“Why I don’t want to go but am still going.” Quite the name of a post, huh? The confidence is just exploding out of the title, I know.
Folks have been asking me why I haven’t updated the blog since our “how it is that we decided to move to Rwanda” his/her posts and, frankly, there are three very easy-to-explain reasons: 1) those words pretty much captured most of what I’ve learned in the past 9 years (related to the decision to move) so I didn’t have much else to say for a while, 2) we’re moving across the world and so I’d rather spend time with people or do the necessary packing work than type something and 3) I’m just so, so sad.
So that’s what I’m writing about: what it is about being so sad…and scared. And still going.
For all of our marriage (literally) I’ve wanted to move to a developing country. I just really, really wanted to. I was sure of it. After spending half of our engagement living with Zimbabwean girls who had been orphaned by AIDS, I ached to live our life together alongside folks who are beautifully made in God’s image and yet who are impoverished in ways that robs them of many expressions of that inherent beauty and dignity. So I begged, pleaded, demanded, fought, cried, longed, hoped that we would “go.” Not with 100% exclusivity (my heart, like yours, beats for many things)…but certainly with consistency. The ebb and flow of that longing was more like a pendulum swing from slow, quiet, deep guttural longing to explosive need, desire and demand.
I can’t really explain it, but my longings and passions didn’t originate from me and that clarification is a big part of this.
If I were speaking right now I think I would be whispering, as it feels like holy ground, this particular moment of speaking of the unsearchable Weaver: but it is as if while I was tenderly and intentionally knit together in my mother’s womb, He was likewise counting and equally delighting in the number of hairs on Isaiah’s birth mother’s head. And as he knit her, He knit me.
And we are woven together, though not knowing one another. Forever.
He carefully placed an expression of His love for “her” into me. And so for as long as I can remember after having my eyes opened to faith and receiving the spirit, for reasons higher than my mind can explain, the idea of knowing and being known by, loving and being loved by, and serving and being served by folks in a place like Rwanda has consistently made my belly and heart ache more than other things.
And it still does. The cries of the poor and marginalized cause groans inside me. Their cries and His hearing of their cries are part of my DNA, as I share their humanity and bear His image.
So I am confident that God has planned this story for us. This move to Rwanda.
And yet, even this afternoon the tears are still there. They are different than the ones wept when we didn’t take the job in Congo 6 years ago and when we didn’t get the job in Rwanda 3 years ago. They are different than that mix of unfaithfully bitter tears of an Eve-like woman trying to make a name for herself. And they are different than the faithfully aching tears of a woman made by and for Him, aching for those who are suffering and yet learning to wait on the LORD for His plans and timing. Those faithful and unfaithful ones shed on the same day in the same moments, neither kind really like today’s.
These tears today, while still a mix of faith and unbelief, reflect the reality that while perhaps we are sometimes called to specific places and specific kinds of people, we are all always called to love our neighbor and to honor our family. And we have come to love many and to be loved by many who are here, who we leave behind. It would seem unbefitting of a woman made to reflect the Maker who delights in all of us, for me to feel or act unaffected by this move. His love for people who are here and His sure knitting of me to them, too, move me to tears as we move toward a season when we’ll spend most of our time apart. My tears don’t feel like they confuse me about whether or not He has called us to go, they feel like they speak of other relationships and other loves also knit into me. and the longing for eternity together.
The tears in large part come because when there are things to rejoice about in beloved people’s lives (not in Rwanda), we will not get to physically stand and rejoice with them. And when there are things to grieve about in beloved people’s lives (not in Rwanda), we will not get to physically kneel or lay prostrate with them as we grieve alongside). And so I weep. and still we go.
