I Almost Wasted My Life

Notes from Haiti, Part One.

“Meghan, you almost got away with a wasted life.”

I was sitting in the Haiti airport, fumbling through my backpack looking for a pair of headphone. I almost ignored the thought completely. We were waiting for our flight home, and I was frustrated. This trip hadn’t exactly turned out like I expected. As I was searching through my over-packed backpack I was thinking, “Lord, where were you this week? What am I even doing here?” That’s when I felt my stomach drop. I didn’t hear God in an audible voice, but I truly knew He was speaking:

“Meghan, do you realize you almost got away with wasting your life?”

I paused, then finally found my headphones and plugged them in. He didn’t have to explain what that meant to me, because I already knew.

I remembered where I was at that moment just a few short years ago. A few years ago, it would’ve taken a lot to get me to commit to a trip to Haiti. A few years ago, I couldn’t commit to anything related to God. I was a self-absorbed college girl and my biggest concerns were the numbers on a scale, my boyfriend, homecoming parties and preparing for my twenty-first birthday. I was chasing success and comfort. I longed for control of my life when inside it felt like it was falling apart. I wanted a regular life; and I wanted to follow Jesus without it costing me anything.

So one day I finally gave up and surrendered every ounce of it to an unseen, wild God. And long story short, He landed me in the Haiti airport a few years later.

But, even still, I’ve kept feeling like I’m the wrong girl for the job. Regular life was overwhelming me. I was craving the new and exciting and thought getting on a plane to Haiti would be the change of pace I need in this little rut I’ve been in.

Instead, I struggled. I couldn’t feel the Lord while I was there at all. It took every ounce of energy to peel my eyes open and read my Bible for a minute while chugging three cups of coffee before everyone else woke up and the day got going. My mind was constantly somewhere else, even while I shared the Gospel and gave out water filters. Out loud I would be praying for healing or the needs of the Haitian people but I felt like my words were falling flat. Every night I laid down and silently wished the next few days would go by quickly so I could go home.

But then, on the last day, the last hour actually, God opened my eyes. I spent most of the plane ride home choking back tears. I’m pretty sure the nice Haitian couple next to me was asking each other in Creole, “What is wrong with this crazy white girl?”

I really almost got away with wasting my life. What if I had just ignored Him? What if I had just kept on going along with the way my life was—chasing comfort, security, and the American Dream? Where on the planet would I be right now? Right there in seat 9F, I was completely overwhelmed again that we have a God who relentlessly pursues us.

Thinking about the week—the Lord did so much more than I took the time to pay attention to. While I was distracted in the midst of it, He wasn’t going to let me leave without seeing it.

In that moment I felt like I was surrendering all over again. Enough with chasing the security and comforts of life, I can’t keep living like this. I don’t want normal, I want everything about my life to look different because I love Jesus.

But, y’all IT’S HARD! We live in the “already, but not yet” as they say—basically we are craving heaven and still on earth. I don’t want to waste my life, but I want to control it.

Most days I would like a tolerable job where I get paid a normal salary so I am not constantly wondering how I’m going to pay next month’s rent (or like a husband who made enough money for me to stay at home and read books and drinking coffee all day—taking applications now). I also want a boyfriend. A nice, normal boy who I can call when I’m on my way home late at night to talk about all the meaningless things I did that day. I want my own car (or at least one that was also made in the last decade). I’d like a nice house in a nice neighborhood with a nice church and nice people. I just want a normal life.

But honestly, at the end of day, more than anything, I want the Lord to use me. I want a reckless life full of surrender. I want to drop what I’m doing and get on planes and go to the ends of the world telling people about Jesus. I want to spend all day sweating, covered in dirt giving people clean water. I want to be so tired at the end of the day it’s all I can do to crawl into bed. I want to love on every hungry, broken, abandoned child from here to China and back again. I want to be challenged everyday to live like Jesus did. I want to give every single breath to doing something that matters for eternity.

I want anything but a normal life.

But, living a “not normal” life is almost easy in places like Haiti and gets a lot harder when you have to come back to normal. Real life feels more real than God. Today my life looks like lots of phone calls and e-mails, doing laundry and cooking dinner. Today normal seems to overtake me and the temptation to be numb gets bigger and places like Haiti and radical, sold-out, not-normal life seems really far away.

But surrendered life today isn’t in Haiti or Africa (as much as I want it to be). A surrendered life is dying to myself and my will in the most mundane things. It’s unconditionally loving and respecting my bosses when it can sometimes get frustrating. It’s taking the time to hear about my coworker’s lives. It’s helping a friend out even when all I want to do is be alone and watch Netflix. It’s cooking dinner for my roommate after she’s had a long day, even though my day was equally long. It’s doing the things that no one else may ever see and are not worthy of Instagram. God’s glory is still shone in those places. God gave us seemingly ordinary lives because it reminds us that we are so inadequate and so human and that we desperately need Him. Even the greatest of godly heroes had to sleep, eat, and do boring, everyday life stuff. It’s in the daily stuff we put our faith into action. There is a God work risking it all for and that should change how we view everything. Most of the time the most radical thing is obedience in the mundane.

In reality, this way of living feels like dying. But once I started letting these things die, oh the freedom that followed it. Last week that freedom looked like riding motorcycles up and down a treacherous mountain, flying in tiny planes, riding a speedboat and getting thrown around the trunk of a car driving through the hills of Haiti. I looked in the eyes of men and women and children who have suffered more than I can explain. Yet, they had more hope than most of the people I know. Most of these things hurt like heck, but I’ve never felt more alive.

To think I almost got away with never experiencing any of it, the big and small, scares me more than anything. And God was not going to let me leave Haiti before He reminded me of that.

But more stories on all that very soon…

Always, Meghan XO