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We see how God has always been working in our stories as we tell them. Our prayer for you is that you start finding Him in your stories too.
🙌It's the Friday Call to Worship!🙌
I still recall the inflection of my husband-to-be’s voice in 2015, when he told me God gave him a specific amount to budget for our housing. The amount seemed outlandish and irrelevant. Even the largest home in our rural town in Mpumalanga, South Africa rented for half of that. Yet we knew we stood in a sacred moment. The Lord was preparing a way we couldn’t see yet. I nodded, “Ok. Let’s do it.”
We moved to Cape Town two years later. Our first month’s rent was the exact outlandish amount my husband heard from God. Ten years later, the economy has changed dramatically in Cape Town. We’ve moved again and again as landlords in financial strain put their properties on the market. That seemingly outlandish amount God spoke became too low a long time ago.
We Survived the Move!
I have to say, there were more than a few times we realized we were in over our heads. But, here we are. Our 10th home in 11 years of marriage. And we’ve already started enjoying new sunset views, new rhythms, and a new pace of life. Here’s a video of our first week.
🙌It's the Friday Call to Worship!🙌
I am surrounded by piles of boxes as I write. My family is moving in three days - just 20 minutes up the freeway to reduce our cost of living. We are leaving the house where our church was born, and where our sons learned to walk, swim and shave. I’ve been asked more than once if I felt emotional about it, but I am surprisingly unattached to these walls that have witnessed so much wonder.
I think God has used hard seasons of life to give me the gift of uprootedness
Birthday Reflections
And that’s a wrap on 41… What a year.
I’ve been weathered, made wiser, and found possibilities and limitations I never knew existed. More than anything, I saw God in ways I never had... ways I’d never needed to before this year.
Pizza with Wyatt
Nothing takes you down the road to regret faster than inviting a 4-year old into your kitchen counter to make pizza dough.
The Trick Shot
Hello Dude Perfect!
I'm sending a SEEMINGLY unimpressive "Trick Shot" video you inspired for two reasons:
1. I made a promise to a 7-year old.
2. I'm wiling to bet even my small testimony matters.
🙌It's the Friday Call to Worship!🙌
I've been praying specifically for "the joy of the Lord" for our family this week. Our autistic son is in a kind of burnout I never knew a child could experience. He is home with me full time and has almost no ability to access to himself, relationships, or any measure of delight. Paradoxically, our household feels like we're walking on eggshells AND our legs have been cut off at the knees.
Since interceding for joy, the meltdowns and heartbreaking moments still happen... But joy entered too. Joy that felt foreign. Joy that didn't match, didn't fit, and didn't "fix"anything either. Honestly, it gave me false hope at first. Maybe this would end soon. Maybe the intensity would let up a little. But that's not it.
The joy of the Lord isn't the absence of hardship. It's the nearness of Christ.
🙌It's the Friday Call to Worship!🙌
I clocked a new level of “frazzled” this week. I couldn’t even tolerate a worship song playing in the background of my overstimulating life. Surprising even to myself, I responded by burying myself in stories. The memoir of an admirable Christian leader played in my headphones while I folded towels and mashed potatoes. I read the journal entries of a 19th-century woman’s journey toward God when I would normally turn to social media. Internalizing the way others told their stories quieted my own story just enough to give me a small measure of perspective.
The day after Father’s Day
I didn’t take a single Father’s Day photo or do a gushy post, although he’s so gush-worthy. BUT a friend recently resurfaced this old beauty and it deserves a place here.
2015. Lifa was seven and hardly had any teeth that whole year.
This was before we were married, before he ever called him Dad. We had no idea what God was doing, but we all knew He was in the center of it. Family began in a usual way, an out of the ordinary order for us. But I wouldn’t trade it for the world.
🙌It's the Friday Call to Worship!🙌
I’ve been a self-taught weightlifter for ten years. I purchased a secondhand set of adjustable dumbbells a few years ago when caring for a very young child and one with extra needs made it harder to get to the gym. Those dumbbells finally broke beyond repair last year, so I joined an Olympic weightlifting gym. I had never learned the Olympic lifts but quickly fell in love with the sport. I decided to go all in and even got a pair of lifting shoes for Christmas. I could feel strength building in my entire body and see the evidence of muscle definition. Gaining strength has always been a way for me to honor God with the body He’s entrusted me with.
I was excited to get back to the gym after our recent trip to America. My son with a nervous system disability has gone into a state of burnout, however, and I am currently his 24 hour co-regulator.
Celebrating Chris
Like Wyatt says, “When you turn 43, you don’t get taller. But you do get better.”
Baking with Wyatt
Welcome to Baking with Wyatt… where you just never know what’s gonna happen in the kitchen.
Around the World in 60 Seconds
We are HOME! I don’t think it’s ever felt so good to be home. Eight weeks of international travel. Over 30 hours to get home on the last leg. We did it! The boys did great! Happy brothers!
When Motherhood Hits Different
I called her… actually I think I just texted her… at the end of February and told her I had to come to America with the kids. She didn’t skip a beat. She just asked when she should fly in to help. She’s been ALL over the place with us over the last two months, sacrificing more than even I can understand. And she’s really seen the underbelly of special needs parenting.
But she’s never stopped being my mom first. In our worst of times on this trip, when I need the most help, the kids won’t let anyone but me near. So my mom stands back, quietly, longingly, and watches over ME. She gives her whole self, even when she feels stuck on the sidelines.
🙌It’s the Friday Call to Worship!🙌
My youngest sons and I are traveling through America. The boys have loved meeting family and learning their heritage. My 7-year old son has complex special needs, and the travel has been overwhelmingly difficult for him. We have canceled flights, changed plans, and seen less people than we’d like to accommodate.
Last week, we took a long flight from Houston to Los Angeles to submit South African visa applications. The airport, flight, LA traffic, hotel stay, and waiting in a big office was more than my son could handle. My mom was with us, and we’d planned on staying with her from that point. But her home was three hours away. My son just couldn’t. We sat on the floor of a train station in LA, completely exasperated…
Make Sure You Call It A Party
If you ever find yourself sitting on a train station floor, paralyzed by your child’s disability and inability to do the next thing…
Or mentally, emotionally and physically exhausted from multi-tasking rapid decision making, the admin of living abroad, and managing meltdowns on a very small amount of sleep…
Have a party. Whatever kind of party you need it to be. Just make sure you call it a party.
LADDS ON THE MOVE
What we were up to last week. (And why I was so quiet in communication!)
The video says it all…
A Sacred Afternoon
I didn’t know how I could see a lifetime of people I loved while my feet were so briefly on American soil. I was in my hometown, but my kids’ needs trumped my desires for connection, reunion and alllllll the things. A few very dear friends and my cousins helped me put together a dream God put in my heart when I began planning this trip. It only took a few text messages in transit. They orchestrated the details, created an invitation, and made the snacks. People from every chapter of my story gathered in one room, in the church that taught me about the Church, for a couple of sacred hours.
It was too short. It was just right. It was everything
🙌It's the Friday Call to Worship🙌
Yesterday was a “get through it” day. The needs of my 7-year old autistic son, Benjamin, trumped the plans and preferences of everyone else. On those kind of days, I choke back parenting principles to let safety and regulation be the priority.
Wyatt, his 4-year old brother, tried to process the long, hard day at bedtime. With tears streaming on his pillow, he said he didn’t want his brother to have hard days. Wyatt confessed he had disobeyed because his brother was disobeying, and he wanted to have the same kind of day as his brother. Wyatt loves his brother fiercely. He does everything he can to stay in close proximity “to make sure he’s ok” and puts Benjamin’s needs above his own.
Surrounded
My mom, Wyatt, Benjamin and I land in America in one week. I’m sweating (record-breaking heatwave) and scrambling to tick all the boxes for our visa application submission in America. We had a medical clearance appointment with our pediatrician, Dr. Sinclair, this week. Another requirement fulfilled, but it was more. I told my mom, “God has put the most extraordinary people around us here.”
I’ve been far from “home” so long that this is home and nowhere is home. But we are not on our own.