Lately when I meet people, I've noticed more than usual that they connect me with Africa. This is how they match my name and face with whatever they've heard- "oh! you're the girl who went to South Africa right?" Or something along those lines. It makes me thankful, because Africa is still so close to my heart. It makes me believe that I left not that long ago (even though this week it will have been 14 months). It makes me feel that I've spent a significant amount of time in the third world, even though all totaled it equals almost exactly one year. Right now, God's called me to pursue things that require me to be in America for a bit, and this means entrusting the future to his hands. People always, inevitably, ask me when I'm going back. I give them some lame answer about being in a job contract through the end of July, but the truth is that I'm asking God the same question. When Lord? I'm realizing this week that the calling He's placed on me is growing bigger. Deep in me, is this ache and hunger to live in the dirt. To love children born into physical poverty. To pour myself out for them and to point them to Jesus. Deep in me I ache to go, to be sent. Waiting on the Lord is hard. But a sacrifice is nothing if it doesn't cost us something. I want to embrace contentment and to rejoice where He has me, but I never want to settle into complacency living in comfort for so long.
Tonight when sorting through old notebooks and papers, I came across something that I'd written shortly before I went to South Africa the last time. Thought I would publish a small bit of it here, as it is also some of what I feel tonight.
In a week and a half, I'll be boarding an airplane to go back to the place I love, in South Africa.... Most of all, I am scared of loving too much. It is the kind of love that fills my insides so physically that it hurts. Almost exactly 13 months ago, I met a little boy who God seemed to have brought especially for me to love. There was no use fighting my affections for him, my desperate prayers for him, and my mother instincts. God grew my heart and my capacity to love, and yet He asked me to say goodbye. Soon I will be a part of little one's life again- seeing all the miraculous changes that God has wrought in him. And I am so scared. Scared because he is not my son and I have nothing but a "fool's hope" that he could be someday. Scared because I don't know how to be a caretaker and not a mommy to someone I love so much. And I am terrified of saying goodbye again. It is possible to love too much? Today I'm asking God is maybe He has the wrong person. I don't feel strong enough to keep my heart so split in two.
Somehow, it's a comfort to me that God never changes. He is full of compassion and lovingkindness. He may dash my heart to pieces, but it will be for His glory and His plans. Surely if God could love us to the extreme that He would sacrifice His only Son, then it is impossible to love too much. I want to learn to love through my fears- to love not for my sake, or even for little one's, but for Him who loved me enough to die for me.
Tonight, I pray that God grows my capacity to love. I want to love well, here where I am. And I pray that no matter how it hurts, that God grows the calling and the heart for orphans that He's put inside of me. Let us love, for His sake, so that He may receive all the glory.
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