These past 9 months have been about a lot of paring down.
Stripping away.
Slimming down.
Trimming away.
Less close contact with the friends and family that we love. Less of our possessions. Less of the familiar and comfort of a home culture.
Our trip back the U.S. was both good and hard. It was good to be back in the abundance of the United States; but hard to leave. It was so good to be back in the presence of our cherished relationships. It was good to feel we had common understandings with those around us. It was good to have the luxury of a coffee shop or stocked grocery store nearby.
But somehow that made it more difficult to leave to go back to a place where we have less.
Here in Malawi, there is less steadiness to our lives. As John mentioned in a previous post, almost all of our close local friends are leaving in the few weeks. These are people with whom we have prayed, shared meals, climbed mountains, worshiped, vented, and laughed with this year. Continuing in life here without them feels hard.At the same time, the work demands before me seem to be increasing: getting study protocols through ethics boards, navigating the correct channels to secure funding and personnel to carry out new research studies, learning to perform new statistical analyses to write as many manuscripts as fast as possible, seeing enough patients and studying enough to qualify for an upcoming board examination, making enough connections and doing enough soul-searching to discern the next career step, and making the most of the daily limitations at the hospital to meet the needs of my patients.
And in a place where we don't know if there will be milk at the grocery store, friends after June, internet connectivity to connect with colleagues, or electricity when we make dinner it feels like God is asking us to live a life of less. I'm not sure that I can confidently say I am doing this well. I pray that as the excess is trimmed away, I can clearly see God's purpose. By opening my clenched fists to let go of my expectations of how we thought life was supposed to go, will I receive something I didn't imagine? Will God show me that many of the assurances I try to count on each day are actually illusions? Will I accept that there is no assurance other than His faithfulness, His strength, His hope?
Lately, I have been studying the life of Gideon, featured in the book of Judges. There are many comforting aspects of this story to a struggling believer. God incredibly asks this man who is considered the least man in the least tribe to go and defeat the enemies he is hiding from. God still insists on Gideon going to defeat the Mideonites after Gideon accuses God of abandonment and asks for signs. But then, God gets really extreme: He asks Gideon to let his soldiers go home until he is fighting at a ratio of 450:1. God tells Gideon that "You have too many warriers" and that He is clear that He doesn't want the Isrealites to be able to boast in their own strength if they win the battle. Priscilla Shirer calls this the "God Margin": the space/disparity between where our skills and resources end and what God asks us to do. Over and over in the Bible and in the stories of believers today, God seems to like turning weaknesses into strength, making impossible things possible, using foolishness to confuse the wise, and doing more with less.
Perhaps our sparse life in Malawi seems to be making room for God to work. In releasing comfort, clarity, and stability of relationships, maybe I am giving God more. More room to display His strength in my weaknesses. More room to turn impossible situations into success stories. More room to bring wisdom into the cloudy confusion of the future.
Maybe I don't need everything I thought I would need. Maybe less really is more.
Each time He said, “My grace is all you need. My power works best in weakness.” So now I am glad to boast about my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ can work through me.
2 Corinthians 12:9
