Life-Changing Week

Wow…I can’t believe that is has almost been an entire year since I wrote last. This year has certainly been filled with lots of news and moments worth writing about. However, I think this year has also been one of a great deal of internal processing and processing in prayer with the Lord. It has been a year filled with great joy and delight, as well as a year filled with many, many changes. The biggest changes of this year all took place in the space of a week.

May 2012 was a life-changing month in three particular ways. On May 5^th, I graduated from Azusa Pacific University, with my Bachelor’s of Science in Social Work. Yes, I am a social worker. The very next day, May 6^th, I married the love of my life and very best friend, Robert Chifokoyo. The years (literally) of waiting for that day were well worth it, because I am now doing life each and every day with the man God has blessed me with. I am thankful. May 7^th-11^th we honeymooned and that was a wonderful week. May 13^th I moved back to Zimbabwe with my husband. We were on separate flights, which was awful. But May 13^th was a deeply bittersweet day. You see, I was newly married and so very excited for life together. However, on the other hand I was saying goodbye to the life I knew for four years and more than that I was saying goodbye to the family of friends that God had blessed me with during those four years. I would have to say that the thought of that day still stings a little. Who knew that so much excitement and joy could also be wrapped up with so much sadness and uncertainty.  An airport moment has never been so bittersweet as that one was. As I said goodbye to my three beautiful, nearest and dearest friends, words seemed too inadequate in expressing all that we wanted to say. So tears and hugs said what words could not and I got on a plane back to Zimbabwe, to start a new season of life with my husband.

The past six months have been filled with intense adjustment. I believe that marriage is a beautiful adjustment in and of itself. However, I was also adjusting to being in a “new” country, a new church, a new social circle and a new house. It felt like there was a lot of “news” and it was all somewhat overwhelming. Even though I was born in Zimbabwe and lived here all my life until heading to California for school, somehow this didn’t feel like “home” anymore. People would ask is it good to be home and out of not wanting to have to explain I would simple answer “yes!” However, this really wasn’t’ the case. Yes, I love Zimbabwe and I know that in this time this is where Rob and I are called to be. However, it no longer felt like home and I longed for what I hadn’t fully realized had become my home, Azusa, California. So it has been a time of wrestling with how to make this feel more like home and the reality is that it doesn’t. But what it does feel like is peace. Peace that we are where the Lord has asked us to be and we are faithful in that. Many people that I have tried to share with about this huge transition have shrugged it off as “Oh, you’re one of those Zimbabweans that thinks the grass is greener on the other side!” Again, this is not the case. There are things about American culture that drove me insane, that broke my heart, that challenged me to stand up for what I believe in and to not give in to societal norms. But what was there was the family of friends that truly are irreplaceable. My husband always says to me that friends like the ones you have in Cali are once in a lifetime kind of friends. He constantly says how he’s never really seen friendship like that and I have to agree. After six months of being in Zimbabwe, I have to say that friendships here look very different and if I’m completely honest most people say that Americans are so shallow. Yes, perhaps some are. But I also think there are a great deal of Zimbabweans that are shallow. I don’t think we can generalize in this area, because the friends that I have miles away are the deepest and most real friendships I have ever had. They still are and I believe always will be the friends that I share everything with, all the joys and trials that this life may bring. Those women are the ones that make me long for “home”.

It is also the belief of some married people here that once you’re married you don’t need girlfriends or guy friends and I have to say I disagree. There is absolutely nothing wrong with having friends and enjoying the gift that they are. I believe that the women that I have gotten to share life with, helped shape me into the wife that I get to be for my husband. Through their honest, truthful, loving conversations, challenges and encouragements, they were sharpening me and preparing me, even if we didn’t know it at the time. Rob always says how he wishes my friends were closer because he values the importance of friendship and relationship with others. So it has been a journey of discovering what I think on certain things and what Rob and I both value and we most certainly value real, genuine friendship.

Marriage has been a wonderful journey so far and being with Rob each and every day has been enjoyable after years of being apart. I am so thankful for the husband that he is, for his gentle and strong love during this transition time. For his embrace in moments of weakness and weeping, for his heart that continues to pursue me each day. Above all I am so thankful for his relentless love of the Lord and how he continues to encourage and sharpen me in my own walk with the Lord. I am thankful for cooked dinners and clean dishes on occasion. I am thankful for his encouragement and support always, for his belief in my dreams and desires. I am thankful that one day when we start a family, our children will grow up seeing a man that loves the Lord, that is honest about his short comings, that is willing to risk everything for the sake of the Gospel and a father that will love them with all of his heart, just as he does me.

So this is a very small glimpse into the life-changing week in May, which has brought about wonderful things and has taught me that life is bittersweet. That when we follow the Lord, he doesn’t promise for our road to always be easy or for us not to feel lonely, or that life won’t be bittersweet. But what He does promise us is that He will never leave us or forsake us. That is a promise that I am learning to hold onto. 

Merry Christmas

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The Undecorated Apartment

We all have a need to settle, a desire to be grounded, to have a place called home. We love to decorate our places we call home. It is a way of making them our own, a way of creating a space in the world that is just ours, a place that we can return to at the end of long and stressful days, a place to celebrate and rejoice in, a place that we can share with others, a place that can invite them in. We all desire a place like this. A place that will remain constant regardless of the season. However, I am realizing at the moment that the season in which you find yourself can be evidently expressed in your surroundings without you even realizing it.

This is something I discovered recently when I was sitting in my apartment, looking around at the blank and empty walls with a deep aching that this truly doesn’t’ t feel like home, that this is not my home. I can most definitely say that this self-discovery was a difficult one, as I think being honest with ourselves always is. We all value honesty, however when it comes to being honest with ourselves that is where we find ourselves being the most dishonest. So in this moment of brutal honesty with myself, I realized that my apartment is a very vivid and clear representation of where I am at, the season in which I find myself. I am in my last year of college, senior year baby! Yes it is wonderful but with it comes some interesting aspects and self-discoveries. For me, I found that my undecorated apartment reflected my heart and the state of transition that it is in. Every other year of college my apartment has been decorated and it has been one of my most absolute favorite times of the year. However, this year I have everything to decorate with, but it is all so neatly packed in small boxes just sitting. These boxes are filled with wonderful treasures but the fear of allowing those treasures to come out for a small period of time after which everything will change is daunting. This is true of my heart and the treasures that I hold deep within it, there is a fear of allowing that settling and rootedness to continue knowing that before I know it my heart and my apartment will be packed up and onto the next season of life.

This is a season of transition, a time of reflecting back upon, and a time of looking towards but I think we miss the beauty of the undecorated apartment season. The season in which we just get to sit and look around, behind, ahead but most importantly within. To look, deep within and to find our settling and rootedness in one thing, Christ. By no means do I belittle this season; I am processing through this on a constant basis with the people that are nearest and dearest to my heart. But I do think that this is a time of saying Lord no matter what the undecorated apartment looks like may what resides inside be beautiful and glorifying, that in whatever season we may be, that we remember that the God who loves us is there in the midst of that season, that we are never alone, that our God goes with us.

The thing I love about the undecorated apartment is that it pushes to something more, it pushes you to long for something more, it pushes you to search for home. This doesn’t necessarily mean moving from the undecorated apartment but learning to be fully present in the undecorated apartment, learning to give all of you to where you are right now, to be fully present where you are. Today a wise woman said that God’s will is not found in the future but rather it is found right here in this day right where you are at. For any of you that may be like me, I am a planner, I love to have my ducks in a row, I love to look ahead and plan and map out and look forward to. There is nothing wrong with this but when this takes us away from being fully present where we are, we need to check ourselves. The faithfulness of our God is not only found in what lies ahead it is found in this very day, it is found right where you are. When life gets uncomfortable we tend to run towards the next thing that will make life feel good and comfortable but in this we miss the wonder and awe of a God that meets us in the mist of an uncomfortable season, day, or moment.

The undecorated apartment is teaching me many things about myself, about this season, and about honesty with myself. The undecorated apartment has turned from something that was uncomfortable and frustrating to something that has bought clarity, hope and appreciation for seasons and times. It has challenged me to allow for sitting in the now and opening my treasures up to that, knowing that regardless of how quickly or not the now goes by, there will be another now and that will require the very same thing of me. The undecorated apartment is teaching me to be vulnerable and allowing God to be present with me right here and now in the midst of it.