For my loved ones back home...

For my loved ones back home:

This last weekend, I was sitting under a cabana in a restaurant, surrounded by gorgeous red tile, lush tropical plants, and beautifully set tables. I was sitting across the table from one of my greatest new friends, Brittany, talking about a million things, and nothing all at the same time.

We were sipping crisp white wine, and scooping up chocolate cake a la mode with spoons... trying hard not to steal the other's portion as we savored every bite. 

And then it began to rain.

If you haven't had the fortune of experiencing an African rainstorm, I hope that one day you will.

That phrase, 'when it rains, it pours' must have been coined on this continent, because I've never seen an African drizzle. When it rains, it truly pours; drowning out sound, sights and this weekend I watched it completely hide the Nile from view (it was right in front of me). 

We looked around for our waiter, wondering if we should run for cover, but then stopped. Our cabana was perfectly large enough to protect just our table, our cake and our wine, from the pounding rain.

African rain is intense but it's refreshing, inspiring; it makes you take a breath and affords you a moment to reflect. 

I watched the raindrops fall on the petals of my favorite flower, pink hibiscus, and felt cool and clean and hopeful.

It was the perfect moment... made even MORE perfect by the perfect soundtrack.

With African rain surrounding us... Toto's Africa was clearly the song for the moment.

I whipped out my iPod and we put headphones in, laughing and singing and marveling at the unbelievable pleasure that was our life in that moment.

And then, with my insides lazily relaxing into my glass of wine, I began to listen to the lyrics... with fresh ears this time. 

"It's going to take a lot to take me away from you- there's nothing that a hundred men or more could ever do..."

And I began to think of you... my friends, my family, my loved ones... all those I left behind.

Although the Race has the makings of the perfect 'escape'... an escape from a past, from a present, from a future... from a life that looks differently than we had ever planned or wanted... that's not what it was for me.

My decision to go on the race had nothing to do with running away. It had nothing to do with escaping, and as I think of the people I left behind, I am filled with love and longing, nothing else.

I didn't leave to run away. 

As I was listening to Toto croon away- I was reminded of the process of leaving. And he described it pretty perfectly for me.

It took absolutely all of my strength to leave you. There's nothing that a hundred men or more could ever have said or done to make me leave.

I hate missing the moments that matter: weddings, funerals, baptisms, slumber parties (yes... those still happen), laughter, tears, hugs and kisses. I HATE missing those things.

It took SO much to take me away from you. 

It took exactly one man's voice.

He said; "Go" and I went.

"Go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age." 

~Matthew 28:19-20 

I went because Jesus asked me to. 

I'm saying this all to remind myself as much as to remind you.  

I don't want you for one second to think that you're forgotten. I will not come back someone unlike the person you knew... I will just come back a better version of myself. But I haven't forgotten you. I haven't stopped loving you.  

And I'm saying this for my benefit because here I am, now over halfway done with the race, yet sometimes although the end is drawing nearer, I still feel very far away. 

Sometimes, in the dead of night, bumping down African roads on buses, and staring out the window at the sleeping villages that pass by in a blur, it's easy to feel alone. It's easy to wonder what I was thinking in signing up for something like this. It's easy to miss home- even letting myself believe for just a second that I never should have left.

"After all, I haven't forgotten them, but have they forgotten me? Am I going to come back hoping to slip back into the role I once filled... only to find that I've been replaced?"

These are the fears that try to knock at the door of my mind late at night.

But it's days like this one... wine, cabanas, and refreshing African rain that remind me that none of those fears will ever come true. 

Matthew 19:29 says "and everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or children or fields for my sake will receive a hundred times as much and will inherit eternal life."

I didn't go on the race to be rewarded... that honestly was never my goal, but that's what's happened... and it's not even over yet.

The reward isn't a far off, illusive sort of idea... the type of idea that if you tried to put a number on, or close your fist around would end up just being a puff of smoke.

Jesus has rewarded my sacrifice every single day that I've been gone.

And it was all tied together for me in one beautiful moment of understanding, while listening to Toto, in the pouring Ugandan rain.

Matthew 7:7-11 says that God is a great gift giver. He never gives us things to trick us... when we ask one thing of Him, he never gives us the opposite to spite us, or to vindictively 'teach us a lesson.' He's a good gift giver... all the time. Even when he IS teaching us lessons.

I'm learning an extraordinary amount of lessons right now, and I have been all year... but alongside this discomfort, this stretching, this refinement by fire, have been fantastic gifts.

And it's not just that He's made me into a secure woman, confident of my worth, sure of who I am, and to whom I belong... it's not that He's delivered me of hurts and wounds and scars, and in their place filled me with joy, beauty, peace and an anointing beyond my wildest dreams... it's more than that.

God, having taken me away from my family, my friends, my loved ones... has rewarded me in little, beautifully intimate ways... ways that only I would notice.

This last weekend I got to raft the Nile in Uganda. I got to get flipped out of a boat on a gigantic class 5 rapid, and float down the river wrapped in my life vest, only to look up at the sky and thank the Lord for being a God that loves adventure.

I got to stand in a gorgeous wooden bar that overlooked the river and watch as a rainstorm made the Nile completely disappear... surrounded by 43 friends and fantastic country music.

I even got to have a massage (8 USD) at the hotel next door!

God knows me. He knows my heart intimately, and he knows my love language for sure. He knows the gifts that make me smile, and make me feel loved and pursued. And he's filled this year with those little treasures.

He's filled this year with love and adventure and beauty beyond anything I could have even thought to ask for. 

God asked me to sacrifice my greatest loves... he asked me to sacrifice YOU. But his Word promises us that our sacrifices will be rewarded... today AND for all of eternity. And he wasn't kidding.

So yes... it took a LOT to take me away from you. I miss you always... but there is not one day that goes by where I don't trust the Lord with you in his hands. 

He's proving his goodness and his love and his faithfulness and his 'good gift giving' to me every single day out here... in big ways and small ways. He's good. All the time. Every day. And so I trust him. I trust him with today, with tomorrow, with this month and the next. I trust him with the little things, and with the huge things.

Because if he can take a weekend in Uganda and fill it with such incredible gifts... I can only imagine what else he has up his sleeve when we're truly obedient to his call. 

"I know that I must do what's right, sure as Kilimanjaro rises like Olympus above the Serengeti"