Healing

We are in the midst of our final weeks here, the last weeks that you want to treasure, to accomplish something big and go out with a bang, or at least a strong sense of acheivement. I've spent too many situations wishing my time away, and I wasn't about to let that happen again--I was determined to make this time count. However, it seems that God had different plans for me, or at least a different definition of what makes time valuable.

Right when I was about to give my remaining time in Uganda my all, my all was taken from me in the form of an infection. I went to the doctor last week determined to get better before time got away from me, and the doctor gave me some antibiotics. Right when you think you're on track, though, something else always comes along to mix things up, and these antibiotics ended up treating my body worse than the infection was. I ended up missing three days of our program, in the hopes that rest and rehydration would speed up the healing process. And here I am in Kampala a week later, waiting to see the doctor again, having finished a seven-day course of antibiotics that seems to have gone straight though me.

Because of my health, or continued lack there of, the moments last week that I didn't spend giving our program my all, I spent upset and confused. Even after being prayed over countless times, I still felt the same (and let me just say, being prayed over by someone in a foreign language with passionate intonation is quite the frightening thing, so it took enough faith just to say yes). My motives were pure, I had thought. I had wanted to spend these last weeks really impacting the people here with the Gospel and God's love, so why was God keeping me from it?

And then I realized, as I once again prayed for healing so that I could treasure the remainder of my time here, that my motives weren't pure. They were thoughtful. They were noble. They were even righteous. But they weren't pure. Because while it was all well and good that I wanted to remember my final weeks here as a time when I enriched the Kingdom of God, in my mind I was the one doing the enriching. It wasn't about God--it was about my acomplishements. I was measuring value by what I could acheive, not simply in glorifying God.

Thus, I begin my final week in Namaliri no healthier than I have been the past few weeks. However, I can value it all the same, because my value rests in God's will and that is to glorify God. Healed or not, I can continue to do so when my treasure rests in Him.