God's Love

“Our greatest fear as individuals & as a church should not be of failure, but of succeeding at things in life that don't really matter.”

― Francis Chan

It has been another amazing week at Sunrise. I am so in love with this place, and this village, and the kids. We had a staff meeting this week and one of the “hot” topics we discussed was children talking at meals. Here in Tanzania, children are not allowed to talk at meals. It was hard for me to really grasp this because it’s so different in America. Meal times are when you get together as a family and talk about your day. It’s a time for positive interaction, no instructions, just a time to chat and laugh and be happy. It was even harder for me to accept this when I heard their reasons; children might choke, food can go down the “wrong tube” as we say, and meal times are supposed to be quick. I wanted to fight this issue with everything I had, but then I just had to stop and collect my thoughts. Why does this subject bother me so much? Why do I feel the need to fight this with all I have, and not just accept it as part of this life? Am I showing God’s love right now? So we came to a compromise. Corrinne and I feel that we need a “family time” where we all are together talking, playing games, reading books, etc. So we decided that every night before prayers, we all will get together (staff, kids, us) and do those things. It has been a really great time; everyone just hanging out and spending some really good quality time together. 

I have also been struggling with showing love to one of our staff. Her work has declined lately, and for some reason I have just decided that I don’t like her. Which is such a horrible thing to admit, but basically what it comes down to is I haven’t been very nice. So I have been praying for her every day, that I would show love to her, that I would accept and appreciate her for the person she is, and that I would acknowledge that there are some things I can’t do without God’s help. I cannot tell you the difference that it has made in me. Nothing about her has changed, but God has softened my heart towards her in drastic ways. It’s almost like it happened over night and one day I just woke up and loved her in a way that I can’t claim as my own doing. That is how awesome God is; this God that just loves every single person where they are at. It’s like a light bulb turned on and I was suddenly seeing a glimpse of how God sees us. We don’t have to do a single thing for him to love us. Not one single thing. He loves us when we aren’t our best selves, he loves us when other people fail to, he loves us when we love him back and even when we don’t, he loves us all the time without limits and conditions, and His love is so powerful. I am constantly in awe of all that he is doing in me. 

I am still reading Draw the circle, and one topic that seems to be recurring is “bold prayers”; the kind of bold prayers that can only be done by God, the kind of prayers that give him all the glory, the kind of prayers that require us to take a leap of faith.  The prayer for me has been, “God, please use my life to glorify you.” I want the kind of life that is risky and bold, a life that is always giving because I have been given so much, I want a life that can’t be explained except for the works of God, I want a life that forces me to always take leaps of faith. I don’t want to settle in a comfortable life, that never challenges me to be better, that never requires faith to make it through the week, a life that is simply living. My greatest fear is that I will forget about what I am learning here once I’m gone. My fear is that I am going to forget just how much people are hurting, how great their needs are, how little they have and how much I have. My greatest fear is that I am going to return home and just live. It makes me sick to think about how great the need is all over the world, and how little I have done to help. It breaks my heart to realize that I have been living so selfishly for so long while there are people hurting, and children dying,  girls being kidnapped into sex trade, lives being lost just because of ignorance, people all over the world just needing someone to reach out and love them.  Why can’t I be that person? Even if I only reach one person, why can’t I be that person to someone? I’m not on this rant to make people feel guilty, because I think that God chooses people for different types of lives all the time. I just feel like he hasn’t chosen me for the life I have been living. He challenges me all the time, asks of me more and more, sent me to Africa for a reason and I have to hold onto that.  I have to take that leap of faith because there is no going back after this. How can you once you’ve felt so much, had your heart broken time and again, and been filled with more love than you deserve?

Corrinne and I have started a new “languages of love” project; each week we want to give each child all five of the love languages, at least once. They five love languages are: Gifts, acts of service, quality time, physical touch, and words of affirmation.  We have been really challenging each other to make this happen. Corrinne was in town this weekend, so I had the kids to myself. On Saturday we played toilet tag, tunnel tag, blob tag, and red rover. We had such a blast. I think toilet tag was the favorite. I haven’t laughed so hard in a really long time and it felt so good. I also put the acts of service into effect. For dinner on Saturday I washed all of the kids plates. Seems like a normal thing for someone to do for their kids, but the kids had the hardest time accepting it. In their culture kids wash plates for adults, never the other way around. They were practically begging me to let them wash their plates, it was so hard to let me do that for them. It was one of the funniest things I have ever seen in my life. I thought one girl was going to cry, and she kept saying, “You big, me small, I wash plates.” But I held strong and told them that I was doing this for them. 

I have officially paid for my residency permit. Unfortunately it cost me $850, when we only thought it would be $250. A man at the immigration office asked me why the extra $600 fee was such a problem. I am mzungu, we have endless supplies of money, and if I don’t personally have it than my rich parents must. He also suggested paying a bribe instead, it would be less money that way. I would rather pay $600 to the government than $1 to a person’s pocket. Where has this idea about Americans come from? Where has this idea that we have endless supplies of money just laying around started? And then I think about certain things that are portrayed in our movies, and television shows, and this idea that they have about us, doesn’t seem so far off. In our movies we spend billions just making good entertainment, in our tv shows we have people living in a fancy city, spending hundreds on a pair of shoes, we have shows like the Oscars where movie stars spend thousands of dollars on an outfit they are going to wear one time. Of course their idea of Americans is so skewed. Where does it end? At what point to we stop consuming and start looking around at the rest of the world? At what point do we open our eyes and our hearts and put things into perspective? I’m not saying that everyone should sell their homes, and give all their pay checks away, and move to a foreign country, I am just simply saying; When is enough, enough? I am not even claiming that I am not a creature of consumption. What I have done with my money in that past is less than honorable, and it kills me to finally have opened my eyes and see for the first time the hurts of the world. I just hope that now that I have opened my eyes, I don’t close them again. Now that I know the need that is out there, I will fight for those people.That maybe all of us will pray and ask God what we can do for out neighbor? How we can help? 

I realize this blog post is a little preachy, and it's not for all of you as much as it is for me. God is teaching me so much here, and I just want to share it with all the people in my life. I am so floored by all that God has given me in all of you. I am amazed that he has given me so many people to pray for me, to reach out to me, to love me from afar. Family, friends, people I have never met (and will have to). I can never thank everyone enough for everything, but I can make sure that I don't forget it.