You Put The Light In Me

“My life before you, I was a flame burning down. I was burning out.

But you knew me better. For you there was never a doubt. Not since you gave me life. Something was different. I knew it the instant you put the light in me.

The spark the shot to the heart.

You are the hope that leads me out of the dark

You let your love shine down, so that the world could see you put the light in me.

The light, you put the light in me

The light, you put the light in me.”

I have spent a lot of years wondering what I am going to do with my life. I have so many ideas of what I could be doing in ten years. Maybe I’ll be a famous photographer. Maybe I’ll be married and have the 5 or 6 kids I’ve been dreaming of. Maybe I’ll be back in Africa. These are all definite possibilities. Why, you may ask? Because these are the desires of my heart and I have only recently understood that God not only knows the desires of my heart, He is the one who gave those desires to me.

I used to wonder why every single day of my life I thought of Africa. This has been happening ever since I moved back to the States in 2007. A huge part of my heart never returned with me. It will always be in Africa waiting for me to come find it again. This was such a hard concept for me to grasp because even though Africa filled my every thought, I knew God wasn’t telling me to go back. It wasn’t the right time. That frustrated me. Why would I think about it so often if I wasn’t supposed to be over there? Why did the thought of adopting kids keep popping up? Didn’t that mean I should do it right then?

I have had to spend a lot of time in therapy and in talks with God to really be able to even begin to grasp the concept of God’s timing. Most of the time I am frustrated by it. IF God loved me things would happen now. IF He knew what was best, why did I feel lost most of the time? I consistently put God in a box telling Him what he could or could not do. At the time it seemed rational, and now it seems silly.

I can now look back and see God was doing a work in me. He was giving me time to understand myself. He was waiting for me to understand that He truly has my life in His hands. As I sat in Kenya waiting to be picked up for my flight back home to the States, I prayed that my heart would be at peace. I had been worried that I wouldn’t want to come home; worried that I would abandon my responsibilities here. But God knew better. He knew I was ready for him to say, “Be Still and Know that I have plans for you here. But You must wait for Me. Wait for my timing.” And I was. The minute those words infiltrated my soul I felt completely content. I was ready to fully trust God and know that He had my life in his hands.