The Secret (Lesson 1 from India)
February 22, 2013
The Secret
(Lesson 1 from India)
Over the next few blogs, I’d like to share from my journal some lessons that I learnt whilst we travelled to India last September to attend an international eye health conference.
We made a stop-over in Hong Kong to leave our children in my parents’ care so that we could do our work in India. In Hong Kong, I lost count of the number of times I said to Henri and to my best friend, ‘I don’t want to go back to Congo.’
O I know that New Sight is desperately needed. O I know that New Sight is restoring sight, hope, and life. I said that I didn’t want to go back to Congo because I often feel that I can’t. Some days, I just don’t want to be here at all.
The culture. The language. The disorganisation. The slowness.
The task before us. The helplessness. The needs. The demands.
The heat. The insect bites. The isolation. The way of life.
The Impossibility!
It is just too hard.
I am not cut out for this.
I am out of my depth.
I can’t cope.
Just forget it!
But… there is a but….
I have since discovered the secret.
The secret is:
Fall in love.
When we are in love, we become super beings.
When we are in love, walking in the rain doesn’t seem so annoying. It may even be quite romantic.
When we are in love, we are not too tired to stay up to talk all night.
When we are in love, we delight in the inconvenience of dropping someone off even when it is miles away and completely opposite to where we are going.
When we are in love, we become crazy and possessed. We do the strangest things.
Henri and I were apart in different continents for four years before we were married. Back then, there was no internet, no email, and Henri lived 3 hours away from the nearest phone signal. A postal letter would take 6 weeks to arrive, and often never. On the Saturdays when he was not working, even though he was tired, and was busy with church ministry, he would travel for 3 hours on dirt roads just to go and call me and then travel for another 3 hours to get back. The phone bills were astronomical but we didn’t mind. Our lines often got cut and we would have to redial 10-20 times just to get a line for a minute only to be cut again, but we didn’t mind. When we are in love, we find ourselves overtaken by a force that we did not know we had. Nothing is too tough. Nothing is too inconvenient. Nothing is too tedius. Nothing is too annoying. Nothing is impossible.
I am learning the secret: Fall in love with Jesus daily.
When I am in love, I am a super being. When I am in love, I can do all things.
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