Finding Beauty in the Broken.

After our second furlough in America, we returned to Uganda to begin our third year feeling more encouraged and more refreshed than we had been in years. We had come out of a difficult season and had been intentional in establishing healthy boundaries for the well being of our family. We said no more often and had created our home to be a place of peace and refuge because frankly, we needed one.

We arrived back in Uganda soaring on eagles wings and we could feel God asking us to slowly open up the walls we had built and invite more people in, situations in, and things in that we had been guarding our hearts and children's hearts from.

I was joyful for His calling. Obediently, I began removing the bricks I had put in place. I said yes to joining the Uganda IF Conference Leadership Team, I started a Wednesday night bible study with a group of ladies, and we committed ourselves to inviting someone that we don't normally spend time with over for dinner once a week. 
But before we could begin the slow dismantle of our wall, the entire thing came tumbling down.

 We were faced with some of the most surreal situations we had ever been involved in. And although we are not the main characters in each story of hardship, our souls struggle and hearts cry out along with the protagonists.

Just a few weeks into our time at home in Uganda, we were met with mango worms and mob justice.

We held our darling 4 month old baby down to squeeze more than 30 living worms out of her sweet, delicate skin. We saved thieves from being lit on fire in front of our home after they had been brutally beaten with machetes over and over again, then drenched in gasoline at the hands of our friends and neighbors, whom we are called to love. We held starving children, children who’s mothers refuse to feed them. We laid hands on a girl rejected by her village because her mind is held captive by demonic spirits and suicidal thoughts. We sheltered a friend who demanded justice for a mentally handicapped child being repeatedly raped and molested, but her community saw no value in the girl’s life so they turned on the accuser -threatening her with violence and death. We searched for our friend’s kidnapped son and accompanied him to petition the police to continue investigating his case after his son was found, alive, bound, and gagged in a bag at the edge of the lake. We invited in a young girl to live in our home and be part of our family after her mother was evicted from her house and moved into the back of a bar, under the conditions her young daughter would serve drinks in low cut shirts, and skirts a little too high. We cried with and prayed with friends who’s adoptions wouldn’t be recognized by the US government, so they remained like hostages in a foreign country unable to return home as a family. We asked God to heal our children from scarring skin infections, blistering their legs and faces like 3rd degree burns. We cried with loved ones in hospital beds after terrifying diagnoses.

We walked with others through the wilderness, through fires, and through the hardest seasons of their lives and somehow count it as a great privilege to bare witness to such pain and sorrow. As difficult it was wade through the waters, we find beauty in weeping with the weary in the most broken peices of their lives.

We stand firm on the notion where there is The Spirit moves there will be struggle. We’ve seen story after story filled with suffering for the ultimate glory of God, who desires to heal the broken, redeem the worthless, and give platforms to the powerless.

There is none above reproach. There is none hidden from hardship. And if my heart breaks along with the broken then I’m walking the right road. We are called as a church to love others so deeply that every ounce of ourselves is entangled in their losses and victories. We are not yoked to bondage or slavery, but are bonded together under the same yoke, as slaves to Christ for freedom sake.

This year may not have been as pretty and picture perfect as I intended, but we persevere. We pursue The Light of the world through the darkest hour with great zeal and passion because we know that God will have His glory. The story of our Savior did not stop at the grave, because He had to be nailed to that cross and buried behind a stone before He could be raised and resurrected. And so our stories shall be: tempted and tried before the time of Kingdom’s crowns.

This year held trauma and terror, and to be honest, I didn’t know how cold I was until I stepped out of the water, But God- who’s mercies are new each morning, who’s grace is sufficient, who knows the beginning and end, who is the author of each tale, and knows every tear because He, Himself draped Himself in human flesh and walked our very roads -will equip those in which He calls.

And the call my friends is this: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second is: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these.”-Mark 12:30-31

Our call is to love The Lord with every fiber of our being and to love our neighbors with the same love and reverence as we desire- not what we are deserving of. This year we witnessed the true depravity of man, ugliness of sin and are called to love anyway. We are not called to mend the broken -God does that- we are simply called to endure the brokenness with our brothers, dancing like light in a darkened world.