see but don't understand

My heart whispers write.  My mind yells back no! 

I am a talker, I always have been.  I am my father's daughter.  Coming to Mali has silenced me in a lot of ways.  Normal conversations are not doable at this time because I do not speak either language well enough.

For someone who likes to talk, to share, to listen, this time is difficult.

Spending 10 months in France last year was a trying time for me.  Not only because learning French proved very difficult for my brain, I also struggled deeply with being homesick, anger, loneliness, and at times feelings of great worthlessness and failure.  In my life, if I have not been able to accomplish something right away, I have normally given up on it.  Piano, quit.  Guitar, quit.  Basketball, quit.  School, quit.  I learned very quickly that if I can not be good at something then there is no point in continuing on in it.  My walls grew closer and closer as I learned all the many things I am not good at. Venturing out of my comfort zone became nearly non-existent.

Enter facades, masks, and fake smiles.  I learned to pretend in order to survive.  I became so good at pretending that even some of my closest friends didn't know the true me.

Like the hymnist writes, Prone to wander, Lord I feel it, prone to leave the God I love... I am a wanderer.  I am prone to isolate myself from God and the world.  I am prone to leave the love of the God that I love because I just can't believe I deserve it.

It was a mere six months after God rescued me from the dark pit of hopelessness and despair that I found myself in Mexico with my church youth group.  It was there in Mexico that God began to grow the plant of calling in my heart.  Ever since I could remember my heart burned with fierce passion and desire for the poor and injustice.  I would cry when commercials would come on asking for money to help starving children around the world.  As I began learning history in school I remember being enraged as I learned about slavery.  I remember a feeling of excitement rise up within me as I learned about the Civil Rights Movement and I remember the feelings of disappointment in my heart that I wasn't able to be a part of it.  The more I learned the more I swore within myself that when the time came I would be one who stood up again injustice and never one who kept my mouth shut.  Yes, even if it cost me everything.

When God brought me to the city garbage dump in Mazatlan, Mexico I can remember feeling giddy.  I also remember feelings of guilt and sadness within my heart - I had so much and yet I was never satisfied.  As the little kids came running to us with tattered clothes and huge smiles I was undone.  I was home.  I felt comfortable.  I colored pictures with the little girls and listened to their giggles.  I had no idea what they were saying but I just wanted to stay near to them.  That day wrecked my life.  A few hours and a fishing line necklace with a butterfly pendant later, my life would never be the same.  I knew where I belonged but I had no idea how to get there.

I spent much of the next 14 years desperately trying to rummage through the wreckage my life had become, trying to find my way to where I belong.  As my heart burned with desire to help, to alleviate hurt, to love people I was constantly meant with opposition.  I was seen as a dreamer, a naive young girl, a thorn in many sides.  My heart grew dim with time.  The burning had been smothered and was dwindling to barely a flicker.  A heart that once knew great passion was now lukewarm.

In so many ways I am still sifting through the wreckage of my life.  The landscape in which I do it now just looks different.  Although I do find it somewhat funny and a bit melodramatic that God would literally take me to the desert in order to continue walking through this spiritual desert season He has me in.  Although the passion has returned to my heart and I am once again a bonfire burning, I am no closer to understanding my call.

Every day here is a challenge.  A war [a spiritual war] is raging and I feel very unequipped and under dressed for the battle.  Satan hates children.  He has made that so very clear.  But in this war, at this time I have been rendered speechless.  This girl who declared in her heart that I would NEVER be silent against injustice.  Some nights I go to sleep so burdened that I can feel my heart growing dim.

I don't know their culture.  I don't know their beliefs.  I don't know their language.  I don't know their systems.  There are so many things that I don't know and so I have no way of processing all the things I see.

All I see is corruption and a system of accepted injustice.  But how do they see it?  Every time I get in a car I am guaranteed to be asked for money each time the car stops at a light.  Begging is a way of life here.  My mind can bear the fact of adults choosing [I use that word loosely] this way of life.  It's hard though because I do know that not every woman on the street begging is there by choice.  She may just happen to be wife number 3 and has been sent out by her husband to make him money.  Or she may have been blessed with twins and culturally that leads her to beg.  I can barely bear this reality.  But what I cannot bear is every time a little boy approaches the car window.  Signaling with his small, dirty hand that he wants food.  My heart is ripped in two but my mind immediately picks up on the system of manipulation.  It is in these moments that I want to rage.  I want to scream and shout and make a scene.  I want to yell at the top of my lungs, THIS IS WRONG!!!!!!!!!!!!!  I want to scoop them up and take them home.  I want to feed them, bathe them, hug them, read them stories, play with them and tell them over and over again - You are loved. You are precious. You are wonderfully made. You are smart. You are amazing!                

All these thoughts fly through my mind in the short 45 seconds I sit at the light and before my mind can process through it all we are speeding off to my destination and that little hand and little face that made my heart and mind swirl is on to the next car window.

The thorn in my flesh is my lack of immediate understanding of why God brought me here.  God has whispered things to me in secret and made me promises.  Secrets and promises that have yet to be fulfilled.  The thorn for me is my impatience.  I want to know and I want to know now!  But God has brought me to the desert.  In the desert the wind may blow but it blows hot air mixed with sand and dust.  As the Israelites found out, patience runs out quick in the desert.

And in all of this; all the tears, all the frustration, all the attempting to learn... I hear His still small voice through the rustle of the leaves and the car horn honks.  He tells me to, wait.

He reminds me that Jesus never did anything He didn't see the Father doing.  Jesus never said anything He didn't first hear the Father say.  Jesus.  Savior of the world, the God-man himself, had to wait.  He had to wait to speak.  He had to wait to do ministry.  He had to wait to reveal truth.  His life was also marked by this command, wait.

I'm not Jesus, obviously.  I'm not so good at waiting.  But I beg of my precious Jesus to make me one who is good at waiting.  And then I beg Him to be all that I cannot be for those He puts in front of me everyday until my wait is over.

Even when my wait is over, He gently reminds me, that even then only HE can give the children what they need and love them perfectly!  Apart from Jesus I am nothing.  So I lay my nothing self before my God as an empty vessel and ask of Him:  Abba please use me.  Any way, any time.  Just use me.