three months ago i landed on a new continent in a new country. ready. expectant. excited.
three months ago on that very first day i wrote a draft of something that i never finished or expected to go anywhere but it feels like its the only thing sweet and sincere enough to completely reveal the way i walked into this season. the way i want to walk in and out of every single season of my life.
“there’s a girl. the freshness and awkwardness of new adulthood and confusion and seeking and passion and kindness and all things good. she’s traveling. place to place. leaving her heart behind with people and specific parts of the world. a park bench here. a friend there. a quiet spot hidden somewhere else. and now she’s here somewhere new.
she’s riding in on a bus. ridden with sleep, her tired eyes finally have their first look. within the first sweep of the landscape and new place she’ll call home her eyes open to the position they so love to be in. wide. ready. capturing it all. reveling in it. there’s awe and wonder and curiosity and excitement and expectancy behind them. she looks to one of the boys sitting next to her and says, ‘this is what i’ve dreamed about since i was a little girl.’ the tears in her eyes begin to pool, the sincere and gentle smile so evident and attached. a tear falls at the same time the boy replies with the words, ‘i can see that little girl in your eyes right now.’
so here she is. letting heaven’s dew drop out of her eyes, slip down her cheek the way her father would touch her if he could. she looks around at the place of sweetness. of freshness. of steadfastness. of revival. of simple beauty. of gushing fountains of endless life. she sees smiling faces in front of mud houses and running children excited for the visitors in their community. she feels her heart already opening and breaking and all of the things within ten minutes of the first glance. and she knows her heart will be left here. she knows the family and home she will create. and she knows that her compassion is ready to overflow. so her final thought before driving the last stretch is ‘i just wanna know all their names.’”
and wow. i am sitting in my bed with a fresh cup of ethiopian coffee that has become a necessity staring out the view of my window that represents home more than i ever thought it would. watching last minute laundry go up on the line before we pack the final articles of clothing and miscellaneous pieces.
and wow. i have never changed as much as i have in these last three months. the simplicity and openness and lavish life i have learned to live i will only ever credit to my time in africa. my time here in ethiopia. man, coming in to this place on the first day knowing i was confused and passionate and kind and seeking all things good. leaving it doing that but with so much more simplicity and sincerity. with an eye more drawn to beauty and wonder and awe. with a heart more open to newness and embracing the adventure that comes with following jesus.
i have been avoiding saying goodbye to this place. i have been avoiding processing what leaving this place looks like. but on this final day here all i can think to do is write notes to all the places and things that have made this goodbye a sweet and holy heavenly heartbreak.
to the room i called home for the last three months.
thank you for your memories. thank you for the way your beds are placed so perfectly in a circle allowing my eyes and ears to clearly see and hear my teammates. to spend dark nights each in our own beds, but still having conversations making the nights feel like sleepovers. sometimes even crawling over into each others beds to cuddle and laugh and feel like normal teenage girls. even though we are six months in and living together has the potential of just becoming normal you helped us laugh and fight for each other more. i will never forget the way our walls looked. decorated and adorned with pictures of homes. the ones we have in the states as well as the first place we called home together in guatemala. i will never forget the feeling of waking up with somehow more and more bug bites from the mosquitos that appear from hours of leaving our window open to feel the precious mixture of african breeze and sunshine. and somehow i am even thankful for the hole in the ceiling that has probably haunted each of our nightmares at some point. and to my favorite part of the room. thank you to the windowsill. i have spent so many hours reading so many books or listening to so many songs or even just sitting and spending so much time just thanking the lord for the view i have from the windowsill. many times i just simply sat there. i took in serenity and grabbed it and held it so perfectly as my own portion. i witnessed enough things in that one spot to write a book about all the small moments that are so desperately asking to be seen by someone, even if the moments don’t know it themselves yet. thank you for the sunsets and sunrises and call to prayers that i heard. to the kids i heard laughing from that spot or the laundry i watched be whipped by the wind onto the african ground. all of it. my eyes shine brighter because of what they have seen in this place.
to the bathroom.
at first, you were probably my least favorite place here in this whole dang place. sharing four, might i say, mostly freezing cold showers and five toilets with thirty something girls goes against what i have always known. but man. am i so thankful for the conversations had with new people in the reflection of the mirrors with toothbrushes in our mouths or wet hair fresh out of a shower. i am thankful for the times where i sat on the counter or the floor for hours with a new group of people every night being surrounded by love and depth and perfection. i am thankful for the way i have looked at myself and never felt more beautiful than when i looked in the mirrors here. ethiopian sun always leaving my cheeks sunkissed and african simplicity always allowing me to simply love myself and a contentment that automatically made me feel a radiancy like moses. i am thankful for the way the sinks have helped my wash my feet stained from hours in an apple orchard or get coconut oil out of my hair when i had to be treated for lice. i just love the way you have helped change and redeem my relationship with other women. allowing me to love and appreciate community and already start missing it before its even gone.
to the apple orchard.
my favorite place out of all the sweet ones my feet have had the privilege of stepping on here in ethiopia. you were where real relationships started. where the deepest belly laughs occurred. where the most profound and genuine conversations where had. where i truly helped water seeds and plants that were having life long effects of cultivation and learning. i laid in the middle of dozens of budding apple trees facing the sun. smiling. i ate and tasted the sweetest of fruit that the father promised me in this season. sweet and fresh fruit. this was the place where i spent hours each day. each day. never tiring of it. a place where most realizations and dreams with my good good father occurred. he taught me about simplicity here. about steadfastness. about freshness. about rest. about the wilderness i was walking through and about the springs and wells he was springing up for me. about it all. i learned more about life here than anywhere else.
to the kids here at hopethiopia.
thank you for seeking me out. thank you for pursuing me. thank you for coming to our window and just talking. thank you for laughing at me and with me. thank you for braiding my hair. thank you for your kindness. thank you for never tiring of me hugging and kissing you and thank you for always telling me you loved me. thank you for smushing your faces against the windows of the living room when you know you aren’t allowed to come in. thank you for loving movies as much as we do. thank you for the times you simply stood and held my hand. thank you for always being eager to help. thank you always letting me take your pictures and put you on my shoulders and try new tricks. thank you for your curiosity always helping me spark the same inquisitive nature. thank you for cheering me on. thank you for crawling all over me and laying your head in my lap or using me as just a helper for whatever acrobatic trick you are trying to accomplish. thank you for your honesty, even when i didn’t want it. thank you for falling asleep in my lap crushing your cheeks against my legs and sometimes leaving drool. thank you for copying my goofy faces and joining in so i don’t look like a loser. thank you for repeating everything we say and do, even when you shouldn’t. thank you for scaring me and my team so bad we literally leave everything in the middle of a field and just scream and run like little babies and when we finally stop to catch our breath we hear your sweet giggles and see your silhouettes in the shadows, only lit up by the brightest moon and stars I’ve ever seen. thank you for peeking your little heads in all my pictures. thank you for loving to dance. thank you for the tightest squeezes in forms of hugs. thank you for being the sweetest handful I’ve ever met. and thank you more than anything for the way that all of these things have left an imprint deeper and larger than i ever thought your little bodies and hands and feet could make. i will never forget the way any of your voices and laughs sounded. the way the tight squeezes and braiding of hair and hand holding left me feeling. or the sight of any of you laughing or running or playing or just standing outside my window.
to the sky.
i have seen you in all your shades of the day and all the phases of the month. i have seen you in hazy shades of blues and pinks and purples as you rise in the morning as your mist leaves heaven’s dew on the ground the lord is preparing the day for me with. i have sat out in the sunniest and brightest of days which leave me new shades of red. i have watched you set. i have watched you set so many times in so many different ways i don’t even know which colors to call this time of yours. beautiful. majestic. a perfect representation of the glory and goodness of my creator. i have seen moments that i truly never thought would hold a candle to the ones i so closely associate with home of texas creation. i have sat under your stars so many times. admired the architecture that the architect of the galaxy built and designed. i have seen imagery and understood creation and the creator so much more clearly because of the skies here in africa. ive written many a times about how the lord stands guard among the stars. how he waits up there among them, asking me to reach farther into them. to leave my feet off the ground and join my head and my heart which have already made the journey to thriving and dwelling in the midst of creation more evidently and permanently. the nights under the african sky will not be forgotten. the days sitting in the african sun that had a tent pitched for it by the lord of all will never be rivaled. the skies of africa are the most prominent example of the the way the skies are supposed to proclaim the work of god’s hands and i had the privilege of living and growing and thriving and sitting under the sight of them.
to the girl walking out of this country so changed.
you are simply beautiful. you never have to be burdened and weighed down by expectations. those that belong to you or those yelled at you by society or the world. you have the right to fight for whatever you want and value most. you get to simply live. you have learned how to live lavishly. in an open and expansive world that your god created for you specifically. live in it. paint daily. smile when you listen to the music that makes your ears perk up. swing your feet wherever you go. remember you don’t have to have it all together. you just have to be thankful you have anything at all. always look up to heaven and keep your eyes, arms, and heart wide open. the best is yet to come. pursue simplicity. simple love. simple gospel. simple life. just simply live sweet girl.
