Extremities- Living in a postcard, speaking in a bumper sticker

I have been in Thailand for a month. It’s been the longest I have ever been over-seas.. and the longest I have gone in a while without hugging my Mommy. Thankfully, I am under fabulous leadership. I am with a team that breathes vulnerability and speaks from a heart of grace and words of love. I am serving a God who says that I am enough, even my darkest moments.. and I am residing in a country that is a territory of darkness, and titled “the land of smiles.”

I titled this post “extremities” because the last month, but more so the last week, has been incredibly extreme. I have felt extreme happiness, extreme fear, extreme excitement, extreme sadness and have exercised faith in an extreme of existence: surrender.

The happiness came and cornered me every time I took a moment to stop and think about how awesome my life status is currently. I live in Thailand, with six besties, two older sibling rock star mentors, and under a God who loves love so much He created it. Extreme, right? I feel blessed, lucky, and when it comes down to it, completely undeserving, but I will get to that later. Point being, Thailand is beautiful, and even more beautiful is the way that God has orchestrated this trip.

Fear. Oh fear. Last Monday, my team, our leader, and myself drove an hour outside of the city we were living in and spent three hours jumping off of platforms, zipping down strong cords into a lush green jungle. We screamed and laughed and made more noise than the orphanage produces in a year. It was so fun. I’m scared of heights, so it was scary if I thought about how high I was, but it was so fun, so crazy and so packed with adrenaline that I couldn’t stop to think about the danger potentially involved.

The next day we went to a “fish spa,” and dunked our feet into a small fish habitat, located on the inside of a mall, and giggled as they noshed on our dead skin, exfoliating the surface of our skin. More funny than scary, but still different and weird and extreme in its own way.

After a day of down time spent between the hostel we were staying at and our favorite coffee shops, we were off to the day of extreme excitement. It started with a 25 minute long ride to an “orchid farm.” Now you have to understand, just driving here is an adventure, if you’re in Thailand. The orchids were pretty and I was still half asleep, and then we got back in the truck and drove to one of the coolest places I have ever been.. ever. It was a small village with five families total that lived there. We pulled up and a small and sweet Asian woman sold us some bananas for 20 baht. Then we drove for another 5 minutes and what do we see walking next to our truck, like within reach? AN ELEPHANT. We got to the actual village, waited a few minutes and then mounted the elephants. MOUNTED. As in, we rode the most precious animals. We laughed and smiled with our mouths open because we couldn’t even talk. We got to sit on its head and then go up onto the seat if we wanted. It was so stinking cool, I can’t even explain. When we finished our ride with the elephants, we drove to a trail head and started and hour long trek. We ate pad thai for lunch in a single standing wooden building on the top of a big hill and then continued onward. We hiked over a river and through the trees.. J.. and then finally got to a BEAUTIFUL giganto waterfall that was magnificent and huge. We drank some water at the top and hung out for a bit and then started back down.. You would think it would end there, but no. THEN, we went to a little river side shack and got suited up for white water rafting. (Which p.s. is not to white because it is Thailand, so it looks like the chocolate milk rivers in Willy Wonka J) When we got the instructions on how to listen to our guide, a torrential down pour began to cover us, and the river, and everything else. But, as soon as we got the right life jackets on, we hopped in the river and went on one of the craziest rides of my life. Still not done. We met up about a mile later down the river with a bamboo raft and jumped onto it, then rode it down the end of the river portion. The night ended with seeing an English speaking movie (which is a real treat), ice cream from McDonalds, and talking with Rachel, one of my best girl friends in Woodland. If that isn’t exciting, I don’t know what is.

Rewinding a few nights prior to that, we decided to prayer walk one of the red light streets. That is where extreme sadness hit. What I saw is hard to put down in words. I would rather describe my heart and its broken condition than the victims of poverty, walking in desperation, and doing what they can to survive. The girls out there are my sisters. My equivalent. My age, my gender.. and in more of a hopeless life situation than I will probably ever understand. They are attacked with the poverty they have grown up with, disabled by their lack of education, and just like me, just like all of us, doing what they can to survive. They are bought by the same root of brokenness, but a different bloom of desperation. They are bought by men that are broken. Men that are drowning in their need for an escape, a fix. And then they engage in something that was created to be intimate and holy, and further their cracks of dependence on this broken, broken system.

I didn’t see men covering their tan line from their wedding ring, or wiping their eyes from the pain going on inside. I didn’t see the girls growing up in villages and I don’t pretend to know their stories. All I know is that there is a severe brokenness in this place. What I did see were the red tinted bars. The girls and their cat calls. The smallest skirts I have ever seen on the smallest, most beautiful girls that I wanted to cover. Which leads me into the next and final extreme. The extreme of surrender.

I found myself back at the hostel within a half hour of being in the girls’ presence, and the common theme between how my team was feeling was “puke.” The reality of life here is so filthy that it was making us sick to believe it. It was making us angry at the system, at the men, at the girls, at the.. something. Anything. It’s just not right. The following night we were at Matt and Laura’s house. We started our debrief and within five minutes we were all weeping. How can things get that bad? Why can’t someone fix this? Why can’t God swoop down and rescue the girls from their desperate need for money, rescue the men from there desperate case of emptiness? Matt ended up speaking the truth straight into our hearts. This world is broken. One country over there is genocide going on, murdering hundreds and hundreds because of a difference in ethnicity. Here there are women selling themselves on the streets because they want to feed their child, and they need to eat. In America there is a disease of being lukewarm, of seeing the world as “not to bad” and seeing ourselves as independent enough to not need any God. The globe is plagued with brokenness, and not one of us is worthy of lifting their nose at the other. We are a broken people. But.. then there is our God. Our God who for SOME REASON, chooses us. Chooses to save babies in America from being uneducated, chooses to save babies in Africa from being consumed in material possessions. I don’t know what He has saved babies in Thailand from, not yet, but He has placed each one of us with incredible intention. The extreme surrender came in when I realized that if I was born in Thailand 20 years ago instead of America, if I had no education, no training or skill, and had a drive in me to keep breathing, those girls’ stories would be my own. I am nothing more than a story of salvation. A story that shows that God loves His people, He can rescue, He can heal, He can teach and produce change and shake the earth. My surrender came when I realized that this is ALL about Him.

To say the least, I feel that Thailand is changing me. An awareness of the harsh realities occurring in the world around me has shifted my thinking. I wish I could be superman and rescue my sisters off the street, but what I am is a beloved child of God. I am no superman, I am no all holy person. I am a redeemed child, and Him using me would be His power, and my honor. I surrender to being powerless without Christ. I surrender to trusting that He’s got it, no matter how much sometimes it may seem like He fell asleep on the job. And, I surrender to Him, that when it’s time to go Jason Bourne on the darkness and screwed up system of this country and this world, I am all in, and I know with 100% confidence that I am on the right team. Team Jesus. All the stinkin’ way.

So, this week has been extreme. All kinds of extreme. I write these last few words on my bunk back at the orphanage, and after a week in the city of Chiang Mai, and it is good to be home in the silence. Please pray for the girls at the orphanage, for a bright and hopeful future, for the health and energy of my team and myself, and the deep brokenness of the world that we live in. Thank God that God is in control, and this weight does not have to be ours, but if we can, let’s change the world, yeah? Thank you for reading. Thank you for praying. Thank you for having a heart for the world around you.

Kelli :)