I was perfectly content the way my life had been. My family lived in a small, but nice, house in the suburbs. We had a huge yard, all my clothes were from department stores, and my best friend lived two houses away from me. As a six year old, I thought I had it made! Then my parents told me that we were moving to Africa. Now, at the time, my idea of Africa was running through the jungle with my pet tiger and no clothes on. I thought I would be eating bugs and living in a cave for the rest of my days. Did I mention that my biggest fear when I was six was spiders? I couldn’t do African bugs. No way. I told my parents I was going to run away if they tried to make me move to Africa.
Now, twelve years later, I am living in America, but my heart is still in Kenya. I miss running through the grass barefoot and climbing trees and eating loquats and passion fruit. You could say that our move to Kenya really ended up being the best thing possible for me in the long run.
It’s so funny when I think about it. All those years ago, the very idea of living in Africa terrified me. It was unknown. There was an element of danger for our family to leave everything we knew and everything we had to go live in the middle of Africa. We didn’t have a lot of money, we didn’t know anyone, and my parents had no guarantee that it would turn out for the best. But God knew what he was doing, and it did turn out for the best. I still miss my home in Africa every day.
I see now that scary, uncomfortable leaps of faith is how God grows us. It is how he works in our lives to make us more like Jesus. If we never take a chance, he can never move us forward. For me, this race is a little bit scary. But I know the nature of my God. I trust that this season of my life is going to be used by God in a powerful way. And I couldn’t be more excited!
