A rock for a pillow

It is hard to put into words a week like this – the sheer exhaustion of it, the sheer mercy of it. We successfully made the journey to Arusha, Tanzania (18+ hours waiting in airplanes, three hours waiting in airports, two hours waiting in security lines, two hours waiting for our driver to arrive) and we are here, safe, in a sparse but spacious house, puzzling together a different life. Even as the raw newness slowly wears off, it remains a wonder to have this long-awaited leap behind us, to awake each morning to the reality that the “there” is now “here.”

I have run the gauntlet of emotions this week. I am enchanted by the beauty of this place:  the colors of the sun setting behind our backyard banana tree, the sight of Mount Meru rising up into the big sky, the laughter of the schoolchildren who walk nearby, the prayer-song of a Muslim neighbor. And I am overwhelmed by all that I don’t know:  the language, the money, how to answer the persistent vendors in the market, how to cook and clean without familiar ingredients and tools, how to gather up enough courage to reach across cultures. I am struck by the similarities between this place and other places I have known:  here, as anywhere, the greenery springs up and feet press down, the children shout in play, and hungry bellies need to be fed and fed again. Yet I marvel at the differences, too:  the sharp smell of smoke in the air, the dust that billows and settles, the cacophony of sounds that fill the night—dogs and trucks and roosters and insects and music.

Over and around it all, I am blessed by the sustaining grace of our good God and the flexibility and fortitude of my sweet family. I am grateful for my husband’s calm head and good humor; for my eldest daughter’s keen observations and questions; for my son’s patient and generous spirit; for my small daughter’s ability to communicate with strangers better than any of us, and all without saying a single word. I am grateful that my children have each other for this adventure, that they can be old friends for each other until we can make new friends.

I was reading in Genesis 28 this week, the story where Jacob runs away from home and spends a night with a rock for a pillow. I resonated with Jacob, perhaps because I am also far from home, or perhaps because we don’t have proper pillows yet and I'm keenly aware of the hardness of my bed… Either way, I was struck by how Jacob encounters God in a dream that night and wakes up exclaiming, “God lives here! I’ve stumbled into his home! This is the gateway to heaven!” So my prayer is that I can take the hard things—be it my own inadequacies or a lumpy makeshift pillow—and raise them up in the morning as an offering to God. May I, like Jacob, dare to set my rock pillow on end and declare, “This is the dwelling place of God! This is the gateway to heaven!”