A year ago today I was very sick.
I lay in a bed on the edge of Lake Malawi in sweltering heat as malaria slowly ravaged my body and a strand of the chicken pox had made itself known through the itchy red bumps that covered me. For days I lay there praying for relief, praying for healing, and desperately desiring to leave that place.
I’ll be honest with you; there came a night where I wasn’t sure if I was going to make it. Doubled over in pain while racers came together around me to pray fervently for healing, all I could do was lay there and try to breathe. I’d never known that feeling of desperation; a feeling where the end sounded more promising then pressing through.
That night God was my healer and gave me relief from my pain.
As the prayers found their way to the ear of my Father, the fever broke. Peace washed over me that night and I grew to know the Lord all the more as comforter. Within the next few days the chicken pox had scabbed over. A short time later I was on a plane to Johannesburg, South Africa, for better medical attention and a place to recover.
I found myself lying in a different part of Africa waiting for my body to heal. Christmas quickly approached and all I could wish for was to be well again. Unfortunately, as Christmas dawned on the south of Africa, a dormant strand of malaria awakened in my liver and forced me from a Christmas morning with orphans to a tiled bathroom floor.
I found myself once again being lifted up by brothers and sisters around me. As I lay in bed that night in a slightly delirious state, my friend Emily read scripture over me into the early hours of the morning; fighting, praying, believing.
That night God was my encourager and spoke love over me through the actions and words of a sister.
I wish I could say that suddenly everything turned around and I was fine the next morning… but I wasn’t. In fact I began to feel like I couldn’t catch a break. First, a doctor prescribed the wrong medicine and, for all intents and purposes, destroyed my immune system. Then I had to be removed from the orphanage I was staying at for fear of the smallest cold being too much for my body to handle.
That day God was my provider and brought a couple who took me into their peaceful home.
Time passed and my body began to heal as I dove back into my World Race duties and traveled around to different teams in South Africa, then on to the Philippines, China, Thailand, and Malaysia. But with each passing day the physical strength that I had known before malaria alluded me. Restoration seemed like an oasis over the next hill only to vanish as a mirage once I drew close.
In those moments God was my strength and propelled me through each day.
I may not have arrived back to the United States in my physical prime, but I arrived back aware of a God who was and is my healer, encourager, provider, strength, and so much more.
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Many could look at my story in Africa and wonder how I could return six months later.
I’ll tell you that it is only because of God.
It often defies my own logic and reason to have returned to the dust of this place so quickly; but logic and reason rarely lead to the miraculous. It is in the faith and hope of the unseen where miracles so often occur. In the quiet whispers and gentle leadings that His spirit often directs us to His will.
I have seen the hand of God move in my life. I have heard his voice speak in my life. And for the past four months his hand and his voice have taken me from America, to Asia, and to Africa.
Although it may not have been the logical choice for a 24 year old man to continue to live out of a bag and travel around the world; faith and hope in the unknown and unseen have given me a life blessed with the miraculous and unexplainable acts of my provider, my strength, my God.
