On the first evening of training camp, one of the first things we did was worship. I love worship. To me, it’s one of the most intimate ways I connect with Jesus. During worship as I’m focusing on God and trying to calm myself from the overwhelming fact that there are now 50+ people that I have to meet, I felt a stretching in my spirit. God was asking me if I was willing to allow Him to stretch me. That’s one of the many things I love about God – He asks. He wasn’t just asking to stretch me a little, He was asking to stretch me BEYOND the breaking point. Not just TO the breaking point, BEYOND the breaking point. That can be a dangerous place. Vulnerable, new, scary, confusing, exciting, so many things! But like my response to a lot of things God wants to do in my life, I said yes. It became my prayer, “Please stretch me beyond my breaking point. More of YOU, less of me. I know it’s going to be really tough and hurt but it needs to happen. For me to be used to my fullest potential, I need to be stretched beyond my breaking point.”
After training camp I had 4 weeks left in the States before starting this crazy journey. During those four weeks I spent two of them in Colorado with family and the last two in Texas with church family. The time went by so fast with so much to do that I lost track of spending time with God. I forgot to sit and be His daughter and be filled with His love. Because of that lack of devotion and focus, my first week in East London, South Africa has been a tough one.
We are working at Hope School which is a school for underprivileged children. This first week we have been doing a VBS with a church who comes every year and the kids love it. Seeing and experiencing these children everyday this week has taken a tole on me. All of them are infected or affected by AIDS/HIV. A lot have been abused physically, mentally, and sexually and have been through more than I could ever think to imagine. All of this has brought me to a place that I don’t really understand and leaves me asking God, “How am I supposed to live with a broken heart?”
How the heck am I supposed to go the next 11 months knowing that what I’m seeing in these children and this community is beautiful compared to whatever else is yet to come. I taught the kids about God, heard a few of their stories, saw the way they craved a hug or sitting in someones lap, saw a tiny bit of bad living situations and still I felt nothing. For me to feel nothing in moments like those is unheard of. I had no idea what was going on and we were so busy that there wasn’t really any time to stop and take a moment to be with God. Once I was finally able to have a moment with God, I was able to understand what was going on with my heart.
Because of my lack of devotion between training camp and launch, I didn’t come into this filled up and ready to go. I came into it tired and my heart wasn’t fully prepared to love the way I needed to love. Since being here and seeing the children, I had built up a wall around my heart. I wasn’t fully connected to the Father’s heart and my human heart couldn’t handle all of the brokenness and hurt. Everything I see, every story I hear, every painful tug I feel on my heart must be given to God. My heart is going to break more times this next year than I can possibly imagine and the only way I will ever come out of this alive is by living so closely knit with the Father’s heart that I can feel it beating. That is the only place where I am able to live with a broken heart.
