how it all began

It seems the right time and the right way have finally presented themselves.

I've had a long-standing interest in things international--perhaps more specifically in people and cultures and languages--for about as long as I can remember. Though my family never lived outside the States, courtesy of my dad's job training missionary pilots I grew up around many people whose families did. I was disappointed the year my parents ended up declining an offer to take our family to Botswana for the summer and a little envious of the friends who moved to Indonesia for a couple years in junior high. The Kenyan pen pal I "met" in 8th grade happened to have the same birthday as me. I relished receiving her letters, containing such treasures as flamingo feathers and stories from her everyday, normal life as a Kenyan schoolgirl who was exactly two years older than me.

I was eager to be a high school sophomore because that was the year I could finally start studying another language. On my first trip to Brazil and Colombia after my junior year of high school, I enjoyed heading off alone with some of the Brazilian youth group girls on bike rides or other jaunts around town, getting a break from the insulation of our group of 22 Americans. When the mother of our American missionary host family told me I'd make a great missionary, I felt it to be a great compliment.

I loved life in DC after college partly because of the internationalness of the city. I loved sitting on the Metro listening to any number of languages being spoken around me. Each day held interaction with people from all over the globe. Once I was eating lunch in a crowded food court and ended up sitting with a Paskistani doctor and his family. The doctor was in DC to compete in the World Scrabble Championship! Who knew such things as World Scrabble Championships existed?

While my first post-college job ended up leaving much to be desired (to put mildly the lessons I learned while in that position), one of its few saving graces was the opportunity it offered for interacting with people from around the world. My plan in accepting the admin assistant job with a non-profit that was offering training to broadcasting and telecommunications professionals from developing countries was that it would offer a bridge from my communications background to my hoped-for work in international relations or development work or something. Even though I spent hours surfing the Peace Corps web site and looking up info on various graduate degrees in international things, my bridge job obviously didn't prove to be the bridge I was hoping for.

God's been generous in connecting me to many friends--American and otherwise--who live and work outside America. I am immensely thankful for the way knowing them has changed and shifted my perspective on so many things. For someone who's spent as little time outside the U.S. as I have (something like 30 days spread over 3 trips), I feel like I've lived more internationally than my passports attest...because as I've soaked in details and experiences from others, I've imagined the places and people they describe and learned from them.

Sometime during my high school or college years, some missionary speaker told a group I was part of that if you were at all willing "to go," you should, because so many people were unwilling. I've long taken issue with that statement. I've been so willing to go and checked into so many options for doing that, but they have never been right. It has never been what I'm supposed to do at that time. To have gone would have perhaps even been disobedient.

And, so, over time, I've tried to let go of my desire "to go." I've tried not to be envious of my friends who get to go. I've tried to trust that for some reason it seems God has wired me this way, and then I've hoped that he's wired me this way for some reason other than just that I connect well with the international customers in our Starbucks line. I've tried to trust his purposes for that wiring.

So, that's part of the reason this trip to Africa is so exciting. I've waited a long time for it. During that waiting time, during all that time of wishing to go and not going, I've become a writer. If I had traveled outside the States for an extended period of time all those other times I've wanted to, I would not have been going as a writer. And there is a great sense of rightness about going this way. I can't know what the days in Africa will hold, but I hope I'll go humbly and listen and learn and be available to and for what God's taking me there for.