'my love for you is real'

So, I'm home.

Strange to have up and left so quickly (thanks, Dengue Fever). It feels like I was pushing and begging and asking for breakthrough, and then I was sick and in the hospital and the rest is history. Maybe I'll know what the point of being "taken out of the game" so quickly, maybe I won't. But I have begun to resolve that I will still serve Him if it means I won't see any breakthrough, any beauty, any salvation.
As Screwtape writes to Wormwood of their plight to derail the Christian walk:

"Our cause is never more in danger than when a human no longer desiring, but still intending, to do our Enemy's will, looks round upon a universe from which every trace of Him seems to have vanished, and asks why he has been forsaken, and still obeys."

-C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters

I'm not sure I can really count this as "suffering" for Him, but I hope that there was something broken for the people there. I hope that our lives there even for that little while brought Him pleasure, and that He was proud of us.
Ha. Could He be proud?

Even as I have begun to tell people where I've been, my story seems so little. What I have to offer, what I have given, seems to little. And I don't know where I'm headed, but I know that I see things differently. I believe He has changed my heart toward the poor, and to the reality of what knowing and following Him really means. I believe He is a mighty and holy God, and I am humbled to be counted as someone He loves. His ways seem ever higher, His sovereignty seems so much greater, and His mercies are so much sweeter since I have been serving with so little to give and so little in return. Strange how that works out.

Mercy, Lord.

"my love for you is real. it moves like the summer breeze. my love for you is strong, Lord it brings me to my knees...."