Downpour

Many things can be said about my time in Nicaragua. It was a country layered over and over with unfathomable wonders from my Heavenly Father. Something which continues to perplex me, is how on earth I could celebrate and yet at the same time mourn for such a place. Two months ago, I stepped onto the farm with incredibly low expectations. My feet hit unfamiliar ground, my temporary home. I had just left two countries with a full and yet broken heart for people I may never see again, people I desperately pray to be reunited with one day. This quickly resulted in a piece of me that tried fruitlessly for a couple of weeks to guard myself, to not let my heart feel any of the goodness the Lord was placing so purposefully right in front of me, for fear of having to let people go again. I was incredibly sick and tired of goodbyes. 

If there is anything I have learned from traveling the world, and simply living for the Lord in general, is that He is always providing opportunities to take a glimpse at the joy He interlaces throughout this life. In Nicaragua, there was no shortage of these. I glimpsed the Father’s joy in the grinning faces of the kids I played with all day for ministry and even past ministry times. I tasted it in the long afternoons spent talking in my broken Spanish and laughing with Mariana, an eight year old I will forever hold near and dear to my heart. I felt it on my skin as cool water enveloped my body as I jumped from a 30 foot ledge into a beautiful lagoon, my squad cheering me on below. I listened intently as I caught it in the laughter of my squad mates at long tables squished together so that everyone could fit at mealtimes. 

No, I couldn’t ignore the Father. No matter how desperately I tried to push the feelings away, no matter how determined I was to numb myself to the pain of inevitability, I couldn’t ignore how irrevocably good He is. No matter how many times I try to fight the will of the Lord, He comes chasing after me, pursuing me, fighting for me, and catching my attention with His gentleness and His light and life. 

I have loved every country I’ve been to for very different reasons. I have loved and lost and I have lived. Man have I lived. Nicaragua softened my heart in an incredible number of ways. I became quickly surrounded by a fierce body of believers who fought to know and understand me, and who challenged me to fight for them as well. I was caught completely off guard by the warmth of the culture I was met with, and by the unguarded affection I learned to both receive and give back. I learned what a gift it is to communicate, and I learned how much sweeter laughs can be between two people who don’t speak the same language, and yet can get by enough to laugh and talk for hours with one another. I learned how special the words “Te amo” are to me, when paired with a kiss on the cheek, and a beautiful set of wide brown eyes looking up at me expectantly. 

I experienced the excitement of fútbol games with a flat ball and volleyball games where nobody has any skill. I experienced the simplicity of hard work on a farm that isn’t mine, and with men and women I consider brothers and sisters despite language and cultural barriers. I know what it is to be exhausted and to still run and dance and sing because the Lord is just so good and because I love the people I’m with so much that it hurts. I know what it is to work in a garden all day, giggling with Felix over anomalies as goofy as a centipede (seriously, God, what are those guys about?) or as beautiful as fresh basil and lavender. I have cried over the sweetness of that man giving me mint for my throat from the garden he cherishes, and the amount of people that have trusted me to work with tiny pieces of their livelihood like this. 

In this country I walked into home after home, and hospital room after hospital room, saying countless prayers for things I will never understand, harsh truths about life I cannot fathom the reasoning behind. I have gotten a taste of what it is to trust that there is meaning behind every piece of the life my Author has created, good and bad. 

In every single one of these experiences, I have gotten a peek at, and been left captivated by just how sovereign the Lord is. 

Job 37 says, “At this my heart pounds and leaps from its place. Listen! Listen to the roar of His voice, to the rumbling that comes from His mouth. He unleashes His lightning beneath the whole heaven and sends it to the ends of the earth. After that comes the sound of His roar; He thunders with His majestic voice. When His voice resounds, He holds nothing back. God’s voice thunders in marvelous ways; He does great things beyond our understanding. He says to the snow, ‘Fall on the earth,’ and to the rain shower ‘Be a mighty downpour.’ So that everyone he has made may know His work, He stops all people from laboring.”

We see clearly articulated in this excerpt, that the Lord will stop us in our tracks to marvel at His wonders. To sit in absolute awe at His beauty and magnificent power and authority. Wonders as simple as rain, powerful and yet exquisite. He has us halt where we are, He meets us there, and He draws us in to keep our eyes on Him. The only One who could ever quench our insatiable longing for something to fill ourselves with. 

The Father stopped me in my tracks in Nicaragua, so that my eyes would be drawn back to Him and away from the pain and the numbing I thought would keep me from saying “yes” to this country. He drew my eyes to beautiful people with hearts that softened mine with the character traits of the Lord that they held. 

This softening of my heart hit me like a downpour. 

Nicaragua hurt to leave, big time. I don’t know if I have ever sang louder, danced more fearlessly, or shouted more unashamedly than I did in that holy place. However, it’s an incredible comfort to know that it wasn’t Nicaragua that made me free, but it is by the Father that I am free, and this country gets to be the place I get to associate a testament of the Lord’s faithfulness with. A testament of loving harder than I ever really thought I could, and crying bigger tears than I thought I would, over people I never could have imagined meeting.