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i'm on my way home now. sitting in the airport in kigali, rwanda, where (go figure) they have free wireless internet access. i am so looking forward to arriving at home tomorrow evening...

the trip has gone well overall but i think my whole time here i've been anxious to leave. i'm thankful to have been kept busy and taken out of my normal context, for the simple reason that it's forced me to think about things other than the pregnancy. i haven't had countless hours to google things like "early pregnancy symptoms" or "risks of miscarriage" or "chances of causing miscarriage by accidentally eating soft cheese."

my prayer: that there would be a life growing inside me, that i would deliver a healthy baby just months from now. and my next prayer: whatever happens, i will know and believe that God is good and merciful.

A new post

I promised my mother I would make a new entry soon. She was understandably eager for a different and more interesting title when she navigated over to this page. So instead of TIRED, I will now entice readers with this latest very exciting post name.

I'm sitting at JFK airport, about two hours out from my flight to Brussels, where I'll connect to another flight that will take me to Kigali. Then I'll get in a car and head to Goma in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. I have a week of meetings in Congo followed by three days of meetings in Rwanda.

The question I'm asking myself right now is as follows: Will I contribute anything even remotely close to valuable in the next 10 days? You see, I am distracted and preoccupied with things other than our strategic plan for the Great Lakes region of Africa. Less than 10 days ago, I took a pregnancy test. It was positive.

And so the event that drives me back to the blog is very similar to what brought me here in the first place. Eighteen months ago, it was a miscarriage that caused me to seek refuge in writing (online, for whatever reason...). This time, I'm praying that the ending will be different. I'm excited and terrified and anxious and impatient. I want to know what's going to happen! How frustrating it is that the only way I'll find out is if I actually let it happen...

Tired

I intentionally stayed home tonight (house to myself) so I'd have a few hours to decompress, relax, do nothing, be alone...My hope was to clear my head enough to be able to have a coherent thought, a clear emotion, something not buzzing or fuzzy or tangled. It's not so much happening so I'm thinking of just getting in bed.

I have a friend who journals all the time. I told her I didn't journal very consistently and she said to me, "You have to get that stuff (in your head) OUT!" She's right. Even when there's nothing in particular going on that's worrying me or bothering me or that I'm anticipating, it's good to put whatever is in my head "out there" from time to time so the things aren't crashing into each other and making noise and causing me headaches. But tonight I don't feel like venting or processing or, frankly, writing that much. So I'll keep it short.

I went to Boston last weekend for work. Boston is a beautiful city! Richard came with me and we had a lovely time walking up and down the streets, observing all the other people do the same. Richard thought everyone there had short legs, but I'm pretty sure there's not a statistically significant difference between their leg length and the rest of the world's. I think a lot of people wore low-riding jeans and wore boots, which could indeed have made their legs appear shorter than they were. We ate dinner at a great Indian restaurant a couple blocks away from our hotel.

Saturday, my dad and step-mom are coming into town; they'll be staying for 5 or so days. The Saturday after that, I'm going to Thailand for meetings.

A few nights ago, my friend Piper came over with her friend Jenn, who is an expert gardener. Jenn has offered to help Richard and me with the landscaping (and I emphasize land) in our back "yard" where we have mostly brick but a small flower bed and also want to grow some sort of vines to cover the pergola. I can't remember the last time I was as grateful as I was when Jenn said she'd be happy to pick out plants etc. for us now that she knows what we like -- we don't even have to go! What a blessing. Seriously, that made my week. My month, even.

It's very early but I'm going to get in bed and finish reading my book, In the Footsteps of Mr. Kurtz -- well worth reading if you're interested in learning more about the Democratic Republic of Congo and infamous dictator Mobutu Sese Seko. I have an early morning meeting followed by a 3-hour meeting...Makes me tired just thinking of it.

I love coffee

I'm back at my favorite spot in the house I'm staying at in Rwanda. The upstairs veranda. I'm drinking coffee (confession: my 3rd cup this morning) and soaking up the cool, fresh morning air and the noises of birds and voices of small children yelling in the distance and dogs barking and cars forcing their way over unpaved back-roads. This is my first day of rest in quite a while, and I'm so terribly thankful for it. The last two weeks have been busy with the partners' conference, endless conversations with partners and staff, finishing off a couple of proposals with quickly approaching deadlines...Yesterday, I drove back from Goma (in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, or DRC), having spent a day and a half there meeting with staff. Then I went straight into two more hours of meetings in Kigali. I was exhausted, but had made plans to go to a Good Friday service and then out to dinner at a Greek restaurant. It was a nice evening -- we were entertained by a large gray cat with a very imposing meow who was convinced he ought to be allowed to help himself to the good-smelling food on our table. The waiters asked if the cat was ours or if we wanted the cat to stay with us -- we did not, so they tried shooing him away with firm voices and stomping feet. This cat was unmoved. Finally they threw bread so the cat would move away from the table. A short-term solution that will no doubt cause them anguish in the near future...

Why am I writing of stray cats and Greek food and meetings? Why are these the things my brain is processing right now, instead of the punch-you-in-the-gut-reality of the lives of the people who live in utter deprivation every day here? A week ago I took a walk down a well-populated hill and on the way back up, out of breath from the steepness and the altitude, I was passed by men and women and children who were carrying loads (of branches, bananas, water, whatever) on their heads. They climbed this hill every day. Not for exercise or enjoyment, but because they had to. I am struck once again at how profoundly different my life, my reality is from that of so many other people. Is it better? Is it worse? Am I blessed? Are they? My brain cannot know the answers to such questions, can hardly even process them. My brain convinces me to just drink my coffee and listen to the noises around me and thank God for all He has made.

The journey so far...

The flight from Amsterdam into Nairobi was lovely -- the plane was surprisingly empty. I had a whole row of seats to myself and got to stretch out and sleep for several hours. What a blessing! Especially since the overnight in Nairobi was not terribly smooth...We landed at 8:15pm and waited for the luggage to be unloaded. And we waited. And we waited. And two hours later it was announced that there was a problem with the door to the luggage compartment of the plane and they were working on it. I decided to find my driver and head to the guesthouse rather than wait around -- my flight for Rwanda would leave the next morning anyway and I could collect luggage then. When I returned that morning, I found out they never succeeded in opening the jammed door and all the luggage on the Amsterdam flight had been sent back to Amsterdam. A reasonable solution, I thought.

Luggage arrived in Rwanda one day after I did -- not bad at all.

So I've been in Kigali the past two days. It's beautiful here; such a contrast to the clogged and chaotic streets of Haiti. Here, all the lawns are well manicured (it's against the law to walk on the grass!), the traffic is light, the streets are clean, the air is cool, the hills crowded with homes and crops seem organized and orderly. It's almost eerie. I heard yesterday about a few men who'd been caught carjacking -- they were taken back to the scene of the crime to "reenact" what happened; they tried to escape and were all shot and killed. Carjacking is apparently not a big problem anymore. Reminds me of Singapore.

Now I'm back at the airport to take a quick 2-day trip to Burundi. Can't think too much, just keep moving...

Musings from Amsterdam

Just flew into Amsterdam. On the airplane, I watched the movie Juno. Very cute. I was sitting next to four loud women who were traveling together. One was Italian. And drunk. In the middle of the flight, after one too many individual bottles of chardonnay, she started yelling at her co-travelers and cursing at them. It was awkward.

I’m reading a book by Miroslav Volf, it’s called Free of Charge: Giving and Forgiving in a Culture Stripped of Grace. What a great title. I’m only about 50 pages into it but already I am encountering some truths my soul desperately needs to understand. Volf emphasizes the fact that we are dependent on God and that He is the ultimate Giver. He quotes Martin Luther who said, “We are beggars – that is true.” It’s ironic that only in our utter reliance on God are we able to somehow find freedom. He created us, He gives us our every breath, and all that we have is from Him. That’s such a foreign concept. In this world, in our human relationships, dependency is a bad thing except for infants; being dependent on another strips us of dignity, it obligates us, it ties our hands. How is it that accepting our position as receiver to the divine Giver can set us free? How is it that we can present our open hands to Him in fearless expectation that He has given, is giving, will always give?

Next stop: Nairobi.

On the move

Just off the phone with my mother and she reminded me it had been a while since I've posted...It's good to have a mom.

Since the last post, I've watched the lunar eclipse from a rooftop in Haiti and am now back at the Baltimore airport waiting to get on a plane that will take me to (Detroit, another plane to Amsterdam, another plane to Nairobi, an overnight in Nairobi, and finally a plane to) Kigali, Rwanda. Perhaps on one of the flights I will write something more insightful than that statement of fact. For the moment, I can't process much that's going on except to say I'm prepared to be in Africa for the next month.

My flight is boarding now...

the funny thing about feelings

By most measures, this week was a good week. Richard had his 5-year colonoscopy and the results were normal. I had a number of productive days and very good meetings at work. I went out with my closest friend to see a play. I made progress in "exorcising some ghosts" from my life, as I mentioned I had to in my last post.

So the question I ask myself right now is, Why do I feel so unimpressed with my life? Why is there a tightening in my chest and a restlessness in my heart? Maybe it's not even worth asking the question. I don't know.

For Lent (and for my own mental health) I have given up "TV." We don't actually get any reception on our television set, so what I mean is that I have given up watching television programs online. I knew I had to do something when I had finished one-and-a-half seasons each of Friday Night Lights, Gray's Anatomy and Heroes and all the available episodes of Battlestar Gallactica. All in a relatively short stretch of time. Truly, I have felt myself get stupider. I used to be so smart, it's quite sad really. So now I'm trying to remember how to read and do other things that don't involve streaming video. If I were really ambitious, I'd give up the internet too, but (let's be serious) that's not going to happen until I'm forced.

Ghosts

Life is interesting. I wrote not long ago that change is in the air -- I can feel it, I can almost touch it. I don't know what it will be, but it is coming.

Maybe it's just a part of the preparation, but I feel lately like there are some ghosts I have to deal with. To exorcise. I was speaking with a pastor from Nairobi, Kenya, who was just visiting Baltimore for a few days last week. He said he felt like a lot of the sudden violence they're experiencing along ethnic lines was something that had to be released, like there was too much pressure and the top had to come off, and he predicted that people would be able to move on relatively quickly. Perhaps it's a silly connection for me to make, but the word "exorcism" is what comes to mind in both cases.

I've read a few books on healing and spiritual warfare but I can't say I understand much about it or even deeply believe, although I know I should. In countries all around the world, people experience the spiritual realm in a very physical way, they witness healings regularly, and yet I am confined to my western rational mind that reduces everything to neurotransmitters. I want to see the truth, I want to know the truth. I want to be set free from the demons that haunt me. I want to fight, to stand up and fight.

I'm reminded of the Caedmon's Call song, The Lord is a Warrior. The words are comforting to me. He is mighty in battle, He is mighty to save. And a battle it is.

Happy Fracking New Year

Richard got me watching Battlestar Gallactica this Christmas. I'm officially a fan. I'm officially compulsively addicted. Add that to the list.

So I now have to update my profile to say "just turned 31," and I should probably also confess to giving away our very fat tabby cat.

Today I passed the homeless man I always pass on my way to or from work. He didn't make eye contact for more than a fraction of a second, and he waved in a dismissive, uninterested way. It was sad, it made my heart hurt. He didn't feel like putting on a smile or nodding his head or pretending like we had some special connection because we saw each other from time to time on Baltimore Street just 4 blocks from the Inner Harbor in front of an abandoned field where he'd built a makeshift fort out of cardboard and old folding chairs and scraps of clothing. Tonight was cold. There was a long line out in front of the shelter/soup kitchen across the street, he didn't seem interested in standing in the line. I wonder, what is the right thing to do?

This weekend I was singing at church -- I was asked at the last minute because two vocalists had to cancel. I always enjoy being on the worship team. This time, I was on with a drummer I've known for a few years now. He's about 26, really sweet guy, very sincere, loves to drum. He used to be part of this Christian boy-band that was popular at our church and has moved onto Nashville (but this drummer stayed behind). He has always seemed a little sad, a little bit like he's wandering and feels like there's something else he should be doing. He seems to truly love God and to love people. He's the sort of person that makes you feel welcome, that makes you feel good. In September, he broke his back. I don't remember the whole story of how it happened, but he had surgery to fuse his spine back together. The pain hasn't gone away -- he walks with a cane, carefully, slowly, he is gentle when sitting down and standing up. He grimaces in pain. It breaks my heart. So this weekend was his first weekend back on the team since the accident, and it was hard. He looks remarkably at peace when he's playing the drums and he plays them perfectly, but it takes all the energy he has and the pain must be almost unbearable after each service. I didn't think he'd make it all the way through the 4 weekend services (and his doctor had advised against it), but he did. He felt he had to, to prove that he could do it, that perhaps all hope was not gone and perhaps God would see that He really needed to heal him. Perhaps God would work a miracle.

This week at work is difficult. I don't feel like I have the skills or the patience or the wisdom to make our partnerships successful. I feel unworthy. I feel frustrated with our organization for its chaos and dysfunction and petty arguments. I was directed to Psalm 77 this morning, instructing me to remember God's work and God's deeds, to remember He is a God who performs miracles. I am unworthy. We are dysfunctional. I don't have what it takes to make everything work. But I remember God and all that He is and does and will do. May this be a year of miracles.