Out of the Ashes

I stepped outside the bubble of my little secluded Himalayan world last week when I moved.  I had been in a remote part of the mountain, and though I had moments and days with encounters with the real India, I wasn’t living IN it. My bubble has burst. The constant honking of horns, the beating of drums, the prayer calls, the masked women in their burkas, the men bowing on their mats, the hum of the chants during pooja offerings, the heaviness that wages in this place is felt and heard and seen daily, moment by moment now. It’s rare I feel that I escape it.   I have felt the heaviness.   It’s like I knew it was here and I had felt it before, but now living in this new apt, it is my reality again.   I have been having some weird spiritual attacks in the last week. Unable to sleep well, unable to focus for my quiet time and studying of Hindi. Unable to stay awake and feeling complete exhaustion.   Waking up with intense unexplained abdominal pain and then having it be gone

Somedays I am not sure that the Father sent me to India for the Indians as much as maybe He sent me to India to refine me.  I moved this week. I wanted to move.  I had been asking the Father for more opportunities, more ways to get involved and be closer to the people, a place that I could open up my home and reach the lost more easily.  I asked for it. He answered.   He gave me just what I asked for. This move is one of the hardest things I have experienced since coming to India. I have lost all around me. EVERYWHERE I look. I am not in the secluded location I was on the other side of the mountain with minimal neighbors and few people around me.  Here every time I step foot outside my house I am surrounded by people staring at me, asking questions, peering in my windows, walking unannounced into my home, opening my cupboards, picking up all my personal belongings.   They want to know who I am. They want to know what I have to offer them. Saturday as I moved my belongin