10:30 pm. It’s dark outside and I have to go to the bathroom like none other. At home, that’s an easy fix. Roll out of bed, walk ten steps, do some business, and flop back into bed. But in the village of Morekebu, Uganda, what stands between me and sweet, sweet relief is a corn field and The Unknown. This is Africa. Crickets here are the size of a small car (which means the size of a computer mouse, no joke), spiders look like octopuses (giant butts and beady eyes), and all kinds of wild, roaming animals that could sneak attack at any given moment (like…. chickens and goats…). Clearly, there’s a lot of pressure to keep myself composed so there will still be a reason to be at the outhouse when I finally get there.
But this particular night, I wasn’t really afraid. In all honesty, it’s not frightening at all. It’s mostly just exhilerating. Middle of Uganda, middle of the night, who knows what could happen, yeah I’m completely down for that. Bring it on. So of course the simple solution to this rush is to strap a headlamp to your face, and run as fast as you possibly can through the winding path to the outhouse just to see if you can make it without falling. I couldn’t even see where I was going, the light was bobbing all around, Lindsay was running right next to me, we were laughing so hard that we almost fell over. And then it happened. I made one wrong move, and it was over. Meet The Thorn Bush. This was no ordinary thorn bush. This was Satan himself, in bush form. It had purposfully placed itself in my path, waiting for me to run full force straight into it. I imagine it cackling, sharpening it’s thorns the night before in a dark, damp little corner of the world, knowing that I was coming.
My legs got eaten. Not too badly, but enough for me to stop and wonder what on earth had just happened. But more importantly, my abs got a nice workout over laughing about it.
Now, normally I’m not one for analogies, but this is a good one.
I just got this image of God with a giant, super, mega headlamp strapped on his head. Walking camly down the path, allowing me to follow him, letting his light guide me to get me there safely and in the best way. But, when we step off the path, it’s Thorn Bush City. We get hurt, broken, and it’s all our fault. But God is still on that path, and he reaches his hand out to us to pull us back closer to him. He brushes us off, picks out all the thorns that are stuck in our flesh, gives us a sloppy, wet kiss (or zurburt, preferably), and tells us he loves us. Now, with a God like that, why would we want to be running full force through The Unkown? God promises to lead us, to love us.
God has been showing me so much about himself: his humor; his deep, deep, deep, love for us; the Holy Spirit and listening to it’s direction; being able to have conversation with him; prayer with him; his protection from the enemy; strength that is only found in him.
These past few weeks have taught me so much. Ministering to the people of Uganda has been a spiritual battle. The team would literally come home (home is now where our packs are) exhausted, having poured out everything that God had told us to. We prayed for these people, talked with these people, fought the enemy for these people. And there is absolutely no way we could have done that on our own strength.
Praise God that we get to be his hands and feet here!
