Unity (pt. 1)
Last year as I was leaving for my trip, my leader had said she received the word “unity” for our team. Unity was always something I felt we lacked. I left my trip without feeling as if the Lord fulfilled His word. To my surprise and discomfort, the Lord told me this is another season for me in “unity”. When I arrived at welcome week, what do you know, the leaders say they feel that the word “unity” has been spoken over this class.
I feel a hesitation because I’ve been hurt before in community. I began to write a blog about the beginning of my teams isolation and separation on my trip, but I never posted it because I hadn’t come to see it redeemed. What’s the purpose of bragging about unfinished business?
The truth is the Lord redeems things in His time. Something I’m learning in CGA is that it’s important to be honest and confront your own emotions. It’s important to be truthful about what you feel — truthful to yourself, God, and the people around you. You have to recognize where you stand versus where you should be in order to start walking. That being said, because of my past hurt, CGA community is a difficult adjustment. I will be following this up later this week or next week with more about the cool things the Lord is doing with “unity” in the current season. But to give perspective, here is my unfinished blog from last October.
I love my team, I really do. For all of Cambodia I cherished it and I lifted the team to God. I saw each one of them with a kind heart and did my best to forgive. I submitted to Him when He asked me to let things go, and I cried to Him when people hurt my feelings. And then came Bangkok.
Bangkok was a nightmare for a lot of reasons. The culture change was horrific — abrasive strangers, aggressive shouting, irrational driving in poorly built cars, unknown city surroundings, and then finally a sigh of relief when we reached a luxurious hotel.
Though I adore Siamaze Hostel, it will always scar me as the place my team fell into their separate ways. Regaining wifi, nice showers, a sink where we could wash our hands, full length mirrors, beds, air conditioning, American-style breakfasts; It left gleams in our eyes and fulfilled the dreams we had had for the past month of finally arriving in the American idea of comfortable living. But here’s why Bangkok sucked.
Cambodia, though rocky, stripped us of everything. It sounds painful and wounding but was honestly a blessing in disguise. It pruned dead leaves off the tree that was our team. When one teammate woke up scared, we all woke up and comforted her. When one teammate was sobbing because she had a virus, her cries woke me up and I could sit up and pray with her. When someone was suffering from trying to carry the weight of the childrens’ hurt on their own, we were able to tell. How can you not tell when all you see is each other’s faces everywhere you turn? Not having alone time was annoying and draining. I missed my family and friends because I couldn’t hear from them often. My digestive system just stopped working due to all the rice, and I couldn’t shower without swatting mosquitos or knocking rats of the ceiling with a stick. I got eaten alive by bugs (my arms were covered — I seriously looked like an alien) and I woke up from the insane amount of sweat covering my body every night. One night when I lost my composure because I finally had to accept that we were leaving, my teammates could hear my crying, so they laid on top of me and prayed for me.
Bangkok offered us what we wanted. It gave us markets, coffee shops, restaurants, our own beds with curtains and outlets to ourselves, showers, etc. We dove into it. I didn’t care about eating with my teammates, I just wanted to eat my food, run to a coffee shop, get in the hammock, and FaceTime my friends at home. I wanted to stick some earbuds in and listen to music while chatting with my Cambodian friends I had left behind. I wanted to marathon the television series I had missed a new season release of. For the first few days I barely had a desire to talk to any of my teammates. I finally could have alone time. I started to miss them. I started to crave the realness we had in Cambodia. I craved the unity. Anytime I put in the effort to converse, it seemed my teammates just wanted time to themselves. I respected that. But I thrived every time someone would just sit with me and talk. I just wanted to see someone present, and I wanted to be present with them.
One of my favorite memories so far from this trip is sitting on my bedroom floor with my team leader, drawing on each other with marker, taking webcam selfies, and trying to steal her belongings as she was attempting to pack up to switch to her new room (leaders got a separate room for debrief). Because for days, I either wasn’t present or my teammates weren’t present, and finally, I met someone I knew for a month previously. I didn’t know in the moment how much I valued it.
