Let me just start by saying that I hate hiking. I went to the University of Colorado, where a love of hiking is almost a prerequisite for admittance into the school, but I have just never been into it.
I lived in Boulder for four and a half years before getting peer pressured into climbing the Flatirons. (If you are from Colorado, right now you are appalled. If you are not from Colorado, you have no idea what I'm talking about.)
I am an excellent walker, and have had to be as our ministry on the World Race always is at LEAST an hour walk from wherever we are, but hiking just isn't for me. Maybe if you call it an uphill walk, or a mountain adventure I might be in... but otherwise, no dice.
Yesterday, for ministry, my team and I went on a brief 12-mile stroll, sharing the gospel with villages along the way, with a hike up a mountain as our destination.
At the end of part one of our walk, as we started our ascent, something really weird happened.
I enjoyed it.
I was bouncing along to the beat of my ipod and happily looking around, taking in the sights as we climbed through the jungle on a thin, winding dirt path. And before I knew it, all of the girls on my team had stopped, and it was just me and the boys on the way up to the top.
We walked across a particularly skinny path, with a good 100-foot drop to our right, and instead of being scared, I found myself almost skipping, surprisingly skillfully across the ledge. I was bounding over the rocks on the way up, and took no notice of my legs that were definitely a little tired after my 5-mile stroll.
And that's when it hit me. Something really weird has happened to me this month. I'm not the same. I'm very different... but also just me. It's like I am who I was always supposed to be, the way I was always intended to be.
This month, however, began with a bad attitude.
When we first got to Nepal, I was overwhelmed and speechless at the beauty here. We had an eight-hour drive from Kathmandu to our ministry site near the Indian boarder. We drove through stunning mountains on the windiest roads and it felt like we were teetering a bit as we veered around corners with incredibly steep drop offs on one side. But I took no notice of the near death experiences that were starting to stack up.
I was hanging out the window with my camera glued to my face. Everything was so beautiful, so colorful with pinks, bright blues and oranges... it was like the inside of my brain had exploded out and decorated the world around me.
As we were driving I kept thinking... 'When God made this, he probably thought, "Stephanie will LOVE this!"' Then I realized that Nepal came first, and so I decided that he must have made me thinking "I'm going to make someone who is absolutely going to love the world I've created."
But the second we started ministry, my attitude took a sharp downward turn. I walked through each day, earbuds in, completely checked out. It was like I was looking around at Nepal and then up at God asking, "what are YOU going to do for ME this month?"
So... God did what any good father would do. He struck me with a lightening bolt.
I'm just kidding... but he did allow me to be humbled. OH BOY was I humbled. It's hard to be haughty and entitled in the position I found myself in.
It was two o'clock in the morning when I woke up pretty sure that I was dying.
I laid in bed for a few minutes, willing the pain that was searing through my body to go away, but to no avail. I dragged myself down the ladder of our mud hut (I'm serious) and out to our squatty potty (a hole in the ground complete with places for your feet, in a structure that looks like a port-o-potty.) And there I stayed for the next two hours.
Let me also inform you that I would rather do ANYTHING if it got me out of throwing up. I HATE it.
But there I was... my head buried in a bucket, still hovering over the squatty, trying not to fall in, misery coming out both ends. (Sorry for that visual.)
After a while, the squatty started spinning and I was pretty sure that I was going to faint. As quickly as death would allow, I managed to get myself into a sitting position on a cement step, conveniently located inside the squatty. Bucket still in hand.
As I came up for air, I looked up and said "God, what the CRAP am I doing here?" (Appropriate choice of words Stephanie.)
All I heard back was "I'll show you baby girl. I'll show you."
An hour later, I finally mustered up the strength to get myself back upstairs into bed, and proceeded to lay there for the next several hours, in tears because I couldn't stand the touch of my sleeping bag on my sensitive, feverish skin.
More than anything I just wanted to go home.
I wasn't sure I was going to make it through the night, and so when the sun finally rose, I thought that the worst was over.
It wasn't... I was in bed for four days. I didn't eat, I choked down water when my team absolutely made me, my teammates had to chaperone my first shower so I didn't pass out and hit my head, and my face was covered with mysterious red spots. (That my team didn't tell me about for three days.)
The entire time I laid on the wooden table topped with my sleeping pad (my bed), I looked out the window, offended by Nepal. How DARE it have the audacity to make me sick. How DARE it be hot and have animals and children making noise when I'm so clearly dying in here. I began to make lists in my head of all of the things that are better in the United States, until my desire to go home had absolutely consumed me.
But as my fever disappeared, so did the raging ugly in my heart. And in its place was something miraculous.
"And the God of all grace, who called you to his eternal glory in Christ, after you have suffered a little while, will himself restore you and make you strong, firm and steadfast."
1st Peter 5:10
As you know, I've spent the last two months digging out garbage in my heart that I didn't even know was there. I dug diligently, knowing that eventually my insides would look different... better.
I knew that somewhere along the line God was going to make me into something new.
In Chisinau, the capital of Moldova, I had a dream, or I guess it was more like a vision really because I wasn't quite asleep. I got a quick preview of the woman that God was fashioning me to be.
I had long hair in the vision, and I was wearing a cool, really flowy purple dress- the kind that would be super fun to walk in because it would swish around your legs.
I was glowing, it was like strength and beauty was emanating from my insides. Like my heart was glimmering and it couldn't help but come out of my skin. I was tall, regal almost, and I looked powerful, but also incredibly feminine. And somehow as I saw this, I knew that this was who God was going to make me into.
And as I began to read Proverbs, and started camping out on the scripture about the Proverbs 31 woman- or what King Solomon describes as a 'super legit woman,' I found out that my purple dress wasn't an arbitrary wardrobe choice. King Solomon thought of it first. It has a meaning.
"She is clothed in fine linen and purple."
Proverbs 31:22
The note in my study bible says that fine linen and purple are associated with nobility and linked with kings. She's dressed like royalty... and so was I... or at least I would be some day.
Well... one day, after my strength had returned, I was singing in worship with my teammates, when with a flash, I realized that something inside me had changed.
Not only had my body returned to normal from my sickness, but it was better than normal. I felt whole, I felt warm, I felt incredibly peaceful, and I felt TALL.
I felt confident, and confident in a way that wasn't coming from anything from the outside. It was radiating from the deepest place of my heart.
And I realized, with a shock, that my purple dress wearing self wasn't way off in the distance, in fact... I was her. Right then. Right now.
Now, if I don't walk with dignity, with confidence, and with strength, if my insides don't glow to the point that it is radiating out of me, I wouldn't be being myself.
And apparently I'm not the only one who can see it.
My squad leader Christy told me that when she saw me for the first time in a few weeks, a few days ago, that when I walked towards her, she could see something physically different in me. She said I walked taller, I carried myself differently, in a way that was distinctly graceful and royal. She could see it from the outside and I hadn't even said a word yet.
"She is clothed with strength and dignity; she can laugh at the days to come."
Proverbs 31:25
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