Chasing Aslan

A week and one day have passed since my arrival back in the States. It seems like months. It's as though I'm watching myself from the outside. The world around me feels mechanical and foreign, like something out of a bad futuristic movie with no plot line and flat characters.

I think constantly of Kazembe.  Every sunset breaks my heart a little bit more as the last light of the evening glares harshly off of metal buildings instead of enveloping earthy huts surrounded by half-dressed children. The only thing I've unpacked in my dorm room is a small stack of pictures. Flipping through them is small comfort.

I'm stuck in cultural limbo.  My heart longs for Africa.  I don't understand life here. It's madness.  This obsession with convenience and luxury and possessions is like an acid slowly eating away at whatever sanity I still have left, yet I find myself slowly slipping back into it-- coffee from Bongo, complaining about minor delays, wasting food...  I liked who I was while I was in Africa a whole lot better than I like who I am while I'm here.  I truly believe that God has been molding me my entire life to serve in Africa. Suddenly I find myself on the wrong continent, and I realize that I just don't fit here. I'm homesick for Zambia.

Perhaps the hardest part is trying to explain it all, trying to communicate to the people here what I saw, did and experienced.  Words cannot suffice. Pictures fall woefully short. How do I describe the weight of a fragile little life in my hands?  The beauty of a child's generosity? The brutal cruelty of poverty? The terrible price of prosperity? How could I possibly explain what those kids mean to me? They are the beautiful answer to over a decade of desperate prayers and wild dreams. I've been asking God to bring me to them since before any of them were born.  Leaving them was like cutting myself in half.

I want to shake the world around me and scream at it to wake up. Wake up and realize the terrible price of our apathy.  Redeem the time.  Realize what you have.  See beyond your own front porch.  And then move beyond your own front porch. It will probably hurt. It will definitely be worth it. You have no idea what you're missing.

I've shared a bit about my journey to Christ before, but a big part of coming to understand who He is as a child for me was the Narnian Chronicles.  Well, I found Narnia. It's not on the other side of the wardrobe.  It's two planes, a taxi, and a really smelly bus away.  It's not a perfect world-- the White Witch has her hold, and she's recruited a posse of witch doctors to help her out.  The Narnians have retreated so far into themselves that they don't even know who they are; they do not recognize their own worth.  But Aslan is on the move.  I could hear his whisper as we explored the bush every morning... "Farther up and farther in."  I saw his reflection in the eyes of dirty village kids and tired kitchen ladies.  I felt His comforting warmth as He gently took Jessie from my arms.  I saw Him moving in the lives of people who don't know Him and didn't even realize He was there.  I didn't know if I was ready for what Africa would demand of me. "Good," said Aslan. "If you had felt yourself sufficient, it would have been a proof that you were not."  For the first time in my life, I woke up every morning feeling like I was in the right place at the right time.  That itchy restless flighty feeling that I always have was simply gone. I was home.

Regina Spektor's song The Call plays at the end of the movie Prince Caspian.

"Now we're back to the beginning,
It's just a feeling and no one knows yet.
But just because they can't feel it too,
doesn't mean that you have to forget.
Let your memories grow stronger and stronger,
'Til they are before your eyes.
You'll come back when they call you--
No need to say goodbye."

That verse has become my anthem, playing over and over in my head.  More than anything, I need someone to understand where I'm at right now. But just because they can't feel it too doesn't mean that I have to forget.  There is sadness in separation, but there is joyful hope in the promise of reunion.

The day I left Kazembe, Johnny looked me in the eye and said he didn't think I would come back. "No one ever does." Hold on, kiddo. Ten months and counting.