Do you know those times in life when you think you’ve gotten over something and it’s in your past only to have the feelings it caused creep up again at the most surprising times?
I’m there right now.
Last December, our team flew out of Nasir just two days after the alleged coup d’etat in Juba, South Sudan. Unlike other missionaries across the country, we were not evacuated, merely flying to Kampala for the holidays. The violence spread, and soon a vast majority of Upper Nile State was insecure and we were unable to return to our homes. We waited in Kampala for a few months, but then EV reassigned us to other villages. In May, we learned that intense fighting had broken out in Nasir and that much of the town was destroyed, our houses were looted, and our hopes of returning dimmed. By July, when Blaise and I were leaving Tonj, it was not looking any better for us to return. By September, the decision had officially been made to relocate Blaise and I to Tonj permanently.
It’s a decision I’ve really wrestled with, as my heart is and will always be in Nasir. However, I made peace with the decision because I knew for sure that God wasn’t calling us to leave the mission field yet and He had placed us in an exciting ministry in Tonj. I wanted to be faithful, so I got on board with the move. Blaise and I have designed the floor plan for our mud hut, we’ve written new ministry plans, and we’ve even purchased new household supplies to start all over again in a new village.
The progress we’ve made just in the last couple of weeks has been awesome! Blaise and Brad went to Tonj to get a construction crew started on our new compound, they returned to Kampala and have been purchasing building supplies, and we’ve had team meetings almost every day to make plans for life and ministry in Tonj.
On the homemaker front, I’ve been unpacking all of our trunks (when you move around a lot, it’s really hard to stay totally organized), sorting through everything we own, and repacking our trunks to take to Tonj. I’m calculating things like how much deodorant we’ll need for three months, weighing out the importance of one item or another, and making list upon list to make sure we don’t forget anything.
And that’s when I realized that I’m really not quite over the fact that we left Nasir and never got to return. That our homes were looted and our possessions either stolen or ruined. That I never had any closure.
It happened this morning.
I was packing Clark’s trunk, filling it with the next two clothing sizes, bibs, towels, blankets, sunscreen, etc. We received several of those awesome swaddling blankets, the aiden + anais muslin ones that are super soft and really lightweight. I started packing them and then suddenly this unbelievable fear and sense of insecurity hit me. I thought, “What if I pack all of these, take them to Tonj, and then have to leave so abruptly that we lose them all?”
That idea quickly went from the cotton blankets to the bath towels, our clothes, Clark’s toys. Soon, I was taking things back out of the trunks, thinking that if I leave half of everything here in Kampala, then we won’t lose everything should we have to abandon our home in Tonj, too. It’s really an awful, haunting feeling, but one that I can’t shake. To lose my own stuff again would be hard enough, but to lose Clark’s things?
There’s a war raging within me right now. Truthfully, I am scared to throw my whole self into life and ministry in Tonj. I’m afraid of getting hurt again, of losing everything again, of being homeless again. I want to be faithful and I want to trust the Lord, but I am holding back some of my trust because He has allowed a lot of pain and suffering into our lives over the last year…why should I think it won’t happen again? I want so desperately to set up a new home, to feel settled and content, and to be able to envision years of life and ministry there, yet a part of me doesn’t believe it will happen.
I wish I had a tidy little paragraph about how this feeling is being resolved or some inspirational speech about the future, but the truth is, I don’t. I feel raw, insecure, and wounded. There are places in me that are broken. Life on the mission field has left marks–some of them rather jagged gashes–on my heart that may not heal for a very long time.
I tell you this tonight so that you may get just a glimpse into my heart and know how to pray. I know the place I’m in right now is not without hope, but it is also not without a lot of struggle. So, please pray for me…pray for my heart, pray for healing, and pray for the courage to keep moving forward despite the fears trying to hold me back.
