Reverent Unknowing

Today, the Alabaster team called me from Endonyolasho. There are only a few who would fully understand the miracle that is...

Endonyo is hundreds of miles away from any proper city, any running water, any electricity. For the 7 years we have been sharing life with this precious community, they have been cut off from the world, no phone calls (except near one solitary tree), no internet, no roads...

But last year when we went, something had changed. The rolling hills once bare now boasted a tall, metal tower...a cell tower!! Back then in July 2018, I didn't know how much it would mean to me personally that these hills now supported this tower.

But today, it meant more to me than I could have ever known as my husband, friends, teammates called me from within the brand new library Alabaster had helped build. So much new in just one call...new phone calls, new library, new books...new possibilities.

Yet, I could have never known this significance 1 year ago. But God knew. He knew. He knows. He always knows.

I'm realizing that I need to live in submission to a deep unknowing, accepting that I will never fully know the future, the path or the outcome of things. All I know is that God is good and that He has good in store for us. It's a Reverent Unknowing.

I couldn't have known that as of this day, I carry no child, I'm in LA and not Kenya and my husband and team are thriving without me. I wouldn't have known that I would no longer be needed. It's a challenging, and yet deeply important lesson for me to learn:

I'm not that important.

To God, yes I am, but in the grand scheme of His plans, He doesn't really require me. He invites me, but not begs me. He welcomes me, but doesn't always wait for me. He allows me to ask, but never demand. He's God and I'm certainly not.

So today, I meditate on the picture below because it sums up the beauty of this reverent unknowing. Sums up the truth of not being needed.

Below is my beautiful, world-changing husband, standing without me, in front of the library he helped birth. In the midst of the children he loves in Kenya, he stands, with that signature smile of his.

What's most poignant about this quite candid and unfiltered photo, is the young boy that seems to somehow be connected to him, pulling him in.

I don't know yet the eternal significance of this photo and why it speaks to me so much. But I know that it feels important enough to write about and paste here. Reverent Unknowing.

N -- this is one of the many things you will inherit from your father. Probably one of the most important. Meet your first brothers and sisters all the way across the world. They are our teachers. They are our friends. They taught us love, courage and perseverance. They taught us gratitude and how to have joy in simplicity. They taught us how to see God in all things. They made us ready for you.

One day you will meet them and our world will be complete.