today.

it’s been an odd day all around.

thanksgiving, for us, has generally involved family and peeling potatoes and too many hours + kids in a car. but this was just a normal day in africa, with its docket of classes, meetings, dorm scrubbing, and a campus in full-swing.

we’re nearing the end of term, and life has become the kind of frenetic where it’s best i operate about one hour into the future: i just need to worry about my walking my class through their final projects. then: i just need to survive my swahili final. nimesoma kiswahili kwa bidii kwa sababu ninajaribu kuweza kuongea na watu hapa.

(sidenote: it’s like that dream, where i’m back in high school and i can’t remember my locker combination and i JUST realized i haven’t gone to chemistry the whole semester, and i cannot for the life of me figure out where we keep the science building. except i never did wake up relieved from this one.)

then: i just need to figure out the menu for tonight’s smallish gathering. i just need to walk down to the dukas to grab last-minute flour and sugar. i just need to get dinner and dessert around. i just need to pull the laundry down and quick-clean the house. and so forth, edging forward in fits and starts until at last we fall into sleep.

(sidenote nambari mbili: so tonight i went to bed at the ripe hour of 9:30 because it was just that kind of day, and so now it is 2:36 ayem and i am spectacularly awake. this post is brought to you by the surprise gift of insomnia.)

but back to thanksgiving.

there’s so much that has caught me just right this past year. so much that is richer and clearer and more. and God keeps startling me with the chance to stretch beyond myself, to reach and be reached for, and it just never gets old, you know? He’s ever the best and hardest and most consuming love i’ve got, and he keeps me. in direct spite of my fickle and traitorous heart, he keeps me.

i’m so glad.

praising Him in the small hours of the night:
for relentless grace
for electricity and plumbing in rural kenya
for folks to share life with
for eggs and chickens and milk
for you: your love, sacrifice, emails, praying, friendship
for redemption and life in Christ
for a crazy-wide african sky
for drinkable water
for our dorm kids, owens kids, student kids, mai mahiu kids
and for every last person who has wormed their way into our hearts when we weren’t even looking.

Mungu ni mwema. God is good.

ps dear family of mine: if i’d been in the states today, i would have totally made you eat this. (isn’t it beautiful?) i take my calling as the Personal Ambassador of the Brussel Sprout seriously. y’all missed/lucked out. 🙂

pps happiest thanksgiving.