**continued from My Greatest Love Affair – Part 2**
Few things in my life have ever felt quite as overwhelming… with perhaps the exception of the time I was held up at gunpoint while working at a bank during college winter break. But as we rode in an old, rickety yellow school bus along the marred dirt roads of Port au Prince, my overstimulated brain struggled to process all that I was seeing, smelling, hearing and feeling.
Through one of the many small, rectangular bus windows, I peeked my camera into a foreign world, firing off as many shots as I could. People were everywhere; the streets wore a filthy cloth of chaos. Buildings were in shambles. Clouds of smoke lounged in the air – as if each were taking a Sunday-afternoon nap in a hammock; it burned my eyes and lungs as we drove through it. Never before had I seen (in person) such dire poverty. Such devastation. Such violation of personal space. My heart ached for the people of Haiti. And in those initial, heart-wrenching moments, I would’ve never guessed that I’d leave the place in love with the Haitians… and completely enamored with Jesus. In Haiti, I found unexpected joy; a joy beyond anything I had ever seen before in my entire life. Though it was captivating to witness, it furiously collided with every norm and value I had ever been taught and lived by.
At that time, never would I have guessed that I’d return from a short-term mission trip to Haiti transformed in so many different ways. That witnessing poverty firsthand would radically shift my perspective on money. That people who were poor in material goods and rich in love for Jesus would intensely challenge my Americanized, prettied-up adaptation of "having faith". I came off that trip a changed woman. I stopped going to the hairdresser. I stopped making large purchases from Victoria Secret every 3 months. I stopped wasting money on "stuff", and I began to appreciate everything I already had – like a car, a bed to sleep in, a family who loves me – more than ever before.But amidst all the transformation during the trip… some difficult things were brewing behind the scenes in my life. Not only did I have to pay most of the cost of the trip out of my own pocket, I also had to forgo working my contractor gig in May because of an overlap between my job and the mission trip. Thousands of dollars gone… just like that. And the once-steady, monthly work that I had been hired for seemed to come to a halt as well. For one reason or another, I wasn’t hired to work in April, I had to miss May for the trip to Haiti, I wasn’t hired for June, and there was no training scheduled in July. For 4 months, I had gone without working. The new gig that I so loved now became a great source of instability, and my first instinct (out of fear) was to go back to a traditional M-F 9-5er. Sticking it out meant living in a place of uncertainty, which made me nervous. But despite the instability… something in my soul shouted that I had been called to this new career path. That it was exactly where I was meant to be. Something – perhaps God (wink, wink) – spoke to my heart, "Just trust Me and things will work out — even better than you can imagine". So, I did.
But what made this even more challenging was that I had already committed to going on a mission trip to Nairobi, Kenya for August 2010. After 4 months of going without work and after paying out-of-pocket for most of my trip to Haiti, I could either cancel on Kenya or buck up and trust God to provide. It was a risk, especially given that it was highly possible I’d be forced to forego work in August as well – if the trip to Kenya overlapped with my training gig. But again… deep down I felt the trip to Kenya was something I was called to do. It was right where God wanted me to be. So, I went…. and the most amazing thing happened. God masterfully orchestrated things in such a way (like only He can) so that I could work immediately before and after the mission trip.
When August rolled around, I worked (10 days) from Sunday to the following Tuesday, leaving work just one hour early to catch a flight to Africa. From Tuesday to the following Sunday, I travelled and spent time in Kenya. The Sunday I returned home from Africa, I went straight to a Philadelphia hotel (where I stay at for work) and an hour later, I walked into a team meeting for my job. All this… without a trace of fatigue or jet lag. It was miraculous, especially given the fact that while I was in Africa, I came within $100 of zeroing out both my savings and checking accounts. But that’s when God wooed me into living by faith… showing me that if I trusted in Him and followed Him, amazing things would transpire. It was incredible and wonderful and freeing. Never would I have ever imagined that He'd magnify my affection for Him with honeymoons to third-world nations. But He did.
Much like the trip to Haiti, Kenya was quite transformational. Stepping into the slums of the Mathare Valley was completely overwhelming as I thought, “There’s no way, no way I can help truly help the people here.” But God urged me to just love. To keep it simple. To give my heart to the people I encountered. And so I did.
That season, God romanced me through one of the biggest heart changes of my life. I had learned to stop planning, to stop always looking to the future and to just live in the moment, walking hand-in-hand – in faith – with Him. He completely redefined my views of success, happiness, love and…. life. He rescripted my identity. I was no longer the gal who longed for a great wardrobe, super cute shoes and a book deal. No longer someone who was more task-focused and goal-driven than people focused. Instead of seeking out a husband who is "handsome, witty and successful", I began considering what it would look like if I waited for God to reveal to me a man who is Christ-centered and full of love and grace – someone who can lead spiritually, someone who follows Jesus, someone who has similar desires on their heart as those that God has given me. That season left my heart open for something different than I had ever known before, for something bigger than I could have ever imagined. That season laid the foundation for what was next.
And that’s when the romancing and renovating really began…
