Knelt over desperately trying to scrub the last remints of the African soil that’s wedged itself in the cracks of my feet, a tidal wave of reflection flows over me, engulfing me in a sea of emotions and memories. It’s hard to even fathom that a few short weeks ago, I said adieu to the three beautiful and equally messy months I spent across Kenya, Rwanda, and Uganda only to find myself in the crazy, wonderful land of Thailand. My mind is flooded with thought after endless thought of where I am, and where I have been, and the long and windy road that got me here.
Africa was a beautiful place. It’s beauty not defined by the steering toothless grins of the wrinkled and wise, nor the infinite giggle of a young child in her dirt smeared school uniform, but in the stirrings of my soul. In three short months my heart crashed with the beautiful wreckage that only the dusty roads of Africa could provide.
Everywhere I turned I found story after story of pain, tales of heartache too deep for my superficial understanding. Casual tales of genocide neither overshadowed the story of the orphaned nor the neglect of sick. I discovered almost daily the myriad of emotions that accompanies life as a missionary, and the nomadic wondering of the soul in the middle of nowhere Africa. How was I to understand the deep-rooted hurt of those around me, when I myself sat in a pool of frustrations and hidden heartaches? Restlessness and exhaustion fought ruthlessly for my attention and doubt slowly crept into the inner parts of my mind.
Yet I discovered a treasure chest of coins laden with joy, epic joy, swaddled in grace and forgiveness through my time in Africa. I found as I held that sweet and beautiful child the maternal tugging on my heart so deep, a longing to pour out the Father’s love into the life of the one wrapped in my arms. I felt the satisfaction of knowing the cradling of one so small and so sweet would become my all-consuming future, it would become my life. And a joy spread deep and wide.
I listened to tale after endless tale of the waging war many faced between obedience and sacrifice and I questioned my own good-hearted intentions as well. I noted each moment of victory I experienced as I stood before congregations pouring out my deep rooted truths and heart to the faces sometimes starring blankly before me, as I clinged to a paddle with every bit of strength within me while rafting the Nile, and as I jumped with arms held wide into my deepest fears and greatest moments of joy, relishing in the understanding that my heart is living in the freedom trail of my Father.
Africa was this crazy place of unending lesson upon lesson, a place I felt I entered a girl but left a woman, yet my certainty didn’t completely lay there. With it’s endless horizon of twirling beauty lay a place where my soul found lounging, pain, joy, grace, forgiveness, restlessness, anger, frustration, heartache, and even loneliness. A place where continents away I cannot shake this endless stirring of my soul, where every thought is a reminder of it’s beauty, of it’s sheer unending beauty. I sometimes find myself wrestling at night with the depth to which these thoughts mean, if they hint to a future, of another life to live. For now I sit in the peace of knowing the beauty and pain of those three months will forever follow me in all the days of my life, a sweet reminder of the women I was and the women I am boldly becoming.
“And I give it all it all to you, trusting that you’ll make something beautiful out of me.”
(Photos taken by the wonderful Jessica Gasperin)
