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Lent and Longing
When we anticipated Lent this year, I felt hopeful – maybe an odd emotion for the season, but we were in the throes of late summer. As for our family, we live nearly at the bottom of the African continent, and our mornings were just beginning to start later, with a chilly air, prompting my…
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Advent When I’m Not Feeling It
Sweat dampened the back of my shirt as I held up the upper branches of our very fake, very plastic Christmas tree while my husband tightened the brackets holding the lower branches, which were quite droopy. “Think we can swing one more year out of it?” I ask. “Maybe after Christmas is the time to…
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We Were Happy Once
“Write… we were happy once.” In the Little Women BBC miniseries, Mr. March tenderly looks into Jo’s eyes, those eyes filled with pain and despair and tears. How do I go on? those eyes plead, searching her father’s face for wisdom, guidance, help of any kind. We were happy once. These words echo in my…
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The Beauty of Lament
The slanting rain pounds the window incessantly; it’s been one of those days, where it rains the whole day. We awake to rain, we school to rain, we share dinner to rain, we head to bed to rain. The rain is good, so needed after our long, dry winter here in South Africa. It cleanses…
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On Shadows and Home
The situation in Afghanistan has been heavy on my heart these weeks, for those who must stay and for those who must leave. For the uncertainty, the danger, the chaos. Perhaps it’s heavier for those of us who live outside of our “home” countries, for those of us who have experienced some level of uncertainty,…
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This Is What I Know
The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. John 1:5 What is light without darkness? — “Look at the stars, Mom!” my daughter whispered loudly, as we walked outside near our house. I had returned from the US just a few weeks before, from what was the hardest, saddest trip…
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