the rains have come

the rain has arrived. after months it seems of dry and heat and dust- this welcome dark quiet has blown in to cool and settle things.  i need this. i need this change.  i need it now.

something happens when the days all look the same and the trees and the flowers and the sky. it's easy to become lost and timeless. it's part of the swallowing.  maybe this is only true for those of us who grew up with seasons and change - where we could engage with the outside to manage and shape our inside.

today in this coolness, in my scarf, listening to the softness of the rain, i see how much i miss this.  i feel like i've been summonsed inside the house, to make tea, to stop and to be here.  to close my eyes, but also to open them, and to remember things and what things mean.

this quiet white sky blankets out the daily distractions, like night, an imposed limitation, and i am somehow able to be still- finally- to be still.

last month the celtic book of prayer had daily readings from anne morrow lindberg's 'gifts from the sea', a book i love and will re-read through out my life, especially in seasons of remembering.

"But I want first of all- in fact, as an end to these other desires- to be at peace with myself.  I want a singleness of eye, a purity of intention, a central core to my life that will enable me to carry out these obligations and activities as well as I can, I want, in fact- to borrow from the language of the saints- to live "in grace" as much of the time as possible. I am not using this term in a strictly theological sense. By grace, I mean an inner harmony, essentially spiritual, which can be translated into outward harmony."

there is my problem.  i'm grappling.  i'm needing and begging the outward harmony to come and bring my inward harmony.  i'm wanting this cool rain, these dark clouds, to redirect me.  i'm hoping to hold on to some stillness.  what i really need is to sit still. what i really need is to carve out solitude.  to schedule in the internal white sky.  to practice meditation.  to be open in prayer.  to give in, give up, and embrace the grace that awaits. 

i'm so bad at this. especially in the sun and the hot and the dust.  i get busy and excited and distracted and i forget to focus on the singleness of eye and the central core and of slowing it all down and living in the grace.

sometimes it takes a good rain, and hours of a darkened sky to return.  to remember.  God is found in the whispers, in the softness, in the quiet, in the stillness- oh to live in this place!

the little gray tank top

i'm not sure where i am but i sure haven't been showing up here.  and i need to.

i need to go back to that place of stopping at the end of my day and thinking back on it.  of allowing that space and claiming it.  i need to because with out it, a part of me is lost. lost in the bustle.  lost in the things and the people and the stories that should really be shared.

have i written about clinic? or the all day graduation from 'farming Gods way' that i attended? or my kids growing up more each day? or my thoughts on the facebook circulating repost of a new york times article on sticking together in marriage after 20 years despite the hard stuff?

no. i haven't. because all i can seem to get my mind around these days is most of my family leaving for their visit back to the US in two and a half weeks, and my long three weeks with out them, and then my leaving rose here when i join them.  so in preparation for their leaving- i went to awiino, the massive open air market in downtown kampala, to get some things they would need and i knew i could get cheaper here.  a bathing suit for mike.  shorts for jude. a skirt for me to wear to work.

awiino.   a picture would be worth a thousand words. but i don't have one.  it's what feels like miles of maze like paths lined with used clothes and shoes.  the path is made of dirt, sometimes with planks of wood put down to cover over "water" (or something wet).  the stalls are tiny, like a three sided display panel lined with clothes, there is some tarp-like "roof" over most of it, i think.  in the stalls people are lying down, sometimes sleeping, sometimes eating large bowls of matoke and g-nut sauce, and when i walk past they usually grab me or at least shout out "muzungu how are you?" or "muzungu- you come." i like going to the back area where the clothes and shoes have yet to be sorted.  they are just in piles on the ground or on a table and you can pick through them with out much interruption from the pile owner.  i like it because this is the place for the real bargains.

today i was flipping through this lady's pile.  she was sitting down next to it with her baby on her lap and she started to hand me different shirts to look at.  "how much?" i asked.  "600"  she replied.

600 ugandan shillings is worth about 25 cents.

what? what a bargain for me! but what is going on with her? there was nothing in that pile that i really liked but how could i leave? i couldn't.  i'd like to say that i stopped shopping and bought her lunch or that i gave her 6000 shillings for her shirt.  or at least that i bought the whole pile, but i didn't.  i gave her 1000, told her to keep the difference, and left. she was happy. 

why that story?  i don't know. it's one little tiny piece in my day.  one moment that spoke to me, maybe only because i'm not sure how i would have felt in that moment 2 years ago.  maybe because it could have had many different endings- (like those books, to see what happens next: turn to page 61 if you just walk away with out buying anything, turn to page 85 if you give her a 100 dollar bill...etc)  and who knows what would have been better, but it gave me pause about the little choices that we make all. day. long. and the impact or potential impact we have on each others lives.

sometimes it's the small things that might matter most.  maybe the extra 400 shillings showed enough care and humanization, with out the almost insulting flash of wealth i could have bestowed.  perhaps paying 10X what she asked would have created a greater divide between us- two women, two mothers.  or maybe not.  i don't know.  but this seemed like a reasonable exchange.

and when i got home i tried on the little gray tank top.  it's really beautiful. and what's more, it will remind me of those moments- those times- when we do our best to love each other, to support each others dignity, to lessen the great divide, and to remember that in the big picture, the divide really isn't so big.

it's another poem.. it's what i've got

Walking To Oak-Head Pond, And Thinking Of The Ponds I Will Visit In The Next Days And Weeks
By Mary Oliver

What is so utterly invisible
as tomorrow?
Not love,
not the wind,

not the inside of a stone.
Not anything.
And yet, how often I’m fooled—
I’m wading along

in the sunlight—
and I’m sure I can see the fields and the ponds shining
days ahead—
I can see the light spilling

like a shower of meteors
into next week’s trees,
and I plan to be there soon—
and, so far, I am

just that lucky,
my legs splashing
over the edge of darkness,
my heart on fire.

I don’t know where
such certainty comes from—
the brave flesh
or the theater of the mind—

but if I had to guess
I would say that only
what the soul is supposed to be
could send us forth

with such cheer
as even the leaf must wear
as it unfurls
its fragrant body, and shines

against the hard possibility of stoppage—
which, day after day,
before such brisk, corpuscular belief,
shudders, and gives way.

enough and ready to begin

in three weeks, mike and the three big kids, leave for the US.  we will pull out those big old suitcase/duffel bag things we haven't seen in two years, and pack a few things and a bunch of gifts and off they'll go.

in six weeks i will join them.  i am so ready.

someone told me that when you actually book your tickets, when 'home' is in sight, when it moves into the realm of almost tangible, things here can start to annoy you.  the small things that add up and have to be overlooked for survival purposes, start to have an awful glare that blinds you. she was right.  when we booked our tickets last month, the things that bothered me when we first moved here, which rapidly became 'normal', bothered me again.  bad traffic and bad drivers, littering, losing power during dinner, everyone asking me for school fees, potholes, the pervasive lack.  but now, i'm back to those things being normal. now i'm just getting so excited. 

now i'm allowing all the things i've missed or longed for, things i'd shoved back into my brain and stored, for survival purposes, to come blossoming forward.  a scrumptious cheese board and lomo from the krog bar with a cold cold glass of white wine on a hot summer night.  a loud, hard core southern thunderstorm when the wind turns cold and the sky takes over and quiets us.  oysters from hogg island in the pacific northwest.  the sweet smell of california grasses and eucalyptus trees.  THE OCEAN in it's fullness and magnitude and power and ability to shrink me back to nothing.

i'm ready because i need to be placed.  i need to be reminded. i need to be deafened by the hard rain.  i need to run through golden gate park, inhale the eucalyptus and go back in time to when i pushed my babies there.  i need to hike the ochre hills of the marin headlands. i need to climb mount tam and see the beautiful city across the bay.  i need to feel the waves on my feet and the sand under me and i need to breathe it all into my heart and be filled and rested and i need to spend hours with my 40 something girl friends who have known me forever and still love me even though i've moved across the world.

this is where i am. 

last night i was at another "night of encouragement".  it was a dinner and time of fellowship for missionary women living in uganda.  we ate and introduced ourselves and sang and got into small groups and prayed for each other - for whatever is hard, and whatever is good, and whatever is needed. i didn't mean to but i think i hogged the time in our group. trying to find an aide for zoe for next year, roses adoption challenges, going home in shifts, starting at clinic, fundraising.  but.  what i remembered while we prayed is that GOD IS BIG and what's even better is that GOD CARES about even really little people like me and even about problems that seem gianormous to me but are not much for a big God.  during the singing part of the evening there was a pause and the leader asked us to close our eyes and think of all the adjectives to describe God and then to say them out loud.  there were so many words.  they were all good.  they were all the things we need.  LOVE, FIRM FOUNDATION, FATHER, KINDNESS, FORGIVENESS, CREATOR, HOLY ONE, PROTECTOR, CORNERSTONE, FRIEND, PEACE, GENTLENESS, THE ONE WHO NEVER LEAVES US, FAITHFUL. and on and on.

i sat quietly.  i didn't shout out a word, but what kept circling around in my head was ENOUGH.  what kept running ticker tape through my mind was, ALL I REALLY NEED.

i think she did this so we'd remember. i think hearing from other women who know God and have done crazy things like move across oceans to be Her hands and feet, means something.  i think she knew we needed to be reminded of who God is, so that we can hope and breathe and rest in that.  so that our challenges can shrink back to the place they should have in our lives and our joy can bloom.  because all the things God is, He wants us to experience and know and share. 

the woman who prayed for me reminded me.  the person who will be zoe's aide next year is already picked out, i just need to find her.  it's divinely orchestrated.  rose's life and place in our family has already been decided, i just don't know what it looks like exactly.  but it's the perfect plan. my jumbled summer is just as it should be, even if i don't know why. 

and that is why i can say God is enough.  that is what i can hold on to when the ocean is far away and so are the oysters and good cheese and old friends and golden hills of dried grass and wildflowers. that is what i can hold on to when i grow tired of red dust and potholes and broken. 

but i'm so very thankful that in the middle of God being enough, i get to go home and rest and get ready to begin, again.



I'm ready to begin  
I went on the search for something real I traded what I know for how I feel  
But the ceiling and the walls collapsed  
Upon the darkness I was trapped  
And as the last of breath was drawn from me  
The light broke in and brought me to my feet 

There's no fortune at the end of the road  
That has no end  
There's no returning to the spoils  
Once you've spoiled the thought of them 
There's no falling back to sleep 
Once you've waken from the dream  
Now I'm rested and I'm ready 
I'm rested and I'm ready  
Yeah I'm rested and I'm ready 
I'm rested and I'm ready  
Yeah I'm rested and I'm ready  
I'm rested and I'm ready to begin 
I'm ready to begin
                                        avett brothers, february seven

today (in my mind)

today i'm closing my eyes.
today i'm on my back porch in atlanta. 
today those giant old water oaks are sheltering me and their leaves are waving and the light is making patterns that make everything okay. 
today i'm small and underneath big things like sky and tree and moon and sun. 
today i'm back in a place i left long ago and long for. 
today my kids are younger and making forts while i write. 
today i'm listening to brandi carlise on pandora.
today their is no poverty. today their is no red dust and no crappy roads and no one i don't know, needs anything. 
today no one is asking me for help. 
today no one is saying fine when they are not fine. 
today i'm just siting on wicker furniture and one of my friends is coming over with her kids and they will play and we will talk in regular american english and drink cold white wine. 
today noggin will be the background noise in my life not tropical birds and bodas.
today i might turn the sprinkler on and the kids can get all wet which is fine because today i have a working dryer.  today i don't need to worry about mango fly larvae from drying things outside.
today my kids are running barefoot and i don't need to worry about de-worming them.

enough.

but sometimes i need to go there.  i need to go back.  i need to allow myself to indulge the self-pity that can emerge from the hard parts of being here.  sometimes i need to travel in my head to another far away life that i once lived.  but then i need to travel back to my life now. here. because this is real and my kids just drove in from school.  because i need to make dinner and get the laundry off the line.  because i need to go bring someone some medicine and someone else vegetables, and  see someones pig as promised. and i need to be a mom to those kids who might want to build forts here or play in the hose. 

today, here, brandi carlise is playing and today that is enough.
today, here, the mango trees are waving their leaves and making patterns with sunlight.
today, here, i am small and still underneath big things like sky and tree and moon and sun.

some random things

am i a bad person because at 6:30 in the morning, while driving through kampala traffic, after only a half a cup of coffee, i don't want to discuss how the earth rotates around the sun?  i don't want to answer why an astronaut always wears white, or how old rhianna is, or how pablo neruda died.  i just want to go back to sleep, but i can't, so at least i would love to just drive.  but how is that possible when you have a car full of curious children who just drank hot chocolate?  how is it possible? it's not. and they are good questions.  and i'm thankful that they are being asked.  really. just maybe at 7:30 or 8. 

clinic yesterday was much better.  getting back on the horse is usually easier than we anticipate. i think i can slightly subdue the american in me and balance it will the african in me.   i think it will be okay.  i think change will slowly happen. 

but it may have been good because i was so excited for the dinner party that night at a friends house in kampala.  it was a non-goodbye, goodbye dinner.  it was a 'let's-pretend-that-no-one-is-leaving-and-this-is-just-a-normal-thursday-night-dinner' dinner party. let me say, home-baked bread, fresh salad, spinach pies, some heavenly fish cakes, and eggplant, lamb, cinnamon magic- it was wonderful and delicious and fun and not even sad (well only a little).

and yesterday afternoon was the final football fellowship, so we baked eight loaves of banana bread and brought 30 bags of popcorns, and some ginger biscuits and juice, to pray and share and prepare for the final game today.  i'm so proud of these guys. they have come so far as a team and as friends and in their faith. 

someone asked me recently what my typical day is like and it left me feeling very unaccomplished. it left me feeling like i'm not doing much of anything, because of the randomness of my days, the lack of clear routine, the fact that i don't really have a 'typical day'. 

but then when you dissect one- you see that a lot happens, even in randomness, even with out clear routine. you look back and realize that you did explain that the earth rotates around the sun, not the other way around, and you even discussed the outfits of astronauts and you knew how old rhianna is and now someone can look up how pablo neruda died when they get home.  and you did see some sick people, and had a good laugh with good friends, and people are very happy when you give them banana bread.  so you see that we all accomplish quite a bit in our little moments, in our little lives, with our random days and our lack of routine.

plankton on the nile

i finally got my ugandan medical license.  i finally became 'official' and 'legal' and all those sorts of things, which is fantastic, but, it also means that i have to figure out what to do with all of those sorts of things. i suddenly have to make it.....real...my being a doctor here.  i mean i've been seeing patients and doing house calls and testing people for malaria on the football pitch, but now it comes the time to....commit....in a real way and this is kind of scarey. 

the license came at the same time as mike was beginning to ask me what i was doing here in uganda.  what my mission was, and was i accomplishing it? he was looking at me and my days and asking a very reasonable but challenging question- are you doing what you came to do? which gave me pause....

because lately, i've been feeling like a piece of plankton floating along on the waves.  because lately i've been feeling blown about like the wind. untethered. even aimless.  going through the many motions of life, but only doing that.  lately, i've been wondering what i'm doing here? (the new eyes helped, but still...)

so yesterday i started at the university clinic and in the small ways it was wonderful, but in the big ways it hard and eye opening and humbling.  in the little moments of connecting with the patients it was great and i felt useful and helpful and purposeful. but in the bigger ways, the systems ways, the culturally challenging ways, it was hard hard. 

it made me realize that you can take the girl out of america, but you can't take the america out of the girl. it made me realize that change is slow and then,, actually even slower than that. that change requires the belief that something needs changing......hmmmm.  that here relationships matter most, and people don't express when they are upset because everything 'is fine'. 

it made me understand mike better. it made me understand his days.

when i got home, deflated, we talked.

he asked me again, why i'm here and what i want to do. 

i told him i want to improve health and healthcare systems and he told me that i'm just beginning and what did i expect?

i told him i felt swallowed by africa and really right now i would rather to go sit on a parisian bridge looking over notre dame and eat a pan chocolate. i told him that this piece of plankton wanted to ride the nile north and land in the mediterranean, hopefully heading toward france.  or italy.  maybe florence.... the ponte vecchio... i told him that maybe front porch medicine was more my cup of tea, because at least i had control, at least it was just me deciding what was best. 

'but that doesn't sound like what you came here to do' he said.

'yeah, but right now that is what i want to do, the europe part, not the front porch part.  i mean, i don't know if i can do it.' i retorted.

'it's been one day of clinic.' he reminded.

'true.....i guess i should get back on the horse.'

and i thought about it. we came here because we believe that God cares for everyone and we should too.  we came here to try to teach what we know in a culturally sensitive way.  we came here to serve the people of uganda.  we came here to practice what we do and how we live, with justice, and mercy, and to walk humbly with our God. 

the question i should be asking myself at night as i go off to sleep is not how many people were correctly diagnosed with malaria, but did i love justice, and practice mercy and did i walk humbly with my God? did i love people well, was i patient, was i accepting and kind, was i gentle?

thank God God gave us days that end in nights and start again 12 hours later.  thank God for sleep and rest and food and families and forgiveness and trying again.

today i tried to live in my moments again.  to not be swallowed.  to breathe. to enjoy the nile and be okay that it's not the mediterranean.  and tomorrow, i will go gently back to clinic, quietly and gently, to practice justice and mercy and humbly walk with my God.

'