To Alisa...

Dear Alisa,

This may not mean much to you now, but I pray that God uses this the day you are here in Africa and realize you have nothing left.  Hahaha, but seriously.

So here I am…six months living here in Tanzania and wondering why in the world God would want me?  Ashamed when I see my sin and my selfishness rear its ugly head.  But why am I so shocked?  Because I actually thought I had things together…sick!!!  I remember sitting in our Biblical Counseling courses together and feeling convicted about 1 or maybe 2 idols that I could identify in my life at the time.  I HAD NO IDEA!  I so easily hid behind mounds and mounds of idolatry and I couldn’t even see it.  I had no idea how deeply sick I was with them.

The problem is…I came to Africa. My idols were there the whole time…it was just so easy to hide them, replace them, excuse and ignore them back home.

This has all come crashing into a reality, which is embarrassing to admit.  As I have grasped at the idols I had back home…I have slowly and painfully watched them slip out of my reach.  I can’t escape to them anymore. For months, I have blindly and relentlessly pursued them and even more painfully watched them escape from my grasp; my sisters, my family, my lattes, my clothes, my “sense of self”, my friends, the business of life that kept me feeling important and needed, encouragement from others, friends that spoke the same language, an easy meal to feed my family, a day where I wasn’t covered in dirt, a normal day, a normal conversation, my home, (the list could keep going…like for a long, long time…but I will spare you.)

But there was an idol that I hadn’t lost yet…Aaron.  This week, by the grace of God…he broke my heart and revealed the sin I have been living in as I shouted,  “I just want to go home…I hate it here…I hate you.”  Terrible words.  Revealing words.  All completely untrue but words that came straight from a heart that pursued Aaron to fulfill all those idols and sinful ambitions I had back home.  Aaron could no longer live up to what I thought I needed from him.  I’m so ashamed of what I said and the heart that those words overflowed from.

God has broken my heart and graciously drawn me back to Himself.  He removed the scales that have blinded me for months, for years.  I don’t need Aaron to make me happy.  I don’t need my family, my worldly pleasures, popularity, friendships, ease, a lunch with girlfriends, a date-night once a week, a sense of fitting into a culture so different from my own.  I NEED JESUS. Nothing more. Nothing less.

Before we left as missionaries we were trained to identify culture shock when it came.  I’m not willing to call it that.  It’s this change in culture that has brought our family to our knees in realization of how dependent we are upon our Heavenly Father.  We need Him here.  We needed Him before, but could fill our days with countless pleasure, no matter how unfulfilling they were…we didn’t realize and maybe we didn’t care.  We were far too easily pleased with our idols to realize that communion and reliance upon our Lord is the SWEETEST and greatest place to rest.  In the words we know of C.S. Lewis, We were playing in those mud puddles in the slum because we didn’t understand was meant by God offering us holiday at the sea.  I believe that God loves us so much that He isn’t going to let us settle for anything less than Himself.  It’s not the culture here that is shocking me so much; it’s myself and my own sin that has done most of the shocking.  Even more shocking is a God who lovingly, time and time again, pulls this wandering heart back to Himself. 

So, my dearest friend, who will begin this missionary journey in a few short months:  Let go of your ideas of what a perfect American life looks like and run to Jesus.  Let go of everything you feel that you need…run to Him.  Take a hard and painful look at where your time, your money, your thoughts, your ambitions and your heart so quickly run.  Cast it all before the feet of our gracious Lord and cling to Him alone.  Nothing else will satisfy.  Nothing else will keep you here on the mission field when those things fade away.  Nothing but Jesus is enough to fill these relentless hearts of ours and fill our souls with true and everlasting joy!

I pray that one day our God can get the glory by this being said about our lives:

…having acknowledged that they were strangers and exiles on the earth. For people who speak thus make it clear that they are seeking a homeland.  If they had been thinking of that land from which they had gone out, they would have had opportunity to return. But as it is, they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared for them a city. Hebrews 11:13-16

I love you.  I can’t wait to greet you on this side of the earth.  See you soon.

Steph