She Tore It Up

In the overnight hours I received a newsletter from Tesni about the children’s center in Kenya I almost gave everything to create. Yet just after the groundbreaking, I pulled out of the project. I knew I wouldn't live in Kenya forever, which meant, one day, I would be like all the well-intentioned white people who come, build a church, school or an orphanage, then leave. I think I broke Tesni's heart, but she dug in and did the work and is still doing the work 12 years later. She is doing the work of living in community. Rubber met road and she tore it up.

After a carjacking situation forced us to return to the States, the idea of community was terrifying. All I wanted for a time was to live in a place where I didn't have to dodge hijacking traps, corrupt police with AK-47s, rogue gangs who beheaded bus travelers and put their heads on sticks. My family needed to heal but we needed to learn how to trust again. We landed in West Michigan with more than half of our hearts in Kenya. Despite everything, Kenya is truly a wildly breathtaking and humbling place to live. Back here, we were broken for a few years, tending to each other, and looking outside of ourselves unto the world around us with judgement and sorrow.

The kids are grown now and we are acclimated back into western culture. Yet aside from friends and family, our embrace is stunted.

I am stunted.

I am faced with how to build or enter community alone. Kyle and I will care for each other and our family until our last breath but for me, something roils. Something hums up out of the ground, begging for knees in the dirt. I am alone in this “other” way of living which makes me think I have a few more lifetimes to go before I get it right.

To those who have shown the way, I weep in gratefulness for your gifts to the world.

Literally.