Passion and Pursuit

Pam, Pam, Pam. The rhythmic beating of the wooden mallets striking the wooden barrel was muted only barely by the “fou fou” that we were mashing. Obliterating might be a better term. 

First, you boil the yams until they are soft and then cut them into manageable pieces. Next, you dump several handfuls of steaming yams into basically a hollowed-out wooden tree stump. Taking two long, heavy wooden “mashers”, you find a friend and stand on opposite sides of the stump, holding it in place with your right foot, and balancing the rest of your weight on your back left foot. Together, you alternate as you pound (aka obliterate) the yams, beating them into submission. You add water occasionally only when it gets too sticky, and you keep doing this until your arms can take no more and you have a nice, mashed potato looking substance. 

The end result? Fou-fou. A southern Togolese delicacy served with goat soup. 

Our Togolese nursing director had invited my roommates and I over on a Sunday afternoon to cook, eat, and hang out with his family. This was our first experience with fou-fou. And with buying, transporting, and eating a whole goat. 

The entire afternoon was lovely. The Togolese women found our fou fou pounding abilities to be very lacking and laughable, but everyone got a turn to put their “hand in the plate”, and we all ate and were satisfied. We played games with their three young boys and then were entertained by them with a series of biblical skits that were obviously prepared spontaneously. We were impressed with their recollection of Bible stories and with their hilarious improvisation. The best part, I think, was just sitting on their porch and in their living room, sharing life and conversation and enjoying a normal Togolese family Sunday afternoon. 

I knew God was leading me here to Togo, but I underestimated just how much I would love it. I love the people I have met - both missionary and Togolese. I love the hospital and my colleagues. I love being a nurse. I love biking to work, delivering babies, and singing to premature infants as I give their feedings. I love living closely with other missionaries and doctors, gleaning from them. I love Saturday morning missionary breakfast and Sunday afternoon sports. I love climbing the water tower to watch the stars. I love the pool. I love attending house church, talking to my Muslim guard about Jesus, and praying with him in his name.

Sometimes you don’t realize until after the fact how God was working in your life at a specific time. Other times, I think God gives us the grace of seeing how he is at work in the moment as things unfold. Sometimes we have to follow and trust him blindly, and other times we have the glory of almost watching over his shoulder as he writes. I am becoming acutely aware and conscious that God is writing a chapter in my story, and I’m anticipating every T he crosses and every comma he places. It’s like I know he is writing a good part of my story, and I get to actively play my part as he directs my steps. 

In all this, I sense God is moving me closer and closer to the desires of my heart in this season - nursing and ministry to unreached people groups. 

I saw an article on Facebook the other day. One of those with millions of views and thousands of re-postings. It was about how to live out your passions. It just confirmed to me that my generation is chasing after our passions with all of our hearts, as if this is where purpose and meaning are found. Which, actually, is kind of true, just maybe slightly displaced. We were created to pursue a passion with all our hearts; the problem is that we’ve misnamed our passion. So we pursue our “passions” - work, relationships, hobbies, service - and then still come up unsatisfied until we find a new passion to pursue because we read an article on Facebook about pursuing our passions. 

Only one passion will satisfy our craving. Only one pursuit will give us meaning and purpose and ultimate joy in life. And this passion that we were created for is Jesus himself. Jesus alone. 

It makes me think of Psalm 37:4. “Delight yourself in the Lord and he will give you the desires of your heart.” But you know what? When we delight in him, he becomes the desire of our hearts. So in other words, to give us the desire of our hearts is to give us more of himself! Psalm 73:25 expresses this perfect delight and satisfaction: “Whom have I in heaven but you? And there is nothing on earth I desire besides you.” When we make Jesus our pursuit and passion, we find what we were created for and the purpose that we’ve been seeking all along, and we will be infinitely and over flowingly satisfied. 

That’s why I love my life and my work and Africa. Because he is here. That’s why I can love the heat and the dust and the parasites and the poverty and the suffering and say I was made for this. I wasn’t made for this; I was made for him. This isn’t my passion, he is. And because he is here and he has given me this place to be with him, I am living out my passion, and I am humbly, thankfully, extraordinarily content. 

I’m not in any way downing the Facebook article. I didn’t even read it. I probably should have. Maybe they wrote the same thing that I just did in a much better way. I just pray for us in this culture and generation, that as we are encouraged to pursue our passions, that we will make Christ our passion and the pursuit of our whole hearts. Because I just want others to taste this joy that I have been given - the joy of knowing Jesus and following him as he writes our stories.