Disclaimer number one: I began writing this blog post simply for the fact that it’s been awhile and I feel like I need to give some kind of update on my life. I had no idea what direction it would take, so bear with me. There seems to be a lot of introspective reflection happening towards the end. Disclaimer number two: While I had every intention of keeping this post short, I seem to have a knack for going into too much detail. I just don’t know what to leave out and what to include, so you end up with a whole lot of possibly insignificant specifics. Forgive me. If you no longer wish to continue reading, I fully understand. But for those of you brave enough to dive into in the life of Anna, here is a retelling of a few of my experiences from this past month.

As I mentioned in my last blog post, Christmas is really not a huge deal in Thailand. In fact, it basically doesn’t exist. However, after practicing “Sleigh Ride” and “Jingle Bells” and “Away in a Manger” and “Joy to the World” a hundred times or so, it seemed that even if no one else was, at least our students at Peace Music Academy were feeling the holiday spirit. While holiday cheer definitely existed in my heart as well, I was also very glad when the Christmas season was finished. With long, chaotic group practices for our big concert happening twice a week, all the endless music arranging and editing, helping at or hosting parties and events every weekend, directing choir practices every Friday night and Sabbath afternoon, baking hundreds – possibly closer to thousands – of cookies in our little oven, receiving a surprise visit from friends, going last minute present shopping almost every day for a week, eating WAY too much chocolate, performing two smaller concerts and finally our big Christmas concert at Ton Tann market, it’s no wonder I was happy when we bid December farewell. I was thoroughly wiped out. The same holiday that used to bring me so much joy and excitement in all my past years ended up bringing me stress and exhaustion. Don’t get me wrong, I did immensely enjoy certain aspects of the season, and I wasn’t stressed the ENTIRE month, just, you know, all the days leading up to Christmas… Either way, it was a joyous yet demanding time of the year that I was just as happy to see go as I was to welcome in.

After all the excitement and activities concluded, I desperately wanted a break. We had a scheduled week off from teaching over the New Year, and in all honesty, all I wanted to do was sleep the entire time. But that was not to be the case. A month or so earlier, Tone (our music school director) offered Deedee and me an invitation to go with him to his hometown of Phuket during the break. He promised to take care of all the travel arrangements and his family was more than happy to host all of us for free, so Deedee and I gladly accepted the offer. But I quickly discovered after the big concert and all the other festivities had ended that I no longer felt quite as thrilled about traveling those 18 hours south as I did a month before. While I knew in my heart that I would hate myself later if I didn’t go, I had absolutely no desire to travel anywhere at the moment. However, our bus tickets had already been purchased and plans were already in place, so to Phuket I went.

It was… amazing.

I won’t burden you with every detail of that trip, but let me just say, God blessed. I left Khon Kaen with the sour attitude of a two-year-old recently woken up from a nap, but I came back feeling like… well… honestly, I can’t put it into words. I was blessed. I felt like God met me there and day by day showed me signs of His immense love that, slowly but surely, gave me back the strength I needed to continue His work in Khon Kaen. Let me try to replay some of the highlights for you.

First, I know this is a little thing, but during our first day in Phuket I was given a stick of bamboo filled with sticky rice and coconut milk. I don’t think you understand how life-changing that food was for me the first time I tried it in Laos, and ever since that day I’ve been craving it, wishing it was more accessible in Khon Kaen. Like I said, it seems like a little thing, but to me it was the best gift ever. But God was just getting started showering me with little blessings.

The next day was New Years Eve, and it was also Sabbath. Ever since coming to Thailand I’ve developed a love-hate relationship with this day. Don’t get me wrong, Sabbath amazing. I’m so glad we have that day to focus solely on God and resting in Him. However, lately my Sabbaths haven’t been exactly restful. There’s always something of dire importance to be done that isn’t considered “work”, but is definitely anything but relaxing. I was afraid that it would be the same in Phuket – that we would end up getting asked to do something at church that would consume our precious hours of rest and turn it into a day of stressful “work for the Lord”. It seemed to be starting out that way, as we were asked on short notice to do a special music. Fortunately, they asked us to do a song I’m very familiar with, a song that I hadn’t sang since coming to Thailand, and I realized then how much I missed it. As the strains of the chorus washed over me, I was reminded again that it’s not up to me to do this work I’ve been sent to do. When I start relying on my own strengths and abilities, that’s when I begin sinking. Only when I look to Jesus can I be sure-footed while the storm rages around me.

So I will call upon Your name And keep my eyes above the waves. When oceans rise, my soul will rest in Your embrace For I am Yours, and You are mine. “Oceans” by Hillsong

Though I usually think of performing special music as a chance to bless others, I was the one who walked away with the biggest blessing.

The rest of our Sabbath did end up being duty-free, and I reveled in the chance to simply enjoy the day by worshipping God and hanging out with fellow believers. When potluck was over and Tone’s family finally finished socializing, we all went back to their house to pack up and get ready to go camping. I was so excited. We were planning to go to a national park where we would celebrate the New Year by roasting veggie-meat kebabs over the fire and singing songs on the beach until 2017 arrived. Let me tell you, I ate so many kebabs that I had veggie ham and pineapple coming out my ears. It was glorious. As good as it was though, the food isn’t what made the evening so special – it was the ocean. Almost every other New Year’s Eve in my life has been celebrated in the cold tundra of the Midwest, so spending the final hours of 2016 on a sandy beach with the sound of crashing waves soothing my soul and a sky full of bright stars shining down on me was a new and delightful experience indeed. I always feel closer to God when I’m near a body of water or under a canopy of stars, and here I had both! It was all I could do to sit there and simply breathe it in. Needless to say, God definitely showed up that night, and I can think of no way I’d rather end the year than side-by-side with my Savior.

I thought the beauty of that night would be pretty tough to beat, but as the trip progressed, the blessings from above only increased. It seemed to me that every day something happened that seemed specially designed just for me. Monday was especially wonderful, though the day did start especially early. Tone dragged us all out of bed at 5:30am so that we could go hike up Tok Sat Mountain at sunrise. Now, I’ve never been one to get excited about hiking, especially not at the wee hours of the morning, but this view was worth it. We hiked all over that mountain for an hour or so, drinking in all the beauty around us (while running away from wild monkeys that threatened to steal our personal belongings). That wasn’t the only hiking experience we had that day though; we visited three more viewpoints, all of which required a considerable amount of physical exertion in order to be reached. By late afternoon my legs were screaming at me from all the stairs I had climbed, the boulders I had leaped from, the steep inclines I had scaled, and the miles I had trekked. However, I would gladly do it again in a heartbeat if only to see those landscapes one more time. A camera lens, no matter how professional, can’t possibly attempt to capture the indescribable beauty God has created. I would have gladly sat for hours doing nothing but gazing at His marvelous handiwork which, in that moment, seemed to be created just for me. Words can’t describe the awe and wonder I felt, so I’m not going to try. Let it be known, though, that God is a God of beauty. Though I’ve always appreciated nature, it wasn’t until that day that I realized just how amazing this world is, though it is marred by sin. How much more wonderful, then, will heaven be? I can’t even begin to imagine.

Alas, our vacation had an agenda in which there were more sights to be seen, more pictures to be taken, and more souvenirs to be bought. Oh, the tragedy. The next day was full of its own indescribable sights and wonders, though, so as sad as I was to bid those gorgeous landscapes goodbye, I was rewarded with many new and wonderful experiences. Like I said before, I love being near the water because it brings me closer to God, and on Tuesday I had the opportunity to spend the entire day riding the ocean waves as we made our way to Phi Phi Island. The ride there was special in its own right, though it’s hard to describe exactly what was so special about it. I don’t expect others to understand why riding two and a half hours on a ferry boat would make me so inexplicably happy, but it did. Something about the waves and the breeze and the ocean spray… I don’t know. Anyway, once we arrived at the island, we transferred to a smaller boat that took us to a coral reef where we spent 45 glorious minutes exploring underwater treasures. I’ve been snorkeling before, but it wasn’t nearly as amazing as this place. It took me a little while to get used to the fish swimming directly past my face, but I finally embraced it and began feeling like a fish myself, making the whole experience much more enjoyable. Wanting to get away from all my fellow snorkelers, I swam a short distance away to explore more by myself. Reaching what I felt was a good stopping place, I stuck my plastic-covered face into the water. What I saw made me so excited, I actually began giggling like a school girl. I’d never seen a school of fish before, but here one was, mere inches away from my face. There were hundreds of brightly colored tropical fish, some that I’d never even seen pictures of before. Far down below I noticed the shiny insides of a clam next to a spiny urchin. I was amazed by the busyness of it all; it was hard to take it all in, yet I couldn’t bring myself to look away. A few seconds later I saw an angel fish, and man, was that exciting! I’m telling you, these are things I’ve only experienced through nature videos and National Geographics. Seeing a real-live angel fish was like meeting a famous celebrity, only better because, well, fish are just cooler than people sometimes. They have less ego. To me, those 45 minutes with the fish were really like a glimpse of heaven. I can only describe it as a date with God – just Him, me, and the fish.

I will forever be grateful for that day because it was then that I realized that even if no one on earth understands me, even if no one gets why I giggle at angel fish, even if no one ever figures out my love for boat rides or ocean waves or sand or stars or bamboo sticks filled with coconut milk sticky rice (sometimes I can’t even explain why I like those things so much), God understands me. He created me. He loves me so much that He sent His Son to die for me so that I could spend eternity having dates with Him and the fish. He gives me skies full of stars, sandy beaches, mountain-top views, and big boulders to climb all because He knows it makes me happy. And that, dear friends, is why I’m so glad I decided not to spend my entire vacation curled up in my bed. That time with God in Phuket gave me more rest and rejuvenation than any amount of sleep ever could. Sometimes it’s hard to find God in the craziness of this life, and I’ll admit, I’ve already seemed to have lost sight of Him a few times during this past week back at work; but now whenever I’m tempted to think that no one understands me or cares, all I have to do is look at a fish to be reminded that Someone does care, and that Someone is the only one that really matters.

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