It’s 5am in South Africa, and it’s Lifa’s birthday! 

There’s a pink-swirled sky, and I’m pouring through pictures of baby Lifa before his 10-year old self wakes up. 

LADD FAMILY MILESTONE: This is the first Christmas in the history of the Ladd family that we will all be in the same country! ...In two days, Lifa’s father will board the fanciest, memory foam recliner Greyhound has to offer and begin a 24-hour journey to Cape Town. He will spend two weeks with us, experiencing Lifa’s life as a part of our family. He will see Lifa’s room, watch him practice guitar, play Legos, ride bikes, walk the dogs, see Lifa’s school, and experience what an incredible young man Lifa is. 

I failed… A race report on UTCT 100km and an even better life lesson.  

A year ago, when we moved to Cape Town, I started to train for the Ultra Trail Cape Town.  This is a 100km race that circumnavigates Table Mountain and the surrounding mountains that grace Cape Town with so much beauty.  In this last year, I have lost 30+ pounds, sacrificed a lot of time, and worked my way up to 70 – 90 mile weeks of running.  I put everything I had into getting ready for this race. 

They ranged in age from 3 months to 79 years. Our Thanksgiving guests came from every walk of life, spoke multiple languages, and one of them is going for his purple belt in karate this weekend. It was everyone’s first time to celebrate my favorite American holiday, and they had all googled “Thanksgiving” before they came to know what to say, bring and expect. They had hilarious expectations from American movie clips, and they came with flowers, chocolate, wine, hugs, double-cheek kisses, a jar of honey, a candle, a ball, and a giant clay pot. South African hospitality is amazing!

Our family’s move to Cape Town was a shorter distance but much longer journey than our moves to South Africa from America. In the past one year, we inhabited four homes, two countries, four longdrives, two schools, an embarrassing amount of tears and chocolate for the lady of the house, and a boatload of miracles. 

On Monday night, we told him we were going to have pap, beans, cabbage and beetroot for dinner the next night. And he could eat it with his hands. His eyes lit up, and he said, “It’s like it’s a birthday dinner!”

This morning, I dropped Lifa off with an educational psychologist for a 4-hour assessment. He understood that the psychologist’s job was to give his parents and teachers tools to help him be his best in school, and there was a good chance he would get to draw. She has a giant desk like Dad’s, and he would have 4-hours of uninterrupted adult attention. Game on. 

Last week, as I was leaving the counseling center to pick my shiny-eyed boy up from school, my world got rocked when I made eye contact with a 3-year old. She was wearing a fluffy, pink jacket. And her eyes were not shiny. The inherent shine that is part of the thread our Creator creates with was gone. Already. Her parents were also threadbare. 

It’s been six years, three months and one week since I started the long drives to take Lifa to visit his biological father. Along the way, the oh-so-handsome Chris Ladd stepped in like a super hero to take the steering wheel, take my hand, and take the lead for our family. Together, we re-committed to God to preserve Lifa’s relationship with his father and his culture. 

The Ladd Family was eager to take another faith leap outside of our comfort zones when we moved to Cape Town with a call to plant and pastor a new church. Although the city is more westernized than anywhere we’ve lived in South Africa before, I have spent the past few months feeling hopelessly out of my element. 

When I picked Lifa up from school on Friday, I told him it was an extra special day for our family. I re-explained guardianship and let him slowly process it, Lifa-style. I explained that nothing really changes for his daily life and asked if he had questions. 

The rest of this post is not written to you. It’s a raw response that shot out of my highly-caffeinated fingers and overcome heart. I think you should read it because one day you might need some hope to hold on to.

We said goodbye to Chris’ parents on Monday after three glorious weeks together. There is such power in three generations gathering around the dinner table. We shared the stories that shaped us and narrated new ones. We watched Lifa take developmental leaps with giggles abounding. His personality sprouted and bloomed in the presence of our family’s root system.

We all have different responses when we encounter brokenness. Lifa’s was to turn to a quiet place inside of himself, clutching self-preservation as a stand-in for peace. Over the years, Lifa has begun to believe that he belongs. He has soaked in the truth that he is valuable, celebrated, and purposefully created.

A few nights ago, he actually got too tired to chew. So he just started swallowing his food in big, loud gulps. In effort to keep him awake, I started telling stories about some of our very first dinners together. I talked about what it was like to teach little Lifa how to chew and swallow his food before we even spoke the same language, and how his body was slow and super-ultra-gross in learning how to digest nutrients. Before our dinners, he had mostly lived on flavourless porridge that slid down his throat without requiring chewing and without delivering any nutrition to his swollen little body.

We love long, quiet mornings in the Ladd house. We love them so much that we get up before 5am every morning to fill our coffee cups, read our Bibles and soak up morning sounds before the rest of the world wakes up. It makes the whole day different. 

Every Friday night, we go to a market in Hout Bay. It’s the highlight of our week! We look forward to seeing the beach, mountains, every type of person you could imagine, stalls filled with artists and their products, a live band, and the most amazing selection of fresh, cheap dinner options. We go early, draw our weekly cash from an ATM, and find a seat before it gets too crowded.

There have been dangerous and difficult times since we said “yes” to God’s call in our lives, many of them better left unspoken. But we have also learned when it’s important to speak, and today is one of those days.