A good trade

Sometimes we refuse to see
what we are supposed to, or meant to,
until we are ready
or at least closer to ready.

Tonight I wrestled with god
to get the answer I desired.
Instead, I was given the answer
I needed to hear.

"It's time to trade in your canoe for a kayak."
Excuse me?
"It's time."

What exactly am I supposed to do with that?
I hold the answer in my hands
looking at it closely for meaning.

Here I am, in the season of my life
where my daughters are the ages
I still picture myself being.
(I see you're smiling, so you must understand.)

Now I find myself gently nudged and told
it is time to reinvent myself.
Move deliberately and reverently into this season.
Loosen my grip and perceived sense of control.
Notice what is truly important
and let the worries and regrets fall away.

Small shifts in perspective
move me toward who I am today.
Recalibrating relationships.
Allowing my children, who are grown,
to become who they are.
With or without me,
either way okay. Really.

Later, I try explaining this to my youngest
who has a gentle insightful soul
and she responds in a way that touches my heart.

Can I get one too so we can go together?

Suddenly, the trade doesn't sound so bad.
A kayak for a canoe.
A solo adventure. Sometimes together.

This will work.
Definitely. Yes, definitely.

Today I will remember

Today, when I think of Uganda,
I will remember the smiles
and the laughter and the hugs,
and the voices
that make my familiar language
into something so beautiful and foreign.

I will remember
being surrounded by so many children,
always so many children,
who grab my legs, insist on my attention,
cover me in dirt, and snot,
and whatever they are eating at that moment.

In my memories, I will watch them trace
the veins on the top of my hands,
the darkness of their fingers
making my skin look so very white
even to me.

I will watch and wait for a child's face
to appear in the doorway
and hear the words "may I please enter?"

Today I will say "yes" to all of them,
and I will join in the laughter and the hugs
becoming part of the craziness
as my heart fills with so much more
than I thought it could possibly hold.

Today I choose to remember
the resilience of happy, healthy, hopeful children,
and I will be a witness --
looking beyond what they have lost
and recognizing what they have gained.

By doing so,
by first noticing and then remembering,
I will become part of their world,
even for a short time and then maybe
Uganda will not seem quite so far away.

I can never understand

Ever since saying goodbye
to the children at the orphanage,
and flying home from Uganda,
returning to my country, my family, my home,
I have been struggling to understand
how there can be so many beautiful,
amazing children who have no one
who claims them as family.
Many of whom were abandoned as babies.
Along a road. Or in a field.
Helpless and left alone.

I cannot begin to understand
the desperation and hopelessness
that interweave to create a scenario where I might
be forced to consider abandoning my child.
How someone could make the decision
to turn their back and walk away.

But that does not give me the right to judge.

I can never understand because
I come from privilege.
I have always had a safe place to call home.
I didn't have to choose between feeding my children
or sending them to school.
I didn't have to make impossible decisions
about their future.

I have always had a safety net beneath me,
with the corners held tightly by family,
by community, by the systems
designed to catch me if I fall.

So how can I possibly understand?

I think about these children,
many of whom I can now name in my heart,
and I cry for the parents and families
who never got to watch them grow up.

Saying a prayer for all the mothers
who didn't feel like they had a choice.
Who perhaps thought that they
were doing the best thing.
(And maybe they were.)

Thinking about the love
that embraced that baby,
before the heartache that followed.
The love that never
wanted to let go.

And now, from my place of plenty,
I can reach out to a child
who was abandoned perhaps out of love,
and somehow, with God's help,
bring hope into the days to come.

Now there is something I can understand.

The children's home at Noah's Ark Children's Ministry Uganda.