As we come to the close of 2010, I’ve been reflecting on how it has proven to be one of the most puzzling and difficult years of our lives as Jeff’s brokenness, and mine, has precipitated the closing of a chapter of our lives in Africa and with our WorldVenture family.
I was thinking about some of the relics that mark that passage. Especially, I was thinking of the Lotuko spear and shield which Jeff was given after 2 months dwelling among those tribal people back in 1982 and how a few years later he may have participated in one of the last great hunts with the Lotuko warrior/hunters across the great savannah land near Torit, Southern Sudan… I recall Jeff’s story of walking for miles in the hot sun with hundreds of men hunting only with spears and bows and arrows resulting in his heat exhaustion and being carried out of the bush on a contrived stretcher with a procession of warriors forming a happy parade accompanying him back to his abode. Then later the next day going to the feast which followed such a hunt and running into SPLA rebels who took him hostage and threatened his life which would have been forfeit except for God and his Lotuko brothers who loved him and surrounded him, the chief arguing for his release which was eventually secured.
Twenty years later Jeff’s heart for Sudan took us back to try to help the repatriation of Sudanese who had been refugees in Uganda during the 2 decades of war preceding. I watched him pour himself out body, mind and soul for the Ugandan and Sudanese people never taking into account that his body was no longer that young buck who had gone hunting with that warrior class in 1982… Having a total hip replacement (due to the diseased disintegration of his right hip) followed by a heart valve transplant (because of the faulty valve he was born with) in 2007 which marked the opening door to Sudan with the signing of the peace agreement in Sudan and cessation of hostilities of war with the Ugandan rebels among whom we’d been dwelling since moving into Northern Uganda in 2002.
I am distressed by people who look at Jeff’s breakdown this past year as somehow being his fault…this strong, noble hearted man who never thought of himself these past decades spent in loving the destitute and poor of Africa. Some look at his body and think he must have chosen this path to brokenness by the things he ate or did not eat. When they look at him with that kind of judgment, it breaks my heart because they fail to see the great heart of a warrior, God’s warrior who spent the best years of his life offering compassion and presence to broken people.
This past year we’ve seen him raging against the devastation of his dreams and his own broken health. He did not choose to leave Africa. I dragged him off that Dark Continent to try to preserve him alive before we buried him there as he wanted.
Now we are turning a corner, hoping for renewed vision and life even as he continues to wrestle with his personal demons of PTSD and diabetes resulting from his Vietnam service with the Marine Corps over forty years ago which have so colored our lives all these decades.
Personally, I am taking Philippians 3:12-14 as my theme for 2011 pressing on, don’tcha know, as I trust God still has more life in store for us.
I am profoundly grateful for the great adventure life has been to this point.
