I wasn’t sure I wanted to leave, but I knew I couldn't stay. It was time for the next chapter of the story, the next leg of the journey...time to follow Love as he led me away from the crazy life I had grown to love over the last three years.
I had been given grace for a time to enjoy the close
quarters and appreciate the “assisted living” environment of the Africa Mercy,
despite my fierce longing for independence. I was given grace to move countries every year, try another
new tribal language, and another, and another. Grace to patiently orient seas of new nurses, to put up with
short supplies and the challenges of working through translators all the
time…the grace to look past ugliness and superstition and abandonment to
celebrate new lives and to find my place and purpose in loving others.
It took a patient reminder and the exuberant joy and sorrow of an inland screening trip to remind me that this time on Mercy Ships was not meant to be forever. It was a place to learn and grow, to dig my roots deep into being grounded in Christ, a time to build and be built up, to love and be loved in return. But it was time to move to a new home - home for now with no promise of forever.
I will miss Africa and my ship hospital and incredible
co-workers with all my heart, but I don’t regret the calling to life in America
again. This is a new mission for
the here and now, one that I embrace and wrestle as I did with the move
overseas – full of new challenges and new joys.
The place and people have changed, but the purpose has
not. Can I love the forgotten and needy of
America for Jesus too? They are
equally lost, hurt, lonely, and unloved.
I still serve
the same God, but I am praying for a special kind of grace. I’m praying for patience to put up with
the nuisances of adult responsibility in the Western world. For quick recall as I start work in the
hospitals again – because the hospitals and healthcare here are vastly
different from my familiar ship wards. For wisdom in where to live and how to teach well, for courage to speak out and be an agent of change for my country
and my world, to His glory...
God, give me grace to be an American.
