God is Really Cool

After being in Ghana for 8 months, I sit staring at the last 11 days on my calendar before I leave. I have been trying to process through emotions, but there are SO MANY and they are constantly changing that I haven’t even figured out how to process well.

Since a week and a half ago, there have been multiple days that I’ve woken up feeling sick to my stomach at the thought of going to school, simply because I know it is ending so soon. I have cried in front of kids multiple times… Sometimes, you just can’t keep it inside! Sitting in Autumn’s office this morning, I talked her through a million things going through my head. To sum up my mind…

Me: It’s not like I’m on a roller coaster, just…

Autumn: Just a perpetual flood?

Yes, exactly…

At this point, I don’t have a lot of “things” I want to accomplish. I want to cry with the kids… I want to pray for the school… I want to spend time with Autumn and Emily… I want to laugh… I want to love hard… and I get to do each of those every day (ok, I’m not crying with kids every day… But it has happened a couple time in the last few weeks!). I simply want to be present in this place for as long as I can. Returning from Cape Coast, I was reminded that life will most certainly go on when I leave… There will be some stings, and the evening of “See you later” will be extremely painful, but for everything, there is a season…

Last Wednesday, I struggled through some feelings of inadequacy in thinking about my time here, just feeling as though I hadn’t done as much for the kids I wanted or seen as much change in some of them as I hoped… But God really had to show me that I am dealing with living, breathing sons and daughters of Him, and He’s the one who is going to be present here forever and ever, even when I leave. It took words of encouragement and tears from someone else to really make me able to believe that my time here mattered… To really be able to believe God’s truth above the enemy’s lies. Above all else, I know that my time and purpose here was planned by God, even when I have a hard time figuring out what my “purpose” was. I have really been leaning on Isaiah 49 this week, which I read on the afternoon of my struggles…

“He said to me, ‘You are my servant, Israel, in whom I will display my splendor.’

But I said, ‘I have labored in vain; I have spent my strength for nothing at all. Yet what is due to me is in the Lord’s hand, and my reward is with my God.’

And now the Lord says… ‘It is too small for you to be my servant to restore the tribes of Jacob and bring back those of Israel I have kept. I will also make you a light for the Gentiles, that my salvation may reach to the ends of the earth.’” (v. 3-4, 6)

Just when I felt as though my labor was nothing, He told me “Not only are you not nothing, but you are even greater than you can imagine…Even the title of “servant” I have given you is too small…”

That afternoon, I sat outside the library and wept during our staff meeting, simply overwhelmed at the fact that He wouldn’t even give me an afternoon of wallowing before He spoke up on my behalf… I soon had a group of 1^st graders gathered around me, and all I could tell them in response to “Auntie Kathy, why are you crying?!” was “God is just really cool…”

He’s more than cool… He’s faithful. He’s redeeming. He’s caring. He’s a fighter. He’s sovereign. He’s King of Kings, Lord of Lords… He is the one with the bigger picture in mind that I am so desperately trying to see, handing over my human eyes that look to next Saturday and instead taking up His eyes, which see my life and its purpose in His kingdom...

As I am typing this, the rain has started falling… My favorite thing in Ghana. I’m sure that means the power will go out soon, which is really too bad since it’s time to go to bed and it’s challenging to sleep without the fan… But God, I thank you for the time of peace that the rain brings to my heart. I thank you for the ways that you show yourself in simple beauties. And Lord, I thank you for the way you love us, are enthralled by us, pursue us… You are really cool.