"Why are you here?" and "What are you doing?"

I can’t tell you how many times I have had to answer these questions, and often the most frustrating thing is I don’t have an answer that people can neatly box away in their brain. Of course there must be a reason why I quit my jobs, gave up my house, left my ministries, packed up my life and moved thousands of miles away from my dear family and friends! The answer is simply, “I came in obedience to a call to go…a call to learn and love.” Unlike many people who come to Africa to ‘do’…Jesus has asked me to come in this season and ‘be’…be with him and be with his people. Of course there is doing that comes with that, but that is not my primary focus. Is this easy? No! I left a world of busyness….good busyness, which included full days of teaching, mentoring, organizing, and planning. It is so easy to think that we are wasting time, when we are doing things that go against the world’s standards of success.

I could tell you that I am here for ___ number of months, working on the ___ project for this or that NGO…and show you a handful of pictures of me holding AIDS babies…but that is not the truth of my time here. I don’t have a clue what my weeks, let alone my days look like. The other morning I woke up in a sweat because I didn’t know what I was meant to be doing that day…it wasn’t that I didn’t have anything to do…I just didn’t have a clear sense of what God was asking me of that particular day. I prayed with my roommate that morning, and the Lord brought to mind two mothers that I should text and see if I could help them with anything. My day was blessed as I was able to serve them, play with their children and process with them about what the Lord is teaching me these days.

Somedays I long for a role or a title...something that makes me feel important or needed...but Jesus is not allowing that in this season. My significance comes from him alone and not in what I can accomplish. What great life lessons these are! When I was in a season of work, oh how I longed for the days where I could sit, read and journal. Now I’ve been blessed with that! It may be a short season or a longer season…but as many of you know, I would be crazy if I didn’t take advantage of it. Life is so precious, each day a gift…regardless of what it holds.