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Out on a limb.

by nic
Posted on December 15, 2018December 16, 2018

The December I turned maybe nine, we arrived like ninjas in Indiana. My uncles and…

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This girl showed up in my neighborhood for one sweet, brief weekend, and I breathed the kind of lung expansion that comes from being known. Jannae did sweaty life with me in the Central African Republic. We’d sit in my back yard of dirt, on a log that was sort of still a tree in that it was plugged into the ground. And we talked all of the words till those shards of confusion and dismay burned off in the relief of understanding each other’s bones. Her sister is a chef, and so J has inherited cheffy genetics, and even in the African boondocks she plated meals that saved me. My spirit is not above rescue by stuffed Italian pastas. This past weekend, J delivered beautiful edibles from Todd’s mom, plus ziplocked gems from another soul-friend who understands my internal soup of angst and weirdness. (Thanks, @shannanwrites, for knowing how tea, peppermint soap, and thrifted hankies can feed a soul.) And J, thanks for scheming up this visit. You are the truest and kindest among us, and you will always belong to me. #lovesongforthelonghaul

Here’s to the women raising families in temporary homes feathered with palm fronds, existing in the careful margins framing paragraphs of violence. Who pound roots and leaves into dinner, who shush babies under diamond skies. Who teach their children math and stitching wounds and keeping a makeshift village alive. Who jostle each other crazy in elbow-to-elbow quarters, but choose the claustrophobia to keep watch over one another. Here’s to the women who gifted me most of what I know about being a neighbor. Who, even far from home, never stop making every human belong. #centralafricanrepublic #internationalwomensday #awalitibeafrika 📸: @todd_owens

These kids, though. Z&E (and their compatriots) are bright and stunning in their candor, and they act like the world is their problem to solve. They debate everything from the relative ripeness of avocados to worthwhile responses to an unjust global order. Plus they’re kind. Gutsy. Achingly funny. I’ve never been more hopeful about a future with them in charge. Also, PS: I understand that it’s too early for me to get serious about anyone, because hi. They’re in high school. But Zachamony needs to hold on to this girl, because if I have to choose between the two of them, I am keeping her.

The thing about book clubs is I love books and I love clubs (especially with trees and thin mints and passwords), but I just don’t have time for a book club. Yet here we are. Shannan’s latest book rolled out with the swooniest coffee mug cover, and I scraped up every word like I was starving for hope in Kindle format. And then other people wanted to read it, and someone suggested a club, and so now I am an adult nerd and possibly weirdly smug about it. 😍🤓🤩 - This week, We of The Book Club met over Tupperware lunches and @shannanwrites’ salsa, cupping the small, bright coins of our backstories like a widow’s offering. We shared quotes from the book that stuck with us, and a few of us cried a bit. (FINE, ok, it was actually just me crying, multiple times.) - But can I be blamed? No, I cannot. Just let the lush truth of these phrases roll over you: “I told them what was just beginning to bloom in me: obedience is worth the risk of failure.” - “How much bread do you have? Honestly, I didn’t have much, and what I did have wasn’t the good kind of bread. With great hesitation, I held out my slice and a half of bad bread. Wasting no time, God snatched them up, making a feast of scraps.” - (A quote of a quote by Henri Nouwen): “On the contrary, compassion means going directly to those people and places where suffering is most acute and building a home there.” - At one point I glanced around my circle of co-laborers and drank in their earnest faces. Many of them I’m just starting to know. Some of us are opposites in ways that should politely sequester us. But these shining peeps share my awkward missionaryness and my reckless belief in these gorgeous MKs, and so I fell in love with them. I am rich in people. I will not trade lives or book clubs with anyone, but I will share my (bad) bread with you. #nerdfightersunite #theministryofordinaryplaces

When Zachamee was little, he used to roar at ladybugs and tell on his brother for poinking him. I’m pretty sure that was just last week, but then Friday I took his senior portraits (😶), and when did time get this wild and slippery? Largely in spite of me, Zee has grown into this gorgeous person of justice, relentless in championing those without a voice. Folks displaced by war or trafficked far from home: my kid has got you. His room is a shipwreck with four corners, it’s true, but he’s faithful and perceptive and unabashedly nurturing. I’m just a wee bit proud of you, Zachary. Remember to be brave and kind out there. Keep your gaze pinned on the overlooked. Turn your ear toward the still, hushed voice of a God who’s worth more than the sum of our lives. You plan to study law to uphold humans caught in the grim underbellies of our world. I cannot think of a more fitting calling for you, even as it rattles my living daylights. But I will not bubble wrap your life. Instead I’m trusting God to go firmly with you, so that justice lights up every sky you step beneath. You will always be my fierce and beautiful kid, and I will never leave your corner.

Every year, immense swirls of zebras, trailed by wildebeest and gazelles, beat a circular path around the Mara and Serengeti, chasing the rain-watered plains. Few sights have made me feel smaller or more startled alive by wonder. At the Mara River, zebras plunged through water lumped with crocodiles, graceful even in their fear. After reaching the far bank, some of the stripey guys turned to gaze back before skittering into the water again to return to the side where they’d begun. I didn’t understand it until I did: plains zebras live in families. If all of their family members don’t cross, they circle back and stick together. In a rare nature-channel moment, we saw a croc and a leopard locked in a half-hour, high-stakes staring contest over a downed zebra. I don’t even remember for sure who won, because I only had eyes for a small someone else: this kid-sized zebra in the background, watching his mama thrash and go still. I suppose this is how animals work. I suppose crocodiles and leopards need their dinners too. But even now, the only thing I know to feel is sorrow, and the ragged wish that life wasn’t quite so soaked with death. These days everything hums a tune of foreboding—the wind packs it into low-grade panic in my lungs, the skeletal trees dance to its rhythm, my shadow mourns behind me even in the cheeriest daylight. I guess I know that life is riddled with loss, and living in families means our hearts are bound to shatter on repeat. But I also know other things. I know, for instance, that living in families means loyalty so thick and redeeming it pearls into gold and drips off the edges of even our most bereft days. It means we have people who stare into the inky pools of our worst selves and still refuse to let go. Family could mean mirrored strands of DNA, but it also could mean the person who sees us when everyone else avoids eye contact. It could be the folks who choose to need us even though we complicate their lives. I will bleed straight despair when I someday lose you all, but I will never regret that you’re mine.

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