So I stumbled out of bed to realize I had slept a little too late for church that morning. I sat on my living room couch, unsure of what to do next.
I turned on my worship music and I prayed.
I wasn’t thinking about where I should or shouldn’t be. I wasn’t thinking about what I was going to do with my life or what my Kingdom Dream would be and when I would find out what that was.
I immediately began researching Inner Healing ministries in Northern Uganda, and as I found them, I felt like my insides were screaming. It was in that moment that all of these words given to me, all these desires, all these uninterpreted dreams met in a messy collision of Uganda.
The one place on my World Race that I never wanted to go back to ever again. The one country that, up until that moment, I couldn’t admit was the one country I couldn’t stop thinking about and that there might be a reason for that.
I remember my month in Gulu as one of the hardest times of my life. I had made some big commitments to God, to see through some healing that I couldn’t neglect any longer. I didn’t understand the war and what had happened to the people around me. I knew that, according to what I had heard, the war was over, and had been for about five years.
I figured it was a cultural difference.
As our month wore on, I began to see new sides to the puzzle. I began to notice how people here were not unfriendly, but emotionally vacant. I noticed that the unprecedented spiritual darkness in this town was not something that I alone was feeling. I began to hear the stories of friends we had made, people I had ignorantly seen as just oppressed by poverty or maybe fear from a little gunfire in the distance five years ago.
I discovered their stories, and my heart could not handle it.
These girls that were leading worship, teaching Sunday School to the children at our church underneath the raggedy tarp….
They had been ripped from their families.
Thrown into sexual slavery.
Forced to mother children by the very men who killed their family.
Had HIV and AIDS forced into their bodies.
Killed their own friends and families in ways too primitive and gruesome for our privileged minds to conceive.
Stole babies from mother’s arms and smashed them to death against trees.
Been forced to drink the blood of children for occultic worship and empowerment practices.
As this became more real to me, it was more personal to me than I could take in at the time. Instead of processing this, I just pushed it back, telling myself I would come to terms with these atrocities in a time when I wouldn’t be in danger of a meltdown.
As I returned to America, I couldn’t stop thinking. Thinking about Uganda. Thinking about the horror of what it means to be a child soldier. Thinking about the beautiful people I met and how open they became as they encountered love.
Two months ago, I didn’t know what my heart beat for besides Jesus.
Two months later, I do.
I want to see inner healing come to generations of the Acholi people in Northern Uganda. I want to see them emotionally restored and empowered to live life again. I want to see dead fields come alive with the fruit of harvest. I want to see homes rebuilt, I want to see jobs flourish, I want to see a tribe of people encounter a love so ferociously resilient that they are healed from every single scar and remembrance of war. I want to see the Holy Spirit’s restorative power, I want to see a nation reconciled to justice, and I won’t set my sights on anything less.
I remember what it was once like to live in darkness, to see no hope.
