on beginning left behind

i can write again! i have had all this time on my hands and thoughts and need to process and this blogger has been down! praise God it's back. i'm back. i have a voice again.  sometimes i think i need to write it out for things to become real. for my life to have shape and form, to not just be motion.  to be still.  to even....just be.   this week has been hard and while i so wanted to be here, in this space, i felt God knew what was needed.  i felt like She was saying 'no'. saying, 'wait'.  saying just breathe and be quiet and be in the space you are in. right. now. here. alone.

this week has been hard because exactly a week ago, i said goodbye to the 4 members of my family that started this journey with me.  the family that has been my world, more than ever before, for the past two years.  i knew it would be sad to have them go, but i had no idea how sad. 

-->and it was awful. it was way more painful than i'd imagined.  i stood there in the cool of that delicious ugandan night air, holding, no clutching rose, my beautiful little brown child who is made of this land and keeps me anchored here,  and watched as my limbs detached from my body and walked away.

that is what it was like.  mike holding me and that cart full of bags, jude and zoe hugging me and telling me it's okay to cry, and bryn and i weeping.  and when that little boy turned crying and walked away up that ramp, i just lost it.  then my heart and my lungs and my entire nervous system ran away with them, leaving me with what bones and skin were left. like a broken shell. i stood there feeling abandoned. left. a deep deep sense of alone.

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in the car, sweet rose told me that it would be okay. she said that she would pray to Jesus that daddy would come back soon.  then she told me funny stories from school until she fell asleep while i drove on, praying that they would make it to land again.

i hate flying.  i didn't used to, but i've grown to be terrified of being 35,000 feet in the air. especially when over water, especially when the water is an ocean.  as i drove and thought about most of what i love in the world, what i would die for, being all together in a small metal thing, so high up, so far far away, and moving farther and farther away from me, i felt sort of sick.
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it was strange and painful and heavy- none of which i'd expected. suddenly the world that feels generally pretty small, felt gigantic. suddenly sharing the same moon didn't count for much, and i wanted to run to my babies- all 4 of them.  the space between me and them seemed insurmountable and unbearable. it was almost hard to breathe.

what is it about being left? that is so different from being the one doing the leaving? i don't know, but there is something.

this week has happened as all weeks do.  and we've survived, as we usually do.  rose and i have had some great times together, swimming and laughing and eating dinner and drawing and practicing counting.  (the girl is brilliant, but she can't count.)  i've learned that after almost 20 years of marriage and 13 years with at least one child, being alone is hard and unnatural and not something i want to do again.  i've learned that after about one day of enjoying a clean house, i would LOVE  to step on a lego, and that i miss hearing the fights over which movie to watch or who needs to set the table.  i miss zoe's cackling laugh.  i even miss saying. "SHUT THE DOOR!"

what i miss more, is what i'm missing.  the first impressions.  the reuniting with friends after having lived in africa for 1/3 or 1/4 of their young lives.  the trip to dunkin' donuts.  their reaction to being back at the beach

but we are okay.  in two weeks i'll be back to visit the US too, and it will rip my heart out again when i need to leave rose. 

but soon the summer will be over and we'll all be together again. and next time, please God, we will all be together here or there or elsewhere or where ever- just together.