no boundaries

 

I am awakened this morning to the horribly electric and piercing sound of my phone.  I lay there for a moment, trying to figure out where I am.  I hear a car engine rev outside and the sounds of life waking up.  The sunrise is barely illuminating the batik fabric draped across the window above my head creating a soft pink glow in the room.  Then I remember, Bo.  I’m up country in a guesthouse (SL version of a motel) in the town of Bo. (Boasting the second largest city in Sierra Leone, but much more of a town than a city and a significant escape from the craziness of Freetown.)  I realize my phone, still screaming at me to pay attention to it, is not the alarm going off but the ring.  I look at the screen – it’s momma!

I answer only to hear the loud sounds of what seems like a party. I quickly compute that it is still the night before back in America. Mom yells from the other end.  She has someone for me to talk to.

Immediately I am transported from a world of roosters crowing and mosquito nets (which has caught hold of me in a tangled mess as I try to get out of bed still half asleep) to a world of runways, lights and fashion.  A voice, whose soundless words over email have become such a source of encouragement and comfort, comes on the other end of the line.  It is the voice of an incredibly driven, talented, beautiful fashion designer and seamstress.  Kelsey’s show!  The pieces start coming together into focus in my head.

Kelsey’s show!  The one she started working on designing and creating dresses for this summer when I stayed with her.  At the time, the dresses only looked like big hoops of fabric—dreams I could see reflected it her minds eye that I had to take her word for.

After some shrieks of I love you, I miss you, I wish I could have been there the phone is passed off to another.  Ash!  Oh, what a morning!

Before I know it, it’s over, and I’m back in the silence of my little room, sitting in a plastic lawn chair, drinking my instant coffee.

A pang of longing sweeps over me for the first time since I’ve been here.  A pang of longing to be part of two worlds.  My heart has become part of Africa, part of this country and these people.  But part of my heart is still at home.  Still with family and friends in Washington, California, Arizona, D.C.  Part of my heart is with my new little nephews and their parents who have truly become family.  With my sissy and her beautiful new home so full of love and life.  With each of my many friends who are faithfully walking down the paths toward the future, many barely able to see one step in front of the other.  With my family as they gather to celebrate 80 wonderful God given years of blessings grandpa and auntie Joyce have shared…the list goes on.  A pang of longing to be with each where my heart resides.

Yet while my body cannot, my heart has no boundaries.  So as I sit in my plastic chair in a little room watching the sun bring life to Bo, Sierra Leone, I know that that same sun will bring light and life to another world as well.  A world across oceans and understanding.  And just as the sun will rise with my family and friends throughout the world, the Son has no boundaries either.  The Son, our Jesus, has brought light and life to all the world, and allowed my heart to do so as well.

While my body longs to be in two worlds at once, my heart rises with the Son – in the North, in the South, in the East, in the West.  Wherever He has taken my heart – there it is.