I really should be packing. We leave Saturday and so far, I’ve got socks packed. Socks that I most likely won’t be wearing since temperatures are rising above 105 degrees.

So I pull down my journal from my first trip to India with Wells for Life in October 2009. One of the entries says only this:

“Day One – India. What is this place?”

After that, I fell apart. I came undone. A broken mess of “what now” and about a million other questions.

I remember lying in bed that night, unable to sleep and it was 2am. I started to cry in that heaving “I can’t breath” sort of way that only comes sometimes. I started to pray to the God I’d only half acknowledged for the past 10 years. I prayed, “WHAT?! What do you want from me? What can You possibly want me to do here?!”

Then I heard Him. Maybe for the first time, maybe not. I don’t really know. But I know I heard Him, and He said, “Connect. Love them”. That was all. “Connect. Love them”. Love them with His Love.

That first day of well dedications I’d been a little on the sidelines. Frozen, not knowing how to function in these surroundings, and unsure of my role. But now I knew. “Connect. Love them”. The next day we got out of the truck and I took the hand of an old old woman who gripped mine tightly back, and we walked the however many feet it was to the well. She wouldn’t let go, and I didn’t want her to. I was in love.

Everything changed that day. I will never be the same.

I’ve been listening to David Crowder Band today, “The Glory of it All” and feel a wave flood through me at the truth of the lyric. “Oh the glory of it all is He came here, for the rescue of us all, that we may live”. Not just me. For us ALL. For me, for you, and for that beautiful little old lady in the village in India.

Wow.

Overwhelming isn’t it? Let it overwhelm you.

“After all falls apart, He repairs. He repairs. Everything will change. Things will never be the same. We will never be the same”.