There's something mysteriously powerful in the grief and gratitude of a farewell. The terrifying sadness in saying goodbye is so touching because it doesn't just express a deep appreciation for one another, but it openly affirms the fact that we have loved life TOGETHER.
We're affirming the other's presence as something we deem life unfit without. We've done all the HUMAN things together: to be imperfect, to laugh, to cry, to love and it is so wonderful when we can't see ourselves without them in the picture ever again.
We've welcomed someone into our heart. That's what it means to be sad in a farewell. That's what it means to grieve the loss of someone's presence. It means they are loved. It means you have been loved.
When arms are being extended to hug that person goodbye they are being invited in, for one last time, to be openly affirmed in a reciprocated love.
I have shared life with miniscule portions of South Africa, Walk in the Light, with you Bruce, David, Phindile, Anne, with you Sabello, Togo, Tandegile, Alfred, Sipo, Pretty, yes you Harniville- and I could not have been more blessed by your presence.
In the waning days of my time with Walk in the Light I could not absorb all that I was being hit with...and I knew it. At the end of each day we would drive through and away Harniville I knew in each millisecond of life that I wanted to take this in; the look, the smell, the road, the people, the homes. Each and every image I wanted to store up so it could act like an eternal photo-album that I could tap into during any second of the day.
Previously I wrote about the 1st man I encountered with HIV/AIDS-his name is Sabello. I left you with an image of a weak, sickly, mysterious person. I sat by his feet and prayed earnestly for the first miracle I ever have in my life.
Perhaps the most all-encompassing, full-circle event of my experience at Walk in the Light can be said in Sabello's story. I sat there, troubled, scared, doubtful, FAITHLESS at times, begging for God to give this man more life.
Several weeks later I was given the honor to teach during their Sunday service ministry. Here I am in Africa with this Zulu translator to my left about to teach these people what they had been teaching ME (humbling to say the least) and who do I see toward the back of the crowd? Sabello. The man had walked a LONG WAY to get to this service, the man who couldn't sit up weeks before was all the sudden...
THERE.
It clicked from that point on that God was divinely there, with us, with me-and that never changes, but this is the moment where I momentarily reached a plain of understanding that is divinely true. I do not know how this man is doing of late, but he weighs heavily on my heart whenever I think back to my experiences... I return to his face.
In Africa I both carried and buried a child of God. I've seen life and death- staying and passing.
Quite the contrast.
During a prayer walk we went on throughout Harniville-the mother of the 17 year old boy who died by the red-hands of his best-friends sat defeated and weeping just a foot to my left. We just stood there with her for a moment, prayed to the Lord for comfort and worship, and sat in a discomforting silence.
The silence you feel when you're next to someone slowly dying on a row of chairs- it's discomforting because it's horrible to feel helpless. It's so discontenting to be up in the air, clouded, in ASHES on things and all you want to do is bring healing.
It's the tension of that moment that the Lord worked in us though. It was the tension of those seconds that felt like hours and months that felt like seconds.
The moments where you wonder where God might be or you recognize that presence so warmly and intimately that you feel blessed to have eyes to see and ears to hear.
Recently there has been a tragic happening to a great man in my community back home. It is one of those things that hits you out of nowhere, unexpected, and unREAL. He is a man of God that lives life from the heart. Upon sudden news of this unexpected happening I was smack dab in the middle of that tension again. I have been ever since. You ask questions like, "what can I do?" And even more familiar sounding, "Where are you GOD?"
Sometimes the most heart-wrenching thing can happen and all the sudden you question if you'll be able to ever feel it thumping in your chest again.
It is important for us to value these moments of tension though.
I'm realizing, be it in prayer with my friend in the WAMU parking lot or a HOSPITAL or a CHURCH, we can always belt out that cry. That ever so familiar cry that Christ exclaims on the Cross,"My God, My God. Why have you forsaken me?"
It's so fitting because it proclaims a universal fear in us all. That we're worthless, meaningless, purposeless, powerless, unworthy, non-BELOVED, randomized creations of a hopeless world. It's the seed by which we sprout from. Whether it be your Dad said you weren't worth it to stay and broke your heart and home simultaneously or the one you love the most is lying on that hospital bed. Whether it be the powerlessness you initially feel sitting next to Sabello or a cry of grief from a sonless Mother.
Christ embraced us for those moments with his own enduring of God Forsakenness; that TOTAL ALONENESS. God embraced us in those moments with his atonement on the Cross and enabled us to cry out from our death-defying fears and heart-wrenching love not just that He can relate to us, but so we never have to endure it. Christ did, but we never will.
I want to speak directly to this specific condition of the heart. Suffering- not because of Walk in the Light, not because of Africa. We have to acknowledge pain, vulnerability, and the fear of God-Forsakenness because in the fast-paced, wreckage of living we can get too caught up in a blissful reality. So it seems quite fitting to bring this whole thing up just to freeze the frame for a second and take in what God has done, doing, and will do for us.
Henri Nouwen writes in, "Life of the Beloved" about this idea of our BELOVEDNESS (good word). This special place that we need to operate out of to; to be capable of love we have to believe that we ARE loved. I want to quote a portion of this book because I think it's something that comes off very passe in our day and age, but we truly need to KNOW it:
"When I know that I am chosen, I know that I have been seen as a special person. Someone has noticed me in my uniqueness and has expressed a desire to know me, to come closer to me, to love me. When I write to you that, as the Beloved, we are God's chosen ones, I mean that we have been seen by God from all eternity and seen as unique, special, precious beings. It is very hard for me to express well the depth of meaning the word "chosen" has for me, but I hope you are willing to listen to me from within. From all eternity, long before you were born and became a part of history, you existed in God's heart. Long before your parents admired you or your friends acknowledged your gifts or your teachers, colleagues, and employers encouraged you, you were already "chosen." The eyes of love had seen you as precious, as of infinite beauty, as of eternal value. When love chooses, it chooses with a perfect sensitivity for the unique beauty of the chosen one, and it chooses without making anyone else feel excluded." (Pg. 53-54)
So allow me to impart a blessing on any of you whom might be reading:
You are GOLDEN.
Whomever is suffering or suffering from watching suffering, know that you and they are GOLDEN. Loved, prized, and worthy. Worthy enough that Jesus died for him or her. Completely cherished by God. Receive this, take it in, allow it to grow on you.
God is there for you...
RIGHT
NOW
Breathe in and take that in at the same time. God is there for you, He is your companion in the pain of a hurt loved one or a hurtful farewell. He's amidst those moments where you absolutely, 100% are grieving for the love of this precious gift God has given you called LIFE.
This is something that Walk in the Light taught me, this is something I have returned home with, and I believe the most fulfilling way I can truly take it in is to share it to whomever might need it.
The complacency of my heart has not met the urgency that this world requires, but hopefully, in the blessing of my words it can serve as a message of love to push I and anyone else who runs across them toward action.
My experience at Walk in the Light tugs on my heart to do more, to live higher, to not forget.
As I left Walk in the Light with my hand suspended in the air- waving goodbye, I realized that my heart had experienced something very tremendous; an outpouring of His presence through truly special people.
Farewell to Walk in the Light and everyone I encountered in South Africa whom I have left for home. If there's one thing I can take back from my experience, it is that you have loved me so undeservingly so and I pray that I have reflected that love upon you as well.
Thank You.
