I just got back from a trip to South Africa to visit my friends, Shawn and Sarah Gardner. Shawn and Sarah have 3 kids - Ben, Olivia and Caleb. Caleb got critically ill while in Nampula, Mozambique where Shawn and Sarah live and minister. Caleb had to be medivaced from Mozambique to Johannesburg, South Africa for medical treatment. When he first arrived there the doctors were not sure if Caleb was going to live. In the midst of that news I felt like God was putting it on my heart to go and be with Shawn and Sarah. I didn't really have an agenda, I just felt like I needed to go be family to them. As I expressed this to a friend, Jason, he said he would like to do the same. I was talking to the men who are on my management team later that day and they said, "Ask God. Make your desire known to the people you know and see what God does." I thought that was a great idea. Within 4 hours I had collected enough to pay for my ticket and to help Jason get his ticket so we could both travel to see the Gardners. That was on a Thursday and by Tuesday we were flying to South Africa.
First lesson - When you feel something deep inside and you do not know if it is God or just a thought do something that lets God reveal Himself. If I had not made my desire to go known my friends would not have been able to minister to me, Jason and the Gardners the way they did.
Second lesson - Make a commitment to pour yourself into others in Christian community and you will never be alone. I was able to do something I was completely incapable of doing because of the people who are in my life. By committing to other people and trying to develop community with them I was allowed to do something incredible through them. They became the hands and feet and the resources that sent me.
Third lesson - Bring pillow on a 19 hour flight from Atlanta to Johannesburg.
When we first got to South Africa Caleb was improving some, but the new concern was that he was going to be brain damaged, or even brain dead because of the lack of oxygen he experienced for a time in Mozambique. Shawn and Sarah tried hard to wrap their minds around what that would mean. At times they thought too much, at times they were able to rest in the arms of a loving Father and at times it was all just too overwhelming. We were able to sit with Shawn and Sarah and talk about grief and joy and the impossibilities that God brings. I was able to share the comfort God brought o me when my parents died. We were able to talk about sometimes thinking less. We talked about how healthy honest grief can be and how our Father in Heaven hurts with us. Sometimes tears of hurting can begin healing.
Fourth lesson - Sometimes faith is not trying to understand all of the possibilities, but simply trusting in the God of the impossible. Shawn and Sarah showed a tremendous level of faith when they were able to say no matter what the outcome was, they knew God was not only with them, but for them and for Caleb. Faith is not believing everything will work out, but that God is good enough to make up the difference when we just don't see it.
The last email I got from Africa was from Pam, Sarah's mom. This is what she wrote: Yesterday I spent 8 hours with Caleb Allen and he giggled when I shook a rattle for him, kicked out his little feet as fast as he could, giggling and smiling. Some involuntary I'm sure, but it sure warms the heart of a tired grandma.
Shawn, Sarah, Pam, all of us are witnessing God do an incredible thing. It is not just in healing Caleb, but in what others have seen through these circumstances. One lady wrote how she could finally trust God completely with her kids as she has watched the Gardners go through this and read their responses. Some have said they finally understand that Christianity is not religion but community that not only goes, but sends others thousands of miles away to be the loving embrace of God. Some are relearning how simple faith really is. And some of us are just reminded that the little joys, like feet that wiggle, are the more important things in life anyway.
I want to thank all of you who have been a part of this moving of God. Thank you to those who have prayed. Thank yout o those who have given to send others. Thank you for letting your own soul be drawn into the story that God is writing.
I thank you God for such a beautiful idea called the Church. May we remember who you made Her and us to be and may we make a new commitment to her today.
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