I went to Kenya with the desire to be challenged, impassioned, and most of all,
changed. I’ve come to a point in my life where I simply refuse to be satisfied with just letting life happen to me or just going through the motions of school, work, relationships, whatever it is. As much as I often fear change and the unexpected, the
last thing I want is for my life to become routine or easy or static. And as I watched the majority of my friends and classmates around me secure jobs or internships for their summers, I found myself realizing that I didn’t want to let yet another summer go by focused on making money or building my resume or even “gaining an experience.” I needed my summer to be focused on God – and HIS purposes, not my own – in order for me to root myself back in Him and allow room for growth and change. I’ve spent two years of college searching for identity and meaning and what my future is going to look like in many of the wrong places. There have been times when I've made decisions or acted out of selfish interest, choosing to do different things and activities because I felt entitled to my own desires and it was what
I wanted to do, not because I knew it was the Lord’s desire
for me. Before God called me to Kenya on this trip I was searching for prestigious summer internships and jobs because let’s be honest, come time to find a real job all that looks darn good on a resume. And while none of those things are at all inherently bad or wrong, and I have absolutely loved so many of my experiences in college thus far, I knew that there was still something more out there that I wanted to be doing, something that the Lord was offering and extending to me that held greater fulfillment and possibility for my life.
But because I was often content living life with iffy intentions and mixed motives – maybe “half for me, half for God,” or something like that – I wasn’t really growing or changing into the person I felt God calling me to be. I was putting up all sorts of walls and barriers in God’s way, saying, “Just give me a little more time to do what
I want to do, God, and then I’ll start being that person I hear you calling me to be, start living the life I know you have planned for me.” I wasn’t putting myself in, or letting God put me in, places and situations that would make me confront the true soundness of my faith and make me question whether I am actually willing to “lose my life for Christ’s sake in order to find it.” I was, in many ways, afraid to be the person that I’ve known all along God is calling me to be. Why? Because a life following the Lord is
marked with risk, challenge, and sacrifice. That’s not even speculation or possibility; it’s
fact – Paul writes in 2 Timothy 3:12 that “
everyone who wants to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted.” Jesus said that “If the world hates you, keep in mind that it hated me first. If you belonged to the world, it would love you as its own. As it is,
you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world.” (John 15:18-19). And while I knew in my heart of hearts that God was calling me out of this world – out of its expectations, and approval, and agenda – and telling me that it was time to go deeper and give up my own plans, I was afraid of what that might mean for my life.
And then God called me to Kenya, and I knew it was the perfect opportunity to let Him change me – radically change me – and this time I wasn’t going to say no. So I signed up to go for 8 weeks with a team of 15 people I didn’t know, to serve and to live life with people who I
thought I would have little in common with. And I prayed (all the while somewhat fearing the implications of this prayer) to be molded and transformed and changed. And now this is the part where you’re probably expecting me to explain just exactly
how I’ve changed and what I’ve learned…and I wish I could, but I don’t think I can. Some of the things God taught me and grew in me were revealed or realized in a moment, and other things I’m still processing and reflecting on, and I may be for years to come. Africa is absolutely beautiful – indescribably evocative – and through the things we saw and the people we encountered I absorbed and discovered more than I ever have before about joy, faith, poverty, conviction, and God's heart for the hurting. If you’ve followed my blog you’ve gotten glimpses into a few of the things I experienced and learned, and I so wish I could explain it all perfectly, but sometimes words just aren’t enough, and this is one of those times when you’re just going to have to believe me that
God has moved – in Kenya, in the people there, in my teammates, and in me.
I LOVE this quote from Shauna Niequist’s introduction to her book
Bittersweet (I know, I know, I’m obsessed with her writing!) that I feel perfectly explains and captures my changed attitude towards change
:) She writes: “This is what I've come to believe about change: it's good, in the way that childbirth is good, and heartbreak is good, and failure is good. By that I mean that it's incredibly painful, exponentially more so if you fight it, and also that it has the potential to open you up, to open life up, to deliver you right into the palm of God's hand, which is where you wanted to be all long, except that you were too busy pushing and pulling your life into exactly what you thought it should be
.” The complete shock and tidal wave of emotions I felt when I returned home made me realize that I have changed even more than I know at this point, and that I may have unintentionally but understandably left a sizable piece of my heart back in Kenya (but that just means I will go back someday to find it again!) Carl, who works on AIM staff, says that he would tell his ‘college self’:
“Be the person you are afraid to be.” I love that. It’s now something I take as a challenge. And even though I’m still in college, I would add to that,
Live the life you’re afraid to live. Give up the things you’re afraid to give up. Open yourself up to God’s way when you’d rather do it your own way. And watch as your life is beautifully and radically changed.
