My 50 Day Q&A with God…Part 1

The Goal

 My goal in this blog (Part 1 and Part 2) is to share with you guys a glimpse into this 50 day spiritual journey I just took…what it was, why I felt the need to set this time aside at this point in my life and some things I learned from it. 

Before I started, I wasn’t planning on telling anyone about it really but about halfway through I realized that it was literally changing my life, for the better, and helping me experience relationship with God and freedom in conversation with him in a new way… and that there was no way I’d be able to not tell anyone about it afterward. so..here we go! 

What are you talking about, Drea? 

March 1^st, I started a 50 day journey…can’t think of a way really to describe it better than my own “intensive course” with God…it’s summer here in India, so I’ve been thinking of it like spiritual summer school haha.  My intention in setting aside these 50 days was to try and figure out/better understand what I believed on many of the theological, social and political topics that I had not really come to a conclusion on or had questions regarding still.  

Being a missionary on the field for the last 3 years, seeing persecution up close, witnessing poverty and death and healings and demonic possession on the reg has resulted in the drastic upheaval of some of my prior held theology, social ideals and beliefs. I’m super thankful to have started out with such an incredibly solid community that holds a high regard for scripture and has always encouraged me to carry out the great commission but there are certainly some things that I have experienced, especially serving here in the villages of India, which were not explained or talked about much in the church I attended before I left America…things that I felt important to discuss with God directly. 

 

 Why do it now?

I spent 2006 reading about different religions and exploring my options when it came to faith…that year started when I went to Japan as an exchange student and practiced Buddhism with my host family for a couple weeks.  Ultimately after a year of exploring, I came to the conclusion that the grace offered by the God described in Christianity, through the sacrifice of a perfect son, was the only religion that made sense to me and reflected the image of the God that I talked to and had personal relationship with even as a child growing up mostly unchurched.  That next year in 2007, 10 years ago this summer, I made the decision to follow Jesus. 

My host sister, her friend and myself at their school in 2006

 

 As I’ve reflected on the last 10 years, and how thankful I am for having accepted Jesus’ love for me at just 15, I also want to make sure that for my next 10+ I’m stepping into greater intimacy and calling with God instead of staying complacent with where I’m at.

 

 Rosa and I at her school in 2007, later that same night I became a follower of Jesus!

 

 From August to January, I had been extremely busy with hosting WR teams and doing the village life but after the last team left in February I knew we would have a few months break from receiving teams due to the Indian heat coming though and anticipated a season with some free time.

Thanks to a great conversation I had with a friend that is married with kids, I was also beginning to realize what a gift this season I’m in actually is…I’m living overseas as an unmarried person with no kids and lots of free time (when not hosting teams) so having this time available to commit to diving into some topics with the Lord seemed like a really cool opportunity I didn’t want to miss out on!

 The 50 days started out with biblical topics, things I’ve kind of been familiar with like eschatology, sanctification, justification, etc… but about a week and a half into the 50 days, my plans for topics and the questions I had, changed a bit. 

 

 They changed after coming across an article on CNN (link here) about a 12 year old muslim girl, now 19, getting sold into marriage to a 70 year old traveler.  Reading this, I was irate over the unjust circumstances of this girl, growing in frustration with every word i was reading, when at the bottom of the article I saw that the author listed where she lived…a small part of Hyderabad, India…just a few kilometers from my home.

Muneera, the girl sold into sex slavery by her parents in Hyderabad

 

As I read that final detail, my eyes began to swell and tears began flooding down my face. I wanted to run over to her house and console her…figure out why her mother would have sold her…why this girl at the age of 12 was being held prisoner and then raped over and over again by a 70 year old man…how her family could have been so poor that a mother would have to make the decision to sell one of her children in the first place. Then, I started talking to God about it and felt that as I cried, he was crying too. Unlike me though, he knew exactly the pain she felt, he understood her torment and could carry her grief. 

I’ve often read stories like this happening thousands of miles away but this time, I was just a 20 minutes walk away from the girl.  Yet even though I was close in proximity, practically, I felt useless to do anything for her other than to pray. so I did. Not being able to act though and love her in the moment, was beyond frustrating and so through my tears, on that roof, I discovered a true sense of wanting to use this time to talk to God about more than my planned topics….but also about the hard things, about the topics I’ve never had any ability to truly understand from another’s perspective because their situation/pain/circumstances differed from my own. 

From this place of knowing my father’s heart and immense love for his people, and trusting in his desire to bring clarity and not confusion I began to think of more questions, some of which included…. 

 

Why do people suffer?

What can I do about injustice in the world?

How can I love people that identify as LGBTQ, better?

What difference can I really make in the world as one of 7 billion people?

How do we end racism in America? in India?

How does it make sense that I can take on and serve in a pastoral role in the unreached villages of India but if I went back to my home church, as a woman, I wouldn’t be allowed to continue in the same role?  

What is the Universe? Multiverse? Cosmos?

Is the church today reflective of God’s intent for his bride? How have we strayed?

What does sacrifice mean?

How can I love, support and fight for my marginalized brothers and sisters, as a white American?

What does God say about the covenant of marriage?

How is the Catholic Church different than the Protestant Church?

What do boundaries in relationships look like?

Do those boundaries change when you answer the call to become a missionary?

What does biblical parenting look like?  

How does my brain even work?

What is mysticism?

Why is experiential faith so important?

What is the importance of meditation, contemplative prayer?

How do you verbally portray deep felt pain to others?

What is fear? How do we overcome fear? Etc…

Lots of questions. Spoiler alert, I don’t have all the answers…only, my own opinions based on my experiences around the world and those conversations I’ve had with the Lord these last 10 years and especially these last 50 days. I’m not going to list what I have learned about each topic or how my opinions have changed…that would take an already long blog and turn it into unreadable; however, I will talk about some key take aways and a few lessons in my next blog (Part 2) so stay tuned!