The Ladd Family was eager to take another faith leap outside of our comfort zones when we moved to Cape Town with a call to plant and pastor a new church. Although the city is more westernized than anywhere we’ve lived in South Africa before, I have spent the past few months feeling hopelessly out of my element. 

When I picked Lifa up from school on Friday, I told him it was an extra special day for our family. I re-explained guardianship and let him slowly process it, Lifa-style. I explained that nothing really changes for his daily life and asked if he had questions. 

The rest of this post is not written to you. It’s a raw response that shot out of my highly-caffeinated fingers and overcome heart. I think you should read it because one day you might need some hope to hold on to.

We said goodbye to Chris’ parents on Monday after three glorious weeks together. There is such power in three generations gathering around the dinner table. We shared the stories that shaped us and narrated new ones. We watched Lifa take developmental leaps with giggles abounding. His personality sprouted and bloomed in the presence of our family’s root system.

We all have different responses when we encounter brokenness. Lifa’s was to turn to a quiet place inside of himself, clutching self-preservation as a stand-in for peace. Over the years, Lifa has begun to believe that he belongs. He has soaked in the truth that he is valuable, celebrated, and purposefully created.

A few nights ago, he actually got too tired to chew. So he just started swallowing his food in big, loud gulps. In effort to keep him awake, I started telling stories about some of our very first dinners together. I talked about what it was like to teach little Lifa how to chew and swallow his food before we even spoke the same language, and how his body was slow and super-ultra-gross in learning how to digest nutrients. Before our dinners, he had mostly lived on flavourless porridge that slid down his throat without requiring chewing and without delivering any nutrition to his swollen little body.

We love long, quiet mornings in the Ladd house. We love them so much that we get up before 5am every morning to fill our coffee cups, read our Bibles and soak up morning sounds before the rest of the world wakes up. It makes the whole day different. 

Every Friday night, we go to a market in Hout Bay. It’s the highlight of our week! We look forward to seeing the beach, mountains, every type of person you could imagine, stalls filled with artists and their products, a live band, and the most amazing selection of fresh, cheap dinner options. We go early, draw our weekly cash from an ATM, and find a seat before it gets too crowded.

There have been dangerous and difficult times since we said “yes” to God’s call in our lives, many of them better left unspoken. But we have also learned when it’s important to speak, and today is one of those days.

After my first year in South Africa, I visited my family in Texas. I took a walk… No, a stomp down the beach on Galveston Island, spiritually arrested with the choice God had laid before me. He gave me a “Yes or No only” invitation for a very special kind of life and family.

Three sets of folded legs sat in a shaded circle in Cape Town. Three sets of hands plucked blades of grass and doodled with twigs in the dirt, mirroring our internal fidgeting that day. Our family gathered in Chris and Lifa’s favorite Frisbee field to talk to Lifa about what to expect before we took him to visit his biological father.

We don’t know many people in this city yet, and South Africa doesn’t know Thanksgiving. We are our pinching pennies (or rands), and the table is tiny in our current rental house. And all of my placemats and tablecloths are in a storage unit in Johannesburg until February.  This is not the proper recipe for a Hallmark Thanksgiving special. 

Cape Town: It’s enchanting; it’s amazing; it’s a bucket list city.  We didn’t move for the views, the adventure or the charm. We moved to Cape Town to live in Cape Town because we see something more beautiful here than sparkles and fairydust. Before we tackle the day’s life stuff, all three of us sit down with Life Himself, and we pray for this city. We know that Jesus has a big, abundant plan for this bucket list city.

We do our best during dinner table talk to keep Lifa’s father as the hero every dad deserves to be to his son. We do everything we can to stay in close contact, despite the distance, language and culture gaps. Dads are important.

Clark Kent's life has a lot of ordinary moments. So do we.Currently, our ordinary life moments include monkeys in the backyard. 

There are baby monkeys that wrestle and ricochet off each other. And mama monkeys that latch them onto their bellies to calm them down. The most notorious monkey in our backyard crew, however, is the slightly-too-brave one-armed monkey. (We all have our theories on what happened to that arm.) We love watching them fly from treetops to fence tops, stopping only to taunt the neighborhood dogs. Lifa makes up monkey family stories, and has given them their own voices and personalities. 

It may seem outlandish to compare the issues of humanity to a sunset walk on the beach with your husband. But maybe it’s not if we put things into perspective from the proper vantage point.

What if we don’t have to hold the whole world in our hands? What if we just use our hand to hold another?Or if we just give up a sunset for someone else to experience a love beyond what we could create on our own? What if we had fun with someone because they’re worth it?

When she was totally spent and totally out of words, Busi said, “Eish… That cornbread. I’m going to miss that cornbread.” 

“Me too, Busi. I’m going to miss eating cornbread with you. But I’m going to keep making beans and rice and cornbread for Sunday Lunch wherever I am, whoever I’m with. And I’m going to keep having church with that cornbread. You do it too."