We just got back from our three days off and our safari! (Pictures to come soon!) It was completely amazing. We stayed at a lodge called Ma Rula’s. We tented the first two nights and then stayed in basically a hotel room the last night with real beds and big fluffy towels. And Jenny (the lady who owns the place) only charged us the 5 USD tenting cost for the room the last night, which was so amazing. Jenny and her husband Mike were just a huge blessing to us. Jenny actually lived in Oklahoma for a year when she was 17 as a foreign exchange student, small world huh!
So the lodge we stayed at is actually what they call a wilderness management area (or something like that) which means that the animals just roam through the lodging area whenever they want. So we had elephants and hippos and monkeys and baboons and giant lizards just walking around our tents the entire time!
We did a day and a night safari and saw a bunch of animals, all of which I’ve seen in zoos before, but it’s just nothing like seeing them in the wild the way God intended. The one animal that eluded us was a lion, and we were all dying to see some. We started the night safari around 3:30, watched the sun go down while drinking pineapple juice, and then started out in the truck with the spotlight. We went into it so hopeful that we would see a lion, and I’m sure I was not the only one asking God if He would let us see one. But we never did.
Now that shouldn’t really have affected me. I’ve seen lions before and I’ll see lions again. But for some reason it brought up all my feelings of not being special. I’ve always felt, and do feel the majority of the time, nothing but average. I don’t say that to like dig for compliments or anything like that, I’ve gotten as many compliments as the next person; this is about the struggle of not feeling special to God.
Maybe this is unreasonable, but I want an extravagant, extraordinary, once in a lifetime experience that is so unbelievable and remarkable that it is clearly a specific gift from the Lord meant only for me. Like I want a lion to come up and lay it’s head in my lap. That might sound stupid, but do you get what I’m saying? I want an experience so outrageous that I can’t help but feel completely cherished to God. I thought when I got accepted to this trip that it would be my “miracle” experience. That this would be the time that God showed me what I mean to Him. The time that He would show up in unexplainable ways. And He hasn’t yet. It’s month 1, I know, and I know that God has much longer than 11 months to show up with an experience like that in my life. I’m just explaining how I’m feeling.
And our God is a God of big things right? He sent down fire for people and moves mountains and calms seas and rains manna down from heaven and resurrects the dead. He wants us to ask for big things, doesn’t He? To reveal His glory to people and to the world? So is it bad to want and hope for something like that from God, to show me that He does think I’m special? He’s done and does so many incredible things, and the fact that I feel I haven’t experienced something like that just makes me feel even more that He simply doesn’t see me as worth it (even though that’s obviously a lie that the devil wants me to believe).
As we panned the African wilderness back and forth with that giant spotlight, searching for even the slightest glimpse of a lion, I couldn’t help but think that that’s how I’ve felt with God lately. I know the lions are real and that they’re out there, I keep quiet and still, and I hope and pray to see them. I’ve been faithful with the little things and I intently search and search through the night with my spotlight looking for God, and I just haven’t seen Him lately. All I can do is try to remain faithful in the small things and keep enough hope in my heart to have the courage to keep praying big prayers, trusting that one day He’ll show up in one of them to express to me that I am His precious, special daughter. My God is a lion, He cannot be tamed.
