Good and hard and right

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Life has been full to overflowing since we got back this summer. I wish I had time to blog, but it’s enough just to be keeping up with life right now. Jenna is loving school and has made a beautiful adjustment. Rachel and Sophie are happy at home, although they miss their big sister and home schooling without community is rough, but we’re doing it. Sean is drowning in work and loving it. I’m keeping everything moving along and home schooling, working with the refugee kids on Sundays and directing the kid’s Christmas program at church. Our community is the best part of our life here.

Life is good. So good in fact that we have decided to stay in Nigeria an extra year, which puts us here until the summer of ’19. When we leave here, Jenna will be entering high school. Mind blown.

It was an easy decision to make, when we looked at our options, but it wasn’t without it’s heartache. There is a lot I love about living here and there is a lot I miss about home. I struggle to not look back on what we had and wish for it. My girls are having amazing experiences, but they aren’t getting normal growing up experiences and I grieve that. I have wonderful friends here AND I miss my wonderful friends in the US. We are meeting my parents in London in December to celebrate my 40^th birthday AND I’m faced with poverty, injustice and culture shock constantly. It’s good AND hard and it is where God has us, which makes it right.

In a few weeks, we will fly back to Texas for my grandmother’s service. Sean will even be able to join us. It will be a precious time with family AND it will be hard. Jetlag, celebrating and grieving the loss of my precious grandmother, a teasing taste of home, a few days of loving on nieces and nephews and being loved on as well, then crossing the Atlantic again 6 days later. Good AND hard AND right. So many emotions.

Thank you for your love and prayers

We're Back

We’re back and I can honestly say it’s good to be home, but it took me awhile to find this happy place. When we flew from New York I was still recovering from the stress of last year and going right back into battle and I was nervous. But, I needed time back in Nigeria to heal as much as I needed time away. I needed to be reminded of the good here. I needed the slower African life combined with the dog days of summer to get to the heart of the matter.

That first week I had to give myself a lot of grace and be okay with not being okay. Then, one morning in church, a quote from Spurgeon opened my eyes.

“A true prayer is
an inventory of needs
a catalog of necessities
an exposure of secret wounds
a revelation of hidden poverty.”

Last year for me was a revealing of hidden poverty. Well, actually pride that was crushed into poverty. Areas in life where I had always felt confident, competent and comfortable were challenged, rebuked and crushed. The combination of learning a foreign culture, Embassy culture and solo home schooling in one of the hardest places we could be assigned to was a triple threat that left me spent.

Areas of life that take little to no thought in the US take up major energy and time here. The dailies of life: budgeting, food prep, grocery shopping, clothes shopping, and internet service can be stifling. (Notice I didn’t mention house cleaning or dish washing? I have Esther full time this year and it is glorious. Grace ALWAYS shows up.)

Vendors trying to sell you something, beggars asking for a handout, gardeners cutting down shade trees for no apparent reason, over paying or under paying help because there isn’t a standard. Deciding whether or not it is worth the emotional energy it to bargain and being okay with paying the “white man” price. Driving in a combination of frogger and Super Mario Cart and having the courage to weave your way through a gridlocked intersection, not hit the break when a mama with a baby on her back runs across the expressway or have the self-control not to run the red light when the three cars in front of you do.

Moving to Nigeria has shown me how much I idolize control and how little control I really have. It took moving to here to bring me to the end of myself, which once you get there is actually a nice play to be because the pressure is off.  There is no area in my life where I am going to get it right every time and coming to grips with that is freeing. The more I mess up (and survive) the more grace I have for myself and for others which I think is the whole point. Because that “I’ve got this” girl didn’t need Jesus nearly as much as this “I don’t know what I’m doing” girl. And this new girl? I think I’m going to like her a lot.