Day 19 - Joy in the In Between

That phrase makes me roll my eyes sometimes. Joy in the in between. It feels like a quick way to brush off the troubles you are living amidst and force yourself to just "be happy" instead.

But, I think I am missing some of the sentiment of the phrase when I let my jaded heart get in the way.

When I look back at pictures from the days between Jack's second surgery and when his soul left this earth, I do see joy. I see the faces of my family members who came to see him for the first time. Like my grandparents meeting their first great grandchild. My friends coming to swoon over him even with all of his tubes and unable to hold him. I see photos of us with Jack, holding his hand, enjoying every moment we had with him knowing it was a gift, a miracle.

There was pain and sorrow during those days, of course. But essentially joy in the in between is life. We are living right now in the "not yet." We live among pain and sorrow daily (often not as grave in severity) and yet we are to be hopeful. We, as Christians, hope and wait expectantly for the day we go home to be with Jesus for eternity. We are given mercy and grace and joy along the way. The bible is flooded with verses about waiting on the Lord, God meeting people in the waiting - in the in between.

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Day 32 - How grief changed me

I obviously missed quite a few days - I took about 2 weeks off - turns out blogging about heavy stuff is draining and I probably bit off more than I could chew by aiming to do 35 posts. I have been reflecting on how grief has changed me over the last two years. In many ways, I am not the same person I was when 2021 began. Grief has changed my thought life, my friendships, my work. First - My world got tiny. I often felt myself looking inward (at my usually crappy situation) and feeling a lot of pity, sadness, anger and occasional shame. In those seasons, it’s so hard for me to be an engaged friend. Essentially grief has made me selfish. When you are going through so much stuff, you don’t have capacity to extend yourself to be there for your people. There’s nothing wrong with that - that’s the reality of grief: other people are checking on you for a long time - for good reason. But that’s hard for me- I wasn’t built to be needy, to mope or even be able to answer “...

Settling

Last Monday, Jan 21, we left Kampala around 9am and headed west to Bundibugyo. At this point, all we had seen of Uganda was Kampala (lots and lots of cars and bodas) and a short ride of forest/open areas between Kampala and Entebbe (which we drove on the new bypass road and that felt like we were on an American Highway for a hot second!). So getting out of such a densely populated area sort of felt like leaving Harrisonburg on the Friday after JMU finished for thankgiving break - awful traffic getting on 81 and then finally you get to a point on the highway where there are very few cars around and you can breathe again! The view was breath taking - rolling hills of banana trees or eucalyptus or cassava. Of course the occasional matatu (taxi van with 20+ passengers and way too much luggage on top) or boda would pass by....or we would pass a herd of cattle. But overall, it was an open road. We got to Bundi on Monday evening, greeted by the Carrigan kids (another family on the mission...

Arrival

We arrived on Saturday evening, the 12th. All but one bag made it to Entebbe (five out of six is pretty good) and the last bag arrived a few days later via boda boda (motorcycle). It was dark when we flew in so we did not get to see much of anything (besides the loud clubs and street vendors) until we woke up on Sunday morning and the view was beautiful! Actually we were up at 4am (jet lag) but when the sun came up it was quite peaceful. It was a cool morning, we ate breakfast at our guest house and sat on the porch and watched birds - so peaceful! We have spent this week in Kampala and two nights in Entebbe, getting adjusted to the time difference, visiting places we will come back to during our resupply trips, and having time to do some culture and Serge orientation before we get to Bundibugyo. Guest House #1 - Adonai House Guest House #2 - Guinea Fowl Dinner at Faze 3 overlooking Lake Victoria - where we celebrated Malac...

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