Recently, I’ve had a lot of thoughts of home. Not like homesickness, but just a feeling like while I’m here I’m missing lots of milestones. My best friend just had her second baby this week. It’s weird not to be able to hop in a car and drive the hour to the hospital and see her new baby. Not to mention that two more of my close friends are pregnant, as well as my sister-in-law. All deliveries and first months of life I will miss. Also, my mom’s 60th birthday was on Friday, her party was a great suprise, I heard, as my brother and sister had worked out all the plans. I wish I were there to see the suprise on her face.
Even more than that, I’ve recently been missing my 9 year old niece. God has really been placing her on my heart. God uses the mundane things of life to bring you to a place of brokenness. When we go into Tumpa, it seems lately that God has put some quiet, soft-spoken little nine year old girls in my path. Now when I go into town, they search for me, ask where I am, and when they find me, they are attached to me. Miriam (a girl I prayed over for healing of her legs, and the prayer was answered… no more pain), Daviani (the mayor’s granddaughter), and Sulime (Heidi’s daughter) have all attached themselves to me. And when we hiked up to the gold mine last Thursday night, we sat in a small living room for service, and I had one 9 year old fall asleep sitting on my lap, and another leaned against my shoulder.
At the beginning of this trip I didn’t really notice how this demographic has come to seek me out, but as I look back in Mexico and Nicaragua, I see how much truth there is to that statement. And so I’ve seen how God has burdened my heart through all of these little girls, for my own niece.
When I was living in the States, I worked 12 hour days, barely made it to family events, nevermind trying to do things with individual family members, and rationalized that it’s just how families work as you get older. But God is changing me. He’s showing me how much I’ve already missed. How really, what we all want, is just to be loved. And my niece needs my love, the love that Jesus has given me, I need to pour out on her more and more.
God has shown me through all of the 9 year old girls I’ve come in contact with, all of the girls who have attached themselves to me, that all we really want is to be loved. To be noticed, as Steph has said in one of her blogs. To see that people care about us, to see that people want to spend time with us, to hear encouraging words. The same rings true with my own niece… at least that what God has revealed to me.
As I shared with Scott how I’ve been feeling, tears filled my eyes, and I realized just how much my heart breaks for my family, for my own 9 year old niece. Historically, I’ve given gifts, thinking I’m a good aunt, but I know God wants more for that relationship. How does that look? I don’t know, but I do know that love looks different every time you do it.
