What's It All For?

This one I wrote in August as well! It does give a peak into what I've been up to...but it's a little out of date. 

My life couldn't be MORE FULL WITH MEANINGFUL ACTIVITY! I feel like my life is one run-on sentence in bold, caps, and ending in exclamation points!!!!! Since we got back from our family trip to Lagos, there has been one sprint after another. 

Zach had an AC (Advisory Commitee) meeting, requiring late nights and lots of important decisions. 

I started drama practice 3 days a week for the month of July with 20 young people to perform a children's book "Babushka Baba Yaga." 

 

I was choreographing, together with a couple of friends, my life story. Yes, I danced my way through my life.  It was part of the rememberance journey I've been on. 

 

My back had a big issue and I got some serious boils. 

A many year prayer for a boys Bible study got going...all I had to do was basically suggest it and lay down some ground rules and drive people around!  

Performed our play and my life choreography on the same day.  

 

I started the hunt for a place for my summer library...and found one!  

We left for a weeklong change of pace and scenery at Miango, leaving Zach to work and rest at home. 

The boys Bible study went for a retreat the next day, the same day Zach left for Ethiopia. 

 The library (The Orange Hat) is up and running.  About 150 kids registered our first week. 

 Thinking about homeschooling my girls and what that needs to look like, and meeting with another mom to plan together. 

These are the big things, but we still have the little joys too with lots of giggles, cuddles, learnings daily with my girls.  I have a daily exercise time with a group of ladies where we dance and pray and laugh together. We have our weekly Bible study at the church with 50-80 kids weekly.  Zach is under constant pressure at the office to do more.  He faithfully seeks God's face early in the morning before the business begins.  

Amid all the exclamation points and one sentence cramming itself into another, I have been wapped upside the head with a floofin tundrunus, and realised that if it's not all in the power of the Spirit of the Lord of Heaven's Armies, then I'm not acheiving what is possible, at best, and wasting my time, energy, and lift at worst.  So what if people are entertained, children engaged, children learning to read, family fed if I'm not making the most of the opportunities presented to me because I'm not in tune with the Holy Spirit!  SOOOOO,  with this conviction splatting against my heart, I am seeking God more actively than I ha...

 

Turning 40

I wrote this three months ago but never posted it!  I can't believe I've not written for that long. I will post it anyway, and then write one from today...

Walking home tonight from the children's Bible study in the neighborhood where we first lived as newlyweds 10 years ago, a deluge of memories smacked me upside my unsuspecting heart.  I was with Uncle Dala, a dear friend, who has only been part of our family for two years. Remembering walking with Mariama on my back, meeting young girls that we've watched become young women on a certain corner, greeting elderly women outside their homes where I've eaten celebratory food offered as I passed by, felt like too much to describe to Uncle Dala as we walked home.  I turned 40 on Monday, the 15th of August.  On Tuesday, the 16th we remembered one year when my brother died. I don't know how to reconcile the fullness of life, the richness of all I experience and have experienced living in Nigeria with the abruptness of change and death. 

 Processing loss and grief alongside the joy of living is a very delicate balance.  In movies they like to refer to how the person who has left you on earth would want you to live your life.  There's no doubt that as life sprints forward and you get farther from the memories of those you've loved, that you run differently because of them, but it seems they cannot speak into how you respond to their absence.  To the living, maybe, but not to the grieving, which leaves a gap once again of how to balance these tender moments...

 So, that's as much as I wrote in August, and I'll leave it with that and this picture above.  To say that Josh Watkin knew how to make moments special is an understatement.  He and Amy created this scene year after year!  A tree that shouldn't have fit into the space provided, loaded with memories, a warm fire, and thoughtful gifts.  I'm going home for Christmas, my first without Josh.  Thankfully, none of us are without the beauty that he imparted to us, and we have each person in the family...the holders of memories, laughter, joy, and pioneers to the way forward.