To Those I Love

I just want you to know now that I am not afraid. I hear of the bombings and the disease and the guns and the mess and your sincere “Be safe” whispered to me as I ramble on about dirty children and full-funding. And I hope you don’t take this the wrong way, but I won’t be safe. I hear myself say that and I’ve yet to flinch and it surprises me, I know I’m not that brave. The only explanation I can settle on is that this is what I was made for. I’ve known for a long time that I wasn’t made for a comfortable life and I’ve always wanted so much deeper that what this world can give me. I’m never satisfied with the white picket fence theology so widely accepted. Safe has never really been a long term goal of mine.

And I know how hard this will be for you to understand and you will wonder how I could “risk it all” for a place I’ve never known. But the thing is I do know it, as sure as my heart is beating right now, I know it. And I have no fear about following my heart in this direction. You know, I don’t sit here and wonder about my next breath, and maybe I should, but without wondering and fearing, love, it came. Life was not meant to be lived on a ventilator for fear my lungs would give-way. God built me with this passion and by His grace, He’s letting me live it out and you can bet that if I had to give up all my comfort: reading books in my favorite chair and fancy dates and a warm bed, my little safe ventilator bubble. If I had to give it all up to be in that passion for but a moment, I wouldn’t think twice.

C.S. Lewis says, “If I find in myself desires which nothing in this world can satisfy, the only logical explanation is that I was made for another world.” And, friends, until I am in that world I am going to take each of these breaths and urgently love all that I can. And I’m going to go to Africa. And if my bus gets bombed, I’m going to love that man with my last breath because I don’t know how to live any differently anymore.

A beautiful woman, Jane Austen, who speaks my heart sometimes, once said, "I have no notion of loving people by halves, it is not my nature”. – I am going to love them. And if it takes all of me: figuratively, emotionally, literally. Ok.

It is well with my soul.

And to you, I will love you too, with every bit of me that flies across that ocean I will love you. But, I will always love Jesus more. And when He says “go”, I will move. And if that means losing you, I won’t be sorry. Being alive is grand, and with every moment of breath I will love you, but I will recklessly follow Him if it ruins me. And if He is what ruins me, what a beautiful ruin I will be.