deep gladness

when did life grow so big? when did days get so full? and time move so fast?
i'll be lucky to write 12 posts this year, and that used to be a bad month for me. there is so much left unsaid.

last night the garden was filled with fairy lights and friends and i wanted to freeze it and never leave or take it with me. it was a beautiful goodbye.

seven years ago i was packing up a house of little children, filling suitcases with things i thought were necessary, having no idea what life would look like here other than foreign. and now i'm sitting in the dark surrounded by boxes after a day of sorting through piles of my years here. saved pieces of their growing up. turning time as my children's letters steady and words change from phonetic to proper spellings and sentences bloom. crayons to markers, pencil to pen. collections of valentines. a box of baby teeth. treasures. this is why packing is tiring, you go through so much time.

the wind blew in.
it's perfect here. really. it's green and bright and eden-like.

i will miss this place in a deep and aching way. just like i will miss those people underneath the fairy lights last night. just like i will miss so many things. you miss your life when you are away from it- this has become our life. this is the place, strange as it may seem, where i have felt the most internally settled, the most where i am meant to be. this is the only place i've lived where i haven't continually wondered where we would move next. 

when i am at the university clinic, or going down a dirt path on a boda to a house call in the village, or teaching at the refugee health center - i am in my place, doing what i always wanted to do. and that is amazing.

but there are other things tugging at us that need attention. as parents we will do what we must for our kids and zoe's needs are calling us back. for now.

we find ourselves knowing that it's right, but sitting in loss. we find ourselves making our plans forward with many tears as we look at what we are leaving. sometimes doing the right thing is really hard. sometimes it really hurts and nothing about it feels good- but you know that it's still right.  so you do it and you feel it and grieve it and celebrate what you have had and what you will have. and you know that God knows and has you, and that this whole thing (life) is really about knowing and serving Him anyway where ever that is. that peace comes from being in the center of His will which is found in doing the right thing and wisdom, She will come and guide the way. so remembering that helps.

but we imagine it will feel really lonely when people don't understand why we are homesick for africa. why would anyone choose it over the US? and why would you call it home? maybe all i will say in response is what buechner says, "the place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world's deep hunger meet."

maybe i will just tell them, this is my place of deep gladness, for that is the truth.