Hello Uganda, Hello Spirit.

I think back to who we were before we moved, excited newly found Christians, naive and hopeful, eagerly running toward the call and commandment of Christ with reckless abandon. We said goodbye to our friends, family, fellowship, home, and possessions to pursue the mission field and we surrendered it all knowing God would use the scraps of our sacrifice to create something brilliant, beauty from ashes, but we had no idea how refining in would be.

We were sent out with celebratory tears and cheers, like a gladiators being sent from the bowels of the arena into the fight of their lives. We left our small town and church of what seemed to be endless community,  to enter a world of a million faces but not one to call friend. 

The night we arrived in Uganda we were picked up from the airport by a stranger, who would later become a friend, who would later use us and deceive us. Oh what woods we were to walk through. We arrived at a little cottage where we would stay until we furnished our waiting house. I opened our bags to scour for pajamas for the kids who were also doing inventory of their strange surroundings. I thought the hardest part was over, the sting of our sacrifice and now I was expectantly awaiting a "blessing". The fruit of our labor. The grand prize at the end of our race.... but what I got that night was crickets. Very loud, deafening crickets, and barking dogs, and croaking frogs, but no blessing. 

Our entire first year living in a foreign country I searched high and low for our blessing. (I should clarify... I did not expect this to be physical, monetary, or anything tangible, but with each tear I shed, I felt God whisper, "Your eyes will dry and  you will see clearly soon." -so I waited with great anticipation to see the outcome of this whispered promise). Ministry began to take shape, we made friends who quickly became family, we had visitor after visitor but still searched like the hopeful bird in the book, "Are You My Mother?" I waited and waited, hopeful, peeking around every corner asking "Are you my blessing?"

There was great laughter and joyous moments, but there was also more deep sorrows than my fragile soul had known. We watched our friends' lives play out from afar. Babies were born, whom we couldn't hold. Houses were sold and homes were bought. Holidays came and went without family or feasts. Children grew and lives changed. It was a heavy 10 months but it was time to go "home" for our annual furlough.

It had been the hardest months of our lives and we couldn't have been more elated to take a break from the hard and be home, but as someone recently told me: You can never really go home again. 

Our highly anticipated 6 week furlough was more or less of a disaster (as it almost always is when you have something you've built up in your head). We ate one meal together as a family in our 6 weeks of running to disappoint virtually everyone around us. Our fundraiser flopped. Our friends had lives and jobs (um what?). We felt like foreigners in our hometown and we realized that nothing was the same. Not because people had changed or things had changed, but because we had changed. We had spent nearly a year walking through fire and wading through sludge. Our hearts had held higher joys and deeper grief then words could say. Our spirits were stronger and suddenly our lives didn't fit in the mold they used to. Sifting through the muck of our failed furlough, I had finally found our blessing. It wasn't at all, what I had hoped for, or expected it to be.

It was the new burning resilience buried within our souls. It was the fiery flame of faith that could't be blown out by wind or rain. It was defined spiritual muscles and that couldn't be eaten away by disease or death. Our trust in our Maker, Keeper, Savior, and Spirit had transformed. Our feeble hearts had been transplanted with the strength and very heart of God. We had seen His mighty hand mending brokenness that was beyond worldly repair. We had witnessed His sovereign righteousness within the most radical injustice. We were held together in an unweatherable season by the ridiculous grace and mercy of His hand. (yes, I made up a word there)

Nearly three years since moving to Uganda I now sleep through the deafening crickets, barking dogs, and croaking frogs. I look at my kids who's memories of our American home and life have grown foggy with time and how the red dirt has ingrained itself in their porous feet and the cuticles of their toenails as well has their hearts. I see the way their identities are completely entangled in this beautiful country the way the vines on the banks of the Nile entangle themselves in the trees. I see our sweet baby girl in her motherland is as peaceful as she was in her mother's womb. 

I often think of who we were before the move, and there are times I miss our simple faith. I ask myself what would have happened if we didn't respond to the prompting of The Sprit to move? What if we would have closed the shutters and locked the doors that God was opening? What if we allowed the dust to settle and the weeds to grow over the path the He was laying for our family? What if we would have turned around when we encountered rough terrain? I can almost envision what it would have looked like, and I know that yes, we would have been just fine. But when I imagine our comfortable, conventional lives, I become grateful for the grit that God has granted us and smirk thinking of our kids' forever stained feet and hearts.