I am in Africa! Chilling at the Pacify Motel in Kampala, Uganda, waiting for tomorrow to roll around so that we can get on a 9 hour bus ride to Kigali, Rwanda.
I feel…apprehensive. This is the start of something new, something completely different. Like when you go on a first date. You’re excited, the thrill of this new thing tingles in your bones, but you’re nervous. It’s new territory, something completely unknown, and you wonder if what is inside of you is suitable, if what you have to offer is more than satisfactory. You’re words seem to tumble out of your mouth in an awkward jumble, your nervousness translates into disjointed movements, and you feel, more than anything, the newness of everything around you.
It’s like culture shock on crack.
It’s like waking up from a five year coma and realizing that everything around you has changed.
It’s like you’ve been deaf and blind since birth, and you’re miraculously healed, but the sounds and sights that assault your senses and are too much for you too handle.
It’s like an having an identity crisis at a family reunion.
“And now my heart stumbles on things I don’t know,
my weakness I feel I must finally show.”
________________
It’s the beginning of our fifth month on the field. We’ve been serving others and giving of ourselves for the past four months, searching out God, yearning after His heart. And now He asks us for more, now He asks us for something different, now He ups the anti. Like we’re serious poker players, sitting around the table, and He looks up from His hand, looks us right in the eyes, and calculatingly says, “All in.” We have two choices: to fold, or to push our handfuls of chips forward and go all in, no matter what the cost.
________________
They told us at the beginning of training camp that we had to lay down our expectations. We have to give up our preconceived ideas of what our living conditions would be, of what ministry would look like, of what we would eat, and of who we live with. They told us our expectations would, at some point, get in the way of life on the Race. That if we had expectations we would feel like we had so much to lose by not living, ministering, eating, or fellowshipping with what and who we expect. They asked us to lay it all down. Here’s why they do that: Because when you realize you have nothing to lose, you have everything to gain. And when you see everything around you as a gain and not as a loss, you see it for what it really is – a blessing.
My squad and my team have changed since we left North America. And I don’t just mean we’ve grown.
After our second month of ministry in Cambodia my teammate and dear friend Tamara Powers followed God’s call back home. After our third month of ministry in Malaysia another of my squad mates followed God’s call home. In Thailand two more of our squad left to go home, and days later my team leader was put on another team and my team was given a new leader. I have been struggling to see these things as full blessings, I have been counting them, at times, as losses because I have been trying to make sense of it all.
Big mistake.
I can’t make sense of any of this. But God has a perfect understanding of what is happening right now. Somewhere in the storm of brokenness that I seem to be in, I hear Him say, “I am here. I will never leave or forsake you. I make all things new.” Just when I thought I was starting to understand things, to get a grip on things, I realize that in actuality I am completely and utterly inept without God.
_______________
I sit with my meager pile of chips in front of me, conscious that the eyes watching me can read all my tells. I stare at those chips, they are valuable to me, not because they represent money but because they represent my present and future. Those chips represent my desires, my expectations, my strengths and my faults; they are all I have of myself to offer. The cards I hold in my hand are not enough to win with, but I shove my chips forward anyways because I know that everything I have to offer is best kept in His hands, that He will take those chips and multiply them in ways I never could on my own, and I reply, “All in.”
