I miss you.

Once you experience the indescribable love of the family of God, you begin to understand the most profound act of love that ever happened. The Lord gave me such a beautiful family {both immediate and spiritual} and when thinking and processing what full time overseas missions would look like, I will be ugly and honest and say I find myself already sad about saying goodbye to this particular family. I am the last person to advocate or welcome change - especially when that means saying goodbyes.

My Father gave His only Son... so that He could be glorified in us as we become His sons and daughters. This is especially raw and real to me right now.

First, I experienced love like no other. It was so amazing, I didn’t know such a height could be climbed. It was the radical, ridiculous love that was being shown to one another within my Emmaus family. It is beyond words. It is beyond words. It is truly other-worldly in nature. It’s lots of weeping. It’s weeping when we see each other, it’s weeping when we part, it’s weeping in sympathy when we hear of another going through a tough time, it’s weeping in celebration when our brother or sister is blessed in a mighty way. It’s feeling very deeply.

It’s knowing something more surely than you know the sun will rise tomorrow. It’s knowing I am loved and that’s never going to change.

It’s realizing that if I’m not loving, I’m not living. And learning to live an entire existence abiding in the love of Christ. It’s letting His love overtake me until I’m just a fool.

First I experienced this love, and I never wanted to leave. I grieved the thought of being apart from my family. A part of me thought I would be completely content sitting around a campfire, singing songs to the Lord... and I would have never grown tired of it for my whole life. ;-)

But the Lord gave me an opportunity to experience this love {step one}... and the second step is to carry it out to someone else. Many, many “someone’s”.

This lesson may be the biggest lesson I’ve learned in Ghana... at least, the lesson I’ve gleaned from Him thus far. For once, I feel I understand a bit of what the Lord felt when He gave His Son away. I bet He missed Him a lot. It was all for love. They both chose to share it with the world instead of keeping it for themselves. It took a great divide between them... but it brought billions into the Family - to be adopted to as daughters and sons!

I’m here in Ghana and even though 7 weeks hardly registers as a “sacrifice” - I miss my families so much! But I would send them all out in a heartbeat if it meant touching more lives, feeding the starving, adopting orphans and spreading His healing love to every nation.

I would send out all my best friends for love.