thoughts from the deep recesses

I've been thinking about Community a lot lately. It's a pretty popular word in my circles. com mu ni ty    [k uh - myoo -ni-tee] /kəˈmyu nɪ ti/                                                   noun , plural communities. 1. a social group of any size whose members reside in a specific locality, share government, and often have a common cultural and historical heritage. 2. a locality inhabited by such a group. 3. a social, religious, occupational, or other group sharing common characteristics or interests and perceived or perceiving itself as distinct in some respect from the larger society within which it exists (usually ...

With the past weekend and it's extra hour behind me, it feels fitting to write about time today... specifically, about how I spend my time. How we spend our time. It seems our culture is one where time gets away from us... where we wonder 'where the time went' or complain that we 'don't have time.' News flash. People around the world all have the same amount of time. One of my favorite things about being in Sierra Leone is the difference in the perception of time. In the States, we value efficiency to a fault. How much can I get done in as little time as possible? In Sierra Leone, they value relationships. So what I accomplish there takes second place to who I've been with... the conversations I've had... the love I've shown. I can't begin to say I've brought that value home and implemented it perfectly into my life here. But I can say I'm learning. Learning to rest. Learning to value peace and calm. Learning to let my prioriti...

(A series on how we dispense ourselves, our resources and our time.) Lately a common theme has arisen in my thought life and my conversations. A thread that keeps pulling loose, demanding my attention. Like a phone call that needs to be returned, or a bill that has to be paid, I have this nagging, underlying discourse running through my mind, impacting me with a persistence that demands attention. How am I spending? My money. My time. My life. My body. My relationships. My reserves. My thoughts. My devotion. My energy. It's a deep, deep well, this thought pattern I'm working through. I hesitate to pull up a bucket from this well and spill it out because I fear a flood of consequences I'm not sure I'm ready for. But in my experience with how God works in my life, when I feel a profound, almost burning need to explore something, it's in my best interest to take the leap... to trust. To expose the vulnerability I feel and lean on the Promise tha...

I think sometimes when we hear the news of faraway places, it's hard to care.   I understand. I do the same thing...   But the current news about Ebola and the potential it has to wipe out a whole generation of people in West Africa hits VERY close to home for me... for obvious reasons.   Today I want to introduce you to just a small sampling of my loved ones there and ask you to pray not only for them, but for their country and region.   Ebola isn't just a disease in a far off land... it's a disease that's just miles away from these beautiful people who are in my heart and on my mind every day. This sweet little girl on the left is named Cecilia. Her mother was our cook while we were in Banta this trip. Cecelia is a little shy, but has the most beautiful smile. Aminata is a beautiful, statuesque young woman who is waiting to take her senior secondary school exams and hoping to go on to university after the Ebola outbreak ends ...

In 2011 when we went as a family to Sierra Leone, they had just gotten this amazing machine... which takes the beautiful, plentiful red dirt and creates bricks. At that time, they were building some new classrooms for the Mallory Jansen Memorial School - the onsite school where not only the 93 Children's Home kids attend, but roughly 600 children from surrounding villages. Since we went last time, they've built two guest houses, a senior staff housing building, a staff home for long term international staff, a store for the kids to buy things and more classrooms. All from those beautiful red bricks... Currently, work is progressing on a remote school in the village of Mokpangumba, a warehouse, and a brand new secondary school. You can read more about that school in this incredible article: Mokpangumba School We had the privilege of seeing the kids pitch in on one of their last days of school to carry bricks to the new secondary school site. Our son, Spengy, told us he ...

Oh Sierra Leone... I never quite know how to share after a trip. I could talk your ears off for hours. Or, I could give you the elevator pitch version. Either way, I'm not sure I can effectively communicate how blessed I am to have this second home. Asia and Phillip, the newest member of our family How can I begin to tell you the deep sense of family I feel there... how each time we go back, the relationships go a little bit deeper... the love becomes stronger... the affection is freer... the sense of home fiercer... Alhassan, the first boy we ever sponsored The kids we work with and sponsor there are growing, as children do. This trip it was very evident that what used to be a home for lots of little kids is now home to big teenagers and young adolescents... it's similar to the change I feel in my own home. Which is maybe while things feel so familiar there... We now sponsor four boys at the Children of the Nations children's home. We went with three...

 Alhassan, one of the boys we sponsor - he was 8 in this picture - now he will be 11! A week from today Asia and I will be back in this beautiful place. The village of Banta. Sierra Leone. West Africa. My to-do list this week is quite long... lots of last minute shopping, laundry, organizing, packing. I am SO excited to be going back. I've shared with so many people about my heart for this place... that I am blessed to have children on the other side of the globe... a beloved family of lovely people who live out their days on this red earth. But some of you do not know the story. And so I offer it to you here. You can click HERE to get the whole back story to my love affair with this beautiful country and it's people... This trip was originally scheduled so we could be there for Tejan's graduation from high school. Unfortunately, the government of Sierra Leone changed the exam dates for seniors this year, so instead of taking the exams that qualify ...

It's been a million years since a Ten on Tuesday post. But insomnia woke me up at 2:30 this morning and I can only lie there awake for so long... so here we go! Cherries. Wow - can God create some amazingly delicious food or what? I'll pay $4 a pound for these crazy good little orbs every summer. There's just nothing like them. Favorite fruit, hands down. Especially when they're dark rich red and super sweet. Summer. Last summer was super hard for me as I worked through some confusion about how to deal with the reality of  having kids who were always gone. This year I haven't felt nearly as blindsided and am trying (and succeeding!) to really enjoy the freedom to spend these beautiful long days on my own. Some days (like yesterday) that means taking three walks and a lot of reading on my back deck. I'm not complaining... Asia turned 49 on Sunday. Friends - that is one year from 50. What??? He's the best almost-50 year old I know... full of life and lau...

Tomorrow Asia and I celebrate 22 years of marriage. I was 23 years old, naïve, hard-headed, determined, and pretty sure I knew how life should go. He was (two days from turning) 27, optimistic, confident and controlled. We were just a couple of goofy kids. I look back on those two people and am amazed at how God has used our marriage to mature us and create true union . I look at our lives now and cannot begin to tell you the ways I've loved and been loved over these 22 years. But I'll try today, because I want to honor this miracle of life together. I came into marriage with a pretty entitled attitude... that it was just what good Christian kids did... they got married (virgins, of course), had kids, grew them up, sent them to church camp and youth group, served in the church, never straying. Steady. Stalwart. Faithful. Asia came into marriage knowing what he wanted but having never seen the kind of steady example I took for granted. His childhood offered...

It's been awhile. This season sometimes feels so powerfully unpredictable... there are days I'm positively full of pride and joy and hope for the future and days when I am so desperately lonely and bored I just cannot find the strength to pull myself out of the depths of self-pity. I've refrained from writing mostly because I don't want to sound whiny or confusing... and frankly, because of pride. I have a fear of appearing ungrateful. Because my life is SO good. You see, I've been in a bit of a valley. Losing my sweet Gracie  opened up this wide space that's been slowly growing in my heart... this sense of loss and change and a struggle for purpose. It forced me to mourn the loss of not only my beloved companion, but my clearly defined role as mom as my kids move further and further into the world. Kyler moved out within weeks of Gracie's death and Savannah bought her first car and got her license shortly after that (which as any parent of a 17 year...

Metamorphosis: a profound change in form from one stage to the next in the life history of an organism, as from the caterpillar to the pupa and from the pupa to the adult butterfly.   I wonder if pupas are ever afraid. Or lonely. Or confused.   Or if it hurts inside the cocoon... as they transform from one shape to another.   Or if somehow, their tiny brains possess some divine knowledge that the process they are involuntarily facing is just exactly what they were made to do.   Does the caterpillar trust the Creator?     I am in a cocoon, of late.   I am unsure of the process. Skeptical that something beautiful could emerge from this dark, confining space. Suspicious of the unknown. Scared.   I have a love/hate relationship with the cocoon.   I am swathed in its silky warmth but confined by it's darkness. Safe, but at the same time made crazy in it's enco...