Stepping into leadership has been amazing and also incredibly difficult, not necessarily in ways I even expected.
In the last week, a deep passion was uncovered and brought to light in several of my teammates. I shared a lot about this in my last blog – the Lord opened our eyes and broke our hearts for the hundreds (literally) of boys that live on the streets in Nakuru. In my passion, I jumped in with both feet to see if we could incorporate outreach on the streets into our ministry schedule. I was unprepared for what we were about to find ourselves face to face with – a harsh reality way bigger than I had bargained for. Our first day, we found ourselves swarmed by homeless men and boys in the park, giving away three bags full of sandwiches in a matter of minutes. So we began to buy porridge from a woman who approached us. By the end of half an hour, we had probably fed 50 people. I was overwhelmed. Boys swarmed around me with dirt-caked hands to touch my guitar and try to strum on it. Many had bottles of glue in their mouths, inhaling the fumes as I watched. We confiscated multiple bottles, but I found myself face to face with a reality too big for little me to take on.
Playing guitar with Olina, John, and Joel on our first day doing street kid ministry in Nakuru (photo by Naomi)
I wanted to quit. I wanted to run away. I asked a lot of questions, and struggled with still more. I felt a burden of responsibility. Then I found out that we were not going to be able to do ministry on the streets the next day because of a prior commitment with a different ministry that I hadn’t realized.
Even though a part of me was relieved to have a day off the streets (which meant time to process what had happened and pray about ways to make our ministry there more effective), I felt like a failure when I told my teammates the news. I felt like I should have done more to advocate for what seemed, in some of our minds, like a more worthy ministry. I knew that some of them were disappointed, which translated in my mind to disappointment in me.
I found myself face to face with another harsh reality… I could not make everyone happy.
I responded by falling into a place of shame. It came on multiple levels. Shame that my burst of initial passion had so quickly been replaced by discouragement in ministering to the street kids. Shame that I didn’t know my own convictions and was trying to make decisions to please people rather than hearing the voice of God. Shame that I had not communicated better and thought ahead better to avoid the awkwardness of having our ministry contact frustrated and others disappointed.
I woke up yesterday morning feeling heavy. As usual, Missy and I sat at the dining room table with our Bibles and coffee mugs and journals, scribbling away. The morning passed as normal, and then the unexpected happened.
She got up, left the room, and returned with a Cadbury chocolate bar that she placed on my open journal.
I was completely caught off guard. I had been questioning her confidence and love for me without even knowing it, and the last thing I expected in that moment was to be lavished with love in what I perceived as my failure – me letting her down because my passion and commitment to the new ministry did not match hers.
Before I knew it, my head was buried in my arm and I was crying. Minutes passed, people were waking up, sitting at the table around me, and I couldn’t look up because my eyes kept flooding more and more with tears. God was speaking to my heart.
This is My love for you! It doesn’t matter whether you pleased Me or disappointed Me today, I love you the same. You don’t understand this, do you? You don’t understand love that comes in response to failure, bad behavior, letdown. You think that You have to earn My love! But you don’t. This is what My love looks like.
I finally retreated to the bedroom to try to recover myself. Instead I lay on the bed and sobbed. The Lord’s voice came more and more, and waves of overwhelming pain and amazement flooded me. What is this love??? Missy and Kate ended up next to me, holding me, talking to me, listening as I tried to understand a concept that makes no sense to the human brain.
All my life I’ve been a “good girl”. I’ve never found out if I could still be loved in the midst of rebellion and outright, blatant sin because I never went there. Not to say that I’ve been perfect by any means, but I have tried so hard to please everyone around me. So I never knew if they would love me when I didn’t please them. I don’t understand love at all. I’ve believed that love is giving people what they want. I’ve believed (or at least, so say my actions) that love is being nice to people.
Loving the boys on the street doesn’t mean letting them have their glue and buying them anything they ask for. Loving my teammates doesn’t mean saying nice things to them and withholding hard words if they are words that will bring growth and life.
And I now know that I can say hard words and they will still love me. I can mess up and fall flat on my face and they will still love me. I can let them down, disappoint them, say “no” when they want me to say yes, and they will still love me. I can have passions that are different from their passions, and they will still love me.
Not because that is human love. But that is God’s love. His love is crazy and bizarre. I don’t understand it – I don’t! But that is the kind of love that I want to overflow my life. Not the shallow, nice, easy kind of love. The hard, real, deep love that gives chocolate to the person who lets you down, that takes away glue because it wants that boy’s best, that doesn’t act out of guilt but out of conviction.
If I go back to those street kids because I feel guilty if I don’t, then I am not loving them. I am loving myself. If I am sweet and gentle with them but have no backbone, then I am not loving them. If I let them walk all over me, I am not loving them! Love is more than that. Love is not weak. Love is strong. Love transforms. Love speaks truth. Love brings life.
Two of the boys we met on the streets, Moses and Job, with Jo Linda and Naomi at church today!
I want to love the way I have been loved, by the Author of love. And He says to me, and to many of us:
All these years you have striven to please the people around you. You know that that cycle in your life must be broken. You know that is one of the reasons I’ve called you into leadership. But what I want to show you is that it won’t be broken by you trying harder to fix it. No, it will be broken when you finally realize the way that I love you. When you realize that My love for you is not based on whether or not you perform well. That you are free. When you succeed, I love you! When you fail, I love you. I will pour out blessing on you when you least deserve it in your own estimation. And as you realize how My love functions, and how different it is from what you have known and lived believing, it will transform the way that you see the people around you. You don’t need to make them happy to feel loved. You are loved. No matter what.
You are loved.
Me n Missy standing in the back of a tuk-tuk on the drive to town
