An Extended Hiatus (and Life Fully Lived)

Living the Dream (2015-2020)

It has been 5 1/2 years (2114 days if you want to be precise) since my last realtime posting here. If you were following along and have been concerned that perhaps I've been stuck in a bank line most of that time, fear not - my extended hiatus comes not from a sentence to bureaucratic purgatory but from a life fully lived. 

If/as time allows, I'll go back and fill in the record with selected postings. In the meantime, here's a brief sketch of what I've been up to...

+++

On the professional front, I'm now completing the seventh year of my call as Director of Bega Kwa Bega with the ELCA's Saint Paul Area Synod. Since March 2015, I've logged 13 trips to Iringa and added some 234,000 miles to my frequent flier accounts. Along the way I've developed some pro-tips and habits that make the long-haul journey a downright pleasant experience. 

In terms of time away in Tanzania, by my estimation it comes to a 64 weeks - or a year and some change. When I first started, the pattern of service involved three-months in Tanzania followed by three-months in Minnesota. It was an open question as to which place would be 'home.' Over time that one worked itself out... I got married and things changed; we had kids, and things changed again (more on those below) and Saint Paul became 'home' home. In recent pre-pandemic years, I've been averaging three trips per year with an average duration of anywhere from 2-8 weeks.

Although I've been away from the blog, I haven't been away from my keyboard. Writing continues to be an important part of who I am and what I am about, including composing some 260 newsletters with stories from the partnership (many of which are archived here) and crafting several dozen sermons for congregations across Minnesota and Tanzania. 

+++

While I've been fortunate to have work that has kept my weeks and days meaningfully full, it is my personal life that has seen the most change. I returned from Tanzania on March 13 and jumped straight into wedding preparation mode. On June 28, 2015 the decade-and-a-half-long question mark of our maybe-more-than-friends relationship was formally resolved before God and the world. 

Since then, we've been busy building -together- a life that we love. 

It has included a honeymoon in Zanzibar and a feast with our friends in a Maasai village. Our first anniversary was spent at the base of the world's tallest building in Dubai and came in the middle of a summer that was bookended with some of our favorite places: Malaysia and the tropics of SE Asia and the Canadian  wilderness. We've circled through Utah, road tripped out to Montana, gone to Orlando once and been out to Southern California twice.

Somewhere in there, we bought a 1923 bungalow and have also learned to settle down.

Two became three with the birth of H in August 2017 and then three became 4 when Z arrived in April 2020. With Kasper and Daisy (his and hers pups if there ever were any) faithfully beside us, our pack/household now numbers six. Although the realities of kiddo-hood (and pandemics) make it tough, we are eager to show our girls the wider world. In the mean time, we are digging into the simple joys of life at home - playing games, baking bread, and giving thanks for a plot of earth and the chance to tend to it.

+++

While we've suffered our fair share of losses and heartbreaks along the way, we are, I'd say, living the dream -or, at least, a dream that we've dreamed up with each other. 

Honestly, I don't know that one-handed typing with a sleeping infant on my lap in a recliner in a little house in the city was part of my wildest imagination as a solo traveler in the spring of 2015... And yet, here we are and here we go... 

And I, for one, couldn't be more grateful.