Homesick for a foreign land...

   “Every dreamer knows that it is entirely possible to be homesick for a place you've never been to, perhaps more homesick than for familiar ground.”

   This quote by Judith Thurman caught my eye because it so entirely fits the theme of this blog. I don't know who Judith Thurman is, I've never even heard of her...but I love her thinking!

   All my fellow dreamers out there, you know what homesickness we are talking about. That feeling that you get right after you finish a really fantastic book that you never wanted to end because it was just so awesome...that's what I'm talking about. That intense longing to go back to wherever it was that you were within those pages. When you look up after you've just read and read and re-read yet again the last few lines of that novel because you can't believe that it's really the end, and you realize that you've just taken that whole journey all by yourself despite the wonderfully magical friendships you've made with the characters along the way. And as much as you want to talk about it with someone just as you would after you've gotten home after physically going somewhere...you can't. Because no one else has been where you've been and they don't understand. I often try to tell my family all about my journeys through book after book, but they don't understand because they haven't gone on it and, until they do, I'm on my own. I've longed for the prairies of Minnesota (just to be with the Ingalls family...), for the bush of Africa, for the busy-ness and anonymity of New York, for the carefree-ness of California...I've longed for many places. Only, my homesickness transcends just place to interfere with time as well. I've dreamed of the Wild West, of Victorian England, of the 1930's in Virginia (just be with the Walton family...). 

    And sometimes, when my imagination is really running free, I find myself homesick for places that don't even exist; places that you could never find on a map because they simply are not there. They are in my imagination and I love these places and I sincerely wish that they were real because I would just spend my life there, in the land that I've created in my mind. I tried to create one of my places that is in my imagination once. I went out into my woods where there is a little creek bubbling through the long grasses and tall trees and wild flowers. When the sun hits the greenery just right, I swear it's like magic. It's the most magical place I've ever seen...and it's just yards away from my house. So, I decided to build a little house out of tree branches and braided grass and decorate with flowers and old glass jars. Unfortunately, it didn't survive the next summer storm...but it was so wonderful while it lasted. And, surprisingly, it actually did resemble the land in my dreams. 

   This feeling...this longing...this homesickness (which is just the greatest way to describe it, though I'd never thought of it until this quote came along)... It's happened so often and intensely to me that I'm getting used to it. I'm kind of glad because it's like I am constantly being ripped apart at the hands of a paperback. But at the same time...I hope that I never get entirely used to it because that means that part of my imagination would become average, and average is definitely not my goal. Maybe it was once. But not anymore.

   And so this is the way that I feel about Uganda. Though I've never been there, though I've never set foot on that land, I long to be there. It's strange and it's confusing, even to me, but I know that it's somehow so right. 

Oh, the mystery...

   I want to know the woman who made this bracelet I now wear. 

   I long to know her story, her life. I want to know the good and the bad. I want to know what circumstances she has been in, the hardships she has endured. I want to hear the pride in her voice when she tells me that she can send her children to school now because she has a steady income from these bracelets she makes. I want to see the relief on her face as she tells me that she doesn't have to brew alcohol or sell her body to put food on the table anymore. I want to sit with her and just talk. I want to see her home, however small and barren it may be. I want to spend a while with her, living the life that God has so graciously, for some reason, spared me from. 

   I want to become uncomfortable. I want to become so uncomfortable with my life and the way that I am living; so frivolously, in such incredible abundance. I want to understand the condition some people live in so that I may be more thankful than I am, so that I never again take the things that I have for granted. 

   I want to see her smile when I tell her the bracelet is beautiful. I want to look her in her eyes and tell her that SHE is beautiful, that SHE is lovely. I want to speak words of love into her heart, I want to be an instrument the Lord uses as He breathes life into her soul.

...the LORD, who remains faithful forever. He upholds the cause of the oppressed and gives food to the hungry. The LORD sets prisoners free, the LORD gives sight to the blind, the LORD lifts up those who are bowed down...
       - Psalm 146:6-8

Just show up...

   "I don't really know what's going on, I just show up," he said with a smile as he climbed onto the block, preparing himself for the race ahead. 

   This wonderful sentence came out of one of my swimmer's mouths this morning at our swim meet. And so I began thinking. How often do we all feel that we need to know EVERYTHING in order to do ANYTHING? For example...

   "I can't work in the nursery - I don't even have kids yet." 
   "I can't write a book - I don't have a degree in English or Journalism." 
   "I can't teach Sunday School - I'm not a teacher." 
   "I can't sing/play in the praise band - I haven't had music lessons." 
   "I can't help with the youth group - my kids aren't teenagers yet, I don't know how to connect with them."

   Seriously? We don't have to know everything (or even ANYTHING) about what it is that we are led to do. Like my swimmer understands (at least partially), God isn't going to not use us just because we don't know everything. He just wants us to show up and let Him work through us. 

   If I was too afraid of going to Uganda just because I don't know things, I'd never go. Let's re-cap everything I don't know that has to do with going to Uganda:

1. the language
2. BABIES (I'm going to use the "I don't have any yet" excuse here...)
3. how to board a plan (seriously, I should've paid more attention on those mission trips...)
4. how to make my own food (most of what I eat is prepackaged and frozen)
5. how to do my laundry in the sink (I did this in Dominican...I might remember?)
6. how to live without electricity for long periods of time as often happens there (longest time without power: 8 days)

   So, yeah, it's scary leaping into the unknown and having to fully trust that God is going to take care of you. But it's so worth it! I think I'm ready to try just showing up and letting God do the rest.  Because, seriously, what am I going to do that God can't do better?
  

Christians don't have fun...?

   I don't know where we get the idea that Christians don't have fun. I mean, seriously? And yet, I find myself thinking that often. When I was little (fine, I'll admit it...I still do sometimes), I dreamed of being a singer (country, of course!). I never thought of being a Christian singer because "they don't do fun stuff with their music and shows". Right. You clearly haven't been to Icthus. When I was twelve, I dreamed of being a writer (still dreaming...) and, again, I never thought of being a Christian writer because I wanted to write "exciting stuff". Go read a Terri Blackstock or Ted Dekker book. Exciting enough for you? 

   We, as Christians, have the best, most exciting story to tell and song to sing. And it all points back to the One who created us and gave us our talents, whatever they may be.

   To everyone who is still convinced that Christians don't have fun, I have a few suggestions for you:

     1. Icthus Festival (http://www.ichthusfestival.org/) and/or Alive Festival (http://www.alive.org/) - it's Woodstock BUT Christian!

     2. International House of Prayer (http://www.ihopkc.org/) - go to a worship service. Most amazing worship EVER! Or just live stream one on your computer and have your own little worship service.

     3. Go on a mission trip. Period. It can be anywhere - outside of the States, in the States, whatever. Truthfully, it does not matter. God will use you (and the people who - apparently - you are supposed to be ministering to...oftentimes, I've learned more from them than I think they learned from me). Some of my favorite memories involved mission trips.

     4. The Way Skatepark (http://thewayskatepark.org/) - I have NO idea how to skate and, truthfully, it scares me to death every time I go and see these kids flying around the building. But they love Jesus and they love to have fun and it's a blast to see them doing so!

   So, here's to the music video that inspired this post. Do you see how much fun these guys are having, performing their music and giving all the credit to their Lord and Savior? And, let's face it, this is one of the coolest songs I've heard in Christian music in a while.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=he32vwlKQPY

All i know is I'm not home yet 
This is not where I belong 
Take this world and give me Jesus 
This is not where I belong
     - "Where I Belong" by Building 429

When I feel too much...

   I've always known that I wanted my life to be different. I've always wanted to be vibrant and outgoing, drawing others close to me so that I may touch their lives in a significant way. When I was little, I think I was closer to this dream of myself than I have been since. Before I started school, I was the oldest in my family, which meant I had a lot of authority (or so I thought) over my little sister, Kenzie, my best friend, Stephen. Those were pretty much the only friends I had before school (along with my new friend from preschool, Jess), and I was perfectly happy with it. 

   But then I started kindergarten and I made friends with Tricia and she kind of took me under her wing because at school I wasn't the girl I was at home. I was surrounded by new people and in a huge school I'd never been in before. It was a whole new world, and I was frightened by that. Tricia, Jess, I ended up all being in Brownie Girl Scouts and there we made friends with Dani. In first and second grades, we all became friends with Kara and Naomi - and that formed what my mom calls "The Six". We became best friends and we did everything together from Girl Scouts to campouts to birthday parties. Our mom's all became friends, and this new friendship was a great blessing to us all. 

   We began middle school the same close-knit circle of girls, but soon started making new friends. Throughout middle school, there were people we befriended and drew very close to, others we befriended and eventually drifted away from. I think middle school was when I began to lose myself. It's no one's fault at all and I blame absolutely no one. I simply started to fade into the sea of faces I joined as I walked those crowded hallways; I was quieted by the loud drone of voices that seemed to follow me everywhere. So, I became shyer and quieter, and that's how people knew me. 

   As much as I wanted to be more vibrant like Jess, more outgoing like Kara, more outspoken like Tricia, more everything like everyone, I found that it was just too hard to do, so I decided not to. And so I remained quiet and shy and I think I became more painfully so before it began getting better. 

   With the beginning of high school came the frightening realization that I was going to high school. Once I got there, I quickly understood that being different was not a good thing. You could be made fun of for anything that was out of the ordinary and, while most people say that middle school is the worst time of a person's life, high school beat out middle school for me. I was ostracized by many for "being a Christian" and, while I was taught to be proud of that and not care what others thought of me, being 15 and being told two totally different things by my parents and church and my classmates and society, I was hopelessly confused. I decided that I didn't want to be different if this was the price I'd pay, so I tried to blend in. It wasn't hard per se, being as shy and quiet as I was, but it's hard to change a reputation after you've gotten one. My reputation wasn't bad; I was known as "the Christian", but sometimes it seemed more like a death sentence than the life sentence that I knew that it was. 

   As I write this out, I laugh because all of this really doesn't seem that it should have been such a burden for me; it doesn't seem like it should hurt as much as it did. But I guess 15 years old is young and naive and tender, and I've always felt things deeper and stronger than most other people. And I've decided that that is not a bad thing. I always thought that it was because I cry at EVERYTHING - sad movies and books (or incredibly happy ones...?), emotional songs, etc. I hated this about myself for a long time, but now I don't. This deep sympathy and feeling has allowed me all kinds of blessings through the Lord. 

   I have cried as I discovered the plight of over 27 million modern-day slaves around the world today. I have laughed with children in the Dominican Republic as I made balloon animals and giggled with children in Mexico as I lay on the cement floor of their church, coloring countless pictures with them. I have cried as I prepared to leave both of these places for my far too comfortable home here in America. My heart has broken for the women in the Marysville Women's Correctional Center as they have apologized to me for corrupting the world in which we live. I have felt my heart swell to the point of bursting when I got to hold little Nakiah, a toddler that my friend Stephen's parents adopted from an orphanage in Uganda, and let the truth of what they have saved her from sink in. 

   I think that there are far too many people who care less in this world. I will care more. I don't care how many times my heart has to break in order to do so - I will do it. And, after all of the drama of middle school and high school that I so desperately wanted to escape but now laugh at despite the hurt it caused me, I am ready for my life to be different. 

   "For I know the plans that I have for you," declares the Lord. "Plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future." 
                       - Jeremiah 29:11

What would you do without...

   I am currently reading a book called The Missionary Call: Finding Your Place in God's Will for the World by M. David Sills. (I'd really recommend it, by the way. P.S. Before you refuse to read it because you are afraid that God will call you to become a missionary, which of course MUST mean moving halfway around the world, remember that missions doesn't always look like packing up and moving to a foreign country - you can be a missionary ANYWHERE you are!)

   Ironically, that is exactly what I was going to write about anyway. Sills writes about when he was in seminary and he had several friends who refused to go to chapel on "missions day" because they were so afraid that God might call them into missions. "They already had their life planned out and their plan did not include missions." He writes again about when he worked with the youth in his local church and many of them said that they were nervous to surrender to God 100% because, "I am afraid that if I do, then God will call me to be a missionary in Africa and I don't want to be a missionary." 

   I have to admit, I laughed when I read this. I really don't understand at all. If God told me to move to Africa and be a missionary, I would be so incredibly excited! I don't understand how some people are so scared to go to foreign countries. When talking to people about going to Uganda, many of them have made comments about how I would survive with no air conditioning, internet (mostly Facebook =]), television, and my cell phone. I finally started to think about it after enough people asked, and I realized that those things don't really matter all that much to me. Yeah, all of those things are wonderful to have (and I have been slightly uncomfortable and irritated with the lack of them lately with all of the storms - our power was out for almost 3 days...), but so what? People survived for a long time without all of those things. 

   I think my lack of cable TV, internet, and air conditioning throughout my childhood and most of my adolescence, may have something to do with this attitude. I used to be annoyed that my parents wouldn't pay to get cable, but now I see just how much that benefited me. Instead of sitting inside and watching TV or spending hours on MySpace (never had one of those either!), I spent every minute of daylight - and many of nighttime as well - outside. My imagination was wildly crazy! And when paired with my good friend, Naomi, well, we came up with some pretty great stories and games of "pretend". We were slaves navigating the Underground Railroad to freedom in Canada, we were pioneers on a great adventure as we rode our horses for miles and miles westward, we were Indians fighting off the white men who were stealing our land and moving us to reservations, we were..., we were..., we were... We were anything we wanted to be, and that is a wonderful feeling!
   My point of this post is that I truly WANT to go to Uganda, at least for a while. I don't think that God would call us to do something that we hate; He is far to loving. Psalm 37:4 - "Delight yourself in the Lord, and He will give you the desires of your heart." Sills writes about how this verse teaches two things: "One is that the source of the desires in the heart of a person who is delighting himself in the Lord is God Himself. When we are delighting ourselves in Him, He places desires in our hearts that He wants to fulfill. ... The second truth is that God gave us the desire because He wants to fulfill it. So, one can legitimately say that God guides us by our desires when we are delighting ourselves in Him." God may be calling me to Uganda because I have a great desire to go there.

   In all honesty, I have no idea what God has in store for me, but I'm learning to trust Him and follow Him wherever and to whatever He calls me. I was watching an interview with Katie Davis (author of Kisses from Katie - read it! It's definitely one of my favorite books ever!) and she was talking about how her plans for her life don't really count for much because (she writes in her book) "Jesus wrecked my life" and how God's plans also tend to be much better than her own. I think that's the most wonderful things I've heard in a long time. It's not that I exactly like the idea of not knowing what is going to happen in my life, but I do like the idea of an all-knowing and all-powerful God planning my life for me rather than going along with my plans. 

   Right now, I am exploring the possibility of going to Uganda to work in Sanyu Babies' Home in Mengo, Kampala, Uganda. I really hope that this is part of God's plan for me because I am already so incredibly excited and we're still just exploring the idea! But, you know, I think God kind of likes keeping us guessing. 

http://kissesfromkatie.blogspot.com/

One day, the dream began...

   One day, I received a letter in the mail - one of my favorite things in the world. But this one was special, different from junk mail and ads. This was an old-fashioned, handwritten letter! Its blue and red envelope spoke of far-off countries, places I'd never seen and most likely never would see (or so I thought at the time). The handwriting was blocky, like a child had written it, and I couldn't wait to see what it contained.

   My enthusiasm bursting, I ripped it open and eagerly looked to see who it was from: a girl from Uganda. A girl I'd never met. 

   Earlier that year, I had packed nearly 30 shoeboxes full of gifts for children in third-world countries as part of the Samaritan's Purse Operation Christmas Child project. My friends and family and I had put letter into each one, telling about ourselves, asking about the child who would receive the box, and wishing them a Merry Christmas. We always put return addresses in the letter in hopes of a reply, but we had never gotten one - until now. 

   Even in my young mind, I read my letter and my heart broke. This girl had nothing to her names besides what I had given her (which mostly consisted of Dollar Tree flip-flops and school supplies), yet she was so happy! I couldn't comprehend that type of joy, even though I had (and still have) everything I could ever want. She wrote of a God so holy and wonderful and all-powerful; a God that I knew well, but only within the perimeters of my small farming town nestled in the Bible Belt, surrounded by a loving family, great friends, and mountains of money - which I had never noticed until then. I didn't understand how this girl who had virtually nothing in the eyes of the world could be so happy while I, who had nearly everything, was so often unhappy. 

   As I wrote her back and we continued to exchange letters, as I began to learn about her culture and people, as she taught me bits and pieces of her language, we became friends. And as we became friends, as I started to care for and lover her and her family, I fell in love with Uganda.

   I fell in love with its people who love Jesus with all their hears but own almost nothing, who put their trust and faith in Him though they sometimes don't know where their next meal will come from.

   It may seem odd to you that I can be so passionate about this country and its people; that I can love them so intensely, yet I've never even set foot on that land. Don't worry, you're not alone. It's odd to me, too. But all of my uncertainty is overpowered by my love of Uganda's people and the Lord who has given me this love and passion. 

   I have dreamed of visiting this country for years, I have read books about it and gone on mission trips with my church because I was so excited about sharing the love of God and His Word with people who had never heard it before. I have loved my trips to the Dominican Republic and Mexico. But I still dream of a land that is halfway around the world. 

   And I truly believe that God will get me there. Somehow, some way. 

   And I cannot wait!!http://www.samaritanspurse.org/index.php/OCC/