Part of our task this week was to try to figure out/think about what it looks like to be in love with Jesus. So, this week I keep asking myself, “What does it really mean to be in love with Jesus?” In doing so, I’m also trying to differentiate “loving Jesus” and “being in love with Jesus.” Several things have come and gone from my mind, but one girl’s life continues to resonate with me. I know it’s dangerous to put people on pedestals, but I really think this girl has it figured out. Does this mean she doesn’t screw up? Absolutely not. However, I wouldn’t mind if my life and daily mindset looked a lot more like hers. 
I’ve mentioned her before, but to give you some background info, she went to Uganda right after high school. After spending some time there, she felt called to stay. She ended up starting a nonprofit, Amazima Ministries, which operates a sponsorship program for 400 orphans, providing them with 3 meals a day, education, school supplies, medical care and spiritual encouragement. Amazima also provides food, medical care and Bible study to people in their community. Oh, she’s also “Mama” to 14 little girls. I think she’s currently a whopping 21 years old.
So, as I was thinking about what it means to be in love with Jesus, Katie posts the following blog. To me, she radiates love for Jesus. She gives up comfort for pain and security for the unknown. She’s running toward her Savior with reckless abandon. She’s in love.
“Jesus! Mama, baby Jesus! I want to see! I want to see Jesus!,” shrieks my littlest darling.
How can I refuse? I lift her, for what seems like the hundredth time this morning, to the manger scene on the living room bookshelf. She gazes in wonder, oohs and ahs, gingerly fingering the cornhusk baby in his twig and banana fiber trough.
“Jesus, Mama,” she whispers.
And so, the nativity scene that once was packed away each year after Christmas remains on the bookshelf still, because my darling baby, in all her wondrous excitement reminds me daily of who I want to be, the kind of life I want to live.
A wide-eyed, expectant child, gazing in wonder on a beautiful Savior.
In the middle of a broken, sin-crushed world, my soul cries out, “I want to see! I want to see Jesus!”
I want to see Jesus.
My darling Karimojong sister Maria, who is battling severe, gripping alcoholism, and her sweet baby are living with us still. People wonder, even gasp, that I would let her join us at our table. Isn’t she a poor example? Why would I subject my girls to that?
I want to see Jesus.
Newborn baby Noah snuggles to my chest as his mother lays dying in a hospital bed. He cried through the night and I feed him and kiss his pink toes and pray over his little life. Why do I do it? Don’t I have my hands full enough already?
I want to see Jesus.
Zulaika, her severely malnourished baby and her 8 year old daughter move into our home while we teach Zulaika how to care for her children and find her a job so she can continue to do so. They have lice. They do not bathe. Fear creeps up the back of my throat and I wonder, what if all my children get sick? But we have taken in sick people before, and each time He hedges us in protection. People ask, do I feel that I am being responsible?
I want to see Jesus.
Jane and her birth mom spend the weekend in our guest room. I figure if I cannot parent this my daughter, the least I can do is teach her mother about our Savior, invest time in their lives, pray over them while we love them. My heart breaks in two as her high pitched, breathy giggle once more fills my home and the pain threatens to paralyze me, but I won’t let it.
I want to see Jesus.
Strangers eat at our table, bathe in our showers, sleep in our beds, share our everything. And I fleetingly wonder if it wouldn’t be better for my girls if I maintained some semblance of normal, but He shows me that HIS definition of family is not at all limited by my own.
I want to see Jesus.
I want to see Jesus and if I don’t step out, how can He come in? If I don’t give all of myself, my home, even my family, how will He be magnified?
Do I want my children to be safe? Absolutely. Do I want them to have a “normal” family dinner sometimes and be healthy and not be subject to the rage of an alcoholic or the hurt of friends dying and siblings leaving? Of course. But more than that I want to take a cue from my baby girl.
I want to whisper to them excitedly each morning, “Look, Jesus.”
I want them to see Jesus. In my life. In my actions. Lifted High. Magnified. In our neighbors, no matter how sick or dirty. In our home.
I want the best for my children, I do. And I believe with all my heart what is best is for them to have a mother – a crazy mother even – wide-eyed in wonder, recklessly chasing after her Savior.
More of Him. We want to see Jesus.
What she’s doing is wildly courageous. Where my struggle comes in is how do I live that out in the United States? Would I love to be doing what she’s doing? Yes. But I’m here in the United States where it’s really, really easy to be a Christian (or really, really hard, depending on how you look at it). She’s in a country where there’s immense poverty and ample opportunity to spread the gospel. Am I just being blind to opportunities surrounding me? Am I just too stubborn to give up luxuries in my life and see what Jesus does when I truly live sacrificially? It’s easy to look at her and see that she’s in love with Jesus. What would it take for people to look at me and declare, “That girl is in love with Jesus!”
