Contact with everyone back home is something that I am very, very thankful for. I receive so much comfort when I read an e-mail or a facebook message from people as they send me their love from all the way across the Atlantic Ocean. Many of the e-mails I receive are encouraging and positive as my family and friends genuinely wish happiness for me.
And sometimes, it has been difficult to reply to those messages with the harsh reality that I'm not always having the time of my life.
But that's okay.
Because I don't think God is in the business of making us happy; God is in the business of stretching us, challenging us, teaching us, changing us, and growing us.
As a team, we went through a three week period in the beginning of October when we were miserable. During this valley, the only thing keeping me from Mason, OH was an $1800 plane ticket.
But it was also during this time that I spent an awful lot of time sitting under the mango tree praying, reading, journaling, and processing more than I ever have in my life.
So as far as being happy goes, I am.
But not because of my circumstances or anything. Just because my God has never, ever left me this whole time. I've grown so close to Him, which makes me happy in itself.
I have many times here when I am happy, and I try to always verbally identify those moments so that I can appreciate them and thank God for giving me them.
But for the rest of the time when I'm over Africa and missing home, I find my happiness in Him because I simply get to spend time with Him and learn to appreciate Him and grow into the woman of God that both He and I want me to be.
So if all I ever asked for was happiness, then I wouldn't be growing, I would just be…happy.
And as far as I'm concerned, I'm not going to endure three and a half months of eating rice and beans and getting beaten up by African primary school children just to return to America as the same Rebecca Diane Stewart.
This leads me to the conclusion that happiness isn't always the end goal.
And I'm not sure what is.
I suppose I'll adopt the Sunday School answer which would have something to do with our relationship with God being our end goal.
So I'll trade all the happiness in the world for mystery goat meat and mosquito bites, just to dig deeper into God's identity and my identity in Him.
