One truth I did realize, though, was something I really thought I already knew. I did know it, on some level, but my time in America drilled it into me in a whole new way. I came to understand and believe with more passion than ever that God is in control. I mean absolute, complete, sovereign control. It sounds like a basic principle of the Christian faith, but many times people who say these words use them to encourage someone else. Sometimes it’s much harder to embrace the fact that God is in control when you are the one with the terrible diagnosis, the empty bank account, and no job, the drug-addicted son or daughter, or all your children and the ministry you love are in Africa while you are in America.
I had to tell myself over and over again, “God is really in control.” I felt as though I lived in a vacuum of aloneness and impossibility. Most people saw me as a nineteen-year-old college student. But I didn’t look like, feel like, or understand what it meant to be a college student. I felt like a small, young woman who had eight children in Uganda and 150 young minds I was helping to educate there—and that’s the life I understood. But few people around me seemed to be able to grasp it.
People asked me how I would provide for my family long distance as a nursing major, taking nineteen hours of courses and working fifteen hours per week. I could only offer my standard answer: “God will provide.” That simple, honest answer had always proven true. Christians say this often, but sometimes we don’t understand the full truth of it.
I knew exactly what “God will provide” meant. It meant that on any given day, just when I needed it, a check for $1,000 would arrive in the mail so I could pay the rent on my house and pay salaries for my employees. It meant that the next week, He would inspire someone to send a check that would help with the electric bill and that just as we ran out of food, someone would send money to help stock the cupboard again.
I found it strange when people looked doubtfully at me when I said “God will provide.” I knew He would; I’d seen Him do it. I wasn’t naive; I was simply dependent on a God who loved my children and employees more than I did.
People also asked me if I felt overwhelmed, and that became one of my least favorite questions. If I said “Yes,” they inevitably followed up with “Then why don’t you scale back?” And while I tried to answer nicely with my mouth, my brain said: “I’m raising a family and loving children with all my heart. I’m not running a business, so I can’t just ‘make some cuts.’ ” I’m sure everyone who suggested I lighten my load meant well, but I sometimes wonder what they would have said had I recommended that they simply discard one of their children.
Several people really did understand. My mother, who was nice to me when I was not nice in return and who did my laundry when I was too stressed out to thank her, understood. My roommate, who did my grocery shopping so I would have something to eat, understood. The May family, who invited me into their home, insisted I stay to eat dinner with their family and listened to me talk about my girls for hours on end, always promising to pray for us, understood. Gwen and Suzanne, who loved orphans and adoption and helped advocate for me and Amazima, understood. I knew that although lots of people didn’t understand, I was enormously blessed because certain people did.
Nevertheless, the huge aloneness I felt continued to dog me. God was filling it slowly, but carefully, with people who cared. He sent me not only several families who understood but others who were happy to pay a water bill so my house in Uganda could continue to provide showers and clean drinking water for the village. He made sure that, just when I thought my heart would crumble with longing for my children, I received a phone call from a small chocolate-colored person who missed me and was eagerly awaiting my return. He provided for my every need and proved time and time again, in the most amazing ways, that He is in control.
One weekend, I especially needed to be reminded that God was in control. For a split second, my world was shattered. My best friend, who was studying to be an accountant, asked to take a look at Amazima’s finances. As she and I saw it, this was a great opportunity for her to practice her accounting skills and I considered it a blessing to have someone who knew more than I did review our financial situation.
My friend was dumbfounded. She simply couldn’t figure out how the ministry had stayed afloat. From an accounting perspective, and based on basic human logic, it simply didn’t work. Out of 150 children who needed to go to school, only forty-four were sponsored. That meant the other 106 were going to school with fees paid by donations or from my personal savings account. At that time, in October, I still owed the schools in Uganda $8,000 to finish the term that would end in December. I also owed the next month’s rent on my house.
My friend asked, carefully, how on earth I thought I could keep the ministry going and send the children to school in 2009 if I couldn’t even finish paying for 2008, when I didn’t have money for rent or other overhead expenses. My very unbusinesslike answer was, “So far we’ve made ends meet. The money just always shows up by the end of the month.” I think she wanted to laugh at me, but I love her for not doing so.
She went on to explain to me, as others including my wise father had tried to do, that continuing to run the ministry as I had been doing was not possible. I would have to cut back; and only the forty-four children who had sponsors would be able to attend school in 2009. My friend suggested that whatever money came into the ministry for the remainder of 2008 go toward paying the remaining balances on the school fees and reasoned that we should build up some savings and then resume sending the other children to school.
The thought of telling 106 children I loved that they could no longer go to school—and also telling them I could no longer feed them or provide their medical care—was something I couldn’t even imagine. I held my composure until my friend left and then broke down in tears.
That’s when God grabbed my attention. The light came on and I remembered: I never chose these 150 children; God gave them to me. I never planned to send them all to school; He did. It wasn’t Katie carrying out Katie’s plan; it was the Lord, for whom all things, all things, are possible. I could envision Him chuckling at me, saying: “Oh, you of little faith! Ask anything in my name and it will be given to you!”
I had become so concerned about how I would continue to provide for the children that I forgot I wasn’t even the one who was supposed to do it. I’d been so busy working to raise money that I forgot to ask God for it. I literally fell to my knees that day and said: “I am not cutting back. I am not going to tell 106 children that they won’t be going to school next year.”
All I had to do was look at what happened the previous year. Had God ever failed to provide exactly what was needed? No. Why, then, would I ever believe He would fail to provide now, even though I was living in America?
Still on my knees, I asked God to forgive me for wondering whether He would come through for us or not. Of course He would. In the days following, I fasted and prayed fervently for His continued provision. We needed a total of $70,000 to pay off the debt from 2008, send all the children to school in 2009, and have enough money left to feed them, pay rent, cover overhead, and provide for their medical needs. Within a matter of weeks, thirteen more children had been sponsored, three new fund-raising dinners were arranged, and friends began to rally around me and ask, without being prompted, what they could do to help. Gwen and Suzanne were some of the first to volunteer and were tireless in their efforts and enthusiasm. I did nothing but pray and believe God wanted to be involved in the life to which He called me. Nothing was impossible; no request was too big or too small.
After I prayed and surrendered this situation to the Lord, He began to do miracles. It was as though magical floodgates of provision were opened. Within a few months, we had the $70,000 we needed—and then some.
Maybe I wasn’t comfortable in America; maybe I didn’t fit in. But God hadn’t left me there to fend for myself. He was with me and He was doing incredible things to keep the work going in Uganda while I was away.
ONE DAY . . .
September 25, 2008
Some Sundays I go to my parents’ Catholic church where I grew up. My favorite part of the mass is communion, and I never miss a chance to pass it out. Being able to look into each person’s eyes and know that on some level they are experiencing the same hurt that I am, the same joy that I am, the same separation from the Maker we long to be with, is the greatest blessing. This week as I was giving communion to one lady in the long line of people, she looked at me and said “Welcome home.”
I don’t know this woman, but for that instant she knew me. When she said “Welcome home,” it was as though a floodgate broke open from behind my eyes and the tears came in an unstoppable river. “Welcome home.”
I wanted to ask her, “Where is home?”
I have come to the realization that I am somewhat of a nomad on this earth. I am learning to be okay with that. Human beings long for a place to call home, a nest, a sanctuary of their own. I have many and none. For so long my parents’ house was my “home,” my safe place; now it is a place where I feel strangely disconnected. My apartment is “home” for now, but it doesn’t feel personal yet. My room there is plastered with pictures of my children in my other “home” in Uganda, the only home that truly feels like my place, the only home that I created for myself, and yet a place I cannot be.
“Welcome home,” the lady said to me at church. And in my mind, eight little bald, brown people ran toward me shrieking “Mommy, welcome hoooooome!” and squeezed me until I threatened to burst. My heart lives in so many places. With so many people. But God whispers to me that I really have only one home, and that is with Him. I will never be content on this earth. I will always be a nomad. It was meant to be that way. My heart was created with a desire for a home, a nest, a sanctuary, and that can be found only with Him in Heaven. And I will continue bouncing from one home to another, loving with everything I have in whatever location I currently reside, excitedly awaiting the day when I am called heavenward and He says to me, “Welcome home.”
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LIVING THE SECRET
I turned twenty one Sunday in early November and spent part of my birthday marveling at the last year of my life. Between nineteen and twenty, I learned to be a teacher, a nurse, a handyman (plumbing and electrical work included), a cook, an exterminator, a maid, a servant, a mentor, a mother, and, most important, a daughter of the King.
My gracious Father created for me a home with adoring children and began a rapidly growing ministry helping His people. While my hands had done some of the physical work involved in these endeavors, I actually accomplished none of it. People often asked me then as they do now, “How do you do it?” The answer has never changed and it is so simple: I don’t. It’s just a little bit of coffee and a whole lot of Jesus. This plan, these “accomplishments,” they are so not my own.
I am dependent.
Powerless.
Weak.
Drowning.
While those adjectives may sound scary, they put me in a beautiful place, a place where I couldn’t go one minute without crying out to my Father or I would sink. I remember being so grateful for that place, and I still am. Paul says in his letter to the Philippians that he “knows the secret.” He has been well fed and he has been starving; he has lived in abundance and he has lived with nothing. His revelation? That he could do all things through Christ who strengthens (see Philippians 4:13).
I was learning that the powerless, broken, dependent place was actually the place where the Lord was closest to me.
At times, while I was attending college in the United States, I wished I were still living in the hungry, needy circumstances in which I lived in Uganda. Sometimes I felt it was easier to cling to Jesus in that state of having nothing than it was to cling to Him while surrounded by the abundance of America. Although I was not physically hungry or in need, my soul was thirstier than ever. And Paul’s secret remained true: I couldn’t do anything, but as I let the Lord strengthen me, I knew there was nothing He could not accomplish through me. I could hardly wait to see what would happen between twenty and twenty-one.
As Thanksgiving break approached, I stayed busy with school, work, and fund-raising for my growing ministry in Uganda. Plans for the ministry continued to unfold. Thanksgiving melted into Christmas, but while everyone around me was busy with lights, decorations, and gifts, I was desperately missing the other half of my family in Uganda and my mind was fixed on getting back to them. My semester in college, in my estimation, had been a disaster. I’m not saying God didn’t use it; I made wonderful friends and raised lots of funds to continue doing what God had started in Uganda. I’m simply saying that college wasn’t for me; Uganda was for me.
I’d tried college; one semester was enough. I simply couldn’t live with my body in one country and my soul in another. And yet I wanted to. I wanted to figure out how to honor both my earthly father and my heavenly Father. The battle within me was agonizing.
A scripture I had memorized for years kept creeping into my heart and mind: “No servant can serve two masters” (Luke 16:13). In context, the verse pertains to serving God versus money, but I realized as I read that I could not serve God’s eternal purpose and man’s earthly desires. I couldn’t fulfill both God’s call on my life and my parents’ desire for me to secure a “normal, successful future” with a college degree.
I didn’t hate college or America; I just so desperately missed my new home and family. And as much as I reveled in my life, ministry, and motherhood in a village in Uganda, I also had moments when I wanted to live near my family and marry my high school boyfriend. I didn’t want to give up everything I’d grown to love in Uganda; I wanted that—with a few American blessings added to it. But the reality is, no one can serve two masters. To follow Jesus, we have to make choices. Sometimes, making those choices is anguish.
Looking back, I now believe that during my time in the States, I was trying my best to live a life God did not intend me to live. I wanted to obey my earthly parents, but what they expected of me did not line up with what the heavenly Father asked me to do. While in the United States, I was not where God had asked me to be. I was not in the center of God’s will, and that is a dark place.
This is not to say that my time in the States was not necessary or that God didn’t bless it. He did, more than I could have ever asked or imagined. He put just the right people in just the right places. Some of them simply helped me get through every day on a practical level; some helped me fund-raise; and some, like my brother, Brad, my boyfriend, and my girlfriends, just helped me hold up my head, even though they didn’t understand. God allowed me to do important and necessary fund- and awareness-raising during my time in the United States, and much of that work still helps fund the ministry today.
God taught me, over and over, that it did not matter what the world said, that it did not matter that almost none of the people closest to me believed in what I was doing or believed it would succeed, that it did not matter what they said was impossible, because God did this, and He was going to continue doing it.
I didn’t realize then, but I strongly believe now that there is a common misconception that whatever happens to us is the will of God. It’s as though we think: Okay, I can do whatever I want and God will either do something or He won’t and that will be His will. It will all work out. It will all happen just like it needs to. I don’t believe this anymore. I believe that God is in control, yes, but I also believe I have a choice: I can follow Him or I can turn my back on Him. I can say yes to Him, or I can say no. I can go to the hard places or I can remain comfortable. And if I remain comfortable, God who loves us unconditionally will continue to love me anyway. I may still see His glory revealed in my life and recognize His blessings, but not like I could have. I can miss the will of God. The rich young ruler certainly did. He didn’t fall dead, as Ananias and Sapphira did; and maybe he went on to live a great life, but it wasn’t the life he could have lived had he sa
id yes to what Jesus was asking of him.
I don’t ever want to miss God’s will again. God grew me tremendously during my time in the States. He taught me many lessons and He never let go of my hand. But He also revealed to me more and more each day that this was not what He had for me. I don’t want to miss what He has for me. Ever, ever again.
In Luke 14:26, Jesus says to His followers, “If anyone comes to me and does not hate his father and mother, his wife and children, his brothers and sisters—yes, even his own life—he cannot be my disciple.” Obviously, this verse doesn’t mean I was to literally detest my parents. But it means that I was to love God so much that my love for my parents and anyone else looked small, even like hatred. It means I was to so want to follow Him that I would leave all the things I loved, even if doing so made it appear that I hated these things. It means to me that I should have valued nothing even close to the degree to which I valued His plan for my life and His love for me. And that’s where I landed.
I chose to value His plan, His calling, and His love over everything else. Everything. I had to be reunited with my heart and God’s purpose; I had to get back to Uganda, not temporarily, but for the rest of my life.
With my parents’ reluctant blessing, I didn’t register for university courses after Christmas. Instead, I bought a one-way ticket back to Uganda.
Kisses From Katie: A Story of Relentless Love and Redemption Page 12