My head was pounding from the overwhelming noise of blaring bus horns, car exhaust, and the stench that seemed to contentedly settle all around me, never inclined to leave. It had been another busy day learning foreign sounds that were meant to translate into actual meaning, navigating roads, and failing miserably at picking up on cultural cues and expectations. I’d managed to make it back up to the apartment, take off my hijab, and sit silently on the cool tile floor.

That’s when it all really hit me. The weight of doing this: getting mobilized overseas, choosing a life away from familiarity, comfort, dignity, and all things normal and understood. I was in the process of deciding whether or not this was the place I would choose to leave everything behind to make Jesus’ name known among this nation.

You know, when people start this journey, it all sounds pretty romantic. Whether they admit it or not, I think lots of people who start the mobilization process get wrapped up in the romanticism of running off to a foreign land, collecting their bathwater from cool streams, and sitting in the hills sharing Bible stories with a group of unreached nomads as the breeze rustles through the leaves and grass, everyone intently listening and growing. Or maybe they’re a little more practical, and their vision is more emotionally stimulating. They imagine themselves in a war-torn nation, wrapped up in a turban with the desert air ripping across their faces as they inspiringly navigate the dusty streets searching for faithful men and women they can throw Bibles at as they leave ethereal-like worship songs in their wake, all while saving the world of course (just because, you know, that’s what missionaries do).

But getting sick after eating poisonous fresh produce doesn’t feel too romantic. Neither does getting ripped off by taxi drivers (ALL THE TIME) because you’re still trying to learn their language and not sound like a 4-year-old. Or imagine never getting to just relax in a warm shower because water heaters don’t exist or never being able to get your bills paid or your internet set up because, well, you’re a single woman in a chauvinistic land. Maybe it sounds romantic for a fleeting moment, but it sure isn’t after confronting small issues like this day after day after day. And then there are some days it truly feels like too much to bear — the days after surviving another monsoon-season terror of flooded streets, sitting alone on your tile floor, and wishing, just wishing, your closest friends and family were there to simply sit with you. But they can’t, and you can’t because you’re half a world away from them, and you can’t even call because it’s the middle of the night for them.

That’s about where I was at when the tears started to fall and in the deepest, most sincerest way, I asked myself,

“Can I do this?”

And immediately I was reminded that there’s a reason this place is so dark. There’s a reason it’s still so dark. I am convinced more than ever that choosing to go overseas and choosing a location has really nothing to do with the warm fuzzy “call” some so adamantly speak of. We’ve already got a pretty clear call to go through the Great Commission. However, I am convinced that you will never make it out there if you do not have an anchor of deep conviction that this tumultuous lifestyle and global vision is TRUE. If you are not entirely sold out for it, you’ll never last.

By the end of my vision trip, I had concluded that this place was horrible. The people were mean, the culture was overwhelmingly frustrating, and the sights, sounds, and smells constantly had me reeling with disgust. But all these downfalls made it that much more apparent that the need for Jesus’ redemptive power to flood this place is the only solution in the face of such darkness.

I don’t think this means we all need to run off to war-torn zones, but I also don’t think we are automatically exempt from going to hard places simply because it’s hard. People in hard places need the hands and feet of Jesus too. And in the same vein, we need the hard places. Though the decision to go is not an easy one, it’s nothing when I think about the eternal treasure in store for not only those we will love but also the cauldron of transformation that awaits our own hearts. Honestly there’s not a whole lot one person can do by deciding to pack up and move halfway across the world, but when you do so, allowing yourself to be transformed and sanctified by the Holy Spirit as a testimony to the lost, spiritual climates begin to shift. We can undeniably see the stark contrast between Jesus’ love and the tainted love this world so vainly offers. As author Kate McCord so well puts, "Perhaps that’s the greatest reason why He calls us to dangerous places: so that we will know His astonishing, sacrificial, life-restoring love."