Thursday, June 13, 2013

He meets me here.

Summer.

Here, it's a season of thundershower evenings. A season when avocados, kineps and grenadia fruits (to name a few) grow in size and abundance... And so has the buzz around this campus. We've recently accumulated over 20 interns on the scene to assist with the hundred-plus team members visiting weekly in the next 2 months. It's exam time for our students, and soon graduation will wrap the year up with a bow and bring on the highly-anticipated VBS-palooza. Kids from the mountains to the coast will be swept into a flurry of sweaty silliness and gospel love. It's awesome. Not to mention our church advancement team, orphanage activities, and mobile clinics that are on the brink of new programs and big strides toward life transformation. Naturally, these also bring new summer staff and first-time full-timers merging into the action with ready hearts to pour out and serve.

This season, there is newness and acceleration happening just about everywhere you go. It's exciting and spreading rapidly across this campus, creating a current of passion, and drawing people in.

But for me, it's a different kind of season. My days, no matter how much I try to pack them full with fractions and vowel blending, guitar jamming next door, 3cord visiting, goat-trailing to mountain family sing-a-longs, smoothie sharing with neighbours, baby talking and report card editing, aren't going to last forever. With each passing day, I become increasingly aware that I'm not gearing up like the rest of this place. As much as my heart longs to fit in alongside these dear people and their upcoming plans, it's not the same as it used to be. The farewell gets a little bit more real everyday, and I feel my direction veering.

It's an awkward place. It's a foreign disconnect between my head and my heart. Because I want to belong and resonate here, but lately there hasn't been the same familiar connection.

And yet even in the discomfort of unknown whys and hows, He meets me here. He quiets my spinning thoughts with His love in the morning light that breaks over the backyard mountains. Yes, each day here is a gift! And He rejoices over me with lullabies in the flickering lightning over Port-au-Prince. He reminds me of His care in the dear ones who listen with eyes full of acceptance, even when I struggle to express the complexities happening in my head. His promises awaken me to new truth and trust as I tread on these new waters. And it's good. I hold my breath with each new step I must take, but His firm foundation holds me faithfully with every release.

Thank you for your prayers. That I may finish the year strong with my boys. That the hours in each day would slow enough for me to seize moments and breathe in the blessings of each God-given moment. And that I would find peace in whatever mix tomorrow brings.

I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statues and be careful to obey my rules. You shall dwell in the land that I gave to your fathers, and you shall be my people and I will be your God.  
~ Ezekiel 36:26-28

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