what i'm afraid of and the everlasting arrms

 do you ever feel like you are watching your life? or maybe it's that i am watching time as it drips through my fingers. two weeks from the day after tomorrow. i know how fast that will go because i've been watching it go by. 

right now i'm here in my house in uganda which looks exactly as it always has, nothing is out of place, we haven't started packing and our things which are technically "sold" haven't been taken yet. nothing about the way our house looks says that we are moving away from here. it's weird. i hear the chanting from the mosque, the birds loudly conversing and edith sweeping. the wind is in the trees, moving the leaves in that way that reassures me that She is here and She will go with me. i find the Holy Spirit in the wind, reassuring, promising, ever present, often in stillness but sometimes forceful.

right now things seem normal. but nothing is normal. it's going to change and change fast.  i imagine myself standing in line  at t.j.maxx under the fluorescent lights with a cart full of random things i've picked up after debating way too long over each, listening to that mechanical overly loud voice, "CASHIER NUMBER 5 PLEASE" direct the next customer, wondering what the H-E-double hockey sticks we are all doing here buying all this stuff? and then i imagine myself excusing myself from the line, abandoning ship, aborting the mission and driving home in tears only to realize that i really did want at least the yoga mat. 

these are the things i'm afraid of. the very scene at target 10 years early that i feared leaving, i fear returning to. 

the wind She moved again, "Do not be afraid! I have rescued you, I have called you by name and you are mine. when you cross over that giant ocean, I will be with you. and when you feel like you are drowning in tj maxx or where ever, they will not overwhelm you, for I am the Lord your God." that is what i hear today.

in the wind, God speaks the ancient words. the eternal God is your refuge, and underneath are the everlasting arms.

called by name. rescued. caught by the everlasting arms. held. not overwhelmed. not consumed.  known. seen. 

and perhaps we are returning  for such a time as this. what ever it is. whatever awaits. the palm fronds wiggle in the wind at this. the tree next to her nods in approval and a new gust comes in from the door behind me. 

i am surrounded by the wind, the Spirit. those Everlasting Arms.

this is what is good. what i can trust and lean into and rely on and know will not fail. the truths that cross land and oceans and culture and time. Love. loving each other. care and concern. offering refuge where we can. seeing people. being those things for each other.

and that doesn't end two weeks from the day after tomorrow, it comes with us.

the threshold

writing it down makes it real. 

i'm at that point where things are so close that i begin to subconsciously on purpose never know what day it so that time seems to stretch out. it's protective. it happens. i've been here before. 

but even in my lack of date specific awareness, there has been a lot of looking back. a bit of looking forward. and then doing life everyday. 

we are standing in the threshold. 

a threshold is a piece of wood that marks an entrance. a place or point of new beginning or change. a magnitude or intensity that must be exceeded for a certain reaction to happen. a place between where you were and where you are going.

a threshold marks change. a passageway into what is next. you must go through it.

i am standing in the threshold of this season. i made myself count, in 18 days we fly away.

and it's beginning to sink in that when i return, i will not return to my life here. to my car and dogs and home and work. i will enter in as a visitor once again. i will stay with friends. it will feel different and people will say, "where do you stay?" and i will say words i never thought i would say, i will say, "wenham". 

as i've been standing in this threshold space for about a week now i have seen a few things happening. my skin is getting a bit tougher- i'm giving some distance- i'm pulling back a bit. noticing the potholes and the broken things and telling myself that i won't miss them, then thinking about family at home and looking forward to spending time with them after so many years spent so far away. 

and the other thing i've noticed is that when i look back with such deep love and nostalgia over these 10 years of raising little people with their grubby bare feet and skinny arms and home-style haircuts, is that so much of what i am grieving leaving is already gone. it's both taken by time and given back to me as memory. much of what i will miss i can't get back here anymore than i can get it back where i am going. my little children are big children but i am leaving the land where i raised them and that is sad and hard especially because it's sad and hard for them. 

so may we pass well through this threshold and on to the other side with joy for what is next knowing that the same God who went before us 10 years ago, is waiting on the other side again.

oh uganda, land of beauty

what will i miss most? will it be the rooster in the morning? or the constant bird chatter, echoing and layered even right in the city.  or maybe the scent of burning leaves and diesel with someone cooking meat on the roadside. will it be being called 'madame!' or buying potatoes and passion fruits from Sara, only Sara in the parking lot outside of the market with a host of boys selling bananas greeting with grins and saying "yes docta!" or maybe  i will miss the way they push for me to buy the oranges which are too sour and i don't like, "but what of oranges?" as if someday i will change my mind, but some days i do. maybe i will long for those sour oranges, and pot holes, and broken air-conditioning in 26 year old cars, and traffic where no one follows rules. i think all of these things i will miss. 

i'm scared truth be told. scared of moving back. scared of the ease and the comforts and not being understood for missing broken things and ways of life that have become normal and comfortable for me and are my children's baseline. scared of easy purchases and new things and phone plans with years of commitment, and mortgages.  i don't want a new car or a new anything really. i want to buy used. i want to buy airtime when i need it. i want to pay with mobile money. i want it to be 80 degrees year round and hear the sound of sweeping rains at night and awake to the call of the dove and the monkey bird and always see green outside my screened windows.

i remember 10 years ago right as we were getting ready to leave, we were boarding a plane that night and needed one more suitcase and so i drove to target. i was in the luggage aisle and i had a mild panic attack. i was temporarily incapacitated by the choices but really i was incapacitated by the choice i was making- to get on an airplane in a few hours with zoe who was 10 and the boys who were 6 and 4 and move them to the heart of africa. i starred at those suitcases and thought, "what have we done?" a crate of our stuff was already on it's way, our supporters were already supporting us, we had our house on the market and an airport pick up plan on the other side. it was happening, and i was scared of the change.

mike and i have talked a lot about what we want to bring back with us, to carry with us in to this next season. what pieces of our life here can we hold and savor and reuse, replicate, share with our new england life and community. there are my large african drums and some baskets, but we are really taking about the things we have learned. priorities. slowing down. valuing people over productivity. relationships, even the little ones sprinkled through out the day, matter.  the boda driver delivering food and calling for directions, "good eve-a-ning madame. how are you? i myself am fine. now..... i am wondering....i am near...but  how can i find your place..? "   not. "where are you? i got your pizza" those things that used to drive me mad, now i cherish. 

so in 5 weeks i will fly away with the blue curtains i've looked out of for 10 years packed in my suitcase and my much bigger boys now 16 and 14 and my dogs and cat, red dirt on my shoes and know that hard as it is, it's time. and uganda with it's bird calls and smiles and warmth and time taking and traffic and potholes had grown me in ways i couldn't have imagined and taught me to slow down in ways i didn't know i needed to know. it has shown me our great need for community and given me a broader definition of what community can and should be. i have found friendship in the strangest of places and been welcomed in corners where i couldn't have dreamed of stepping. i have been blessed over and over again by the people of this place who have let me call their country home. 

oh uganda may God uphold thee, we lay our future in your hands