Heaven leaks today and I am homesick.
For the first time since Rainforest-Life, I see the white skeleton hands of crackling fury scratch dark night sky, creation threatenening thunderously. The house shakes. Curled up on the sofa, I feel it shake. It has been so, so long since I have felt sky-vibrations and memories wake. The agonizing skies drip rain that is both merry and soothing. I hear a sweet jig danced on some tin surface outside.
Oh, it makes me homesick….homesick!
I never realized how much nature affected our Congo-lives till I came back to this land of warm houses and carpeted cars. Each time I am inside and watch out the window the trees shake as the wind blows but hear and feel nothing, something feels like it’s dying inside of me.
See, I come from a land of screens for windows and open doors and days and nights of running inside and out, the two worlds merged into one. It would rain in the dark night, and I would wake to the sound of Dad stumbling around the house, gathering up buckets and pans to place under leaks. (For that matter, I also woke because I would be in my own private mini-shower!) The symphony of rain lashing against our tin roof would merge with the soprano voices of our kitchen pots and pans collecting their first drops.
And when night was still a suggestion but not yet reality, in that tentative dusky gloaming, King Wind would blow furiously, sweeping the atmosphere clean of oppresive humidity, gusting through the whole house. I would drop dishes, drop homework, whatever I was doing, and rush outside to stand, exhilerated in the rush, steadying myself when it seemed that I would be picked right up and fly away.
Yes, I remember this too, that it was inconvenient, at times, to be so affected by nature’s whims. It was disastrous for many of our friends when crops and houses took a battering.
But it was life.
And now that whole life is gone from me.
And God, in His grace, revealed so much to me about Himself through Congo-nature. I counted the rain storms and the glorious, glorious sky among my primary instructors, and I thrilled to their testimony.
Heaven speaks here too, of course, yet I miss the Congo-dialect I grew to love.
And yet, it is so easy to stop remembering what once was so much of my life. It is hard to remember the sky.
But today, an ocean away from the rainforest, I danced in cold Spring rain. Today, I sit inside but the celestial argument still thunders close.
Today, I am homesick.
But as I danced in the rain and walked country roads today, and cried because of homesickness, there was also happy gratitude that my home is nowhere less than IN JESUS! I do belong somewhere – I belong in Him. So tears of pain for what is gone mingled with tears of joy at being surprised by peace – at-home-ness!
So, dear reader, the word “homesick” could best be read “Congo-sick”.
This is pain: my Congo-world is dead. I will never, never live that life again. I dance now to another tune. There is no going back. So I weep with the rain….
This is grace: I am home already. And you want to hear real, unfathomable grace?
“You number my wanderings; Put my tears into Your bottle; Are they not in Your book?” (Psalm 56:8)
Who can forbid the rain to fall? Who can mute thunder? Why have I lived for years thinking that to cry my tears and speak my pain is to be disloyal to God? Why has no one ever told me that God numbers my wanderings, catches my tears, and that even these are precious in the story He writes of my life?
So the God who gives rain gives me tears today, tears for what is no longer mine, tears to heal what is still hurting so bad inside….and all the while I know that everything is mine in Christ.
Is it strange?
Grace can be.
Exceeding Imagination 