When Running TOWARDS Pain Brings Victory – PRAISE REPORT (3)

It seemed so counter-intuitive. Why run into the very place that had harbored so much pain? Why not hide, race away, from the source of it all?

The plane landed. My feet were still hesitant, after having dreams I would die, not knowing what that might look like.

We step on the soil of my husband’s ancestors. Bare. Questioning. Asking. Demanding.

Too much time had been lost. Too much pain had been bottled up. Too many stories and questions had been formulating in my mind.

As a young girl of twenty-four, silence became my cloak. Smiles and passivity, and avoiding the positions that need addressing, my antecdote to misery.

Ignorance a garment covering bravery.

But, I was not confident. Not bold. In fact, I hid my own face behind bright colored lipstick. I doubted and questioned everything about my existence…

My only hope at the time was survival.

But here I was. A woman, with grown children, now the age I once was…having to navigate my past, my purpose, this call inside my heart that burned with unanswered questions…

Journey still orchestrating laid foundations for what, in my mind?

And how many run away from the pathway their feet were meant to walk? How many feel the call burn, yet, know that fire of God isn’t conditional or partial?

How many say they want their “call” but truly run from it internally…content with the dream of having purpose…

Because justification is more comfortable that actually pursuing things?

I was a dreamer. And dreamers alone, are safe, when purposes stay locked inside their minds.

But, visions are made for stepping, or soon they will perish, if left unspoken, unlived, uncalled out, unorchestrated.

Eventually all feet must start walking if they want to grow in strength. Legs were made for leaping…not sitting idly with hopes and dreams that rot to very core of your whole…

If not release with faith.

And I had rotted enough in childhood. Sat on my pain and let it eat me from inside like a worm bent solely on letting negativity devour me.

Yet, I knew I was meant to die, if I wanted to live…I needed to race into the darknes of my wildest fears. Step into the place I had dreamed of, despite the fear…if I want to be set free from isolation and trepidation…

I knew it was time, I needed to call out the demons in my own mind; as foolish and powerless in light of the Savior that I serve.

He was stretching me with faith. His breath in my lungs was swelling. I could feel it. I dreamed about this season…yet, doubleminded, questioned my own God-given identity and purpose.

Healing.

Healing funneled in my chest as I left my husband’s family house. Healing not from perfection…but from unconditional love. Acceptance. Oneness. A destiny larger than life and my own wildest expectations.

We took the plane to Cusco. Fears started surfacing again. And I remembered my dreams before leaving. How I was swallowing for breath. Gasping. Dying. Crying out for my Savior.

And then, I see them. The Andes Mountains. Gloriously majectic from the windows of the plane.

“Oh honey”. I gasp, in awe. Wondering how even in my wildest imagination I had never seen such a remarkeable, majestic sight!

“Oh, this is what heaven must look like”, I said inside my mind.

Such beauty pointing me to its maker, as all gloriously beautiful things should just do naturally.

I felt the plane decend. I was almost there. I could feel us landing on the place of my husband and children’s forefathers.

Incan space. A place people roamed free before the Spanish came to conquer, and steal from them the treasures they believe to be theirs for the taking.

And I didn’t know much about this region…except that it was the place my heart would stop beating, my hands would stop reaching…

Every fiber in my being would cry out to a God to save me. I would Him with numbing arms and a foggy mind, “Let me fulfill my purpose.”

No one else could expect what the day might bring…but I knew….

The church. The sun. The hills. The blaspheme of Jesus.

And the gasping…the cries and hope for healing for His air to fill my lungs…

How this day would forever change me….

(You are reading a story about our journey to Cusco last fall. It is part of a series. Please check back for more in the days to come.)

UPDATE ON CARAHUASI SHOE CAMPAIGN

We did it! We reached our goal!!

O.k….No…We not only reached our goal…

We surpassed our goal!

Suprisingly, we had donations coming in even AFTER we had collected all the funds requested to buy our Carahuasi children shoes!

Only God could have helped us raise $2695.00 from 22 people in 15 days!!

Read more about this God-sized, miraculous campaign here.

Oh, and would you please be praying for my husband and son this week? They will be traveling into the Andes Mountains to deliver the shoes in the small town, Carahuasi!

Also, we would love your prayers for those of us left here. Our home has been bursting with foster babies and there has been lots of dr’s appointments. We felt it was better for them, if I stayed home and we did not have to leave them with some stranger, in respite.

Thanks for your prayers and support! It has been amazing what God can do when we gather together to lift His name high and care for the poor and the needy.

Maybe next time, I’ll share a little bit about where the name for this blog, “Rich Faith Rising” came from…