Welp. My post-India blog is coming sooner than I thought due to the paper I have to write for my school credit. This is the shorter, way more relaxed, blog version of my paper for my internship in India.
Words could never describe what I learned and how I grew over the last three months. I am honestly not even to a point where my thoughts are clear enough to write about the experience as a whole, but nevertheless I have to for this credit. As I sat in the New Delhi airport about to board the plane to New Jersey, my heart was literally overflowing with joyful thankfulness for how I had been so thrust into the grasp of God. What beautiful people I encountered and was privileged to share life with! How sweet it was to be so simply in the presence of God without my normal surroundings! What a needed venue to be able to slow down, be still, and drink in Scripture as it sharpened my mind and heart! That is all I could think as I sat there pondering the grace I was given to have such an experience. I felt so unworthy, yet so very thankful. I knew God hadn’t given me these experiences to hold them captive inside my mind and heart refusing to share. He has given me a voice. He has given me a confidence—not in myself but in Him. I have something to say. I definitely have something to tell.
I’ve quickly realized after being back, I have to gage how much people really want to know about my experience. I’m not going to word vomit on everyone if I can honestly tell they aren’t that interested. I mean everyone never fails to ask, “How was India?” You gotta be really determined to not know if you don’t even ask that. I usually respond with either of the true statements, “It was the greatest experience of my life” or “It’s the best thing I’ve ever done”…something along those lines. If they in response ask another question or seem overly interested to know more, I’ll go on. If not, I’ll change subjects. Only my mother probably has (had) the patience to sit there and listen for a good two hours as I ramble on, changing topics rapidly, attempting to relay the things I learned and experienced.
This is the point where I hit a writer’s block, because I should start trying to describe my experiences and growth. It is almost impossible to know where to begin. Okay, here it goes… I didn’t really go to India to become some humanitarian. That honestly wasn’t my purpose, nor would I describe myself that way now. Life before India was normal. I don’t think anyone would disagree with the life I lived. It was about as normal as you can get. I was getting ready for my last semester of college wondering what the heck I was going to do next. My spiritual life consisted of the standard ups and downs. Sometimes, I felt God so clearly. Sometimes, I literally had no concept of Him. I knew one thing though. I had this weird, increasing desire for more of God in my life than I currently had. It just wouldn’t go away. I had no idea what having more God would look like, but I knew something was going to have to tangibly change in my life. I was going to have to act. I decided I needed to do something challenging that would force me to grow and test this thing I have called “faith.” So, this intro is very quickly becoming too long and descriptive… It culminated to this: I decided to go to India. It took several months for me to decide to even pursue such a notion. But the moment I started pursuing it, God flung open the doors and said, “Here you go!” or maybe “Here. You go.” So then scared out of my ever-living mind, I decided I was going to walk through them.
In retrospect, “WOW” is all I can say. How with conviction I’ve learned that the choice is always the hardest part! You wanna know what the absolute hardest part of the three months was? The drive with my parents to the airport. Boom. That is it. Disappointing eh? No… God is seriously just that good. Totally overestimated how hard it would be to live in such a different place. Not that India isn’t different. Hear me when I say, there is nothing in India similar to here. No, I overestimated because I underestimated something else. I underestimated God and how perfectly sweet it is to trust in Him in everything, in all the bewilderment of India. So all of that being said, one of the main things I learned is this: God is incredible. God is bigger than me. God is and will always be more than I can know in this life until the day comes that I see Him face to face and then can’t help but to fall on my face in worship. God needs to be feared. God needs to be trusted. I am human. God is God. Where do we meet? Jesus. I have seriously no other choice, but to put my faith in Jesus and experience the relationship with our Creator that was intended from the very beginning. Jesus is literally the only hope for having life now and the eternal future that God so desperately wants us to be in. Faith in Jesus. Sounds so simple. So cliché. So not profound. But that is what I learned in India… how greatly I am in need of Jesus’ mediation, atonement (betcha didn’t think you’d hear that word), appeasement (that one too), transformation, righteousness, holiness, and the grace to have His eyes, hands, heart, and feet for the injustices of this world. Boy, do I need Him. And the “good news“is, (that I am so freshly finding) it is available. It is here. Jesus is here. (MERRY CHRISTMAS TO YOU!) Our sad, unfulfilled brokenness puts us in the PERFECT position to be so radically swept up by Jesus into a relationship with the Father. How quickly this paper/blog has turned into me preaching the Gospel, haha! I’m not sorry for it though. It is the central thing I was so intensely convicted of in my time in India.
Don’t get me wrong… I have learned more than I can say about the country of India, people in desperate situations, poverty, oppression, beautiful children, the need for more harvesters to be sent into the fields, about the lives of people who are dedicated through persecutions, lack of money, and everything to bringing God’s justice to this world. I have experienced that too. And that seriously is a whole other paper. But I think before we become humanitarians, we must become so convinced that the Gospel is our story, our story to be shared.
To share with you my own brokenness, I’ve already felt the change in my mindset since returning. I don’t understand it. I don’t know how to stop it. I honestly don’t know what to do. Yes, I think I have been changed in ways that there is no turning back, but I’ve realized it is going to be a continuous battle. Hence… a continuing desperate need for the power of Christ. That is where I am. That is part of what I’ve learned. There’s much more where all this came from, so if you want to know more…just ask.
