i am val and this is my heart

I just want to share some personal thoughts on what God has shown me while in this country. Looking back on our arrival in Tallinn the 17th of June, I remember the deep sadness and lack of purpose I felt. My journal entry that day reads ``Why the heck am I here? I hope to read this entry later on in the summer with a completely opposite, positive attitude. God, I just want to be your heart and your love to the people here in Estonia...I don´t know whatś wrong with me, Lord. I am so sad and feeling dark but I still want so badly to do all of this for you.´´
There is a spiritof heaviness on Estonia, and now I know that that heaviness was a big part of my sadness and despair back in June. Estoniaś history of being invaded and oppressed has taken a toll on the people here; they carry their history like weights on their backs. The people of Estonia need to be taken by the heels, turned upside down, and shaken free of all the baggage they still hold onto. Only the Lord can bring this freedom. And the more I write home about my insights (if you can call them that) the more I am encouraged to realize this: it is not that in all the world, Estonia desperately needs Jesus- it is that Estonia needs Jesus, just like the rest of the world.
It has been very difficult for me to admit and come to peace with what I am about to say, but it is the unfathomable peace of our Lord that causes me to be able to do so. I am a fixer by personality. When something is wrong, I want to know how to make it right. I want to know the solution, the answer, the remedy, and I want to make it all better. But life doesn´t work that way; our world doesn´t work that way. No amount of money, power, intelligence, or fame could ever enable me to ``fix´´´all the injustices and problems that we see in our world. I will never be good enough to go out on my own into all the world and fix the broken. But the truth is, I don´t have to be rich enough or smart enough or pwerful enough to do so. My God is greater than all of these; surely He is more than great enough to go out into all the world and fix, mend, reconcile, recreate. My calling instead is to be less of myself so that His greatness can work through me. I, me, valerie hartshorn, will never be great enough, but a great ``me´´ is not what this world needs. What it needs is our great God.
What was once, in my mind, Mission: Save Estonia has become Mission: Seek God´s Heart. I am no help to anyone if I am not seeking the source of Life, yearning after the heart of the only One who understands the pain and suffering of this world. I have seen Godś hand of artistic design, His perfect timing, His faithfulness while in this place. And that confirms the greatness of our Lord. But I have also seen poverty, abuse, drunkenness, addiction, and that reveals to me the holiness and majesty of our Lord. He is not a good God who is okay with good things happening in our world. He is beyond indescribable because although the bad things happen that nobody wants to admit exist or acknowledge or confirm, He is still God. He is still just and righteous. I am in awe in this place. I am in a state of fear and yearning after the heart of this God whom I thought I knew as good, but am realizing is so much more.