Lifa Update!

I finally have news to share!

Thank you for your ceaseless prayers, for checking in on me, for loving Lifa so perfectly and for walking through this trip to the States with me. I've received love, home, encouragement and home in all shapes and sizes in the past 1 1/2 months.

In mid-December I shared a very up-close and personal prayer request with you about the three-year old nearest and dearest to my heart. For those of you who are just tuning in, if I've been within a 1/2 mile radius of you, you've probably heard me talk about Lifa.

For the full-story, check out my archives. In October, I started a six-part series to tell the story of how I learned family in my new home. I don't think I realize how much mine and Lifa's story shaped me and has taught me a deeper love than I knew I was capable of until recently.

Lifa's biological father picked him up right after I left South Africa. He virtually fell off the radar and I didn't know if he was safe or if I'd see him again.

I'm relieved to report that my friend and brother Stanley, who also works with Ten Thousand Homes in South Africa, talked to Lifa's father last week. Finally, communication after a month and a half of silence! Stan said his father would bring him home at the end of January. He even promised to keep calling and make sure we have nothing to worry about. Best brother EVER!

After a month of ceaseless prayer, more worry and sleeplessness than I care to admit, some yelling on a beach, and A LOT of story-sharing, I find myself stuttering and stumbling over "that girl" prayers.

God, do you REALLY want me to be that girl who jumps in with two feet into loving and caring for a little boy? A little boy who speaks a different language, was abandoned so early, has a mystery dad popping in and out, and who I believe You've called Your Greatness? 

Yes. 

The truth is it hurts to love him this deeply. And I won't ever stop.


As I've shared his story and the ways God is using "the least of these" to turn his entire community's head and heart toward family, God is showing me His Sovereignty and a plan that was too big for me to see in daily life in South Africa. Taking a step away has helped me see His big hand on that small hand and given me perspective. The Big Picture is far too big and too beautiful for me to see with this tunnel vision.

As Lifa's eyes have gone from dull and lifeless to bright and full of Light in the past year, the faces of Mbonisweni's eyes are opening to the Truth of the love of The Great Adopter and Perfect Father.

Thank you for praying this through with me. Keep the prayers coming as I still don't know what kind of environment Lifa is in right now or if his father will stay true to his word. And I don't know what his eyes will look like when I see him again. I'm relieved to know we've contacted his dad. And I'm honored to be a part of his story, even just the small part I've played so far.

You can see what God's love and your prayers have done in one perfect little life in comparing two photos just a few months apart. Look at those perfect eyes...

August 2010

Novermber 2010

Thank you for being a part of our story.

Stepping in Sanboxes

Faith... It's like growing up.

We start out in the backyard with a fence. It’s safe to play in the fence. You can go allllll the way to the back of the yard, up the tree, and even bury your little sister in the sandbox without causing Mom to blink twice. You’re completely free to play – and to play with gusto – in a safe space.

Once you learn how to play well, how to give it all you got, you want more. More life. More playing. You want to taste more of the great outdoors… and preferably with the independence of no parental discretion.

So you gradate to the freedom of two wheels and handlebars to be let loose in the neighborhood… or the back roads of Alvin, Texas. (There was gum to be purchased and a slew of people in a 2 mile radius… scrunchi, don’t fail me now!)

But you can only get so street-smart on those two wheels. (The big ditch had been mastered and the cows didn’t try to mess with me anymore.) The next step was two more tires, a steering wheel, and a lot more freedom.

But this freedom came with responsibility. There was a gas tank to be filled and that little sister had somehow got traveling rights early. For that kind of freedom, though, working and chauffeuring was worth it.

Let's be honest. These children are MUCH less awkward illustrations of the actual Kacy Chaffin stages of development)

Next, the floodgates fly open further when the possibility of leaving Alvin, Texas comes onto the radar. The freedom to choose a course of study, a new city, how to live… And to be known how you want to be known by who you want to be known by. Now there are academic, financial, social, and a million other types of responsibilities. And HOW important is it to separate laundry by color, again?

All of the to-do’s, the scary’s, the unknowns… worth it. To be able to discover, explore and understand who you are more is always worth it. It’s the great human itch.

What does this have to do with faith? 

That pursuit of freedom.

That drive to go deeper into Truth and understanding… the explorer in all of us.

The very essence of what leaves us miserably discontented and mortified with being an adult playing in the well-monitored confinement of the backyard sandbox.

We’re a bunch of imperfect humans designed for unbroken intimacy with a Perfect God. We’re not there yet, and we won’t be on this earth… Thus explains the inescapable strife and striving for the next leap into what we may not really understand, but we know is worth it.

Deeper and deeper intimacy. Being known more and more. We’re exploring, leaping, running, trying to get there.

I want to know who God is and who He made me to be all the way.

I don’t want to hang out in the kiddie park of Heaven… the ball pit just before the pearly gates.

I want to jump with two feet into the freedom that has no white picket perimeter.

It’s a freedom that I can’t see. And a freedom where I have no choice but to trust that I am so deeply and so intimately known by my Creator, my Father, my Fortress. And, when I’m trusting in that freedom, I can run fast, far and with abandon. Probably screaming, squealing and cartwheeling along the way.

Maybe not always cartwheeling though.

Because here’s the thing…

When you’re not in the sandbox and Mom’s not calling you in for dinner, sometimes the darkness sneaks up on you. And it’s hard to find the Light from Home.

When you run hard and fast and with abandon, you sometimes trip and fall.

Or sometimes feel like you made a wrong turn.

Or wonder what you were thinking... should I have stayed for lasagna night at Mom’s house?

But once you’ve tasted that freedom, could you ever turn back?
Once you know, can you ever not know?

I can’t and I won’t.

And for some reason, it’s hitting me as a new revelation today that the more I know and the further I go, the more freedom and responsibility I face. We don’t stop running in faith until we get to heaven.

And I’m certainly not stopping at the ball pit. I’m going straight for the main attraction: My Perfectly and Intimately Loving God.

But here’s the kicker…

The freedom part has already been paid in full. We’ve already been given full rights, a full voice and the capacity for full and abundant love. Some of us just decide to camp out in the safety of the sandbox.

Forget Mom’s lasagna, people.

Taste and see that the Lord is good! (Psalm 34)

Freedom is the undeserved gift from Perfect Love.

Jesus came. Jesus died. And Jesus came back to set you free. To give you full rights to be known and to know God all the way. As deep as you want to belong, to be delighted in and to be known by Him… He wants to meet you there and go deeper.

I feel like I’m bracing myself for a jump out of the big tree that overlooks the unknown, unventured part of my faith and His plan for me. I’m ready to jump with both feet and have no idea how I’m going to land. Or what it’s going to look like in the next days, weeks, months or years.

I suppose I don’t need to know that part though.

I just need to worship and offer my feet and my faith, and run into that freedom like I never have before.

Please pray for me in the journey.

Ummm... and I can’t sign off without confessing, that if anyone every buried anyone in a sandbox, my little sister totally would have buried me! (Had to keep it real, sesi)

Deserts and Daily Bread

I LOVE worshipping with my American church family, Bay Area Community Church in League City, Texas. Singing familiar songs, in a familiar language, with familiar faces. Mmmhmmm.

The words felt different this past Sunday, though. Instead of giddy, giggling, overflowing worship in the back with my friends, I found a corner and felt it so differently.

As I held my arms up and sang, "I will follow you..." I didn't feel bowed up, like a soldier in armor going to battle. I didn't feel a surge of powerful jubilation or enthusiasm in following my God.

I felt a lot more like an Israelite in the desert, somewhere in the smoldering, confusing and undefinable abyss between slavery under the law and the Promised Land. (For all the details, check out Exodus. They start walking at the end of chapter 12.)

You see, the Israelites didn't have a map or a timeline or a planner. They started in Egypt, so you'd think they would have been accustomed to "African time", but we're talking 40 years of hiking through a desert to a place we've never known and having no tangible proof of its existence.

If you've never heard the story, brace yourself. Not only were they following an insecure, stuttering guy with a recent identity crisis, but their guide was a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night (not kidding, see Exodus 13:17-22). When the cloud moved, they moved. When it stopped they stopped. Every day they woke up to morning shower of just enough food for that day (Exodus 16-17:7).

Tomorrow would bring what tomorrow would bring - new food and cloud chasing.

When they said, "I will follow you..." from that desert, I bet it felt different too.

Hard to swallow. Uncomfortable. Sometimes even angry.

I get that it's a beautiful image and makes for great Sunday School crafts. The very best of Lifetime movie marathons couldn't come close to the power and emotion in this story.

But when you actually live in that desert...
When you're following a cloud zig-zagging between the place that was hard to live in but at least made sense and the place you were created for but you've never known...
When you wake up each morning hoping for your daily bread...
When that tent starts to feel small and your feet have blisters....

"I will follow you..." feels different.

As different as it felt this Sunday, I think I meant it more than ever. Not because I'm oozing with extra holiness or because I just got my halo shined. (Trust me, I'm experiencing more excess in queso than holiness... and I don't think they even make halos in my size.)

I meant it more than ever because I have no other choice.

I have no idea what I'm doing.
I have no idea what life is going to look like when I get back to Africa on February 9th.
I have no idea where Lifa is or what God has planned for us. Or how to do that.
I have no idea how to be a visitor to my home country and go home to a foreign country.
I have no idea where my daily bread is going to come from.

But there is a lot to be confident about in this faith based on what we can't see. There are promises, miracles, provision and the very thickness of His Presence.

And then there's my story. 
Undeserved grace flowing through immeasurable depth in relationships. 
A front row seat to the unveiling of God's glory in families all around the world and coming back for Christmas with the families who taught it all to me, sent me off, and then welcomed me home with even more love than before. 
People joining in a movement together as a body and as a family. 

So, Jesus, "I will follow you..."
You write stories so much better than I do.

And to you, my Home people, reading this and knowing me in this journey...
Will you pray for me? He didn't send one Israelite on the journey. He sent the whole family. He didn't even make Moses lead alone. His brother came alongside him.

As we sing together, "I will follow you..." will you pray for what that is supposed to look like on the rest of my Stateside journey? I have one month to follow Him through America, sharing stories and getting prepared for the upcoming year in Africa. I'm asking you to share stories with me and pray for a support team, or a family, to step up and help me financially on this journey. I have no idea how to do this and need your prayers.

And I'm praying with you that you find the parts in your daily life that feel different because you really mean them. Where in your journey do you FEEL it when you say, "I will follow you..." We are all called to be on this journey. We were all designed for the ultimate Promised Land. We're gonna have an awesome party when we get there!

In the meantime, pray for me and I'll pray for you. We'll follow him together. Our deserts and daily bread  probably look different. But let's keep looking for the Promised Land.