Now, I’m all about difficulties and growth, but like, one time should be enough, right?

First of all, (I guess second of all now) I am in love with Guatemala. It’s all beautiful. The people, the culture, the sights, all the best kinds of warm fuzzies like the sun that shines here.

Upon arrival, my group got split into smaller groups for work around the YWAM base where we are stationed in Guatemala City. I got placed on the manual labor team. Literally, so stoked.

Our first few days we were on rooftops of sunny Guatemala working the garden. I spent the whole work day singing about how much I love my job and thanking my leaders for placing me there.

Then, we went from the beautiful work of trimming roses with a machete to our next project…

Sanding the beautiful front doors of our base.

By hand.

Granted I haven’t really sanded much in my time, but I really had no idea the size of this task.

Little by little we had to pay attention to each curve, and persist until the rough surface was smooth. Then, move one inch and work on the next rough spot. Then, repeat x10000.

This pace was much slower than our previous machete slinging jobs.

Personally, I would have rather knocked the door down than take time on the details, but Jesus met us there.

We chose to savor the process. We got to slow down and have genuine conversations, and the time flew.

As our job seemed to come to a close, our supervisor celebrated our hard work and progress. Then, he said it was time to do it all over again.

I bought fell out right there in the street.

We already learned our lesson. Slow down, tending to the details, enjoy each other, praise anyways.

Tell me why we needed to do it again?

We got that lesson. Saving it in our back pocket. Let’s go to the next thing.

See, God has a thing for slowing us down, savoring moments.

In my mind, I return to spaces because I failed, and Jesus has to teach me all over again. The return feels like an undoing of what was done before.

In actuality, Jesus is concerned about going deeper and building. He returns as a continuation.

While I prefer to knock doors down, sometimes Jesus so kindly comes to the same old door to smooth out some more edges.

Where we want to settle for good enough, Jesus leads us to better for the best.