Departure Thoughts

I’ll never forget the moment when I stepped foot off the plane in Uganda after visiting Michigan for a few months and thought I’m home. I genuinely never thought I would feel that way about a place so different than what I was used to. A place so dirty and stinky. A place where I was noticed everywhere I went. A place I didn’t always understand. A place where death seemed too real.

When was it? I remember thinking.  Was it when the children started asking for beans and rice instead of macaroni and cheese? Was it when the women working in our home became my friends?

Was it when I welcomed my first guests?  Was it when Tom made me this dorky hat and I realized how much he seemed like family?

Was it when Mark and I started clinging to each other out of necessity? Was it when I self diagnosed my first set of strange symptoms?

When did this exotic life of ours become our normal?

The uncomfortable became familiar. The dirt and odors made life authentic. Our minority position sharpened our sense of self. My questions ended up being more freeing than my answers. And death…well, it never got easier but it was followed by resurrection.

The people and needs and broken realities we had to face carved out for us a life that built for us a home.

It’s a beautiful thought, really. Because in that moment when I called Ugandan home I realized God can make environments of grace out of anything.

We can too.

Will you pray for us? Today at 7pm our family departs for Uganda. It’s no longer home to us, but I know it will receive us with love. It will hold our family for a month, and we will revel in its beauty and weep at its brokenness. We will remember in thankfulness how it shaped. We will wrestle with its inconveniences and romanticize its simplicities. And I’m guessing it will still feel a little bit like home.