Whatever's in front of me, help me to sing hallelujah



My family for the past two and a half months (minus Raúl and Nahum)...

Hello All,

It has been quite a roller coaster since I last updated. On November 16, Sara and Sally left to move to Nicaragua. This past week has been very difficult for me. I am generally pretty positive, especially with anything that I send out into the world of the internet, but I don't want you to get the idea that life here is always easy--it isn't. I am constantly learning, and a lot of times, that learning is through struggle.

One of the biggest struggles that I have is in part due to my personality. I grew up being very much a perfectionist, especially in school work. Now, I'm less of a perfectionist, but I always have much higher expectations for myself than anyone else has for me, which also means that when I fail, I'm much harder on myself than anyone else is on me. For this reason, I tend to be overly sensitive to criticism. In this environment, all of these facts about myself are amplified. Being a gringa, everything I do is under a microscope--the way I cook, eat, speak, drive, everything. There are lots of gringos (North Americans) who live here and whose behavior gives all gringos a bad reputation. Oftentimes, I feel like I can't win, that I can't do anything right. Just as there is an unspoken code of conduct in every culture, there are unspoken rules or tendencies of the Honduran culture that I don't know because I haven't lived here that long. I'm always learning, which is good, but I often feel like the odds are against me since I already have to fight the bad image that people from the US often have. For someone who doesn't like to draw a lot of unnecessary attention and doesn't like to be a burden for anyone, it is a very stretching condition. When I was growing up, I was a pretty quiet, independent kid. I was the kind of kid that didn't like to ask for help and would let my shoes hurt my feet for months before I told my parents that I had outgrown them simply because I didn't want to be a burden. Because of these attitudes, there were often times where I needed help in schoolwork while being homeschooled or should've shared my struggles of being a kid but didn't. My stubborn independence and the constant assumption that I was mature for my age often left me feeling alone unnecessarily. I rather feel like that younger version of myself now. I've grown accustomed to Honduran life and the Spanish language enough to be more or less independent and left alone but that doesn't always mean that I couldn't use the help and friendship of others. An example of this recently was that Roy and I went to the immigration office to turn in my residency paperwork. He told me to ask the lady up front for directions. I did, but I didn't understand one word that she said (all it takes is one important word, and I'm lost). I wasn't worried, though, because I knew Roy had heard her directions too. So, I walked a few steps, stopped, and waited for him to guide me. Instead, he said (almost with a sense of frustration), "Sarah, what did the lady tell you?" I repeated what she said and then explained that I didn't know one of the words. He directed me to where to go and soon after approached me to say, "Sarah, I have to apologize to you. I need to have patience with you. I'm sorry. In my mind, you already understand almost everything in Spanish, so when you act like you're confused or you don't follow instructions, I don't understand what's wrong. I forget that you are still learning, so please forgive me for my lack of patience." I was grateful for this apology because I do often struggle with giving myself the freedom to fail, and when others don't give me the freedom to fail, it makes it a million times worse. It's a constant struggle for me to remember that I only have one person to please--Jesus, not even myself (especially not myself, because I could never live up to my own expectations).

In the midst of this ongoing battle with myself, Sara and Sally's leaving has been especially difficult. I am a very family-oriented person. I am the oldest of three, so I stayed at home a lot to take care of my siblings. I wasn't one to be running around with lots of friends growing up. Now, I tend to be a home body, and I can adapt to pretty much any new situation when I find a sense of family--biological or adopted--where I can let my guard down and rest comfortably. I had already developed a relationship with Sara and Sally and the girls over the years, so finding a sense of family when I first got here was pretty easy. With them leaving, I have felt rather lost. Unlike all of the other missionaries here, I have no one to go home to, no consistent sense of safety in another human being. I, of course, still have Quendy and Raúl and Nahum (and even Roy sometimes), but I have lost my primary protectors, comforters, confidants, my adopted mother, and my adopted aunt. This has resulted in much crying this week, but I'm a relatively emotional person, so perhaps, that's nothing new. On Tuesday, Roy and I went to the immigartion office for a second time. Then we headed to do some errands that he needed to do. While I was sitting on a bench, waiting for him, I found myself overwhelmed with loneliness and just heaviness of loss and feeling lost. I just started telling God (probably for the millionth time) how lonely I was, the pain I was feeling, etc. I am here out of obedience. I am here because I know that God sent me here, that He prepared me for years to come here. I'm not here for any other reason. Sometimes, there is no logical, apparent reason for my being here. But because of my desire to be obedient, I don't often even question the reason for being here. Even if I'm the most useless and solitary missionary, I know that God has a purpose for my being here, that even when I can't see, He is doing the work. So, I trust Him even as I cry and struggle. As I was having difficulty maintaining my composure while sitting on this bench, the young mother who was sitting across from me came over and sat down. I didn't know her and had never met or seen her before.

She said, "The Holy Spirit told me to come talk to you. He showed me that you have a spirit of loneliness all over you. He told me that you left everything--your home and friends and family--to come here. He wants you to know that you're not alone. You didn't make an error in coming here. Sometimes we have to go through difficulties, but God always has a purpose. Keep coming to Him with the difficulties because when you ask for His help, He is listening and working on your behalf. You are not alone." By this time, I was crying, of course, because I was so blessed that God sent a total stranger to send me such a timely message, one that I hadn't even demanded or even dared to ask for. I was prepared to endure with no answer from Him. I was so blessed by this woman's obedience. God does know what He is doing. He is working even when I can't see, and in the mean time, He is preparing me for whatever it is that He has next.

One of those preparations has been this week--probably one of the most trying weeks I've ever had in Honduras. (And it continues next week.) Sara and Sally had already bought their bus/plane tickets to leave before we knew when Blanca was going to finish school. She doesn't finish until the middle of next week. Thus, I was the one who was left with the responsibility of taking care of Quendy and Blanca until Blanca is done school. Once she is done, Quendy and I can move up to the apartment, and Raúl will stay to take care of this house until they make it into a home for boys. I was overwhelmed for days about having to take on this responsibility. We have had so many problems with lying and stealing in this house that I didn't feel like I could handle being the only one responsible for the girls. But, in the midst of feeling so ill-equipped and inadequate, I found solace in a Bethany Dillon song called "Hallelujah":

Who can hold the stars and my weary heart?

Who can see everything?

I've fallen so hard, sometimes I feel so far

But not beyond your reach

I could climb a mountain

Swim the ocean or do anything

But it's when you hold me that I start unfolding

All I can say is

Hallelujah, hallelujah

Whatever's in front of me

I'll choose to sing hallelujah

Oh, hallelujah, hallelujah

Whatever's in front of me,

I'll choose to sing hallelujah

The same sun rises over castles

And welcomes the day

Spills over buildings into the streets

Where orphans play

And only you can see the good

In broken things

You took my heart of stone and you made it home

And set this prisoner free

Hallelujah, hallelujah

Whatever's in front of me,

Help me to sing hallelujah

This week has been wildly difficult. I was given a large house and family (of two teenage girls and Raúl) to take care of overnight. In some ways, I have embraced the opportunity to be a homemaker. I enjoy packing Raúl's lunch, cooking for my little family, making banana bread to sell, making guava jelly (for the first time) from guavas from Roy's family's garden, doing laundry, and making sure we have everything we need in the house. What has been difficult has been keeping track of the girls. They both have no problem lying to my face, and there is nothing that pains my heart more than lying. For someone who so needs a sense of family where it's possible to let the guard down and be safe, it has been exhausting living with these girls. If I have learned nothing else this week, it is that I never want to be a single mother because constantly having to be alert, guarded, and discerning all by myself has brought me to tears every day. I will say, however, that it has been a new opportunity to depend even more on God. I have developed so much wisdom in the two and a half months I've lived here. God has taught me numerous lessons about how to love and what love looks like in the face of constant manipulation. I have had to realize my necessity to go deeper into the heart of Jesus and to remember who I am in Him. I am a very soft-hearted person. Lying and manipulation is such a deep betrayal to me that it is very hard for me to let it go and not just withdraw into myself and emotionally shut down. I find myself angry at how much I am hurt by these girls who can hug me and shower me with compliments and love like they're my sisters and then in the next moment lie to my face. Even this morning as I was telling God how much I don't like about myself that I have an inability to protect myself and not internalize this betrayal, I heard Him say yet again, "But I like the way you are." Thankfully, today, I was granted a break as the girls went to spend the afternoon with a couple from our church. All I could say to God last night was, "Please, just let me have a little break. Enough to recharge." And, in His wonderful sweetness, He gave me just that. He so amazingly knows exactly what I need when I need it, often even when I don't know what I need.

Please keep me in your prayers that God would continuously grant me patience and endurance and that He would harden me to difficulty. As I often used to joke with Sara and Sally, God must have something big in store for the future with all of the patience and endurance He's cultivating within me now. Please also keep the girls in your prayers. I remember being their ages. Adolescence is not easy by any means, but it is made infinitely more difficult by one's own insistence to rebel, lie, steal, and run from God and real love. I do believe that God can always change someone's heart, but it breaks my own that oftentimes He must do so the hard way.

Lots of love,

Sarah