Imagine for a moment that you’re in a workout class. You probably know the feeling — a hot room, a big whiteboard listing every brutal exercise you’re about to endure, and maybe a group of people beside you, sweating it out on the same journey. The intensity is high. Your strength is fading with each passing rep. You feel like you’ve given it all you’ve got, and you’re ready to call it quits and head home for the day.
Raucous laughter and pulsating music resounded through the crowded, chaotic street. Eric tried to keep his fellow missionaries in sight as hundreds of drunken revelers surged around them on all sides. Eric (who later became my husband) was 23, and this was one of his first missionary assignments — doing street evangelism on Bourbon Street in New Orleans during Mardi Gras — and he was not at all comfortable being there.
My dad was uncharacteristically quiet, and it worried me. He sat on a bench in his room staring down at his legs with a wearied, almost defeated expression on his face. We’d been dealing with large, open wounds from weeping edema (signs of his progressing congestive heart failure) that extended from both his ankles to his knees, and the healing process was painfully slow.
The season brought warmth, birds, and flowers, but I barely noticed the beauty and life around me. I was caught in a funk darker than the bleakest winter day. Physically, I had been sick with an infection I couldn’t shake. Spiritually, the enemy was assailing me through the bitter words of another. Emotionally, I was in turmoil because of the failing health of my husband.
When I was about 13 years old, I attended a worship service that included a powerful song about the love of God. As the words of the song echoed through the church, I suddenly had the clear realization that God could have chosen to let humanity go and never have tried to redeem them.
Several decades ago at a gathering of Christian believers in Ethiopia, hundreds of believers were challenged to send someone from among them to reach the unreached tribes in their country with the Gospel; tribes where nobody else had been able to go for generations.
I was nervous about the day’s events. I gave my husband a hug before I left the house with his reassurance that, truly, everything was going to be just fine. Even on the short drive, I could only imagine how horrible it was going to be. As I pulled up at my destination, eyeing it with fear, I knew there was no avoiding it. No matter what…
Late into the night over cups of tea going cold, I heard her story and surveyed the landscape of her life from the outside listening in. My mind reeled and my heart ached as her words landed in my ears. There were problems I couldn’t fix; solutions I couldn’t provide. She was in a desert season — and I couldn’t change that.
The sound of humming lawnmowers and the carefree laughter of children playing could be heard throughout the neighborhood on that summer afternoon as I excitedly cut through backyards in an effort to reach my house as quickly as possible