I keep trying to sum up my trip to Africa in a word or a few short sentences. I have so many wonderful friends & family members who supported me along the way and they want to know, “How was it?” 

And so I keep grasping for the right word. There must be one. Or the right the answer. Something to say to the neighbor in that 5-minute window we have that will capture all my thoughts and feelings about the incredible country and the amazing people I met during my trip. But honestly, there’s just not. And it almost seems to cheapen the experience to not share it all. To just say, “It was amazing” or “Life changing.” Although it was, in fact, both of these things.

So because this blog is such a great venue for me to express myself and to share my heart with you, I will do my best to give you a glimpse into my time there.

If I was only allowed one word, and let’s be real, “Who would put such silly stipulations on sharing an experience?” But, if that were the case, the word that keeps surfacing to my mind is
wrecked.

Wrecked:  Any building, structure or thing, reduced to a state of ruin. Or in my case, any person. Wrecked: to tear down, demolish. My thoughts and ideas. My preconceived notions. “Wrecked: When a Broken World Slams into your Comfortable Life.” (A book by Jeff Goins.) 

That’s pretty much how I feel. I am feeling bruised from the cold pieces of this broken world that have slammed hard against my comfortable life.

It’s like I exchanged my heart for a sponge this last week and came to Africa dry and porous.  I soaked in the people, the villages, the culture and the breathtaking landscape. But more than that-I soaked in their eyes as they looked at me.  Their eyes told a story. For some it was a sad, hard story. Others looked at me with hope, their eyes shining. Many took my hand and squeezed it saying, “Thank-you. Thank-you so much!” or “God bless you!” And all of it I soaked in.

The very first feet I washed were the strong & beautiful feet of the oldest female leader in the village of Chiyali. As I took her feet & guided them to the wash basin, a feeling of humbleness like nothing I have ever experienced before washed over me. My hands were trembling as I grabbed the washcloth and slowly started washing her feet. Then I took the towel and started to dry her feet, daring to look up into her eyes. Scared I would unleash a flow of tears I would be powerless to stop, but knowing this was not the time for holding anything back, I laid my hand on her shoulder. I looked deep into her eyes and said “God bless you for all that you do.” She looked at me, a perfect stranger, her eyes full of love and gratefulness as she thanked me.

She thanked me.

This incredibly strong woman that has spent her life serving her family and her village, working the ground to produce crops to feed her family and tending to the needs of the poor in her village. She IS a Proverbs 31 woman and she is thanking me? 

I’m still letting that one settle.

And so it went. People greatly moved by our act of love displayed in the washing of their feet and the gifting of a pair of shoes. One pair of shoes.

37.

That’s the number of shoes I currently have sitting in my closet.

And guess what? I’m not having to wear them to walk 3 miles to get the water I’m going to use for the day. No, I have them to match all of my different outfits. Ugh.

In one of the villages there was a little girl, probably about 7 or 8 years old who was very excited about her new shoes. I couldn’t help but think of my own daughter Hannah who is the same age. She was smiling from ear to ear and was just staring at her shoes as if she had just been handed the greatest gift of her life. And I guess in some ways it was. The interpreter told me that it was the very first pair of shoes she has ever owned. She has never owned a single pair of shoes.  The excitement in her smile wrecked me some more.

And I soaked it in.

My heart-turned sponge is saturated with faces I can’t let go of. Don’t want to let go of.

It’s dripping with the idea that life is best lived simply.

That living with less doesn’t include living with less of God.

I have never met a people group with less who love more.

Philippians 4:11-14 was written by the Apostle Paul but this morning when I read this verse, all I could hear were the voices of my African brothers and sisters saying,

“I’m glad in God, far happier than you would ever guess—happy that you’re again showing such strong concern for me. Not that you ever quit praying and thinking about me. You just had no chance to show it. Actually, I don’t have a sense of needing anything personally. I’ve learned by now to be quite content whatever my circumstances. I’m just as happy with little as with much, with much as with little. I’ve found the recipe for being happy whether full or hungry, hands full or hands empty. Whatever I have, wherever I am, I can make it through anything in the One who makes me who I am. I don’t mean that your help didn’t mean a lot to me—it did. It was a beautiful thing that you came alongside me in my troubles.”

Whatever you have, wherever you are, you can make it through anything in the One who makes you who you are. 

This truth should wreck you too.