A life less comfortable

Aww, so inspiring isn't it?!  People leaping off rocky cliffs into rippling green waters.  There are a few already in, wading and watching.  Get it... wading and watching... waiting and watching...  never mind.  So technically they aren't wading since they are fully immersed but the alliteration is lovely.  The image has some kind of soft sepia muted color filter lending a dreamy quality.  It looks so daring and exciting and inviting.  It calls out to the wild abandon within.  I like it.  However as my blog title indicates, I've taken the leap and been treading water in that murky sea of discomfort for some time now.  My life is less comfortable.  Living as a foreigner is challenging.  Leaping, so to speak, from land to sea is an all-in thing.  There is no turning back mid-jump.  Foreign cultures are a fascinating mystery that unfurls forever .  Foreign language snarls and snags and tries to entangl...

You think you know a guy...  I mean I've been married to the guy for over 20 years.  Then suddenly, while we were getting ready for our walk/run this morning, he walks in the room holding up what look like a pair of spandex bicycle shorts.  They are completely unfamiliar to me.  I assumed it was unclaimed laundry from the basement ( it happens a lot around these parts living with 12 teenagers).  Steve's face is alight with delight as he excitedly exclaims, "Look Honey, it's my old baseball sliding shorts!"  He goes on to show me the pocket in the front to hold the athletic cup.  It's like he's reunited with an old friend.  "Wow" is my only response at this point.  Then I ask, "when did you get those?"  He takes a moment to think back and responds, "When I was 15!"  Wait, what?!  "You've had these 'sliding shorts' since you were 15??"  He responds with, "You never know when you might need sliding shor...

We live behind tall walls.  It is necessary.  We have guards 24/7 and even with these precautions we experienced a break in earlier this year.  We weren't the target of the armed masked bandits but our guards were taken and detained as the bandits feared our guards might hear and intervene during their robbery of the school next door.  So, unfortunately, walls and guards are part of smart security in these parts.  The tendency for me is to stay behind these tall walls except for shopping trips, going to church and other errands.  Our kids walk to school through a gate connecting the two properties.  Steve and I walk/run at the school within the walls.  We can even occasionally catch our kids in PE class when they are on the soccer field.  Funny story... Steve was running yesterday at the school and happened upon Sam.  Steve decided to jokingly pants Sam (Steve only slightly tugged at Sam's shorts and did not truly pants him).  When ...

I have jokingly referred to this year of being dorm parents in Cameroon as THE trip Steve has taken me on to celebrate our 20th wedding anniversary.  And this year is definitely a trip!  As well as truly being a gift.  I want to share just a few of my favorite things about being in Cameroon.  We have come to love the kids at UBAC.  Just last night I was helping some students with their homework when I shocked Sharis.  She had been holding her laptop when I walked by and brushed past her and felt a gentle electrical buzz coming off that brief contact.  So, of course, I convinced her to hold her laptop again to see if a shock could be induced.  By this time Steve had come up and was making contact with me to see if he could feel any current.  In that moment I glanced up and noticed Megan and Amy (studying nearby) watching us quizically, a human chain of weirdos connected to an unbelieving Sharis tentatively holding her laptop.  She was zap...

I've lived in many places: lots of American places, an English place, a French Alps place, a Gabon sea-side place and now a rain forest place.  We live in a large house with 7 bedrooms, a study room and craft room, 6 bathrooms, several screened terraces, a large living/dining room with golden wooded ceilings and a kitchen, bright with light and views to the house next door and forest beyond.  This house is shared by 14 souls (that's pilot talk for people).  14 people from far flung places converging for this year in this place.  Some of us were little more than strangers when we moved in just over 8 weeks ago. UBAC Hostel God has nestled us here in a rainforest filled with wild night sounds.  A chorus of singing crickets and deep-throated croaking toads and hyraxes screaming like banshees slip in through open windows.   Hyrax es are often mistaken for rodents but are actually more closely related to elephants.  It's like somethi...

11 days from today I will board a plane and leave this place.  Gabon has been our home for nearly 5 years.  When we came fresh from language school in the French Alps we were abruptly thrust into a new way of living.  The learning curve was high and we often felt completely overwhelmed and out-muscled.  My new life went ninja-like on me and my leg was more than swept! (mixed metaphors I know)  However, little by little, this new place became the new normal.  We home schooled our kids with a couple of embassy and missionary families, we learned to drive Kamikaze-style, we reset our expectations of what one could do in a certain amount of time, we sweat buckets in the sweltering humid heat, we stumbled our way through speaking french with twisted tongues and hazy understanding.  We placed our kiddos in boarding school a country away.  We started a mission aviation program for the Bongolo Hospital, from scratch, with no previous experience to guide u...

"In the aftermath of an exuberant craft time clean-up by a group of deaf kids being ministered to by some lovely visitors from France my ipod drowned on the kitchen counter, a victim of a mini flash-flood cascading down the kitchen cabinets from the guest house bathroom directly above. The soapy water tinged with "washable" green paint murdered my poor ipod. I'm left with an empty husk of technology, my music silenced and still."  This was my facebook status last night.  As mourned the loss of my music I was struck by the irony of my musical silence being inadvertently brought on by a group of deaf kids.  They have never heard music, any kind of music, and in thinking along those lines I felt overwhelmed by sadness, not at my loss, but by theirs.  The team from France is here to work with the one and only deaf school in all of Gabon.  The kids attending this school represent a mere fraction of the deaf population here in Gabon.   Due to the rolling power c...