Giving up

We had come back from three weeks in the land of the rising sun and I had spent my days taking turns in arguing with and surrendering to the Lord.

The problem was that I had my ideas – my ideas of who I was and of what I wanted to do. And of what I did not want to do. I had my ideas, of what Anne, the missionary, looked like: A woman, selflessly but heroically helping the poor, living with them in a mud hut or a cracking concrete building, a mother to the orphaned and hurt around her, facing danger and even persecution, but living a wild and free dream of miracle filled pioneering life. I wanted to be Anne-DavidLingstoneHudsonTaylorAmyCarmichaelGladysAilward-deVilliers.

 

“They don´t even have orphans here!” I said to the Lord the one day. The next day, another missionary told us about more or less 39.000 children who are orphaned or abandoned and end up being institutionalised, stigmatised and often even abused.

I was told about drama teaching opportunities, the impact wives and moms and families can have in lonely and ageing neighbourhoods, about the need for people that can offer informal counselling and with everything that was mentioned I warmed more to the idea of a “different” Anne, the missionary.

But… I still had my ideas.

We returned to South Africa and I was cautious in my descriptions of Japan. Yes, it was beautiful. Yes, it was different. Would we move there? Maybe. Yes, probably, but…

A few days after we returned, Hanno, my brother and I went to hike a nearby hill.

Finally, I felt like myself again. Red soil under my shoes, a rough rock under my bottom   as we take the adventurous route and slide down the rocky ground. The bush kid comes to live again. I want to dance freedom on that hill in the city.

“This is me!”, I want to exclaim as I take off my shoes and let the wind blow through my messy hair. “Look, this is me!

This continent is where I fit and belong, under a sun that darkens my skin and among people that swing to the same slow rhythm of earth and open skies. Where Creator God is blazing Bright against the night, where heaven and hell are so close and clear in drums and dancing- This is where my soul feels at home and where I can dance Light into poverty and pain.

And yet, You show me a land with heavy, wet soil and dense forests, a people as beautiful and intransparent as the paper windows of their old houses. You show me a land that never danced in the Light and a heaven polluted by false Gods. You show me a numbed people that drinks busyness like medicine against loneliness and fear.

 

I would really have to deny myself if You wanted me to move there!”

 

“Isn´t that what it´s all about?”

The response comes clearly and cuts right through the bone to the marrow.

You show me that I have no right to complain. No right to say: “I would choose differently.” Because You gave that right up when You came to me. You went to the numb, the religious, the critical and immoral. You went to the ones whose character, being and essence didn´t only kill Your comforts and Your routines, but killed You.

You came – and you became – one of us. Flesh in our likeness, ate what we like, spoke with our words – and brought change for eternity.

“Whoever holds on to his life”, You explained “will lose it.”

We all turn to colourless dust, no matter how colourful and distinctive we made ourselves.

“But if you give up your life” – if I give up likes, my preferences, my I-can´t-live-without-this-lies and my sinful desire to be someone, someone better, someone outstanding, someone admired, someone accepted and approved by the nod of my own head – then…

“then you will find it.”

Then I will find purpose beyond my own “Like”-seal, then I find identity beyond the colourless dust – and then I will find the ones that You want to change for eternity.