I had learned earlier in my walk with the Lord that asking 'WHY' just made you end up going in circles. God doesn't answer Whys...more often than not, He remains silent and we remain frustrated with that silence. So I learned to ask what. When God chooses to allow hurricanes to devastate cities and towns and families, I asked Him, "What can I do to help, Lord?".
So along with this grief, I asked "WHAT?"...What should I do with my grief? What should I do with where I'm at right now? I was so tired of being Mopey-McMoperson and honestly I was just ready to start living again.
One day, the answer came clearly to me..."Give your life away."
Those few Words came like lightning in my heart. There was a new sense of awakening and passion to do what I was commanded. I knew that God would meet me wherever "Give your life away" led. So my search began.
At the time, I was reading David Jeremiah's book on grieving. It was pretty neat because it used the book of Psalms alot and I felt like David (King David) put my feelings into words when he wrote all these Psalms. Particularly, Psalm 13. While this book brought some healing to me, I was still determined to figure out how I would give my life away. Somewhere in the book, I read about serving and how serving brought healing to David Jeremiah's heart.
Slowly but surely, it became clear to me that those words meant I was to serve. Serve as a missionary.
The December of my Junior year marked the beginnings of my quest. I knew that the upcoming summer would be my last summer before I would have to be a grown up and find a real job (I was going to graduate the year after that). And if serving was going to bring my healing, then I definitely wanted to be healed as soon as possible.
One order of Healing please.
New Orleans 9th Ward
Selfishly, I knew I could not go back to my hometown that summer anyway. And two of the mission trips I did involved my church where my ex and I both served. The mere thought of bumping into my ex made me want to vomit. I was NOT ready to face him or his family or RISK seeing them. Worse, be doing missions/camps with him. NO WAY.
So with many practical questions like....
"Where do I want to go?"
and
"What am I good at?"
I began my search.
IMB, WYWAM, NAMB....I went through all the organizations' websites to see if there was an open door.
I finally decided that I was going to stay in the States and went with NAMB. I picked Colorado because I have always wanted to go there and it sounded like an amazing adventure. I picked Trinity Baptist Church because I've always liked the word "Trinity" and the description of the church and the work to be done fit my child-loving/teaching capabilities. So I clicked on the link.
Many God-things happened. You can read about some of them HERE. And by May 31st, I was on a plane to Gunnison, Colorado. Population 5500 people. No movie theatre. 1 Walmart and possible Moose sightings in the past.
Gunnison took my breath away. It was beautiful, serene, magnificent...everything a city girl only dreamed of. The stars shone brighter, the water was cleaner and I swear to you the Dandelions were on steriods. Gunnison was a fairytale for my heart.
Giant Dandelions
But the most important thing that happened to my heart happened on one of the last weeks of being there. I did something very irresponsible and old-Rachel-like. See, I'm a selfish and spoiled person. I'm not even trying to be humble right now. I have always known that when I do things, I weigh the benefit it has for me and alot of the time, I don't think about other people's feelings. Without going into too much detail, I neglected to carry out one of my duties at church...not on purpose...but I can definitely see how I should have taken more responsibility.
Well, we (the 5 missionaries on the team) were confronted about it and I bawled like I've never bawled in my life.
Part of it was because I was just disappointed in myself but mostly it was because I was still so hurt by the break up and it was my first time releasing all the anger, disappointment, self-doubt, self-loathing-depression that I held on to the WHOLE summer.
God was trying to heal me...but I didn't realize that it was ME who was holding on to myself and what I did or did not do.
Colorado was absolutely beautiful. The mountains and sunsets and sunrises and rains took my breath away. All that time I was thanking God for the beauty in front of me and for what He was showing me that I didn't realize that He was showing me that I was worth more than all the sceneries there were in this world; that I was more beautiful than the tallest mountain; more precious that the deepest sunsets ; more loved than all of His creation.
I held on to my expectations for myself--to be perfect, to be put-together and meanwhile, God was trying to take these blinders away to show me that in my desperate need for help, I was the most beautiful thing to Him. In my absolute weakness, He was strong.
So my journey to healing took a huge step but the greatest step of all was only months away.
