A Place to Call Home.

It's September of 2018, and we're wrapping up our third year in Uganda, and third furlough. A lot has happened over the last few years, in our hearts and world. Our annual visits to America grant us with the opportunity to take a step back and process what the years have held, and oh boy, if these years had hands they sure would be full!

I sit here in my old hometown, jotting down the things written on my heart, while Jake takes a quiz for his Master's of Divinity, Jamison and EZ play with borrowed toys, and Aila toddles around nibbling on whatever she just found on the floor (the whole third child stereotype thing is disturbingly real). It was just three short years ago, we were on our first furlough in America. It comes back to me in foggy flashes of chaos and flurries of anxiety after we had spent ten months striving and surviving in Uganda. 

We had six weeks in America. Six wild weeks, packing in about as much food, family, friend time, fun, and fundraising as we could possibly do and the day before we left for home, I was met with a positive pregnancy test. 

That plus sign was an answer to more prayers and petitions than I am able to write... it also happened to come months later than we had hoped, and weeks after we had decided to stop trying. God hijacked my plan and timing for this pregnancy.

We took off for Uganda, only with enough time to panic and twinge, swing by the pharmacy for prenatals, and divulge my positive lines to my friend Denisa after a few pinky-swears of secrecy.  

The morning sickness hit on the plane ride home. I folded into myself, wrapped my oversized sweater around me, and leaned into the Lord. I rested my head back into the seat and looked at Jamison and EZ, who suddenly looked huge in comparison to their tiny seedling of a sibling growing in my womb. I remembered the constant chaos of our first year in Uganda, and then our furlough, and desperately wanted rest. Silent tears rolled down my face as I contemplated how I could mentally and emotionally bear the weight of baring another babe into this storm that swirled around me.

With nausea and sleep at the forefront of my mind, we landed in our adopted country and were embraced by the warm humidity and earthy smells of home.

Home... Home wasn't something I felt I had since before our house sold, nestled in the foothills of California more than a year and a half prior. The strange little house we had moved into, held fragments of our past and was our house for a year, but had never, and would never become our home. It was simply a stepping stone towards it.

Within three weeks of returning to Uganda we moved into a new house and into a new season of life. Our new home allowed us to redefine our boundaries, something we had never established our first year in Uganda. I stepped into this new home with intentionality, with eyes fixated on The Lord, and focused on the minimal things He set in front of me. Our new home became our sanctuary. Our sacred place of worship. With each passing day I could feel the new life that God was breathing into us, while my stomach swelled with the new life He was granting us. This season was a holy one, where we witnessed The Lord restore all that the locusts had eaten. 

Our family bloomed and blossomed like a bulb's first sprouts after a long hard winter. We dug deeper where The Lord had planted us, and grew roots in our community of brothers and sisters who lived each day committed to pursuing Christ, and the calling He placed on them. We found liberty and new passion in our homeschooling rhythm. We reprioritized life, and built new routines, beginning with morning snuggles and bible reading in bed. 

Our family flourished in this new fertile soil. We weathered our fair share of wind, rain, and scorching sun, but still we stood beaming with a beauty that only He could make from our mess. Isn't that just like our God to create masterpieces from mud, winsomeness from wreckage, and wholeness from a million broken hearts? Our God is the God of endless contradiction, defying all the sense of the world and society. What a joy and privilege it is to be recreated, resurrected, and redeemed over and over again by His overwhelming grace and unfailing love.

My pregnancy in Uganda challenged everything I knew about prenatal care and taught me the true meaning of a peace that passes all understanding. Over a nine month stretch we overcame countless hurdles and barriers the enemy put in our way. We severred unhealthy bonds with our own culture and learned to adopt a new one. With each step we took, there was a new mountain to move, but we persevered in reckless pursuit of the promise of freedom. Day after day we would wade into the depths of His Word and away from the bonds of the world, finding great joy in the journey to liberate ourselves from preconceived ideas of faith, safety, and truth. 

After four years of wanting, one year of hoping, nine months of waiting, and 12 hours of labor, every tear, every second, and every prayer was made perfect with the birth of our little Aila Elizabeth. Ā-la: Bringer of Light//From the Strong Place. Our precious babe, didn't feel like a new addition, but like we finally found the piece that had been missing. The promise at the end of our rainbow. With the birth of this baby, and of her new life, we were awakened with the realization that God had birthed new life in us, and that in Him, we had place to call home.

All the trouble of our transition and desperate search for a home washed away the evening our third born took her first breath of air, right there in the sacred space of our bedroom, in the tin roofed house, in her motherland, in the deliverance graciously offered from a faithful God, who really does make all things beautiful, in His time, and not ours....