A New Normal (The Best Birthday Ever)

Something we talk about a lot on the Race is the idea of a "new normal". For instance, I just spent the afternoon at a wonderful little coffee shop, talking with Lauren Weidley and KJ Blair (my squad's incredible logistic leaders) about our life dreams and aspirations. Normal, right? Nope. Union Coffee is in Tanzania, at the base of Mt. Kilimanjaro; definitely a new normal.

As we talked, we discussed how bizarre it is that we are able to adapt and find normalcy in the heart of Africa, completely removed from American culture and language. Another example: we were preaching at a secondary school at 7 am Tuesday morning and the principal asked the students to pray for the elections in America that would be happening later in the day. Elections? Oh yeah! I had totally forgotten about them until she asked God to give peace to Americans' hearts and to remind them to pray for and bless the leader that He ordained to be in authority. An event that has filled the headlines worldwide for the past several years had completely slipped our minds as thoughts of a different Kingdom took precedence: a new normal.

So I'm writing this from Tanzania. I got here six days ago, after my first debrief as squad leader (which was filled with meetings, team debriefs, teaching, worship, and hard goodbyes). Prior to debrief though, I visited teams in Nakuru and Kitale, during the month of Kenya (writing it that way seemed more natural than writing "during our month in Kenya" because American months and seasons have become basically irrelevant; a weird new normal).

Anyway, I celebrated my 23rd birthday during the month of Kenya, and I got to spend it with Ali and Sarah's teams (including Susan, Tom, and Christina from my original team)! I felt so blessed. I love both those teams so much, and sharing my birthday with them would have been blessing enough, but God (who is infamous for heaping blessing upon blessing) gave me one more.

His name is Kalebu Baraka, which translates to Caleb Blessing. If you didn't read about my time in Ukraine, you should, because God seems to have a theme going. While there, I lived with the Blessing family, and I was Blessed to be an adopted Blessing. Then, when I got to Great Mercy orphanage, I met a boy with the same name.

I asked Judith (who founded the school, and is a woman of incredible faith) if I could hear his story. She explained that after being abandoned as a baby, he got very sick. The officials asked a lot of orphanages if they would take him in to try to nurse him back to health, but time after time he was turned away. He was so sick, and everyone thought he was too far gone. When they got to Mama Judith, though, her answer was different. Jesus didn't turn away children, and neither would she. She invited him into her family of about 85 children. The school had no electricity, was understaffed, and didn't know from where its next day's food would come. But at Great Mercy, the children are taught to depend on their heavenly Daddy from a very young age, and this impossible situation was no longer deemed an impossibility. Soon after being brought into the family, Kalebu, whose health had been restored very quickly, was in town with his Mama Judith. An American missionary saw him and gasped. She asked Judith who that boy was, and Judith told his story. The woman ran a children's home, and had turned Kalebu away, thinking he was too sick to recover. She felt so convicted and she knew she needed to help; God laid it on her heart to install electricity at Great Mercy, and within a few days she had raised the money to bring light to the school. Kalebu was already fulfilling his destiny of being a blessing, without doing anything but living.

God began to teach me so much about sonship and identity through this child. Back in month two in Ukraine, I had a really significant time where Papa was telling me that my identity is as a blessing; that without even trying, without ever striving, that I bless and bring blessing, and when I live as His son, it just flows. Then, right after that, at our month two debrief, during a teaching on identity, God told me that I am an "image-bearer and light-bringer." In the Bible, Caleb was a man with a different spirit, who saw things from a different perspective. I know that I carry that anointing; I have known it for a long time. But this anointing of being a light-bringer and a blessing was new and kind of strange. So when I met another Caleb Blessing, who literally brought light into the darkness in his orphanage, I realized that God was trying to really bring it home for me.

We spent about a week and a half living at Great Mercy and over the course of my time there, I came to love Kalebu, Felix, Martin, Henry, Dominick, and many of the other boys. A few days into our time there, I realized that our last day visiting there would be my birthday and I felt The Lord giving me an idea. In Luke's account of the Gospel, he writes about a time when Jesus was invited to an important religious leader's home for dinner. Jesus said (in Luke 14:13-14) that "When you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind, and you will be blessed. Although they cannot repay you, you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous." He then shares a parable about the Kingdom, and challenges them out of their comfort zones and self-gratifying mind sets.

While in Moldova, I read Heidi and Rolland Baker's Always Enough. In it, they talk about their experience inviting people to Bridegroom's feast. Heidi has realized that

"The Lord is looking for servant-lovers who are passionate for Him, who are filled with love for Him, who are longing for the Bridegroom's return, who can taste the feast and know it's about to begin. They can't stand anymore to stay in their comfort, to wait around for someone to be saved. They will literally run out and call in the poor, the crippled, the blind and the lame. If we will go, they will come."

I really love birthdays. I love to celebrate people and their lives and who they are. I also like to celebrate myself, and if I'm being honest, I've always had a hard time sharing the spotlight with other people. But this time it was different. God has been giving me a heart to see Kingdom come, to see His will being done on Earth just like in Heaven. So when Holy Spirit asked me to give my birthday to Kalebu, I knew that Papa had something special planned.

Because no one knows his story, Kalebu never had a birthday to celebrate. But God brought me there to give him the gift of a birthday. We bought ice cream for all the kids; Rachel bought a drum for the orphanage to have during worship; I bought a party hat for Kalebu. It was a celebration!

We went to bless them, but school blessed us even more. They gave us gifts: handmade shirts and aprons to remember our time there. Many of the children also made speeches thanking us for what we had meant to them. One girl told me that my sermon the previous Sunday had impacted her; another girl told us that she and many of the others had always wanted to try ice cream, but had never been afforded the opportunity. The impact of what we were doing began to sink in. How many times had I had ice cream that month? It was always nice, but never that special. What else have I taken for granted? How often do I miss the chance to bring Kingdom into someone's life? We hadn't done anything huge or important, but The Lord whispered to my heart that this sort of thing is His favorite. He loves the least. He invites the people who don't get parties – the widows, the orphans. He spoke to my heart and told me that He really cares more about the little things that are real than the big flashy things that don't matter that much.

Beautiful right? Well, that wasn't all. The presence of God was there in a powerful, tangible way. I'm realizing that He loves to pour Himself out like that when we choose to live from a Kingdom perspective. As I was playing with the kids there, I felt God leading me to pray for one of the boys. He had been in a bad accident that left his hip broken and painful. It healed wrong, and his left leg was six or seven inches shorter than his right leg. I prayed for him, asking God to restore His body to the way it was supposed to be and commanded all the pain to leave his back, hip and leg. There didn't seem to be any difference, but he said that he felt heat around his hip, and the pain seemed to be gone. He stood up and both feet touched the ground! The left leg was still about two inches shorter, but he said that all the pain was gone, for the first time since the accident. (I have been following up with him through another boy there, Felix. I'm not sure if the leg is 100% restored, because communication is limited – and so is our understanding between languages – but he is still free from all the pain and is walking much better!)

After that, I was talking with one of the other boys, Dominick. He told me how he had gotten a really bad ear infection and almost lost his right ear in the operation intended to save him. He said that he had a perforation in his ear drum and asked if I could give him the money to get a new one (and to send him to an American university). I told him that I didn't have the money, but that we could pray. He had no hearing in his right ear. After we prayed, though, he began to hear! He said that it was about 40-50% of the volume of his left. We prayed again, and he said it was at 80% percent. A third time of prayer, and it was almost completely better, and after a fourth time of prayer, thanking God and sealing what He had done, Dominick couldn't tell a difference between his two ears. He was speechless and seemed kind of dazed for the rest of the day. Felix says that he has not experienced any loss of hearing. His healing has become his new normal.

So this is my new normal: a normal where I share my birthday with a Kenyan orphan, get gifts of Oreos (a precious commodity), and see the deaf hear and the lame walk. Normal.