So many thoughts and reflections are running through my head.  I have been stuck since I came home from Africa in trying to find a way to express what I experienced.  I told my buddy that I felt bound up. Words seem so impotent, so shallow in trying to paint the picture of what God did in my life, what he opened my eyes to, how he overwhelmed my heart.  One thing I have been telling friends as they have asked about my trip, is that it was the single most incredible experience of my life.  That is probably great but it doesn’t answer the question of what God did or is doing, what changed in me, what I saw God do in others.  Last night and today as I have been talking with my amazing friend about everything, the words that have finally started to feel like they paint some brush strokes of the painting God is revealing to me, are that I felt like I was drowning in love.  No, I FEEL like I am drowning in love, God’s love, pure love.  

The first sunday that I was in Africa, we went to a worship service at a church in the town where we were staying.  I had the most beautiful experience worshipping there! The congregation was predominantly black and as they began to sing worship songs in Setswana (the native language) tears immediately came to my eyes.  Tears of joy flowed down my face as the crowd swayed back and forth and 2 rows of white Lutherans stood in awkward immobility.  Those tears of joy came as the sincerity of that worship overwhelmed me with a sense of my own need to be unbound, to be free, free to worship with all of me. I determined to just let my heart connect with Jesus.  I promise you, I had no idea that I would be as overwhelmed as I was as I opened myself to him. For the first time in a long time I just responded to Jesus with open arms.  I felt like he opened my neck up and started pouring his love and affection down my throat with the force of a fire hose.  Love, love and more love.   Some more love and then even more love flowed into spaces that had once been captivated and bound by hate.  Love flowed into the places of fear and doubt that had me questioning if I should even go on this adventure.  Love flooded into my heart and all I could do was cry with relief, with joy, with gratitude.  I was drowning in a love that was giving me life again, rocking me out of my complacency and my need to control.  I had no control.  I could not stop what Jesus started in that place.  

Over and over again as I had the honor and privilege of walking with Jesus each day in that incredible country with the most beautiful children I have ever encountered, I felt Jesus pouring his love continuously into the crevices and caves of my soul that had been taken up by my struggle to receive love, my doubts about my worthiness to receive that love.  Jesus straightened me out that week.  Jesus put me in my place.  You know where he wanted me?  He wanted me right there, right in the center of his flood. He did not want me sitting in a place of regret that I had not allowed him there in so long.  He did not want me bound by guilt about the control I had tried to wield to avoid what he wanted to do in me.  Yep, I definitely have been avoiding that.  I know that I talk about being open to Jesus and letting him work, but I think I desire that so much more for the people I love in my life than I do for me.  Don’t get the wrong idea.  There is nothing altruistic or giving of self in that.  It’s because I am afraid of what Jesus wants to do sometimes.  I am always wrong about it.  I swear I am such a slow learner. But Jesus didn’t want me to sit in that either.  ”Just receive Neil, just receive”.  He whispered he loved me through the voice of the most precious little dude I have ever met.  He held my hand with the fury of a six year old kid that didn’t want to share me with anyone else.  He put his face against mine through the skin of a beautiful little girl who kept holding her face to mine no matter which way I turned.  He had me in a place of receiving his flood, of drowning in his love.  

I will never be the same.  I will never be able to go back to how I was. I can’t!  I can’t deny the change that has happened as a result of his love.  I love you Jesus.  I am open. I am so grateful!