homing call

this morning i was awoken from my dream by the urgent call of the homing pigeon.

"5 more days! 5 more days!" she shouted from the tree. " 5 more days and you thought it was forever."

i had been dreaming that the floor was falling out from under me.

5 more days. i'm not ready. i'm not ready to go.

last night bryn told me that he doesn't want to go. he doesn't want to go to another school. he doesn't want to leave here and he doesn't want to go there. he asked if we really have to. can't we stay. it's heart breaking this thing really. ripping up the roots of 5 for 1. 5 well planted ones with good root systems growing strong for the one who isn't growing, the one who struggles to grow everywhere, but here her stunting is choking our growth. we are trying to find better soil for her. a garden that supports her kind of seed, a greenhouse because her fragility is great. we hope that with a lot of bracing and underpinning and careful tending and balancing of ecosystems, zoe can heal old wounds and then begin to thrive and then bloom into her own unique spectacular self.

but what of the rest of us? what of the 3 other little plants who's young-ling selves are in the throws of transition? who are being asked more of than most their age, who don't get to say 'no, we are staying, thanks but no thanks.' what of them?

this is where it all began. these walls. this cement floor. the monkeys on the roof. the call of that homing pigeon. looking out this window through this net from this bed. all this familiar will be achingly missed. at least by 5 of us.

the garden analogy is hard for me because almost every plant i've had has died. i can't grow things well. i'm bad at it. a few years ago here we bought a christmas tree with its roots in a pot and after Christmas i replanted it in the yard. it died. then our guard took some sticks, literal sticks no roots, no leaves, sticks, and stuck them in the ground and they grew into a flowering tree. so digging up and re-planting and expecting things to survive, let alone flourish, is scary for me.

thankfully, i am better with people than plants. i can help people walk in dark places because i've been in dark places myself and i know that God goes there with us. i know that life is hard and can be painful and that that is just part of it. this move will be sad and feel miserable at times and we will all cry at least once but probably more and feel mad about it and then find and sit with the truth of the loss in it. it's okay that it will hurt. pain is okay. we can look to each other and to God and we can open our hands and learn about being real as a family with our feelings. well, that is my hope and the direction i will try to point us toward. but i could end up with a bunch of angry teens and pre-teens who choose very differently.

and then what about the other side? our return? in a year (or two) i'll have three teenagers and a tween who will likely have re-rooted, grown leaves and fruit, had seasons. what if uprooting again feels like too much? what if there's anarchy? what if it becomes uprooting 4 for 2 and the 2 are mike and me?

this.

this is the hardest part. this is the third culture bit. the blessing and the curse. we belong in 2 places. we long for 2 places. 2 places feel (in)completely like home. that is the truth that we hold now and can't escape from. what i have gifted and forced upon my children. it is both magical and isolating and as i write this, i'm seeing that it is what we as a family will hold up. in listening to the promptings of God 8 years ago we were being handed a gift. the whispers that mike and i had heard through our childhoods, the leanings that lead us to east africa, the choice we made to follow that invitation - embracing that, acting on that, listening to the threads that have tracked with us both and still run strong in us - this is who we are.

the homing pigeon is right. this is forever. this life of back and forth. this life that will never go back to what was for any of us. this can no longer be 'either or' but has become 'both and', like it or not and so maybe that is the key: to love it as it is. not to resist it, not to figure it out. not to plan way ahead. not to second guess. not to fear or assume. not to overthink. not to resent, bemoan, glorify or be self-pitying about. to love it as it is- in the hard and root-ripping pain of it and the broad adventurous joy of it. in the lonely and the excitement and the shallow and the deep of it. love it as it is.

and there is real peace in that.

so that is what i will hold in these 5 days. i am going to embrace this. 
this homing call.
i am going to hear it as my invitation as i first heard it way back.
my invitation to love my life here and there, 5 days and forever, as it is.

back to where it began

home. that is how it feels.

i'm sitting back on my old mukono porch. same couch. same table. same view. same cement slab my kids played on and posts they climbed. same clean air and breeze and calling birds and monkeys. the trees are bigger and the shade is more.  it's strange and new and old and normal all at once. it's forward and backward combined. it's opening and closure. it's right. it feels like a gift, a welcome and well timed gift- to return before our going. to leave from our beginnings.

i've missed this space. this place where i could write from. where somehow even from brokenness, i could find pieces of myself that in their speaking kept some of me afloat during seasons when i would i have drowned. in that way this porch is magical.

the brokenness is still here. the unfair. yesterday it broke me again. trying to get care for a young woman whose kidneys have failed. knowing that in my home country it would be a trip to the emergency room, an admission, emergent dialysis. but here, it's an attempt to find a place that can do dialysis, that will do dialysis, and the money to pay for it because it won't happen unless the money is there first and it costs what most people make in a year. broken. and then what? what will happen to her then? she will spend the rest of her days trying to scrape together the money for intermittent dialysis unless someone can sponsor her for a transplant overseas.

life is hard. it's hard in different ways everywhere. we each hold our struggles. we hold our joys.

the kids are now off on their bikes in the rain. mike is down at a meeting. i'm thankful for this moment. this space. the green. the sound of rain. thankful to be back. to be home.

"Give me a candle of the Spirit, O God, as I go down into the deeps of my being. Show me the hidden things, the creatures of my dreams, the storehouse of forgotten memories and hurts. Take me down to the spring of my life, and tell me my nature and my name. Give me freedom to grow, so that I may become that self, the seed of which You planted in me at my making.
Out of the depths I cry to You…"
George Appleton