New car, new place, new job, same stomping grounds.

Okay, so maybe some of those are still in process. But still - change! It's here! It's coming! It's yikes! It's yay! It's oof!

I was SO ready to come back to the States. 94 days of ups, downs, and enough turn-arounds to still feel some residual dizziness. I've grown, regressed, gained confidence, lost direction, and now am plowing aimlessly, straight ahead.

Or, at least, I WAS going straight ahead. Within 24 hours, I had secured an apartment that, days later, I declined.

Sleepy morning at Java House in Jinja.

Two months down, one to go. Somehow, three seems to be my magic number when it comes to traveling. Three months in Amsterdam. Three months in Los Angeles. Three months in Haiti. A three-year period of never staying anywhere longer than three months, broken up only by time back home or transitory moments, til staying in Mexico for seven months before returning home and being bound there by tragedy (only kind of dramatic, eh). Til 2016, anyway, when I returned to my lucky number three for three months in Greece.

But these three months are so different than any three months I've spent elsewhere. I didn't pull my savings to get on a plane and step off into a whole new, foreign world, praying everything would work out. If I put my six other trips to Uganda together, I've already spent four months here since 2019. I have co-workers, "usual" stomping grounds, a purpose and a paycheck. The biggest change (from my past Ugandan trips) is being here alone (now + Kelly), as well as having access to a car. As much as the dream of work-life balance has already crashed and burned, it has been freeing and amazing to be in Jinja on my own terms. My own place, access to transit, freedom to choose what to eat, wear, where to walk, etc... ahhhh. Since my time here has previously been very controlled, that has been super freeing.

Anyway, it's fun to be somewhere longer term that is easy and familiar. Uganda is so dang beautiful, and it's great to work from here rather than a desk job in the States, haha. Still.. there's enough happening behind the scenes here that it will be exciting to return to that desk job in May.

Listening to: gentle breeze, bird song, and the general buzz of cafe javas

Drinking: cappucino

At: Corazones y Esperanza

Drinking: Kinda bad, old brewed coffee, enhanced by Jack Daniels and Coconut Creme

Listening to: Josh Garrels

I wonder what it’s like to just be able to instantly concentrate on something. This whole week has been a mess of distractions. Most frustratingly, I don’t even really have anything to show from my detours. Browsing homes I won’t buy... jobs in cities (and countries) I won’t live in... online shopping for items I don’t need, with money I either don’t have or shouldn’t be spending. 

Where dat ADHD diagnosis when ya need it?

Just hanging at my usual coffee place on M-F... my place of employment.

Car repair - a blessing in disguise. I love working from a coffee shop instead of the office! I also enjoy my co-workers and the office, I’ve just missed the cosy environment of wooden tables, walls of literature and art, the smell of warm pastries being pulled out of the oven, hearts in my latte, and the friendly buzz of stranger’s conversation and filling the room. Of course, I can also be a little more productive without a co-worker cracking a joke, asking a question, or making a comment every ten minutes. :p

Our organization is small - two full-timers, two part-timers, and headed by two “volunteers” (the Executive Director and Chairman of the Board) who only appear once or twice every few weeks. I’ve never worked in such an intimate work environment before and it sure is different than just being one face in a sea of many others! Only four months in and I already have seen all of my co-workers outside of work (going to lunch, happy hour, or even eachother’s houses), met most of their immediate family, traveled across the ocean with half of them (sharing a room... and sometimes a bed), and have even driven one of my co-workers to return her engagement ring to her now ex-fiance. Hahah. Hard to believe it was only a few months ago I still hadn’t accepted their Facebook friend requests because I didn’t want to mix my work with my personal life. >,< 

Ah well, what a blessing to be able to have co-workers that I enjoy and that I can really get to know and invest in! Diane started having us do weekly devotions, and it’s been really nice to be able to pray together over some of the things that are concerning us about the kids, our partners, or just our lives in general. ...We also have a fridge that’s always stocked with beer, and a cabinet for hard liquor, so that’s also a new component to my work environment that I’m kind of loving (usually just after hours or during evening meetings), haha. 

Drinking: Mocha

Listening to: Brene Brown on Boundaries

At: Stone Spiral Coffee Shop

Drinking: Donut Shop, Coconut Mocha

Listening to: Kelly’s Praise Pandora

At: HH4U

I know, I know, it’s been awhile. About a year, from the looks of things (although I did just go and post a few posts that had been saved as drafts, ranging from 2013-2018, ha), and with very few substantial updates inbetween. 

Life has been ZANY. I don’t know if I have ever posted about Greece, but I’ve spent about 6 months there over the past three years. (Now, since I’ve decided not to go back this year.. I, of course, have suddenly found myself thinking about it again.) I finaaaallly finished my degree this summer and graduated magna cum laude with a degree in Social Work, minor in Psychology, and certificate in Trauma Studies. I had hoped/still hope to get my masters, but that’s been somewhat disrupted by landing something along the lines of a dream job. What dream job, you may ask? Oh, I now oversee the programs and projects at a small non-profit that works in Africa, and I get PAID to go there 2-3 times a year! Yep, I get paid to travel across the world and ensure adorable kiddos are able to get a quality education so that they can become thriving, successful world changers. I am B-L-E-S-S-E-D!! A1:8 is up and running as well as when it first started, Cates House has stable and loving roommates for the first time in awhile (we have been through some intense, sometimes life-threatening situations since 2017), the family house is gone forever (after many dollars, some labor, and eventually a foreclosure), all but one of my Grandparents passed away, I visited all the states in the continental USA, have gotten to see my family pretty frequently, and.. I don’t know.. just, overall, have been really busy, but really blessed. I’m thankful, so thankful, for my life and everything in it. I have everything I could need. OH, including health insurance, for the first time in my whole life! What a concept. Ha. Anyway, I’ll try to check in more frequently, but it may mostly be checking in from office-coffee land. :p <3

“Waking alone At the hour when we are Trembling with tenderness Lips that would kiss Form prayers to broken stone”

I had a disorienting dream last night. I was with Shep, but there was the sense was that, though together, we hadn’t truly seen one another in a long time. 

He had me wrapped in his arms and he started singing, so gently and sweetly. His words were validating and kind, the things that I had probably desperately wanted to hear from him for a long time. But I could only stare into the distance, hiding my face from his, as tears silently escaped my eyes and ran down my face. He was sweet and blissful, lost in the moment, and I couldn’t bring myself to turn my face towards his, to show him my tears, to reveal just how much his words, his touch, and that moment meant to me. Stuck somewhere between feeling so reassured and comforted, yet so alone, so distant. Feeling the promise of his words while recognizing that the pain of the past year had created invisible barriers that were too well fortified to be removed by any one moment of tenderness. Still, I couldn’t escape the beauty and the love that covered me, telling me that, maybe, everything would be alright.

I woke up then, slowly, warmly. I felt happy, for a moment, like the healing aspects of the experience transcended my dream and was resting on me. But it was replaced with something closer to sadness, closer to loneliness. I guess that shouldn’t be surprising, given that I went from the warm embrace of the one that I love to being alone in my bed, knowing that was a beautiful moment that was far from my current reality. It felt like a weird reminder, that woke the craving for something more.

Maybe worse, It awoke a feeling that I haven’t felt for a long time. A warmth that had been missing for so long that I had forgotten my room was even cold to begin with. 

Hello, Minnesota!

Love, love, sweet love. This state has been such a delight; a beauty to behold and nothing short of refreshing and inspiring. :) I’m currently melting in appreciation of the diversity of Minneapolis, especially after spending the past week at L’Abri in Rochester - the sweetest of honey to my lips. 

I first heard of L’Abri when I was working at the Shelter in Amsterdam. It seemed everyone had some connection to this mysterious land of community and growth, especially the European staffers. This makes sense, given that many people who come to the Shelter are driven by a craving to be part of a Christian community and L’Abri exists as a place where questions can be explored, relationships deepened, and growth capitalised. Although I haven’t heard much about L’Abri since, it crosses my mind every year or so as something I’d be interested in being part of. As I looked for more reasons to justify my four-day gig in Minneapolis (it’s cool to work in a new city and all, but when it takes 8 hours to get there and you have to pay for food/housing, it’s not exactly lucrative), I suddenly remembered that L’Abri had a few U.S. branches and decided to see if any of them happened to be nearby. I was thrilled to see that there was a Rochester location which was actually on my way to Minneapolis. 

I arrived late on Sunday, and the creepiness of the drive wasn’t lessened by the creaky, eerie old house that would be my home for the week, nor the tall, serious looking girl who greeted me in the darkness outside of the home. Of course, the girl/woman ended up being nothing but kind, gentle, and resourceful and the house was much less creepy in the daylight. There were only five of us - two workers, one volunteer, the director and myself - when I arrived, which made for a very intimate experience. All meals were made and shared together and the days themselves were split up into times of reading and studying or working around the property. I loved working with my hands, the cooler weather, the deer, and just being so engaged in the beautiful nature around me. Studying seemed like a lot at times, but raised some good questions within me. Something that really struck me while I was there was the tension between regression and progression. 

There are so many things that I learned when I was young that I have since distanced myself from, generally conservative thoughts that I now find to be backwards and against the love of Christ I have learned from reading the Bible. L’Abri, though promising to be a place where thoughts are openly explored and you can grow closer to truth, God, and others, features many of the conservative authors and lecturists that were praised by my very biased, one-sided teachers in Highschool. I know that a lot of truth was taught to me when I was younger, but I also know that a lot of it was kiiiiiind of crazy and just legalistic, American conservative culture being preached as biblical. Things against society helping the poor (that’s strictly the churches role), multiculturalism (wrong because that blending will surely lure Christians away from the truth), going to college (a place that Marxists had overtaken), and anything outside of a six day creation (because how else could the rest of the Bible possibly be true, if the creation story was, well, just a story or metaphor?). Being at L’Abri, a place I respected but was also a bit wary of (due to the semi conservative nature), emphasized my desire to find a peace and a balance in that tension of what I learned growing up vs what I’ve seen since highschool. Would some of the content be things that I WOULD agree with, should I take a deeper look at it? 

...Okay, I need to head to work, but I will hopefully continue this later. Other key points: Minneapolis is beautifully diverse and a mecca of NGO’s and hipster cafes. 

At: Spyhouse Coffee

Drinking: Ethiopian Pour Over

Listening to: Bloc Party

Messy like

a shawl that doesn’t fit

slides off your shoulder

showing your straps

Messy like

hair that doesn’t stay up without

a blue tie

and some black bars

but still shows your roots

My life feels like I look - messy, unintentional - like a garment that’s too big and slides off the places it’s meant to protect.

There’s a weird thing that happens when the unexpected strikes, when the protection falls away.

Part of me thinks, hey, we’ve been here before - we’ve been here so many times before. Things like this don’t rip us apart. We strengthen. We come together. We support eachother in ways we haven’t months before. Resilience at its finest. We know what matters - each other - and we are still all alive and healthy - so this is small plaly, no matter how big it feels.

But then there’s the other part of me that’s kind of in denial, kind of freaking out when I realize. There’s SO MUCH TO DO. We don’t even know where to start. How can we do this much, now, right now? What about her work? What about being spread across states? What about the things that are suddenly my responsiblity which have not been before? That’s just the now - I definitely can’t think too much about the future implications.

So many unknowns. I don’t know whether to be (shamed and) proud and quiet - adding this to that blanket of secrets that we love to allow only our family to cuddle under, or laughing, open and humble with a nod towards the, right, of course, yeah, this would happen, well we’ve got this, right, but maybe we need some help?

Anyway. I shouldn’t even be here right now. I came to work on Arabic, but of course I just feel something between anxious and motivated, and will probably leave as soon as I finish my drink.

Iced coffee

Foam

Because sometimes when I don’t have money for coffee/going out, I end up eating sandwiches on the floor of my living room rather than at cool coffee shops, drinking bottomless cups to my hearts content. Lyfe, man, I tell ya.

Actually not where I am right now, just couldn’t load my camera. This is in a bathroom in Guadalajara. 

This week has been kind of crazy. 

It was like a movie, watching them in the backseat. His eyes, so intense, never leaving her - even though her eyes were closed, her face barely visible behind her hair as she collapsed on to a sleeping Emi’s carseat. I didn’t see the bruises until the next day. I don’t know how I had missed them, but I guess it was dark..

Off work early, staying a little longer to listen to stories, drink coffee.

Awkward smile for my first photo on a new macbook! yaaaay!

So I made a video because I just don´t have time to type much right now, but... There is... no sound. I found that out a little late. Ahahaha. So I hope you enjoy trying to interpret my life via hand gestures!!

Dominican Joe’s, because finals don’t care if it’s the weekend and you’re in a ridiculously awesome new city.

Oh hay. Just trying out the Austin coffee scene. 

I can't really place why I feel this way, why I want the things I want, or doubt the good that's here. But I really, really am not enjoying it and would appreciate if it would go very, very far away.