I have been home from Lesotho for over 4 months now, but the
lessons that God began to teach me in that beautiful mountain kingdom are still
very much ongoing. I have been so homesick for Africa lately. I have been
looking for jobs and struggling because I have no idea what I want to do with
my life or where God wants me in this next season. God used Lesotho- getting
over there, serving there, and now coming home to the U.S.- to teach me how to
‘fear not’. I have not always considered myself to be an anxious person, but
for some reason I have noticed that I tend to have a lot of fear about my
future- namely things that are completely out of my control. What job should I
get? Who will I marry? What is my 5/10/25 year plan? And the list of questions
and worries goes on.
A few months ago I was told by a dear friend that I was “not
the least hard-headed of God’s children”. If that’s not the Truth spoken in
love I don’t know what is. And it got me thinking. If God is all-powerful and
omniscient, why did he create me to be so prone to anxiety? He could have made
me so much more faithful and much less fearful. Even if he had originally
designed me this way, he is the ultimate healer and redeemer, so why can’t he
just fix me? I kept crying out for more faith and less worry. I was so tired of being anxious. And then I
realized that God HAD been healing me. It’s a long- and slow, painfully slow!-
process, but I have been changing. Like my friend had implied, I was being taught the same
lesson over and over again, it was just taking a while to stick.
This led me back to wrestling with the issue of why God
creates us with innate weaknesses when he has the power to eradicate them before
we even come into existence. Today I had an interesting thought. Perhaps God is
struck by a moment of inspiration when it comes to creating each and every one
of us. In that instant he can still see our future sin and brokenness, as he is
knitting us together in our mother’s womb and numbering the hairs on our head,
but he is already so in love with us that he can’t bear to change a thing about
us. Plus, he knows that in our deepest moments of brokenness, our sin and
inadequacies will be what ultimately draw us nearest to him. While he will hurt
when he sees us in pain, his longing to be close to his beloved and to reveal himself
to us balances his grief. He does not need to be needed, but I think that God
wants us to need him because it is his great joy to take us by the hand and
lead us out of danger/fear/turmoil and lead us to a place of rest.
As I look back on some of the challenges that I have faced
over the past couple of years, I now realize that I am grateful for my
shortcomings because they have radically changed my faith and how I view my
relationship with Christ. Just because God has me in a place of waiting, my current
lack of direction doesn’t mean that he has forgotten me or that he doesn’t have
a plan or purpose for me. It simply means that he is allowing me to rest. My
prayer for the past few years has been ‘Send me!’ but now I think it’s more
appropriate for it to be ‘Stay with me.’ Because wherever I am, I want God to
be also, and I believe that‘s been his desire all along. I will definitely be
adding this to my ‘life lessons from Lesotho’. I miss that little country and
all of my loved ones in it; I will never again take for granted the privilege
that it was to live and serve there. It was an invaluable time in my life and I
hope and pray that I get back there someday soon :)
"And we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God. Not only so, but we also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance: character; and character: hope. And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us."
~Romans 5: 2-5
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