As I’m closing in on my last week out here in the Philippines this year, I’ve been reflecting on not just the past 3 months that I’ve been here but the entire year as well. Thus far, Missions has been a real trip for me – and I’m not referring to all my travels.
Starting back at the beginning before I left my life in Chicago, I remember having a conversation with a good friend over a piece of pie. His words of wisdom were, “Jessie, maybe this next season of your life is just suppose to be you and God…no one else.” Oh how true that has been!
On many different levels, I’ve been stripped down to just “me and God” before being able to build anything back up again. It’s the best place and the worst place to be all at the same time. Through it all I’ve been learning about who I am, my identity in God, and who He is forming me into which has been awesome, and on the flip side He’s exposed all my insecurities, failures, and shortcomings which has left me facing what I’ve tried so hard to bury and run from – feeling vulnerable.
In my comfort zone, I had built a fortress that was impenetrable. I knew how to reinforce the walls that kept me in tact because I knew who, what, where, when, why, and how – everything was familiar. Looking back, within my comfort zone I’d learned how to compartmentalize where God fit and what He could have access to in my life.
God really had to do some demolition in me, which could be summed up neatly in my first 5 months on the mission field: leaving home, family, friends, culture, ministry, church and substituting that for 4 vastly different experiences those first 5 months in Florida, England, Nicaragua, and the Dominican Republic. In a good/necessary way missions had been nothing what I had expected it to be.
God has exposed my insecurities about my age, capabilities, relationship-status (a TOTAL lack-there of), and appearance – yes that even includes my height.
…but what I love, and what I’ve been learning, is when God brings me to a place of feeling vulnerable He doesn’t keep me there too long; He begins to encourage me and put me together again and I begin to understand more of who I am in Him. God sweetly reminds me of Psalms 139,
For you created me in my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well. My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place. When I was woven together in the depths of the earth, your eyes saw my unformed body. All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.
God knows me better than I do. He’s seen me unraveled and undone…and even the mess that I am, God chooses to create me into something more than I could ever dare to hope for or imagine. I’ve been learning that God’s placement is never wrong, and for me to doubt myself in turn doubts God… it’s taken awhile for me to get this and believe it but I love it that God’s patient enough for me to understand it J.
For me, the Philippines has been a place of reconstruction personally, spiritually, and emotionally. I’ve finally been able to find my footing in this season of my life. I am now starting to build upon relationships, ministry purpose, church life, and simply who I am without such drastic changes. There are still vulnerable moments here and there, where God’s refining me…but I have to say that now, I’m grateful for these tough breaking moments because I know that in the end He will erect something beautiful from my broken pieces.
God deserves all my gratitude this year.
