A Way in the Desert: 2020

Nearly 3 months ago we celebrated Pi Day: our 10^th time to set a day aside for spending time together, measuring some circles, eating some pie. 9 years ago, March 14th was the very last time I spent the day at home with only 3 kids.

By that night, our entire world flipped and it would never again look exactly the same.  Now, we celebrate Pi day each year; time set aside to remember how God sustained us.  We remember that He alone is consistent.  We remember how important it is to treasure the days we have together because we can never take an ounce of this life for granted.  We remember that He always works for our good and His glory so that others may know Him.

For Pi Day 2020 we did more of the usual than last year, which was a good measuring stick.  We were a bit more settled in our TZ life.  We measured pancakes with chocolate chips, baked pies, played games, were together.

I’m so incredibly thankful, now, for those simple memories and pictures because this year Pi Day once again became a marker for us.  It was the last day before our world began a slow turn which eventually flipped us upside down and spat us out on the literal other side.

Short story: We left TZ, a country which had been our home for 19 months, at the end of March.  It was a terribly difficult decision.  One that I’ve had to journal over and over to keep from emotionally muddying the reasons we felt God had said “go.” It was backwards and upside down from anything we expected to do even when we came to know of Covid-19, and life changed in literally a matter of hours.

 

 

 

 

Now that we’ve travelled back to our home country, we’ve been asked a lot, “How are you doing?” Which is just an impossible question to answer.  It is like asking someone mid-jolt at the end of the roller coaster “how did you find that ride?”.  You know that jolt?  The one where you hit the final bump to slow the beast.  The one where you are startled a little, but then quickly start breathing again for the first time since the ride began?  Only somehow we got stuck for a while in the jolt- with no slow coast toward the unloading dock.   For a while it was as if our bodies hung, with only our subconscious wandering.  And sometimes still we blink slowly in an eery pause, oscillating between glancing forward and back.

Over the last two months we have begun to slowly re-intersect with life. Encouraging scriptures and words written from those we love were like slow shakes on our shoulders to help us awake, and assess, and resurface.  We’ve continued working hard with our school in TZ: RRL as interim-director, our 7 kids finishing their classes remotely, and me as ring-master of the home circus.  There has been a lot of good in this new (albeit temporary) life, even if it is a world we could never have predicted.

As we’ve found new routine, developed new expectations and worked to navigate a world that at once seems familiar and foreign, I’ve thought a lot about these verses from Isaiah 43:18-19:

“Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past.

Toss out your expectations, your security, your identity.  Do not clench your fists around the confidence you had in your strength or routines or even relationships.

SEE, I am doing a new thing!

Blink, look around, even when stuck in the jolt of the ride- SEE.  God is here. He is doing a new thing!

Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? 

You might have missed it.  It might have seemed inconsequential at first, in its beginnings, because it was coming from deep in the ground. And you didn’t notice it before, because before you didn’t even know you needed it.  Maybe because like Manna, you didn’t even know what to call this provision.

I am making a way in the desert and streams in the wasteland.”

Why would God go to such care to make a path in the desert, in the most unlikely place.  In a place that no one wants to go ANYWAY.  And why would He dare carve the wasteland with a life-giving stream?  Why waste the water?  The good, clean, life-sustaining water?

UNLESS.  Unless the places the enemy declared a desert, God claimed for growth.  Unless the place the enemy declared a wasteland was the very place from which God decided to raise up beauty.  Unless the very places the enemy would tell us to flee are the exact places where God is saying, “HERE!!!  SEE IT HERE!  I am doing a NEW thing!”

UNLESS in the desert and the wasteland there was life worth LIVING.  And against the backdrop of wilderness, the life given would all the more loudly declare His glory!

The days after our very first Pi Day were so hard, such a blur.  It was weeks before we started to feel like we were resurfacing and even then we resurfaced to a new reality, one we weren’t sure we wanted to embrace.  But God was faithful there, in the most unexpected of places, to bring LIFE.  He indeed made a path and carved the land with streams of sustaining water.  Now those days are part of our Ebenezer story– where we can look back and say “ah, but God sustained us then.  He was faithful.  And He is the SAME now.  His very character is consistent and His loving care for us is unwavering.”

These days we are praying fervently about what the next piece of our life will look like.  We believe we will go back to TZ for the 20-21 school year, but not completely clear what that will look like. And as we find ourselves in another land of unknowns, what a gift the previous chapters of our story are.  We have different eyes to see and watch for His provision.  We know with confidence that even when He asks us trust Him in places we didn’t ask to go, when we have low visibility for what lies around the bend, He is there.  Providing what we didn’t even know to ask for.

There is a Swahili word we love: “shagalabagala,” meaning chaos or chaotic, kind of like haywire.  A very good word for 2020.  The loss of lives, the economic destruction, the unknown, the turning-upside down of plans and expectations.  Maybe especially the confrontation with the reality of systemic injustices which should be antiquated but still inflict significant harm.  SHAGALABAGALA.  In this wasteland there is anger, hurt, rebellion, injustice, death, destruction, division…and maybe that is the very place where restoring order and providing a path forward, will make His name known.  It is our opportunity, as a Church, to ask the question again “what life is here for us?  Why would he provide for us unless there is life worth living.”  We can choose to argue “who done it” or to be involved in the new life which has suddenly been provided space to cultivate.  A righteous SPRING is BLOOMING because there is nothing left to do from here but GROW anew.

“From scratch” might be terrifying.  EXCEPT. There is one who is an expert at redemption, a pro at bringing order from shagalabagala.  He is walking right beside saying “Dear one, it is springing up.  I KNOW you can’t perceive it yet.  I KNOW you don’t understand. I know you feel like you are stuck at the end of a ride you did not ask to take away from the former things.  But soon, you’ll be past this jolt. You’ll be unpaused.  You’ll be able to look and see with certainty this new thing I am doing is for your good.  And my glory.  So that they may know.”

“There WILL be life here.  Life worth living to the fullest.”

ABL