There are so many things I’ve neglected to write about throughout my three months in Malawi, Africa. I’m still not entirely sure why I couldn’t bring myself to write through countless experiences, hardships, and mindsets. Maybe I couldn’t find the words or maybe I just didn’t want to. Maybe I didn’t want to casually throw memories that changed me deeply onto paper and plaster them onto my many walls of the internet. So I won’t. What I will do, however, is simply explain that Africa was hard and heartbreaking and utterly unexplainable. But it changed me, and unlike the experience itself, I can explain the impact it had on me.
Africa brought out parts of myself I didn’t know were there, parts that put on a smile as a false sense of security in the face of suffering. Positivity is not a bad thing, but when you use “choosing positivity” as a way to escape raw emotion it becomes unhealthy. So I chose not to escape anymore, I chose to let myself feel the fullness of my feelings.
I used to hurl myself over waves of emotion, but this time I allowed them to wash over me and pull me under. Fully expecting to confront and understand what I was feeling I broke through the surface with something different, acknowledgment. The act of simply acknowledging my feelings without labeling them good or bad or true or false brought on a new sense of freedom. It released me from the exhaustion that comes with ripping apart the bad things and stitching together the universally good things everyone wants to see. Rather than feeling depleted I felt whole. I was made perfect in weakness. And I learned that the universally good things are not truthfully what everyone wants to see.
Because when it comes down to it, it’s not the seemingly flawless always-have-the- right-answer type of person I go to in times of need. It’s the souls like mine; broken, mending, still learning to love themselves who see right past my artificial togetherness, straight into my chaotic world and set a place at the table for me anyways. We are united by our humanity, our messy fragmented imperfections, and the sooner we stop ignoring that, the deeper we can connect. The world needs people who create space, I want to be someone who does just that rather than frantically trying to bandage the wounds of people who Jesus already healed.
This isn’t about using self acceptance as a justification for unwillingness to change, but as a tool for vulnerability. A tool that nudges you toward a path of being honest with where you’re at in order to see clearly how far you have to go. It’s a path that has no final destination, but rather leads you to become more like Jesus as you trudge through despair with strength and dignity. The farther you go the less critical you become when you fall, and you’re more willing to embrace the fullness of your messy broken life without shame or projected perfection, but with humility and grace and openness.
The word fullness has been my word this year. It’s a word God gave to me in Cambodia and I’ve carried it with me ever since. In order to achieve fullness, the kind of fullness God offers, you have to empty yourself first. And I can assure you, this process is not fun, I went through it in Cambodia and now in Africa. But it’s when the cleaning out of all the junk and things we cling to so tightly is over that we reap rewards simply because we created space for them. I threw out hypocrisy and perfection in exchange for acknowledgment, peace, acceptance; the things that make me feel the fullness of my life with clarity and joy. Refinement doesn’t take and leave you empty. It cleanses and rejuvenates so God can restore and redeem.
Africa struck me down but it did not destroy me, in fact it built me up stronger than I was before. It showed me that when I am weak then I am myself. A strong woman of God who doesn’t run from hardship but leans into it, takes her rightful place at the table, and is fully known and fully loved the way she is.
P.S. I got baptized in Lake Malawi!
“But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong.”
-2 Corinthians 12:9-10
