Strawberries and Onions

It’s Monday May 3rd.

Here at the base it’s bright outside, crisp and cool air fill your lungs as you walk outside. It’s colder than normal.

We started the day off with activation. Staff talked about speaking life.

Kingdom language.

Are your words glorifying? When you speak do you fill people with life, telling them who they are in the Lord or do you tear people down agreeing with the labels that the world has given them?

Do you speak truth over yourself or do you define yourself by the circumstances happening around you?

Activation ended, three of us walked out the gate, got into a car and I said “opps, I forgot my jacket… it’s okay it won’t be that cold.”

I was wrong.

I wasn’t cold at first, in fact in felt refreshing.

We stood there and asked the Lord where we were supposed to go for the day. I thought about the valley, so on we walked. Down the steep street, onto a dirt road. We kept walking and walking, simply looking for someone to talk to.

A woman stood, leaning over in a field. She caught all of our eyes as she picked something from the plants at her feet, three kids running around her, two carrying buckets. She looked over at us, we asked if we could enter the field and she shouted yes.

The small wooden gate with barbed wire was pushed open. We walked towards her, through a field of corn that has just started to grow.

She greeted us with a smile and while doing so the little girl, around 8 years old, started talking like crazy, with a big smile, showing us the strawberries she was picking.

There used to be a strawberry field there, but it was wiped out and replaced with onions. Somehow, every few rows, a few strawberry plants still grow.

We sat and talked as the air grew colder, we tried the strawberries, we talked about life, about how they pick the few strawberries and sell them to a bakery in a nearby town

There I stood, as it started to rain, in a field mixed with onions and strawberries. It was cold, the kind of cold that makes you want to grab a blanket and curl up in front of a fire. With no jacket, the sharp wind made the hair on my arms stand up. The drizzle turned into big droplets, landing on all parts of my clothes. The water soaked into my shirt and then into my jeans, making the cold, colder. The rain started to come down harder, we decided it was time to go. I held three strawberries in one hand and three onions in the other as we walked out of the field.

In that moment I found myself,

on the top of a mountain,

in a village in Guatemala,

standing in a random field,

holding three onions in my right hand and three strawberries in my left,

in the rain,

clothes getting wet,

with bone chilling wind,

Thanking the Lord.

that I get to be at the top of a mountain in a village in Guatemala, standing in a random field, holding three onions and three strawberries, in the rain as my clothes were getting wet, and the wind was freezing.

How lucky am I to say that this is my life. That the Lord would chose me to be in that moment. I was filled with overwhelming gratitude for what I get to do. Even if that means being freezing and having wet clothes.

Thank you Lord for sweet reminders. Thank you for fields full of strawberries and onions.