A life less comfortable

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grieving losses at a remote mission hospital

August 23, 2020

"Dear friends, He is not slow in keeping His promises As some understand slowness to be Keep a watch out, don't lose faith, He said, He would come for you He's gonna come for you, you wait and see, just wait and see" ~ Charlie Peacock This song came to me like a serendipitous meeting with an old friend. In 1990 I listened to this song on repeat. I played it on my dad's car cassette player as I drove solo to and from my high school youth group. I got to drive my dad's car more often at that time because he wasn't using it much during the 7 weeks he was in the cancer ICU ward of Baylor Hospital in Dallas, Texas (silver lining!). It was a grievous time in my life as I stared my dad's mortality square in the face. I wrestled with my faith and angrily demanded of God to just fix Dad and let us go on with life already! I was weak and heartsick from seeing needles and chemo bags and a bloated father listless on a narrow hospital bed. My father was 38 and

20/20 C'est fou? C'est flou? C'est clair? Finding clarity...

July 27, 2020

Unfamiliar landmarks unfurled, disjointed and jarring, as we traversed the deeply rutted roads in our boxy blue Nissan Patrol. We had only been in the country for about a week. We were driving in our new-to-us 4x4 following behind new friends when I realized the foreign fog that enveloped everything around us had penetrated within as well - my mind had been infiltrated. I didn't feel like myself. It seemed I had lost even my internal bearings. It was like I had put on someone else's glasses and the prescription was way off. A few years later I was part of a mobil medical caravan with my Gabonese and American friends. Our combo medical/non-medical volunteer team had set up an outreach clinic in an open-air church building just outside of Libreville. My dear friend Leanne was put in charge of doing basic vision tests. That day as I walked by her area I couldn't help but notice Leanne pointing to an eye chart symbol and asking an older Papa in French if the symbol was "f

cracked and broken... extravagant grace in common clay

July 21, 2020

If you do an online search of Kintsugi you will find a definition much like this - "golden joinery" the Japanese art of repairing (mending) broken pottery with lacquer dusted or mixed with powdered gold, silver or platinum. I was reminded of this ancient artform the other day. When I first heard of Kintsugi my mind resonated with a rightness. It was like a tuning rod to my soul. To take something broken and in pieces and artfully put it back together using golden ribbons of lacquer that literally shines with shimmering veins of precious gold which bonds and holds the vessel whole again. It elevates the value and unique beauty of the object. The philosophy of this art of repair is to celebrate the history of brokenness rather than disguising it, or worse yet tossing the broken bits in the garbage bin. My personal philosophy is to celebrate the One who repairs the brokenness.The One that does the ultimate mending. One of my absolute favorite facets of God is the way He Redeems

A nuanced approach might be in order...

July 17, 2020

I've been reminded lately of when I first developed an awareness of tensions between beloved family members when I was growing up. It was destabilizing to my young and idealistic self that just wanted everyone to get along. The dawning realization of the adult world of complicated and nuanced relational dynamics within close family members was sobering. I didn't know who's side to take as I loved those involved so deeply and I felt uncertain and insecure in how to navigate through the altered landscape. It was a landscape of a grief of sorts - a loss of my simplistic understanding that led to a deeper realization of the complicated nuances of relationships. Don't get me wrong there was no massive or unusual rift in the family, it was just typical misunderstandings and personality differences and old wounds that surfaced from time to time at gatherings or, in most cases, in overheard conversations adults were having within my itchy ear-shot. It was destabilizing, none t

to mask or not to mask...

July 10, 2020

In my previous blog I shared my story of being COVID-19 positive. You can read it here if you missed it: https://alacecatherine.blogspot.com/2020/07/covid-19-positive-in-equatorial.html?fbclid=IwAR3-xINEoaE-ggdbHwSKXZ6g9b9MPZkSRkXyRQeqDaRcU9IwaE0C371wf_I So many taken-for-granted personal and collective liberties have been narrowed in the last months - life as we knew it had suddenly and without warning been ripped away like the proverbial rug being pulled out from underneath us. Our day to day has changed, graduations and celebrations have been canceled, families and friends have been distanced and simple things like going to work, going to church, going out to eat and getting a haircut has become headlining news and fodder for aggressively angry online arguments. Friends and families have become divided over ideologies and how to move forward in these dastardly days of division on almost all levels. It's been grievous and jarring. It's left us all reeling and searching for e

COVID 19 positive in the remote equatorial rainforest

July 06, 2020

"... because sometimes we need the space to chew on things before any answer can have real weight. Some truths need to happen to us, like when a child feels the cold ocean waves lapping at her feet for the very first time. Such encounters lift us out of ourselves until the world breaks open, becoming suddenly more wild and wondrous than mere moments before. And premature analysis, no matter how airtight, can empty such occasions of their evocative potency." -Justin Rosolino, from his book "Idiot, Sojourning Soul" I live in an almost mythical place, like a setting in a storybook, it is stunningly beautiful, mind-numbingly mundane in it's same, same everyday and at times also flat-out unpleasant and ugly. The contrasts of light and dark, good and bad are like a furious rainstorm that comes suddenly on a sunny day, a deluge of precipitation that cracks the heat in half and softens the red dirt roads into a myriad of puddles reflecting the sky and trees above

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