I’m tired of having to choose what to do with my limited resources. I’m spending a lot of time cleaning and fixing things, because it’s satisfying and doesn’t require me to be very creative.
A hole mended, a hinge repaired, a pile of crumbs vacuumed, does not a blog post make. I didn’t even realize I hadn’t posted for all of February until the month was over.
A few years ago, I wrote a post about a high school classmate of mine and what our friendship had meant to me.
This fall, that classmate passed away.
He wasn’t the first of my graduating class to cross over, but he was the first that I knew well enough to feel the loss.
He had married outside of our friend circle and most of us didn’t hear about the ceremony that was held in his honor until after it had taken place. Grief circled around me with no place to land.
Just wait.
Your teenagers will make you laugh. Sometimes it will be because they were trying to be funny, and sometimes not. You’ll typically know the difference, which will make it even better.
They’ll introduce you to music you didn’t know existed. You’ll hate some of it, but sometimes, you’ll listen to the playlist they made on your phone even when they’re not around. Sometimes they’ll even surprise you by knowing one of “your” songs.
They’ll impress you with their perceptiveness. They’ll observe things about themselves, and you, your family culture, and the world, that will make you stop and think, or laugh in recognition.
A safari truck came to pick us up on a Sunday morning from our lodgings – I don’t want to call it a hotel, but it also kind of was. Called Ndaza Escape, it’s located in Kinigi, Rwanda. It had three rooms and was really nice.
The safari truck driver took us to the welcome center at the foot of Mount Bisoke where we’d meet our guide and the rest of our group.
This was an act of trust. The Chaplain and I knew the hike would take all day, but we had no idea about the elevation or the level of effort it required, and we hadn’t packed proper mountain climbing clothes. We knew we’d be hiking, but didn’t realize we’d be climbing a volcano.
We left on a Friday, and drove for hours from Kigali, Rwanda, to an ecolodge overlooking tea plantations about an hour from the canopy walk we’d be doing at Nyungwe National Forest. A GPS search says it takes about 5 hours. There was much to see, and the long drive wasn’t a hardship.
