I'll never forget the mixter of elation and horror as I read the email from Experience Mission, telling me I have been accepted onto the 3-Month South Africa team. Reading those words, I lept out of my chair and shouted "hallelujah!", but was soon greeted by an unwelcome feeling of terror. Africa? Isn't that on the other side of the world? You'll never make it, it takes certain people to be a missionary. You aren't one of those people. Look at what you've done, Gwen, you aren't worthy of this. And I sat back down as quickly as I got up and stared at the too-bright screen of my laptop. It took me a few days to reply and accept my position in the team, despite every thought telling me I wasn't good enough...
I grew up loving solitude. When I was two, my world was ripped apart by the death of my father. I decided at a very young age after a lot of horrible things happened that I did not need people, or trust. I lived that life until this last September (2013). I had no room for trust in my life, not for people, especially not for God. I spent my life running. I don't like depending on people, because people always leave. Because at the end of the day all you have is yourself and that has to be enough. I was trapped. Trapped inside my head, terrified of everybody, and my head was a very dark place to be. I knew something was wrong with me, but I couldn't pin point it. "Who I am is not who I should be. The devil took my hand and said child come with me." I reached out a couple times, but I learned quickly that no one cares that you are broken. Nobody really wants to hear about the grief inside your bones. You may be acquainted with the night, but I have seen the darkness in the day. My entire life, I looked in the mirror and saw a monster. A monster my childhood spit out into the real world.
As soon as I was able, I began to release my lifetime of suffering through drugs and alcohol. It didn't work. If anything, I drug me further and further away from where I needed to go. I was running a thousand miles an hour in the wrong direction. I got to a point of drinking before I even got up, to simply give me the courage to face the day. I'll never forget the morning I woke up and looked in the mirror. "They say your eyes are the mirror to your soul. That morning, when I looked in the mirror, I saw nothing. And that night, I began to self harm to prove to myself that I was still alive." Before long, I was also consumed by an eating disorder, and not long after that, I decided my life was no longer worth living. I couldn't handle the pain alone anymore. The hopelessness that comes with that decision is not something I would ever wish on any human being.
God had other plans. My plan failed, when it shouldn't have. My father God never, ever left my side.
I have known about God since I was two. When my mother took us to church when she had no where else to turn with the loss of my father. But I never believed it was for me. I always believed that freedom is a length of rope, and God wants us to hang ourselves with it. But in all reality, God was with me every dark second of my deep, dark struggle with worthlessness and hatred. Every time I looked in the mirror and spat at myself, I was hurting him. Every second I put a blade to my skin, He screamed for me to stop because He loves me. Every dark night I spent stumbling around drunk, He cried for His lost child, trying to call me home... It makes me want to cry to consider the pain I put Him through, forcing Him to watch me slowly destroy myself. But I saw no way out.
So the day I was sitting in my dorm room, and an ad for Experience Mission popped up on my facebook, I scrolled past it. Missions work? Pfft. Honorable people do that. People who havent disappointed God. The second day it appeared, I scrolled past, and then scrolled back up and clicked. Within a few weeks, I received that letter of acceptance. It took all I had to accept it, knowing I was not worthy of such a job.
My journey began in June 2013 at a Christian summer camp. I don't think they realized who they hired. They hired an angry, hostile, cruel person who basically hated everyone and everything. By the end of the summer I was completely different, I liked people, but I still couldn't depend on them or trust them. I learned 3 major lessons that summer. 1: God does not regret saving you. 2: You do not disgust him. 3: You do no disappoint him. Christ entered my life at that camp, preparing be for the journey I would partake in to Africa.
If God taught me anything over the past 3 months of my life, it is that I can depend on Him. That I can depend on people. I was stuck into the wild bush of the Kalahari desert with 11 strangers, and forced to work and praise with them on a daily basis. I was forced to brush me teeth with them, talk about private matters due to the fact that we had one bathroom, and much more. I'll admit I probably wasn't the friendliest, or the most fun to be around in the beginning. I don't do well in big groups for extended periods of time with my distrust in every living being. But as things got harder and I began to fight some serious internal battles, I was forced to lean on the group of misfits that I was living with. Little by little, I began to lean on them, tiny bit by tiny bit. Half way though the trip I began to feel myself changing, my entire life began to shift as my morals changed. Which I can tell you right now, is one of the most difficult and painful experiences of my life. I had no idea what to feel or think, I struggled with every emotion, which only forced me to lean on God and my team more. And before we left Africa, I depended and trusted every person on that team with my life. I opened up my heart to every single one of them and loved them with my entire heart. I prayed more than I had ever prayed in my life, I read my bible, I immersed myself in God's love and in turn was able to fully love the people I was working with.
People always ask me "how was Africa?" Well. It's hard to say that I had any impact on Africa compared to the impact Africa had on me. When I say "it changed my life", I dont think people understand that I honestly mean that. Everything I grew up believing was shattered, everything I went through was brought forward, everything I have done was laid at the feet of Christ. My morals shifted, which is more painful than I ever imagined. Jesus wrecked my life. Africa wrecked my life. The faith and trust I saw in people who didn't have half of what I have, made me realize how amazing our God is. I cry when I think about the children chasing our bucky, screaming "If you love Jesus!", the song we taught them. I cry to think about the women at the chirstmas party, who got mere umbrellas, lifting those umbrellas in to the sky and praising Jesus. I cry when I think about the life of the prostitute Jesus rescued from a brothel, using us. So I have lots of memories from Africa, yes, and how the people there will forever be engraved in my heart. But what mostly changed, was me. Funny how the very people I went to "bless", blessed me so much, it changed my very life. Recovery is not a moment, it is a process. And that is a process I will be living the rest of my life, in the hands of Jesus.
Funny how God works. <3
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