Deep Feelings

I don't want to get to the end of my life and find that I lived just the length of it.

  I want to have lived the width of it as well.  ~ Diane Ackerman

What an emotional week!  It started with news that a friend of mine was called home to Heaven.  You would think that I could get used to all of the funerals here, but with every passing comes deep sadness, even though we also rejoice at Heaven's gain.  I'll miss my friend very much.

The Army meets the community at the home of the bereaved for the burial service.

A few days later, we opened a school for "Martha's Boys" (which is our name for the boys from the streets of Kakamega) on our headquarters compound.  Some of the boys are runaways, but my heart really goes out to the orphans whose extended families will sometimes simply bring them to Kakamega and then abandon them.  We have made a hall available to the new school, of course, but the boys seem to prefer taking their classes under the big tree that is sandwiched between our garbage dump and the pit latrines.   I couldn't be more proud of these young men.

Distributing school supplies to Martha's Boys

On Friday, we held a press conference with the Governor of Kakamega County.  After Ken and I gave a short report on Martha's Boys and our work with a group of local prostitutes that we're calling the "Survivors," the Governor graciously pledged his support.  Taking him at his word, I brought two of the ladies into the room.  They spoke with him in Swahili for a few nervous minutes, and only later was I told that it was culturally unknown for a prostitute to converse with such a powerful man.  Still, it seemed to work, as the ladies then told me that they had something to tell the community.  I took them across the room to one of the cameramen, and they spoke excitedly for ten minutes about all the love and support they had found at The Salvation Army.  It was quite a moment.

After the conference, the Governor asked Ken to pray this Monday at the dedication of the new market in Kakamega, which is quite an honor.  Ken said yes, of course, but he was then told that he'd be praying at the opening of both the market and the new slaughterhouse.  Now that's one situation that we never covered in Training School!

By now, you'll have guessed that my emotions have run the gamut this week.  But in my devotions yesterday, I was reminded of the fact that I am not alone in this.  Various passages in the New Testament demonstrate that Jesus had the same experience.  He also felt affection, anguish, anger, compassion, distress, grief, gladness, indignation, joy, love, peace, and sadness.  In a way, that helps me to understand what He meant in John 10:10:

I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly.

Jesus didn't mean by this that we would only experience love, joy and peace.  He knew that that our feelings would range far beyond that.  What He meant, I think, was that we would live in every sense of the word - that we would truly feel all the emotions that life has to offer.  He was saying that when we know God loves us and we then encounter the ups and downs of life, we don't just experience them, but we learn from them.  We grow spiritually.  We live the "abundant lives" that He promised.

So, yes, I am a bit emotional at times.  But praise the Lord for it!