Almost exactly four years ago today I began a journey. I had no intention of stepping foot on a new path, but there I was standing in the doorway to a whole new world. Nay Kaw was in my photography class at the Proskuneo School of the Arts. He had been my student for nine months and I knew that he was a refugee from Burma. I didn’t really know what that meant nor did I know where Burma was. And on that particular day I asked a question that kind of pushed me out of the door. Where did you move to Georgia from? “A refugee camp in Thailand,” he replied. My heart stopped for just a minute. I didn’t know what that looked like. I had no frame of reference.
I wrote about this part of my story in a blog called “Comfortably Numb.”
I woke up this morning at four a.m. I was literally sobbing as I awoke from a dream I had. It was powerful and sobering. In my dream I saw how much he (Nay Kaw) loves God. In my dream I saw him loving his family as he does so well. In my dream I saw him caring for the people around him. And in my dream I began to see the “monsters” of war that have oppressed him. And in my dream I began to see him fighting a battle with the world that would try to oppress him here. And then he came to me and said “they are sending me back there.” This is the moment when I was awakened with tears running down my face. I realized that I didn’t even know where “there” was. And I didn’t have a clue what “there” even looked like. I didn’t know his story – not his full story.
There. That night I spent the next few hours researching “there.” I painted “there.” And “there” started to seep into my skin. God began a work in me that night that led me through the next four years. I say it was a journey, but I did not really have to travel far. It was more like God spun the world on its axis and all of a sudden my heart was “there.”
And a few short weeks ago, I made the actual journey to “there.” God finishes what He starts. I am not saying He is done yet, because I am pretty sure He’s not. But I found myself sitting in the refugee camp where Nay Kaw grew up. I was walking the same roads and breathing the same air. I was smelling the scents and eating the food. I was looking at trees that were “there” when he was a child running down those dusty roads and I was watching children play in the same stream.
I also had the opportunity to take a boat across the river into Karen State, Nay Kaw’s home before becoming a refugee. In the middle of the river I was overwhelmed at the thought of the thousands of refugees who made it across those waters to “freedom” behind the barbed wire of the camp. And I thought of the thousands who, as my Karen friends say, were swallowed by that same river as they attempted to flee from the war that was tearing apart their villages and ripping the innocence from their land. Kawthoolei, they call it. It means country without evil. One day perhaps it will be.
“There" is now no longer a complete mystery. “There” is a place where people love God and worship Him with their whole hearts. “There” is a place where many still need to know Jesus. “There” is real and tangible. And “there” is now embedded in my shoes and in my heart.
P.S. If you would like to read the former blog “Comfortably Numb” just click on the words and a link will take you there.