Glass in my foot.

I pulled a piece of broken glass out of my foot this morning that has been in there for the past two days.

Two days. Walking around with glass in my foot.

I honestly just thought my foot was hurting because I scratched myself.

Apparently I did.
With glass.
That was lodged in my foot.

I think I need an intervention......or else my feet may fall off in protest for all the abuse they are subjected to.

A BAPTISM party!!

We got to be a part of the coolest thing last Sunday.....

...we had the immense honor of hosting six baptisms at our house.

This was one of the greatest things we've gotten to be a part of since moving here. And really, it started long before we ever moved to Burkina. Because months and months and months ago, when people at the Embassy were looking for a house to put us in, and they decided to assign us to this house, we were told it had one of the largest yards here! And we got to use this yard to host over 100 people last week!

It's just another one of those things that at first I felt bad over having. Seeing our grass and yard and trees and beautiful enclosure, and then you step outside and everywhere you look there is so much need. You feel guilty for having so much when most everyone around you has so little in comparison.

But, I'm starting to see things differently. God is tweaking my eyesight. He's showing me things and teaching me and helping me to see more clearly. Revealing to me secrets of His plan. And how I fit into all of it.

This house wasn't given to us by accident. God blessed us with this house on purpose. For His purpose. It was calculated and intentional for us to be here, in this place. And it was amazing to see what God can do with a house that is dedicated to serving Him.

Once we started attending church in Ouaga, word spread that we had a big yard (most homes here have a courtyard with a concrete slab for a yard and no grass. This is a luxury!) So back in October a month or so before the baptisms, we were asked if we'd be willing to open up our home to host a baptism celebration.

Two words....Heck.Yeah!!

The day before the party, a few church members came over to set up and we took some time to gather within the pool enclosure to pray over the next day.

We all took turns, one after another, lifting up our voices in earnest petition to the Lord. Praying that tomorrow would bring Him glory. That His presence would saturate this entire place. For those coming from other religions who are not Christ followers...that no power of darkness would stand in the way of what the Lord was wanting to accomplish. That they would just be assaulted by His presence. That we would show the world what is looks like for the Church to support and rejoice with each other. That the kids being baptized would paint a beautiful picture of what Christ's love and redemption looks like and what He can do with a heart that decides to follow Him.....

and when Sunday came...this was not just a yard. This was not just a pool. This was the dwelling place of the Lord Most High, and when I say He was there.....I mean HE.WAS.THERE!

Over 100 people flocked to our home and filled our lawn. It was standing room only.

There were Christians and unbelievers alike, sitting side by side, watching six kids get baptized and share their faith in Jesus. 

You just couldn't help but cry, seeing these kids stand in boldness and testify to what Jesus has done in their lives.

 

There was even an entire sound system set up inside the pool! Mics, keyboard, guitar, speakers, video camera....the whole nine yards! We worshiped and sang and proclaimed Christ for all who could hear....and I'm sure that included the whole neighborhood!

And then one by one....they each took a turn following Christ into the water to further depict there commitment to stand with Jesus.

(Dr. Peter getting to baptize his daughter)

(Pastor Joel getting to baptize his son.) 

And we celebrated and rejoiced as each one broke through the surface....

It was powerful. It is not a day that I will ever forget. I pray my daughters never forget this day. I pray that everyone who came remembers what happened here, this day, in the lives of these kids. What they stood for. What I pray they continue to stand for.

God is raising up a new generation.....a new generation of Christ followers. World changers. Eternity advocates. Proponents of justice.....

For Him. 

Watch out world....these kids are gonna shake things up.

Thanksgiving In Burkina.

We had a different Thanksgiving than we've had for many years past.

This was our first major holiday in Burkina Faso, and the first Thanksgiving in years and years and years that I haven't spent with my family in Hilton Head. And when I say family, I mean 50+ aunts, uncles, cousins, 2nd cousins, 3rd cousins, nieces, brothers, sister-in-laws....we're like a small army. We do Thanksgiving big, and it's the only holiday that we ever see family being in the Air Force and always living too far away to make traveling convenient. So Thanksgiving is important to me.

And as I stood in the kitchen the night before Thanksgiving to make pie, it hit me that I was standing in the kitchen all alone. There would be no family in there with me this year. There would be no one coming in to talk to me, or harass me. No one to help me prep. No mom. No sister-in-laws. There would be no chorus of cousins bantering back and forth.

It was painfully quiet. And I couldn't help but cry.

I cried from the absence of noise and delightful chaos that this holiday has always had. I cried at the loss of family time. And as much I as love being here and wouldn't trade living in Burkina for anything....I just resigned myself to the fact that it was okay to be sad and miss family and it didn't mean I loved being here any less.

So, I turned on some praise music and let Jesus fill my kitchen and slowly over the course of the couple hours that I was in the there I found solace in Jesus' presence.

Thanksgiving was also different in the way that Sydaleigh had to go to school. Seen as how we live in a country that does not celebrate or recognize our American holidays...Isaak had the day off from work at the Embassy, but Syd still had school. It was kinda odd. And just felt weird and bizarre waking up on Thanksgiving and having a school day. I think next year I will give her the choice to stay home if she wants too. But her school had a Harvest Celebration that day, which is close to Thanksgiving, so we headed over to her school in the morning to hang with her for a little while.

I received a note saying that Sydaleigh's class was in charge of bringing veggie trays and dip for their feast....but I'm all like, "what kind of veggie tray do they expect me to bring?!!"

A common veggie tray in the states consists of carrots, broccoli, celery, and grape tomatoes.

In Burkina Faso there is no such thing as grape tomatoes, there is no broccoli to be found, I have yet to see celery...and their carrots.....dude, the carrots here are way bendy....what.is.up.with.that? I should not be able to bend a carrot like that without it snapping.

The only veggie left I could think to include were cucumbers. Soooo, I sent a whole plate of 'em!

Sydaleigh's class and the other younger kids singing a song.

When we got home I had some more food to make, but this time I wasn't alone. I had a little helper for the morning. :~)

She is really good at rolling up some crescents, let me tell ya. 

I loved working in the kitchen with that little lady. It was different from what my days normally look like, but it was nice to make some memories with just my family. So, we rolled ourselves up some crescents, got the rest of the food ready, and looked forward with eager anticipation to dinner with good friends.

I made a yummy chocolate pudding pie. It was suppose to be a chocolate torte, but turned out like pudding, which was fine with me because that's really what I was wanting! Really, you can't go wrong with chocolate and heavy cream and even if it turned out like mush, it would have been a chocolate mush and still tasted good. :~)

We had dinner with Jean and Andy and their kids at their home, and feasted on turkey, potatoes, sweet potatoes, green bean casserole, macaroni and rolls, pumpkin pie and chocolate pie. It felt as much like home as we could get!

The kids swam and swung. And we talked and laughed and rested.

So that was our day. I think next year the shock of being so far away will have worn off and it won't be so hard. But it still turned out okay. It was good. And I was thankful and felt blessed.

(Marvelly, little stinker thinks it's funny not to smile in pictures right now. )
(Oh, and a special shout out to Bekah and her dad who I got to skype with on Thanksgiving, and my mom for getting to hear her voice too! Made me so happy!)

This "cool" season ain't so cool.

It's hot here.

This has been our forecast everyday for weeks and weeks.

100's. Everyday. They say that this is the "cool" season, but I'm like, "whatever, man, it doesn't count if it's only cool at night."

But now I know. The cool season is still actually really hot, except at midnight....when it does not count.

The day I turned 31.

Yesterday was my birthday.

It was a humble and modest day.

I woke up sick, not having slept the night before due to a nasty cold. By mid afternoon I had a fever. But one thing I have learned since moving to Burkina is that there is no such thing as, "I think I'll stay in bed today" kinda days.

I wanted to stay in bed yesterday. I wanted to wear sweat pants and watch movies and not move. But Africa does not allow that. You must wake up, and get dressed, and brush your hair, and accept the fact that people will come to your gate that you will have to answer.

So I got dressed. I brushed my hair. And I went about my day as I normally would. 

And it was fine.

I liked this birthday.

It was normal.

Odette arrived for work first thing in the morning.
Our vegetable guy came by bright and early to deliver my basket.
Then the electricity guy came over.
Then some Embassy workers.
Then Joseph came over, our Malian friend who is suppose to be in Mali because we bought him a bus ticket to go back there....and yet he is here. More on that later.....
Next a school girl stopped by needing some water.
Then some friends arrived late in the afternoon to load up the chairs from the baptism party.

In addition to spending the day with Marvelly, doing school with her, playing Pocahontas on the patio, cleaning my large basket of veggies, blowing my nose till it felt like it would fall off, and talking to a couple friends on the phone to receive birthday wishes.

When Isaak got home from work, he went to a nearby ice cream parlor and picked up some ice cream, and a tiny piece of cake, and him and the girls sang "happy birthday" to me. And Sydaleigh presented me with a paper bag book she made me for my present.

We ended the night playing "Go Fish" in my bed so that I could lay down but still spend time with the family. And I won...which was only fitting since it was my birthday. :~)

Throughout the day I kept thinking....about all the things that we expect from others on our birthdays. We pollute our brain with false thinking that we deserve to be spoiled because it is our one day out of the year to be celebrated. We place our value and importance on how many birthday cards we get, the amount of presents we receive, the cost of the presents, or the thought that went into buying the presents, or the creativity of the gifts. We measure people's love for us based on whether they throw us a party, or we go out with friends to celebrate, or buy us flowers, and the kind of restaurant we eat at....McDonalds or Melting Pot? Which indicates the greater degree of love? We measure our worth based on how many Facebook friends write birthday wishes on our wall, how many family members call us...and the list goes on.

And we think that if those expectations of what we deem adequate celebration aren't met...we are less loved, or less valued, or not important to others.

But that is a lie. I've had birthdays when I've have had flowers, and gifts and parties and cards, and ate at my favorite restaurants, with my favorite cakes with my favorite people. 

I've had all those things.

And then I've had birthday's like yesterday.

Birthdays that are spent at home. Modest. No parties. No restaurant. No presents. Just the quiet celebration of having lived through another year. And it doesn't make me any less loved, or valued, or esteemed to have celebrated without all the fanfare and spoils.

I liked my birthday. I liked the day I turned 31.

I got to spend it living. I got to spend it loving. And I even got to spend it eating my favorite ice creams...mint chocolate chip and my new favorite, Chocolate Crunch (some mysterious African flavor that we have yet to discover what the actual crunch is...but oh man is it yummy.)

And that is more than good enough for me.

Feeling blessed with less on my birthday still left me overflowing.

To my 31st year of life....

 (For the record, Sydaleigh is not starving, she is just ribby :~) )

237th Marine Corp Ball

We went to the Marine Corp Ball on Saturday night. It's the first Marine ball they've ever had in Burkina since getting a detachment here. And since there aren't exactly a whole lot of reasons to get all dressed up here in Burkina Faso everyone was very excited for this formal night.

This was the first time we have ever been to a Marine Corp Ball....normally everything formal we go to is Air Force related. It was special getting to sit and take in the Marine side of our military and participate in something that is so personal to each of them. The Marines are something else let me tell ya. This is not just some party...this event is sacred to them.

Actually, what they do is sacred to them. They protect. And they do it with pride. And it's not just a job. They serve because their desire to protect is stronger than anything. And being in an embassy on foreign soil, surrounded, quite literally, on every side by unrest and turmoil, I don't look at them the same. They are not just another branch of our military. I value their presence and commitment more than I ever have.


I pray that there is never a reason for them to draw their "swords" and defend the Embassy, but I know if that were to ever happen....those faces, they would defend it without hesitation.

We invited some great people to attend the ball with us who work so hard in this country. We wanted to give them a night where they could get dolled up and dance and just, do something different. It was such a fun night had by all.

Our guests.....Mike and Amy, some awesome missionaries who work in Yako at Sheltering Wings. (who happen to have a teenage daughter who so graciously offered to watch the girls while we were away!)

And Becky and Rebecca. Becky is here with Envision and works up in Yako with Mike and Amy, and Rebecca lives here in Ouaga as a teacher for a missionary family.

Ambassador Dougherty, Marine Justin Genovese and guest speaker Col. Bristol

The purple squad! Whoo hoo! Purple's the new black we say!

Me and Jean, a dear friend. The Lord is so good to have blessed us with such a fantastic family and people here. I met Jean while we were both living in DC for our husbands training and we came out to Burkina within two weeks of each other. (Along with Becky down below and her husband Heath! They were in DC with us too!) Our husbands, Isaak, Andy and Heath, work together side by side. We're all here doing life together. I love these ladies.

Blessed to know every single one of them.....we have such fun when we get together!

(Katina, Nicole, Tara, Jayne, Becky, Me, Anne, Sheryl)

To a great night!!

Some friends stopped by yesterday....

Some Garibou friends. Plus a little girl.

They absolutely warm my heart.

Praying they left filled up with something more lasting than crackers, fruit rolls ups and new flip flops. Praying Jesus met some emotional needs for those kids in our courtyard. He is able, in ten minutes time through handshakes and smiles to fill a heart to overflowing. Praying His presence over those children. And that we will never be too busy to stop what we're doing and answer His call with joy.

Pumpkin in my toe.

On Monday morning I was on the patio cleaning up because nine kids were scheduled to come over that afternoon to play.

It needs to be said that while on the patio cleaning I was walking around bare foot. I've never been much for shoes, unless they are boots or heels for a girls/date night of course, but day to day I'm a no shoe wearing sandles if I have to kinda gal.

And in very typical Melissa fashion, as I was walking around bare foot I stubbed my toe.

I have this problem see....I stub my toes a lot. That happens when you don't wear shoes. It is a miracle that they have not become deformed over the years from scar tissue building up for repeated beatings.

You'd think that after all these years of repeated toe stubbings I would be used to the pain incurred from them. But no. Not in the least. There is something about stubbing your toe that makes you think you are enduring the greatest degree of suffering you've ever experienced. (Why then I laugh at other people when I see them stub there toe and curse from the pain....I don't know. I gather I'm a little off. )

Okay so this time when I stubbed my toe, I did not stub it on a door, or corner piece of furniture, or chair leg....I stubbed it on a pumpkin.

Blasted thing.

Stupid pumpkin was just sitting there, waiting for me to run into it. Being busy cleaning and distracted from it's position right in front of my nose, it's skin not being a bright enough orange for me take proper note of it's existence and potential for disaster.....I slammed my toes into the side of it, taking off the pumpkin skin as I dragged my foot away.

It needs to be said, that stubbing your toe on a pumpkin is comparable in pain to a normal toe stubbing. Definitely hurts.

But, stubbing your toe on a pumpkin and having the skin of that pumpkin forcefully shoved under your toe nails, and not just the tippy top of the nail either, but shoved all.the.way down to the bottom of your toe nail bed.....

is comparable to child birth. Or something equally as painful. Torture perhaps.

It was a NINE on the 0-10 pain scale you see at the doctor's office. Zero being no pain, 10 being worst pain you've ever experienced. 9. Maybe 9.5. For reals. Pumpkin in the toe hurts.

It hurt so bad I started crying.

I hobbled my way inside the house, doing the lamaze breathing I never had a chance to do while pregnant to try to mindfully manage the pain.

I sat at the table and looked at the damage.....

my smallest three toes had orange crap sticking out the top of my nails.

I hobble to the bathroom and got the tweezers and successfully manage to remove all the pumpkin I could see. I figured it would be like a splinter, hurts real bad while in the skin, but once removed, immeditately feels better.

That did not happen.

Which led me to believe that I had pumpkin way down deep and the only hope for removing it would be to amputate my toe nail.

Oh mercy Jesus, why couldn't I have been wearing shoes.

There was no way I could do toe nail removal surgery on myself, so I chugged some ibuprofen and waited till Isaak got home from work. I can't believe I survived that long.

But, luckily, by the afternoon I had 11 kids at the house to watch and distract me and soon thereafter Isaak came home from work and I had him examine my toe.

He could see orange down further under neath the nail, but in order to get to it he had to cut the nail down half way, to the middle of the nail bed. And once he cut the nail down shorter than it's suppose to go, I noticed he stopped, and sat for minute staring at my foot. I had my face buried in the couch cushions when I heard him say,

"You do realize that you have pumpkin coming out of your toes."

Yeah.

"You realize you stub your toes more than anyone I know."

Yeah.

"You might want to consider wearing shoes sometimes."

Yeah. It hurts as bad as child birth.

"You had c-sections."

It hurts like my c-sections.

(It may not look like much, but don't be deceived, it's the little things that hurt the worst.  That little bit of pumpkin had me contemplating cutting off my own toe for relief. I figured it would be comparable to that guy who cut off his own arm when he got trapped while hiking, and in the end I could at least have a movie made from my experience.)

So Isaak then took the tweezers and pulled out the remaining pumpkin he could see.

Ahhhhh, sweet relief. For like, 3 minutes. And then it started hurting again. Just as bad as it did before! Burning, throbbing, feels like my toes gonna fall off kinda pain! What the heck?! Pumpkin out=no more pain I thought! Except I still had some major pain action goin' on. Isaak assured me that this was a different kind of pain....the healing kind of pain when a foreign substance has been removed from somewhere it never should have been.

I looked at him like he was flippin' mad....trying to tell me this was healing pain. Healing pain my keister.

But I hobbled off to bed in hopes that by morning it would feel better.

No such luck.

I could hardly sleep it hurt so much. I was sure during the night that my toe was sprouting a garden under the blankets. But when I looked at it, it looked perfectly normal, which then made me consider that the bacteria from the pumpkin rind had somehow entered my toe blood stream and was getting secretly infected and would actually need to be amputated!

This was not good for my hypochondriatic tendencies.

So I walked to the bathroom, got the smallest pumpkin removal tools I could find, and set to work on my toe. You wanna know what I found....more pumpkin in my toe!

Isaak was wrong. There was still a major piece of pumpkin trapped very closely between my skin and toe. The only way to get it out was with a needle. It was the only thing small enough that could fit in there. So, I took a deep breath and carefully forced that needle down under my toe nail and started moving it back and forth to try to move the pumpkin up enough to pull out.

I'm not gonna lie....it was bad.

Real bad.

Just awful.

But I did it. I removed the rest of the pumpkin in my toe! The remaining piece was so big it was fitted under the skin all the way down to the bottom of my nail. So nasty!

But such sweet relief! Until the next day when I stubbed that same toe on the corner of our metal bedroom door. Dude! What the heck is my problem!

I'm gonna seriously have to work on my Africa stories. While everyone else is carrying on about how, "I slept in the bush for a week on the dirt ground with nothing more than a mosquito net." Or, " I came this close to being eaten by a hippo!" Or, " I once had malaria, typhoid, meningitis, rabies, yellow fever, and dengue fever all at the same time!" Or "I strangled a lion with my bare hands!"

I'm all like, "There was this one time I got pumpkin stuck in my toe." Doesn't exactly scream hard core.

In the meantime, while I work on my hard coreness, here are some things I have taken away from this experience.....

# 1. try not to stub your toe.
# 2. if refraining from toe stubbings is not an option, consider wearing steel toed shoes.
# 3. pumpkin in the toe hurts.
# 4. African pumpkins are harder than anywhere else in the world (that's my opinion and I'm stinkin' to it.
# 5. just avoid pumpkins at all costs, they are from the devil.

"The Awe Factor"

I am just now reading Francis Chan's Crazy Love. I know, I'm about five years behind everyone else. But, I don't like to go with the crowd so I skipped his first book and just went straight to his second, Forgotten God, which was fantastic.

I like Francis. He's a very convicting writer. After reading the first two pages I stopped, and watched this video.

The Awe Factor.

Three minutes.

Really cool. And humbling. And I am feeling incredibly small at the moment. I can't get that last image out of my head.

God is SO big.

Uncensored: My heart 12 weeks later

It's hard to write this out.

It's hard because, there is so much going on, there is so much happening and so much that has happened, sometimes putting words to heavy heart matters seems impossible.

But I will try. I will try......but this is not going to be pretty......

We have been living here in Burkina Faso for three months now. I look back and wonder, "has it really been that long? I'm pretty sure that was us just yesterday running through the airport frantic to make our flight with mere seconds to spare."

But here we are.

Three months later.

These first three months have been a balance of hard and good. Not really one over the other. Not more hard than good or vise versa. Both equally hard and good.

My heart these past three months has gone through and is still going through a range of emotions. I'm told that's normal. If only the fact that it was normal made me feel better about it. :~)

One of the things my heart has been struggling with is American life. There are many days where thinking about American life makes me angry. I look at friends and family and I get mad. Okay, scratch that. Melissa "censored" would say mad. I'm gonna go out on a very lonely limb here...I'm gonna go uncensored, and say, actually, when I think about America and my friends and family living back there, and just American life in general....

...I feel disgusted.

At western culture.
At the lives I see people living.

And then, feeling disgusted, I feel guilty because I am being judgmental. And overly harsh and critical.

I said this wouldn't be pretty.
But it is reality.
It is the reality to how I, and many other people feel when they are plucked out of their cushy culture and thrown into a third world country.

It is reality.
And one thing I've learned is that reality ain't always pretty.
And when I look at America, my country, I do not see reality. I see isolation, ignorance, delusion, shallowness, and blissful distraction.

I think it's pitiful. Absolutely pitiful.

And it's really hard struggling through feelings like this. It doesn't exactly scream,  

"Hey, come talk to me, tell me all about the new two hundred dollar boots you just bought! Eek!!!"

It's more like this, "I kinda hate you right now, but please don't be offended that I can't stop rolling my eyes and gagging when I hear about 'home', and love me through this."

Because there is a part of me that is still deeply longing for the trivial familiar shallowness of home. There is that part of me that wants to hear and talk about boots, and new outfits, and movies, and talk about Jessica Simpson's parents gettin' a divorce, say what?! and laugh at random stupid things and talk about pinterest and the newest this' and that's.

Because sometimes talking about new fashion trends and celebrity gossip is just easier than talking about the man who came to my gate today begging for money to go back to Mali. And how he's been sleeping at the market and knocking on people's doors for food and water because he can't find work to buy it himself. Showing me the scars all over his body from only God knows what. Seeing him cry and beg and plead.....

...it's this reality that makes me want to talk about boots, and it's this same reality that makes me pity and roll my eyes and get angry at those who do.

I can't reconcile those two sides yet.
They are at odds.
They are at war in my heart.
I don't know if there can be a world in me where those two realities co-exist. 
I'm not sure God wants them to.
I do know that this is going to take time to sort out, and a whole heck of a lotta grace. Grace from others. And grace towards others.

Grace towards others as they continue living their lives, and grace towards me as I relearn how to live mine. Grace as I work through trying to figure out who I am now.

All the things I was. All the places I fit. All the things I did. The clothes I wore. The shoes I walked in. The stores that I shopped at. The people I talked to. The kind of church I worshiped at. The car we drove. The way I decorated my house. The language I spoke. The jewelry I wore. The food I ate.....

All the things that I have allowed to make me, me.....is being stripped away.

All of it.

The person that I was, the identity I had, the life I lived.....it's disappearing. The whole dying to self is no easy business. And I've chosen to do it. And I'm sorry, but coming to such extreme living conditions as these requires a whole lot more dying than when we lived in America, or were maybe instead stationed in Japan at an Air Force base with a commissary and BX and base housing and many other western conveniences.

This is a totally different ballgame.

In the United States I had the luxury, yes, luxury of going through my day and never seeing anything hard. Of saying to myself and God, "I'm just gonna wait on you today Lord. I'm gonna sit here and go about my life today until you speak a word to me to do otherwise. That homeless vet I see on the side of the street standing next to my car as I sit at the intersection...I'm just gonna keep on sitting and pretending that I don't see him unless you tell me to reach my hand out and help." Or maybe there is no homeless vet that day. Maybe there is no one. So there is no need to even direct a prayer toward God.

That life for me is gone. I don't have to luxury anymore to wake up and go about my life like it's just me and my family and nothing else exists outside that bubble. I don't have the option to just sit back anymore and wait on God to tell me to do something.

Living in such extreme conditions as these you have to make moment by moment decisions. Fast decisions. Poverty and suffering are everywhere. I no longer have the option to just stand in front of it all and say, "I'm just gonna pray, and wait on you God.....". I am having to learn to act. To think faster. I have learned that God is ALWAYS talking. Even if I don't hear Him. Even if He's not saying anything new to me in a particular moment. His WORD is clear. And when I see something that stuns me, and I'm frozen with shock, and my mind is scrambling with what to do, or how to respond, and I don't hear God tell me point blank, "Help this man in this specific way", I know what the Bible says, even while I'm relearning what the Bible says.

And I have failed at this so many times since moving here. While we were in Bobo right before we left we were outside a pretty nice ice cream parlor eating our ice cream on another 100 degree day. As we walked outside to eat I noticed two boys walking along the road up front. I turned to stand in front of the table the girls were eating at and I had my back to the parking lot. Out of the corner of my eye I could see the two boys approach from behind....two Garibous, carrying their red tomato cans. Ragged clothes. Dusty and dirty. Hot from the heat.

I could feel them standing there, two feet behind me. Just standing, and watching. You wanna know what I did? Absolutely nothing. I just stood there, eating, never turning around, never meeting their eyes. Never acknowledging their presence. I pretended like they weren't there because I was eating a cup full of ice cream and they weren't. And it made me feel horrible. I could feel God telling me to turn around, but I didn't. I kept my back to them. And after a few minutes, maybe it was just one, they walked away.

Moment.gone.

Literally a moment. Two minutes at best. To decide whether to act, or ignore. To love, or to hoard. It didn't occur to me until I saw them walking back up the road that I should have walked them inside and let them pick out a scoop of ice cream. A treat. An extra. Something they never have.

That moment kills me. It absolutely kills me. I think about it and cry. Because that's how fast it happens here.

I don't have the option anymore to say, "Okay God, this week is like way busy, so how about you give me a really good idea to serve You next week, or ya know, next week is actually busy too, how about the end of the month, I can squeeze something in then." 

Here, it's everyday. And I will have two minutes at best sometimes to decide how to share God's love, and that's it. Two minutes. Sometimes it's seconds. And then the moment is gone. And with it the opportunity to reclaim the spaces where darkness has grown and spread a little bit of God's light into their life.

And when I think about life outside of here, how people go about their lives, living for themselves, being so cavalier with the sufferings happening in the world outside their lives....it's hard not to feel angry about that right now.

And it's really hard that virtually everyone back "home" will never understand. That part of it all is really hard to swallow at the moment. Knowing that the longer I am here, the more that I see, the more that I die to me and all I used to be....the less and less and less people will be able to relate to me.

I remember back in March I was in Pennsylvania sitting in a hotel for a women's retreat I was attending. I was sitting on the bed in my room, just me and Holly, taking a moment to rest and sit before the scheduled activities started up again. She quietly asked me what was one thing that I was afraid of for this move to Africa. I told her, trying to choke the tears down, that one of my biggest fears was, "becoming unrelateable."

I knew it would happen. I knew it would be inevitable. You can't live this kind of lifestyle without becoming isolated from all that was familiar to you, including relationships. Unless you live through this there is no way to know to relate to those that have. And I was scared of that.

I am still scared of that.

Because it is already happening.

I am already in a place of extreme isolation due to distance and language, but now I can see myself becoming further isolated due to my experiences. Because, I mean really, how do you talk about what I see here? People ask, "so, how are you, how is Africa?" How do you tell them, "well, today me and the girls played with forty street kids who's teeth were so rotted they were black and falling out and had ring worm so bad they had huge patches of hair missing from their head." Or, "I just got off the phone with a friend here who found out her Burkinabé neighbor was hit by a car and drove to a remote village to see the witch doctor because they couldn't afford to take her to the hospital and when she got there she had been laying on a dirt floor for a week with a broken femur bone."

Or, "Oh, Isaak's job? It's going great thanks for asking. He visited a prison today and walked through the hallways of the most disgusting place he's ever been, seeing up to nineteen men piled into a 10x15 foot cell. Watched as little kids ran naked through their cell, born into the prison because they mother was incarcerated pregnant, and now that is where they live. In a prison. Innocent and naked."

I'm not entirely convinced people want to hear all that. And maybe I'm wrong. Maybe they do. Mostly I think they don't. Because what do you say to that? Here's what I've heard people say, "wow."

And that's about it.

Because there is no way to relate to that type of suffering and pain and cruel raw conditions unless you've seen it.

And as a result, the people who do see it, become unrelateable in the relationships they have with those who don't. Either that, or I will be left having to change again, pretend I'm still the old me, to make everyone else comfortable.

Maybe there is another way. Maybe there is a way that I don't see yet to bridge the gap because those who can't be here, and we who are. Maybe there is a way to relate to them all that is happening in the world outside of their own. Maybe. Maybe not. But with only three months here that is not something I have begun to figure out yet.

But what I have figured out, well, am figuring out more and more everyday, is the absolute faithfulness of God. What it looks like to live by faith.What it looks like to love with a love that doesn't come from me.

Despite all the stuff that my heart is working through...as crazy as it sounds, especially after that rant, I feel good. Even on the days that I feel really really bad, I feel good. Even when I cry from the heaviness of it "all"....I love being here. I do, I love it.

Because even though I am daily surrendering myself over to be crucified, I am happy to do it. Even when it's hard and I don't think there is one more change I can make without having a mental breakdown, I give myself to Him still. I do it because there is His promise of Him. I do it because He equips me to. I do it because the Bible makes it crystal clear that that is His expectation of me. I am doing this because there is way too much darkness in this world and I want to be a part of shining God's light.

So I am good and happy and filled with joy....even in the midst of my frustration and messy heart....because His peace makes it so. His peace is what makes it so. It sounds crazy. To be so at peace in the middle of such chaos. But I am. And only Jesus can do that.

And that is a part my heart uncensored, the good the bad and the ugly of it all....twelve weeks later. No telling where I'll be in another twelve weeks....but wherever it is, His peace is comin' with me. For that I know....