we put mud on her eyes,

the first day here, i asked God to show

me what He wanted to say about Cambodia.

He led me to John chapter 9

where Jesus spits into the dirt,

makes mud, places it on a blind man’s eyes

and the man is ultimately healed.

and then within two days,

we met two blind people.

one of them was a woman named nai

nai has been losing her eye sight

she can only see a little and this

has significantly impacted her life.

she cannot walk far

people have to give her food

and she feels very alone

throughout the month

we visited her almost every day

to sing with her, read her Bible stories

talk to her about God

and pray for her.

each time she said

she felt better

she felt her vision slowly improving

and her soul felt r e f r e s h e d.

and throughout the month

i kept hearing the words

you will not leave this place

before you put mud on their eyes

and i kept telling myself

that’s weird

….

 but i kept hearing it.

& i finally told my team

and asked them to pray about it

my teammate marissa told me

that the first day we met nai

she had a vision of nai with mud

on her eyes and us praying over her

we prayed and as a team and even

though some of them thought i

was crazy – we felt like God was

asking us to do this.

 to put mud on her eyes.

and all i can think is

that we are crazy, i am crazy

we’ll give her an infection

(or worse: false h o p e )

but what do you do when you know God is asking you to do something

that you don’t want to do?

 (you trust in Him and you do it anyway).

so we went with our host

and we read her the story

and i told nai everything.

i explained to her what we felt God asking us to do

and that we didn’t know what would happen

she may not receive physical healing

but healing looks different than we think

sometimes

we asked if we could do this with her

and she said yes

we mixed up mud

and saliva

we painted it

over her eyes

and we laid our hands

on her

and

we

 prayed.

we brought clean water

and helped wash away the mud

and after a minute

our host asked her if she could see

she opened her eyes and said:

“…no. i have sand in my eye.”

her vision was not restored.

but we told her

that we have seen healing in her

in her soul, in her smile

and that God loves her so much

He sent people from halfway

around the world

to tell her that.

and then alli told her more

about Jesus –

and she decided to accept Him.

and we left.

and i felt

angry

disappointed

&

defeated

(and like we probably gave

this woman pink eye).

i left feeling unconvinced

she truly understood

what it meant to accept Jesus

and because of that

she hadn’t really received

any healing at all

i left heartbroken

that we were obedient

and she was not healed

(why, God?)

not in the way

that i wanted.

the next day we went to visit her

and you know what i saw?

a woman at peace.

smiling & laughing

and as always

feeling better than the day before.

and if she isn’t

bitter

why am i?

i started thinking more about

the story, and wondering

why did Jesus even bother

putting mud on the man’s eyes?

He didn’t need to

do anything like that

when He could just say the word

and the man would be healed

and i don’t know the answer

except that

the act was

i n t e n t i o n a l

personal, a way

to connect with one another

and we connected with nai.

all month. so much so,

that when we asked if we

could put mud on her eyes,

she said yes.

i may never understand

why God asked us to do this.

but i know there is a reason.

and sometimes we have to listen

to God without fully understanding.

sometimes you have to take

a leap of faith if you want

to see a miracle.

and if moses never threw down that rod

if he let fear of failure keep him back

it never would have turned into a snake.

the thing is,

 they say you don’t

have to be crazy to live here

(but it helps).

 and i know that we have all left feeling just a little [re]freshed,