Jesse and Annie :)

Jesse and Annie were married on Sunday, December 9th.  It was an incredible weekend.  I'm not sure when my heart will catch up, or maybe slow down, or be able to express herself.

In the mean time, Annie's brother (in law) has captured it well over on his photography blog.  I love his photos and his words about our time together.

Follow this link to Enjoy the celebrations...

And a Stench to Greet You

You know how sometimes you don't realize the freezer door is slightly ajar and you leave for 3 days and all the precious meat and fish thaws and drips through the fridge's insides and a noxious wave of rotten meat smell greets you when you arrive home with your beloved late at night and he spends a LARGE portion of the entire next day cleaning out the freezer and fridge, like really cleaning it out, (by which I mean that after removing all the wretched wrecked food and wiping the thing down he opened the back up and  poured vinegar water all through the drains of the fridge so that wherever stinky liquids ran, a flush of vinegar water followed) and he never once look very perturbed, except for just slightly when he saw exactly how much meat and fish was going to waste?  Well, that's when you know that despite not always being really great at making sure the freezer door is closed,  you  really are extraordinarily great at choosing a partner.

An Anniversary of Sorts

We landed in Africa for the very first time together 25 years ago today. I have the stamp in these old passports to prove it :-) Of course, Byron had been here, but it was my first time ever.

Quite a lot of people who read this blog weren’t even born yet, but there I was, a couple days shy of my 22nd yesterday, with a suitcase and backpack and a cute young husband who was pretty sure I would love it here.

He was right, you know.

I was awake last night, thinking back to that October. It was 1984 and, Orwellian implications aside, it was an important year for us as it marked the beginning of our global meanderings together. We’d already been married 2 years as I finished my degree in Santa Barbara, but that was just a beginning. It was a lovely beginning, mind you, and one that we’ll always appreciate it. But, my, it seems a foreign life now. We've called so many places "home" since then.

Twenty-five years ago, we set out on this grand adventure.

I’m ever so glad that we did.

A Good Run

Paul Newman died on Friday, as most of you will know. I think his daughters made the sweetest statement when they said...

"Paul Newman played many unforgettable roles. But the ones for which he was proudest never had top billing on the marquee:
Devoted husband, loving father, adoring grandfather, dedicated philanthropist."

Growing up in the 70's, we loved "Cool Hand Luke," "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid," and "The Sting." Each one remains a total classic.

One thing I admired greatly about Newman's life was the successful 50 year marriage that he shared and Joanne Woodward.

At the height of Newman's career, when he was everyone's favorite beautiful Hollywood face, Joanne was asked what it is like being married to the most beautiful and most sexy man in the world.

Her reply has long been one of my favorite quotes on marriage...

"Beauty fades and sexiness wears thin, but to be married to a man who makes you laugh every day, ah, now that's a real treat."

And This is How i Know...

That I married the right man:

Because while the overwhelm was trying to overwhelm me this morning, he slipped into the kitchen and made us all a big pan of scrambled eggs with green onions and potatoes mixed in.

And when I cried after breakfast and told him I was disappointed that we didn't have a better school situation for the kids, he told me how great the kids are and how great they are doing and how maybe God knows a thing or two.

And when I asked him what God might possibly know about what was best for my kids, he laughed (and didn't worry that maybe I had lost my faith.)

And rather than wait for tomorrow to catch up with us and shock us with the list of things that aren't yet done, he seasoned all the ground beef and got it ready tonight for tomorrow's BBQ burger thing that we're bringing the meat to.

And THEN, because he realized the celery he had been so excited to find was about to fade, he made a big batch of Mrs. Lucia's Italian chicken stuff for our dinner and we had enough to freeze for some other night too. (All this while still putting in a day's work.)

And Heather said, "Mom, you never cook anymore!"

And Colin said, "She cooks all the time."

And I said, "I married the right man."

Life looks so much better from the vantage point of tonight.

(And home school was actually just fine today.)

Boys and Girls (or Sometimes Byron and I Don't Get Each Other)

I have one "nice" lipstick. I have a couple of cheaper lip gloss things, but one nice "real" lipstick in a pretty silver case.

It fell out of my pocket on Sunday and I didn't know it. I spent a lot of time throughout the morning checking my various pockets (in my jeans, in my sweatshirt, in my down vest and through my purse) but I never found it.

As we drove away from the event we were at, I commented on my lost lipstick and something very strange came to light. Byron had found the lipstick but, "because it was closer to the car beside us than to our car," he had assumed it belonged to "some lady" in that other car and he had put in on their windscreen, held down by the wiper blade.

I was shocked and appalled. Could he not recognize a "special" lipstick when he saw one and would it not occur to him to first ask his wife if it was hers?

Apparently not.

Wednesday was a busy morning as our household multi-tasked in a major way. People were running in and out to errands and all manner of things and I needed to dash up to town to get some meat before I then dashed to the shuttle to collect my dear friend, Dana, and her 2 kids who were arriving from California to stay with us.

Byron had been doing some things on the car. I don't know what except that it involved the compressor. He then zipped off on the motorcycle to accomplish some errand, leaving me the car which he knew I needed now to make my run to town.

I ran outside and Trevor closed the hood for me and off I went.

I was standing in the butchery when Byron called. "Where are you? Are you with the car?" I thought the car was with me but I said yes. "And where is the air filter?" he asked.. "It's here on the grass!" he answered himself. Byron wondered, rather loudly, if I knew that an open hood MEANS something.

Apparently not. And he was shocked and appalled.

Now, I'm not saying that all girls know how to recognize a good lipstick or that all boys know what an open hood means. I'm really not. But it did occur to me that we have very few moments of totally not getting each other and these 2 little incidents certainly left the both of us stumped by the other.

BTW, I called Tammy, who was still at Sunday's event, from the car and told her where Byron had left my lipstick and she actually found and retrieved it for me. And the Land Cruiser Engine survived it's spin around town all naked and filter-less.

All is again well.

Tuesday Last

I like this boy I've been married to for the last 25 years. Yessssirrreee!

(Photo by Jesse Borden)

Headship, Partnership and Bringing Out the Best

What is headship and submission? What is partnership in marriage, and what is Biblical?

Ha! If anyone thinks I can answer all those questions then I'm very sorry to disappoint. This will just be some refections, mainly inspired by how much I admire Byron.

I sat with Deb Hirsch recently (amazing Aussie who blessed our staff conference with her wisdom and wit and hard hitting/gently delivered truth.) We were talking about marriage and maleness, femaleness, headship, submission and all that.

It sounds to me as if her experience has been very similar to mine in that she is married to a very secure male who has never felt the need to impose leadership over her. But both Deb and I recognized that there is something there to that headship thing that we both feel is right and neither of us feel repulsed by it or rebellious toward it.

The secret seems to be in the partnership. "There can never be healthy headship until there has been healthy partnership," she said. Unless a man and woman come together as equals before God, unless they both recognize the other's worth and know deeply that they need the other, the headship thing will never work. Imposed headship can't, by definition, ever really be healthy.

It strikes me that it's just like elders and leaders. When there is spiritual authority along with functional servant leadership, you have an elder. It's almost innate. Positional leadership almost never cuts the mustard when things get down to the real stuff.

I could go on. My mind is really working through this stuff as I do the chores of packing up our house. But what it's all leading me to think about it how really wonderful Byron is.

There were a collection of reasons that led us to leave Africa in 1999. Seems you have to have quite a significant grouping of things coming together before you uproot your family and throw them all into the unknown. But one of the MAJOR PLAYERS on that list of reasons was this:

Byron wanted to go somewhere where I would blossom. He wanted to see me grow in my giftings. He wanted to see me walk into the calling God had for me that was not being realized in the wilderness of those quiet Loita Hills.

You can't possibly know how at home Byron is in Africa unless you have seen him there. You can't possibly fathom what it meant for him to walk away.

But I know.

In these last six years in Europe I have found out a lot about myself. I have become something much closer to the one God was dreaming of when he was weaving me together. Africa taught me many things and there is a strength she revealed in me that I would never have known I had. But Europe brought out a whole new set of facets. I wasn't even aware of them, really. Not in the way Byron was. He was dreaming God's dreams for me while I was not.

And yes, Europe has been good for Byron as well. But as he works so hard preparing to head back to Africa, I swear I can see the color returning to his cheeks.

Today I've been hanging the laundry on the line in the Portuguese summer sun. And all the while I've been marveling. That boy! That boy that God gave me, he's been nudging me toward my true self. He's been setting me free, calling me out, cheering me on. And think of it! He left a job and a place he loved in order to help pry open more of the heart of me.

I don't know if I've seen much of that modeled anywhere.

I think this is headship at its very best.