Why am I doing this?
What is it I am hoping to gain from it?
Why did God place this in front of me?
What is He thinking?
Missions was my life's dream.
I wanted nothing more, from the time I was in high school, than to go into Latin America somewhere and serve the poor.
I had originally thought I wanted to go into a tribe but over time the needs to children took precedence in my heart.
Especially street children.
After Larry and I ended up back in the States due to my undiagnosed (at the time) health issues I slowly and deliberately started shutting my heart down.
For the first while I just couldn't deal with some of the things I had seen and experienced.
Abused children. Indescribably abused.
Street children being herded up so they could be taken out into the countryside and shot. (want to feel helpless and ill? Go watch that knowing there's nothing you can do about it).
Children who were hungry all the time.
Children who were dying for lack of medical care.
Children with no homes.
On and on and on.
Then, over time, I felt the ache of longing to go back overseas and help kids.
But my health prevented me. Along with other factors.
So, again, I went into a deliberate shut down and refused to feel the renewed desire.
That ache of longing to be involved.
To help. To serve.
So, why am I doing this "Seven" fast until next March?
Because I want my heart back.
I know what it feels like to be hungry.
I lived on a dollar a day in South America.
Not because I wanted to but because that was all I had.
It's interesting to have to find food and shelter on a dollar a day.
I know what it feels like to have few clothes.
I had only a handful at times when I was overseas.
It didn't make any sense to have more.
I lived and felt several odd things that the "poor" experience.
I've been deported.
I've been on guerrilla hit lists.
I've had intestinal worms from unclean water.
I've slept on cement slabs when I had no bed.
I've bather in rivers, out of buckets and in ice cold showers in cold weather.
Heck, I even have an arranged marriage.
Don't get me wrong.
I am so very grateful to have had these experiences because there is so much that the poor go through that I can now relate to on a minor level.
I prayed that God would allow me to know some of this so that I would begin to understand.
He has granted me that.
What worries me is that I have lost my heart.
I got tired of being poor.
I got tired of being lonely. (not too many people want to live that way...I get why)
I got tired of wondering where my next meal would come from.
And then one day I realized I missed being with the poor.
I missed serving them and learning from them.
And, yes, I missed living simply.
We all have our callings.
We all have ways that we were meant to serve.
For me, I realize in my head that at some level I am meant to serve the poor and/or the marginalized.
Here in KC and, hopefully, on short-term trips. And from there, who knows???
I don't know for sure what that even looks like right now.
That's part of what I am searching and praying for.
So, my reason for "Seven" and also my reason for doing the "Experience God" study?
It is because I want my heart to open up again.
I want my heart to break with the things that break the Heart of Jesus.
I want to weep over the things He weeps over.
I want to find out how He wants me to be His Hands and Feet.
I don't want a self-indulgent life anymore.
And, presently, that's what I have.
So I am re-exploring what it looks like and feels like to have limited food, limited clothing, etc.
I want to remember.
So I am exploring what it's like to limit media, to not be wasteful.
I want to live a disciplined life.
I want a life focused on the things that matter (people, Jesus) not on the things that don't matter.
Is it hard?
Oddly, frighteningly, yes.
I didn't expect it to be.
It's hard to let the self die and let God fully take over again.
It's heard to open up the heart. It might hurt.
But, to me, there is no life, no real life, in any other way of living.
"Here I stand, I can do no other, so help me God.
Amen." --Martin Luther
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