Quiet

-
It is Wednesday night. I am sitting at the computer with a fan blowing at my fingers as the internal fan in our computer stopped working and blowing a fan at the computer is now the only way to keep it from frying up inside. It’s all good for now, but I think I’ll need to find some fingerless gloves before winter as even without a fan blowing on my fingers in winters past, typing with frozen fingers has been a challenge.

My parents left on Sunday. We had a great time together. We spent almost a week in St. Lucia (South Africa, not the island) and it was fab. Really, one of the best holidays we’ve had; a great location, lots to see and do and a perfect fit for all ages, including the old folks. Just kidding mom and dad!! We also had fun just hanging out, playing cards, eating dessert, and talking, like really talking and being able to share some things that we’ve been working through and being able to bounce ideas off of two people much wiser than us.

Darin also left on Sunday for Malawi. He went to deliver Sawyer water filters and meet with some NGOs who might be interested in placing orders in the future. WHEN that happens, I am going back with him. Who wants to come watch our kids?? He is having a great time, says the country is beautiful, was able to hang out with our friends Hans and Gerrie (hello!) in Mzuzu and met up with some Hudsonville peeps in Lilongwe, the Palmbos family, who we didn’t know when we lived in H-ville. Such a small and wonderful world. He is coming back on Saturday and we are all so excited to see him! I will be especially happy to give him back his morning routine of waking up the kids, packing their lunches and seeing them off to school.

While I do miss my parents and my hubby, I will admit to enjoying the space. Lately I have been feeling peopled out, and having extra people in our home was wonderful, but I think my capacity for being kind and embracing and loving has been heading towards the negative for quite some time, so my poor parents did not always see me at my best, which is sad. On the whole introvert/extrovert scale, I would say I am more on the introverted side. Being here at Tshepo ya Bana has been a very stretching and growing experience for me and I am thankful for it. Interacting with social workers, spending time with volunteers, meeting adoptive parents, and having little chats with people I don’t know and may never see again are all things I would not say I have been overly comfortable with, but I have managed and I think have done a pretty good job. It is just hard to always feel like I have to be “on” and sometimes my being kind to people outside of my family has left me less than kind towards the 3 people I share a home with.

So, for this week, I am embracing space. I am filling my time with Amo cuddles, books, sitting in the sun, watching little ones chase and then run away from bugs, and drinking an extra cup of coffee each day. I am trying to herd my two loves home after I get them from school, supervise their homework, help them get a snack and just be more available to them. The somewhat irritating noise of the running fan is helping with this as I am quick to shut down the computer to have a bit of quiet, which means less time spent browsing through facebook and checking to see if anyone has sent an email.
I am also trying to be intentional about seeking God, whether through reading the Bible, through music or just sitting in quiet contemplation thinking on how He has brought us so far and has been so faithful. He is such a good and loving God and so often I forget to take the time to talk with him.


Please pray for Darin as he flies back to us on Saturday for safety and an on time flight. Thank you for so faithfully bringing our family to the Lord!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Connection and Community

-
Image
When we had made the decision to uproot our lives in the US and move to South Africa, I was so hungry for information about what living in South Africa would look like. We had been to South Africa several times as a couple, Darin had come on work trips, and we had spent 10 weeks here with our children. We knew some people, had been into various shops, and had a familiarity with the sounds of English being spoken with a variety of accents. However, there is a big difference between leaving home to visit a place for a few weeks or months and entirely uprooting your life in one place to start over in another. What were the schools like, would I have access to familiar ingredients to cook with, what about healthcare?  I scoured the internet to find stories about living in South Africa and found a few women who were more than happy to answer my questions, however random and weird they were. There was Annie, an American living in Pretoria, whose entire blog I read in one day and when Darin c
Read more

Family Fun Friday

-
Image
We have almost reached the end of the winter holiday. Tyson and Jori go back to school on Wednesday. We have some fun activities planned for the next few days, but we will also be cleaning bedrooms and setting out uniforms and lunch boxes. Let the school fun begin! Overall, it has been a fun holiday. Tyson and Jori have both had school friends over to play, we've made it to church twice, we've been out for pizza, had donuts, did some baking, and more. Friday, however, was probably the highlight of the school holidays for us. The day started with Jori losing her first tooth! Our baby girl is growing up. We had a few errands to run and took the kids with us. While Darin was busy at Cashbuild ordering supplies for an upcoming building project at TYB, Tyson, Jori and I went to Pick N Pay and King Pie for a little treat. We shared with Darin, of course. We spent a few hours at home, then headed out at 3 for our big adventure. We drove slowly and took a mini game drive on
Read more

More thoughts on motivation

-
When I look back at the decision making process that Darin and I went through, the process which has now brought us so close to a departure date, I have little doubt that Darin felt a call and responded to this call. Yet, when I go back over the different thought processes I went through to get us to this point, I realize that it has been all about me, which might explain why I am now suffering from some "buyer's remorse". It's not that my motivations for moving were necessarily wrong in themselves-I hope that Darin and I will be closer as a couple, I hope that our family will be closer and will do more together, I hope that Tyson will thrive in this new environment, I hope that our family will be able to reach out and help those that we come into contact with, I hope that Darin will be home more often and able to be a bigger part of our family life. Yet as we get closer, these hopes seem to be such small reasons to go. It's not like moving to a new country is goi
Read more