Wildly Longing...

I can close my eyes at almost anytime...and I am there.

I take a deep breath. I smell it. I walk carefully on wet, slippery, red earth. Banana trees everywhere I look. I hear the noise of kids running, playing, laughing. I see those beautiful white teeth shining out from beautiful dark faces, some full of hope, some full of fear and anger. I hear night noises, loud symphonies carrying on despite the darkness. Rain pours down on my tin roof. Laughing until it hurt with Adam, Moses and Sophie every day. Adventure in every moment.

My life of simplicity. Void of the greatest "necessities" electricity, running water, a toilet inside the house. I miss the silly things like filling up a plastic basin to bathe in and not even dreaming of blow drying my hair or putting make up on. Lighting matches, candles lanterns to see. No distractions to take up my time. Learning how to love in an unimaginable way.

Oh, the fullness of wildly loving a God who I knew beyond all else, was wild about me.

That is something I no longer feel. Its a place that I long for. Not even so much physically but spiritually. It is a place that I have never found here. I look for it. But I get so angry that I cannot quench this longing...to be back there, back in that fullness, that love, that confidence. Why doesn't God let this fire die out? It seems so unfair. I struggle with so much anger towards Him. I cannot go back...so why are these flames still raging??

I long to go back there. I cannot explain the way I have felt each time I stepped off that plane in Entebbe, Uganda. My heart screamed, "I am home!!" Its the only thing in my life I have ever done where I undeniably knew GOD TOLD ME TO GO HERE. The idea, so much NOT mine, that it was ONLY His.

I remember returning to the States feeling like such an outsider. It was an impossible feeling to deal with. I truly felt like God left me...and if I am being honest, there is such a short period of time where I have felt connected with Him since then, that its hard not to say I haven’t felt Him or heard Him at all in these past years.

There is goodness, greatness in my life now. I have a husband who I know God hand picked and delivered for/to me. I have the most lovely children, that I have dreamed of my whole life...but I am lost. I search for Him, wanting to find Him in the way I found Him there. I cannot. The guilt I have over our seemingly failed relationship must only fall on me...but this dessert is dry and it is wearing me down.

And the emptiness remains. I cannot bring myself to believe that it is there for a reason. I simply try and daily find the God I feel abandoned me on an airplane many years ago.

Oh, how I miss the fullness of wildly loving a God who I knew beyond all else, was wild about me.