A 10 Year Letter to My Family
It was 10 years ago today.
Ten years ago, I called my mom and said goodbye one last time while my friends drove me to the airport. Then I cried on the phone with the AT&T lady while I cancelled my cell phone plan. I was leaving family and friends with no way of knowing I was going to stay and start a family of my own. Ten years ago, I set my feet on the soil of my future. I walked out of an airport in South Africa with two suitcases and pulsing excitement for what I thought was going to be a 6-month mission trip.
TEN YEARS AGO. I can hardly believe it!
I don’t have those two suitcases anymore or any of the things that filled them. I’m writing this now while I look at the lime tree we used as a Christmas tree and still haven’t moved outside, Benjamin’s play pen strewn with toys, and a “Happy 12th Birthday Lifa” message on the big chalkboard that I haven’t changed since his party last week. I cannot believe all that God has done.
I don’t find myself remembering the epic stories of the past 10 years like I have on previous Africa anniversaries. Yes, Africa anniversaries are a thing to me. This year, I look at Benjamin’s blocks and knocked over Fischer Price tower... and I look at the blanket on the couch that Lifa never puts back correctly... and I think about the cost of this past decade. The weightiness of it.
Chik-Fil-A, home churches, and climate controlled houses... all that stuff is great. But Chris and I both chose to leave what America had to offer for what we felt God was inviting us into. First separately and then together. The cost I’m counting on this 10 year anniversary is for the ones that did not get to make the choice. The parents that are now grandparents to kids far away, the siblings who are aunts and uncles to nieces and nephews on the other side of the world. Cousins who don’t get to vacation together like we always planned to do. Grandparents, now great-grandparents, who we didn’t get to say goodbye to and who missed out on the brand new baby skin and watching all of Lifa’s teeth fall out.
Our families didn’t get to choose if we left and the cost is even greater for them. It can be hard to reconcile why a good God would call your own family away to love strangers. Why foreigners would get to cuddle your grandchildren. There are 10 years of missed moments and memories. Although I’ve forgotten or let go of most of what America has to offer by now, the stretching, tearing and wearing cost on our families is the cost that keeps building, keeps counting and keeps stretching so thin.
So this 10 year anniversary blog isn’t one of commemorating amazing moments in Africa. Not even one of looking back at all the goodness of God in my life since I’ve moved here. It’s an altar of acknowledgement to our families that didn’t choose the cost, but chose to love us limitlessly while we left anyway. You, family, are the ones who are capable of holding both great love and great sacrifice at the same time. You are the ones who’ve showed us what real family is, the kind that Jesus died for.
There are years of stockpiled tears I’ve never seen. Moments you wish I would have been there for that you never even told me about because you didn’t want to make me feel bad. Weddings, funerals, new babies and major accidents that I wasn’t there for. Thanksgiving, Christmas, and summer vacations. And Saturdays. And all the other days.
Family, I’ve missed you every single day of these 10 years. I’ve not counted the cost for myself nearly as much as I’ve been aware of how much my decision to go has cost you. You missed moments you’ve lived a lifetime dreaming of. Yet you still love me. You’re the ones who have modeled true love. The real, enduring love that lasts - the kind of love that stands up to 10 years of stretching. Especially in these last 4 years since I haven’t been able to come visit and have had a baby in the process. You still stamp my Christmas cards and put them in the mailbox for me. You still send pictures of important documents we receive in the mail, and you keep me connected even though I moved away. Thank you. I see it. I feel it. Daily. Your great, great love is not lost on us.
On this Africa anniversary, I’m asking God to make this 10th year be a payback year for your sacrificial love. He sees the cost you’ve paid, and He has a good year ahead for you. We love you with everything in us. Thank you for loving us so incredibly well.
“I will restore to you the years that the swarming locust has eaten, the hopper, the destroyer, and the cutter, my great army, which I sent among you. You shall eat in plenty and be satisfied, and praise the name of the Lord your God, who has dealt wondrously with you. And my people shall never again be put to shame.” Joel 2:25-26