Deborah was a rescued soul, an adopted daughter taken in from the cold streets of Kenya in which she had been thrown out and discarded as an infant. Now, the daughter of a local pastor, she was making plans to attend college after she graduated high school with the hopes of becoming a doctor one day. She wanted to serve the hurting and broken in her community with her Heaven-sent gifts.
The group I was traveling with on the trip was working alongside Deborah and her family, helping them to reach out to those in the community that wanted to know more about Jesus and His love. During the trip we were also working at an orphanage, preparing food for a hundred kids each day and giving AIDS medicine to tiny babies and building up walls as a means of shelter.
Walls are a valuable jewel in a war-torn culture, in a country where food isn't guaranteed for most people and shopping malls are shot up by religious extremists.
In a world where three hundred girls are kidnapped and sold into slavery (read: the Nigeria Crisis).
God, bring back our girls.
As I walked that road with Deborah, I remember thinking on the peaceful presence of the day. We'd had tea (such the norm in Kenya) with various families in which they'd asked us questions and we'd do our best to answer, do our best to testify to the sweet Jesus that had touched our lives with His Spirit, the same Spirit that was waiting to touch their lives, too. They'd pull out their Bibles and we'd flip through the pages with them, pointing to words of John here and messages from Mark there.
And I remember that, though I'd only known Deborah for a short time, by the end of that day she felt as close to me as any one of my biological sisters. As we walked the dusty road past shacks and African housing communities, she so easily slipped her hand into mine in a friendly gesture of likemindedness, because I knew she felt the sisterly connection of the trip too.
We were kingdom-sisters, and nothing could break a bond so strong.
I remember not wanting to come home after that trip. It was my first encounter overseas, and it was my first encounter with God that made me feel authentic and free and alive and purposeful, like I was spending my time how it was made to be spent, in loving people and sharing truth and empowering lives in the name of Jesus.
I remember coming home and falling facedown before the throne of grace, literally laying on my bedroom floor in sweet surrender, praying to God for Africa and Deborah and little Joe and spirit-filled Catherine and beautiful Harry, all of these faces and more who were among the few given an education and medical care and opportunity, who were being raised as a generation of hope, a generation of kids that could rise up and change their country. I prayed so much for three triplets I had met, Alice, Theresa, and Stella, who lived out child-like faith as pure as anyone I'd seen and brought such joy and laughter to life. I love them dearly, those silly things. I prayed for these and more, because my heart was overwhelmed.
Culture-shock is not an experience I have ever truly encountered, and I don't know why. I've always thrived in other contexts other than the typical American dream environment. The opposite is true: I have over and over again experienced reverse culture-shock. It's also called re-entry syndrome, and it sucks.
The first time it was upon my return to the states from Nairobi, and it took the form of sleepless nights and a weepy Lauren, a sobbing version of myself that cried day after day for the kids that I'd met that were living so differently than the kids I knew in America. They clung to their education like it was oxygen, because in a sense it was exactly that. Without school they may or may not have a future of opportunity ahead of them, and without a future such as this they wouldn't have food, wouldn't have shelter, wouldn't have a lot of things. Going to school increases one's chances of survival in many countries.
I cried for those with opportunity, I cried for those without it. I sobbed at the thought of little Catherine, a girl at the orphanage who had an extreme case of polio and likely wouldn't make it past the age of fifteen. I cried at the thought of the children in the slums, of dying babies and overwhelmed mamas and unsanitary living conditions. I cried so much after that trip, enough to fill a dry riverbed up I'm sure.
I cried because when I re-entered America the kingdom seemed so distant and far-off. I'd never felt so useful as I did in Kenya, because I was tangibly doing kingdom things. Talking about Jesus, teaching self-sustenance, building shelter and promoting education and seeking justice providing medicine to dying babies and empowering lives of future generations-how much closer to the kingdom could you get?
So over time I prayed, hard. I begged God to send me back to Africa, begged Him to call me overseas even if I had no idea what I would be doing or how I would be furthering His purposes. I just wanted to go, and I wanted to go now. Forget school, there were bigger things to live for.
But as usual, God's timing and plans are hardly our own. I was praying for my will to be God's and He had to teach me to pray the other way around. It's the hardest prayer to pray, Lord have your way, but it's the most powerful one hands-down. So over time He molded my heart to pray for His will, rather than to try to impose my own onto His.
His will included me attending school and pursuing an education. It included Him revealing to me passions for women and identity and Jesus and cultures. It included me not going to Africa again but to Haiti, and it was upon returning to America after this trip that I was hit hardcore with re-entry syndrome for a second time, perhaps even more strongly than the first. The term "shock" is an accurate label, because I could hardly function for about a week. I struggled with consumerism and materialism and aspects of the American culture that are so individualistic that it still overwhelms me at times, but maybe that's a good thing. I couldn't go anywhere or do anything without questions of "why" racing through my mind.
What is everyone doing? Why are we all sitting in cutesie cafes drinking mimosas and throwing our heads back in laughter while children are crying out from hunger pains in places all over the world? Why are we throwing our brunch remnants into trash cans when multiple families are struggling to make it on less than a dollar a day? Why are we freaking out over iphones and possessions and slow restaurants and I can't handle it all, I just want to be living the messy with hurting people and everyone here is putting up a clean facade.
And yet, for as much as I have prayed for Him to God has never asked me to live in another country. My heart is so drawn to other cultures, but He's always asked me to stay planted right in the one that I was born in.
I'm not even sure if I will travel overseas again for awhile. Right now I'm invested in what Mission of Hope is doing in Haiti, but it's an investment of prayer and financially giving to what the ministry is doing in the country rather than going and helping them myself. Though plans could certainly change, I doubt God will ever lead me to full-on live in Haiti or any other country, because over time He has shown me that America has needs and places that He wants me to speak into, wants me to be a part of. Not that He needs me, but that He is inviting me to be a part of what He's doing. He's calling me here for reasons that I know yet for various ones that I don't quite know yet.
I was angry about it for awhile. Why? Why, why, why am I being asked to stay put in the one culture that least fits me? I'd argue with Him in prayer, telling him I'm too much of a wild-child spirit to fit these American confinements. I'm not patriotic, not individualistic, not any of these things that often define the United States. I didn't understand why He wanted me in college or various other contexts.
Then one day a realization hit me: God was here, too.
And His kingdom calling is just as loud in the United States as it is in Kenya or Haiti or anywhere else in the world. He's opened my eyes to people that are struggling to survive in the streets of Abilene, those who are hurting in the deepest parts of Dallas, to women who are broken and exploited and abused in the city of Portland, one of the largest hubs for sex-trafficking in the United States. I'll be traveling to Portland in three short weeks to intern in the city for the duration of the summer. I'm terrified and excited all at once.
There are people all over this beautiful, broken, messy, lovely planet that need love. We all need Jesus lovin'. It's why we have each other I believe, so that we can look into the faces of those around us and speak it out: you're worth something grand.
The kingdom is all around us, and you don't have to travel to Africa to experience it to the full. The kingdom is both here and to come, and the need to live it out is pressing in hard on our hearts whether we admit it or not.
As our friends cry to us from broken places deep down in their being. As children are abused in dark spaces. As people all around us are without homes and food and medicine and necessities. As mamas strive to balance dirty dishes and runny noses and crazy kiddos. As couples stumble through relationships and as we interact with one another on a day-to-day basis.
The kingdom is calling.
It's true that Africa was the place that God wrecked my life in a way I had never before experienced, but it's also true that His presence is everywhere to be experienced. His love is all around, and His movements are within the cracks and crevices of every corner of the earth. God is moving and breathing into the lives of everyday people in the midst of everyday circumstances, and He is asking you and me and every person to move and breathe with Him.
This spirit-breathed life is a moment by moment calling, a mindset that says "God, where you go I will go and where you stay I will stay".
Somewhere along my journey of life I stopped pleading with God to send me back to Africa or even Haiti and started asking Him to open my eyes to the surroundings around me. I started asking Him who needs love today, right here, right now. Where is His kingdom spreading, and how is He asking me to be a part of it?
That Jesus love was tangible on that dusty road in Nairobi, but it is waiting to be just as tangible on this American soil. It's tangible in Haiti and it's tangible in Italy. It's real anywhere in the world, and it's ours to claim. His love is ours to live out.
Some people are indeed called to Haiti or Africa, to live and dwell and have long-term, lasting effects on the people and the country. Katie Davis is an empowering example of this, a girl who sold everything she had to go and found a non-profit ministry in Uganda. She's currently running a child-sponsorship program, feeding hundreds of kids each day, and providing education for an up and coming generation. She's also adopted, yes actually adopted, thirteen ugandan children. She's a twenty-something single mother of thirteen.
And she's moving with God to change those kids lives.
Jennie Allen writes in her book Anything how she and her husband felt led to adopt from Africa, and as they prayed through the whole situation God revealed how exactly the process was to unfold. Jennie and her family are breathing and moving with God to love well and be faithful in international adoption. Both of these examples, these stories from Katie and Jennie, are big examples of living out the kingdom, and they are inspiring stories that are rich and full and overflowing with obedience.
The love of God is in the big and small. That's what so great about His love, that it's so vast, so wide and high and deep and magnificent that it covers every person. At the same time though it is intimate, reaching down to weave its way into the lives of individual people all over this earth.
I think a lot of us within Christianity have a mindset that says we aren't being purposeful if we aren't traveling the globe or starting a non-profit ministry or doing some sort of big, grand, magnificent task, and that simply isn't true. Being faithful to God and fulfilling your kingdom purpose is a daily fulfillment. It's found in the little ways of love as well as the seemingly-larger adventures. If you're wondering what you're supposed to be doing with your life, pray about where you're at. Ask for open eyes and an open heart to see what God is doing, to find where God is moving. God may be pulling you to travel halfway across the world to teach at a school in Zimbabwe, it's true. Your Africa might not be Africa at all. Your Africa might be China. It might be Nepal or Switzerland or even the tiny town of Abilene, Texas. It might be on a dusty road filled with potholes or it might be in a kitchen preparing food for littles. It may be in the classroom or on a sand volleyball court, or on the streets of Denver or at a pregnancy center. It may be where you'd least expect it or it may be in the most expected of all places.
It might be in a way that you deem extraordinary or it may be quite ordinary indeed.
God is moving in every part of this world, and He's asking us to move with Him. He's asking us to be authentic and free and alive and purposeful each day, inviting us to be Jesus to one another no matter what we're doing or where we find ourselves.
Each day this question: what is my Africa? Where am I called to live out the kingdom? Where is God moving and breathing and working, and how is He asking me to be a part of it? From the biggest action to the smallest word, how can I glorify Him?
Every second of every day, how can I choose love?
