I abandoned breakfast table manners completely this week. My five-year old son is struggling to sit still. Every meal is a brutally painful process. So, instead of continually starting our morning with frustration and fighting, I have reformatted breakfast. I turn on worship music, put his breakfast at the kitchen counter, and he dance-eats while I pack lunchboxes. It has changed our morning story this week…

Our lawyers told us today that they weren’t surprised that Benjamin’s 🇿🇦 visa application was rejected because at least 70% of them are. I had called to understand our options. The options were there was no option except to bring him in this afternoon to the visa processing center to appeal.
We showed up at the end of an already-tricky day and found an over-crowded room that flabbergasted even the center’s staff and our legal representative.

I've lived in Cape Town for almost eight years. That's the longest I've lived anywhere since I was 18. We got dealt a few hard blows upon arrival in the city we left everything for... so hard my stomach twisted in knots at the sight of that big, beautiful Table Mountain.

Eight years later, I've learned to love this city through the lens of special needs parenting and "a church to call home, a family to call our own". I know how the weather changes based on what side of the mountain you're on, to check tide times and wind speeds, and how to navigate the traffic.

I show up to church out of breath and in a full sweat - even on the coldest winter day! Have you ever noticed that everyone loses their ever-lovin’ minds when it’s time to get to church? …. Go anyway. Show up sweaty, frizzy-haired, with one sock on. Doesn’t matter. Your Father has good gifts for you in His storehouses, and He will clothe you in His grace, mercy, compassion, goodness and love…

It had been seven years of unfathomable oppression. To make matters worse, God's people brought on their oppression with their own idol-worshiping hands. Desperate Gideon, the youngest in an insignificant family from a small tribe, was quite literally in a low place. He was doing chores below ground. Grain was typically threshed on a hilltop so the wind would blow away the chaff. Gideon was threshing wheat in a sunken winepress to protect it from the locust-like Midianites. He might have been wondering how things got so bad, even though his father's had idolatrous shrine loomed above him.

We went to Benjamin and Wyatt's first soccer practice yesterday. (Read the soccer camp story for important context!) I snapped a picture of Benjamin, frozen with fear, and sent it to Chris at work. I asked Chris to pray for Benjamin because he was completely overwhelmed at the sight of other kids on the field. I knew Benjamin was in a hard spot because his whole heart wants to be a soccer player, and he's been counting down the days to come to soccer practice. His body and mind simply said no. They could not integrate.

I've dealt with blood sugar imbalances my entire life. Doctors said I was destined for diabetes, obesity, and was unlikely to have children due to the hormonal imbalance at the root of it all. They were the experts, so I accepted my fate... until I couldn't anymore. In my late 20's, I was alone in the South African bush. My world was closing in on me. I needed hope in something beyond what I could see and faith that my fate wasn't sealed by a broken endocrine system.

unMother’s Day: This one is not just for moms.

Chris and I stood on stage at the beginning of both servcies to welcome everyone. I had been awake since 3am with a rotation of small child issues, and Benjamin was having a harder than normal day. If I didn't need to be on stage that morning, I would kept the little guys home with me. Things were heading south quickly...