"Christ has no body on earth but yours, no hands but yours, no feet but yours. Yours are the eyes through which Christ's compassion for the world is to look out; yours are the feet with which He is to go about doing good; and yours are the hands which He is to bless with now" -St. Teresa of Avila
Some days are more difficult than others, I think we can all agree on that. Some days you wake up and think to yourself what am I doing, why am I here. God is this really what you have for me. And then there are days you wake up and are filled with some weird sense of peace and excitement about what God has you doing. Yesterday was not one of those days. Yesterday was hard.
There are many things I struggle with since coming to the missions field. Personality clashes, physically sickness. spiritual weakness. major homesickness and so on. Yesterday I had homesickness and it was bad. I woke up with an intense longing to be somewhere familiar, with the people who deeply love me and understand me and I don't have to explain myself to. I woke up with an intense longing to be comfortable to be able to walk down the hall and plop on my sisters bed. To walk down the stairs and have coffee with my mom and dad. I woke up with that intense longing. I woke up with tears in my eyes and I cried most of the morning. Cried because I miss them, cried because I don't know how to handle it otherwise. Cried because I'm realizing that the most important thing to me is my family and Christ is asking me to put Him before them and I struggle everyday to do that, because I love my family with all my heart. I would lay down my life for them. But God is asking me to love Him with all my heart, to love Him more, to lay down my life for Him. and it's hard.
I struggle to understand what God expects of me. Even being here on the missions field. I struggle to understand what He expects and has called me to do. It's harder to understand when the aching for familiar clouds out His voice. To even be Christians, we must first believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God. That in itself is no small idea. So we believe. But God expects more. Much more than church attendance, more than prayer too. More than belief, and even more than self-denial. God asks us for everything. He requires a total life commitment from those who would be His followers. The life-commitment is something I struggle with, every single day. It would be easy to turn my back on God, to throw a temper tantrum and tell Him to take me home from Africa. It would be easy to find a reason to go home but as Rachel, the missionary I am working with said to me "Everyday I ask myself am I willing to accept what God has for me or am I going to be angry and bitter about it?"
That question hit me hard. Am I willing to accept what God has for me? Yesterday I didn't. Yesterday I through a temper tantrum, yesterday I just wanted to go home. But today is a new day. Today I can choose to accept what God has for me. That is the beauty of my God, that He gives me a choice and another day to make that choice. And through my attitude yesterday I saw that I must accept what God has for me, because what He has is much better than what I want. He is calling me to be a carrier of the gospel, not to live out my faith privately but to shout it from rooftops. To love Him and His people recklessly, why would I choose not to accept that?
Yes some days are going to be hard. Some days I will miss my family and my mom's eggs and pancakes. I'll miss sitting on my sisters bed laughing about nothing, I'll miss my brother's stupid jokes, I'll miss watching pixar movies with my older sister and her kids. I'll miss my dad snoring in his chair. I'll miss my dogs pouncing me as I walk through the door. I'll miss just calling up Kelsey and talking with her. I'll miss those things and more, but here is where I need to be. Here is where GOD is calling me. Here is where I need to be. I am human and I will not tell you that everything is great, everyday is a struggle and everyday is a choice. Someday I will wake up with tears in my eyes and somedays I will wake up with peace. It's all in how I approach each day, approaching with GOD and never ever without HIM. How will you approach today?
Struggling,
HIS and yours,
Cami
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