[home is where the heart is]

As soon as the plane landed, I let out a breath I didn't know I had been holding since May. Every single moment during the too-short visit to San Diego felt like home. I was struck by the beauty of the life I had created there- the relationships that more closely resemble family than friendship, the church that convicts me to live a life of intention and action, the ocean walks that fill me with awe and reverence.

"Do you feel like you're where you are supposed to be?" I was asked.

Sonoma County is breathtakingly beautiful, and the redwoods make my heart soar. My family is here, and I can see my grandparents and cousins within a five minute drive. {Yet it isn't a question of the merits of my hometown.} My soul longs to be elsewhere. I am in a waiting period, biding my time until I can leave. I rush through every day, wishing time would pass faster. I have spent much of my life waiting to live: waiting to move to college, waiting to find the right career, the right man.

But is that how my life is meant to be lived? Hurried through to get to something hopefully better? Not noticing the beauty around me, the work God wants to do in me right here, right now?

We may be fairly happy now, but there's always tomorrow and the prospect of a happier place, a happier life. So all options are left on the table. We never fully commit. That is, I think, a dangerous thing. We can't love a place, or a person, if we always have one foot out the door.

[Geography of Bliss, Eric Weiner]

I feel like I'm in a desert. A place of forgottenness. But looking back at my times of waiting, I know that deserts aren't that at all. They are times of tremendous growth- fresh buds popping up all over the place. It's a time when I learn to be humble, when I learn that I have limits and am fragile, and when I learn where true strength comes from.

The color of the day is sea green. The color of the ocean on a sunny San Diego day, of the bracelet that travelled to me from my best's adventure in Nicaragua, and of the succulents that sit on my windowsill who thrive and grow in arid conditions.

Can these dry bones live? They can, and they will. There is still beauty in my life, every day, that I walk right by. {And I can choose to not only see it, but celebrate it.} To be aware of these tiny glimpses of heaven in my life. To be all here for the time that I am here. To know that while I may or may not end up in San Diego, that my life doesn't stop, or pause. That this is my life right now. And I must notice it.

ish and awe

I miss the ish-ness of Malawi: "the bus will be here around 8-ish," but pulls in at 9:30, "church starts at 10-ish," but we start the first worship song at 10:45, the ish-ness of whether the showers would be warm or not, whether the light switch would turn on or not, whether we would have fuel to travel each day or not, or whether the gate keeper would be at the gate or not. Believe it or not, I miss ish. I loved that living was so dependent on... life.

Brick red is the color of the day: the color of the red dirt roads and the red mud huts and the dusty haze that made the sunsets burn bright red.

I might have only been in Africa for two weeks, but those two weeks were filled with more moments of feeling alive than all 52 weeks of the past year combined. There were highs and there were lows and there was everything in between, but more than anything, I felt home. I found home and now I'm halfway around the world from it and it's breaking my heart. So here I am, homesick and struggling to express how or why I feel the way I do to anybody around me, and I feel completely alone.

In the midst of that heartbreak, though, is awe at God's handiwork in my life and in my heart. The complete affirmation that the deep aching desires of my heart are from Him. And that affirmation has blown away my doubts and replaced them with motivation to pursue a path that I wasn't sure was for me. 

The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field. When a man found it, he hid it again, and then in his joy went and sold all he had and bought that field.

Matthew 13:44

And now with joy- with joy! I seek to abandon it all. Why? Because I've found something worth losing everything for. [David Platt, Radical] 

Malawi, ndakondwa kukuonani (I am happy to meet you)

In seven hours, I will see San Diego get smaller and smaller until it is out of sight. I will fly over mountains and fields, rivers and oceans, and Monday morning my feet will touch Malawian soil. I will breathe Malawian air.

My only purpose there is to let God shine His light through me. I'm there to be His hands and His feet and to provide a tangible expression of His love.

Of His amazing, everlasting, unconditional love.

Whether I'm ready or not is of little consequence. Whether I have it all together or not doesn't matter. I've doubted and I've been excited. I've been nervous and I've been filled with joy and hope. The beautiful thing is that I will never have it all together and God doesn't make me rely on my own strength, wisdom, or capacity to love, all of which would fail me. He is with me always.

"Ah, sovereign Lord," I said, "I do not know how to speak. I am only a child."

But the Lord said to me, "Do not say, 'I am only a child.' You must go to everyone I send you to and say whatever I command you. But do not be afraid, for I am with you and will rescue you," declares the Lord.

Then the Lord reached out His hand and touched my mouth. He said to me, "Now, I have put my words in your mouth."

Jeremiah 1:6-9

I think I was meant to go to Africa, I mean, after all my favorite movie ever is The Lion King. I want to watch an African sunrise and sing "The Circle of Life." And I want to see Rafiki. The color of the day is aquamarine, the color of Rafiki's bum of course!

Thank you for all of the support and encouragement I've received in this journey. Please keep my team in your prayers these next couple of weeks. Pitani bwino ♥