Our Trip North Part 1

Before our trip up North, I told Grandma Judy that if I still could, I would choose not to go. I told her I didn’t feel like I was ready. I didn’t want to leave the comfort of Beacon House and head off into this wild, crazy unknown. I imagined that it would be one of the hardest things I’d ever done, that I wouldn’t understand, that my cultural skin would be too thick for me to really comprehend it. How can I comprehend? I can’t even speak these peoples’ language. I imagined that I would be uncomfortable and awkward, not knowing what to do with myself.

And I was right. Only after you have really done it can you understand how hard it really is. How utterly exhausting it is. And only after I have done it can I realize what a mistake it would have been to stay home.

It takes a lot to get a human to change. We are always scrabbling for our comfort like rats, hoarding every scrap of luxury, pressing our faces into our pillows. God sometimes has to use a veritable cattle prod to get us out of bed and on our feet. In this respect, He is almost ruthless. He refuses to let us settle in. He convicts us with His Word, holds us to His standards, and demands uncompromising obedience. If you make the mistake of giving Him this obedience, He will disrupt and destroy and dismantle your life. He’ll send you 11 siblings and move you across the country 8 times and send you to Africa and then ask “Now what?”

The first thing we did on Friday was go to Mama Laadi’s foster home. When we drove up, the children’s faces lit up and they started jumping and smiling and shouting and running alongside the car. We climbed out and I had about 20 little hands reaching for me and pulling on my skirt and stealing around my waist. They looked at my photo album and kept saying “black and white?” in awed voices. Everyone wanted to know my name and wanted me to know their name. I can only recall three or four of the myriads I heard. But I know they remembered mine. At the end of the day we visited one last time to drop off a suitcase for one of the house mothers. As we got into the car, all the kids started waving and shouting, “Good bye Rasheel!” I rolled down the window and waved until we were out of sight.

And God said, “Now what?”

I got to see the village of Vea, where my sister was born and lived for 8 years. It was beautiful. On our drive in, we passed the irrigated fields where they grow rice and have their fish ponds. Then we drove through a low-lying area and Pastor John (he lives in Vea and was our guide for the day) said that in the rainy season you have to use a canoe to get through to the village. We walked to the church and the school and the community center and met the village chief. There were a few old men sitting there, and afterwards one of them shook my hand and said something in Fra-fra. Pastor John laughed and translated: “Next year when you come, you will have a husband!” Then we all laughed too. I thought about saying I was only 16, but I figured that wouldn’t be of much import here. I met my sister’s grandmother and showed her videos of Lydia and gave her our family photo album. Everyone was pointing at the pictures and talking in Fra-fra. Once I looked behind me and it seemed like the whole village had gathered just to look at the photos. The women also brought out these beautiful hand-woven baskets that they had made. I think Grandma Judy bought almost 10 of them. I hugged Lydia’s grandmother twice before we left; she was sweet and kind and said so many things I wish I had understood. We all trooped back to our air conditioned car.

And God said, “Now what?”

We drove to the Presbyterian Clinic to deliver some of our donated things and take photos of some families needing sponsorship to send their children to school. The Clinic was way out in the boonies; we actually got lost trying to get there and didn’t arrive until after 1:00 in the afternoon. The families had been sitting on a bench, waiting for us since early that morning. We walked into this clinic with no running water and no electricity, filed past a mother with her one hour old baby boy lying on a cot, then out to the porch where two other women were sitting on the verge of having their babies, and finally into a room where a man had just finished having his leg stitched up after accidentally slicing it with an axe. Then we headed outside and took pictures of a blind grandmother with her three grandsons, a 16-year-old who became an orphan for the second time last December, and a blind man with his deaf wife and their two small children. And then we sat down in the shade and let these people serve us bottles of cold Sprite.

And God said, “Now what?”

Now what? What will I do after my brain stops reeling and my body recovers from everything that has happened on this trip? Will it matter? Will it be a turning point, the ray of light that woke me up and got me moving? Or will I run back to my comfortable life and refuse to grow? Will I be too afraid to take the next step? Because there is always one more step. The journey won’t ever end on earth. We will never reach a point where God says, “All right, you’ve done enough. Now sit back, relax, and don’t change anymore for the rest of your life.” He’ll always be calling us to climb one more mountain, cross one more ocean, run one more mile. I don’t want to believe it, but it is going to get harder. The road to the kind of life God loves is deeper and darker and tougher than any other road. But it’s the road I’ve started on. And I may have failed in almost every other way, but so far I haven’t been a quitter, and I don’t plan on being one now.

Okay God. Now what?