A Memoir From Myanmar

This is your brain. This is your brain on...I don't know--hyperactivity? A little bit of crazy?
I am a runner. I wake up running. I run to make breakfast and get the kids ready and do laundry and try to get myself dressed. And that is in the first half hour of my day. I am not busier than others; I just do myself in trying to get as much done as is humanly possible. And then I have to talk to myself (yes, I know it's a problem), "Slow down...be still...remember that God shows Himself in a gentle whisper and not in the storm". Do you know how hard that is? So, as I'm leaping off the third stair from the bottom to make better time to the dryer, those are the words running through my head. But I keep running....
And so tonight, I sit down to read the words I wrote August 5, 2000 on my month long trip to Myanmar (Burma):

I slipped my shoes off and climbed up two small wooden stairs in to a one room bamboo hut. I was afraid I might fall through the floor as I could see through it and it felt like it might give way. There was one chair in the room where they had me sit like a queen--when all I really wanted to do is bury my head in shame. I wanted to cry because my clothes were clean and pressed and my hair had been washed with Pantene. There on the floor lay a man who had been paralyzed from possibly menonjitis or polio. He said he saw God in me and he was so thankful for my coming...I felt so full of shame. He wore a dirty shirt that may have once been white, a tattered blue jacket and a matching pair of pants. He was smaller than I was and he looked so frail. But we prayed and I pleaded with the Lord to heal his sickness. Through faith we can move mountains.
"Oh, I believe, Father, help me overcome my unbelief." Never have I felt this more strongly. Really, is it true what you say? Is it true that if I ask, I will receive? I want to believe so badly.
The man was curled up like a beaten child, but he held out his hands for some breath of hope. And I put my hands in his--probably more scared than he--a simple twenty-two year old girl who lives in a nice house with a nice truck and a closet full of clothes...and there he was in his little one room thatch hut curled up on the floor next to a couple of pots and pans.
I slipped off my shoes just expecting to walkl in to a room with a sick man...
I walked in to a freight train of emotions hurling me over. And I never knew that Jesus lived in the heart of a little man in a little hut full of hope and desperation.
The only thing I've learned on this trip to Myanmar is that I'm very young and I don't know anything. I don't know one iota what is to experience what many are experiencing. I don't know what it feels like not to be able to lift myself out of bed. I don't know what it feels like to be tested by God just to go to church, to have faith that He will provide rice to eat even if I don't work so that I can worship. I am so very blessed. And so very ignorant.


And I am still so very blessed---and so very ignorant. I forget to slow down. To listen. I allow my life to be turned in to a check list. But tonight, I remember. I remember not to take it all for granted. To go in and kiss my little girl on the forehead long after she is asleep. I remember to say thank you.