Copyright © June Cleaver in yoga pants
Design by Dzignine
Sunday, January 15, 2017

thoughts on saying yes

So. I am sitting in a little tiny apartment, baby sleeping on my chest in the Ergo, three kids watching Netflix behind me. And I am in Hawaii. Not Greece.

It didn't work. Our trip. To lead the team of volunteers. To a refugee camp in Greece.

Turns out last minute adventures with four kids in tow are not terribly easy to pull off

But, I am realizing as I sit here, ocean to my right, that sometimes its not about the doing but about the willing.

And also. And also. I realize I now have Greece and its people permanently etched on my heart - not just the refugees, certainly them! but also the people of Greece who have suffered so much with economic downturn. They are there. Forever on my mind.

And sometimes. Sometimes. That is all that is needed to move to action. To move to yes.

We have all had this happen as humans and mothers. Our child almost drowns one summer at the pool and we are suddenly huge proponents of learning child rescue techniques. Our brother joins the Navy and we see him in every fresh faced uniformed seaman we pass in the airport.

The Rwandan genocide occurred the year I graduated from highschool. I tried to go on a youth missions trip to Eastern Africa that summer and unlike the past four summers, it just didnt work out. But my heart. Oh how my heart was changed. I wrote my first paper in college on the genocide and cried tears when I read through the thick packet of documentation sent to me by the United Nations (yahoo search was only basic then - HAHA I AM SO OLD. You had to actually write away for information for research.)

That is what this "almost trip" has done to me.

And what's more, I know this isn't the end of the story for us and Greece. And I fully see us living in a little stone house for a month, working, meeting with people, developing some kind of project, homeschooling the kids, even within the next year or two.

It's gonna happen.

And yea. It didnt now. But that is okay.

Because it spurred me into thinking about saying yes. Saying yes to good things. Saying yes to a simpler life. Saying yes to less. Saying yes to opportunities, though scary, and friendships, though hard sometimes. Saying yes, for some of us, to love. Loving ourselves more. Loving our spouses more, or to maybe loving again.Saying yes to being who you are, not who you think you have to be. Saying yes to the body you have, not the body you think you have to have. Saying yes to contentment. To peace. Saying yes to courage.

What are you challenging yourself to say yes to this year?

Find it. Hold on to it. Say yes.

And I am writing now from my teeny tiny hole of an apartment where we have landed after all this, feet first, like cats on the prowl.

And I have an actual little desk, with cubbies for notebooks and thank you cards and decks of cards and colored pencils. I honestly think its the nicest set up I have ever had. And gosh darnit, I think I am going to be able to blog again from this here desk.

And I have a brand new super nice laptop that dada finally was able to get for me. AND IT IS SO LOVELY.

And the ocean is just a glance to my right. Hazy today, palm trees lazily swaying in the evening wind.

And I am content.

I could write a book from this desk, I think.

I think I shall.

And I will lead my little school next quarter, even with the three students we have so far, and I shall start pulling my justice projects together in skype calls around the world.

And gosh darnit. Its all coming together.

And I am going to keep saying yes. Because there is magic in a yes life.

this is going on outside my window right now!!!!!!!



mom has a cool camera???

mom wont let me touch her camera!!!

mom has her camera back out!!!




hazy lovely goodness...

0 comments:

Post a Comment

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...