Pushing Back Darkness

Crystal blogging here from the almost Dec. 26 trip to Sierra Leone:

Yesterday I should have been traveling up the Sierra Leonean coast via speedboat with my beloved friends, Pastor Hassan and three of the older boys, including my African son Moses from the orphanage, whom I wanted to experience first-hand the planning and progress of our bridge construction project.

Our destination was the small northern village of Rookbop. This tiny place has been made infamous in the whole of Sierra Leone for the violence that occurred last April when a mob destroyed a newly built church and community center for a cash reward offered by Hezbollah.

Several months prior water wells had been installed by a 4HIM team that had changed the countenance and health of the village from despair and disease to hope.

The message of Christ was spreading with the fresh water that flowed in the village – both washing over them with the power to clean, heal and revive the spirit.

Our objectives for Rookbop this trip were to review on-site the engineering plans of a local firm along with an Oklahoma-based road and bridge construction company that had collaborated on in order to build a bailey bridge in to the village – a bridge that will provide Rookbop adequate and modern infrastructure to access to the rest of the world.

And Rookbop, able to grow large amounts of food, stands ready to bring its plentiful rice to the rest of starving Mama Salone should the bridge be built.

Today, we were supposed to travel back to Freetown and meet with the government’s minister of public works to obtain their approval for the bridge plans and learn what may be available, such as heavy construction equipment, for aiding the project.

After the meeting I had planned to spend the next several days basking in the company of all the Wellington orphanage children – talking, laughing, listening to new songs they’d learned… Lemon and Teresa constant by my side holding my arms and giggling about whatever ridiculous Americanism I was unwittingly performing for them. Praying with little Kadiatu before she went to sleep and having her interrupt, “In Jesus’s name!” after every phrase I spoke over her.

Instead I’m at home still in my PJs trying to make sense of the last three days and what possible goodness God could bring out of missing this trip.

On Saturday at 5:00 a.m. we arrived in the OKC airport and begin a series of delays and travel mishaps that would land us stuck at the JFK airport a day later with no possible way to Sierra Leone that wouldn’t cost us another $15,000 to get there in time or a cheaper option (shelling out another $3,200) that would get us there so late we would only have three days on the ground.

We came to the conclusion it was best to stay the night in NYC and go back home. We reasoned it was better to keep the unused portion of our tickets toward a later trip that would allow us adequate time to accomplish all that is needed and more time with the children.

My friend Stephanie, who was traveling with us to Africa for the first time, would have been robbed of the full experience of AFRICA with this three-day jet-lagged cameo. I felt it unfair to ask her to shell out more money to do so.

I cannot begin to tell you the level of cool indifference and incompetence of every airline that marked every leg of the trip save the last exchange with this heavenly airline angel, who miraculously got us home at no additional cost – a total 180 from what we had been told were our options just 24 hours before.

My last conversation with an airline worker just before we gave up on getting to Africa went something like this. “Our only obligation to you was to get you to New York City. Our contract with you ends here.”

My reply. “So it doesn’t matter both of your flights were delayed by five hours which caused us to miss our international connection? You don’t feel any obligation to help get us on another flight?”

“No. Our contract ended with you here. We don’t have to do anything.”

I’d like to tell you my first thought was “Praise God! He has a plan even though we don’t understand why this happening… and Jesus bless this airport worker and rescue them from their path of eternal damnation which they are so obviously plunging headlong into.”

I actually began to feel hot defiance toward God more than anything. My honest attitude was, “What is the deal God? Why are you doing this?”

“Really Lord? You’re going to let this crap-head airline employee and delayed flights get in the way of spending time with the children? You really aren’t going to rescue us so we can accomplish an important milestone on a bridge that may help reduce starvation? You’re really not going to let Stephanie see and experience her dream? You’re going to deny her the wonderment and the healing of walking through the world’s slums and feeling how alive Christ’s spirit is in depths of poverty?”

The overwhelming disappointment from the realization that God wasn’t going to smooth our plans and make a way for us just didn’t make sense to me.

While defiance and rebellion are some of my biggest character flaws, my biggest sin often is my reaction when I don’t get my way. And I was not getting my way.

We ultimately decided we should at least spend a day in New York and see some sites, possibly a show and go back home on Tuesday.

The next morning we went to a different hotel in Manhattan in the heart of all the buzz and excitement of the city that doesn’t sleep.

Traveling to New York has been another life-long dream of mine and for whatever reason I hadn’t made it there yet in my travels. I never thought it would be under these circumstances.

So I found myself thinking, “Okay God, I feel tremendous guilt for thinking about enjoying Broadway, shopping and food – but you are the one who didn’t make a way for us to get to Sierra Leone.”

This dialogue continued in my heart the whole time we were in NYC, “God you know how busy my schedule is. You knew I felt anxious about leaving my business and all that I have going on right now to squeeze in this trip. I did my part. I put all of that aside to go do your work in Africa. And you dropped the ball.”

I mean – how wicked is my heart!

I wish I could tell you I wasn’t being such an obnoxious baby before God about it all – but for the sake of honesty that is really where I was.

So I was a little ashamed when within a couple of minutes of exploring New York City, I became fully enraptured in the busy streets, the sheer number of people, tower after tower of lights, the shops, the Bergdorf Goodman window displays, the way energy radiates and bustles from sensory overload, which keeps you oblivious to the cold…

New York was everything I had ever read about in a Fitzgerald novel or seen in a movie or imagined in my mind… and the pain of not going to Africa eased as I settled into this attitude of “I’m going to have a good time if you won’t let me have my way, God.”

Our hotel happened to be a block from where the Broadway musical “Fela!” was playing. Not knowing a thing about the man Fela Kuti – who he was or what his music was about, I couldn’t tell if the signs and posters outside the theater meant it was gay theater or just a show full of really elaborate costumes.

But Stephanie had the inside scoop from a friend who lives in NYC, who said it was worth seeing so we bought tickets to the 7:00 p.m. performance.

Little did I know the show was about the life and music of Fela Anikulapo-Kuti, a Nigerian born musician and activist who invented the sounds of “Afro-beat” and suffered greatly at the hands of his government for speaking out against their evil oppressions.

I have never seen or heard anything like it.

Imagine dozens of women in head to toe African regalia and painted faces furiously dancing, while surrounded by an explosive and thick kind of jazz made of barrel-chested djembe drummers and saxophone players churning out songs like Water Get No Enemy that decry poverty and corruption with lines like “If wata’ kill yo’ child, na wata’ you still go use.”

It was an unbelievable performance about the life and music of man that captured the essence of Africa. And it absolutely pierced my heart with grief in missing Sierra Leone.

(As a side-note, I couldn’t help but think about how many stiff necked and dour church-goers would immediately dismiss Fela, likely unable to think past the necessary finger pointing over the fact he had 35 wives and ultimately died of AIDS.)

For me though, I know it was the heart of God speaking right to my defiant childish mind.

“I AM Africa. I AM the Lord over Africa’s beauty. Africa’s music. Their culture. Their passion. Their struggles. Their restoration. I AM.”

Blessed conviction.

The arrogance of thinking I know what my role and calling is in Africa. I don’t even KNOW Africa.

I don’t begin to understand its rich inheritance. Its aching heart from centuries-long struggles. Its exploitation. Its oppression. The endless beauty and hope that continuously springs out of her people as they soldier on in life under conditions that most of us will never understand.

But the great I AM presides over it all.

I was bringing my useless sacrifices and offerings of achievement and responsibility before the Lord, and stomping around about how I made time out of my schedule to go to Africa.

Reality is my talents and my efforts are so fragile and pale apart from Him. They are weak enough to be thwarted by a single wrinkle in an airline schedule should God allow it.

So I am reminded if we are fortunate enough to be even a slight mention in His work of restoration to the nations, we should ever be still before Him – in any difficulty or any disruption – and know that He is God. And when we are not. In His mercy He will remind us of our smallness, and relieve us of the weight of our “achievement.”

God, in the face of my disappointment and temper tantrum, did something else for me through Fela. It set my longing and desire for Africa on fire again at a deeper level.

I am so unbelievably privileged to set foot on her soil and serve the Lord in Sierra Leone. I welcome every set back and every obstacle. All of it plunges me deeper into the heart of God over one of the most heroic battles to push back darkness that exists in all of creation.

Christ is all.