grace

thank you for the few falling leaves, and the coolness of this breeze, and the scrape of the leaf as it crawls across the porch. thank you for the cold white sky and the distant moving thunder and the fact that in all things there is grace. thank you for this midday darkness, for the children i will soon pick up, for the plink of rain on this tin covering.  thank you for this time of waiting, for this coming advent, for your light, and that in all these things- there is grace.  thank you that it's raining loudly now, pouring down in sheets and waves, and that if i didn't need to go and find my children at school, i could run fast in it, feeling the cold alive on my skin, reaching our for your everlastingly open arms, immersion in the grace as it falls all around me.

a little poem

Love Song- 

How can I keep my soul in me, so that
it doesn't touch your soul? How can I raise
it high enough, past you, to other things?
I would like to shelter it, among remote
lost objects, in some dark and silent place
that doesn't resonate when your depths resound.
Yet everything that touches us, me and you,
takes us together like a violin's bow,
which draws one voice out of two seperate strings.
Upon what instrument are we two spanned?
And what musician holds us in his hand?
Oh sweetest song.
                          - rainer maria rilke
            

give thanks

it's been a busy and full week.  a week of thanks. a week of thanksgiving. a week of thanks and giving and giving thanks.  i have so much. to be. thankful for.

we had two thanksgiving celebrations- two 'expat' feasts.  they were beautiful and special and different and both reminded me that while we miss our friends and family dearly- we have family here too.  we become more for each other here.

today zoe got an award at the school assembly.  it was for "writing a fantastic science report about the effects of gravity."  that's right. it wasn't for sitting still. or not interrupting. it was for doing a great job. it was legit.  it was for...of all things...writing.  wow.  now that is HUGE.  that is something to be seriously thankful for.  i am really speechless.

and my headaches are better- it seems adding gatorade and returning to gluten- and getting rid of chocolate and any alcohol and all amoebas- makes a big difference.

and my children are healthy. 
and there are 4 of them.
and my husband made it safely to america.
and we have food.
and we have shelter.
and we are loved deeply by a God who cares for us, who doesn't abandon us.
and it's almost Christmas time.
and the sky will soon be dark and the sky will fill up with little white lights from so far away that i will feel small and close to all those people around the world who are looking at the same moon.

good bye

mike left and i cried like a baby in the arms of my sweet zoe.  i didn't mean to.  i didn't think i would.  but all i could think about was our arriving here a year and a half ago.  all i could think about was our leaving our old life together and the 15 suitcases stacked high, and the airplane and how far away it all feels.  all i could think about is how deeply i love him and how even after 18 years of marriage-  here - we are suddenly much more for each other. 

suddenly when i hugged him goodbye all that came flooding back and i couldn't let go.  suddenly the driving and the cooking and the cleaning up alone, meant nothing- because i was hugging a big part of my heart goodbye.  suddenly i felt alone- like when pa left ma in little house on the prairie and would go off to town in the dead of winter during a storm.  suddenly i wondered if i could actually do anything with out him- and then i wondered what if he never came back? what if this was it? what if something happens? what if this is the last of it? and with my head in that little spot where his shoulder meets his chest, that place i've known for so long, that place i've cried so many times before, that place i've returned too again and again, that safe place, i began to cry.

it wasn't because our car was broken into again last night, in our driveway, 4 feet from zoe's bedroom.  it wasn't because the next two days will be fuller now that i need to ge the car repaired, and deal with insurance, etc etc.

i know it's not that long. i know that it will be fine and he will return rested and with a new perspective and that he will see and hear everything twice.  but it was surprisingly hard to say that goodbye!

magnificent

 








i sat outside on the deck overlooking the lake and it was magnificent. cool, wet, whiteout like snow. i could look out and be anywhere. northern italy in the cold, north carolina mountains with the fog rising and the clouds hovering- or here- where i am- western uganda.

it was good to get away. lake bunyoni. 3 days. 5 friends. it was good to be myself apart from what makes up most of me and my days- those 4 precious ones.  because when i get away, i breathe and laugh and sleep and laugh more and hear other peoples stories and struggles and triumphs. and breathing and laughing and sleeping are good, but it also reminds me to savor the ones back home. and when i hear their bubbly little voices on the phone, i am filled with love and thanks.

but i savor these moments with my friends in a deep and rich way.  because i still remember when the sky remained closed, the sun didn't return, and the storm of zoe hung on tightly.  i remember months and years of her storminess disabling me- leaving me defeated, deflated and withered- leaving me empty and hollow- with out laughter or breath. when there was nothing magnificent about the storm, when there was no hope of it passing. so to be able to go away, to be with out worry, or anxiety, or the need to talk about her, or the need to feel so small and vulnerable- feels so good. to be able to relax. to find myself whole and put back together again- that is truly magnificent. 

look, the sky opened. the sun came out. the storm did move over the mountain.














i am filled with love and thanks.

trying to fix it

when i was 16 years old i fell in love with a broken boy.  he was new to our school, had come from rehab.  he proudly went to AA in the evenings, was living with his father who he'd newly reunited with, and smoke a pack a day of marlboro reds.  he wore bandanas tied around each ankle and one on his head over his long hair that smelled like strawberries. he smelled like the taste of a strawberry mento, tobacco and sometimes patchouli (but i think that came later).

i was drawn to him.  he was cute and he was new and he was different and he was broken.  the sad part is, i had this crazy idea that i could fix him, which assumed that a) he needed to be fixed, b) he wanted to be fixed, and c) that i could be the one to fix him.  i don't think any of those assumptions were true.

the unfairness of the world has been high on my list of "issues" since i was a young child. one of my earliest memories is being aghast at a homeless man's lack of coat on a cold snowy night in boston, when i had 2 coats.  this made me cry, and wonder, and reflect.  but it also left me feeling confused and guilty and upset with the way the world works.

i went to peru on a missions trip when i was 14 and saw a lot more of the unfair and the unjust.  but when i met this boy- his unfair was on the inside.  i was like heidi, or pollyanna, or any number of characters where the sweet girl shines her light onto the grumpy old relative reminding them that love is real and true and worth trying.  there is then redemption and connection and healing.  i wanted this so badly for this boy.

my mom sized him up and told me there would be trouble, that he had, "that look in his eye."
"what look??" i asked accusingly. "the look that tells me he's seen a lot more in his 16 years than you've seen in yours."  i knew she was right- not about the trouble, but about his eyes.

i had this idea that if i could love him enough, he'd see the beauty and value that i saw in him.  i wanted him to know he was worthy, he was important, he was as valuable as anyone else, he was special.  i wanted to make up for past loss and abuse and betrayal.  i wanted to draw on the love i'd been shown, on the affirmation that i'd had for my 16 years, on the support and the blessing of a family rich in love, and i wanted to share it with him.  i wanted to give him my second coat.

it took a long time for me to realize what was wrong with all this, and what was wrong with me.  it took a long time for me to see that i was broken too (because we all are) and that my need to fix things was actually part of my broken.  that assumptions a, b, and c were wrong.   people aren't in need of fixing, they are in process.  you can't love someone "enough" to make up for a lot of loss and pain- it's part of them, part of their story, part of their process.  and people want to be loved- not fixed- so that as motive, will never help, it will never work.

life is hard.  the world is full of crazy.  we are all broken.

now i live in africa where i'm surrounded by hard and crazy and broken, all the time. now i still have that same pain in my heart at the unfairness, at the lack of and the fact that even as a missionary, reliant on the generosity  of others, i have much more than most people here.  and just like i hated that fact when i was 6, and 16, i still hate it. and just like i wanted to fix it then, i still want to fix it.

but.

what is asked of me?  to be still and know.  to love God with all my heart and soul and strength.  to love my neighbor, as myself, (which means to love myself- yikes), to give, to try, to look and not turn away, to challenge the unfair, to work for justice, to be a voice for the voiceless, to be the hands and feet of God.  to love. to love.  to love -not to fix it- but just because it's right.  to love even when it will stay broken.  to love because everyone has a story. to love because it will become a part of their story.  to love. to love...

"Compassion is the sometimes fatal capacity for feeling what it is like to live inside somebody else's skin. It's the knowledge that there can never really be any peace and joy for me until there is peace and joy finally for you too. ”   - frederick buechner

deep gladness

this rainy season is very rainy.  i'm thankful for the darkened sky and the sound of  heaviness releasing.  it feels more right as the season of advent approaches.

the rain brings me stillness.  because it makes me sit still.  it cuts off other noises.  it somehow makes me feel safe (well at least when i'm inside my house and during daylight).  right now it's so loud i can barely hear the avett brothers singing. it sounds like being under a breaking wave in the ocean- that loud ssshhwwwooooosshhhing sound.

this next month will be strange. it's the beginning of my favorite time. christmas time. anticipation, waiting, little lights in darkness, sweetness, kindness, songs, red and green m+m's, snowflakes, shiny things, glitter, candles, reflection, a star, an arrival, The gift, a new beginning. it will be strange because the days will be getting hotter and dryer and sunnier.  it will be strange because mike will be away for half of it, he will be half way across the world at our old home, and i will be only half here without him.

he will go back for the first time since we moved, but he will experience 're-entry' alone.  he will eat a 'yeah burger with bacon sauce' with out me, he will have a drink at leon's service station in decatur with out me.  he will eat bocorones at krog bar with out me. he will see his family with out me. he will hang out with my brother with out me.  he will see all the new and clean and massive of america with different eyes, with out me.

and. i. will. miss. him. so. much.

the crazy thing is that i'm okay with staying behind.  we have the gift of rosie, who isn't able to travel with us yet, and she is worth staying for.  and in the ups and downs of life in africa, i'm feeling in an "up".  and in a life far away from what has always been normal, i'm finding a new normal.  a normal that i love, and after a year and a half almost, i'm finally beginning to understand the language. 

this weekend in luwero i had a moment.  i was leaning over a very sick man who was lying on a colorful woven mat on the floor.  he had just found out that he was HIV positive, but he was feeling too sick to care. an old sheet hung blocking the doorway while i examined him.  i knelt on the floor in my skirt, feeling the pebbles from the dirt and cement under my knees. the walls were chipped and cracked and i looked down at my pale hands on his dark stomach and felt fully at peace.  i knew i was where was meant to be. i knew there was no where else i wanted to be. i knew that this is where i am called.  that buechner was right:

"The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.” 

because this is my deep gladness.  and there is nothing more satisfying, more peace-giving than being where God wants you.

so i will hold down the fort.  i will eagerly await mikes return. i will long for his stories about how it felt to be back at the house he grew up in, and what it was like to see old friends and meet their new babies, and how good a dunkin' donut tasted, and what it felt like to see the cold new england ocean again.

now the sun is bright and hot again. the sky is blue and far away and the air is filled with singing birds.  it feels like summertime.