The ugliness I sometimes see


We returned home today, August 18th, to the vastly different country that I now call "home". The things I so easily become immune to while living here rage their ugly heads whenever I return. It’s a mini culture shock and re-initiation if you will.

I watched from my hotel window as a woman outside bathed her child in brown water. They live in an uncompleted brick shack with holes and a plastic sheet roof that monsoon has mostly destroyed already. Besides the beauty in the color of the scraps of clothes they are wearing there is nothing beautiful to the sight. No running water, no comforts to enjoy- simply day to day survival. My heart broke as I watched her. I looked down to my own sleeping baby tucked away in a nice crib with clean sheets and clean clothes. Sin is a horrible thing! It’s mared the world God created and his original beauty designed. It’s brought sickness, poverty, and brokenness. My heart aches for this woman, and at the same time rejoices in the fact I intimately know the Savior who sees her!

Sometimes I question why we do what we do. Not that I don’t innately know, but sometimes the question just comes to mind again.

I returned to our apartment today which is an asylum impacted by the dampness and humidity of monsoon. I don’t know how else to explain it. There is mold everywhere. Black mold. Scary mold. Bugs, leaches and scorpions inside the house, too close to my baby playing on the floor. There is a dampness that you feel in your bones; a smell of must and mold that makes you wonder how many days till sickness will set in. My toilet paper crumbles to pieces because it’s so damp from the heavy air. Literal liquid droplets collect under the clothes hanging to dry. Our water purifier has mold around the spout due to the moisture that collects there as well.

Frustration, envy, or discontentment could easily set in if I let it, but as "our boys" come home form work and we sit and talk and catch up after our month of being gone, the giggles erupt. And with it praise! My heart is full! I am home! And these boys knowing and finding Jesus more and more not only fill Manoj and I, and our home with laughter, but I believe all of heaven is giggling too.

There are still 6,000 people groups in India that don’t know Jesus, some of those people groups have over 1 million people. There are lost and broken people all around us. And though yes it hard at times to live outside my culture and comfort zones, THIS is why I am here. And I am blessed. Laughter erupts within me and around me because of the work of the Lord in me and through me. I truly count it all as loss in comparison to knowing God more. (Phil 3:8).

As I serve him here I find more of him, and it’s worth it all!

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