November

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I love America. 

I love drinking tap water.

I love living in a Norman Rockwell. Or a Grandma Moses.

I love seasons in America.  Pumpkin season hits us with irony.  For one, we don’t do Halloween and two, just a few weeks ago in Kenya a nameless family member in Daktari’s house requested that we “take a break” from eating pumpkins for a while.  We eat them as vegetables in Kenya.  Not lattes.  We also eat a lot of cabbage.

At least there is no cabbage flavor craze in America too. 

I love Americans. I know how to navigate expected cultural norms and behaviors.  I can read people here  (Not that it takes a rocket scientist to read what many Americans are thinking).   Living cross culturally allows one to engage extra neurons at all times just trying to understand what’s going on.  It’s nice to relax that muscle a little and just sit back to enjoy the show-

Leaves blowing and long shadows, the slanted light at noon and where daylight is unnaturally shortened in one fell swoop of mass confusion called “fall back”.  Even the crickets seem to disoriented as to what time to chirp. Our life on the equator doesn’t get this same kind of seasonal drama and beauty.  We do get beauty, and drama, and seasons of wet or dry, but not this concoction of October in East Tennessee.   Fall used to make me kind of depressive and feeling like something good was going away too fast, but this time it just looks golden.

We have been in the US so that daktari could take an infectious diseases board exam. 

As he studied for it, I made an important non-medical discovery:

My discontent will not be bound by continents.  As a traveler who has lived overseas, there will be dings and dents in my shell wherever I go. In our home culture I carry traits from my host culture, and in my host culture we carry our home culture more than we can even realize.   That might explain why they say that missionaries are most content when they are on the airplane.

Recently we were walking in a pasture at our family’s farm when Little Miss told me “I don’t want to go in there cause there’s cow p**p there”.  Ah ha.  She too will always have an element of discontent.  Perhaps St. Paul learned the secret to being content whatever the circumstances, but I my friends, I have mastered the mad skill of discontent no matter how golden the circumstances.   Walking in fields of gold, Canaan land, our Nahala.  Then bam! Cow poop.  There’s a lot of optimists in the Daktari farm family and they’d say “ah, smells like money”.  There’s a lot of realist in me and I say “Well, it does happen”.

In Kenya I long for things at "home" in America and in America, things aren't all that perfect either, come to find out.

The struggle is to see Beauty that is right in front of us but hidden from view.   

In Kenya, when we go on safari, I always pray for open eyes to see the wonder and beauty of creation, alert to the intricacies.  Sometimes we find the most beautiful bird in all the world perched on bare branches against the sky- the Lilac Breasted Roller.  Sometimes we find a pride of lions camouflaged in the tall grass right beneath our feet.  You don’t see these things by default because only grace will allow it.  And if I pray for eyes to see what beauty God has for me each day, I end up surprised at the amazing interactions with people that I get to have.  In Kenya, a day without relating to people is like a day un-lived.  There is amazing beauty in relationships.

But Beauty is not my natural bent either.  I have to request the grace to find it.  The contrary nature of my heart is not contrite usually.  I am trained to think “yeah, but” as a pre-fix on my responses. Ever since that Fall in the Garden, I've got snake venom in my eye.  I tend to see the bad over the good.  And I have the dastardly pride to feel superior for my critical viewpoint.  Yes, I’m a flop in many departments of my soul. 

But here’s the Good News:  God loves me.  And my heart is being wooed by this persistent Love that is not shocked by my failings nor jaded by my weak recoveries.  I believe that God is neither naïve nor jaded and still chooses to love me.  That is grace.  That is why we are returning back to Africa this week, neither (too) naïve nor jaded (quite yet), and profoundly trusting in God’s love for us to be enough. 

And out of that grace, contentment is born in all circumstances. 

We fly out Nov.14.