Qui suis-je?

Who am I?

I feel like I am living one of those reality TV shows where you change places with another and live their life for a while.  This “experience” is not a trip, not a vacation, but a “choice” to live a different life for a while.   I say choice because we did choose to come here but we believe we were choosing to follow God on a path he was laying out for us. 

We came here because we felt God’s call to do this.  It was unclear from any communication we had before we came what we would actually be doing and now that we are here I would say, it is still unclear what God is planning.

We decided at the beginning that we would just go with the flow – try to bloom where we are planted – that we are called to be faithful, not successful – that we would be OK with not understanding.

So now here we are like living this whole, new, totally different life.

 

I am still me but yet different.  I feel younger in some ways.  For one thing we are always with people who are 20+ years younger than we are. 

Even though I don’t own a car and I don’t drive and I wear mostly skirts, I am in many ways living like I would live anywhere.  I tend to daily life like grocery shopping, meals, etc.  I go to the dentist.  I build relationships with the people I am in contact with.  I tutor and I work at the Niamey American Women’s Club Christmas Bazaar.  I try to be helpful with projects here at the center like the prayer day, the Christmas Fun Night, and the garage sale that is coming up - just like I would do at home.  And I think I could be doing these same things at home.  I visit an African pastor’s wife who is also a seamstress and see the devastation that a fire did to her home and her sewing business.  I will help to raise funds for a new sewing machine for her.  I look for ways to be involved in the community at large – ways to make a difference in the world.  And so it is the same, and yet it is so different. 

I look in the mirror and while a little older and grayer, it still looks like me but I have to admit, I wonder, who are you and what are you doing here??

The surprising thing to me is that somehow I am OK with this – with the not knowing why I am here, with the routines of the daily life.

It is OK I think because I believe even though I don’t really understand it I am exactly where God wants me to be.  It’s weird really.  It is like it is my life yet; it isn’t my life at all.  

So I am trying to take each day, each hour, each minute as it comes.  I am learning to be grateful for small everyday things.  I am learning to be content where I am.   I am learning to live with inconvenience and inefficiency and a lot of red dust on everything.  I am learning to “make do” because so often what I need or want is not an option.  And I pray to take advantage of every opportunity open to me to be in relationship with the people and community here. 

But mostly I am learning that although my life might be totally different, foreign and sometimes uncomfortable, God is the same.  He is always present, faithful, working in my life.  His provision for us awes me.  I am learning that God is truly everywhere - God is here in this arid, dusty, different place.  I am learning that seeking God rather than seeking what I think or want – seeking God’s leading and provision perspective on my life, I am seeing God at work everywhere – especially in me. 

Maybe, that is why I am here.