10

i remember 10. it was big. it was like having those 2 numbers instead of one gave me footing to stand on. like i had arrived into myself. an awareness, that everything up to and including 9, didn't have. 

i've watched rose arrive here too.  shirt tails flapping behind her as she wizes by on her bike. wearing her favorite birthday gift of all, prescription-less glasses. she is her own.

i've watched her arrive here. and it's been a beautiful path. a different path than my other three in some ways- because of course it would be. denying that would be weird and wrong. she's had more things to figure out, more things to interpret, more looks to navigate, more internal questions to wrestle with .

part of standing on your own 2 feet at 10 and biking away boldly in your unnecessary, by-choice glasses is knowing who you are and being okay with it. it's embracing that yeah, your family is mixed. the parents that look like you don't speak your language and live 8000 miles away and the ones that tuck you in every night and check your homework and teach you to do the dishes, don't.
and that is inherently full of loss. it just is.

it's the kind of loss that creeps up on you like fog.  the kind that hides and pokes its head out when it's not expected. the kind that lingers and when i see it, catches me off guard and stings like a slap and says, 'don't forget, don't you ever forget, she didn't ask for this, she didn't choose this.' it's a loss that needs an ear. that deserves respect and time.

i try. i try to keep an eye out for it, an ear out. i try to speak for it when i feel it's there but too shy to come out because i know that sharing that unnameable loss can be vulnerable. and i try to teach her to have an eye out for it too. to know that it's there and that it's okay. that it's normal. that it's not shameful. that complicated emotions are allowed and welcome.

each time we move through a patch of that fog, she stands taller. her gorgeous confident self, aware that life isn't fair, that it has loss but that's okay. it also has choice. and while it is far from perfect, we are in it together and she is so deeply loved. i remember when we first got rose, people used to say how lucky she was and it always hit my stomach in a sour way because i was the one who felt lucky. and i was right. the privilege has been all mine!

i love you with all of my heart.

happy 10th birthday rose!

stone in my shoe

i've been back from home for about a week. back to america, back to my life, my kids, my job, my life, my present, my reality. but what doesn't feel like my home.

it probably shouldn't be this way.

it probably should feel completely like home. it should probably all make sense now. my family together, in our home country, the part of the country where mike and i were both raised and where we met and began our lives together.

but.

last week we were home.
last week we were 8,000 miles away, on the equator, in the dry warm heat of uganda, listening to the sounds of a thousand birds wake us, resting well beneath mosquito nets, feet on cement floors, milk in bags, dirt roads and all.

home.

every night since we've been back i wake up at 3 am and in my half asleep state i worry. i feel that everything is wrong. somehow broken. somehow not right. but i can't put my finger on it. it's very disturbing when you're half asleep.

last night, i figured it out. i'm going through life here with a stone in my shoe. i'm limping. i'm not where i'm supposed to be. i'm here and i'm happy. my days are fine. things are 'good'. there is no major drama. but i'm not in my place. i'm not really doing my thing. my kids aren't doing their thing. we are place holding. we are limping. we are doing 'fine' and all is 'well'. but this is not home for us- not for our family and mike and my trip to uganda last week confirmed that.

when we arrived we were cold and pale and wrinkled and tired and our faces told the story of our limping. of the stones in our shoes. by the time we left we were sunny and smiling and our faces were again full of the life we love and know and are called into. we had been revived. we had been breathed into by the Spirit. we had received the life-giving memories of who we are and what we are to do. 

i once wondered if when we got back to america all the ease and niceties would take over and we'd settle in and leaving would become to hard. i wondered if maybe uganda would be a season that had ended- if once out of sight, things would look and feel and become different.

no. not. at. all.

being there was like stepping back into my self. into my skin. it was like breathing real again.
running free. 
it felt like david removing the armor that saul placed on him to fight goliath and picking up his sling shot to face the giant. he came as himself. maybe less impressive. maybe more vulnerable.  but he knew all he needed was God and authenticity.

listen. can you hear it ?