The winding road.

I’m sitting here in this beautiful place this morning; the soundtrack complementing the lush green hillsides and cool(ish) morning breezes is a mélange of children’s voices, roosters calling, birds tweeting from the surrounding palm trees, the hotelier rhythmically sweeping the dirt of the entryway, and the firey evangelist some ways away on a loud microphone emphatically preaching indecipherable words punctuated by amen, amen, alleluia, alleluia, amen approximately every other sentence.

This place feels a part of me already; the red dust coating everything, the smiles of welcome, the directness with which people speak, the slow, methodical, clearly-enunciated English surrounded by emphatic Swahili that I can’t yet follow more than a few words at a time. I’m working on that.  It’s been cooler than I expected, quite pleasant really, and the scenery so beautiful I found myself actually gasping as we crested a hill or turned a corner to a panorama of natural glory.

The first part of the week was spent trying to force my circadian rhythms seven hours into the future and traveling out to the northwestern region of the country; the last three days have been filled with hospital visits surrounded with meetings with local authorities, debriefing, report-writing, and summarizing said visits.  I always loved this type of work with Mercy Ships and it has me fondly remembering assessments and trainings and the relaxed trust and flexibility it requires; made more challenging here due to my extremely limited Swahili language abilities and traveling with a group of complete strangers.   Jet lag doesn’t help.  But truly, I love a good challenge, and have really, really enjoyed it so far.

This week will be busier than last, but thankfully my sleep has been better in recent days and we have a little time to breathe this weekend. A resetting of focus, a recommitment of trust; this season is one of growth and learning and humility and wide emotional swings that need to be acknowledged but not empowered.  I know I’m the best version of myself when I’m eating well and sleeping well and exercising well and feeling supported well; today’s reminder from the stillness is that even with all of those things absent and when my emotions seem to swing wildly from one end of the spectrum to the other and back again, in the same way that fear is not the boss of me neither is hopelessness or excitement or loneliness or passion or doubt or joy.  They are welcome in the room and their presence acknowledged but they don’t get a seat at the decision table. 

So I keep on doing the next right thing, loving this place and these people and this wild calling on my life; when you spend a day on the road and the worst thing that happened was you didn’t see any giraffe, that’s a day to be grateful for.   And though the road I’m on feels both figuratively and literally winding and waving though unknown savannahs, I trust my feet and the ground under them to the One who directs my steps and created both my feet and the red earth to reflect eternal glory.

Until next time...

My literal winding road through rural Tanzania