It’s been six months since we left Africa.
Six months since I put a sandaled foot on her and breathed her sweet, smoky air after a hard rain.
I’m starting to have a routine, starting to have an order to the chaos.
I like California. What’s not to like about California? The weather. The people. It’s pretty dang amazing.
I like my little one bedroom cottage apartment I live in.
Even my neighbors are nice. They remember to drag our trash to the curb when we forget because we’re not used to organized garbage trucks.
Rules. Things like, only a certain amount of waste can go in the bucket, and it can’t be overflowing, or they’ll reject it.
That’s weird.
I like being able to work out and juice things.
But well, I’m bored.
I know, it sounds crazy. Isn’t this what everyone wants? A home. A great husband. Maybe throw some kids in there.
But after six years of living desperate and going from one drama to another, and solving problems I didn’t have answers for, and loving past what I thought was possible, and giving until my body gave out, this normalcy, this rest, is like a foreign bubble I’m not sure I want enveloping me.
Like it’s going to put me to sleep.
I think the hardest part is feeling closer to God. Craving the adventure with Him.
But finding myself under a pile of laundry and emails.
Wanting Him. But trying to find a way to connect to him here, in this maze of mini-vans and self-serving pleasure.
The biggest difference is every morning I woke up in Uganda, I needed him with a hunger that was never satisfied because I was living outside what was possible for me, alone.
It’s not so much the place, but the mission.
The dream bigger than our dreams.
Don’t get me wrong—I’m busy. I have mountains of to do lists scrawled out on papers, and hammered into my Iphone. Every day with this ministry, there are more things to do, then get done.
But yesterday, talking to my country director over Skype–supporting her as she carries out this thing God built, I felt
jealous.
I look at the slideshow of my African family on my computer, and I crave those hugs. Crave those stories.
We can know we are supposed to be somewhere, before God bursts into our world with some new dream, but it doesn’t make the in-between any easier.
Here, coming alive is harder. We have to seek it out, a treasure not easily won.
God hasn’t left me. And He hasn’t left America.
I just need a new set of lenses to see Him. Make space for Him, where there isn’t any.
Maybe that’s my few moments on the back porch.
Maybe it’s singing loud Jesus Culture songs in the car.
Maybe it’s offering to help the mom with four kids in the checkout line.
Or maybe it’s heading to Mammoth Lakes where I’m pretty sure God lives in all the jagged rocks, and lakes, and crevices there. Which is what I intend to do.
Hey, I’m still me. If it’s not risky, it’s not worth doing.
Where do you find Him?
(Ps-I’ll post pics soon so you can be jealous 🙂
