A Practice of Faith:

You thought you wanted them, the questions about your time in Uganda, but as they fly at you the panic makes your heart beat a little faster, you aren't sure. No matter how many times you've heard the most annoyingly general inquiry, "How was Africa?" you still don't have an answer. Debrief taught you to have a planned response, but each time you forget what you meant to say and have to decide again how you will, in one or two sentences, describe the experiences that left you sobbing uncontrollably on the dorm step, or the incredible laughter you had with a roommate that was so joyful it made your heart explode, or to explain how the challenges of what you thought would be your career destroyed your confidence and rattled your belief in God. So, you take a breath, look wide-eyed at the half-curious person and say, 'It was great!' or maybe if you really like them you spice up the adjective by saying, 'It was really great' and wait for their reactions. Do they inhale as if to ask you another question or do they nod, drop your gaze, and move on to the thing they actually wanted to discuss. You hope for the former. You hope you'll be able to tell them that it was the most challenging experience you've ever had but also the most life giving thing. You hope they will want to hear you talk about the days spent in the classrooms, or the dinner you made for all the roommates or the trips to the market with other girls from the program. You hope they want to know that God stripped you of everything you relied on so that when you came home you were left with nothing but a need for him. But, they don't. So you move on with them. You write it all down though because you want to remember. Quickly, heart-breakingly fast this grand adventure, this life-changing experience stops being the thing you are doing and becomes the thing you did. Every new day is just 24 hours separating you from the sun, the red dirt, and the brown skin. How do you handle the end of it?

I sat and journaled and cried because my people didn't ask and I found it hard to honor my time there without telling stories. I felt guilty each time I started with a 'when I was in Uganda...', but I remembered the whole Ugandan journey was about digging in. I realized that digging in is really a practice in faithfulness. We have a faithful God who was here in the pages of my journal among the pressed leaves and dried flowers, even in the smell my pages had adopted from four months in a foreign world. I began to understand that God is faithful so that we are faithful. I came home to no job, no school, no functioning car, and a heart that hadn't been ready to leave yet. I was unsure of God, unsure of my belief that He was tangible, existent. I instantly went from routine, homework, responsibility, and intense independence to nothing but reliance on my parents for transportation and endless hours of free time. God was carving out space for Him. He was telling me, 'That nothingness you feel? It's room for me" He was telling me, 'You can't find me if you don't seek me.' He said, 'You can't know me if you don't open your heart and your hands to my plans'. He said, 'You can't follow me unless you take a step' and I said, okay. 

At first, it was easier to live in that wildness, to thrive in the high of the nothingness and to avoid His gaze. He kept carving, stripping, and calling me to Him because he is Elohim. I can't tell you what has happened because words aren't enough, because it is deep and still unknown but He calls us to be obedient and I've often believed it's that JUMP of faith, the here is ALL OF ME, but really we don't know what that looks like. I'm only 21, I don't know what ALL OF ME is. I don't understand how things will go or end. So you take a step, you write down how you drank too much and kissed a boy and then you did it again. You write it down and realize that isn't the wildness you crave. You realize your life needs to reflect the faithfulness of your creator and to honor the work He put into designing your heart and its desires, and to whittling away the things that hinder His goodness. As five weeks without a car goes by and you've now spent most mornings finding peace in His presence you feel changed because God is good. And then one morning you are talking to the newest good thing in your life and decide to put away your phone because you want to be with Jesus. You walk into that space He made and God says, "Receive it. My Grace. My Love. My Truth as I pour them over you like water. Here is my Presence. My Peace. My Goodness as I see you taking my hand. Here, Receive my Calm. My affirmation that your fear has no place because I have won the battle and lead you to where I want you."

I guess I just want to share that 6 months ago I was giddy to leave for the trip of a lifetime. 4 months ago I experienced the refinement of God. I was stretched, broken, and built up. (Almost) 2 months ago I came home feeling empty, rebellious, and apathetic. Today, though, I am singing his praises. God is Faithful so that we can be faithful. He is all about holding hands, walking slowly. About putting down roots in a dwelling place and experiencing harvest. He asks us for trust, for the reaching out to touch his robe, the willingness to cross the lake into an unknown place, and the ability to follow and do as he did.

he is the faithful father so take a step. 

"Behold, God is my salvation; I will trust, and will not be afraid; for the Lord God is my strength, my song, and has become my salvation" 

Waking Up in Amsterdam:

I woke up in Amsterdam and took a walk to find coffee and chocolate croissants. It was a brisk walk not because I was walking quickly but because the cold could be seen on my breath and my cheeks turned pink. My nose hasn't been cold in months. As I walked, I found myself thinking over and over I woke up in Amsterdam. This trip, just a short excursion before returning home, was expected to be an adventure. It's our first time in Europe and we had sights to see and places to explore and things to drink. Instead, Andrea got sick and spent yesterday sleeping on the couch of the hostel and then 8 hours in a hospital bed. 

After months in Uganda learning about expectations and letting go of plans I found myself frustrated, anxious, and antsy. I wanted this trip to be a BIG thing. My first time in Europe. Acting on my adulthood, being able to make all my decisions and navigate public transits and canal roads without help. I was defeated yesterday, yet, today I woke up in Amsterdam. 

There's a common phrase used to comfort people about God's new mercies every morning. A lot of times this verse is used as a blanket statement to console someone instead of truly confronting their need. Today I'm finding it exceptionally true. The conviction that I could continue in my 51 hours frustrated that it hasn't gone as planned and letting the change in plans ruin the entire experience or I can get back on my knees and thank God that she doesn't have Malaria, and for the many people praying for us at home, and that our luggage isn't lost, and that we are still waking up in Amsterdam. 

We finished our semester at Uganda Christian University on the 13th of December and spent 5 days in debrief with each other reflecting on our time and preparing for re-entry. To sum up my experience: Mukono, Uganda had a lot to teach me about letting go of expectation. To hope for God's plan to work out instead of hoping for what I wanted. I learned to embrace the tension of wanting my own plan and desiring to be in the will of God. And I did learn. I learned to dig in. I learned to push passed frustration, or sit in it for awhile and learn from it. I learned to be present with God and with others and surrender. I've found that while letting go is harder said than done, it has to happen. Simply put, we can't let go and still expect. We can't hope for the thing we are trying to let go of because it will be impossible and we'll end up defeated. heart broken. angry. We can't expect God to teach us and grow us and reveal himself to us if we are not willing to see what he has to share.

This morning I woke up in Amsterdam. I had coffee and a chocolate croissant. I smelled winter in the air and was glad for it. Here's to optimism, to new mercies every morning, to a God that blesses us and is faithful even when we're denying him, to finding freedom because we truly surrender, to the new day, and to waking up Amsterdam. 

A dryer time:

I am tired. I am tired of praying without answers. I'm tired of realizing my heart has dirty motives. I'm tired of being wrong. I'm tired of realizing I'm just trying to get something from God. I'm tired of burden and I am definitely tired of rice and beans.

I keep thinking about my history as a swimmer. There was a part of my 500 yard race, at about minute 5, where I would get this tired but have to keep going. It was then I would have to remind myself to kick harder, pull faster and catch my competition. In the last 100 yards I had to drive, deprive myself of oxygen and use my last bits of energy to finish hard into the wall. This tired is a lot like that tired. But, God, he hasn't given me a finish line. He never said pray for a few weeks and I will miraculously save your Grandma's cabin. He never said seek me in the mornings and find your bills paid for. He never said knock and the door to your new car will be opened to you. He just said that I would find him. He promised in finding him I would have satisfaction and joy and peace and hope. Not that he would give me those things through other means, but that He embodies those things.

There is a common theme in the Church of Uganda. Pray, seek, believe and God will bless you. Songs are often sung with lines like, "wonderful things will happen to you if you have faith in God". But my weary heart knows God doesn't promise "wonderful things", he promises nearness, refreshment, faithfulness and understanding. He promises to be our satisfaction.

I recently sent a frustrated message to my greatest friend that expressed my anger towards God. I had been praying for weeks that God would change my Grandma's heart about selling her cabin and had not felt anything from him. I told her, "God is nowhere to be found in any of it" and she graciously corrected me, "He is. If only it was for you to seek him." When I responded with, "It's not enough," she merely asked, "Is it not?" Is it not enough that God would put this in my life and drive me to wake up early every morning and seek him? Oh, my heart. Out of pride I didn't respond. She was wrong. God had left me. But, really, I was wrong and it was enough. He brought me to him to show me sin and to root it out. Is it not enough that I would seek him? It's enough. He is enough. My prayer is that I, that we, would stop trying to get things from God. That we would pray not with the hope of an answered prayer, but with the knowledge that God will show up and the belief that it is enough.
It's his love that showed me my pride, and his grace that brought me to him. This is enough. The sun is shining and that is enough.

I've got 34 days left in Uganda and I want it to be enough; for me to have learned what God intended, for me to walk away from here knowing more about myself and him. I believe this will be true. But, I've still got 34 days. Each day, let's wake up and say, Good morning Jesus, let us acknowledge that what he has in store is more than enough. What he has designed is good and perfect. What he will do is welcome and that we are ready to walk with his hand in our own.

A Mzungu Walk:

If I told you I woke up a few days ago believing that God didn't exist you would be shocked. Maybe you wouldn't believe me. But, it's true. That is the place I am in.

Here I am, Shanna Christine Johnson, the girl who was going to fall in love with Africa. With Uganda. She was going to build schools and change the world. But, here I am in a place so uncertain. God is  ripping down walls of understanding. The things I knew to be true about myself are not so clear. The hopes and dreams I had five weeks ago are pretty much non-existent and as a result I am weak. My heart is so sensitive to emotion and discovery. I am resistant to the change, to the refinement that is happening. But, if we are true to God, faithful to his individual work then this process is what we crave. Right? What I have learned is that there are two words God is putting in front of me on a daily basis (for months, actually) . These are discipline and freedom.

If we are disciplined how can we be free? And if we are free how can we be disciplined? On one hand discipline requires a list of shoulds and should nots. It demands boundaries on our lives to create a faithfulness to Christ and His desire for our lives. And on the other, freedom requires that we are open, we throw out the shoulds and should nots in favor of acknowledging salvation as a gift of grace that cannot and will not be earned. Freedom expects that we release our cares and trust in God's infinite power and wisdom, not as a cop-out or an I don't know to the hundreds of questions we have about eternity and sin and grace and faith but as a surrender to our human finite minds and the Creator's supernatural, beautiful, all-knowing one.

And that folks is where all the doubt and all the fear is beginning to be cast aside. Discipline and freedom link arms at surrender. Where there is discipline there is a humility to the desires of God and a laying down of the things that muddle and distract our understanding of Him, of the true things of Christ. Where there is freedom there is a surrender of striving. Here we give up our hard work, the notion that we are earning our ticket to heaven by not sleeping with our boyfriends and praying in the morning. Here is the laying down of the "I'm better than you because I've spent my whole life doing it right" idea or the feeling that we deserve it.

Surrender brings forth life because as we sit in the presence of God, out of discipline, we realize His conviction and his blessing and it brings freedom. We rid ourselves of the burden of attempting to earn the one thing that can never be earned.

I am sitting on top of a mountain overlooking a city that is eating away my sense of self. I see a place I don't fully understand, thinking that if I came to this place to learn this one truth I am blessed beyond comprehension. With this nugget I will welcome the hot, raging fire that promises to turn me into gold.

"Jesus said to them, do you not say, 'There are yet four months, then comes the harvest'? Look, I tell you, lift up your eyes, and see that the fields are white for harvest." 

John 4: 35

Uganda Be Kidding Me:

It's a life I've started living. One so completely different from the hundreds of days passed. But, one that is teaching me so much about the hundreds of days to come. To tell you that I love it here would be a lie. But, I would also be lying if I told you I hated it.

The cold showers are a shock in the morning, so I take them at night. I started working out before hand so that I would be hot enough to be able to grit my teeth and bear the daily ice bucket challenge.

I'm sure in a few days I'll have raw knuckles, and eventually calloused fingers from hand washing clothes.

I'm already surprised at the amount that I crave rice and beans come meal time. It's quite incredible the way your perspective changes when there isn't a snack aisle to walk down or a hundred and two bread choices. Just rice and beans and the occasional watermelon. The choices melt away and you resign yourself to enjoying the steaming hot food in front of you.

I've been in East Africa a little over two weeks. The first night I walked into my room after 24 hours of traveling and almost fell to my knees in a panic. I was terrified at the prospect of living in an old fashioned room with a wool blanket and barred windows, squatting over toilets and eating only starch forever. So I called out to my empty room God, be near to me. Please God and I fell asleep crying. Then things got better. There are 18 girls here and we are slowly developing a routine. I spend so much more time journaling and I am taking life by the day.

In 17 days, I have experienced powerful things. A 10 day trip to Rwanda broke open my heart and then healed it right back up again. The power of God is real even oceans away. I saw that humans have the ability to do the hardest things like forgiving and befriending men that killed their families. I've experienced meaningful, human connections with so many people like Jean-Paul teaching me a Rwandan dance without being able to exchange a language. Or participating in a nationally mandated work day which promotes peace and community.

While there hasn't been deep profound revelations  about who I am or what my future will entail, I am expecting to learn and to be influenced by the red dirt and intense rain storms. To be changed by the home-stay coming up next week and the little babies trying to fit into their mother's shoes. I expect to walk through a refining fire which will show me that after 20 years of learning things I still have so much more to discover. I am expecting that the next 4 months will decide passions and joys in my life.

"May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit"

God says he will do it. He will refine us. He will heal us. He will restore us. He will reveal his promises to us. I know this because he is doing it. I feel him doing it all the way here in Uganda. He is near and far and all around in every moment. It's like waking up to rain that sounds like wind in the trees. It's like being filled with breath. A peace that comes with trusting where he has you for the time. So go on tomorrow believing that he has you in a moment, in a place, on a path to bring His kingdom forward. Over oceans or just down the road His power is tangible.

Days:

Sometimes you just have to know what to come home to.

Today it was turning off the overhead lights, lighting candles, turning on the Christmas lights and blaring Will Regan radio on Pandora.

Today was the cry-in-the-bathroom-at-work-and-then-again-in-your-dad's-arms day.

Today I was so aware of my selfish and graceless heart. It was not giving the man on the street my lunch (even fully contemplating it twice), or rolling up my window at a red light to avoid the man holding a sign, or ignoring my co-worker because I didn't have the patience for her socially awkwardness, or snapping at someone important to me because she wasn't loving me well enough.

Today was: I worked for my lunch, I don't have spare cash because I need it, I'm better at this job than you, I'm a better friend than you.

Today was consumed with me, me, me.

But, really. Today was God knowing better than that. Selfish and graceless is the exact opposite of the picture He shows me on a regular basis. You might wonder what the first song that played off of the Pandora station? 'Set a fire' (so, today was really crying in the bathroom, crying with my dad, and now crying with my Papa). Set a fire in my soul that I can't control. A fire that burns and gives and loves and needs and hopes. A fire which finds fuel in the Holy. In the righteous. In the selfless and gracious.

Christ doesn't ask us to be these things. He requires that we are because he was (is) and we claim to bear his image.

So, be graceful and selfless to your end and then ask him for more because in him we're filled up, overflowing.

"Why do you see the speck that is in your brother's eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye?" Or how can you say to your brother, 'Let me take the speck out of your eye' when there is the log in your own eye." Matthew 7: 3-5 

"For everyone who asks recieves," Matthew 7: 8 

"The sacrifices to God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite hear, O God, you will not despise" Psalm 51: 17

Blessed by the Blue House:

             My grandmother is moving out of her house soon. This means that the Big Blue House on Oakleigh will probably be sold into unfamiliar hands. For those of you who know my family you understand this is heartbreaking news. Especially, for my little pod that lives two houses down. My entire life involves that house and the woman inside. Every coming and going, every summer day, every major family celebration has the memory of that blue house. When I learned this news I was broken, devastated, kind of lost because I didn't really understand what that meant but, I knew it would be a really hard thing for me. I started the process of grieving.

            With the help of a class at Cornerstone, I've been learning to trust in my ability to process emotional things through creative writing. Meaning not just journaling or blog posts, but through writing stories. I wrote a piece involving my memory of my grandma's house and wanted to share it here.

           Feel free to leave comments on any ways it could use improvement, or if you know my grandma and have been similarly blessed by the blue house (whether that is the pool, coffee on the porch, or just the joy of my grandma) leave a note and I'll make sure it gets to her. Thank you!

The Blue House

As the summer transformed into fall and the hot days turned to crisp mornings filled with warm sun, it waited. As the leaves changed color and fell to the ground, the house stood beside the road. As the barren trees seemingly wept for life because snow covered their branches and the shutters became coated in a thin layer of ice, the blue house watched over the familiar golf course. Then when the sun got hotter, the snow began to melt, the trees burst forth with new life and the smell of freshly cut grass filled the air, the blue house opened. The porch doors were unlocked and the woman inside readied herself for the flood of visitors.

I watched as all of this happened. I watched as the seasons changed. I watched as my grandmother opened her home again and again to the neighborhood, to friends and to family, to strangers. Over and over she served these people with the big blue house. I was one of the blessed.

My mother grew up in the robin’s egg home many years ago. When it came time to start her own family she settled into the two-story white colonial just down the road. Only one house separated my sisters and me from the always open arms of our Grandma K. but, soon this will be different, the house will change hands. Her field that was simply an addition to our own backyard will not be available for our games of hide and seek. The kitchen and den that were just an extension of our own kitchen will not allow for our search of a cup of sugar or a box of Club crackers. Soon, my Grandma will leave and the once magical, blue house will be empty—a shell of familial history.

                                                                   *

I can’t remember the first time I swam in the pool or napped in the cabana; my mother tells me it began in infancy. My childhood days were filled with the smell of chlorine, poolside snacks, and courageous dives off of the diving board. There was not a single summer day, growing up on Oakleigh, that didn’t involve waking up and looking out the second story window at my grandmother’s pool. There was not a moment in those schoolless days where my younger sister and I didn’t sit on our front step begging for permission to go swimming. Everyday our hair got crisper and our tans deeper because of our love for the blue house and the adventure it promised.

In the beginning, we were able to walk across the Collin’s backyard. We could don our bathing suits, grab a towel and skitter our bare feet through the dirt path that was lined with ivy. But, in my tenth year the neighbors re-landscaped forcing us to either sneak across their backyard or take the “long” way across all three front yards. This didn’t last long; as the neighbor boys got older we cared less about making our journey inconspicuously and more about getting to the pool as quickly as possible, with as many friends in tow as our parents would allow. As soon as permission was granted we would run over to the house and open the white gate to our heaven-on-earth.

First, we had the challenging task of uncovering the pool. Using all of our strength, we cranked the cover’s wheel, revealing the crystal water. As the cover wheeled back, we hopped from one foot to the next to keep the hot, red brick from searing the bottoms of our feet. Once we exposed the deep end of the pool, I would race my sisters or friends into the refreshing water. Once we were in, nothing could get us out of the water unless it was the promise of food. More often than not, our grandma would come out with her tray of fruit and crackers, to fill our bellies, and the green glass pitcher of lemon water to quench our thirst. Satisfied, we would dive in for another three hours spent in the swimming pool. Often our days ended with the ringing of the dinner bell from our house. If we were lucky, dessert came in the form of a night swim. My grandma would turn on the pool light, making the deep water glow, allowing us to splash in the company of fireflies. I cherished time spent at the house, the comfort of my grandmother’s smell. I would leave feeling the best kind of exhausted, smelling of chlorine and sunshine, freshly laundered sheets and flowers.

As I got older, the magic never dissipated. Granted, I spent less time in the water and more time lying beside the pool with various friends, but the feeling of peace that resonated so deeply in the blue house never left.  I was growing and changing, but the house remained constant. The woman inside never failed to make me feel remembered.

 Just as I grew and changed, so my grandmother got older. Recently an ALS[1] diagnosis has ravaged her body and left her shoulders useless. As I grow and become more of myself, she grows and loses some of herself. So she’s moving. She’s leaving behind all of her comforts and all her possessions. She’s forsaking all the memories of her husband and years spent child-rearing to move in with her daughters. The idea of this house being empty, the pool drained, and the woman inside gone is like the first time I swam without floatees. I knew I could kick my legs and stay afloat; I had done it before. But now the physical sense of safety that insured my head would stay above water had vanished. Though my dad was only a few feet away from me, I still had to make a choice. Without the floatees the pool seemed so much bigger, the world seemed that much scarier. I remember swimming into my dad’s arms, again and again until I wasn’t swimming into his arms, but to the other side of the pool and then I was racing and winning medals on my high school swim team. The pool no longer seemed scary but conquerable. I understood the way the water moved and resisted. I understood where I should take my last breath to make it through a flip turn and streamline. The pool wasn’t scary; it was familiar and normal. In the same way swimming without floatees makes the world scarier, the blue house without my grandmother, sitting on the porch drinking her morning coffee, makes the world bigger; it makes it unbeatable.

It isn’t the idea of her leaving the house to move in with family that is the most troubling, but the idea of her leaving this world altogether. Through every season, physical and emotional, that house has been a refuge for every sister, aunt and uncle, cousin, or friend who needed a place to warm their feet on a freshly stoked fire or to nap on the softest carpet known to man. When our comfort or familiarity is threatened our reaction is to cling even more tightly to that thing we love; to hang on because the world would be unbearable without it. However, the truth is the thing we love so deeply has shaped us, probably molded us to be a better version of ourselves. The thing we love so profoundly will exist eternally. For what we love is love itself and that will never be wiped from memory. Although, in a few weeks, that house will be emptied of all that gave it life and character, I can pass by believing that I am better for having known it, I am better for having a woman to look up to and to treasure. I am better for having experienced that selfless kind of love.

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[1] Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis or Lou Gherig’s Disease is a progressive neurodegenerative disease that affects nerve cells in the brain and the spinal cord eliminating muscle function.