Navigating the Heart: Choosing the Cross When It Costs Everything
Author: Mukarugwiza Faith
There comes a moment when your heart cracks open not from pain, but from clarity. This is the story of a soul called to leave everything familiar behind, and to wear a new Name. Not for escape. Not for ambition. But for love. For inclusion. For Christ.
I remember the day the most beautiful decision was taken to follow Christ Jesus 100% in November 2024 by then I had already given my life to Christ in 2019, I had being a Christian for 5 years by then.
I decided to go all in, not with bags packed or doors slammed, but with Joy in my heart, favor and silence. With resolve to go all in with Jesus Christ and where He would lead me. It wasn't dramatic at all though it may have seemed that way :). It was holy, it was bold it was maturity in me.
The kind of holy that makes your stomachache but gives your skin goose bump because you know—deep down—you’re saying goodbye to something you’ll miss for the rest of your life and hello to the greatest blessings of all. But what you miss -- surely you will meet again and hopefully not too late. My family didn’t understand completely thought they actively try. How could they? How can they? The calling isn’t theirs. The vision I carry is not theirs the one—of a table where everyone is welcome, where wounds aren’t hidden but held—wasn’t given to them. It was etched into my chest, between my ribs, where breath meets spirit. And when God whispered, “Go,” I had to decide: comfort or calling?
I chose the cross.
Not the golden one polished on church walls. The real one. The cross that costs. The cross that severs. The one Jesus warned about when He said, “If anyone would come after me, let them deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me.” (Luke 9:23)
So I walked. Away from the known. Into the wilderness. There’s a particular kind of ache when you pursue something divine and all you hear from behind you is the echo of absence. Birthdays missed. Conversations avoided. Eyes that once sparkled with recognition now squint in confusion. “You’ve changed,” they say.
I have. Because to carry the ministry of Christ on inclusion means you love the ones the world told you to fear. You listen to the ones the church told you to correct. You sit with the ones no one else would touch. And sometimes, your own people don’t recognize the Christ you’re reflecting back to them.
That’s the hardest part. Not the loneliness. Not the road. But the longing.
I still dream about them. I still pray. I still ache.
But I move.
Because love requires movement. Inclusion requires risk. Faith—real faith—is not found in staying where it’s safe, but in walking where you can’t see the ground beneath your feet.Christ did it first. Left His home. Faced rejection. Sat with the scandalous. Wept in gardens. And even He asked, “Father, if it be Your will, let this cup pass from me…”
And yet.
He drank it.
So I do too.
Navigating the heart in this journey means constantly choosing to keep it soft when it wants to harden. To cry when crying feels weak. To open your arms again and again, even when no one’s coming.
It means trusting that one day, maybe, your family will see what you see.
But until then, you walk.
You build. You love. You include.
And when it hurts the most—when you feel the weight of that cross on your back—you remember: He sees you. And you are not alone.
He is Risen. 21/04/ 2025
Copyright 2025. Dare To Dream (Anything is Possible Through Christ Jesus) Fund. Ministry.
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