Baños, Ecuador. A small hidden gem of a town that is surrounded by mountains, volcanoes, and waterfalls. I had always heard of Baños from my parents, who have visited this city before me, and two weeks ago I was in this little wonderland standing on the roof of our hostel crying in frustration to God.
My squad traveled 22 hours overnight on a bus from Medellin, Colombia to Ipiales, Colombia, a city that is right next to Ecuador’s border. Once we arrived we walked across the border into Ecuador and caught another bus to Quito and stayed there for the night to take a break from being on a bus for hours on end. The next morning we were up to catch another 5ish hour bus ride from Quito to Baños. It was a lot of buses guys haha my neck and shoulders ache mostly every time I have to carry my pack because my 4’11 body can only take wearing it for 10 minutes at a time, but I’m managing and doing my best to part with some things to make my pack lighter.
(Don’t worry I know I left you with a cliffhanger when I mentioned I was crying and you’re probably wondering why and I’ll get to that in a short bit.)
The four days we spent in Baños is what we call our “Debrief”. Debriefs are days of rest for our squad while dwelling in what the Lord has taught us in the past month/or months in the countries we visit. Our team mentor and coaches also fly out and we have the privilege to have some one on one time with them and have a few sessions with them as a squad.
With that being said I had two huge one on one’s with one of my coaches and my mentor. As you might have read from one of my previous blogs, my body image and outer appearance is one of the bigger things in my life that I’ve actively been trying to grow and get freedom from at the same time. I want to grow in loving and caring for this 4’11ish body in a healthy way, but also not over obsess about food or feel overwhelmed when I have one too many cookies. I feel like it sounds silly saying out loud, but it’s honestly what my thoughts sometimes process and what I’m trying to let the Lord give me complete freedom from in order to have a healthy balance. The thing is that for so long I have believed I have had to look a certain way. Ever since I was in 6th grade I remember wishing I could be taller, skinnier, and prettier. One of the questions my coach asked me was why? Why did I feel the need to be all these things at such a young age? Well for one, a lot had to do with my identity not being rooted in Christ because of my lack of relationship with Him. When there is no relationship with Christ you’re prone to believe the lies that are being thrown at you. You start hearing lies in the words of humans who had no intention of hurting you. Things like “Don’t eat that it’s not good for you” sounded more like “You’re fat you can’t eat that”.
Along with that lie, I truly believed that my life’s biggest goal here on earth was finding a significant other to serve the Lord with. It’s actually quite comical if you think about a girl wanting to serve the Lord with her future husband while having no relationship with the Lord, but this is a perfect example of a person growing up in church since birth that just went through the motions. I was sure marriage was the pathway a Christian girl strived for, so that was my “fairytale” ending I suppose. There were things I was believing about myself and thoughts of what I should look like in order to obtain this “fairytale” ending and it was slowly damaging my identity, my confidence, my priorities, and even more so in wanting a relationship with God.
Most of my life I have acted like being single and not having someone in my life by now hadn’t really bothered me. I’ve acted like I’m this independent girl who doesn’t have a care in the world about relationships and boys because it’s way too cringey to admit. To be honest, for me, a girl openly stating how much she wants to be in a relationship and get married is actually just the worst and makes it seem like she’s desperate (which is an absolute lie). Then to my surprise, when I was having my one on one conversation with my mentor, I realized that I’m that girl who I cringe at. I was lying to myself and making myself think that I don’t have a problem with being single. I kept telling myself that what I’m doing on the World Race is the definition of a single girl being content and independent. I thought so highly of myself that I sometimes would think how great of an example I would be on the World Race because it can show other girls that they can do something with their lives instead of waiting around for some guy to swoop them up. Well guess what? I’m a fraud. Why else would I care about my appearance so much? Why else would I let something as vain as my outer appearance consume my mind as much as I let it? Why do I also feel the need to overcompensate in serving, being kind, and making sure people think good things of me? My silly mind thinks if I can’t be what I want to be on the outside I can try being the best person I can be with my actions. I can be that sweet, kind, reliable servant girl that leaves a lasting impression on people if I can’t do it with my appearance. I was basically being the hands and feet of Jesus but not for God…for people.
During my one on one, I mentioned to my mentor that I believed God was possibly holding out on me. I expressed that I’m possibly enduring the consequences of my sin and that’s why He hasn’t sent someone I’m interested in to start a relationship with. My mentor heard me make a whole speech about it and at the end she asked me to go spend some time with the Lord and ask Him what His promises are to me and if He’s holding back anything from me because of my past. To be honest, I left frustrated and mad. Haha I was like, that’s it? That’s all you have for me? You want me to go ask the God of the universe, whose ways are mysterious and no one understands, if He’s keeping things I desire away from me? That’s absolutely insane…but I did it.
I went on top of the roof of our hostel to have a serious conversation with the Lord and just sat there and cried. I prayed for about half an hour and just thought how impossible it is to get into the mind of how God works. I grew frustrated and called my dad and told him all about my deep random thoughts. To no surprise, he does the dad thing well and helped me realize my need for control in life. I was so worked up about not being able to know how God plans things that I somehow made some untrue thoughts and feelings that indicated He was holding back on me because of past sin. I was reminded that God doesn’t work like that. God doesn’t hold account of old sin. He doesn’t hold back or break His promises. When I asked Him to forgive me of all my sins and become my Savior, He forgave the past and He forgives the present and future. He only keeps us accountable for every 24 hours and then His mercies are new every morning.
Now with that in mind I still don’t know if marriage is in His plan for me, but I do know that in this moment what He wants from me is to be still. Be still and let go. He wants me to be still in not knowing what the future holds because it’s in the hands of a merciful Father who doesn’t hold back on giving me the best. He promises a life of joy, peace, and fulfillment to those that love Him and if that doesn’t involve finding a significant other then I’ll still be still. I think God wants us to desire and dream of good, pure things such as a marriage that is centered in His will, but in doing so I’ll also be still. Marriage is a good thing and I think I’ll always admire and desire something as beautiful as living your time here on earth with someone that is set apart for you, but if it’s just me and God until the end of my life that’s enough.
My point in writing this isn’t to receive encouragement in waiting for “the one” or compliments of how lucky any guy would be to be with me. The point of this blog is to perhaps reach out to some girl or guy out there that feel like their lives aren’t complete until they find “the one”. This is for the person who feels like God is holding out on them because of some past sin. This is for the person who is probably frustrated and confused about God’s plans and promises. This is for the person that struggles with being content in their singleness because all they’ve heard their whole life is that “married life is the best life”. Haha
Baños will forever hold a special place in my heart. It’ll be the place I cried out to my Heavenly Father over something I was so confused and frustrated about, and in return, He responded with grace in telling me to let go and take one step closer to trusting Him to receive an extra dose of freedom from the lies about my body and what life on earth should look like.
