Where to begin? Sometimes I feel like God has to fill me to the brim before words can spill out in an explanation of what is going on in my head or in my heart. It’s been over a month since my last blog post or prayer update and mainly the reason was that I had no words to give you. Today I must be full, because the words are slowly trickling.
I got into Memphis Tennessee a little over two weeks ago, recovered from a bout of malaria and moved into a new apartment. Transitioning back into life here is a workout that I never quite seem to be properly conditioned for. Adjusting back into life in the U.S. is the hardest because it’s so easy, leaving me questioning whether the life I was living in Sierra Leone is actually real or if I just made it up. The past year I’ve spent more time in Sierra Leone than in the U.S. all together, which is a drop in the bucket compared to most missionaries. In my defense though, I think I've been exposed to a large amount of cracks in the system in a condensed period of time. I’ve found that upon arrival in the U.S., I vacillate between tears of joy over the opportunity of eating cheese (seriously- I get emotional), to thanking God for the ability to walk ten yards without adults and children yelling “White person! White person!” (translated from Temne). Shortly sometime after those two realizations, the feelings of deep responsibility for what I have encountered starts to seep in, and I sometimes mourn my ignorance, wishing to go back to not knowing what I do now.
“Deep responsibility,” doesn’t sound sexy. Please hear me out and don’t think I’m turning into a walking commercial with pictures of children with bloated bellies and flies on their eyes. I feel SO privileged to have the opportunity to travel to another country, learn another culture and work alongside beautiful and utterly complex people in a joint effort to bring the restoration of dignity and purpose to a group who have been utterly blinded to their own self-worth. By His grace and a series of events that I couldn’t have constructed myself if I tried, I have had the opportunity to meet these women, and now I struggle with a response. How do we respond to the depths of brokenness out there that is reality?
The last week I was in Sierra Leone, I was sitting with two friends who happen to be beneficiaries of WOHInt. As we sat together chatting about what the next few months look like for each of us, Ramatulai said, “Kelsey, don’t forget us, I beg.” I responded by saying, “I couldn’t forget you if I tried.” Every day whether in Sierra Leone or in the States, I work on fundraising, organizational development, income generation projects for women with disabilities or administrative work for WOHInt, the organization. I laughed at the thought of forgetting
Ramatulai and the other women, when over the past year and a half, they have become a serious focus of my life.
As I sit on my couch writing this with the air conditioning going, drinking a cold beverage, I confess that I have forgotten them today. The truth is that I choose to “forget” much more than our women, but even my neighbors grieving the loss of family and struggling for food in Missouri right now. I “forget” my new neighbor, Mr. Charles, who rocks lonely in the swing on his front porch, next door. I “forget” to listen to the answer of the checkout person at my grocery store after I ask how she’s doing. I “forget” because remembering is uncomfortable, it’s messy, and sometimes it’s just painful. Life happens and I know how quickly I forget the reality of Sierra Leone. Even when I work every day on the development of WOHInt, I’m able to turn the women into the far off “them” in order to separate myself from the discomfort of the reality of beggars and prostitutes in a developing nation. Poverty, rape, corruption, injustice, prejudice, hunger, illness, illiteracy- these things are heavy. I don’t want to carry such a load, after the Jesus I “decided” to follow a few years back told me his yoke is easy and his burden is light…. what’s the deal? I didn’t sign up for heavy!
I am not in any way saying that salvation comes through activism or even doing good things. Trusting Christ is something that comes from the acknowledgement that one can’t possibly measure up, and that one can only find true life by trusting that Jesus Christ has taken all my failures and disobedience upon Himself, restoring right relationship with the creator of the universe. Following Jesus Christ is pursuing freedom.
At the same time, I am acknowledging that Jesus will mess you up! Coming to Him means you’re giving Him free reign to change whatever plans you’ve constructed for your life with the utterance “your will be done.” The first statement in Mathew 6:10 is “your kingdom come,” meaning that shalom, or the restoration of the peace and tranquility that comes with right relationship with the God of the universe. What I get from this prayer is that He wants to restore the world but He will enlist us in the army He’s going to use to bring restoration. Honestly I say these things in fear because I recognize that there is no end to what He wants to do in and through us; it is a life-long process. Really, he tells us plainly that if we follow Him, we will be hated by the world, we will face hardship, we will be separated from our loved ones and we could even die. He is a God of dichotomies however, because in His Word He tells us that as he messes up our lives, He fills us with the fruit of the Spirit on earth (love, joy, peace patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness and self-control Gal 5:22-23) and He says in other passages He will reward us in eternity.
As I transition back into life in the States and the next season of whatever it is that I’m doing here (living in Memphis/ Sierra Leone), I confess the moans that seem to seep from my soul like what Paul discusses in 2 Corinthians. I can’t even put words to it, but I’m forced to reckon with a number of emotions. I yearn for His Kingdom as I reside on Earth face to face with the brokenness that exists in and all around me. I lunge to be content with what the world has to offer because, at a glance, it looks much cooler than the life that He calls us to as His followers. We read that John the Baptist ended up wearing camel’s hair and eating locusts. I’m seriously afraid I’ll end up in a denim jumper with a tightly wound bun in my hair everyday if I keep following this Jesus guy! What a buzz kill!
All at the same time, I have no choice but to cling to the only thing that makes any sense: His grace. I ask for help in trusting Him (because I can’t even do that right on my own). I throw myself on Jesus, and trust that He’s got it covered because He is who He says He is. Today I forgot Ramatulai because I didn’t want to remember her, but by His grace, tomorrow I’ll heap her in prayer upon Him who has offered to carry the “load” for me. Silly me! He doesn’t ask that I try to shoulder the weight of all this brokenness I see around me, but He does ask that I try to do some heavy lifting I couldn’t possibly do on my own so that I have to depend on Him for help.
“But he said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness,’ therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, them I am strong.” 2 Corinthians 12:9-10
