GREEN-LIGHT revolution

As I sit and reflect today, I have been back in South Africa almost as long as I was in India, four and a half years. Matt celebrates his twentieth birthday this week. Our transition wasn’t easy, but we can honestly say that God had already walked in all our tomorrows, and met us there. His thoughts and ways are so much higher than ours (see Isaiah55v8&9). I could never have imagined what He had in store for me. I came to realise that He used India to shape me, change me, and then planted me here to help pioneer something new - health care His way - starting with the heart lessons He had taught me far away.

And His promise of flowers has been happily fulfilled. God has surrounded me with wonderful women, each a beautiful flower. They have become special friends, daughters, sisters, forming a community of love, a safe place in which to grow in God. We meet to pray together, share life together, encouraging one another to love Him with all our heart and soul and strength. We cry together, laugh together, and have wriggled deep into each other’s souls where we sharpen each other (see Proverbs27v17), seeing God’s skilled surgical hand at work in our broken and wounded places, bringing healing and wholeness. We in turn are able to reach out to others – the lost and broken, fellow believers needing encouragement along the way, the outcasts of society, the misunderstood…We celebrate life, delighting in our Beloved and the fellowship of His people.

I have been challenged by my own weaknesses and vulnerabilities, which have become glaringly obvious in close relationship with others (it’s so easy to hide our true selves when our relationships don’t go deep!), and have learned that pride blinds me to my own sin and brokenness. It has taken courage to allow others into my heart, but it has been so worthwhile! I have learned to be loved and to love in ways I hadn’t dreamed possible. I have learned that selfless GIVING (I mean MUCH more than finances) is the way of life in God. After all, God so loved the world that He GAVE….everything. He calls us to love like that too.

And I have learned that surrendering to God’s ways completely - without trying to interpret what should happen, when, where, with whom – brings so much peace and so much joy. To me (who loves surfing), it feels like I’m floating blissfully in an ocean of God’s grace. It just isn’t worth trying to live any other way! Life in Him is truly more than we could ever ask or imagine (see Ephesians3v20&21). It really is a thrill to partner with Jesus, my Lover and my Friend.

Going green!

Caryn