african stories

have you ever had a moment when you knew things with such exactness and precise knowledge that it moved you to your very core?  a knowledge so sure and so powerful that it seems as if every single thing in your life all connects to that point, because that one thing that you know is so strong, it must have everything to do with it all. have you ever felt that?

i distinctly remember feeling that one day. it overtook me like a wave of emotion and power mixed and sent clarity through my heart.

there was a girl in africa. she was young, probably in her early teens. and she was sick. very sick. one day as we closed the clinic for the day, turning away patients, her father dragged her in by her arms, and gently set her by us, not saying a word.

the rest all happened so quickly, its sometimes hard for me to remember it all.  but throughout seizure after seizure, and several episodes of passing out, our small little group of clinic helpers became very worried about this girl. we knew she must go to the hospital, because it was beyond our nurse's help. but making it there - even making it home - was what troubled us all. i thought it was sure she wouldn't make it back. she could barely stay conscious, let alone sit up straight on the back of a little moped scooter for more than 10 miles on the dirt road.

"can you go get the other men to give her a blessing?" the sweet nurse asked her husband, believing in a power far greater than what we had, putting aside religious prejudices (her family was not from the same church) and calling upon something she knew to be an answer.

and in the middle of that barren land in kenya, africa, she was given a blessing.  and just as simple as it was given, she left with her father again.

through the next few days as the nurse and her husband spent time with the girl at the hospital, they discovered malaria that had traveled to her brain, and treated it. and with more kindness, they decided to sponsor her education at the school we had worked at, and give her a better life there.

that moment comes to me time and again. the moment when i realized of the intricate plan we all have.  things have been set in motion for us, that we may not even comprehend. things that are hard and burdensome, that we would rather live without.  but then those things can bring us blessings that would have never come about without those hard things.  and to look back at all those things, i couldn't help but know with such preciseness that there is a God, and He is in our lives. and that moment - that powerful moment - was so simple, that it brought me the clarity that i know could have only come from Him.