Senior year has been a year where my life has been consumed with social gatherings and sporting events and never being home. I have been avoiding the loneliness that the enemy wants me to feel, but when I do this, I am also avoiding the Lord. When I came home this summer, I had really changed. Uganda was amazing and I had found so much contentment in my heart for what God was calling me to. However, as senior year began, my mind became very clouded and temptations were and still are constantly being thrown in my face. The very source of my hurt was looking straight at me in the hallways, staring me down. I have let so much of my self pity and worldliness influence what I thought about my life, and I never had time to really figure out what happened in Uganda.
I only applied to CSU because I feel like CSU or either Uganda is where the Lord wants to place me in the next year. I have been accepted into CSU, and for a while now, I have felt like that is where I am being called to. However, this week, my Younglife leader, Elise, challenged me and asked me if I had really given this desire to be at CSU to Him and if that was His plan for my life. Honestly, I feel like I had really given it all up to the Lord and that He was calling me to CSU- I mean, I already know what I want to do with my life and I just want to get college done and over with so that I can earn my degree and then peace out of America. Yet, there is something in my heart that keeps telling me to not shut the door to Uganda next year just yet.
The past few days have been so life giving, because I have finally heard the Father's voice again, and I have been obeying and going out of my way to give to others and not focus on myself as much. In the midst of this joy that I have found here, in Littleton, I have been reminded of the joy and love and freedom that I experienced in Uganda. This reminder is so constant lately and all I want to do is buy a one way plane ticket to Uganda for tomorrow and just up and leave without any notice. My heart aches and longs to be back home, but there is such a good reason that I am in Littleton.
In all honesty, since I have returned home from Uganda, I have faked a lot of my happiness just so that other people would think I am okay and that I have m life all put together. Truth is, I don't. I'm not even remotely close to having my life completely put together - and that's okay. I think I felt this pressure to be okay because of how joyful and full I felt in Uganda and on backpacking. Somewhere along the way this year, my mind became consumed with thinking I needed a boyfriend again, and that I needed everyone to like me. But those are all lies that I have been believing because I am insecure in my own pain and they bring me comfort. Tonight, I was reading through my journal from Africa, and I came across this quote, it's from my favorite book, The Shack: "There are millions of reasons to allow pain and hurt and suffering rather than to eradicate them, but most of those reasons can be understood only within each person's story. I am not evil. You are the ones who embrace fear and pain and power and rights so readily in your relationships. But your choices are also not stronger than my purposes, and I will use every choice you make for the ultimate good and most loving outcome. Broken humans center their lives around things that seem good to them but will neither fill them nor free them. They are addicted to power, or the illusion of security that power offers. When a disaster happens, those same people will turn against the false powers they trusted. In their disappointment, either they become softened towards Me or the become bolder in their independence." This is truth that I had found during my time in Uganda, and I had felt such a sense of relief when I felt that. I felt like I had really begun to trust the Lord and look to Him instead of looking towards the false powers of this world. Let me tell ya, when I came home, everything changed and I began trusting the false powers that really brought me worldly security. Looking back on everything that has happened though, it is such a blessing I spent three weeks in Uganda with the Lord this summer, because that is where I left my fully broken heart, and finally began to mend. Senior year has been a test that I have been failing honestly. I have taken my focus off of the Lord and I have put it on my friends and on boys and on figuring out everything between Sam and I. But it was brought to my attention, that when I focus on the Lord first, I am going to be okay in the end, and my days will be so much better, no matter what happens with the ways of the world.
This year, I have identified so much with being broken with, I have taken the view of the victim and I have allowed the enemy to terrorize me for far too long. But it's time to stop throwing myself a pity party, pick up the broken pieces, and move on with life. Life is worth living and I don't have it that bad. It makes me sick to my stomach to think that I had drowned in self pity for so long, when I had just visited a country where kids were thankful if they got to eat posho for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Like honestly, how annoying is it that my mind completely changed back to such a first world view so fast? But I think in the midst of throwing myself a pity party, it was the enemy's way of pulling me closer to lies and him more than it brought me closer to the Lord. Another quote from The Shack talks about it: "Life hurt you. Lies are one of the easiest places for survivors to run. They give you a sense of safety, a place where you have to depend on only yourself. But it's a dark place, isn't it? Lies are a little fortress: inside them you can feel safe and powerful. Through your little fortress of lies you try to run your life and manipulate others. But the fortress needs walls, so you build some. These are the justifications for your lies. You know, like you are doing this to protect someone you love, to keep them from feeling the pain. Whatever works, just so you feel okay about the lies." This has hit me hard in the last hour. I am done telling and believing lies about my life and about others because that is not where real safety comes from. My real safety is going to come from hiding my heart in my First Love.
Day to day life is hard, but that's why the Lord allows us to experience Him in huge ways at certain points in our life so we don't give up or lose hope in Him. For me, it has been so hard to even want God because of how miserable I have been feeling. Honestly though, I know without a doubt I need the Lord more than ever right now, and instead of going to soccer games or hanging out with my friends all the time, I know I need to start taking time to be with the Lord.
In the past few days, I have started to do that again. And it has been so refreshing for my soul. I have come to the conclusion that it is so much harder for me to see and taste and hear my Daddy in Littleton than it was for me in Uganda, because I have so many distractions in my life. I have realized that I was so happy in Uganda because I was not worried about what Sam was doing or about what fun Kaley and Katie were having without me. I was completely M.I.A. and my heart is dying to go M.I.A. again. Knowing that I am better off without social media, or the ways of #firstworldproblems, is comforting because it shows me that I really do desire to be back at my home.
For so long this year, I thought for sure that something big was going to happen to me, that I would have this moment where the Lord finally gave me the greatness He promised me this summer, and maybe it's still coming, but I have not experienced it yet. But because of this, I know for a fact, that my heart is halfway around the world. I know exactly where I left it too, I left it at the front gate of the kids house. My heart misses sweet Tuse and Janat and Favor and Lez and Ikiam and Meddie and Tracy and Mark, but I cling to the thought that someday, whether it is here or in heaven, I will be reunited with those dark faces and white eyes. When that moment comes, I will weep tears of wondrous joy because those children stole my heart and kept it with them.
Senior year has blind sided me, in so many good ways, but also some bad. And while my heart is finally recovering, I know where it truly belongs: halfway around the world in Kampala, Uganda. So with that said, I have no idea where the Lord wants me to be next year or even this summer, but I am confident that I will be perfectly fine as long as I have my First Love by my side.
Wherever I am in this world, as long as I have God, I am Home.
Sara
