change

apologies for two at once.

So you know: while this is definitely about my experience here, it has nothing to do with my traveling throughout Ghana. It started as a prayer and then turned in to a pretty accurate description of what I’m feeling right now. I had a really great conversation with my good friend Natalie the other day in Togo that really put things in to perspective for me. We’re feeling a lot of the same emotions here and it’s so great to be able to share those with someone who shares the same beliefs as me. I’m blessed to have her here to encourage me. I’ve spent a lot of time in prayer, both satisfying and frustrating, before and after that convo and this is kind of what came out of that. Most definitely still developing and changing every day, every hour. But as is life.

I’m excited for Lent to start today. I know it is intended to be a somber season. But I look at it too as a time for some intense introspection and reflection. I think when I first arrived I got really off track with what my priorities were or should be while I was here. It was so easy to get caught up on the whirlwind of making friends and not wanting to miss out on a thing. Some of the things I really intended to learn from this trip were pushed to the backburner and forgotten for a time. As things have settled down, those ideas have crept up again to the forefront and for a time I could get by suppressing the guilty feeling that overtook me every time I let my mind wander to one of these forgotten ideals. But it became too much to hold back and I had to face the fact that I had strayed from what I had originally intended. This shouldn’t have come as a surprise to me; I had come to let myself believe that I could take on this challenge by myself. And that is always foolish. I had begun though, to feel the gentle prod that there was Someone else there to help, Someone that could carry the load for me and show me the way. I had simply refused to let myself feel vulnerable and helpless enough to feel It before. It’s hard though, to accept the challenge to let myself be changed. To open myself up enough and commit to making an effort. However, it’s also a relief to succumb to His desire. To know that beyond His will, none of it really matters and it is all only a compliment and manifestation of His burning love for me. So for now, everyday I am stumbling and being gently picked back up again. I am attempting to seek Him in new and exciting and surprising ways and to commit that to being a part of me - something I desire beyond anything else, that it becomes so much a part of me that there is no way to avoid it. I don’t know when or how or what there is in store, but to realize yet again that there is most definitely Something brings an almost uncontainable joy. Yet at the same time almost a frustration, an anxiety that is just as hard to contain. For me the challenge is to use that anxiety for good and embody it in love and it is in that that the change will reveal itself. And above all to realize it’s not me or about me at all. It’s about seeking the Jesus in me and letting his love pour in to the Jesus in others in small ways everyday.

loving