I'm broken, I'm healing, I'm learning.

I haven't been sleeping very good lately. Actually I don't even know if I am really sleeping at all. Coupled with stresses of work, worldly issues, and my mind and my heart being 8000 miles away. Leads to a migraine, sleepy, cranky Cami. Not a good combination. One that is not me.

It all started on Thursday.

I was sitting in a book store coffee shop enjoying books and coffee beans, minding my own business when I saw it. Five feet away from me words screamed from colorful covers. Flawless. The Best Abs. How to make your man Happy. The Perfect Bikini Body. Lose 10 pounds. Words after words after words. Then I glanced to the right and saw The Bible 50 ways it can change your life. So I may or may not have found all the copies of that magazine and used them to cover the perfect body and the best abs, but really that's beside the point.

The point being that these messages are everywhere, and they are literally driving me mad. No I'm being serious. The things that this world puts stock in, the things this world calls beautiful, I find quite ugly. It's so hard for me to explain. It's so hard for me to even comprehend. I don't want to be flawless. I don't want to lose 10 pounds, I don't want a perfect body. I don't need to know how to make a man happy... Those things don't appeal to me. Those things I don't find beautiful. My calling, God's calling on my life is far more important than any man, than any make up, than 10 less pounds, than a perfect body could ever be... So starts the little tension headache at the base of my neck.

I find beauty in the hard, dark places. Beauty in the way Moses use to tell me how he wants to be fat like me someday. Beauty in the toothless woman handing me her child. Beauty in the ringworm and the sores. Beauty in the little hand grasping mine. Beauty in the coal burns and the holes in my skirts. Beauty in the mosquito bites that make me look like I have a disease. Beauty in the dirt covered feet and greasy hair. Beauty in the little bit of hope that love gives people. Beauty in the place where there are no need for words exchange, just a hand in hand and a head on a shoulder and child sitting in a lap. There is so much beauty hidden in the world and yet it seems what we are focused on is this beauty that fades, beauty that will never last.

Beauty isn't in losing 10 pounds. It isn't in having the perfect face or perfect body. Beauty is in the way God transforms broken lives. Beauty is in the way that no matter how a person looks, with Jesus they are beautiful, with Jesus the only thing that matters is the heart. I think too many of us have lost sight of this. I know I often have.

But this it where it started.

I became restless with this. Restless with the way these messages scream at me and my mind began to wander away... 8000 miles away to children who are raising children. girls who are being sold into a life of darkness and death. To grandparents whose children are dying and are having to raise their grandchildren. To the man who walked in to the village that day with shoulder pain. To the little girl I carried on my hip for hours. To the family I lived with for two months and miss every day. My mind goes there, because the people there loved me without knowing me and I loved them with every part of my heart, every part of my soul, with every fiber in my being.

But people here... They are not easy to love. Everyday is a new challenge. Friday was a big challenge. When a customer was unnecessarily rude to my fellow employee. When she treated this wonderful woman like she was nothing. When she stuck her hand in her face demanding her change, then yelling at her for no reason and then pushing her cart into the others and stomping out of the store. No I'm sorry I did not love this woman. I wanted to yell at her, scream at the top of my lungs. "How dare you. How dare you treat someone like dirt. Have some decency. Have some courtesy, Have a heart." But I didn't say anything. I comforted my fellow associate and went into my office and cried. I cried because love is not easy. grace is not easy. And yet Jesus loves this woman. This woman, who I do not know, but He does. I don't know what she was going through. I don't know her life, her wounds, her scars, her hurts and He does. So all I can do is try and not be angry, try to be a little bit more loving and a little bit more gracious, because everyone is fighting battles and somedays are harder than others. And Friday... Friday was hard.

So I got home after the stressfulness of customers and associates and bosses and life and feeling inadequate. I laid on my bed looking at pictures from Tanzania and Kenya. Tears filling my eyes. My mind again 8000 miles away. And I closed my eyes with faces imprinted in the back of my eyelids. Because I wanted more than anything to be there holding there hands, cradling their faces in my palms. Laughing and Singing. But I wasn't and I won't be... not for a while. And it is hard. Hard to come to terms with. Hard to be okay with. Hard to sleep on.

And I woke this morning with a pounding in my head. My vision blurry and my stomach lurching, feeling as if I didn't sleep even one hour. I woke up to a migraine. I woke up to not wanting to go to work. But I did and the entire drive to work I had trouble seeing. But I made it there and could only handle being there for three hours. I did my office work and then drove back home. Sick and tired and aching. Physically, emotionally, and spiritually...

And I had this upset feeling in my gut as I drove toward home, feeling like I am not doing anything for the Kingdom. That I'm just waiting around for something to happen and God's saying to me. "Cami I don't want you to wait to get messy in ministry. Get messy now. Just because I don't have you in Africa now doesn't mean I don't want you to be my hands and feet. No matter where you are, people need me, you need me. Be me to the lost, to the broken, to your family, to your friends. Your ministry doesn't end just because you are home. Your ministry is everyday, every hour, every minute, every second of your life."

I have forgotten that.

Climbing into bed, wrapping the sheet around me I cried a little more. I cried out to Him. "God take it, take it all. Teach me to be messy in ministry here. To see beauty here. To love here. To be Your hands and feet here." And letting out a big breath I was holding in, I closed my eyes and fell asleep. Yes... I still have a headache... it's a dull roar compared to the full on lion it was earlier. But I think it's a pounding reminder. That God is slowly healing me. He's slowly working out everything and He's asking me to be patient, to focus on Him and not the pounding. To look around and see the need for Him and go.

To not wait for the migraine to realize that people are experiencing this kind of pain everyday. And He's asking me to be the healing hand He uses. To be the kind heart, He loves through. To be His hands, His feet. To Shine His light. Right where I am. In this moment.


Seeking out the need for HIM,



HIS and yours,


 Cami