As you can see by the title, I’ve been in the midst of a bit of struggle lately. For the sake of vulnerability, I’m just going to be very real with you all about it so you can continue in this journey with me.
For the first 10 days of Zambia, things were great. I was loving Africa, ministry was fantastic, I was full of joy, and there wasn’t any other place that I wanted to be.
On April 10th, I started getting what I thought was simply the flu. Flash forward three days, and I found myself in the hospital being treated for malaria and septicaemia, two very life threatening diagnoses. Throughout the entirety of my stay in the hospital, though, I was still bursting with joy and gratitude. The circumstance that I was in could have very easily lead to a coma or death, but because of multiple factors that were so evidently due to God, I was on my way to a full recovery after just two days in the hospital. While in the hospital, the staff were all amazing, and although it was tough, I was so grateful for God keeping me safe and continuing to fill me with joy.
Being in the hospital was hard, but the Lord kept a smile on my face!
When I got back to where I am currently living, however, things took a bit of a turn. The doctor said that I needed to be in bed for a week, which meant I couldn’t take part in ministry and hardly ever interacted with anyone, including my team. It was just me laying in bed, with not much else to do other than read, write, and think. I was totally fine with it for the first few days, but after a while, I was hit hard with homesickness.
As most of you probably know, I only have 2 months left of this trip. I know the date of final debrief, I know where I will be for my final day of ministry, and my flight home is booked. For most of this trip, the end has been an abstract concept that may or may not actually happen, but now, it’s real. God is showing me all that He wants me to do when I get back, so I’m extremely excited for that and have begun the preparations that are necessary while I’m still on the Race. Basically, the end feels so near that it’s as though I can reach out and touch it.
Now, here is the issue: that’s not really the case. I still have 2 months left, and considering all that God has done in me on this trip so far, I know that He can move mountains in me in no time at all. These last two months are so valuable and are exactly when I should be most intensely pushing into all that God has for me, but that’s not what my brain wants to do.
Because I have spent the past week in bed, pretty much isolated from the world around me, I feel disconnected from the Race. I forgot why I’m here and why I love it. I have lost sight of my purpose here, and have switched into a mindset of “what’s even the point anymore?”
I’m so excited for what God has planned when I get home, and I have already grown so much on the Race so far, that my brain decided that there’s not much left that matters and I might as well just check out and count the days until I get back.
Let me be the first to say this: that mindset is so, so wrong. We have an incredibly powerful God who sent me on this trip for a reason, and He didn’t just set a purpose for 7 months of it. He has placed me in Lusaka, Zambia for a reason, and now it’s my responsibility to seek that reason out.
Every single time I have struggled on the Race and wanted to go home, it has been just before God did something incredible. I know that Satan attacks us and tries to push us from our path right when God is about to do something great, so I’m not about to let him do that to me right now.
This is the time where I need to lean into God and let Him fill me with His strength, because if I’m being honest, I don’t feel like I have any left. It’s easy to just slide into complacency and ride this trip out until the end, but that’s not what God wants for me.
“But he said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.’ Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.” ~ 2 Corinthians 12: 9-10
My growth and walk with God doesn’t end when I fly back to North America June 30th.
Before coming to Africa, God told me that this is the time when I am going to turn all the things He has taught me and grown me in into permanent parts of who I am. I have been tested in every single thing that has been changed in me, and I’m having to fight hard to keep them as unchanging parts of my character. One of the biggest fears a lot of people – myself included – have on this trip is the fear of slipping back into our old ways once we get home, but I see now that God is preparing me so that doesn’t happen. He has made me new, and no matter what Satan does to try and change that, he can’t. I am deeply rooted in God, and no matter how hard the wind blows or how hard the rain comes down, I can’t be uprooted. He is my strength, my joy, my peace, and my life, and even though things are hard right now, I can’t wait to see the fruit that God will produce from this season of struggle.
“The LORD is my strength and my shield; my heart trusts in him, and he helps me. My heart leaps for joy, and with my song I praise him. The LORD is the strength of his people, a fortress of salvation for his anointed one.” ~ Psalms 28: 7-8
Please keep me in your prayers as I finish out the last two months of this journey, and thank you for all who have supported me so far!
