Overflow

I started unpacking today. There’s a sense of finality to it, but also the same kind of nascent hope that comes with the Spring—the changing of a season and another beginning. I am not in Africa anymore. I am in Nashville. I am here, at Belmont University, in this beautiful city, a full week into my senior year. I’m a wee bit closer to mastering the art of loving two places but only being able to physically be present in one. Ichitenge (large pieces of African fabric) hang like tapestries over my sterile dorm room walls. Pictures of my kids decorate the outside of my door, arranged around a note card that gives my reason: “Because I believe in a free Narnia.” My nights are filled with coffee shops and long walks and emergency trips to Kroger to get mozzarella sticks and ice cream, because I’m a girl and sometimes I crave them. Both of them. At the same time.  I chat with Jasmine or Troy or Zeger on facebook and flip through photos that I forgot I had taken while David fields phone calls from the village kids who just keep calling to say hi. Then we curl up and watch Hulu while the face of the Mwata stares down at us from the ichitenge that hangs on his wall, and I cannot help but smile, because my two words seem to be colliding in a beautiful dance that I don’t quite understand.

Surely my cup overflows.

I’m an RA in Kennedy again this year. Twenty-three girls call my floor home. I don’t know them very well yet, but sometimes really late at night, when I can’t sleep because my body is still relatively convinced that I’m still on the other side of the planet, I walk up and down the hall. I read their nametags and try to put a face to them, and I pray for each one of them. My thoughts drift to other girls who have come into my life under similar circumstances.  Some of my residents from last year are now my dearest friends. My sophomore year, I worked with University Ministries in a girl’s dorm. Some of those girls later became my residents in Kennedy. Others came in and out of my life as they needed me. I was there through judicial sanctions, the passing of grandparents, changes of major, cheating boyfriends, anaphylaxis, and just about every other conceivable catastrophe that could possibly happen on a college campus. I prayed for them too. I still do. All of those girls are juniors now, and so many of them have grown so much. I cannot describe the privilege it has been to watch them come into a deeper understanding of who Christ is and how much He loves them. Reconnecting with them in the past two weeks-- praying for them, guiding them, loving them-- has been pure joy, and I thank my sweet Savior for whatever small role I was allowed to play in their journeys of redemption. They are beautiful.

Surely my cup overflows.

Today I met with a professor that I first connected with last Spring. We talked about the future—about the possibility of grad school, about what the needs of the Kazembe community are and who might be able to help. People like her—people who believe that life can become better for these people but recognize that it may not be fully realized in their lifetime or mine, and yet still believe anyway—fill my soul with hope. It’s hard to find that balance between optimism and realism, and many people either never try in the first place or give it everything they’ve got before sinking into pessimistic despair. I think she believes I’ll make it. I think I needed to hear that.

Surely, truly, my cup overflows.

I found something in that first bag I unpacked today. It’s a tired looking little popsicle stick, partially wrapped in masking tape, ribbon, and yarn. I haven’t the faintest idea what it’s supposed to be. Johnny gave it to me the day that we left. “This is so you can keep it forever,” he said seriously, gazing at me sternly from beneath raised eyebrows.  I pocketed it and haven’t thought about it since. As I turned it over in my hands today, I found a dirty little fingerprint on the back.  I think he left one on my heart too.

This is my overflow.