I was lingering in the kitchen right before lunch, trying to boil some water and wash some dishes, the window in front of me had a view to the girls playing games in the field. They were doing some sort of relay races, hopping in corn shacks with shouts of joy. They would topple over in laughter and get back up again to repeat the process.
It was a special moment, being the unseen spectator on a simple human moment.
In that moment, I didn’t remember their trauma or their tragic stories. I saw children of the king, children living in their wholeness of being, the beautiful, raw and imperfect experience of life.
One thing that can become way too common in life of mission work, especially someone who blogs everything about their mission work, is that ministries, people, become stories.
They can become two dimensional characters telling of their beautiful and tragic stories. But that’s the thing with characters, that is merely what they are, a whisper in your memory, impactful but inevitably, forgotten.
But our maker didn’t make us as mere characters, he didn’t make our purpose to be the telling of a good story. He made us whole, He made us imperfect, He made us with divine understanding of everything in between.
The Lord is with us in the unwritten moments. The quiet moments of being where everything is still and mundane.
Being the unseen spectator gave me a glimpse into something that my blogs and my stories could never convey. These girls are so, so much more than their stories. So much more than a blank faced character that symbolizes the tragedy of human wickedness.
The truth is my words will never give them justice, but that is so beautiful. It is so beautiful that our Creator made the human experience something so incomprehensible. I can grapple at it, grapple at trying to squeeze humanity into pen and paper but I will inevitably fail.
I will fail to convey that feeling in my heart as I watched those daughters of the King laugh and lean on each other. I will fail to convey that feeling when I look out the windows at dusk and slowly see the lights of Quito turn on and change the valley into a pool of twinkling lights. I will fail to convey that feeling when you look at the people you love so dearly and nothing makes sense but everything feels right.
One of my favorite verses in the Bible is John 1 verse 48. It tells the story of Jesus meeting a man named Nathanael for the first time, Jesus says that he contains no deceit. Nathanael becomes confused and asked Jesus how he knew this about him. Jesus replies with a hauntingly beautiful and simple answer, “I saw you while you were still under the fig tree before Philip called you”.
This is so impactful because Jesus is claiming that He knows Nathanael more intimately than he could ever imagine. Jesus saw and knew him before Nathanael knew Jesus was watching, before anyone was watching. Jesus was there in his unwritten moments.
In the same way, God created us for those unwritten moments, the moments were my words fail and His glory prevails.
Thank God that my words fail. Thank God that we are so much more than characters in a story. Thank God that the human experience is something so incomprehensibly beautiful that truly, only He understands. In those little, raw and beautiful, unwritten moments.
I don’t want to overstate this, but your words are poetry. I really appreciate that you have given us that window into being unseen, but seeing. My good friend Ray and I were talking this week about “moments” and being grateful. As Ray always challenges me, he started talking about the “practice” of noticing, taking in the small things and being grateful in that moment. It’s easier to be grateful about those significant events, but what about the small things, every day things that we take in every day. Your writings are such a blessing! Thank you for sharing!
Reminds me of John 21:25 “And there are also many other things that Jesus did, which if they were written one by one, I suppose that even the world itself could not contain the books that would be written”.
Even still, thank you for documenting this journey so well. You live and tell an adventurous and brilliant story!