The Fine Balance

We are ending our third month back in the States and our eighth month of “homelessness.”  Tonight I am humbled as I take a look at myself and how I’m handling all of this transition.  For the past three months we have been telling people about the work we do in Togo and for the past three months we have received praise and honor for our great “sacrifice” to help those in abject poverty.  I am ashamed to say that I have let that creep in to distract me from the real purpose behind what we are doing.  I am feeling disconnecting from the work because we are so far away and we have another set of objectives for our time here in Denton, but I can honestly say that I am not only missing the passion that comes from seeing the Kabiye live out their day to day lives, I am missing my passion for the One who sent me to serve them.  I’ve begun to take my cues from the people here, who are telling us how much they support us and admire us, and it’s led me to take pride in our work and in myself.  

Tonight I spent some time in worship.  Drawing near to God and truly facing the glory of Christ is always so humbling.  It was a good reminder to me of an elementary truth, something I feel foolish to have forgotten.  It doesn’t matter what we are doing or how “exalted” our position is before man, we all sit humbly at the feet of Christ.  The work we do in Africa is a meager offering to the Lord as we bring nothing to the work except for our feeble selves.  Being a missionary does not exempt me from daily struggling to lay down my life and offer it up to God, and I need to continue to examine myself before him.  

Once again, I am so grateful for the grace of God, that he would not only love and accept me despite my inadequacies, but that he would deign to reveal himself to me so that I can glorify him.

While I was in Memphis I was forced to confront a sensitive issue- the fact that my daughters are growing up.  Mark and I talk about how nice it is that our children are pretty independent and that we can do a lot of things now that we couldn’t when they were younger, but I am still a little wistful at the thought of their growing up and eventually moving on from our home.  Having a garage sale and going through their things triggered a lot of sweet memories of when they were little, and it was pretty difficult to give some of those things up.  I tried to tell myself that it’s ok, I still have the girls, but as Joel Neely pointed out to me we are hard wired to make associations and I had to grieve some of the things we got rid of.  Anything that causes me to reflect on my girls’ early childhood inevitably also leads me to grieve again over having to give up our plans for having more children, so the process is complex.  In some cases it was good to get rid of things.  There were things I treasured that I knew we had no use for, and we gave them to people we love dearly.  It makes me happy to think of these things in their homes with their little girls gathered around them.  

However, I recently received some consolation.  My friend Cathy is a die hard scrapbooker, and she took me to a scrapbooking store with her.  It has been several years since I’ve been able to spend time doing a scrapbook, but now I am looking forward to recording our family life for my girls to enjoy and pass on to their own.  I love the way you can capture moments and thoughts and feelings, and the creativity that comes with scrapbooking.  The ability to keep a memory for future enjoyment is like a salve to my heart which sometimes feels like it has very little in this life to count steady.   It will be great to sit down again and spend time looking at pictures that reveal the quirks of treasures within those I love and to create a lasting book of memories.

As was previously mentioned, we started our time in Memphis with a boom of friends and fun.  Saturday we went to the Dave Matthews Band/ Wille Nelson concert which cannot be given adequate due in a blog.  It was incredible.  I will say a few things and refer you to my friend, Matt’s blog which has some video from the concert, and leave it at that.  Dave started with a great song, Don’t Drink the Water and backed the stage with pictures of underdeveloped countries.  Mark and I both remarked that it made us think of home.  Every song was great but two surprising treats were Burning Down the House (by the Talking Heads) and Sledgehammer (Peter Gabriel is another fave for Mark and me.)  They did an amazing job on both of the covers.  The encore was a performance worthy to end an evening with DMB as Dave sang a sweet, soft song called Sister and then the band launched into a several minute long teaser that eventually became Marching Ants.  Wow, I’m sad it’s over and that chances are great that I won’t be able to do it again.  

Witnessing legendary talent is always an honor (I’m not even trying to sound dramatic here, I really feel that way) and certainly DMB and Willie Nelson are legendary talents.