There’s a Cape Town connection in today’s Thin Place story. What a fun surprise to find in the queue as the last Thin Place entry for 2010. Katie’s story continues at her blog, Everyday Miracles. (Don’t forget to send in your Thin Place story via this form.)

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I had traveled 30 hours solo. I tried, but sleep on the plane just wouldn’t come, leaving me exhausted. The seat belt light illuminated and the decent began. I put my fingers through my hair. It felt greasy. I looked down to my clothes and let out a big sigh, they were a wrinkled mess.

Table Mountain started to emerge through the clouds. Excitement began to replace the tiredness that overwhelmed me just moments before.

The 20 minutes it took to deplane seemed like hours. But, soon I was stepping onto African soil for the first time. Immediately I felt something change inside me. I felt at home. At peace.

As I saw my friend in the terminal, I put my feelings aside. After all, this was just a vacation. We were here to have fun, see the Big Five, and knock something else off my bucket list. Ten days felt like two, and suddenly my vacation was over. I was on the airbus again, this time headed to my real life in America.

After our return, I went about my life like nothing had happened.

The feelings I had in that moment on the tarmac couldn’t be vocalized, that would make it real. So, I kept them to myself. I couldn’t even bring myself to write them in my journal. It wasn’t real.

I had a five-year plan. Africa wasn’t in it.

But, when I was alone in my room, I couldn’t ignore the feelings. I wrestled with God about what it all meant. Why was there overwhelming peace in that moment at the airport? What was God trying to tell me? Does He want me to go back to Africa? What if all the studying, all the papers, all the hours I’d spent preparing, what if all of this was meant for something bigger than corporate America?

As that moment in Cape Town grew further away, it was easier to put out of my mind. But, weeks later, out of the blue, the discontentment became intense. As I sat at my computer at work, I daydreamed about being somewhere else. I couldn’t put a finger on what was happening.

After all, I loved my job. It was a dream job at 22. A recent promotion meant more responsibility, and more money. I was in charge of real budgets, real events. My work mattered. Despite all that, I couldn’t get into it anymore.

I longed to be somewhere else.

In my thin moments, the moments where I was quiet with God, I knew what needed to happen. He was calling me to something greater than myself, something greater than my own plans and my own expectations.

And then it happened, as the rest of the church worshiped, I sat and talked to God. I told Him I was His. In one of the thinnest moments of my life, I surrendered my plans for His.

Fast-forward three years and Africa has captivated my heart. She has blessed me in ways I could have never imagined. It is here that met and fell in love with the man of my dreams. It is here that we started our life together.

Africa is my home, her footprint imprinted on the very fabric of my life.

While our goal is to impact lives here with the love of Christ, I know that Africa will make her mark on our lives in ways that we could never imagine.