Exactly, Why Guatemala? : The Summation

On a trip to Israel, I was sitting around a meal table in a kibbutz with a team of people I had come to greatly enjoy over the past six days, when someone asked the often-asked question when on a missions-focused trip: “Where do you feel called to?” 

I came into a personal relationship with Jesus on a mission trip to Frakes, KY. I didn’t understand missions at the time, but as my life grew with Jesus at the helm, I learned more and more that I wanted to go to different parts of the world. 16 trips later, I was at this table in Israel answering the same question I’ve answered on every other trip. I was called to the United States. 

This answer garnered questions, always, but it was true. I love my people and my country. I selfishly saw Jesus as an American God rather than a global God until I expanded my world view and sat in a church service in Vladimir, Russia, listening to a translator whisper what the pastor was praying from the front. It was just like we pray, same asking, same praise, same words and sentiment as my American church prayed in a corporate setting. It was in that moment I connected to my bias and understood that God was a global God and the hearts of men were the same who seek Him regardless of language or culture. 

The year following Israel, an opportunity to return to Russia with a team to work with ministry center we had partnered with for decades presented itself, marking my 16th mission trip. The following year, I had decided to earn a master's degree and was in my second semester of school when I looked through a list of trips my employer’s foundation was offering through its missions program. I looked at a coworker and asked, “Want to go to Guatemala?” I had never visited, out of the list, it was the only place I felt “willing” to go to. I hear the arrogance in that sentence as I share it, but it was who I was then, and it shaped how I made my choices. So in April of that year, I embarked on my 17th mission trip, but first to a country where it wasn’t illegal to speak about the gospel of Jesus. 

Guatemala, April 2018

During my five-day visit with the host missionaries, I was often moved by their spiritual depth. There were some days, they would gather and pray, asking the Lord to guide them where they went that day and who needed to experience the Lord. There’s a story in the New Testament where the disciple Philip was led to go stand near a cart where he was met with the opportunity to answer a eunich’s questions about Jesus because he was sensitive to the spirit enough to be led there. This is what I imagined the work in Guatemala looked like on those days. I was intrigued.

I come back and I am in my normal everyday life. It’s been a year and a half since my trip to Guatemala. I had no mission trips on the horizon, and I was facing some big life changes. I knew the Lord was shifting me; graduation was pending, and I could tell I  was going to move from Virginia Beach. The Lord had spoken to me during that first summer after Guatemala, calling me into full-time vocational ministry. Now, it’s the Thanksgiving holiday and on an impromptu trip to Texas to visit my brother, social media showed that some of the missionaries I’d worked with in Guatemala were in town close to me. We met for a coffee where during the conversation I simply asked, “What would it look like to come work in Guatemala full time?” 

That’s it. That’s how it happened. I was simply presented with an opportunity, and when I prayed about it, I felt like the choice was mine, so I took it. I didn’t make the choice for many more months, but I wanted to live like those missionaries were, for a season. I wanted to see what it was like to push yourself in more ways than one and learn to walk in the guidance of the Holy Spirit. 

Guatemala, January 2021

If I’m painfully honest, I wanted to walk in the fullness of God all day every day, like I did on short-term trips. On week three I started to realize there is a difference in life on the field and two weeks on the field…there’s a point when life becomes life after that two weeks, and daily life will start to march in. I think that’s one of the lessons I learned in Guatemala: long-term vocational ministry is not a missions trip. It’s a gritty dedication to something you know is where you’re supposed to be when everything else feels like it’s in the wrong place. It’s holding on to your why when you can’t remember it, and dedicating yourself to slowing down, sitting in the seeking, and changing everything you thought you knew about life before. 

Guatemala unfolded a lot of whys…too many to answer in one post, but enough of them to keep an open conversation. So, this one is “the why I went to Guatemala itself” in a summation. 

To Whom it May Concern:

To Whom it May Concern:

You can’t help where you were born. Why one is born into privilege and one in to abject poverty is only answered by the creator. We have a responsibility to the position we are in to serve the underserved in our spheres. Out of the abundance of the heart we give; compassion, revelation, fasting, religion are found and centered in serving the underserved regardless of station. I’ve met women with dirt floor kitchens open their homes as a village soup kitchen during pandemic. 

When we step out God will put the next step in front of us. When we acknowledge him in all we do he will order and straighten the steps of our paths. The abide feels like a great big ole sick, but so does the gym. When you stand in the reward of that gym suck you feel good! Same with the suck of the abide. Someone told me, recently, that God was going to sustain me in this season. I know that’s true, but on days when the suck is more pronounced than the reward I have to remind myself that sustainability is meant for these times and I can trust him beyond all measure, fear, or anxiety. He’s a breath away to my cries of, “Help me!” Even when I groan and grumble, feeling like a toddler inside and I want to have a full-out-on-my-back-kicking temper tantrum I know he sustains me even then. 

He’s a good Father and faithful to be trusted. To my pals in the suck, I see you!! We’ll get there. In the meantime, what I keep doing is seeking him for answers to the questions and responsibilities he’s laid in my heart and hands. I keep short accounts with other believers I trust, especially on days when the abide feels more like punishment. I also keep my prayer language active with worship in the background to keep my heart in a posture of praise and worship because even in the suck he’s still more than worth it, and honestly, so am I. I am worth the pressing in for his peace and his presence. I guess it’s about posture. Where do you posture your heart? When there’s seemingly famine do you pour out anyway and allow Jesus to fill you again? I’m learning it’s living waters and when you acknowledge him all you do the waters stir and flow and regardless of ebbs and wanes of life tides, there is life - and life abundantly - flowing through you. 

So, choose life. 

To Whom it May Concern

I didn’t know a “nervous breakdown” was your nervous system breaking down and not being able to function as intended.. I didn’t know that eventually those things you muscle through  will show themselves. It’s been two years since the initial “breaking,” and it still surprises me that there are days when I don’t want to be here anymore.It's not a desire to die, per se, or even a lack of a will to live. It's more so a feeling of "I don't know how to do this anymore, and I would rather not be here anymore.". The more honest I’ve gotten with others about this feeling, the more I am hearing that the feeling is understood. Is this a normal thought in other people?  Or is this something of a plague we agree with and figure, “It’s ok we will just get through it?”

In experiencing my lowest days, I realized that when my nervous system is most stressed I start to get fuzzy-brained and do weird things. On one of those days, I left my iPad in the Denver airport bathroom, wrecked a rental car before I even got it out of the parking lot, and saw a project I’d dedicated my whole life to for two years go up in flames during  a three hour flight. I remember crying over how dark the day was. I had no idea how to manage all I was facing and telling my friend that I saw no tomorrows. 

I don’t feel like that today, thankfully. I think I am to the place where I know there are tomorrows no matter how dark today. I do feel deeply at times that I have very little worth to add to the world. It’s a very strong feeling that leaves me feeling loose and shaking all within my core. 

I really thought I was immune from mental health struggles, but I know that we are all the same. I know these things make it more relatable but being in the midst of days where I have to ask for help to hold myself together is very humbling. So humbling, I ALMOST don’t want to tell anyone, but the fear of keeping that in feels greater so I humble myself. I’ll be transparent…I don’t understand the purpose of this season I’m walking out, what I did or didn’t do to bring it on or exacerbate it, why I know He’s a real God but I also feel like He’s this distant judge and I just have to muscle through. My mind knows that He is not attached to how these relationships and circumstances diminish my sense of worth and life attribution, but my heart and my emptiness feels like it is. The “muscle through” doesn’t work, I’m fairly sedentary these days, and I want sustainable mental and physical health. 

So cheers to those whom it may concern, regarding our mental health and the battles we rage against and within. I’m asking for help, I’m being honest, and I’m full of faith (even if it’s a habit of faith) that nothing lasts forever and this too shall pass. You can join me, thankfully we aren’t alone.