a short video on the situation in sudan, more specifically in khartoum, from my perspective.
this is a place that hurt me more deeply than i could process. the heaviest upset was the fact that my own personal emotion dominated my thoughts more than the needs of people around me. how do we "visit" anyway? am i always just a guest, invited by muslims and christians, blacks and arabs, poor and rich alike to drink tea in their muddy homes? is my goal to be like them, to live like them? i feel worse if it isn't. i feel pulled by some internal organ (because mostly all of them hurt now), attached to a line and hook, to come out of my water and gasp for air with anyone i can. but how dare i try, and with what motives? what great purpose can i serve as a flopping fish anyway? but i need you to know about this thing. to be present. to show up with the giant question mark in your shirt pocket and some love in your heart. i don't know if i did a good job. i actually don't know if i shared much more than my white face and some rap songs with these people. but aren't we both changed now? how can we not be new, to be with each other, me and sudan? how can sudan not feel how i do, confused, unsure of this thing before them or how to be with it, but glad to at least have had the opportunity to have someone new to listen? sometimes i hear these questions rise up and snatch all the attention until i've lost site of my friend, my Love, who answers everything for me just by choosing to be with me. He, Jesus, He tells me "wait! wait!", "I'm bringing you something." He's already given me something bigger than me. the simple fact is that He's making me like Him, giving me Himself over and over, and He loves people a whole lot more than i do by myself. sudan has been loved by Him since it began, and the best way He cares deeply for it is through people who love Him. sometimes they're sudanese, sometimes they're from eritrea, sometimes they're from minnesota. He's the reason we do things we don't know how to explain. when Love is your push, you might find yourself eating breakfast with both confusion and satisfaction. i'm still trying not to make this about me, but as you can gather, that is not easy. sometimes you just feel like you gotta do something, go somewhere, love somebody specific. i don't want to be done with my new friend, sudan. but i also don't want to go again until that beautiful Gift, that Christ, moves me to go with Him. my head points down at my feet when i think about the fact that i got to go and see His bright face in that place, through those people He loves. it is He inside me who loves them back, who desires to listen to and live their pain, and who has the capacity to even care. i alone am simply a spurt of deeply felt emotions that move because i'm the one hurting. i don't want to sell them me or my country or feed them my personal aspirations. i just want to be a good listener. i want to be used if i can, and if i can't, then i want to leave them with Love.
it's taken me a long time to feel myself again after this trip. i don't want to forget, to get distracted, to move on, or to let my proximity to the situation have the final say. awareness has changed my conversations with God, and i'm learning that sometimes what seems to be the last pathetic squeak for help is actually igniting new movements in a God who listens. i still don't know where i'm going or what i'm doing or why what happened to me in sudan happened. most of the time i hear myself wondering what the heck i'm talking about since i've returned home...but then i realize that i'm just like everyone else; we just like to say what's in our hearts, to decipher our purpose and find our connection to our own lives. i believe that the greatest purpose we can ever achieve is in a relationship with that magnificent God, who came as Christ, to seek us out and take us beyond our limits. i can't believe He listens to me and hears me out. i can't believe He gives me passion and compassion and puts me in places where i can play out both. the truth is that even as a flopping fish, i have been made uniquely and designed, implemented, into a plan that is bursting at the seems with purpose, and the title of it all is Love. i'm so grateful to this Friend who is it for me, my Favorite, who is saying the same things to you, maybe in different forms or facets, just so that we can experience a little more of Him. thank you for bearing with me through all of this, for trying to understand and for even wanting to know. nothing is ever finished when we are talking about people's lives. we must be a part of the great conversation, at the very least, and we must not forget to be active in the outpouring of our souls into that of others, which is always greater than our own selves.
there will be more.
