thinkin' malawi like thoughts

I brewed a pot of coffee this morning with the intention of some quiet time to write. I spotted my old journals on the bookshelf and thought I would break them open and read into my old self, thoughts born on the other side of the world.

I quickly became absorbed into my own words deeply missing Malawi, the people and the strength of my faith during that time. I wrote constantly when I was in Malawi. I had my journal with me everywhere. I didn’t want a single experience or thought to be lost along the way. Now, I am seeing why I wrote so fervently. I was writing it for myself, for myself while I was there, the self that would read it a few months later, a couple years later, and my self now. I am encouraged in reading my thoughts and reflections from years ago with a million moments filling the space between.

Here are a few entries that touched me today.

“One little girl at the farm is sick, she would fast for days and pray to be healed. Marla told us about this girl and how she wouldn’t eat for days, and at mealtime they would look for her and find her in her room. She would be on her knees praying for God to heal her and make her well. Everyone wanted so bad just to sit her down and tell her she needs to eat, and be nourished, especially with the anti-retrovirals which need nutrients to be absorbed and effective. But they were torn at the same time, wondering who were they to think that God wouldn’t honor her fasting and her prayers for healing, to give her the nutrients her body needs. We often look for our prayers to be answered in the way we want to see them answered and here that is often the physical healing from sickness and hunger. What God did heal is this little girl’s spirit. She is so young but she has experienced a healing of her spirit far greater than any of us will ever know. She has a peace and a joy from the Lord that far surpasses anything we will ever know or will ever understand.”

“I feel so invested already and that desire to walk alongside them to watch them grow into the men and women God created them to be. That connection begins in such a short time. It’s crazy, because I imagine myself here long-term and it doesn’t sound so crazy. People are what get me. I just want to be near them for the rest of my life. I wonder about all my friends and family back home. It kills me that I have no idea how anyone is doing right now. God is constantly teaching me how to let people into my life and how to let people go, to let people go on their way…life just keeps going. I always think back on that book. The Five People You Meet in Heaven and how at the end of this guys’ life he meets five people who influenced or played a huge role in his life and he in theirs. It was just so interesting to think about the people we’ve touched or affected without even knowing it. People that have had to leave our lives for us to be the people we are today. I wouldn’t be who I am today if my dad didn’t leave when I was little. Who even knows what that would look like if he didn’t. God uses those that leave and those who stay to strengthen us and shape us for the better. He didn’t bring those situations upon us but because they happened, he uses them for good…”

“We never know who we are affecting and influencing in the moment. We are coloring the people we connect with. When the team was discouraged about being here and wondering why we were here if the Children of the Nations kids are already being well cared for now. Kara had a good point, she grew up in a family that cared greatly for her. If people looked in and saw that she had a family that loves her and therefore decided not to pour into her, she would not be the person she is today. We are who we are because of those who have spent time with us and poured into us. This is why we can’t love enough on these kids. Sure, many of the COTN kids are in homes and being cared for (because of COTN) and going to school. They are doing well because of the hundreds of people who have cared for them and taken time to love on them, to tell them bedtime stories, to play futbol with them, help them with school, tickle them, hug them. Every little act of love is part of a much grander story. We are a part of a much grander story. Sure, my heart craves the adventure of bringing food to the starving child, the saving a child from sure death, stopping the arm that abused a child, but that is exactly where these kids came from. You can see the traces of their past in the burn marks on there faces, in the scars on their bodies, in the way they avert their eyes, the way they are afraid to raise their voices. These are the kids and just because they aren’t in the thick of it right now doesn’t mean they don’t struggle with the effects of their past still in this day. We should never choose not to love a child or anyone for that matter, because everyone is fighting a battle and we have the opportunity to pour into and shape the lives we interact with every day. Love wastefully.”

Oh heavenly day...

I’m thinking about Malawi today as I so often do…one of my interns in Malawi had the lyrics “oh heavenly day” written as her status on facebook. This is my favorite song in the whole entire world. I feel like I say that about a lot of songs I love but it really is my favorite. If I had to listen to one song on repeat forever into eternity, it would be ‘heavenly day’. After I commented that ‘heavenly day’ is indeed the best.song.ever. She wrote back and reminded me that I would play it over and over in our kitchen in Chiwengo Village.

As I read those words, I was instantly taken back to that village, our little house, and our littler kitchen with the sun streaming through and Patty Griffin’s words echoing through our walls.

Tomorrow may rain with sorrow

Here's a little time we can borrow

Forget all our troubles in these moments so few

Oh we can right now the only thing that all that we really have to do

Is have ourselves a heavenly day…

Oh all the troubles gone away

Oh for awhile anyway

Heavenly day…

On any given afternoon, there would be several of us in the kitchen singing, dancing and preparing a dinner for ourselves and one of several short-term teams visiting Chiwengo. It was so familiar to be chopping, frying, stirring etc. in the kitchen and for several kids to come and visit with us in the kitchen or help us prepare or just make silly faces from outside the window. Or to hear kids in the next room playing cards, yelling Bodza (aka liar—a little take off of the game BS) or to see kids outside making tiny campfires for cooking over.

It’s those little moments that I miss. They are just little snapshots that make up an average day; they are so minute and so fleeting. Yet when you are so far from them, and take a moment to hold them up to the light, you can see the beauty of each piece.

And in doing so, my heart just aches for those little moments.

choosing gratitude

My mind needs a break from the intellectual life. All I have been doing these past couple days is attempting to pull out pages and pages of concise yet eloquent words of research and policy surrounding issues in child welfare. I am not used to intense intellectual thought for hours and hours and no break. If you were to walk past me any of these last days at Sydney’s, my coffee shop of choice, you would see an intense stare into my laptop screen, complete with furrowed brow and feet tapping below to the soundtrack my dear Pandora unrolls for me as I type, type, type away…

I’ve been thinking about Malawi a lot lately. For whatever reason, it’s come up in conversation with strangers, with new friends, with family and with someone becoming very dear to me. After I’ve been talking about it, then it seems as though all things remind me of my time there. From a website featuring a picture of the darling girls I got close to, to the smell of a conditioner I started using in Malawi, these little reminders set my heart on my loves a world away. It’s hard to be a world away from the people and place you love so much. I’m tempted to become melancholy and bummed, but I’m choosing gratitude tonight. I’m grateful to sit and recall the laughter, the jokes, the culture and the beauty of the people.

I’m grateful to have a place that brings my heart so much joy and so many memories worth treasuring. Instead of feeling torn between the northwest and a home in Africa, instead of feeling torn between these two places, instead of reliving or fearing goodbyes, I’m choosing to be thankful for two homes. In whichever place I physically reside, my heart will always be present and alive in both. And whenever I leave one for the other, I know there is a welcoming home, always a hello, a refreshing arrival.

I know in my heart that someday I will again feel that freshness of arriving on African soil. Someday…