Honduras...pieces of my journey that have led me here

Honduras...almost 5 years ago I visited Honduras for the first time. It was my senior spring break of high school.

The summer before was my first time really out of the country. I went to Lima, Peru on a missions trip with Focus on the Family's girl's magazine, at the time called Brio. That first experience was everything almost everyone says about their first time abroad on a missions trip: eye-opening, powerful, life-changing. And it was. I had wanted to be a missionary/in ministry since I was little (largely because I just wanted to be like my parents) but the desire became real once I truly gave my life to Christ in 8th grade. In Peru that first time, God challenged me to trust Him wherever He would take me. That summer was the start of Him drawing me to Latin America.

When the opportunity presented itself to go to an orphanage in Honduras (Nuestros Pequeños Hermanos) with one of my favorite high school teachers, my heart burned with a desire to go. My mom always half jokes about my die-hard determination to go, that I wanted to give up my birthday and Christmas presents for years if it meant I could go :) So needless to say I ended up going. And indeed it was an intense life-changing experience. 5 days was all. But I don't know if I have ever cried as hard as I cried leaving that orphanage, perhaps even to this day. My time there ripped my heart open in ways I didn't know possible. There was one particular little boy named Diego who I came to love and bond with during that time. He has become symbolic almost to me of all that God taught me and did in my heart while I was there.

The summer before college I returned to Peru with Brio and simply came to love Latin America more. So in many ways my time in college was shaped by these times in Latin America and my desire to return someday. I ended up majoring in Latin American and Caribbean Studies, minoring in Education/became certified as an Elementary School teacher and studied abroad in Argentina.

After graduating this past June, God divinely orchestrated for me to go to Honduras to participate in a summer missionary internship at God's Littlest Lambs children's home through the LAMB institute. My time there was full of growing and getting a more real picture of what it means to serve children in orphanages/children's homes. God also showed me to deeper extents His own love for me as His precious child. I learned so much through simply watching the children and meditating on what it means to be a child of God. During my time there, the most amazing thing that happened was I was able to see Diego again. The story is a bit long about how God made that happen but it left me in complete awe and utterly undone that the God of the universe would care so much about my small life to give me the gift of seeing this boy, who had so touched my life, once again. Through that God deeply ministered to my heart and spoke to my soul that He cherishes my heart, the hopes and dreams that He has placed there and the experiences that we have walked through together.

Through prayer and counsel I am now heading off to Orphanage Emmanuel, which is an orphanage that one of my best friends volunteered at a couple years ago. It seems to be the place that has the greatest potential to be healthiest for me spiritually, relationally and otherwise. It is located a couple hours outside of Tegucigalpa and only 45 minutes away from where Diego lives at NPH. I will be at Emmanuel for 9 months as a volunteer. In so many ways I can't believe that I am actually going, that this is actually God's plan for me right now. There are many unknowns that lie ahead, and I'm definitely afraid. But I'm also really excited. More than just excited I feel hope, joy and an anticipation of beautiful and sweet intimacy with the Lord. I feel that He has so much for me in this next part of my journey and I long to walk with Him as He leads me through the lush pastures, beside the bubbling brooks, up the steep rock faces, and yes even through the lonely deserts. In His hands I remain His redeemed lily.

Heart of a Lily

The sun rose again over a waking earth, it’s warm rays pouring forth life and energy on a new day. The clear voice of the Gardener drifted through the air like pure honey dripping from the cone as He walked through the forest singing. The birds awoke, ruffling their feathers and chirped as the Gardener passed by. he laughed as a little one just learning how to fly landed clumsily on his shoulder and stayed along for a ride. The flowers swayed softly to His voice and the squirrels peeped their sleepy heads out of their holes as they heard His footsteps. And so it was every day of the year, the Gardener awaking His garden with song and tending to each creature.

 One early dawn his quiet footsteps neared and stopped on a small hill. Yes this was the hill He had set out for today. There at the top of the hill was one lone foxtail weed. She had a strong green stem and a voluminous light green head whose shoots reached in every direction. She stood tall above the grass and small flowers around her.

“Good morning Gardener,” the weed called out as she saw Him approach.

“Good morning,” the Gardener greeted her.

As He got nearer the weed entreated, “Gardener you must stop for a moment and observe how tall and strong I am. My roots have stretched quiet far now absorbing more nutrients.” The weed continued on proudly, “And now that I am tall I can receive more sunlight.”

 The Gardener nodded but looked sadly at the little flowers next to the weed who were shriveling up. He bent down and touched their small petals, watered their roots and breathed on them to revive them. The weed looked on disdainfully, impatiently waiting for the Gardener to return His attention to her. “Gardener, you must be quite pleased with me, me being such a model plant in your Garden to the other weaker plants,” she stated casting a eye at the flowers the Gardener had been tending to.

The Gardener turned his gaze toward her and paused and looked at her with an expression the weed could not distinguish. Finally He asked her, “Will you receive that water I have to give you?”

She raised her eyebrows in surprise, “As I was explaining I have become quiet strong by my roots and tall stem, so I’m quite fine, but thank you for the offer. I’ll let you save your water for more needy plants,” the weed smiled feigning compassion. The Gardener made no reply but looked at her again with that same indistinguishable look and walked away. Why would He offer me water? How insulting. Isn’t He proud of me for working so hard and becoming such an excellent plant?

To the weed’s great frustration, each time the Gardener came by he responded in the same exact way, always asking her if she would receive His water. Each day she declined His invitation. But soon the heat of summer came. The sun’s rays intensified and the clouds withheld the rain from the parched earth. The weed dug her roots down farther into the now crusting surface of the ground. Each day, the Gardener would come by and water the little flowers and provide them respite from the sun’s heat beneath His shadow. Each day, He would offer the same to the weed. But with each passing day her determination grew stronger to prove to the Gardener that He should be proud of her and her strength to survive the dry summer.

But the days wore on, and her roots could not stretch far enough into the ground to reach rich soil and the sun began to dry up her shoots. Her stem became brittle and turned brown. She could feel her strength leaving her; she could feel herself becoming weak. It terrified her and so she clung on desperately but she knew she had nothing left. With her shoots withered and body brown and feeble she finally crumbled to the ground, her head bowed low to the earth below her. She didn’t have the strength or the will to see if the flowers around her were mocking her as she lay there dying, she knew they must be. Hot tears ran down her face, what was becoming of me? How had this happened to me? How had I not been strong enough? Anger, rage, bitterness, helplessness, fear. She wept.

As she lay there dying, soft footsteps approached. She did not look up but felt His presence and the coolness of His shadow. Oh why is He here? To mock me in my pain? Oh let me die. She sucked air in laboriously. I thought I was strong enough, thought I deserved praise. But now, oh I am nothing more than a worthless, ugly, dying weed. Her body convulsed in her agony. If only…if only I hadn’t thought myself so strong, if only I had let the Gardener water me, if only I had realized what I really was…He could never forgive me.

            The Gardener kneeled and watched with tears in His eyes as she suffered in her broken state. Gently and slowly He reached down and lifted up her head. “Do not despair little weed,” He spoke without a hint of condemnation in His voice. “I am not here to mock you. I am here to give you life. Will you receive that water I have to give you?”

            Water? The Gardener would give me water? Even after continually refusing it before? The weed, she looked at what her pride and self-righteousness, what her sin had brought her—not life but death. She looked at her humbled state and broke, tears streaming down her face. She looked up through blurry eyes in shame to the Gardener, “Yes, if you can accept me in this withered state, after all my rebellion and sin.”

            “I wouldn’t want you in any other state little one. I have waited all your life for this moment. To receive the kind of life I give, you must first come to this place.” He spoke softly and compassionately. “To receive my water, I must take you with me to a different place.” Then he reached down and dug His hands into the soil surrounding the little weed. He dug deep and pulled the weed out of the ground by her roots. The weed cried out in pain. The Gardener looked on the poor weed with mercy and tears came to His eyes as He saw her pain but He continued pulling until she was completely uprooted and in His hands. As she breathed heavy in exhaustion He carried the her away.

            Soon the two came to a forest and then a small opening in the forest where lay a still small pool.  

            “Before I can give you life, I must cleanse you in the pool of forgiveness,” the Gardener explained as He kneeled down beside the pool.

            He lowered the weed into the clear water. At first the shock of the coolness made her pull back, it felt so unlike anything she had ever felt. But the Gardener lowered her steadily into the pool and spoke to her reassuringly. The cool, clean water seeped into the weed’s every pore, it moved through her, around her. The Gardener gently washed all the dirt off her. She could feel her brittle stem heal. Her body relaxed and she felt a peace and joy she had never experienced before. The water was so sweet, so cleansing. She longed to remain in these waters forever. But why did the Gardener choose to have mercy on me, a fallen, dying weed? She could not comprehend it.

            When the Gardener drew her out of the pool He looked at her with love and spoke, “You are forgiven my child.” At these words the weed wept with joy. “Nevermore shall you be a weed living for your own glory in the hardened soil.”

            With that, He carried her through the wood and out to a lush valley.

            “This shall be your new dwelling place.” He smiled down at her.

            Along the bank of a bubbling brook He found a patch of rich, dark soil beside a large oak. He dug a hole and lay her roots down, covering them with new soil. “Here you will grow my child, my daughter.”

            There she grew, drinking deeply of the moist, rich soil, under the care of the Gardener. As spring came, she felt a new joy bursting forth from within her. She began to bloom…into a lovely, white lily.

            The Gardener came to her one day, knelt down and touched her delicate petals, smiling. “Oh Gardener, how can this be? I am only a weed, how can a weed become a lily?” the lily asked.

            The Gardener chuckled, merriment filling his eyes. “My dear one, indeed I have made you into a new creation, the old is gone and the new has come. Now you can see you shall never be a weed again. You are my beloved and forevermore you shall sing to the world of my love for you. But now it is time for me to take you to a new place. Come away with me my love there is much yet I have to show you and teach you. There are places that I will take you to, quiet places, dry places, scary places, lonely places, sad places, all of them beautiful places if you have eyes to see the beauty. In all these places your only task is to be that which you are my lily, and to sing to all creation from the heart of a lily who has been brought from death to life by my loving hand. My cherished one, remember that wherever I take you I will never leave you nor forsake you. This I promise, my sweet lily, this I promise.”