It almost feels like 5 years ago I was in Uganda, but then again it could have been 5 days.
The concept of time seemed to slip away while I was there, time stood still while the whole world was spinning around me, and my life was transformed. Everything I believed in, everything I felt secure about, was challenged when I was placed in an environment unlike any I've been in before. The questions that arose, the emotions that I felt, the way I saw life, was so foreign and almost incomprehensible. There, I was stripped of all my comforts and forced to be myself and see myself. I was not a construct of the culture around me, I was not defined by what I did or what people said of me... I was me...free, sustained, passionate, and real. In my humanity, I tasted fear... heart break... grace... birth... death... celebration... the power of nature, peace, war, poverty, hunger, longing, friendship... Life resonated inside of me. I loved that I was alive!
There was a particular moment that I will never forget:
It was late at night, most of us were off to bed (when I say bed, I mean hammock). The girls we were staying with were doing what they did every night before bed, sang and danced together. I decided to walk over to them and join in. It was when they were almost finished, singing a soft, emotional, deep song, eyes closed. I quietly approached the beautiful sight. Sunday Patricia is a 17 year old girl with two children, one of them is Junior who she never let go of it seemed. Sunday was taken from her school by the LRA four years prior, was abused, raped, and forced to fight against her own people. Her smile is deep and true, almost makes you want to cry seeing someone so beautiful who had been through and seen so much.
When I came to the girls, Sunday was up against a wall, holding tightly on to Junior who was passed out asleep. Her eyes were shut, she was singing, maybe praying, softly and still. I noticed her tears falling, streaming down her face as she held her son. I saw as she wept, and wept, her pain was spilling over, she was alive. I started to weep as well. I was not able to control any emotion, any thought, I was captivated by her tears, for I felt like they were my tears as well. I touched her and held her and we cried together. This may have lasted 2 hours, I have no idea.
Before I left for Uganda, I kept considering the idea of passion. Webster's definition of passion is, "a suffering especially that of Christ's." Somehow I stumbled across this definition, and after I couldn't get it out of my head. While in Africa, Chris reminded our group of compassion...which means "to suffer with." In this context, compassion and passion are not just feelings and mushy or lovey-dovey crap, these words actually dive into the gut of what it means to be human. And in this, we are vulnerable, tested, and challenged.
I want to be reminded of this time I shared with Sunday. I may never know the reason why God allowed us to share that moment together, but it changed my life. It opened up a part of me that needed to be opened. I needed to know that we are not meant to live this life alone. We are meant to enter into each other's joys and pains.When you share joy it's two times the fun, and when you share pain it's half the hurt.
More on my Uganda experiences later...
