I’ve come to realize that usually the sacrifices God asks us to make aren’t the ones we were prepared for. It might seem backwards but I was always ready to sacrifice creature comforts; suburban life never appealed to me much. Giving up a house, a dog, occasional trips to Starbucks, and hot showers didn’t scare me, in fact, the idea excited me (ok, the hot showers part I’ve changed my mind about.) I always thought that since I didn’t feel very attached to stuff and I wasn’t tied to any place in particular, that I made the perfect candidate for God to use me in an unusual way. Surprisingly, I found someone with a similar detachment from the clutter of life. It seemed like when I found John there was nothing stopping us from changing the world through passionate faith, simple living, and revolutionary ideas. Why would two people with such an uncommon shared interest be meant to do something ordinary? (if there is such a thing.)So we made our plans following what seemed logical, and what we thought was certainly direction from God (I still believe it was from him, but not for the reasons we thought.) We had a few road blocks along the way, but we persevered through and continued to pursue a big move overseas to see what the master plan was for our lives. We were sure to find it in some remote village in Africa, weren’t we? We certainly couldn’t have gotten to this point if we hadn’t been dealt a good handful of divine intervention, and there are countless events that confirm in our minds that we came here for a purpose. As we spent the summer traveling and preparing for the next adventure, I felt certain this was going to be our last stop. Nomads no more. I knew it would take some time to settle in, but once we got our bearings we would be set for a life of service in Ghana. Unsettling though, was the fact that I felt John pulling in the opposite direction (ironic because before we left the states I was anxious to just explore and he was feeling the tug to settle). I told myself he was just resisting change and would get used to it and realize this was a preordained plan.
Since moving to the US for college I had thought I would just be there a few years and then would find where I was meant to be, in some exotic location. I felt out of place and thought I would somehow feel more at home anywhere else. I now realize that I came to Ghana for selfish reasons. I came here to fulfill some void in my own life. To feel needed, to have a purpose, to feel accepted and to feel that I had something to offer. Now I see that I do have these things, but not the way I expected. The kids here don’t need American love, they don’t need white love, they don’t need foreigner love; they need LOVE. Ghanaians are just as capable of loving them as we are (actually more so.) Ghanaians are more capable of creating change in the systems that generate trafficking of children here. And they better understand the cultural influences, social pressures and economic realities (we have known these things intellectually for a while but this experience has made it sink in to apply heart-wise). They just need to be enabled to do so through the freeing up of resources that they may not have access to. We do.
The things we have to offer are only the gifts we have been given ourselves; our education, our opportunities, our connections to others and resources. We knew we have been given much, and that much is expected of us. We just prepared for a very different much than God has asked us to give. So we are choosing to use the graces we have received to redistribute them to others. We aren’t exactly sure what that will mean in the long term, but for now, we are following a sign to return to Florida and further our education so we can get a better handle on how this will work. We are also excited that we have the opportunity to continue working with the organization in an administrative and development position stateside.
Maybe I’ve just played the ultimate reverse psychology trip on God and I’ll get what every girl dreams; to be the suburban wife, white picket fence, soccer mom, with occasional interruptions of chaos, but generally just being the typical American. But now I realize that he is asking me for a different kind of sacrifice than some; the sacrifice of an idea, a dream, and a mindset. I don’t know what will happen next, if he’ll give it back (as he often does when we let things go), if he’ll use me in a completely unexpected way (he usually does), or if he’ll just give me a new contentment with being ordinary (which I’m beginning to think would be alright too).
Thank God he uses our idiocy for his purposes. Only he can do something good with something that was purely selfish. He chose this place to reveal a new vision for us that we couldn’t see from where we were. This, from Donald Miller’s “Through Painted Deserts”, has been amazingly reassuring to both of us and incredibly timely:
“…everybody, every person, has to leave, has to change like seasons; they have to or they die. The seasons remind me that I must keep changing, and I want to because it’s God’s way. All my life I have been changing. I changed from a baby to a child… I will change into a husband to love a woman, into a father to love a child, change houses so we are near water, and again so we are near mountains, and again so we are near friends, keep changing with my wife, getting our love so it dies and gets born again and again, like a garden, fed by four seasons, a cycle of change. Everybody has to change, or they expire. Everybody has to leave, everybody has to leave their home and come back so they can love it again for all new reasons.
I want to keep my soul fertile for the changes, so things keep getting born in me, so things keep dying when it is time for things to die. I want to keep walking away from the person I was a moment ago, because a mind was made to figure things out, not to read the same page recurrently.
…And so my prayer is that your story will have involved some leaving and some coming home, some summer and some winter, some roses blooming out like children in a play. My hope is that your story will be about changing, about getting something beautiful born inside of you, about learning to love a woman or a man, about learning to love a child, about moving yourself around water, around mountains, around friends, about learning to love others more than we love ourselves, about learning oneness as a way of understanding God. We get one story, you and I, and one story alone. God has established the elements, the setting and the climax and the resolution. It would be a crime not to venture out, wouldn’t it?
…It’s interesting how you sometimes have to leave home before you can ask difficult questions, how the questions never come up in the room you grew up in, in the town in which you were born. It’s funny how you can’t ask difficult questions in a familiar place, how you have to stand back a few feet and see things in a new way before you realize nothing that is happening to you is normal.”
And so I am assured that what we are doing here is not useless, and that maybe we just have a lot more questions in our minds than some, and we needed to step back a bit further than most to ask them; that we had to leave in order to change and in order to realize that we are meant to return.
So that is what we are doing. I understand if you think we’re crazy, it isn’t far from the truth. We’ve made a lot of unusual decisions and we’ve followed a lot of overgrown trails, but we’ve followed believing that we will get to where we are meant to be. Or maybe the going, the following, the journey itself is where we are meant to be. I don’t suppose, in this life, we have a specific destination to reach. Just to keep seeking, keep following, keep knocking, and walking through the doors or jumping through the windows that are opened to us. Thanks to our families and friends for supporting us, and for knowing our hearts well enough not to question our sanity. We couldn’t do any of the things we do if it weren’t for the love we receive from you.

For more insight and further thinking on the subject of African development and our role in it, I found this article helpful, and I have a handful of others if you are interested.
http://burnsidewriters.com/2009/09/21/advocacy-and-africa-we-cant-all-be-celebrities/all/1/