What is a Honeymoon Anyway?

I have been in South Africa for 10 weeks now… I wouldn’t change any part of my time here thus far! Well, there are a few mistakes that I made that would be great to redo and I will get a chance to do that! =) I know that there is grace in mistakes and that I can learn from my mistakes, so even those are a gift and I do get to redo them when I learn from my mistakes and apply what I learned the next time! Such redemption!!!

I would be lying if I said it has been a walk in the park… Truly, though, the Faithfulness of Jesus and His goodness has overshadowed every challenging thing that has come my way! I have heard several times, “Enjoy this time right now, it is your honeymoon!” or “You are just in your honeymoon phase!” My question is what is a honeymoon? I know what Hollywood says… That it is all roses and rainbows filled with walks on a sandy beach, happiness galore and incredible places to dine! 

As nice is that sounds, that surely isn’t my definition of a honeymoon! Those things can most definitely be included in a honeymoon and I know incredible moments and times will happen, but what about awkward silences or talking over each other, even interrupting each other in the midst of dialogue or stepping on each others toes literally as you learn to dance together? Or what about the first moment you realize that the way you wanted to spend your honeymoon with no plan and the other person desperately wants to plan out every moment of the day or the moment that you want to relax and be served for dinner and the other wants you to cook a meal (expectations) and that leads to your first conflict…

This is ALL possible indeed! And there was a time in my life that the latter stuff would have terrified me, conflict used to terrify me, but now, I see it is a gift, arguing isn’t the point, but a conflict is an opportunity and invitation to grow! In the midst of conflict, we have an opportunity to seek understanding acknowledging differences rather than pursuing right or wrong! We also can learn how to love and celebrate our differences as a beautiful thing, including many other gifts such as laying down your preference for another, compromising for the greater good or agreeing to disagree and being okay with that!

So, again, I ask, what is a honeymoon to you? Maybe I should ask people when they tell me that I am in my honeymoon season and to enjoy it, what are they actually trying to say? I know that we as humans are guilty of idealizing things so easily and the media/Hollywood are for sure apart of the problem, but I have seen too many struggles that people have and I myself have had to idealize that me stepping into the next steps of my destiny was going to be pristine and beautiful without any blemish or thorns!! It would be like me seeing the rose in front of me without its thorns or seeing the rainbow without having the downpour of rain! Don’t get me wrong, I am totally guilty at moments of this thinking, but I am telling you, it is not true and we don’t have to be blindsided or worry when struggles or difficulties come! It is a FULL package and the rose is beautiful with the thorns! He wants to meet us in our struggle when the thorns of life come or the rain that feels like we are about to be washed away. The Father isn’t worried, pacing the floor or biting His nails when mistakes or messy things happen or we caused messy things to ourselves and others, however, He is waiting to see if we will turn our gaze towards Him!

Surely, there is a glimmer in the New, it is AWESOME here and I see the beauty in the people I meet, the staff I get to work alongside and the beautiful children that I get to hold and interact with here! I also see the challenges and the imperfections both in myself and others, but I choose not to focus on that! I know there is mundane in life and that it will be my job to steward the beauty in the mundane even when I don’t see or feel changes are happening. Of course the mundane moments will come, but if I can STAY the course and pursue the One that is worthy and gaze into His face, He will continue to reveal the beauty that He made ALL around me in the faces I see, in the nature and animals that He created, in the sunrises and sunsets that He paints daily for my enjoyment!! It is actually difficult for me to NOT see the Newness of Him each day as I look around me!

Since I have been here, many things have happened! It has been a fight with my physical body pretty much non-stop! In fact, the first two months here, I had just as many sleepless nights as nights I slept, due to adrenalin excitement when I first got here and then intense pain that would wake me up and keep me awake in the night! I am sleeping now through the night, Hallelujah! =) As most of you know, I had more than a month straight of pain from my appendix, I was hospitalized for 3 nights nearly facing surgery to get my appendix removed, thank the Lord that I was healed and didn’t have to have surgery! I spent days, even weeks where a good part or all of my day was spent in bed with minimal social outlets (if you know me, you know that that is hard!!). I have had several bouts of diarrhea including food poisoning recently. About 3 weeks before I arrived in early August, my lower back was so bad that I couldn’t walk, I have had back pain on and off and am still dealing with that, it seems that I have a pinched nerve and currently, it sends shooting pains down my right leg when I move it in a funky way or ride in a bumpy road or even sometimes when I am walking. I KNOW I AM HEALED, IT WAS FINISHED ON THE CROSS!! There is no doubt in my mind about that, I know there is a little enemy who wants me to be discouraged, but I know the Victor, Jesus and His spirit lives inside of me! I also am living with 3 roommates, who are amazing and lovely, we are learning how to live life together intimately and certainly run into our own bumps as we are still getting to know each other and what it looks like to Love each other best in intimate community! Also, I found out a week ago by reading my brother’s post on FaceBook that my 93 year-old grandpa passed away! Only now am I beginning to grieve the fact that a loved one is gone and I am across the world without my family and pondering the preciousness of each of our lives and am reminded of beholding the beauty of each breathe and moment we have!

I don’t say any of this for a pity party, I am Blessed beyond belief and I have the JOY of the Lord and it IS indeed my strength! This is my honeymoon and it has been an incredible journey! I could tell you WAY more testimonies of His goodness than my list of challenges since I have been here, it is overwhelming what He has done in 10 weeks! Seriously, I couldn’t have orchestrated it if I tried! I have so many beautiful relationships, I truly feel at home here and that I have a family that I am apart of! Some of the girls in our family are struggling and I have gotten to build relationships with them and pour out His love and connect to them in unique ways and allow them to just talk and feel heard and understood!

He has opened the door for me to go to the hospital (a desire that was on my heart for several years now) and pray for people and bring some of our older girls and watch them love on the next generation as they hold little babies! It melts my heart each week we go to see the girls love on them!
The Lord has provided the financing for a car (through a generous family that said YES to Him) and He provided the perfect car, which I didn’t even go looking for!! This allows me much more freedom as we live in a rural area where a car is necessary to engage in the greater community. The testimonies go on and on…

There is nothing more Amazing than doing what you were made to do and at the moment, I know that I am walking out what I was called to do! I LOVE my life, even the challenges and hard days have given me profound gifts! This is only the honeymoon of what is yet to come and I am expectant for more! A honeymoon is just the beginning of a journey, it is a starting point with beautiful Newness and toes being stepped on as you don’t know what you don’t know when you begin the New; it will be filled with excitement and mistakes, all of this is beautiful and is part of journey!!

A Day in My Life...

One of the interesting and exciting things about living in South Africa is we are Blessed with many resources and it feels first world at times! However, at any point, you never know when it will feel and turn 3rd world. South Africa is this amazing place that has some infrastructure especially in the cities and yet, you may encounter a very 3rd world feeling within the cities and often, the minute you go rural, it feels like you are in 3rd world Africa (like we imagine and see on the TV), lots of red dirt and many people living in tiny tiny house with or without roofs and people lacking food and sleeping on the ground.

I know many of you might wonder what my days look like, it is very difficult to say as everyday looks totally different, so I thought I would give you the play by play of one of my days here. Sunrise is about 5:30 in the morning, I often wake up between 5-6ish. I love to read my Bible, pray in the morning, sometimes listen to music, then make tea and eat breakfast. This particular day, I had some admin work to do on the business plan for the upcoming year. So, I went to the admin office to work on that. Then, a social worker showed up to do his monthly check in and review our files on the kids and make sure things are up to snuff. So, I got trained on what that looks like, he basically asks the same questions each month and makes sure he is up to date!

After he left, Teisa, my base director and I decided to head to a nice cafe to do our admin work while enjoying a smoothie, so that is what we did! We thought we would spend a couple hours there. However after an hour I got a message that a boy, let's call him, Peter, a 16 year old, who has been very sick at the hospital was released. I had visited him and prayed with him a couple times at the hospital. So, we agreed to pick Peter up, this was at 11 in the morning. No problem,  so we leave right away and head to the hospital. When we get there, we find out that he is at the hospital pharmacy getting his medicine. He was in a line for who knows how long, it is a public hospital, so it is free, but that means that they can wait up to 6 hours to get their medicine. After he gets his medicine, he must go back to his hospital room to get discharge papers and more specifics on after care. Clearly, we didn't need to rush to the hospital, but we were thinking in our western mindset. So, I gave him my phone number and told him to call me when he was ready and that I would come and get him.

Teisa and I then headed to her house to relieve her babysitter for her daughter, we then went to town to do a few errands buying stuff for our base and to get a few things to welcome back a missionary that had been gone for a month! =) I also picked up some snacks and a requested favorite food for Peter. It was then that I got the call that he was ready to be picked up around 2 pm. Teisa dropped me off so I could get the truck to pick him up. It was then that my pain started as the whole appendix thing was still bothering me. At this moment, I haven't had pain for 2 days, but it has been quite a month of dealing with my appendix and pain! I was ready to lay down for a rest! So, we prayed for GRACE and I went on my way to pick him up.

Oh, I was supposed to start something new this afternoon called "Music and Movement" with our children, incorporating singing, dancing and just a fun time to move your body. However, this will now start next week since this important matter came up of picking up Peter at the hospital.

When I got there, it was about 3:15 pm, the nurse went through his medicine with me, he literally had 7 kinds of medicine, keep in mind he is very sick and looks incredibly skinny and really is in no place to be tracking all this stuff! He lives with his granny and 5 siblings, they sleep on the floor in their little place. The medicine was overwhelming, some twice a day, some once a day, some with food and another must be before food! So, I began to draw pictures on each of the medicines to help him keep track of it all. I was ready to take him home and he just sat in the hospital room (there are 4 other men in the hospital room as well), one guy was naked, I didn't mean to look as I didn't know he was naked!! Oops! Anyway, Peter just sat there. When I asked if we should go, he said, no, my granny is coming. I was confused as he knew I would take him home. I asked more questions and he said he doesn't have pants and has to wait for his granny to bring pants. I was sure that he could just wear his hospital scrubs and then I could bring them back. So, I went and asked the nurse if I could take him home and bring back the pants. She said, no, the security at the gate will not allow us to leave if he has the pants on.

Sooooo... we wait for his granny to bring him pants. While waiting, I am messaging our team that have been praying for him and visiting him in the hospital keeping them up to date on the discharge, the meds he has to take, etc... We are also arranging to bring mattresses to his house, so Peter and the children will not have to sleep on the floor. We don't know if there will be room for them or not though. We sit outside enjoying the fresh air, we chat a bit, I give him some snacks and the food I brought him. Peter's native tongue is South African Saswati, this language comes out of Swaziland, but also mixes Africaans (kinds of close to Dutch) words as well. He speaks some English, I have to speak slowly and very simple English. Over the next few hours, Peter calls her several times and she says she is looking for a car, so I wait with him at the hospital. His granny arrives around dusk, it is about 5:40 pm. She thanks me several times, so happy and thankful that I was with him, she hugs me at least 3 times as well. It was great to meet her, I confirm that I will visit them soon and then I drive home.

I was thankful to have grace for this extended adventure. Needless to say, I was exhausted when I got home, I ate a snack and greeted my roommate who just returned from a month away. Then at 7 pm we had worship night outside in the prayer hut! So, I headed down for an incredible evening of singing, dancing and laying down soaking in His presence. That concludes one of my days here, which was last Wednesday, September 30th.