Finding Rest!!

“Come to me, all you who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest.”

Entering into the beauty of Kapturwa, I thought I was also entering into a place of rest and renewal.  Instead, as I so easily end up doing, I ended up being super busy and striving and worrying about the future.  It was full of lots of fun and cultural activities – I went to a Ugandan wedding and introduction ceremony and hiked mountains and saw caves and learned how to cook with my mom, but I was not at rest in my soul.  As I was trudging up the dusty hills of Uganda in the scorching sun, I felt overwhelmingly, tired.  As I also started feeling pretty sick, God brought to mind a verse in the form of a song I knew – “Come to me, all you who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest.  Take my yoke upon me and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble at heart, and you will find rest for your souls.  For my load is easy and my burden is light.”  This verse brought me comfort and helped me in those few hours of tiredness, and it continued to bring me through a time where I desperately needed to stop striving, and just rest! 

  During the rest of the afternoon, as I lay in my bed sweating out a fever, I also sweat out my need to strive and serve and figure out the rest of my life.  In that moment of brokenness and forced rest, I finally was able to hear God’s perfect plan for me – to rest knowing that I was His beloved.  God had desired Kapturwa to be a time of rest for me, but I had instead tried to serve and constantly do…and that’s not what God wanted of me!  Moreover, I had become really frustrated and confused with my desire to do missions – because suddenly, I realized that missions was really hard and it would be way easier to just live the normal life of an American! It was really humbling to find that I wasn’t actually naturally compassionate and did not want to suffer with others – it was way too hard!  My dream of doing missions and bringing light into the darkness and hope to those in despair suddenly came crashing down as I was faced with the hard and realistic realization of what missions really is.  While I hadn’t really entered into anything super hard, I had found that waking up early to do dishes outside and having to cook for three hours to make a meal and constantly feeling hot and missing family…was hard!  It was in humbly realizing that wow – I really wasn’t righteous on my own and didn’t desire God on my own either, that I finally realized, the truth of the gospel.  Everything truly and finally is grace, and anything that I do is completely by His power!  Moreover, as I later began reading Compassion, I found that if I was to do missions, God would give me the conviction and absolute joy in doing it.  And in the meantime, I can rest in God’s loving arms and in doing so love others in whatever community I am in.  

I still don’t know where God is calling me or my “vision” for the future, but that’s ok.  As He spoke to me over and over again since that time of sickness that He was calling me just to rest in Him, I found comfort knowing that He was holding me by my right hand and was hemming me in behind and before.  I may not know where I’m going, but He sure does!