Climbing Above

Guest article by Shaina Thiner

It was barely dawn when my eyes opened, yet I was fully awake. My long week—intensified by the mounting heat and humidity of the rainy season—had left me completely exhausted, and I hadn’t slept well. It wasn’t yet 6:30 a.m., and the air around me was already sticky and hot. Realizing the likelihood of falling back asleep was low, I rolled my eyes and flopped out of bed.

I’d been wanting to spend one of my quiet times on the roof—so this seemed to be the perfect opportunity. I grabbed my iPod and hurried outside, eager to climb up top before anyone saw me and interfered. Thankfully the ladder was still there leaning against the house, left from last month’s solar panel installation.

Reaching the top, I breathed a sigh of relief. Shifting my feet to stay balanced on the sloped cement, I remained standing for a bit, taking in the view. In one direction, I could see the ladies sweeping the yard and preparing the charcoal fire for breakfast. Before me was the beach, my preferred view: the crashing waves as the tide came in and the glassy-silver expanse of a sea, not yet touched by the light of morning. To the left of that was the wharf, already bustling with merchants disembarking the speedboat that had just carried them over from the small island across the bay.

But then I turned around and found my gaze lifted up—past the wall surrounding our compound, past the main road, past the rooftops of the village, to the very peaks of the mountains. Suddenly my heart felt an unfamiliar (of late) peace. I tiptoed around the solar panels, found an open spot, put my earbuds in, and sat down as I listened to worship music and watched the sun make its leisurely appearance in the sky.

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The lady with the machete was one of the reasons for my mental exhaustion. We were in the process of taking a struggling church under our wing and it seemed everywhere we turned she was there, standing (brandishing her machete)—making demands or spreading rumors or even threatening us.

Then there was a little boy—the most adorable, precious boy with bouts of searing pains in his legs. His mother, frantic and distressed, had asked us for help. We didn’t have the resources to send her to a doctor to confirm it, but after questioning her and talking with a friend who was a licensed nurse, we were pretty sure he had severe anemia—possibly even sickle-cell. There was no cure, and so many of the treatments were beyond our means or capability in this country.

Helpless—that’s what I felt. Helpless and useless and utterly unequipped to handle the circumstances in which I found myself. These were people and I was struggling to see them as image bearers of God, instead of “situations.” My heart felt like a battlefield of emotions. The guilt I felt about my ugly thoughts towards the lady with the machete struck blow after blow. Then a barrage of arrows—discouragement, heartbreak, despair—pierced my defenses as I desperately sought to find some way to do something to help this little boy experiencing so much pain.

The feeling of uselessness reached an all-time high when we hosted a Kids’ Club at church the next week. Over 150 children showed up and there were only four of us to run it. Snacks ran out, the afternoon heat was stifling, the little boy was having another episode of pain, and then our vehicle ran out of fuel.

At the beginning of the week I had felt like mud was encircling my feet, slowing down my efforts. By the end of the week, I felt like I was almost completely engulfed by it, gasping for breath, just barely holding my mouth above the miry flood.

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The music praising the Creator wove its way through my being as I sat on my rooftop. The first rays of light peered between the mountains and lit the tips of the palm fronds. All the tenseness and worry of the previous days began to melt away. Not that I forgot all that had happened, but it just didn’t weigh so heavily anymore. My helplessness was not what it was all about. For what were my feelings of helplessness but a desire for control over my situation? I realized that giving into these feelings had become my way of saying “I could handle this better than You, God.” I had become engrossed in my circumstances instead of turning to the One who can do so much more than I can.

Sometimes we find ourselves in circumstances where it’s like our feet are stuck in the mud. Every time we get one foot out, the other one sinks farther in. When there’s mud surrounding us it’s really hard to look up. We want to focus on getting out of the mud, and how can we do that unless we’re looking down at it, surveying it, researching it, fighting against it? I mean, that makes the most sense, doesn’t it?

But if the mud just keeps getting deeper, and thicker, and heavier, maybe it’s time to stop struggling and turn our faces heavenward. Maybe it’s time to cease striving and believe that God does know best, that He has a purpose in all of this. Maybe it’s time to be still and just wait—wait for the sun to come out and dry up the pathway.

As I sat on my rooftop, that’s the day I remembered Who it’s really all about. It’s the day I climbed above my circumstances and got a fresh perspective.

This guest article was written by Shaina Thiner. Shaina Thiner now resides in the Midwest U.S. with her husband and five stepchildren, after spending six years as a single expat worker in the Caribbean She continues her work with the same Caribbean-based organization as a vision team leader and keeper of the financial reports. She also teaches at a local school. In her free time, she loves to read, write, enjoy the outdoors, and try out new recipes.

Photo by Caroline Ellis