Four years ago, I could predict the general story
of my life. I could probably have listed my dreams on paper for you with pride
and comfort. My hands wrapped tightly around a future and an idea of God that
seemed safe, and I thought I was happy there.
Until one crucial piece changed, and all of a sudden following my God meant
letting go. The scary kind. Letting go of safe dreams
and certain timelines, to step into uncertain, painful ones with no guarantees. It was
terrifying. In dark places my heart cried out and I began to need – and to know
- God differently. Slowly I began to open white knuckled fists just a little bit, and He
met me there. He used the pain to create a space and as we waded together through oceans of tears and fear and sin and forgiveness, He began filling the empty in me with new things.
One day six months later He leaned in and whispered, Come away, I want to show you more of Me.
One day six months later He leaned in and whispered, Come away, I want to show you more of Me.
My feet hit red dirt, and He opened my hands wider to fill them with new
gifts I could never have predicted. Here in a war-torn country, here where tears soaked the pages of
His words in my lap, I found what I never expected: hope. I
found hope everywhere. Creeping in the places darkness said it should not be, bouncing out of smiles whose stories should have eroded it forever. I began to know this God as the One
who speaks new life into valleys of dry bones, the King who kneels down in the dirt to be near to the suffering, the God who calls a farmer mighty warrior and makes it true, the Creator who calls forth hope out of
darkness.
I began to trust the One who asks for my palms, my heart, my life held wide
open. He plans past my limited imagination, my secure hopes. He pulls me into the uncomfortable, the painful, and puts power
behind my every weak yes to draw me deeper still.
In March 2014 I found my feet again in this
strangely familiar country halfway around the world, where my God so gently
sings over red earth about the depths of His kind of hope. Plowing through a
list of kids to be added to Let Them LOL’s School Sponsorship Program,
surrounded by a crowd of them chanting, "We want to learn!" my heart was emptied
and filled all over again. It was easy to hope here, I didn’t want to leave. But surrender means learning to listen. I offered my open
palms and began to carry hope with me into darker corners of my city where
God is still teaching me how to listen.
Shortly after returning home, one word changed my world all over again:
Ebola. For months and months I sat on my bed crying as an otherwise
manageable disease ravaged the poorest, most vulnerable communities in the world
including that dusty red land that I love. This was too much. How could this impossibly hopeful place be suddenly drowning in so much hurt all over again? How could I know God as good here in this darkness, where my open heart seemed repeatedly met with deeper hurt? Daily He spoke His promises into the depths of me and I
prayed them back to Him for my friends. Sometimes hope is something we fight
for.
As I prayed for the faces I know, one by one, I learned
about the One who responds to our weakness with mercy. I learned the status of our home base village: zero cases through the entire outbreak. Hope flowed salty down my cheeks. I learned our entire chiefdom was spared. I saw the numbers of daily cases drop from hundreds to single-digits.
Then two
weeks ago, tucked away in a grid full of pictures was a face I knew instantly - even after three years - a little girl named Hawa. The
same Hawa I met on my first trip in January 2013, who shared with me a piece of her heart and stole
some of mine in return. The same Hawa I wrote to when I could not visit with some of our team last year. The same Hawa I cried over on my list
of “Abba, please let her be alive.” There she was in a photo posted just hours before – out of 100+ kids they could
have pictured, at an orphanage I hardly knew how to track down - safe, smiling, and healthy with the impossible news that her
orphanage had avoided the disease. With palms open, I lifted my head and closed my eyes. This was too much! God whispered Call to Me, I will answer you and tell you great and unsearchable things you do not know. Hope. Like a secret meant just for me.
I am no expert at this hope thing, but my dreams look different today than they were four years
ago. I haven’t abandoned the longings planted deep in me but I have laid them down because God cannot
fill my clenched fists. And I want His kind of fullness. My finite dreams and logical timelines might end with some basic version of fairy-tale happiness – but God is making me hungry for joy and a better story. Joy finds that hope endures because
it has learned to walk through dark places, joy trusts that my weakness is
strength in the hands of the One I follow. Joy pays no mind to ever-changing circumstances in the face of God's promises.
God is not afraid of the pain it will take to prove the depths of Him. He knows the greater
value of what His invitation holds. He is bold enough to allow our fear to face
His perfect love and shrink away. He continues to teach me, “every dark place has its redemption in Him. Every single one.” There is always more of Him to be found. When we stop, let our eyes adjust and open our hands we find it to be true: He has hidden hope every dark place.
God plants in me the kind of love that slowly pulls,
finger-by-finger, leaving me with palms open but not empty, wounds exposed but
accessible for healing, hope eternal and vast but intimate and mine, and
expectations deeper than the ones I held to so tightly.
In April I will travel back to red dirt roads
for the third time and I am ready to open my hands, ready to see hope in dark places revealed by
the One who cares for the orphan and the widow. If you’d like to give toward my
trip, it would be a blessing to the nonprofit empowering hope in a dark corner
of the world, and to me. https://my.letthemlol.com/
“I remain confident of this: I will see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living.” Psalm 27:13
(L) Hawa in the orange bandana Jan 2013, (R) Hawa earlier this month!