Last
week, I accepted an invitation to move to Charlotte, North Carolina, to work
among the refugee community there.
Come August, I'll be
living in an apartment complex where they resettle refugees and, essentially,
loving on people as we all live our normal lives.
That part
sounds awesome.
However, loving
people is always messy. Throw in
cultural, religious, generational and social differences, language barriers,
and the effects of physical/emotional trauma, and it gets even more
complicated. I am very aware of my
inadequacy to navigate these things on my own, and to meet the staggering needs
I will encounter. Part of me is afraid
that I will go and invest my heart only to have it battered and exhausted. Part of me is afraid that my heart will be
battered and my presence there won't even be helpful, or that I will make
things worse somehow.
Yet,
despite those fears, I'm in one of those
odd (blessed) places where even in my fear I have a confidence outside of
myself that this is where I'm supposed to go, and that—although I am small and
fragile—God is great and inexhaustible.
His love and grace will be the only source of any good that comes of
this, anyway, and there is great comfort in that. I am afraid, but I don't feel afraid. (Usually.)
So,
yeah. Here's to the next stage of life's
adventure. May God do with it, and me, what He will.
