Falling in LOVE

For the first time in about three months (which would make that the first week I got here), this week involved a lot of tears. However, this time, the tears were not tears of missing friends and cool weather and Ben and Jerry’s… They were tears of pure, glorious love. Love for these children, love for this creation, love for the God who orchestrated this whole plan.

Sitting on the couch in the Redeemed Center, listing to Enoch try and explain just a little bit of his life in his fishing village… Having Florence fall asleep in my arms sitting on that same couch a few days later, with all the kids saying “Florence, go sleep in you room!” and me not being willing to let her go… Watching Sammy and Moses prance around like long-lost brothers, just being 8-year olds… Wanting to go seek out Portia at movie night but not wanting to leave DK’s side, only to have Portia come pounce on me a few minutes later… Praying over her and the near-arrival of her Forever Family (EIGHT DAYS!)… Meeting a whole new set of children in another orphanage and listing to the cries of “Mommy, take me!” directed at me… I am not a mommy, and while I can hold them and love them, which is really all they want, I cannot “take them”… But they sure can take me. They can take my heart, every last bit of it, and shatter it into a thousand pieces only to have it instantaneously put back together with a bright smile and a new hairdo on my head…

I don’t cry out of sorrow and I don’t cry out of pity. I don’t cry because I am sad for them and I only cry a little because I am sad to leave them for a month. I cry because I love them.

I cry out of love for the freedom that is in their eyes and the stories that are in their hearts and their mouths. I cry for the horror stories that were thrown out of their future when they were rescued after being abandoned, orphaned, or trafficked… I cry for the beautiful new lives that have replaced their living hell. I cry for the way they love me, despite my past and my sin and my insecurities and my sometimes-too-quick frustration that still sneaks in all the time… They love me because I will love them, and that’s all they want.

Yesterday, I spent all morning and all night reading (from beginning to end) “Kisses from Katie,” a beautiful story of an ordinary girl, born probably just a year or two away from me, who found a new, beautiful life for herself in Uganda after following God’s call to this far-away place. A new life filled with 14 adopted children, a new language learned, a house located close to a slum, and a beautiful, poverty-filled, hope-filled, Jesus-needing new home. Her book is filled with praises to God, stories of miracles happening and lives turned around through His work in her. As I’m lying on my bed reading it, I feel as if I have it too easy… I live on a land that God has BLESSED, giving us electricity and running water even when the town ten minutes away goes without it for weeks on end… In a house with lots of space and lots of fans and lots of life (and lots of bugs, but we’re tough. Sometimes we are tougher than others… But still). But I know that this place is where I am supposed to be.

 Sometimes I wonder what my life would be like if I lived a ten minute walk away in the Shai Hills village across the street. I know it’s a totally different world just right there… Sometimes I wish that’s where I was supposed to be, because I feel like “comfortable” sneaks in, even far away from the life I used to know. And next week, comfortable REALLY sneaks in, as I board a plane back to America for a month… A country without these 36 beautiful souls in the next house, a country without Indomie for lunch and without mangoes growing on trees (CORM really needs a mango tree here…), a country where I will be far away from Holly and then come back to this place without her, a country with seemingly everything at my fingertips, except for the opportunity to look to God at all times… Not that I’m the best at doing it here, but it’s sure a lot easier than it ever was in America…

Don’t get me wrong. I get giddy thinking about walking toward people I know at the airport, looking at e-mails from Tricia and Devin planning my week in Spokane, talking with Caty about our car ride together and figuring out when we will get to see Lynne Corn Dog, thinking about my much-too-short weekend in Thousand Oaks, CA before I come back to Ghana with a family whom I love dearly, planning on staying in my bed for as much as possible (partially because dealing with the outside world will probably be really hard) when I am at my parents’ house… I am both excited for and dreading the comforts that await me, simply because I don’t want them to replace the comfort that God has provided for this ministry here. The comfort that God is trying to provide for all of us, every day, no matter where we are… We just aren’t so good at seeking it out or believing it’s there.

My time at home brings much to be done… Fundraising (and lots of it), planning, organizing, shopping, eating… But more than anything, I hope it involves a whole lot of loving. Last night as I couldn’t sleep, I lay in bed thinking of how awesome people are… Which I know sounds so silly. “Wow, people are so cool!” But I was just overcome with thoughts of how truly similar everyone in this world is, regardless of whether they sleep in a mud hut or a five-bedroom house for five people (this is me and my family), whether they live in Uganda or Ghana or the United States… Yes, culture is different and people look different and act different and want different things… But all of us just want to be loved, both by each other and, for most (many? I hope it’s most) of us, by something Greater… My heart sat there just dying to be the one God chooses to show extraordinary love to people. If “…out of the overflow of the heart the mouth speaks,” (Luke 6:45) I want my mouth to show this love that continues to overtake me…The love that I have been shown and the love that has captured my heart through the beautiful little people I know here in Doryumu, Ghana… And through the beautiful adults I know here as well! The hearts I hear spilled out at Bible study every week, the hearts that get shared in one-on-one’s, the hearts that come together in the late hours of the night in our bedroom to share sorrows and joys and worries about yesterday, today and tomorrow, the hearts that come together for a meal every evening… I am thankful for the community that was put in place for me to join here. Yes, I am a Whitworthian to the core, and “community” was my biggest fear coming here… But God probably looked at me going “Really? You think I drilled this into you for four years and then would leave you hanging out to dry? Come on, my daughter! You can keep asking people to pray about it, but I already have it all set up for you.”

I keep praying for my heart. For the things I am seeing and feeling and learning to truly manifest inside me and change me… For my heart to look and feel different. For my heart to show love more freely and purely. For it to be a better reflection of God’s heart for me!

I have a long way to go. But what a blessing this life is!

PS- Six days, one church service, one day at the art market, three days of school, one Christmas program, a few conferences with parents, and a whole lot of “see you soon’s” until takeoff next Saturday night… I can’t believe it’s so close!