Friends,
Thank you for perusing one of my final “World Race” blogs. This and the two blogs to follow are a scattering of thoughts, lessons & breakthroughs I’ve received in the expanse of the last several years, involving my time on the Race. My hope is that this blog, although my own experience, will encourage you in your own journey & walk, whatever the season.
I remember sitting in a church pew as a young child completely ashamed of my Biblical illiteracy. The pastor would name a passage and I would frantically scramble through the text in hopes of magically arriving there. You see, I was petrified that someone would peer into my soul and realize how imperfect of a “Christian” I truly was. I was around seven or eight years old and attending a VBS that summer (Vacation Bible School, for anyone who did not grow up in Western Christian Culture). Every morning we were expected to memorize a scripture verse and recite it in the presence of the instructor later that afternoon. If the child was successfully able to recite the verse, he/she would receive a prize and a verbal affirmation. We all stood in a line. My hands were sweating excessively. I could hear the child in front of me seamlessly recite the verse and receive her prize. It was my turn and my mind blanked. The teacher glanced at me disapprovingly and questioned whether I had actually made any attempt to “write the scripture on my heart.” I knew I had struggled to do exactly that and failed. Apparently, it wasn’t enough. From then on, I tried desperately to be the “square” that deep down I knew I wasn’t. Maybe if I pushed, shoved and contorted myself enough into the square hole on the shape sorting cube, I’d land within the desired box. Somewhere along the way it proved successful and I learned to shapeshift. I attended the Bible studies, said all of the right things and wore the clothes just to find an even greater emptiness therein. Shame and fear were my two best friends and I went on an endless search for love and belonging in desolate places. It looked like codependency. It looked like slaving away to make a 4.0 GPA at the expense of my own health. It looked like a double life where I was one person with my family and another with my friends. To say I was miserable was an understatement. In January 2020, my first month of the Race, I experienced Jesus’s love for me in a way I had never previously understood. I think it may have literally saved my life. It came through a petite Indonesian woman named Desy. She was our ministry host for the month. She’d tote my team and I around the small town of Bandung, Indonesia, while listening to the song “New Wine” by Hillsong. One morning, I was unable to attend ministry due to an excruciating migraine that had me nearly paralyzed on this thin mattress pad. Desy, out of the kindness of her heart, approached where I was laying and kneeled down to begin massaging my temples. As I glanced up into her deep brown eyes, a smile danced across her face as she whispered, “Stephanie, Jesus loves you.” That day, despite the numerous times I’ve heard those words throughout my life, they actually became my reality. I was at one of my lowest, most broken, unlovely points of my life and Jesus chose to work through Desy to meet me there.
I’m fully convinced that Jesus continues to meet the hearts of broken people as He always has. In fact, it is in the times that we recognize our own weakness and need for healing, that breakthrough is most imminent. Jesus breaks all of the chains and crosses all of the barriers. If your version of “Christianity” is marked by pretense, fear, control, a strong need for perfection, shame or condemnation, it isn’t Christ. If that is all you’ve ever known, I want to tell you there is hope. That hope doesn’t reside in anything you could ever achieve but in the truth that Jesus died to set you free. Even if it isn’t your current experience or understanding, there is more and it looks far different from the burden of attempting to carry out a facade every Sunday morning. If you aren’t a square and you don’t belong, you’re in good company and His name is Jesus. He came to set the captives free. He sees you in your imperfection and calls you “Beloved.” Knowing the Lord’s love for me has radically shifted my outlook on life and the way that I view myself. I no longer experience the perpetual emptiness that I once did and am instead learning to walk free of a lot of the chains that my life was previously marked by.
Thanks for reading this reflection! I hope you found it encouraging in some way. I’ll be posting two more in the months of November and December as a way of debriefing my time abroad.
-Steph
