Petitions with Thanksgiving

I am a writer. Not a published writer (unless you count a couple of devotions in a collection of devotions), but I write to process “stuff.” The last few months, I’ve done a lot of writing, but none of it was something I could put on a blog for the world to read, because it was terribly raw and painful. When I was a little girl, I used to show off my scrapes and cuts for others to be awed or repulsed, but now the hurts are deeper and hard to see. I have a dear friend who knows me well and how I process, and she encouraged me to keep writing, just to tuck it away for only my eyes or a few people I wouldn’t mind peeking under the bandage later on. So, I write.

We are getting closer to Thanksgiving and still have no answer to the question: “When are you going back? (Or even) Are you going back?” These are questions that feel like a cotton ball soaked with alcohol pressed onto a freshly scraped knee. With all that is in me, I want to have an answer to the questions. But, I still don’t have them.

There are other times we’ve had to return to the states unexpectedly: after a carjacking, after rebels took over our region (and losing everything), after a year chock full of severe stress and strain on our family (twice). So, one could definitely say that in our obedience to God’s call to take His good news to hard places, we have walked a road marked with suffering. But, each time, we could safely say approximately when we could go back to join God in His work among a people we dearly loved.

This time is different.

My heart aches for so many things at once. It aches to be with my children… and with my grandchild that will join our family in a few months. It aches to be with my extended family. It aches to be in fellowship with mature believers of Jesus. It aches to be in West Africa among my people, whom God has helped me to love deeply, so much that I physically feel the pain of their lostness. But most of all, despite all the aches, my heart’s desire is to love and serve my Jesus, who has always proven faithful.

Folks have said to me, especially those who have had their sandals on the ground where we live and work, “I couldn’t do what you do.” And I have thought a lot about that in recent days. One of my daughters’ pastors is preaching a sermon series right now about spiritual gifts in the Body of Christ and there is one phrase he said recently that has struck home. He said that when someone expresses thanks for the sermon he preached and how well he preached it, he says that it took “one hour and 20 years” to prepare (the number of years may be different, but you get the gist). I realized that these other people really couldn’t do what I do, because, by God’s grace, His Spirit’s equipping and teaching, the trials, the joys and the tears, my ministry in West Africa has been 23 years in the making.

There are a number of ways that the Lord has equipped me to live and work in West Africa. I speak multiple West African languages. I have a keen understanding of the culture. Though living among our people, isolated from other Americans and a fellowship of believers, has been difficult, Jesus has helped me, by His Spirit, to have deep compassion on them like He does (Matt. 9:36), so I miss them. I’ve found that when I see a person of color here, I want so much to hear if they speak with an accent, with the hopes that they might be from one of the peoples with whom we’ve worked in West Africa (my kids tease me that I have a “radar” to find these people!). The suffering we’ve experienced has helped me to have a testimony that can personally relate to the believers I know and testify to God’s grace and faithfulness to believers and unbelievers alike.

So, as we go into this season of Thanksgiving, I am looking at it as a Philippians 4:6 kind of Thanksgiving:

Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, WITH THANKSGIVING, present your requests to God.

I think it’s ok to go into Thanksgiving with an achiness in your heart. It’s ok to have painful wounds to bear.  My Heavenly Father isn’t turned off by petitions AND thanksgiving. Our words and songs of thankfulness aren’t tainted by our laments. Because He who loves us unconditionally and graciously, saved us and sanctifies us is the only One who can heal, sustain and be present with us through it all.