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It is a bit overwhelming to realize that you have bled your whole heart – the ugly sin, the raw emotion, the unbridled truth – out on paper for the whole world to read.

It is a bit exhausting to hear over and over again how “awesome” you are when you, in fact, know very well that you are not.

People expect romantic, and all I have is a wildly disorganized bookshelf and dirty children shrieking with too-loud laughter. People expect that the days all hold life-saving medicine given to children on the brink of death and profound revelation and while some do, most consist more of peeling potatoes and wiping spills and listening to recited memory verses and biting my tongue as spaghetti sauce splatters everywhere and I light the pot holder on fire, again.

I believe the lie that I must meet expectation, and I try harder. I stay up later answering emails and I desperately try to finish a book that I said I would endorse and I organize the bookshelves and wipe down the counters again. I brush past the children who hold my heart in order to be a “good mother” who has homemade food on the dinner table on time. We finish lessons and recite Psalms and fold laundry and welcome visitors. Life gets too busy, it gets so fast and so full that at the end of the day it can feel just empty.

  

* * * 

This was not the first time I had been here and I knew what to do. I pull back, I dig into the Word and I listen. The lesson whispered in the quiet is always the same. My friend Sara calls it Adoration. My friend Ann counts it all up as Eucharisto. Paul says it’s the secret of contentment, hands full or hands empty. Whatever we name it, it is astounding Truth: Communion with the Savior is the only thing that makes anything matter.

I choke because my every day life begins too feel small compared to the expectation. And He breathes truth that a life is not made by lives saved or bellies fed or words written. To adore the one who created the Heavens and the Earth, to give thanks for who He is and all He has given, to worship and commune with Holy God, whispering in the quiet, clinging in the noise, believing in all circumstances – this is what makes a life large.

The miracle is joy in Him in a day that goes all wrong. The miracle is standing in awe of abundance as I chop carrots and bathe babies and fold laundry. The miracle is a Son sent to die for the very likes of me and His ever-pursuing love for me still.

Paul knows the secret, and even when I think I learned this lesson already Jesus teaches me again: we can live a full life wherever we are – even in the days that seem to small – when we live in communion with the Savior. We look up, praise on our lips, and as we worship Him for all He has done our hearts open wide to more. We wait, expectant, for all that He is doing and this is it, this is life to the fullest.

Foster babies go back to their families. How do you raise a child as your own and then say good-bye? I guess because you know that God ordained their family to be another one, but that doesn’t make it easy. My baby will start therapy before she starts kindergarten. I do not like the idea of a child having to endure trauma so that one day she may learn from it, or teach another about it. But I still believe He has purpose, even when I can’t see it. I look outside at the insanely noisy game of tag taking place in my yard: 4 Hindu neighbors that my children are praying desperately to reveal Christ to, 2 little girls off the street who lost their mother 2 weeks ago and passed by for a drink of water, 13 little girls that have walked through hell and made it out on the other side with a family. Is there anything my lips could say but thank you? I don’t know what to make of it all, but I can’t think of anything to do but praise the God who is always working and will not leave us here. Where I end, He is only just beginning.

Paul says he strains to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of him and isn’t this why He took hold of us -that as we open our lips to praise Him for who He is, He opens our hearts to be transformed in His likeness. He trades my dirty rags for the splendor of Him, breathes new life into dry, dead spaces.

We know the secret: Christ Jesus crucified and risen from the dead reaching out for relationship with you and with me. And a heart turned toward Him is the only way to live full of joy.

On the days when children run around the yard happy and the bread rises warm in the oven and those we’ve been nursing return home with new life in their veins, and on the days when the reading doesn’t get done and I half carry a mother up the hill to the place they will lower her 3 year-old’s body into the ground because of a fever – a fever! -  and life seems too unjust and the head wants to shake “no”, my lips will say yes to all that is Christ and I will adore my Savior.

Communion with God is what we are standing up under here – on the days that go as planned and on the days that don’t. On the days with expectations left unmet and dinner running late because of an extra game of hide-and-seek, on the days that seem mundane and the days that seem magnificent, we are saying yes to all He gives and we are saying thank you.

O God, you are my God,

I earnestly seek you;

my soul thirsts for you, 

my body longs for you,

in a dry and weary land

where there is not water.

I have seen you in the sanctuary

and beheld your power and your glory.

Because your love is better than life,

my lips will glorify you.

I will praise you as long as I live,

and in your name I will lift up my hands.

My soul will be satisfied as with the 

richest of foods;

with singing lips my mouth will praise you. 

Psalm 63:1-5

Awesome photos by my awesome friends Jackie and Kate

The scene played out as it has so many times before – a late night phone call and I jump into the van and race toward that little slum and the people that my heart so loves. People step out of the street as I bounce and bump through the dirt road – if you can even call it that. I park and jump out in only the light of the moon, expecting the worst. So many times, it has just been too late to help.

This time, something is different. I can see the woman who is sick, the one they have called me about. But instead of lying alone on the dirt per usual, she has been placed on a mat and is covered with a blanket. Neighbor women – my friends – stand all around her and Scovia puts a cup of water up to her lips. She sips. She is very sick, but stable now, and I whisper thanks.

I ask questions about her illness and her family, and women turn to go get her husband. Moments later they return, one holding her child, another carrying a basin, blankets, soap and some food – all the things needed for admittance to the local hospital. I briefly think that I haven’t even asked her to bring them. A weary looking husband follows, and without missing a beat, Angelina volunteers to accompany her to the hospital to care for her through the night and Sarah steps forward offering to babysit.

“Thank you for calling, Lillian,” I squeeze her neck tight, “and for helping her.” She doesn’t hesitate and says it so simply, “The praise belongs to God,” and she slips into the night. 

It isn’t until after I have slid the van door shut and jumped back into the driver’s seat that the full weight of what has just transpired hits me. My mind flips through the recent scenes, the faces of all these people who have captured my heart. For the first time, the only thing these friends needed me for was my car. They had done everything else themselves. In this place where child sacrifice and alcoholism are more common than friendship, in this place where consideration for a neighbor is so foreign because one must protect herself at all costs, right here in this place God was changing hearts.

They had done everything they could to help. They had kept her warm, hydrated and comfortable while they waited. They had gathered her things, encouraged her family, carried her children and shared of their time and their resources. They had loved so well.

Tears of praise streamed down my face as the van jostled back out toward the hospital. I wanted to stand on the roof and shout it into the dark, loud for all to hear, but instead whispered to the only One who made it possible: The people of Masese are learning to love their neighbors. Are loving their neighbors.

The praise belongs to God.

I will bless the Lord at all times;
His praise will continually be in my mouth.
My soul makes its boast in the Lord;
let the humble hear and be glad!
Oh, magnify the Lord with me,
and let us exalt His name together!


I sought the Lord and He answered me,
He delivered me out of all my fears.
Those who look to Him are radiant,
and their faces shall never be ashamed.
This poor man cried and the Lord heard him
and delivered him out of all his troubles.
The angel of the Lord encamps 
around those who fear Him, and delivers them.


Oh, taste and see that the LORD IS GOOD!
Blessed is the man who takes refuge in Him!

Just wanted to share with you this incredible picture (and quick update) of Musoke, a little friend that we have been nursing back to health. Musoke and his dad have been staying with us while he recovers from severe acute malnutrition and gets started on his ARVs and tuberculosis treatment. As you can see, our Mighty Father has revived him from the brink of death and he is well on his way to recovery. We will be sad to see him go but so excited for him and his father as they transition into their new life healthy and happy!


Just this week, Musoke got the chicken pox. Chilcken pox is usually more severe in children with HIV, so we would really appreciate your prayers. Please also join us in praying for his father's salvation, and for Musoke's. His continued restored health is certainly a testimony to the wonderful Savior we serve!

April 2011

Sometimes my 16 passenger van and I clamor down the driveway and I think that I will get out and life will be easy. That 14 daughters will greet me laughingly at the gate and there will the smell of fresh wheat bread baking in the oven and a long run at nap time and clean laundry on the line and 14 bodies pressed close against mine on the couch before bed.

It was once.

Except today life is messy. And there are 14 girls at the gate but they are fighting with each other and one comes with a grouchy birth mother who lives in my guest room and there are burn victims in the yard who need their infected skin scrubbed out and a ten pound three year old abandoned little girl on the couch and my baby has pneumonia and life is busy so cuddling on the couch gets postponed until tomorrow because today I just want to go to sleep and wake up when some of the mess is over.

I park. Turn the keys in the ignition, close my eyes, open my hands and just sit. And He fills up my spirit with just one word, enough.

Enough.

Jesus.

Jesus bent and carrying my burden. Jesus with nails in His hands and water, living water flowing from His side. And even when I think that I have learned this already, He teaches me AGAIN.

Jesus.

I look around the yard again and He whispers softly, “I died for you.” And His ways are not my ways but I trust them and I am thankful for the mess, ever pulling me back to Him. And peace, oh how it passes understanding.

Some days, the bickering and the burns and the birth mom and the babies abandoned are His will for my life, His gift to bring me closer to Him and today, I will embrace the gift that is Him, enough for me and all my broken places.

These days, only He carries me. And because only He carries me only He can receive the glory, all of my adoration and all of my praise.

* * * *

I scribbled this nearly a year ago. Chicken scratch in the journal that catches my half-asleep thoughts just before bed and my still-sleepy thoughts in the first light of morning.

A year later there are no burns or birth moms or abandoned babies to speak of. But today there is Musoke fighting for his little life on the couch and there is the baby thrashing from her too-hot fever. Today the house is too messy and I yelled at my kids for no reason whatsoever other than I am tired.

And because of a hard season and some scribbled words and deep lessons last April, today is little easier. Today I know it deep in my spirit that the hard seasons don’t minimize Him but in fact magnify His goodness. Here is where I learn to know Him more.

I know that I can find joy here, too. Because God is in the days that go as planned. And God is in the days that don’t.

Today there was breath in the chest of a little boy who I thought may die in the night. Today there were hugs and picked flowers and sweet notes from kiddos who knew mama was tired. There were big sisters who helped little sisters and a biggest sister who organized the house cleaning. There were 130 painted toenails, all colors. There were boxes of cookies sent from friends in the states and medicine and food sent over from friends around the corner. There were hands to help and even more that offered to help, and there were voices lifted in prayer.

And today, there was a Savior who paid my ransom with His blood, and it was enough.

It is always enough. Could I just remember? Could I just remember whose I am? Could I just remember the price He paid to live in me? And if Christ is in me, then can’t I find Him in all of these things too - the measles and the vomit, the flowers and the forgiveness and the toenails? Knowing that in all circumstances He is enough and He is working to draw me closer to Him, I praise Him for the good in the hardest of days.

Jesus, you are enough.

You were enough to atone for this ugly sin that wanted to separate. You are enough to fill in the gaps, fill all my holes, make up my lack. My flesh screams, “I can’t go on, I don’t have enough! Not enough strength, not enough patience, not enough…” And I wouldn’t, but I have You. And in You, I have enough and more than enough, Father of abundance, Giver of endless blessings.

I can pour out because I know you fill up. I drink from a well that never runs dry. You are abundantly available to me, ever drawing me closer. You call me into communion with you and I am filled with your life over flowing even in the driest, hardest of seasons. You exchange my lack for your abundance, Christ in me the only hope of glory. Christ in me is enough. Christ with me is enough. Christ on that cross and risen for me is enough. You are enough, Jesus.

And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen His GLORY, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth. From His fullness, we have all received grace upon grace. John 1:14,16

Tonight marked one year since the day Makerere stumbled into my yard with his leg charred to the bone. To remember ho far God has carried us, we had a little celebration. We celebrated healed legs and healed hearts. We celebrated strangers-turned-family. We celebrated Jesus's kept promise of beauty from ashes. We celebrated life.

Just feet from the white and pink frosted cake, on my couch, lay a little boy who is fighting death. 7 years old and merely 20 pounds, HIV snuck up on his family causing his rapid weight loss. Now he lays, under piles of blankets battling severe acute malnutrition.

There is not really a space in my brain or my heart for this - life celebration cake with 18 happy people and 5 ml dropper-fulls of life saving, electrolyte balancing solution into a mouth struggling to hold on, all together in one room.

This is what I know: He is faithful. He is before all things and in Him all things hold together. He gives and He takes away. And as I humbly ask you for your prayers, I will bless His name.

O Lord, you are my God; I will exalt you and praise your name, for in perfect faithfulness you have done marvelous things, things planned long ago.

I adore You, perfect, faithful God.

You have been a refuge for the poor, a refuge for the needy in his distress, a shelter from the storm and a shade from heat.

I adore You God, my refuge, my shelter, my hiding place.

On this mountain the Lord Almighty will prepare a feast of rich food for all peoples, a banquet of aged wine - the best of meats and the finest of wines.

I adore You, extravagant, gift-lavishing Father.

On this mountain He will destroy the shroud that enfolds all peoples, the sheet that covers nations; He will swallow up death forever.

I adore you Oh, God! Our redeemer and Savior!

The Sovereign Lord will wipe away the tears from all faces; He will remove the disgrace of His people from all the earth.

I adore you, Oh God my comfort, the lifter of my head.

In that day we will say, "Surely this is our God; we trusted Him and He saved us! This is the Lord, we trusted in him; let us rejoice and be glad in His salvation."

I adore You, Lord, my trustworthy, promise-keeping Savior.

He is Lord over the life celebration and Lord over severe acute malnutrition. He is good in the life celebration, and He is good in the severe acute malnutrition. He is. Thank you Jesus.

*Awesome photos by my awesome friend Kate*

Healer God

November

“You are right.” He says.

I look up into the shy smile I have grown to love so much. Day 178 of bandaging this wound, and it is almost gone.

Makerere is not one to strike up conversation usually, so I probe. “Right about what?”

“That thing you say. You know. About even bad things being used for our good and all of it working for God’s glory even when we can’t see it. You are right. If I hadn’t been burnt we might not be friends, you know. And If I hadn’t come to live here, I would still be drinking and mostly, I wouldn’t know about that Jesus,” he laughs, “Jesus.”

I focus my gaze back on the bandage to hide the happy tears. I am right, but sometimes, I need reminding.

****

Sometime in April, Christine pulled up in my van. “I have a patient for you,” she said as she opened the back door. I knew he was in bad shape as he tumbled out, and I could feel the vomit surge hot in my throat as I caught that first glimpse of his leg – skin burnt charcoal black, bone exposed, nothing even still alive enough to bleed.

I knew this man. At least, I thought I did. As the village drunk of Masese, he was a constant annoyance to me. I was appalled but not surprised to learn that while he was passed out in the middle of the day, some neighbors lit his house on fire. The fire caught his leg and he crawled out just in time to watch his neighbors steal all his remaining belongings from inside.

And thus began the season that I though would heal him, but instead healed me.

He moaned as I injected painkiller and mumbled a story that I couldn’t understand. I prayed over his wound and over his heart, and when he fell asleep on the porch, I didn’t make him move but draped a blanket over him instead and I didn’t realize that just this simple action would be the beginning of coming to love the newest member of our family.

The doctor at the best hospital around told me he would lose his leg if I didn’t dress and clean it daily. That probably he would lose it anyway. At this point, I don’t think he cared one way or another, but I did. Just months earlier, tragedy had struck our family. And although I had no idea at the time, Jesus was bringing about my own healing by drawing me into someone else’s. I couldn’t verbalize it then, but it is as if my heart screamed, “I lost my daughter. I lost my reality. You will not lose your leg. You will not lose yours.” And so I threw myself into becoming an expert on third degree burn care.

For hours each day I scraped the dead skin from this wound and God scraped at the dead places of my heart. Buried places that, though I would never say it, somehow doubted that God could be good, all the time, when my daughter’s bed lay empty. And I said it out loud, to him and to myself. God uses all for good. For His glory. God is using this, I said, and I smiled at new pink life showing through and though I didn’t recognize it yet, God was growing new life out of the very hardest places of my heart.

For a month he came and went. I would bandage the leg and send him home; he would return the next day and I would almost be thankful that he was drunk because even still the pain was excruciating. I would wash and scrape and scrub and dress and I cry and I would say to that wound and to anyone who would listen, “We will not lose this leg.” Others from the community stepped over our new friend asleep on the porch and they shook their heads. “You can’t save ‘em all. Not this one, Katie.” But I am stubborn. And God is relentless.

Eventually he just moved in to the little house in our back yard. This made finding him at bandaging time quite a bit easier and it allowed me to make sure he wasn’t drinking. As he began to sober up, we began to have longer conversations; he would tell me all about his life and his family before he became an alcoholic and found himself homeless in Masese and I would tell him about a Savior born as an infant in a feeding trough and nailed to a tree. He questioned everything I said about God’s goodness and sovereignty, and I know that as I was answering him, I was answering myself, too. In the darkest place of my life God had me testify each day exactly who I knew Him to be. In those hours of wound bandaging He was introducing Himself to me again. The Working All For Good God. The Still and Always Faithful God. The God who sees who we are and uses all the broken places to make us who we are becoming. I said these things out loud and I watched God make them true all over again.

And this is what I learned: the hard does not minimize His goodness but allows us to experience His goodness in a whole new way.

252 days of wrapping and talking and laughing and crying later, new skin covered this once dead area. The leg that so many thought was lost could walk and even run. And the man that so many thought was hopeless had been sober for over 6 months. A week later, this physically healed man walked into my kitchen as grinned from ear to ear. “I believe it,” he announced, “today I believe that Jesus is the Son of God.” Simple as that.

I didn’t try to contain my excitement as I danced around the kitchen that day, and I still daily choke back tears as the time I once spent wrapping his leg in gauze is now spent scouring the Bible together for the answer to his every question.

The burnt area on his leg is still a few shades lighter than the skin surrounding it. “Can I look at your leg?” I ask often, and he knows why. “See what God did?” he will chuckle. And we both see so much more than new skin.

Jesus. He met us right where we were, right there on the cold hard tile of my sun room, and He took two broken people, so different and yet so much more alike and showed us the scars on His hands and said its ok if we have some too because the scars are always drawing us to Him.

over here again. humbled.

Can you imagine the stench?

Joseph has walked and Mary ridden 90 miles in the scorching sun, the wind whipping around their faces and caking them with dust from the dirt road. More sweat pours from Mary’s brow as she experiences the pains of labor for the first time. The stable is packed with all the travelers’ animals. Flies buzz around them in the heat and the air is heavy with the smells of sickly sweet hay and kmanure.

And into this, a baby enters.

I have witnessed this kind of birth before. Woman sighs and baby falls right into the dirt and in the dark of a tiny mud hut with the light of just a thin candle our eyes search for something, anything, sharp to cut the cord. Water is a luxury and too far to fetch at this hour so we wrap the baby in whatever filthy rag-scraps we can find without even wiping her off first.

Joseph, still merely a child himself, searches for anything he can find in the dim light to cut the cord and swaddle his child, probably rags carrying the afore mentioned stench and the dirt of the journey. Trembling and exhausted they wrap Him as best they can, and swatting flies away lay him in the same trough out of which these animals have been eating.

Behold, the Savior.

And in this moment God fulfils every promise and every prophecy. This, God’s perfect time. God does not wait for the world to get ready, He enters right into the mess.

He makes Himself very least, no more status or opportunity than an easily overlooked infant in the slums where I spend so many hard hours. Very least so that He can commune with the very most desperate – you and me. He doesn’t mind that I am not ready yet and He doesn’t mind the wretched condition of my heart or the stench of my sin. God’s time is now and He enters into the mess, ready or not.

His perfect timing, now. Now is where He has called us. And we are just not ready yet. We need to clean up the house a bit and pray a little more and seek more counsel and we don’t know how to do that yet and oh, we have our excuses. And God says, “I’m here now, and I am ok with the mess because I am here for the messy.”

God doesn’t need us to be ready for Him; He has been ready for us since the beginning of time and the Messiah is here calling us to commune with the Holy One, to eat at His table.

I want the house to be organized and kids to be clean and nicely dressed and I want dinner to come out of the oven on time, but at the end of the day they laundry still piles and there are still crumbs in the corner and can anyone remember if I brushed my teeth today? And it can’t be the New Year yet because I am just not ready for it to be a new year yet.

But I remember when I wasn’t ready to move to Uganda. I remember when I wasn’t ready to kiss the people I loved the most goodbye. I remember when I didn’t have enough money to start a ministry, and I remember when I wasn’t old enough to be a mother, and I remember when I didn’t know how to parent. I remember when I couldn’t cook for fifteen people and when I didn’t want to share my house and my things and my life with sick people and addicts. I remember when I was afraid of the slum community that now holds hundreds of friends and when I was terrified that my daughter would never walk and when I was scared that we would never heal after tragic loss. And I remember that never, not once, was I really as ready as I wanted to be. And I remember that God kept all His promises, every last one, in His perfect time.

This new season looms and I don’t know what is next. But He doesn’t need me to be ready for this season because He is ready. He just needs me to be clinging to His feet.

Now, God’s perfect time.