home.

an honest prayer
God, which way is home?
Pack my bag again and go
home is You in me

I am “home”.  At least, I am back in America.  And yet I’m not sure I know what it means to be home.  I am reminded of this poem a friend wrote me years ago that resonates with me now more than ever.

As I walk through a park in D.C. I am struck by a deep sense of familiarity.  Homeless men are sleeping under trees lying on a bed of newspaper and wrappers as people step over them without notice. A woman is selling African dress—the same styles and patterns I would have seen on the streets of Freetown.  People are everywhere, the voices and noises of the city surrounding me like a patchwork blanket of life.  I pause for a moment and close my eyes listening to the sounds of the street, feeling the hot sticky air, struck by the similarities to a whole different world I left behind.  A horn blares and a man yells.  I open my eyes again to a world of business suits and Blackberries, high heels and high rises.  A man selling Street Sense approaches me and asks if I’d like to support the homeless as a woman with her Prada bag bumps me as she passes.

This is America.  This is my home.  A hodge-podge of cultures and lifestyles that mix and mingle as if in a dance.  And it is beautiful. It is messy.  It is chaos.  But, it’s not so simple.

Sure maybe we drive in the right lanes and have organized, well stocked supermarkets.  We have systems in place that claim safety and security, life and liberty—but many still fall through the cracks, slip outside the lines.

I feel the peace that I prayed to find back in America.  Peace that I have a place here, a calling here, a purpose.

But then that peace was shattered.

I woke up this morning to an email.  At 2pm yesterday, Hensley Wilson passed away from heart failure.

My heart too failed at that moment.  Failed to take in the reality of what my eyes had read.  Failed to trust in the faith that I know.  Failed to believe it could be true.

Hensley is the Wilson’s only son.  At 16 his smile brought hope for a future I often saw bleak.  At 16 his life had just barely begun.  But life in Africa is unmerciful, unforgiving.  Taking bodies too soon from those who are left behind.

I am

angry.

frustrated.

deeply saddened.

unable to understand.














I want nothing more than to be there with Henrietta as she mourns the loss of her son.  With Letty and Samretta as they cry tears for their brother.  With Euphemia as she grows up without a big brother, unable to remember his face.  I want nothing more than to hold them, cry with them, be home with them.  But instead I am here.  Thousands of miles away.

As I went running this morning, thoughts and emotions went senselessly running through my head.  I wrote this in my frustration…




bleeding tears of Africa

what is this life
    that so easily falls away?
it ebbs & flows, and flows & ebbs
    but where does it go but spiraling down
losing grip on the life line, that runs dry too soon

 if life can fall
    without permission, without consent
where does it land if we only see darkness of the place we have been?

there is a time, you say, a season for all
    to live and to die,
        to laugh and to cry
the cyclical rhythms of lifelines with nobody dancing
only marching the drudge of mourning existence

the sun rises and sets
hurries back to begin – but beginning of end is all in the same as tears of the weary,
torn part by injustice whose toil and trial bring forth absence of trusting

no respite, no answers, no breeze of reward
    for the work of one's hands becomes nothing to gain - all things are wearisome, more than can bear, in this life that can fall to the depths of what came

the wind blows to the south, the east and the west
    then turns to the north, only twirling and whirling back to begin
no avail to move forth beyond falling again
   
if we catch hope in the breeze, a breath of fresh life - then
    slipping and sliding through a fingerless grasp
           
Africa dies too soon.


…and yet, “we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love Him”
Romans 8:28

I can’t deny the comfort in the promises our God offers.  Henrietta often spoke of these promises.  Her trust in our God and her faith in His will inspire me always.  She had nothing, and yet she has everything.  And now even more has been taken away.  But I am comforted knowing that our God is by her side, when I cannot be.  He is her rock, her strength, her comfort.  Hensley is home with his Father.  Released from the toil of trials of life in Africa.  It is not for him I mourn, but for those he has left behind.  On this earth we are not at home.  Not in Africa, not in America.  Henlsey is home.  We are just here until our time comes to join him.