Be forewarned: this is a long, heavy, deep YET redeeming blog. Please don’t feel bad if you don’t read it all, but if you want answers to what China ATL ministry looked like to our team as well as what God taught me…you may just want to read the whole thing.
REAL CHINA//
Let’s talk about China- ALL of it. But I want to pray first because this is going to be a hard blog to put into words.
Abba, you have been entangled in my whole life and I have seen it. You have been running after me. Thank you for the life you have given me, the life full of both joy and pain. Thank you for giving me the words I need to write, need to speak, need to put out into the world that not just I can heal, but that others may as well and ultimately give you all the glory and walk in wholeness and power you give us. Thank you for redeeming me into your glory.
I didn’t know what to expect in China. I had read missionary biographies of living and evangelizing in China, and it felt like the police always heard every word you said. If you said anything related to Christianity, they would find you in seconds and take you to jail where you would do prison ministry. This isn’t China, even though I was excited to come up with names for God (Dumbledore), Jesus (Aslan), the Holy Spirit (Galadriel), and the Bible (the wardrobe into Narnia). My teammate, through a blog, pointed me back to something that intrigued me about Harry Potter: the people never said the name Voldemort for fear of him. But Harry was told that saying Voldemort extinguishes the fear of the person. Making names to take the place of the Christian words was me saying I was scared to be caught talking about and telling people about Jesus, of being a believer. ouch.
I am free to say anything anywhere. Period. Exclamation mark.
//a welcome to China rainbow//
MINISTRY//
As an ATL month of asking the Lord what He wants us to do on a daily basis, Jesus’ ministry assignments this month for me were three things.
ONE, bring joy and smiles to everyone you meet especially at the market stores. The store workers knew who I was, what I liked, and started the game of smiling too since that was something I did, just smiling at them as they stared. This was my FAVORITE game to play in the city; the face change from staring to a joyful smile and laughter was precious.
TWO, keep striving to love my team well; He told me my first ministry is my team.
THREE, me, which may sound odd, but it is true. Abba and I walked through a ton of inner healing this month.
The rest of the team did a lot of different things as well. Discovering unhealed wounds was definitely something common among us. Eric played basketball regularly with the Chinese men and even found some that spoke English. He also has been still learning what it is to love like a man as well as surrendering his securities to Him. Eric also went with Aubs and Caitie on Saturdays to teach English to kids. They, including TJ and Jo, also met two other ladies who spoke English and invited them to dinner a few times, a great way to plant seeds.
The spiritual oppression is definitely a thing in China. The streets may be clean and tidy but there is a spirit of darkness that seems to run whenever the light comes near. We experienced a good deal of spiritual warfare at our apartment when we first arrived. We recognized the evil realm and banned it which created a warmth and peace in our apartment for the remainder of our time there. We were no longer as oppressed by sleepiness, feeling lonely, exc. There is an enemy and he wants to steal, kill and destroy. But Jesus has come to bring LIFE and He has already overcome the world! We have no room for fear in the joy He has given us!
I had been praying that the Holy Spirit would show me the underground church. I haven’t met it yet. There was one lady with her son on the metro that sticks out in my mind. She had eyes that were unlike any of the other Chinese men and women who look so empty and hopeless. She had a contagious joy about her, a peace, a gentle confidence that seemed to saturate the room. I wondered if she was a believer.
Team Reckless came over one night for dinner and worship while we were staying in Xi’an. It was good to see them. We also spent some time with Team Wild on a beautiful day in the city park walk where you walk and dream of walking on the soft grass instead of the pavement, but it was beautiful. My feet are definitely sore from all the city cement. I’m ready for some dirt.
PEOPLE N’ PLACES//
We stayed first at a beautiful hostel outside of Beijing that was encompassed by the green forest mountains and the winding great wall of China. The covered porch on the second story had fruit trees full of juju fruits (Chinese dates that taste like apples) that were just in arms reach. The peace and quiet of the little village, the narrow cobblestone alleyways, the street markets full of fruit and nuts (my favorites being the dehydrated mini almonds and the dried sweet potatoes) all gave it such a serene feeling that reminded me of the little village that Gladys Alyward worked in. Team HKS arrived with us a day after, and it was lovely and refreshing to spend more time with all of them (this is the team we stayed with sporadically in Mongolia in UB as well). Then we moved to Xi’an, to the city. There were many grocery stores full of cheap fruits and veggies and many friendly Chinese men and women following you around ready to help. If I were to describe the Chinese in one word it would be helpful.
Our weeks leading up to leaving for our last city, Lanzhou, the city was decorating for the 70th anniversary of the communist country, September 1st, decorating it with flags on the front of every shop. It reminded me of how in Germany you had to have a nazi flag outside your home otherwise you were looked upon as against them. We left for Lanzhou by train on September 1 spending a week there before the squad met up to fly to Kazakhstan. It was a city next to the yellow river, the one thing I wanted to see in China. I loved buying cooked sweet potatoes from my sweet potato lady and walking along the river rock walkways that massage your feet with the stones in the cement. It felt so good on my sore feet and brought joy to my soul.
// the little village outside of Beijing by the wall that I loved //
REBUILDING THE BROKEN WALLS//
Since Squad debrief in UB, I had officially discovered what a wreck I am still in as well as a funny little thing called enneagram. There I dove head first into the endless research of discovering what type I was—a total of three solid weeks of study over this. Oh, how much grace my team gave me! And after numerous people typing me as certain personalities as well as the tests not being able to type me, it wasn’t until I listened to the “Sleeping at Last” podcast on type 3 that I broke. I saw myself in all of the types which made typing myself especially difficult. I was in essence a chameleon, a shape shifter, skin changer. None of the types really clicked until listening to the podcast on the train to Xi’an. What broke me is how accurately they spoke of my heart in ways that I couldn’t put into words, but it tugged at my broken heart strings.
My life entailed of yearning to be seen, of putting on masks that I may become worthy in everyone’s eyes; therefore, I lost my true identity because I started believing the masks I was putting on for the stage was actually me.
This is why I so loved self perfection projects, and why I constantly craved inner healing. I want to find me. How did He create me? How do I work? How can I better connect with others and understand them?
I yearned for affirmation and would constantly work my butt off to seek it, just one word would do. Without affirmation I felt like I was never doing anything right, so I would spiral into getting overwhelmed with adding more “projects” that would maybe be enough.
Growing up, I was drawn to loving people, nurturers, because I didn’t know how to truly take care of my heart, so I thought by maybe feeling what love I could gain from others I could learn how to take care of my own heart and be able to love others.
In conclusion, I realized I truly struggled with my worth and being enough especially when I didn’t receive any affirmation. I want to be critiqued, but it equally exhausts me because I can feel like I can never be enough for people, live up to their standards or expectations of who I should be. I usually know where I need to work on. Knowing where I am doing well is usually much harder for me to see.
Oh, how tangled in a web of lies I have been.
My fear is truly failure. It terrifies me. It is a driving force for me. To not be noticed, to not have value, being worthless. Wow. And it isn’t healthy.
Being a type 3 I realized why I loved the song “Defender” so much. It literally spoke fresh air to me that I don’t have to do a THING to earn His love “all I did was praise, all I did was worship, all I did was bow down, all I did was stay still”. Then my losing who I was: “when I thought I lost me, You knew where I left me. You reintroduced me to Your love”. It spoke to my soul; I could breathe again.
Oh, but how sweet it is that He has broken the lies!! I am no longer bound by them for He has broken the chains and calls me a new creation, His masterpiece, His poetry.
// what journaling looked like daily //
WALK//
Through this I cried out to Abba. Why is this world so messed up?! Why was I like this?!
I became more broken to the core and drenched in the shame and grief of how I have acted. I withdrew to seek Him and His truth, comfort, and healing. He told me we needed to walk through this, so I journaled working through the pain, the whys, the wounds, and He brought His truth. I brought people into the pain and lies, bringing a freedom and freshness. I started feeling peace again amidst the grief. My eyes were open, no longer in the fog they had oddly been the last few months. I became more aware of His awesome grace for me, who He said I was, what was going on, and I wanted more.
LIES I BELIEVED//
He brought things up that I couldn’t have thought of: people I still needed to forgive, memories that triggered pain, wounds I pushed down, ect.
He asked me to ask Him what lies I was believing. I did, and He gave me a few. “Ask again” He said. More lies. This went on several times until I had a total of 25 lies I had been living in and believing my whole life. I didn’t know what to say. He promptly told me “write down that you are enough”. Crying, I did. Tears are coming easier now-praise Him! He is reconnecting me with my heart.
The next morning He told me to go back through those lies to find out the core of why I believed them, to identify where they came from, and to declare His truth over them with scripture references.
What God is teaching me is that I have brokenness, yes, but I am no longer trapped in sin. I do have a choice to let the enemy take a foothold. The enneagram can make you fall into the great lie: that we are still sinners after Christ saved us. Ask Jesus and read Romans for clarification. The enneagram does show you how the enemy can and will attack you based on your past and the gifts God has given you to use for His glory.
Abba is showing me the ways of my old nature, and these are the ways that the enemy will seek to tempt me in my past weaknesses, my former self, trying to say that this is still me. Those are lies from the pit of hell. I have been renewed. I now truly desire heavenly things; I desire first in any situation to cry out to Abba and give Him glory. He is restoring the broken walls of my past, creating hedges of protection for my present and preparing me for His will. I am His redeemed daughter, a lioness arising.
This going through lies took almost all day to do…then I had to do one more thing..cut my hair.
CUTTING AWAY//
Ok, I LOVE long hair, and I have been attempting to heal my hair these last five years and grow it out more. It was about perfect last winter. Thick, almost to my waist, bouncy curls, silky, ahhhh. I loved it. These last few months starting late winter, my hair started falling out, thinning. I hid my panic pretty well though I did have several moments. People kept asking me if I had cut my hair. By month 2 of the Race, my hair had shortened itself to be almost shoulder length on the right side and mid high back on my left side. This inhibited me doing absolutely anything with it. No braids, messy buns, or down. He told me to cut it. Oh, the meltdowns I had over something like my hair, just on top of everything else I was going through. I loved my hair—apparently too much it became a pride issue. So that day after going through the lies, I sucked up the tears (an unhealthy trait I am currently ridding myself of) and cut my hair bit by bit.
My friend told me later that it is like God is doing a physical cutting away of the lies by asking me to cut my hair. He is asking me to be renewed and live in authenticity. No more lies.
I have also had trouble using my shampoo bars this whole race. My hair couldn’t get clean. Then I asked Him to show me how to use them. Obeying, my hair came out cleaner and fresher than it has since Alaska in July.
He and I have been walking through a lot of pain, but it is sweet because He is making me whole, renewing my mind, breaking me of pride and shame, teaching me how to love myself and others, and preparing me for whatever He has before me. I am His beloved; His precious daughter. And He weeps when I weep.
// I might have gotten the hair cutting skillz from my fam. still getting used to it though //
REDEEMING LOVE//
The last few weeks the book “Redeeming Love” by Francine Rivers has been on my mind often. I have read this book four times through so far, and it is my all time favorite book besides His Letter. He told me to tell the story. I didn’t know if He wanted me to read the book to my team, retell the story, or what. So I waited and kept coming back and asking Him about it.
Journalling one morning with Him, He gave me the lyric “Every tear you tried to hide I wiped away.” I stopped. “You want me to write a song about the story?” I asked. Then He kept giving me more lyrics, so I pulled out my whiteboard and started writing them down until I had the full story. Oh, how beautifully He told it. We edited it together for a few days. Problem is, I have a difficult time creating music to go with lyrics, so I have sent the lyrics off to many of my music friends to see if they can ask Abba about it too and bring this song to life. But He gave me a few chords and it clicked! The song is almost ready to be shown for His glory!
TRUTH//
What have I learned?
Walking through pain is still good as long as you are striving to heal as well. There is always hope, but it’s ok to grieve. Jesus wept even though He knew Lazarus would come back to life. He wept because this world is filled with so much brokenness. Oh, how much fullness of joy He gives when we seek Him for our comfort and healing.
I also found out that my five fold gifting is pastor/apostle which is so cool because I truly seek to do the things of those giftings; they are my heart’s cry. I am seeking how He wants me to better serve others with those gifting as well as growing them in love.
I am redeemed. I am worthy. I am enough.
If those make you cringe or weep, take them to Jesus and let Him declare His truth over you.
Living in the softness of listening to His voice is my favorite thing. He has told me to read so many of His stories this month; Job, 1 Kings, Esther, Ruth, John, Romans, and many of the smaller new testament books. It is hard to describe it, the playing and living constantly with Him. I just pray that you seek it, a real raw authentic relationship with Him for it is the sweetest treasure I desire and have. No one can take it away. Crave Him. Crave His truth. He will always satisfy.
UPDATE: I am currently only $1488.50 away from being FULLY FUNDED! SO CLOSE yet it feels so far away. He will provide though. We have 51 days to meet this goal, and I have seen Him provide $4000 in one weekend before! I am so excited to see how He uses you to provide this.
ALSO-I have been challenged to pray about fundraising for buying a camera on the Race. It would be a huge blessing to be able to share His stories more both with vlogging and photography. Please join me in prayer about this!
// walking through the Chinese streets of Xi’an – this is Caitie //
Prayer requests:
That God keep breaking me and walking me through deeper inner healing in the upcoming months, renewing me more and more like Him.
That He keep speaking over me through all His ways, how He created me for His glory both now and in the future.
That I continue to obey His voice in whatever situation He has me in no matter what.
That He continue to teach me how to rest, to love, and to be a moon in the darkness.
That He bring people into my life this next week that can teach me more Russian and that I can plant seeds of Abba in.
