The Divide in my Heart

I received Katie Davis's book "Kisses from Katie" for Christmas. I honestly thought it would be a good read and that I would learn about her ministry. I wasn't expecting to sob through the book or to relate to her story so well.

Katie is serving in Uganda. She is a mother to 14, a single mother in a third world country. She abandoned  her perfectly "normal" American life. She had plans to go to college and marry her high school sweetheart . Now she is completely devoted to God's plan for her life in Uganda.

As she writes her book, I can feel the tension and peace that she feels. She is at complete peace with her life in Uganda. She is loving orphans, caring for the sick, and feeding the hungry. She feels the closest to God in this world. But on the other side, you can feel her tension. Living in Uganda is not the normal everyone has planned for her. It's like there is this divide in her heart.

I feel this divide in my heart. Sometimes I feel so at peace about packing up and moving to a third world country to care for others. It is soothing to think about. I dream about those brown-eyed children staring at me and how I spend my nights crying out to God asking for His guidance. How my relationship oriented husband would strive in this type of environment.

But then I feel the tension growing inside of me. I get this feeling in the pit of my stomach telling me that I could not possibly move to a third world country. This feeling tells me that I deserve to raise a family here in the States, that I should just stay where I am and not make any decisions. This feeling also tells me that my family would never understand, that my husband couldn't be that far from his family and his normal. This feeling tells me that when the time is right, we will adopt and maybe do a mission trip to a foreign country and that should be enough. But even the idea of just doing those simple things doesn't give me peace.

I have never felt a divide like this in my life. I have never had my heart torn into pieces like it is now. There are people all around me who are doing the right things, they are adopting, they are donating, they are caring for others and they seem at peace. Are they though? Or is it that their time will come and God will wreck them for something more? Why is God allowing my heart to explode like this?

I do not have answers but eventually I will. I keep telling my husband that I strongly believe in 10 years our lives will be completely different. My prayer is that that actually happens. I do not know what our lives will look like in 10 years but I hope it is different than the normal everyone expects. I pray God has us at peace wherever we are.