bet you forgot I had a blog

So remember when I said I was awful at pretty much every type of non-face to face communication?  The blog idea was my best attempt to remedy this issue, but as I now submit my 5^th entry roughly 12 months after its predecessor, I think I’ve proved my point.  Regardless, they say you’ve got to get back on the horse at some point right? 

So here’s me, getting back on my blogging horse, hoping I don’t fall off again.

I think one of the culprits for my such expansive gap in posts is that situation that happens with any prolonged communication - “gosh, it’s been so long, where do I even start?’  Followed by another month of silence, further exacerbating the issue, “now really, where do I start?”  And so it goes.

So I’m going to start with right now.  That seems less overwhelming than trying to recount all the major events and associated thoughts and feelings since last March.

Today marks a month since I boarded a plane back to Zambia after a month home in the States.  5 weeks actually that seemed like whirlwind tours of DFW and Chicagoland.  The time felt packed with friends and family, old people, new people, favorite places, different places, familiar and unexpected, and a few weeks out now, I can definitively say – it was wonderful.  Amazing.  It was restorative and restful and rejuvenating, and all of the other positive “r” words.  It wasn’t just a fun time, it was reviving of the heart-style good.  Because one thing I can tell you about the last year – it was hard.  It was great, but it was hard. 

Lusaka isn’t exactly the Paris of the sub-Saharan like you may have heard.  I sit here now looking at the faint circular scar on the sole of my foot, the reminder of the day in September I stepped on a rusty nail- through my sneaker, right up in there.  That same week I realized my jeans had been getting super baggy; turned out it wasn’t stress, but a parasite.  *In other news, anti-biotics are the bomb (for all of the above).

But come to think of it, those weren’t really even the hard parts.  To be honest, all the 3^rd-worldy stuff you kind of get used to.  You forget what it’s like to have super consistent electricity and water.  That devastation that you missed last week’s episode of Scandal begins to fade as you miss like 23 episodes in a row.  You forget what Starbucks and Chick-fila actually taste like and your taste buds grow accustomed to their African substitutes.  You step on a nail, you take it out – c’est la vie.

No, the hard part I think isn’t all this stuff around, all the things on the outside, it’s that on the inside.  I’m going to real talk here for a second.  I’ve found that moving to Africa as a single person, a single female is…what’s the word…hard.  I know, moving to Africa as a married person with a family is hard too, obviously.  But the single missionaries plight is just a bit different.   I think there is a specific loneliness factor that is a little bit of a game changer; a weapon in Satan’s arsenal almost specially crafted just for us.   At the end of a long day, good or bad, an undercurrent thought line is kind of always present, probably more of a slight whisper from the enemy come to think of it, “I’m here alone.” 

And of course we are not.  God is always with us and all of that legitimate and lifesaving truth, but those times when you think “man this sucks,” it’s not because the internet is too slow in this country to stream Netflix, it’s that. 

I think a lot about my people.  My home team, if you will.  I know I’ve been richly blessed to have a home team comprised of family who have become my dearest friends and some of the dearest friends who have become family.   And on the days when weights of my heart are heavy, from loneliness to frustration, I become even more acutely aware that they are all 10,000 miles away.  And the hard seems harder.  Don’t get me wrong, I’m surrounded by amazing Americans and Zambians alike that serve as constant reminders that..well God is real.  That He will always be present in and through His people; He will reveal His love through them no matter where you are in the world.  I know I am not the easiest person to work with and live with, much less both, and they love me anyway.  But as I examine the last year and a half here through the post home/home team time-lens, I realize how much of my periods of weariness are rooted in the ache of those separations.

Maybe it being Easter time and all, I’ve been thinking about Christ and his time here on Earth, His tenure in a place that wasn’t Home, not by a long shot.  How many times must He looked up and been like, “really Father?  I mean I’m God too, so I get it, but yikes.”  Like times like the Garden of Gethsemane we know, probably/arguably the epitome of such queries, but how many other countless times did his inner thought narrative echo the same sentiment in less dire situations, asking God for there to be another way.  How often do I lift up similar requests.

Single. In His thirties.  Separated from His Father in a very foreign place. 

Jesus is our great sympathizer – um yeah, no joke.  I imagine He had trains of thought just like we do, reflecting on and analyzing situations, deciphering His feelings and opinions on them. And because He was human, I suspect must have internally articulated often how hard things were.  Because His life was really hard; much harder than mine.   But I think He, being God as well, understood far better, more pervasively than I do, that hard doesn’t equate bad.  Quite the opposite actually.  How synonymous does my heart and mind seem to view the two.  But not Him.  He knew the hardest things He was to endure, would yield the greatest reward. 

Hard caused Him to cry out to the Father, every time.  Hard needs to stir me to the same response. His hard times brought about such good things; shoot – they brought about miracles.  Hanging on the cross, bearing the weight of your sins and mine, nothing I will experience will ever be as hard as that.   He didn’t run from it though, but with arms outstretched, embraced the hard – and look what happened.  

The gospel happened.  

My salvation happened.  

My identity and my source of hope happened.    

Good gracious, I’m so thankful He knew the hard would bring about such good.  He walked through His life here with joy because His love for us, His love for His children far outweighed the hard.

And so as I enter into this next season in Zambia, a place of which there is so much, and so many whom I love, I choose faith in that truth.  Hard doesn’t mean bad.  And some other ones too.  Like I’m not alone, not even a little bit.  And that love truly does conquer all – it did at Calvary and it does now.