I Am Valuable

I recently received a very generous donation from a very amazing couple. At seeing the notification of this, I gasped and then began to cry. My crying went from being full of gratefulness, to a full on panic attack. I cried myself to sleep, asking God why I would feel so much guilt for someone supporting me.

I spent all day today thinking and praying and contemplating this. You know what I realized?

I am afraid to accept love. I only accept love from people when I feel as though I have something to offer them, a way to prove my value. 

I have done this in every relationship I have ever had, even with my family and dearest friends. I always have had some way to make their lives better, to help them in some way. But I have nothing to offer this couple, they live in another country and there is nothing I can do to repay them. They gave with nothing to be gained.

That is a beautiful thing, a love that gives expecting nothing in return. Some would say that is the love of God.

All my life I have been trying to prove myself to... to my parents, to my god, to everyone around me. I have always been told that God loves us regardless of what we have to offer, because we are in God and God is in us. I am just now beginning to see this. As with so many other things lately, the ideas I always said I believed are finally starting to take form and be the reality in my heart.

I am learning that we are meant to love and value our neighbors as ourselves. Not instead of ourselves or above ourselves, but as ourselves. We are all spiritual beings, we all have God within us. Call me new age-y, but I believe that firmly. It's time I start living it out for myself as I do for others.  Honestly, I cannot say that I love and value myself now. But hopefully one day soon, I will be able to say it and mean it.

One Year Anniversary!

Yesterday marked the one year anniversary of my moving to Cambodia. To celebrate, I took the day off any and all work. I decided I would like to get a massage, go on a riverboat tour, and finish the night off on a sky bar overlooking the city. My roommate came with me for a lovely massage and as we were in our Tuk Tuk driving to the riverside for the boat tour, the rain began to come down. Now I'm talking Cambodia-style rain, full on flooding and winds and chaos. This meant no river tour as planned. My roommate and I ducked from the Tuk Tuk into a restaurant to avoid being completely drenched. 

And as we sat in this restaurant and talked about the experiences of the past year, there was not even a hint of sadness or anger for the changed plans. Because that is the beauty I have come to find in Cambodia, it is that nothing is ever set in stone. In this country, you could plan your little heart out, and still there is no way of knowing what the actual outcome will be. Any plan you have is turned completely upside down, and instead you are left with something even better. 

I had so many fears and expectations when I came here. And honestly, most of them haven't come to fruition. I say that in complete joy, because I have gotten so much more than I ever could have expected. More friendship, more growth, more love than I anticipated. 

This has been a year of discovery, about myself and others. When I left everything I had ever known, I was only left with myself. For the first time, I was able to take a good, hard look at myself and recognize my desires and capabilities. I was able to see people without my usual biases and expectations, to see friendship and relationship in new ways. I could go on for ages, each month here has brought on new lessons to be learned and love to be experienced. 

But it all boils down to this; In Cambodia I have learned to love. As cheesy as it sounds, this is the place where I have found myself. And I am so terribly excited for all that is still to come in this amazing country. 

Do not be afraid.

More than 350 times. The Bible says "Do not be afraid" or "Fear not"- literally hundreds of times. It's as if there is this common refrain from start to finish of releasing ourselves from fear, a constant push toward freedom.

Yet we live in fear so often. I know I certainly do. I am afraid that I am not enough. I am afraid of how others see me, I am afraid they will think I am selfish. I am afraid that I can only be loved when I have something to offer. I am afraid I will never be known.

I have come to believe that fear is the root of all evil. We hoard money and things because we are afraid of going without. We fall into pride and shame because we are afraid we aren't worthy of love. We hurt others because we are afraid they will hurt us. The people who do the most disgusting things in this world are simply scared children, afraid they will lose if they stop fighting.

That is the beautiful thing about this Christ story. The idea is that Love came to get down and dirty with us, to get into all our messed up parts. And that Love was so perfect that it drove out the fear. We cannot simultaneously be driven by love and fear, there can only be one. When we choose to let love be the thing that runs our lives, fear can no longer hold the reins.

I have a big decision to make soon about my time in Cambodia and what the rest of that will look  like. Truth be told, I am afraid. I am afraid that I will make a choice that leaves other people hurt and angry. But if I can draw closer to the love, I think I can make a decision that brings the most healing, both to myself and others.

Pray for me friends, a time of change is coming!

It's in the past.

I am currently co-leading a team with Steps of Justice. At the beginning of these trips we take everyone to S-21, a school turned into a torture chamber during the mass genocide 40 years ago. I didn't go in, as I have done it before and knew it would destroy me for at least a few days.

As I was sitting in the coffee shop across the street I watched the Khmer people as they lived and worked around this huge historical building. A man near me asked what we were doing there and I said our team was in the museum, when I asked him if he had ever been to the museum he sort of nodded. Something struck me though, he absolutely refused to look at the building. As I looked around, I realized that was everyone. These people worked on the same street as this massive building and yet they refused to actually see it. They averted their eyes, they focussed on something else, they always stopped short of really taking it in.

It made me think about how we as people deal with traumatic experiences. Whether it be a genocide or divorce, abuse or loneliness, we all have our pain. We are all a lot more similar than we realize.

I have my own museum of pain, the memories of trauma and abandonment. I tell myself that because I have wrapped it up nicely and let people in that I have overcome it, that it is in the past and doesn't affect me anymore. But the reality is that I refuse to look at it. Like the Cambodians at S21, my life is run by this thing that I am unwilling to see. Because if I really see it, I know I will live it all again.

I'm sick of living this way, I hate pretending that the past doesn't matter when it is informing all my decisions. I want to learn to see my past for the beautiful parts and the painful parts. Then I want to live my life based on the Ultimate Truth behind it all. I don't know how I'll get there, but I know that is a life worth living.