When God’s Faithfulness is More Than Enough to Cover Your Lack of Faith.

Three weeks ago I wrote about being back in the states for a month, the challenges that have come with that, how my health has been, and a small picture of where my head and heart have been too. I never reread it after I wrote it, but I know I wrote it as a means of therapy after a really hard month. I’m sure parts of it potentially came off a little depressing (although my hope is that it didn’t). Regardless, I’ve been eager to sit down and write about our crazy January. It hasn’t necessarily gotten easier, but I have had eyes to see the Lord’s ultimate goodness, His faithfulness when I am lacking, and His deep love for Robbie and me (and really, all God’s children).

We moved into the “refugee” apartments (for those reading this and are confused about what I’m talking about, the last blog post would be helpful to read first) on January 6th, with the help of some incredible friends who love us so well. Their support of what we are doing has been invaluable. We really didn’t make it a home we came back to each night until the 12th, though. That week was when I last blogged, and I’m super happy to say the wicked sickness taking over my body then was a terrible stomach flu (and not my health regressing like I had originally thought). Nevertheless though, I had been pretty darn sick for two full months. Pair that with some relentless anxiety about my health and being sick in public and the world got a pretty discouraged version of me. I found myself lower than I honestly feel I’ve ever gotten. It all seems so dramatic now, but it was very real in the moment. My internal dialogue, as I moved into these apartments kicking and screaming, was “I’m going to fail,” “I have nothing to offer,” and “Couldn’t we just live in a home close by to the apartments instead of actually moving in to them??” What I can see now is that I was making it all about me. Of course I would fail, of course I have nothing to offer these people on my own. My eyes were not fixed on Jesus. I was doubting His ability to succeed, to do radical things. I was forgetting He was the one in control, the One who prepared good things in advance for us to do [Ephesians 2:10] (if we would only be obedient, if we would only say “yes” even when it’s hard). As far as the last question I was asking God about being able to be used just as much if we were just in a nice home close by–well, God answered that one really fast and really clearly: “No, you will not be as successful here unless you give me your full ‘Yes’. Unless you actually live among them. I’m asking for complete obedience. I have more for you here than you believe.” God didn’t want a partial yes. He didn’t want us to come really close to what He had planned for us, so long as it didn’t interfere with our daily comfort and desires for a perfect American middle-class life. Can you believe that God may actually call people to suffer [1 Peter 2:21]? Now, I get it, living in low income apartments is hardly suffering for the vast majority of the world living in poverty (maybe without even the luxury of a mattress to sleep on or a roof over their heads), but in my selfish mind, this loss of buying my first home in a pretty neighborhood that smells nice and has enough hot water, with a toilet that doesn’t rock back and forth when you sit down on it, that doesn’t have permanently sticky kitchen cabinets with weird bugs showing up in them, without mice and bed bugs, etc. felt like a far fall for me. But Jesus was perfect and blameless, deserving the highest yet receiving the lowest, suffering the worst death for me to have forgiveness (and for you to have that too), suffering for us to have eternal life. And I’m constantly reminding myself of this reality. This life is so temporary, and what’s to come is so much greater. So Robbie and I are actively working on living like we truly believe that.

So I photographed a wonderful wedding on the 13th of January and came home to our new home for the first time that night. Robbie took me out that night to celebrate and we reminded ourselves of the goals we had set for our year in these apartments both short-term and long-term. First-month goals: Learn at least two new neighbors’ names, have a refugee over for dinner, unpack boxes and make it home. Long-term goals (by six months): Chase teach English to moms out of the living room, have a space that refugees will know they can come over to any time, any day– to ask for help, to share a meal, to talk, and to make the apartments generally cleaner and prettier on the outside (like turning the dirt piles into a garden once there’s actually consistent sunshine). We prayed and prayed: “God, would you use us?” That next week started off hard. I was spending my days editing that weekend’s wedding and constantly questioning how I was supposed to reach out to my neighbors. The horrifying obstacle of language barriers, the awkwardness of just knocking on a stranger’s door with no warning and no point other than to come in and attempt to get to know them, the fear of rejection. It felt impossible. I justified doing nothing but “work” for Monday and Tuesday.

Wednesday morning, January 17th came. I was pouring a bowl of cereal in my pajamas and sitting down on my couch to edit photos on my laptop around 9am when there was an unexpected knock at my door. Two refugee women. One who spoke more English than the other. In her broken English, I gathered there was leaking water in the other’s apartment. I put my cereal bowl down, grabbed my coat, and hurried over to her place. Sure enough, there was water leaking from her ceiling inside one of her kitchen cabinets. She had a bucket collecting the drippings. I called the landlord for her with no answer. I tried, in so many words, to explain I would keep calling all day until I heard back. I invited them both back over to my apartment in the meantime. They came, one even with her three year old son. They said sweet things like, “Apartment–beautiful!” and pointed at furniture they liked in my place, even though there were boxes everywhere and in my eyes the place looked nothing like “beautiful.” They returned home for breakfast and I sat on my couch for a moment after they closed the door, deep calm breaths, thanking God for His generosity in giving me an opportunity. Isn’t it amazing? I never had to perform. They came to me themselves. Without my asking them to, without me having to do anything except trust. 

That day I was able to get ahold of the landlord, and he actually came that same day to fix the issue (something I have heard is completely unheard of with this place–sometimes these refugees wait months before anyone comes to help fix the problems). I went back to her apartment to let her know I had heard from Dave. I entered the apartment to a beautiful breakfast scene: 5 Karen adults huddled around a table eating and talking. I happily emoted, “wah ler gay!” (my phonetic spelling of the Karen words for “Good morning!”) and their reaction was priceless. So many smiles, some laughter and even clapping! It filled my heart, seeing how knowing just one phrase in their language united us, turned me from a stranger into a friend, and built some trust. After a bit of time there, I realized I still had my shoes on (in Karen culture, guests leave their shoes outside the front door before entering). I pointed at my shoes and said, “I’m sorry!” They all laughed, exclaiming, “No problem!” Mya Thin was so so grateful. With both of the original women next to me, Hser Bo Paw, the woman who knows a little more English, translated by telling me, “Mya Thin says she is so happy you moved here.” And that’s when I knew. God didn’t need grand gestures on my part, He didn’t need me to be some perfect language-barrier-overcomer and He certainly didn’t need me to be a hero. All God wanted was my heart (and Robbie’s too, of course), our willingness, and our complete “yes.” Every difficult moment in the weeks after arriving back in the States, all the tears it took to get me to move into these apartments all seemed worth it in this one moment.

That was the moment that kickstarted it all. THEIR willingness/courage to knock on my door unannounced, THEIR willingness to ask for help. It’s February 5th now, not even a full month after moving in and I would be hard pressed to write about everything God has done. Let me be clear about that for sure. This is God’s work. Robbie and I are just the ones privileged enough to be used. In three weeks time, God has begun answering our long-term goals. Within a week and a half there, I began teaching English to four Karen adults that live in the apartments and one more that lives in a home close by. I’m teaching them regularly now, and with their varying skill levels, I’m beginning to teach them in “shifts” so they can have one-on-one attention in order to learn faster at their level. They know what times I have told them I can teach and they just show up now, I don’t even have to go knock on their doors to remind them. They come early and they stay as long as I will let them, usually one English lesson only ending because the next woman has arrived to start hers an hour and a half later. And it has quickly become one of the greatest joys of my entire life. We sit on the rug in my living room with my big white board, and depending on the individual, we are learning how to write for the first time (some have never held a pencil, never written a language or read before in their 30-40 year old lives), and with others we are learning new vocabulary and coming up with sentences together for these new words. This isn’t a walk in the park, and I am becoming more and more aware of just how hard English really is (especially for people whose only language they’ve ever known doesn’t have tenses). But it is worth the struggle because these women are bringing me their hearts, their messy and beautiful lives, and are willing to share it with me. They are teaching me what it looks like to live in true community with others, where my home is actually their home and vice versa.

I’ve been able to bring them to multiple doctor appointments, take them on multiple grocery runs, and even learn some Karen from them too. We went without running water for 24 hours without warning and without explanation one day that first week and it gave me this incredible justification to fill a five-gallon jug of water at the grocery, knock on random neighbor’s doors and ask if I could fill a pitcher of water for them, fill their toilet tanks so they could flush them, or just a glass to drink from. So many took me up on the offer, including an American neighbor of mine too who was so grateful to have her toilet flushed. And I’m learning what it looks like to live generously even when you have so little. Here are people who struggle to feed all the mouths in their own homes yet they come to our door often with plates full of Karen food, or grocery bags of avocados, oranges, bananas, and even boxes of cereal that they have bought for us. It is in this kindness that I have seen the face of Jesus and understood better God’s heart for all people of all nations. Jesus came to the world to show us how loving our neighbor as ourselves, despite illness, race, wealth, etc. would radically change our hearts and the world around us. I see His purpose for it. It makes us better, it makes us stronger, and it makes us more like Christ.

Now as for these women’s children. haha THIS is a wild and overwhelming change for us. Kiddos from 3 to 11, anywhere from 1 to 8 of them in our apartment on any given night– our new normal. I often walk with the mothers to Rose Hill Elementary in the afternoons to get the kiddos and walk back; their faces full of delight when they see me outside the school doors. They come running, eager to tell me about their day (their English is not perfect, but their amazing brains are picking up on it rapidly at school). If I’m not there to pick them up, they’re knocking on our door at 4:15pm wondering if it’s okay if they come in and play. Winter’s bitter coldness has definitely made our adjustment to “part-time parents” a little harder, as we have had to come up with activities everyone can do inside instead of outside. We paint with water colors, we color in coloring books, we read books, have dance parties, play games, talk, tickle, and cook together. There’s a few older ones (ten and eleven year olds) that are over each day and they ask Robbie and me great questions about our lives, our interests, and our families. They are also open to all our questions about life in Thailand, about school and their families. They are confiding in us. They’re going to be incredible women some day. They all get sooo excited to see “Mr. Rob” pull up to the apartments once he’s home from work (most of the time they’re asking, “Miss Chase, how many more minutes until Mr. Rob gets home?”). They climb on Robbie and try to tickle him (he’s not ticklish, but it’s become their mission to get him to laugh). They bring their school projects and homework over to have us help. They come to us in tears when something bad happened at school. They delight over helping me cook dinner, and get so excited by learning how to use an oven (something I have decided I need to teach their moms because they tell me their moms don’t know how to use the oven). And when they eat with us, they are quick to be thankful, quick to do the dishes after without being asked, and quick to tell us they love us.

On a few occasions now their mothers have joined us for part of a meal or some of our “play-time.” Their moms thank us and we say thank you back (because they’re actually changing our lives). We talk about Jesus with the children and they tell us they know Him. In fact one of them asked if we could pray for Robbie after he left to play frisbee with his friends the other day. She wanted to pray that Jesus kept him safe. It was completely unprompted. We were all pitching in helping me cook salmon and rice when Chat Htoo asked if we could stop and pray. I was beside myself in thankfulness. Picture four sweet girls, 6, 7, 10, and 11, holding hands cross-legged on our rug (and fighting over who got to hold hands with me), praying that the Lord would keep Robbie and his friends safe from injury.

We have celebrated one girl’s tenth birthday. Hser Gay Moo is kind and brilliant (she is so smart and intuitive), she is humble and oh so easy to be around. She is gentle and reliable, silly and brave. She listens well and remembers everything. Robbie and I got the joy of taking her out for ice cream and then to a coffee shop (because apparently that’s the coolest thing ever to them) for her birthday. She had told me a week beforehand that she wanted a pineapple necklace more than anything. I couldn’t find one at the store so I got a cute pineapple charm at hobby lobby and strung it from a chain and she wears it every day now. I would not have called myself a kid person even a month ago, yet Robbie and I both have fallen in love with each child for their individual strengths and beauties. They’re so unique and we already cannot imagine life without them. The older girls have started asking (again, unprompted) if they can come to church with us. The past two Sundays two of them and then three of them came with us. They ask things like, “Will we be able to come with you next week?” and we press into them that they will always be allowed to come with us. In the first week, all the kiddos would leave our apartments as it got dark out and question incessantly if Robbie and I would be there the next day. I think the fear for them was whether we were going to leave. So we constantly reminded them, “we’re going to be neighbors for a really really long time. We’re going to be here tomorrow and the next day and the next day all the way until summer and then even after that some more!” haha ❤

Every day is work and every day is hard. We have had to balance work and ministry and personal life. God is showing us that this “ministry” is our personal life and our personal life should be our ministry. Being on mission, as the Lord calls us to be, doesn’t mean just putting your missionary hat on when you’re volunteering once a month or when you’re at church once a week. It means being a missionary when you’re at the grocery store, when you’re at the pharmacy, and when you’re talking to your neighbors as you check the mailbox at the same time.

We have had high highs and low lows. As soon as I feel like Robbie and I were truly making this place home, we found a couple bed bugs in our apartment (a reality for most of our neighbors– a reality for most poverty-stricken people in the world– and yet, a reality I did NOT want to have to endure). We found one on the wall and panicked, we checked under the mattress to find another one. I was nearly hyperventilating. Robbie was calm and kind. I was saying out loud in my frantic state, “God! Not this! Oh please, not this!! Why??” as I couldn’t catch my breath, shaking with panic. “Robbie, we can’t sleep here! We can’t be here! This is terrible. We have to go sleep at Brett and Jeff’s house.” And brave and faithful Robbie, said, “Your reaction is completely justified. I hate this too. But we knew what we were signing up for when we said yes to God on this conviction. We knew this was a possibility. No one else that lives here gets the luxury of a back-up beautiful home and clean bed to sleep in when things get tough. So we will stay here too, just like they would have to.” And my frantic heart broke, holding Robbie so closely in my arms, thanking God for this steady man who trusts. That night we were up until 3:30am, killing the ones we found, going to Walmart at one in the morning to buy bed bug traps, and coming home and searching everything with flashlights. We woke up the next morning at 7:30am having maybe slept a total of 2-ish hours after waking up so many times repeatedly in paranoia.

We are three days out from that night and each day I find myself releasing so many pieces of my pride to the Lord. This isn’t what I thought my life would look like at twenty-five, three years in to marriage. If I could have read this blog even one year ago, I would have been so shocked to hear about it all. Robbie and I have had quality time to reflect in the past few days (after not having much of any given that each day kids were in our home when he’d return from work until about 6 when they’d go home and then we’d go out with friends until late and then come home and go straight to bed until we’d do it all again the next day). We are (slowly) finding our rhythm, though we have a long way to go. We know we need quality time together, because we are best friends and we both get equally grumpy when our time together is cut short. We are making it a priority to say no more (whether that’s to the kids on certain nights or to friends) and be okay with that if it means more time to connect and laugh and love each other. And it’s been so good for our hearts. I am telling you, there is no way to put into words the deep and unrelenting love I have for Robbie. I loved the man I married more than this world, but three years later, he’s a different man in so many ways and I’m blown away by how our love has grown way stronger and matured and made room for the Lord and His will. Robbie works so hard every day at his job, and then comes home to a living room full of children and without hesitation gets down on the floor to play legos or read a book with them, continuing his long and tiresome day without complaint, but rather with joy and willingness. He is a picture of grace. He appreciates me endlessly and whispers to the kiddos to go tell me that he loves me. ❤ When we got married we had no passion for refugees or the poor, no mission. Yet God blessed us 100-fold by convicting our hearts of the same thing, aligning our minds for the same mission, giving us passion for the same people. I fall in love with Robbie more and more every day. I learn from his Gospel-driven life and his ceaseless optimism in the face of frustration and set-backs. He’s never questioned for a second we weren’t supposed to be here. All the hesitation and doubt was all mine. Robbie pushed me toward Jesus in it all and reminded me by example that we have one life to pursue Christ and then we get eternity with Him in heaven, and to use it working toward that end goal.

It’s not easy. We are tired nearly all the time. I am not some super-qualified English teacher. I have never been a parent. Language barriers are still really tough. Bugs and mice are still really disgusting and unwanted guests in our home. And I’m still trying to figure out if I’m supposed to continue to accept photography jobs in the midst of what has become a full time job for me here. We desperately need prayer and we desperately need to keep our eyes fixed on Jesus. I am celebrating that God is unbelievably faithful even when I lack all faith. If He can answer long-term goals in a matter of weeks, what will a year from now look like? We remain hopeful and expectant.