This “Mom and Dad Date” is a ZINGAAAAA, y’all. We’re going to the other side of this nation, to a city very different from the one we now call home. We are going because God has asked us to come see, explore and pray there as we prepare for a church.

Last week, Lifa tucked himself away with a box of Legos and a vision. Throaty engine revs, constructive schemings, and the occasional worship song resounded from the other side of his bedroom door. Important stuff was happening in there. When I went in to check on him, Lifa roared, “I’M MAKING A MACHINE!” He looked on his creation with pride, oohed and ahhed a little, and then declared, “It is so cool, and it does stuff."

A miracle is something that happens in this world but doesn’t follow the rules of this world. We are bound with all kinds of rules like gravity, time, space, probability and logic. A miracle reminds us there’s something more and Some One bigger and better than that. We want to be a miracle family. No, scratch that… We are a miracle family.

A baby sits unattended, in the furthest corner of the yard, and cries. She’s had a fever for days, and her mother just cannot handle the sound anymore. She puts baby as far out of ear’s reach as her small plot would allow. There’s a free clinic less than a mile away...

Let me set the scene for you: 

We were baking inside of a broken car on the side of a road in notoriously un-safe South Africa. With no cars left in our family. I hadn’t been able to sleep the night before. I was existing on nothing but prayers and crazy. It was 1:00pm, and I hadn’t eaten anything all day. Lifa only had 1 of his 4 giant meals that day. We had no water. And did I mention the sweat? I don’t mean a forehead glisten… I mean armpit fountains and vertebrae rivers. A ROADSIDE SWEATBOX. Oh, and we had just said goodbye to our beloved Defender.

Nokthula beamed. A beautiful beaming smile from a mother living in two tiny rooms with her 4 kids and another teenage girl she just took in. A mother dealing with a family in conflict, an injured child, and burdened with mental health concerns for another child. She beamed. Nokthula tells me, “I can teach the Bible with anything. Look for anything you see, and I can teach you.”

Lifa is eight. He cannot possibly eat enough rice and beans, tuna fish or corn on the cob to keep up with the rate his legs are growing. He wears capes and plays with his puppy. He’s learning how to throw a frisbee with Chris and lives for Saturday mornings, when he’s allowed to sprawl out on the couch with a cup of tea and Tom and Jerry. He eats dinner INCREDIBLY slow because he loves having the family sit at the table, and, sometimes, he falls asleep between bites. He is thriving and so full of joy that we often catch him happy-dancing by himself when he thinks no one is looking. Lifa is perfectly eight.

“It’s a little bit embarrassing because my mom is white, and I’m normal.”

Ok. Good starting point. Control your face, Kacy. Focus on the road. “Lifa, what does normal mean?”

You can LOVE swimming, but never take a swim lesson or be taken to the water. You have to see the water, and then you have to dive in. You can’t be held responsible for what you’ve never seen and never known. But we are held responsible for what we don’t show, don’t do, and for our tiptoeing around other people’s values as to not cause a ripple or make a wave in life as we know it.

“This is our house. I think God just showed me that.” We just got married. We just moved into the perfect newlywed home – safe, secure, within our means, and just the right size to learn how to be a family. Our small home was perfect for our small family. But what about God's Family - the One we were made in the image of?

Your words shape your world, your values, who you are, how you love. Every relationship that truly reaches you develops it’s own lexicon that characterizes it, impacts your story, hems you into it, and sets it apart from all the others in the word. Moment by moment and laugh by laugh, we are creating our own household vocabulary because we want the legacy we leave as a family to be definable and worth talking about.

I sat in the loudest, most chaotic “library” I’ve ever been in, and leaned in close to talk with a teacher who is not actually a teacher. He thought it would be nice to try teaching, and the need is great, so he was placed in a classroom of 63 third graders. The teacher doesn’t always make it to class, but when he does, he doesn’t know what to do. He’s not even sure about all the subjects.

It was February 3, 2015, and I had just returned from a week out of town. Chris, the nice and neutral Tennessee man, whom I had bonded with about life in South Africa and come to respect on a deep level, wanted “to talk”. No, it did not play out like the romantic movie scene currently playing in your mind. And the only soundtrack was a 7-year old wild child, bouncing around in his underwear.

Dirty, desolate Benji has probably never had a smiling mama to wash away the dirt or to sing away the desolation. He lives with relatives, but he has no parents. He shares a living space inside a culture that feels no obligation to reach for you, touch you or sing over you if you are not their own. No matter how many baths he takes or how many people are around him, without being seen, reached for, touched, he will always be dirty, desolate Benji.

I found her homeless, lost and scared in the aftermath of Hurricane Ike on Galveston Island in 2008. Ms. Armstead was 87-years old and the evidence of her long life had been washed, tossed and left for debris in one night’s windstorm. I met Ms. Armstead in a hot, humid, roach-infested hotel room, and she couldn’t find her son.

Twice upon a time, in two faraway lands,

Two strangers moved to Africa, only bags and passports in their hands.

She packed her boots and told Texas goodbye,

She only bought a one-way ticket and didn’t know why...

Six years ago, I had no idea that you could use buckets for everything. Bath-taking, food-serving, dish-washing, house-cleaning, rat-trapping, water balloon-storing, laundry-doing, foot-washing, and even an indoor, night-toilet when life so calls for one. Disclaimer: NOT the same bucket for everything. Let’s not be gross. Four years ago, I watched malnourished, 2-year-old legs walk too far to get a plate of food his body just couldn’t take in. Pre-school aged family members showed him how to dip his fistful of food in his juice to soak the food so it would slide right through his revolting throat.