On earth as it is in heaven.

I can very clearly remember a time when I didn't want to live in Uganda. I remember sitting on the floor of my NYC room, staring up at the walls that are covered in photos of my children there. I absolutely loved what I saw in those photos but I found myself crying and begging Him not to take me back there because I was scared.

Somehow over the course of the past two years, God slowly removed the fear from my heart and replaced it with joy. I slowly began to see for myself that His calling for me in Uganda wasn't an interruption to my life, but an invitation into something much more beautiful with Him.

I did one of the scariest things I'd ever done this New Year's and told my parents I wanted to move to Uganda. I told them I wanted to use my education to love and serve children with disabilities there. 

For a long time I told God I couldn't do it. My parents grew up in South Korea when it was still a developing country. They both immigrated here and graduated with Ph.D's from Columbia in hopes of starting a better life for us. They left their families overseas. My mom hardly spoke English when she first got here. All this so that their children could grow up in a world of opportunity and comfort, and here I was preparing to tell them that after all they'd given up for me, I wanted to leave our secure life and go live in poverty with children 7,000 miles away. It didn't make any sense. I felt like I was preparing to slap them both in the face. It took me 3 failed attempts, 3 nights in a row of fasting dinner, pacing up and down the hall in between my room and my parents' bedroom, 3 very close yet failed attempts at knocking on their door before I could gather the courage to tell them. 

"God, I don't know how to speak! I'm only a child," I said.

"Don't say 'I am only a child.' You must go to everyone I send you to and say whatever I command. Don't be afraid, I am with you and I will rescue you."

Then the Lord reached out His hand and touched my mouth and said to me "Now I have put my words in your mouth. See today I appoint you over nations and kingdoms to uproot and tear down, to destroy and overthrow, to build and to plant." {Jeremiah 1:6-10}

My dad threw himself on the kitchen floor and begged me to change my mind. His shouting shook every corner of the house and I was torn between calling 911 and praying to Jesus to come take me to heaven. He told me never to talk about it again. My mom (who was miraculously/surprisingly supportive from the beginning) and I cried ourselves into the New Year - literally through the countdown to midnight we cried at church and silently I prayed for a way out of this terrible nightmare that wasn't ending.

I escaped to my apartment in NYC and found myself kneeling in the same spot I had two years ago when I begged God not to send me back to Uganda. This time I begged Him for the opposite. My heart swelled and ached for the beautiful children I'd grown to love so much there. 

Life is hard no matter where you are. It's hard in America and it's hard in Uganda and I choose the hard in Uganda. I choose to love the children in Uganda because God cared enough to show me how much He loves them. He loved me enough to put me on a plane to Uganda 2 years ago. He loved me enough to lead me into one of the world's top schools for studying Special Education. He loved me enough to give me a job working with children with special needs everyday, so that I can teach from a place of experience. He loved me enough to break my heart over His children with disabilities who are often locked between houses, kept out of schools, starved and abandoned on Uganda's roadsides because the devil is a liar and he brands them with labels like "cursed, worthless, and demon-possessed."

Those children belong to Jesus. 
He taught me that they are His rare and beautiful treasures.
They are not mistakes. 

For 5 months I begged God for answers and all I heard was silence. My dad sunk into depression and denial. I was treading water in a storm. I stopped talking about Uganda. I stopped focusing in school. I stopped feeling excited about life. 

Last week, my dad walked in on me making teaching materials for my trip to Uganda this summer. It was 4AM and I was cutting handmade flashcards while watching a beautifully made documentary on children with special needs in Uganda. "You really love those kids, don't you" he said. I told him of course I do. "God's really going to use you there, I can tell," he said. I put down my scissors and looked up at him. "I don't want to be the one to stand in between you and your dreams anymore," he said. He told me to move for a year and a half after I graduate next May 2015. He told me to use that time to figure out if Uganda truly holds a future for me. Miracles don't always have to involve the blatantly supernatural. Like blind eyes being opened or the dead being raised to life, but in my opinion this one came pretty close!!

So next year I get to move to Uganda. Am I uncertain about this? Yes. But my only job is to cling to Jesus and rest in the certainty of who He is. Am I scared? Yes! But His perfect love casts out fear. I often look at the mess of my life and wonder why God wants to use a sinner like me. I often sit in the dark and wonder why He loves me enough to get on the floor with a bucket of clean water and wash my dirty feet. It's a downpour of His Grace. 

The way my daddy loves me is inherently deep and real. But it is also an imperfect, incomplete version of my Heavenly Father's perfect love. We live on a broken side of heaven. We were all created for a different world, a better one. And because of that, I inherently carry a deeply rooted understanding of what is heaven and what is not. 

I know that in heaven, no child is ever sexually trafficked. I know that in heaven, children don't ever die from malaria before their 5th birthday. Children don't drink dirty water in heaven. They drink from the stream of Life. There are no orphanages in heaven. Children live in forever families. Children with special needs don't hide behind houses in heaven. They are celebrated and treasured as children of the King. They sing and play and dance in the house of their Creator.

I want to see glimpses of heaven unfold in the lives of His children here on earth. 

I want to see His children lifted up off the roadsides, out of the dirt, and into the house of their Creator.

I want to see His children fall in love with the Life Giver. 

Last summer, I prayed to Jesus to heal my sweet 4th grader, Alex. He suffered from an ear infection and partial deafness for years and didn't have the resources to seek medical help. God used medicine to heal his ears and provided us with a charity that was willing to pay for two thousand dollar hearing aids. After all our hugging and singing and tears of joy last summer, I was so confused and even crushed to hear that his ear infection returned only a few months after I left. "But God, I thought you healed him. Doesn't healing mean the pain should never come back?"

"Alex" means "Defender and Warrior" 

He reaches out His hand and gently lifts my head to see His face. He quiets me with His love. When Jesus healed and helped and fed people, eventually they all got hungry and sick. Even the ones He raised from the dead eventually died again.

Jesus doesn't call me to save His children. He just calls me to show love to them.
And that love points them to Christ, the only One that can truly save them and fill their hunger forever. Slowly, I'm starting to understand.
It's my job to love and His job to save. 
I only get one life on this side of heaven and this is what I choose.
I want to spend my life pointing God's children Home.
Home to Jesus.

"For You open Your hand and satisfy the hunger and thirst of every living thing." 
{Psalm 145:16}