Tag: Africa

Posted in Living this Life

Weird

Posted on by Sara

“Well, that’s weird”, she said. And then she walked away, leaving an indelible mark on my heart.

It was 1989. My family had moved from Africa to Los Angeles, and I was thrown into a Southern California high school after spending the first 14 years of my life in the jungles of West Africa. (anyone getting Mean Girls vibes here yet?) This was a mixer to get to know people before the first day of school, and some cheerleaders were supposed to be welcoming us. So she smiled brightly, asked me where I was from, and I eagerly told her, “I’m from Africa”.

Looking back, I kind of feel sorry for her. She probably expected me to just say Pasadena or Sierra Madre like most others in that room, so when the word, “Africa” came out of my mouth, what was she suppose to do? There is no script for that when you’re in high school in So Cal… so she applied the only label she probably knew – “weird” – and then walked away. Leaving me standing there, feeling … well, weird, I guess.

Sometimes I remember that moment, and I feel that blush of shame start to crawl up my neck again. There’s something worse than feeling invisible – and that is feeling wrong. Like the whole world is one way, and you are another – and there’s nothing you can do about it.

So you bumble along, figuring the best you can do is pretend. You wear the clothes, play the part, don the mask, and yet feel so out of place in every place you go.

My whole life until then, I was the blond kid in a sea of beautiful brown faces. I may have looked out of place – even weird, you might say – but it was my home and it felt right.

But then it all changed. Suddenly, I looked like I fit in, but nothing inside of me belonged. And that brings a whole other set of confusion, insecurity, and identity conflict.

There were alot of years spent walking in the shadow of that branding … the word weird almost became my identity. I know I’m not alone – in fact many who are reading this have echoes of much worse names spoken over them by those much closer to them than a random cheerleader at a high school event. People who were supposed to protect you and honor you, but instead spoke words filled with lies and deceit into your soul.

My own story led me down many roads and into many different communities where I found bits and pieces of myself, but none could ever define all of me. In Amsterdam, I found a community I could relate to in a wonderful world of misfit travellers who collectively didn’t belong anywhere. It was perhaps the most “at home” I had felt in that sense… but it wasn’t my home. On a beautiful Native American reservation, I found echoes of my life in Africa, and I built a life there, despite once again seeming so out of place. It still feels like home to me, but even that place filled with memories of my wedding day, my babies being babies, much laughter and many tears – even that place doesn’t define me.

So here we are … and I have questions.

When you sit before God in the cool of the day, and let your soul be unclothed, what does He see? And what do you see? Do those two visions align or do you find yourself with a splintered identity?

Could it be that we are living lives designed by a Creator, with beautiful and unique giftings, but we see ourselves through imperfect eyes – and that disconnect between the vision God has of us and our own vision of ourselves leaves an insecurity and brokennes imprinted on our souls. So we live with a splintered identity in the shadow of the lies spoken over us, making life decisions, choosing careers, marrying (or staying single) and raising families (or not) … all while being defined by this discordant note.

Lean in – listen to this! This next part takes my breath away. I love the promises of Scripture, and I have spent years reading and learning and seeking to apply to my life the truth of who God says I actually am… and yet I had never seen this until my 50th year. My year of Jubilee.

In a desert land He found him,
    in a barren and howling waste.
He shielded him and cared for him;
    He guarded him as the apple of His eye. (Dt 32:10)

This is a promise I have always loved, and while finding the phrase “apple of His eye” rather endearing, it sounds like something echoing from the hallways of the 1800’s, doesn’t it? I struggled to find much significance in the phrase until I found myself studying this passage in depth to prepare to teach one day… and I decided it was time to learn what that phrase really meant. Allow me a moment to nerd out over words here, because this little insight has transformed how I see myself!

Here is the image of the Hebrew word we read as “apple” in our Bibles today:

Which translates literally as the “the little man of the eye”.

I have so many more questions at this point. How does a “little man” translate to “apple” and what does all of that even mean in light of God’s promises to you and me?

Hold on – this gets really cool! What this describes is that moment you look into someone’s eye, and their pupil (the apple of their eye) catches the light and reflects a mirrored image of yourself back to you. A “little man of the eye” … kind of like this:

Is your heart beating a little faster? Do you hear what I hear in this beautiful little Hebrew phrase?

We can only see the true image of ourselves when we look into our Father’s eye, into the apple of His eye, and see our reflection gazing back at us.

Which means – we need to draw close. Lay aside all the tormenting lies and self doubts. Lay down all the aspirations and self-help motivational speeches. Turn down what your family and community and successes and failures and echoes in your head say about you. Lay it all down, and gaze into His eyes. Let your soul be stripped down of all the ways we guard ourselves, and in this vulnerable space, look deep into His eyes and see yourself for who you truly are.

I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
    your works are wonderful,
    I know that full well.
My frame was not hidden from you
    when I was made in the secret place,
    when I was woven together in the depths of the earth.
Your eyes saw my unformed body;
    all the days ordained for me were written in your book
    before one of them came to be. (Psalm 139:14-16)

My friend, do you believe that?

You will be a crown of splendor in the Lord’s hand,
    a royal diadem in the hand of your God.
No longer will they call you Deserted,
    or name your land Desolate.
But you will be called Hephzibah, (which means “my delight is in her”)
    and your land Beulah;
for the Lord will take delight in you. Is 62:3-4

You are His workmanship, His poem1 you are royalty and you are holy2 . You are righteous3, you are a temple4 , you are free5, you are a jewel6, you are honored7, and you are protected8 You are delighted in9, you are chosen and precious10, you are complete11, you are loved12, and you have a purpose13. You need not fear or be discouraged14 , you are bold, imbued with power, love, and self-discipline15.

Draw near, my friend!. Gaze in His eyes. Don’t look away – keep at it until you see your reflection in there… see who He is and who He made you to be. Only then is our reflection true, trustworthy, and sure. Only then do the voices from within and without that taunt us start to fade and become irrelevant. Only then do our feet find a firm foundation, and we can truly align our identity with the one our Creator designed us to be.

This brings peace. The kind that doesn’t get rocked by our circumstances. That sweet cheerleader had no idea the road she was putting me on back in 1989, and today I am grateful for the label she put on me – for it made me draw closer to my Creator to discover who He truly made me to be. I kind of like how Dr. Seuss puts it: “today you are you, that is truer than true. There is no one alive who is youer than you!”

  1. Ephesians 2:10 ↩︎
  2. 1 Peter 2:9 ↩︎
  3. Isaiah 54:14 ↩︎
  4. 1 Corinthians 6:19 ↩︎
  5. Zechariah 9:11-12 ↩︎
  6. Zechariah 9:17 ↩︎
  7. Isaiah 49:5 ↩︎
  8. Zechariah 2:8 ↩︎
  9. Zephaniah 3:17 ↩︎
  10. Isaiah 28:16 ↩︎
  11. Colossians 2:10 ↩︎
  12. Romans 5:8 ↩︎
  13. Jeremiah 29:11; 1 Peter 2:9b ↩︎
  14. Joshua 1:9 ↩︎
  15. 2 Timothy 1:7 ↩︎
Posted in Living this Life

Bread of Life

Posted on by Sara

Sometimes the story just writes itself around you and you don’t even know it’s happening. Then one day, you smell that heavenly aroma and it all comes back.

There’s nothing quite like it – that smell of a freshly baked loaf of bread. You may try to break it all down to science and molecules, but I will fight you to the end over it. That smell is pure magic. It communicates all the things in one whiff – comfort, provision, nourishment. It somehow symbolizes everything we need – physically and emotionally.

And there she stood over that counter – kneading the dough. My amazing mom – faithfully providing for her family. I saw the picture this week and it all came rushing back to me. There was no Walmart in the steamy jungles of Liberia – there was simply flour, water, and her hands. So she kneaded that dough, she baked the loaves, and we ate that bread. Day after day, week after week. It nourished our bodies then – and today it nourishes my soul.

I think about those frantic Israelite mothers in Egypt – the time comes to go, and what do they do? They grab their bread, some just had dough, and flee Egypt for the Promised Land. Those children would eat, because their mom packed the bread! As a child, there is so much comfort in that – so much security knowing that you will be cared for.

There is another bread – one that is offered at the altar in the Tabernacle throughout the Israelite’s wanderings in the desert. And later in the Temple in Jerusalem – throughout the history of the Israelite people, The Bread of the Presence has served as a symbol that acknowledged God as life and nourishment.

Hundreds of years later, Jesus held bread. And broke it. And fed 5,000 people with only 2 loaves. He never runs out, does He?

And then come these astonishing words: “Jesus declared, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never go hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.” John 6:35

Can we all get back to that simple place once again? The place of a child who needs nourishment as simple as bread? Bread that satisfies to the fullest. Bread that comforts and nourishes. Bread that heals all our brokenness. Bread that feeds all our needs – physical and emotional. Bread that never runs out.

Taste and see… and be satisfied.

Posted in Living this Life

the e-mail

Posted on by Sara

I could tell by the subject line that I didn’t want to open the e-mail.

Yet, I knew by the subject line that I just had to open the e-mail and read the words I didn’t want to read.

It was true. Another place closing. Another place that I love – gone.

Thing is, this isn’t just another place. I drove by one of my favorite restaurants the other day and saw the for sale sign. That was a bummer. This was different. This hit deep, and I suddenly didn’t know how to process it.

It’s one of those places that I have never been able to get out of my soul. One of the first places I understood the word “home”. In a life of feeling perpetually out of place, this was a place that welcomed misfits like me and gave us a sense of belonging.

It was my sophomore year of college – that summer when I walked through the doors of a The Shelter, a youth hostel in the middle of the city of Amsterdam on the edge of the red light district.

I had no idea God would forever change the trajectory of my life that summer. That He would show me who I was created to be and that I would never be satisfied settling for anything else.

I went back after college and spent a year in those walls – eager to learn, eager to meet people from around the world, eager to share my Jesus with them. God used that place to forever alter my life.

You may say it’s just a building surrounded by a multitude of other buildings. But it was on that rooftop I would pace when I felt my world crumbling around me – I would pace back and forth – praying and pleading with God for His Truth.

It was in that dining room where I would eat with people from around the world – Laughing, singing, talking, doing life together.

It was in that kitchen where I learned to make Moussaka and Boerenkool. But it’s really the place I learned that the simple act of spending a day cutting onions and peeling mounds of potatoes can carve out quiet places to let the Spirit in.

It was in that snack bar where I would discuss the beauty of my Jesus with a Spanish traveler who had just from a Tibetan monastery. Where I would pore over the Scriptures and rest in the peace of the Psalms with my friend Jess, a gay prostitute who was desperately hungry for balm for a hurting soul.

It’s where I learned not to fear the questions – for if you keep looking you will find the Truth. It just takes a lot of courage to face the real questions and a lot of persistence to uncover the answers. It’s where I saw that we aren’t really all that different under the surface – where a smile has the power to transcend all cultural, racial, and political differences. And sometimes when trying to register a group of 20 travelers who don’t speak English, a smile is all you have.

It’s where I learned to love shoarma and frites with mayo. And I learned the value of knowing how to ask for coffee with whipped cream in Dutch (Koffie met slagroom, alstublieft)

So I read the e-mail, and as the truth soaked in that they were having to close their doors due to the current condition of our world, the tears started to fall. Not just for all the faces I saw, the people I had come to love, the memories I cherished… I wept for the loss of a place to return to.

Oh how the heart longs to remember what fades so quickly! How often we long to return to places that matter because they remind us of who we were. More importantly, of who God is and what He has done. And I don’t have many of those places…

Growing up in the jungles of Africa was an unmitigated blessing and I wouldn’t trade it for anything. But my home no longer exists – the ravages of war destroyed my childhood village many years ago, and I will never be able to take my family to the place I grew up. I can show them the country as it is, but it will forever be a different place than the home I knew.

So all these years, my heart has clung to this special place on the edge of the red light district in Amsterdam. I longed for the day I could show my family the place where God changed the course of my life. Where I learned how real He truly is and discovered that He really will catch us when the world crumbles around us. I have walked through those old hallways with my family so many times in my mind – just waiting for the day it could become reality.

And I wept for the loss of that opportunity.

God has placed eternity in the heart of man (Ecclesiastes 3:11) – and yet we try to fit this small earth around that. We grasp for the ideal of an unchangeable good – a place where our hearts feel safe. But buildings crumble and heroes let us down.. What do we do then? Construct new idols? New mirages of control or illusions of contentment? Or do we reject the stuff of earth and place all our hope firmly and only on heaven?

We’ve all experienced loss this year. And I know my story is light compared to the life changing loss many have endured. But we all share this one thing – longings for something we may not be able to return to. It comes out in grief, sorrow, rage, cynicism, depression… and I wonder – what do we do with all these feelings?

When the longings start and we are torn between what is and our nostalgic memory of what was … we often think we have to choose between the two. Instead of rushing past the callback, why don’t we linger a couple more minutes and let it bloom into something of beauty? What if we’re experiencing a foretaste, a promise, a shadow of what is to come? In His moments of greatest agony on earth, Jesus looked to the “joy set before Him”. (Hebrews 12:2)

Do you see it? Can you smell it? The welcoming notes of the fresh baked bread? The delicate aroma of flowers we have yet to discover? We blush and call it childish nostalgia – but could it be so much more?

“In speaking of this desire for our own far off country, which we find in ourselves even now, I feel a certain shyness. I am almost committing an indecency. I am trying to rip open the inconsolable secret in each one of you—the secret which hurts so much that you take your revenge on it by calling it names like Nostalgia and Romanticism and Adolescence; the secret also which pierces with such sweetness that when, in very intimate conversation, the mention of it becomes imminent, we grow awkward and affect to laugh at ourselves… These things—the beauty, the memory of our own past—are good images of what we really desire; but if they are mistaken for the thing itself they turn into dumb idols, breaking the hearts of their worshipers. For they are not the thing itself; they are only the scent of a flower we have not found, the echo of a tune we have not heard, news from a country we have never yet visited.” CS Lewis

So today i don’t think I’m going to wipe these tears away too quickly. I think instead I’ll try to just rest in the magic of the mystery. To let the ache in my heart intensify my longing for heaven – that great unending good that will never be taken from us. That we will never outgrow, move away from, or lose. This is the gift.

“For here we do not have an enduring city, but we are looking for the city that is to come.” Hebrews 13:14