An Attempt To Debrief From Uganda

I know people have been wanting an update on how my trip to Uganda went. Especially those who supported me. I have not been ignoring you. In fact, I have sat down many, many times to try and put down in writing asummary of my trip. However, I have found that to be very difficult. Several people have asked me if it was worth it. Yes, it was. I am not completely sure what all God did through me over there but I know that it’s bigger than I can see. I also know that he is continually working in my life through what I experienced over there. One thing that is always impressed upon me when I go overseas is how small I am. Here in America we can easily begin to think we are something grand by how much we give to charity, that we show up to church on Sundays, how many programs we are in, what service we do, we gain value by titles, degrees, and careers. Our car, our relationship status, physical appearance, and how big our house is, are things that have come to define Americans. Often times we build ourselves up to the point where we rely on ourselves. Many of us are fix-it people. If somebody has a problem we are there to fix it. No matter how big or small. We don’t like to be helpless. We like to have solutions, answers, a magic way to make it all better. When we can't figure it out we often pull out our smartphone to ask Google or Siri and when that doesn’t work we can always find a YouTube video for it. Some of us still go into bookstores and you can find shelves after shelves of self-help books on how to fix every issue in life. If you don’t have an issue somebody can find one for you. 

We live in a society that tells women that they can do anything a man can do. Women who might get offended at that, suck it up. God didn’t create us to be just like a man. That would defeat the purpose of him making man and woman each with unique roles. Kids grow up with the idea that everyone is a winner, if nothing else you will get an award for participation at least. Because it wouldn’t be fair for everybody not to win. And your child? They can grow up to be anything they want to be. So your son decides to be a girl? Damn anybody who tries to stop him or suggest it’s wrong. Two women want to get married, who are you to judge them. We have become a nation that lives under the theme of “Do whatever makes you happy.” As a country we have thrown morals out the window and we cannot even completely fathom what it’s like invillages and  slums overseas where there is nobody there to defend you, stand up for you or protect you. Even if you are only a child.

So, what about when you go to a third world country? You've seen movies, you know what it’s like, you may have even gone once or twice but I have found nothing, nothing at all that prepares you for when you are sitting among the poorest slums in Uganda, in the grimy red dust littered with garbage holding a tiny child’s hand. A child that like hundreds of others in the nearby areas have been abused, raped, are orphans, kids who live in extreme poverty. Children that have no clean drinking water, no warm meals, no medical care, cannot go to school. Children that are starving, don’t have a warm place to sleep at night. In reality, these kids are invisible to the world. There I am kneeling before this child and asking God to bless this little life, to provide, to reach down and enter the life of a tiny child who has nothing but the hope I am sharing with them. Then you lay out in the grass at night looking at the thousands of stars in the universe and wondering what the point is. Wondering if it even matters. You feel completely and utterly helpless. 

That's when you realize how small you are, how insignificant you are. How you cannot change the world. You cannot change the lives of these children. And you realize that you don’t have to because God is bigger. You merely are a servant of Christ. He never told you that you had to fix everything. It’s not our job no matter how much we want to make it our job. So what changed? What impactwas made  on the country of Uganda by me being there five weeks? I don’t know. All I know is that every child’s hand I held and prayed for, every hug, every smile and laugh, every warm meal served, clean cup of water given, or story of Jesus told… a life was touched by the light and hope of God for eternity. How many lives were changed or impacted? I have no idea because all the work and glory is God’s alone. Many times he uses the ripple effect. One life is changedand that  person touches the life of somebody else and therefore starts a ripple of lots of lives changed.

I guess the biggest thing that I learned while over there is the importance of prayer. Here in America prayer is something we often only do when it is convenient or when we need something from God. In Uganda, especially the area where I was at, prayer is a necessity. That connection with God is vital for every day life. There is no magic fix. No perfect cure. Evil crawls at its purest form but as you walk down the street God’s angels are around you, keeping you from harm. You see prayers answered. Lives changed. You see miracles happen. But that’s a subject for another day.

All of that to say this… I have no clue how to relate all my experiences over there to all of you here in America. Honestly I don’t think it's something you can fully understand without experiencing it firsthand. Without being there, engaging all five of your senses. So maybe you got something out of this. Perhaps you didn’t but it was worth a shot. My brain is still all mixed up with the feelings and emotions of those five weeks. Some of the stuff I saw and experienced there was rough, dark, stuff we don’t see in our everyday America lives. On the other hand, it opens you up to realize how much of this stuff happens in our own states, our own cities and we just turn our face away from it because we want to live in our own little worlds without touchingthe harsh  reality of darkness.  

So without further ado this post will come to a close. If you have comments, questions…. Leave them below or message me and I will do my best to give you an answer.

~KrissElise

 

His Hands

I sit on the couch snuggled up against the man I’ll get to marry someday soon. He’s watching a tv show, a pretty good one actually but my mind isn’t focused on the old treasures these guys are finding… my mind is a thousand miles elsewhere….

I pull his hand over to me, my fingers tips reading it like a map. Tracing up and down his fingers, across his palm. So much intricate detail, all those little lines that make up his special, unique design. His big hands rough and strong, yet so tender and gentle.

There’s so much history that lies there. So much those hands have done. He has no idea where my mind is… those strong hands were once tiny and fragile, those of a brand new baby taking his first breath in the world. Those hands played with little toy cars and built towers out of blocks, they reached up to his daddy when he wanted to be held, and pointed out all the things that he was excited to see. As he grew older they built projects and wrote math papers, they turned the pages of book after book. They were on the wheel as he was learning how to drive, and do chores around the house. They work hard to make a living, and play the strings on his guitar as he sings. They turn the precious pages of his Bible when he sits down and turns to God. But the most amazing thing to me is that when God made those tiny hands he knew all that they would do, he knew someday they would be big and strong but he made them gentle too… and I can’t help but wonder… did he make them that way just for me? Did he have me in mind, knowing someday that they’d be mine to hold? Did he make them kind and gentle just for me?

You might think I'm a little crazy, maybe I'm a little too deep in love, some say that I'm in over my head... and maybe I am. But I know this, when all the puzzle pieces start falling together, when you start to see the big picture, you will begin to discover that it was never random. God knew exactly how my life would play out from the beginning, he knew every detail. All the pain, the joy, the happiness, the love. He knew the whole journey, the ups and downs, the whole adventure He knew it before I was even created in my mother's womb. He planned it all out, and the coolest part is that he knew who I'd fall in love with. He handpicked him out just for me.

I know some things stand out a little more to me because my past hasn't always been sweet. I've known hands that haven't been so gentle, ones that reached out to hurt and left bruises on my skin where they touched. I know I'm not the only one who has experienced that. So when you have a man who is tender, loving and gentle you don't take that for granted. It constantly amazes you and sometimes even brings you to tears. (Which tends to make your guy worry lol)

So yes, I'm a little crazy, maybe the little things catch my attention too much... but think about it. There are so many absolutely beautiful things that God created for us that we miss and take for granted every day. So today, remember the simple things. Take a moment and dwell on who God is. How He created you and all the ones you love with such intricate detail and design. And when you are done, don't forget to fall on your knees and thank Him.

~KrissElise

Hungry For God

As a leader and missionary I find myself constantly attempting to get others involved, trying to lead them into being God chasers. America as a whole struggles to get people committed to the body and to devoting their lives to following Christ. We are constantly searching for people who are hungry for God.

Here is something I read about a Pastor in America talking to an Ethiopian pastor who lived in horrible poverty. He said, “Brother, we pray for you in your poverty.” The humble Ethiopian turned  and said, “No, you don’t understand. We pray for you in your prosperity.”  Seeing the taken aback look on the American Pastor’s face he continued, “We pray for you Americans because it is much harder for you to live at the place God wants you to live in the midst of prosperity, than it is for us in the midst of our poverty.”

I think that is such a key point. Most people you meet are starving. They try to meet that desperate need with anything and everything. Now days we turn to alcohol, physics, parties, medication, programs, money, possessions, status, professional psychologists, social acceptance… the list goes on. We try to fill that emptiness inside with all the stuff that America has to offer. We come to church to check it off our list, to socialize, to meet the "religious" part of us, some even come to sit and be taught. But how many of us come just because we are God chasers? We are following Him, running towards Him, we go to church because we fully expect to meet personally with our almighty, all powerful God.

How many times do we come to church on Sundays and completely miss the presence of God only because we didn’t really expect to meet with Him? But maybe we don’t actually want to meet with Him. Do we even know when He shows up? When you go to “church” on Sunday is God going to be there in the building? If so what is He doing? What is He saying? Who is He talking to? What if He shows up to personally talk to you? One of the things that scares me the most is becoming so complacent that when He does show up we either miss Him, or He finds us comfortably tipped back in our church seat napping and when He asks us about the things He has sent us to do we will not have an answer because the list is crumpled up in the garbage can. I believe that no matter how hard we pray or ask God to work, He will not pour out His Spirit on those who do not hunger for Him.

Do we really want Jesus? Or do we just like the idea of Him? Do we just like the things He has to offer? Or do we want Him to completely ruin us for the world? Do we really want Jesus? Or do we just want to know about Him? What will it take for us to be overwhelmed by His presence? For us to fall on our knees and bow our faces in reverence to our almighty God? What will it take for us to break out of our self-induced, self-absorbed comas and start really living for the One whose blood spilled out upon Calvary’s Hill?

A couple months ago I was once again sitting at the table having a conversation with my dad when he said something that really struck me.  “The one thing that comforts me is knowing that whatever God tells you to do, you will do because you don’t know how to stop following God.”

He is right. Rewind about 9 years. It was a spring day, I was alone, terrified, depressed, and hopeless. That’s when I met Jesus. He was there all along, I can see Him when I look back on my younger years but I’d never let Him in. That day I realized that only He could fill the starving part of my soul. At the time I was still living with my birth family and I had no clue what to do about this whole “following God” thing or what a real relationship with Him was like. In fact it was a few years after that when I got to meet my adoptive dad that I really started learning about who Jesus is and who we are in Him. I suddenly found that everything I had been taught about God needed to be rearranged and redefined. 

Somewhere during all the long talks and late nights a fire was lit inside my soul, one that could not be quenched. During the short course of my lifetime I have been through many struggles. Many of the things that happened, the things I had to go through were not easy to overcome. Sometimes I still struggle with them. It’s not easy to make the decision to choose God over your family, to forgive the man who tried to rape you, forget all the voices telling you that you aren’t worth it, to find love in your heart for somebody after years of being abused, it’s not easy to miss out on your sisters growing up, or overcome depression, anxiety and self-destructive habits. It’s the hardest thing in the world to break addictions and the chains that Satan so tightly bound you with. But here’s the good part. We can choose to let those struggles make us bitter against God or we can choose to believe Romans 5:1-5

“Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God. Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.”

Thankfully, my struggles ended up driving me straight into the arms of my God. And sometime during the course of finding my place in God’s plan, finding Him through the struggles and the dark I came to the realization… (I think I first really realized it when God told me to go to Peru) I came to the realization that I cannot say no. I have continually found that I am unable to say no to God. There are times when I’ll argue with him, I’ll try to rationalize and dance around the point but in the end I find that I have no choice but to follow my God wherever He leads.

Has it been easy? No way. Is it always easy now? Nope. Is it worth it? Without doubt. Many people often ask me if I could go back and restart would I? They want to know what I’d change. I struggle to answer that sometimes but in the end it always comes down to the fact that I wouldn’t change a thing. Because if I took out the tragic, the trials, the struggles, the dark parts… if I took that out... my faith wouldn’t be as deep as it is, the fire wouldn’t be quite so consuming and I wouldn’t know Jesus’s love like I do now. 

I don’t wish my life from here on out to be easy either, because if my life runs smoothly with no struggles, no parts that make me question what God is doing that make me drive deeper into His Word, I’ll become complacent. That is my biggest fear. I never want to become lukewarm, I never want to lose passion, I never want to forget how great God’s mercy and grace are over me. So I welcome the struggles, the trials that are sure to come because they will require me to take my faith to a deeper level, to run to my Father’s open arms and trust Him with my life.

And in the end… when I have done all that I was commanded, I say, “I am an unworthy servant; I have only done what was my duty.” *Luke 17-10

~KrissElise

She Calls Him Daddy

Not just anybody would hear that five letter word,
It was one tucked deep down inside,
Set apart for somebody more than special,
And guarded with the utmost care,

It had to be for somebody she could trust,
Not only with her life but with her heart and soul,
One who could know her past,
All the mistakes and failures,
But love her all the same,
He had to be able to let her cry, let her scream
Let her go, yet hold her tight,

Not just anyone would do,
He'd have to understand a broken girl,
See the cracks and all the dirt,
She was a victim of wrong,
But had the heart of a fighter,
He would need to have incredible patience,
And make lots of time,

Nights he'd wait up for her to get home,
And at least once he'd have to track her down,
Days he'd have to let her make choices,
Some when he would have to for her,
He'd have to be her solid ground, 
Her safe place when she was scared,

It would be him to spend hours and hours of time,
Helping her deal with and heal from pain,
That was inflicted upon her by others,
He'd be woken up at three in the morning,
And stay up til way too late, because she needed him,
He would go through stuff that no father should,
Deal with things in her life that he had no clue how,
He would be the strong one when she was weak,

Most of all he would be the reflection of Jesus,
The godly example of how to walk through life,
He'd need hours of time to spend sharing wisdom,
Leading her in life, gently yet persistently,
He'd stand up for wrong, even when he stood alone,
Leading her always, back to the cross on her knees,
Pointing her once again to the King,

So this had to be a special guy,
One she thought only existed in her dreams,
But then God chose one out of millions,
He gave him all the qualifications required,
And then He crossed his path with hers,

In the years following he proved he earned the title,
He done so much more than what was required,
Just because he loved her, and that would never change,
To this day, he lives out his faith, 
Shows her every day just how much he loves her,
And so she calls him Daddy.

~KrissElise

Daddy