by Alanna
The only prayer I could choke out on the airplane was this.
Enlarge my heart.
Somewhere on the way home, I realized what the difference is. When I'm in Africa, my heart aches for and longs for the people at home. But that heartache never stunts my love. I never have a hard time with the children, letting my heart open up with joy and laughter and love for them. Somehow I can miss home, grieve, and also rejoice. I can love with a full heart.
Enlarge my heart.
Somewhere on the way home, I realized what the difference is. When I'm in Africa, my heart aches for and longs for the people at home. But that heartache never stunts my love. I never have a hard time with the children, letting my heart open up with joy and laughter and love for them. Somehow I can miss home, grieve, and also rejoice. I can love with a full heart.
But somehow, when I come home, the grief cripples me. Last year I could never quite figure out how to rejoice well. I hurt of course. I missed them with all my heart. The same way I always miss my family when I am on African soil. But the hurting didn't end there. It took my whole heart away, and left an empty space where there should have been love and laughter.
My biggest fear in coming home this time, was the empty space. I feared the long lonely nights of dreaming about my children. Of my mind wandering in circles, unable to sleep and only able to cry. I was afraid of not knowing how to love well. So my prayer of the last months has been that God would keep me from this. That with His strength, He would keep my heart alive. That He would teach me how to love well. How to be "perplexed, but not despairing". I want to know how to grieve and to rejoice. I want these children to be a testimony to the power of love. Not that love cripples and makes your heart smaller. Not that the pain overwhelms you. Love should make your heart bigger, more capable of loving. Tonight I am hurting and all I can do is ask God to protect me from the sorrow that threatens to drown me.
To enlarge my heart.
"Therefore, we do not lose heart, but though our outer man is decaying, yet our inner man is being renewed day by day.
For momentary, light affliction is producing for us an
eternal weight of glory
far beyond all comparison, while we look not at the things which are seen,
but at the things which are not seen;
for the things which are seen are temporal,
but the things which are not seen are eternal."
For momentary, light affliction is producing for us an
eternal weight of glory
far beyond all comparison, while we look not at the things which are seen,
but at the things which are not seen;
for the things which are seen are temporal,
but the things which are not seen are eternal."
Thank you for the way you have described your last experience coming home and your fear for this time. I understand what you mean though I have not been through your same heart hurting.
ReplyDeleteI want to share psalm 18: 18,19
They confronted me in the day of my calamity, But the Lord was my stay.
He brought me forth also into a broad place;
He rescued me, because He delighted in me.
There is no larger heart that our Lord's. May you find refuge there and joy that overcomes sorrow and can be felt at the same time.