Just some heart wanderings

These thoughts are nothing new for me, but I've found the best thing to do is to get them out into some tangible form where they can be sorted through and maybe not be so overwhelming and joyfully painful.

Africa has so infiltrated my person that I feel as though something vital of me is missing. It's not that I feel like I'm supposed to up and move there (though the thought of that doesn't frighten me). It's just the feeling you get when a relationship you invested a lot of your heart into ends, like a piece of you is irrecoverable, and you have something of them always with you, always haunting you.

When I turn on my mac, faces of beautiful Ugandan children greet me. When I sit in church all alone on Sunday mornings I can feel their little bodies pressed up against me as tightly as they could, all around me, two and three deep on my lap. When I close my eyes to sleep at night I hear that stupid South African rooster outside my window, and I think about mosquitoes and the faces of all the precious people I met who were dying of malaria and AIDS play back one by one while I wonder if they are still among the living.

Yesterday I opened a notebook to jot down a thought and found my notes from this past summer. The names of every single person who we spoke to in the villages and IDP camps was listed with notes beside them. Rose, 30s, afraid to believe because of husband...Michael, 30s, seeking answers...Lucky, 18, my new sister in Christ...I remember those moments so clearly, the emotions attached to them. The pain of the rejection of my sweet Jesus, their only hope. The unexplainable joy of leading a sister to His feet.

But Africa is just one example of the ways in which I feel this. A similar experience greets me when I think of how the modern American church is content to pursue so many things but the face of God. How desperately I long for our nation and world to become reconciled to Him, to revel in His glory and simply delight in His presence. In so many ways it feels as though my heart is breaking, and then I spend honest moments with Him and am filled with such peace and joy that I feel as though I'm glowing from the inside out. I wonder if this is what it means to mourn in order to receive comfort.

If only I could find a way to give a voice to the voiceless and help the blind to see.