two in one day...aren't you lucky?

Living 6,400 miles away means I gave up my primary source of community. I feel like this blog and my Facebook account gives me back a part of that community. If that is sacrilege I immediately confess it. But it feels true.

(That is the shortest blog post you will ever read from me.)

My Heart and the Life Verse Phenomenon, Part II

I have a confession:

Africa was never the desire of my heart.

Which, in a 20/20 hindsight kind of way, is how I know I'm exactly where God wants me to be.

Let's examine the reasons I never wanted to move to Africa:
1. I speak Spanish. I love Spanish. Why would I move to a continent entirely incompatible with 8 years of linguistic training?
2. I generally enjoy living in a nation with a stable infrastructure & an organized government, and without an international reputation for scams.
3. I bargained with God at the age of 9: I would go wherever He wanted me, except Africa.

Oh, sorry, you thought bargaining was only something adults do in the 4th stage of grief? Nope, kids do it, too. Here's how it went down for me:

I have a distinct memory of reading a collection of missionary stories which told about some place in Africa that had these killer ants that sting and bite their way into your ears and wreck your brain. Or something like that.

I sat on the floor of my basement reading about these ants and saying to God, "Okay, buddy, look. You can send me anywhere you want. But I am not going there. Got it?" We learn to bargain with God at such a very young age.

I toyed with the idea of mission work for the better half of my young life, and by my last semester at Wheaton College, my perception of mission work had changed drastically. I'm more in tune with the Humanitarian Work + Jesus model.

As in, "Yes, I'll build a well for your village, supplying you with safe drinking water that will potentially extend your life expectancy. When I'm finished with the well, can I tell you about some Living Water? It extends life expectancy, too." I'm all about that approach.

By May 2009, the "Reasons Maggie Never Wants to Live in Africa" list had grown:

4. I have a bunch of student loans, and few missions organizations will sign on full-time missionaries with debt.
5. I spent all 4 years of college answering the question, "What are you going to do with an English degree? Teach?" with an emphatic "NO WAY, NOT ME."
6. I need a salary. I'm not comfortable taking a job that requires me to itinerate support.
7. My brother Jake moved to Wheaton, and frankly, I want to be in the same state after a 4-year separation.

The list was getting longer, you see. But as I added bullet points to that list, another list was forming: The "Reasons Maggie Will End Up Moving to Africa" list:

1. The economy tanked. Any job is a good job.
2. My English degree does allow me to teach in private schools. Talk about keeping options open.
3. 6-month and 9-month grace periods on federal student loans have this tendency to creep up on you.
4. As much as I love my parents and appreciate their hospitality, the whole being a jobless bum thing was really unflattering. It was the first time I'd been unemployed since the 8th grade, and I hated it. I wanted out.

I have a feeling God knew I would flake out on the living overseas thing. I spent 13 years second-guessing, doubting, questioning, evading, avoiding, ignoring, making excuses, and running in the opposite direction. I imagine God was shaking his head, because I played the part of Israel perfectly.

In Hosea 2, Israel was unfaithful to God like a wife returning to a life of prostitution. God's response?
6 Therefore I will block her path with thornbushes;
I will wall her in so that she cannot find her way
7 She will chase after her lovers but not catch them;
she will look for them but not find them.
Then she will say,
'I will go back to my husband as at first,
for then I was better off than now.'

I was so content in my mud that God had to frustrate me relationally, economically, professionally, physically, financially, and emotionally just to get my attention.

All the while, Africa waited.

God was blocking my path with thorns, backing me into a corner with job loss and breakups, making sure that when I tried to get out of my corner, the open path was Nigeria.

Honestly, I feel that all the events of the past 15 months of my life occurred if solely for the purpose of getting me to Africa, which is both terrifying and relieving. It's terrifying because that means that "such a time as this" is really important. It's relieving because for all my wandering and wrong turns, God still brought me to this place. I didn't screw it up. God is bigger than my ignorance.

For 13 years, Africa was not my desire, but it is now.

That's how I know I'm not in the mud anymore.

Alignment

I'm not trying to be pretentious when I say that the past month in Nigeria has changed me. I'm not claiming to be enlightened by a new world-conscious perspective or to have acquired a burden for the broken parts of this world. My paradigm hasn't shifted. I haven't lost my personality.

But I'm different. I've changed somehow.

And the change isn't that I've learned how to speak Nigerian Pidgin English or how to bargain in the market or how to live my life without electricity. It is all that, but it's not.

It's loneliness rooted in the fear that no one may ever perfectly understand me now that I've attached myself to a country in West Africa. It's the fear that I will never leave Nigeria and the fear that I will leave Nigeria.

It's being bothered by how much my life has changed and by how much it hasn't. It's easy to say I've become more dependent on God in Nigeria, but did you know that moving to Africa doesn't fix what was wrong or missing in your relationship with Jesus Christ before you left?

It's the alarming disparity between my calloused heart ignoring the lame beggar in the market and fighting tears while singing worship songs.

It's seeing change in places I didn't expect and not seeing change in the places I counted on.

The change creeps in and the change floods me. I'm over- and underwhelmed at the exact same time. I'm brave and I'm a coward. I love my life and I hate it because I could be--should be--living it better.

I ran headlong and face-first, with arms outstretched, to this place because I didn't see any open doors, or forks in the road, or lights at ends of tunnels. I saw an opportunity and I ran. I ran away from life, I ran towards life.

I am two-faced. I am conflicted. I am living with one foot in this life and one in the past next. I feel like Velcro, willingly rending myself from the US and sticking to Nigeria. But when I tear myself away from here, won't there be ripping and weeping? Won't I be caught between then and now and what's next? Won't I always be homesick for someplace else?

I don't know how to explain the change, but I know this is only the beginning.

When darkness veils His lovely face,
I rest on His unchanging grace.
Through every high and stormy gale,
my anchor holds within the veil...
All other ground is sinking sand.