Raindrops, Tears, and Grace

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.

The Heart of the Matter: Concering Now and Later

Leaving Congo, I knew I couldn’t leave my heart behind. After all, how could I love God with all my heart in Canada, when pieces of it remained in Congo?

I’m a sucker when it comes to self-pity. So I made the decision, asked Jesus to help me keep it, and cried as I kissed my Congo-land goodbye.

I never realized what would happen.

Instead of leaving my heart in Congo, Congo came to Canada in my heart!

See, this Canada-land knows how to cause eyes to stray, to lull consciences to sleep…

I walk the tarmac roads, trying to ignore the intruding noises of incessant traffic. A few blades of courageous grass peep out from inbetween sidewalk blocks at my feet. Shops bigger than ten houses in Congo put together line the highway right and left. Shops that are colourfully playful, shops that are sober and serious, shops that are decorated in dollar signs and shops that delicately display their antique goods. All with the message of buy, buy, buy. How can I find contentment here?

I want to make a friend, but how does one do it in this culture? The girl is dressed in skin tight jeans and flimsy shirt. I look at her face…her beautiful face. Eyes directed so intent on the small screen she holds in her hand could be so deep and lovely if she lifted them. There’s a heart behind those eyes. So I come close, and I offer words. But they stick in my throat, they come out scratchy, they sound strange and the offer isn’t understood. She looks up briefly and walks away. For one stricken heart-beat I’m ready to bawl, and then I slowly walk away too. Did I look, did I sound so vulgar and strange? How do I relate here? How do I make friends?

Pressure closes in to tell me that I’m wasting my days. Wasting. My heart feels the burn of acidy impatience – I must do something! I look for a job everywhere I can think of, everywhere my friends and family can think of, and there is nothing. Nothing. Sometimes, I resent the whole cheerful consumerism panorama that meets my eyes everytime I step out on the street. Oh this land of opportunity, indeed! Sometimes I dread starting a conversation, because I know the inadequate answers I must give to the inevitable questions. I fall short according to these standards. Very short. How do I find identity here?

My eyes , they can stray. Yes. My heart, it can beat to another rhythm and forsake the God-song. Yes. My blood, it knows now to pulse to a beat I never thought would be mine. But when I’m about to be swept out of My Father’s world onto the artificial dance-floor of the this phony world, I see HER. A little, sweet brown face. Eyelashes so long, kissing her dimply cheeks. Smile that is sweet sunshine. Hands that grab and hold close. I know her! Little Germain, the girl who was spoiled and disobedient, who has no father to love her, whose mother seems to ignore more than cherish. The girl who is now somewhere trekking with her family through the Congo rainforest to find their father. I don’t know where.

Her face arrests me.

Congo is still in my heart.

Everyone here asks what I will be, where I will go, what I will do with my life. It is such a vast question. I smile before answering, because grace is that amazing.

I will: Love Jesus. He, the King and Lover who pursues me and holds me and keeps me in His love. He, who has won my heart! I will: Live in Congo forever….until I die. Congo, the land where there are deep needs to match the deep passions Jesus is nurturing in my heart. Congo, where an eternal battle is being fought. Congo, where there are brown babies and mud puddles, butterflies and bananas! Congo, with rainstorms and grace, music and rhythm.

All my heart is here, today. All my heart is singing praise and thanks that I can love Jesus AND live in His love in Canada, AND still love Congo.

What a God!

What grace!

 

Give us Grace, Not “Normal”

Her eyes lock mine. Her wrinkled face is contorted, and her statement comes out as a question; “God will help us…?” I glance down at her daughter suffering on the hospital bed, recovering from an operation, and then back at the face so close to mine. The eyes begging an answer. I say the one word, the yes. Anna she sings, and I play my flute. We try to bring the melody of grace to this one girl in a bustling hospital full of hurting people. It is His faithfulness and mercy to the girl who wears fresh wounds deep in her stomach. She will scar and there will be no more smoothness, just a memory of the suffering. The floor is cracked, the walls are dirty, people are shuffling past and a baby is wailing but we pray that now, like never before, she will know His presence. Because sometimes pain drives us into His presence, into His peace.

—-

Half an hour later, we are sitting at another young lady’s home, enjoying the cool shade under the thatched roof of their sitting-place. Little girls play with piles of pebbles, and a chicken wanders through puddles of sunshine dancing on the dirt floor.

As the talk continues, we get into deeper subjects. I hear the story of the little girl sitting on my friends lap. How she was brought when a tiny baby, dropped off by her mother who left and hasn’t come back. How she had an operation and my friend stayed with her at the hospital for all those days. How she drank juice and sugary tea and water, and now was just beginning to eat. How she saw my friend as her mother. The story keeps coming, but it’s so similar to the ones I’ve already heard so many times from girls my age. So many have little girls or little boys who they “mother” in whatever way they think best. The little ones are almost entirely spoiled with instant gratification of their every wish. I think of the article I read this week about how the lack of a father affects children and I swish my water in the tin cup and pray in my heart for the children of Congo.

I ask if it doesn’t break the mother’s heart to come back and find her baby attached to someone else? Doesn’t it hurt a mother to be constantly working and return in the evening to find her children distanced from her, to find that she cannot talk to her daughters anymore?

Oh, but it’s normal, they tell me. Parents mostly want to get their children to university and get them married/settled down somewhere, they tell me. Parents know that university will ruin their children, and many don’t check out the integrity of their child’s spouse as long as there is enough money in the marriage to make them feel important.

They say it like this hard fact. So many parents figure their kids are ruined anyways by that age that they don’t even try to salvage them. Maybe the parents themselves don’t have anything else to offer their kids, I think. 

After all, it is normal.

“How can you ask if someone regrets that they only eat with their mouth, and not with their eyes or nose?” they ask me, “They don’t even know that another way exists.”

I close my eyes to stop the pounding in my head. I see the face of that girl in the hospital. So that’s where she’ll end up? I open my eyes and see the happy little girl still playing with her pebbles and it makes me sick to think of her future. I see the toddler cuddled in my friend’s lap and think of where her mother is….where her father is….I think of how girls from nine and up are put in charge of rearing babies and toddlers – they do not know how to raise them. Oh, the children of Congo!

In the evening friends come to see me, and they speak of all the same issues. One says that when she’s a mother, if she doesn’t want all her children, she’ll just ‘give some away’. Speaks of how she’s trained her younger siblings to love and obey her instead of their mother.

Pray for this new generation, that there would be a new mentality, that they would have new hearts….

Grace has begun, we see healing in families. There are always exceptions to normal. But there is still so far to go….

Pray for the parents of Congo.