old village, mount pleasant

Thistle Farms

6. Sense of entitlement

Do I do this?

Veruca may be a little over the top.  But do we believe that a culture, nation or person owes us something to which we have rights? We Americans are pretty bad about this. The high debt of our nation is only an example. I was traveling through the airport in Johannesburg several years ago with a group of friends, Europeans and another American. As we approached a very, very long line and were all sleep-deprived, dirty, sick and hungry, Nate the American began to impersonate George Bush and say, "Uh excuse me, excuse me. I'm an American",  pretending to push his way further in line. We all roared laughing. The Afrikaners in line ahead of us, did not. But for me it was a splendid example of our American entitlement. I hate to break it to you but the rest of the world sees us as pretty obnoxious and this is one of the reasons why. Americans don't wait in line, are used to having whatever they want when they want it and they want it super-sized. I don't want to be seen as an obnoxious American. 

Help us Lord, to see your constant provision and grace that only comes from you. Help us to live life resourcefully and humbly.- Amen

5. Impatience

"Restlessness and impatience change nothing except our peace and joy. Peace does not dwell in outward things, but in the heart prepared to wait trustfully and quietly in Him who has all things safely in His hands."- Elisabeth Elliot 

I keep hoping that one of these won't apply- the day when I will have to write humbly, "This is something with which I do not struggle." But nope. Patience!? I don't have it. I have the attention span of a three year old. I multitask in all that I do. I sprint through the grocery store. I don't like meandering. I hate driving around without a set destination. I don't like going to the movies because it means I have to sit still for 90 minutes. I hate having to get a hair cut because it requires just sitting there and I would never ever get my hair colored there because that means sitting there for all eternity! 

The Mozambicans taught me a great deal about being patient in daily life. They are masters at sitting and waiting. They are a patient people. They get in the three hour queue and stand and wait so beautifully and patiently. It didn't take me long to learn, always carry a book. We sell a throw pillow in our Etsy shop of Galeria dos Sonhos that reads in Swahili, "Hurry, hurry has no blessings." They understand that rushing around will get you nowhere. They walk everywhere they go at a slow pace, never briskly as they know they will get there eventually and when the time is right. They are more focused on the events of each day, the walk it takes to get there is not an means to an end, but part of the process and one to be cherished, savored and enjoyed. Even my book was only a crutch in the process of learning to embrace the day and the time spent with those around me.  

www.clevergreen.co.zo

Missionary Elisabeth Elliot who spent two years ministering to the Auca tribe who killed her husband writes “I realized that the deepest spiritual lessons are not learned by His letting us have our way in the end, but by His making us wait, bearing with us in love and patience until we are able to honestly pray what He taught His disciples to pray: Thy will be done.” I want to be patient in the small things and enjoy simply being with those around me, both foreign and familiar. I also want to be patient in the big unknowns for which I feel like the queue I am in has a 10 year wait. Since October, I have been praying, "Where next, Lord?". Lately, He has been giving me glimpses as to why I am still in waiting and that helps. He is so patient and kind and knows that we are dust and knows I need a book to read while I wait in line. He has been so kind to give me entertainment as I wait, like this sweet trip to Charleston.  

A couple of weeks ago Natty woke me in the middle of the night, in train pajamas hugging a teddy bear around its neck. The vision was priceless, this oversized five year old, brave as a lion all day long, afraid because of strange noises, seeking refuge in my arms. My response without hesitation was to welcome him in and hold him tight. I remember praying, "Thank you for this moment." I have missed that boy and his siblings more than words can say. It felt so good to have him so very close and not so horribly far, far away. As I patiently wait for the next steps I want to remain grateful for these moments, walking slowly, receiving every blessing along the way. 

 

Bunkin' with Punkin'

Billy Reid Party

it was kinda loud and really crowded but the live music and local fare & my companions were all wonderful. 

photo courtesy of tarheelwoo

about 10:30 they took away the bruschetta and brought out milk and cookies!

my kind of party

lovely spending the evening with these amazing people

thoughts on "need to please"

I asked for your commentary. Here are comments from one of my heroes.

"Thanks again for sending your thoughts on the need to please.  Woke up this morning thinking along those lines about a group of folks we know.  My conclusion was that if we are always trying to please to be included, accepted, loved, financed, how will we know when we've done enough or done it right or when the rules of acceptance change? So I sighed and realized that's not God's Way.  Got up and drank my lemon juice and poured a cup of coffee before reading my emails, which included the Need to Please."- Robin Fields

4. Envy

“Nothing in the world is worth having or worth doing unless it means effort, pain, difficulty… I have never in my life envied a human being who led an easy life. I have envied a great many people who led difficult lives and led them well.”
― Theodore Roosevelt

Envy is a doozy. It is one of the 7 deadly sins in the Catholic church. Proverbs says it "makes the bones rot" (14:30). 

I wish I could say I was like Teddy. I'm not. Social media creates this false window into others' lives that portrays them as absolute perfection. Even as I scroll through the pictures of my own life, it is full of smiling faces and beaches and plates of farm to table goodness. Happy missionary surrounded by beautiful black faces. I appear to be healthy, happy, well-traveled, even tan at times, cultured, adventurous. You don't see fatigue, despair, sickness, fear, or the burdens of missionary life in the photographs. You can't see pressure or performance anxiety or worry. 

When I see friends who chose a different path than me; married and had babies, envy awakens. I see chubby cheek babies and envision walking them in carriages down dogwood lined streets, gossiping (Is that one on the list?) with friends in the middle of the day. I see immaculate houses with Dupoini curtains and a curry simmering in the Le Creuset. Their lives look lovely and fulfilled and never lonely, never afraid. They don't have to bear the burdens of the poor kids or life in the dirt or being single. They have running water. They have air-conditioning. They don't sleep alone. They have Target. They have someone to take care of them when they are old and someone to mow the lawn. It is so easy to envy them. Ten minutes in Carla's house with four once chubby cheeked babies brings that vision to a screeching halt. The babies fight and cry and scream and wake up all hours of the night. The babies poo and wet the bed. The babies need food and constant attention and the curry is burning on the stove. The babies father's who I could easily envy as being a romantic, charming, compassionate, and an affectionate addition to life, also have a whole myriad of flaws that we all know well. 

The Christian martyr Dietrich Bonhoeffer who stood against Hitler said, "God's truth judges created things out of love, and Satan's truth judges them out of envy and hatred". Wowzer. I sure don't want to be like Satan. If I am judging out of envy and not of love then I kinda am. Despite the perceptions of their perfect life I cannot envy. So how do I look at their lives and their smiling babies and handsome husbands and not envy? LOVE. All day long, hippie crazy wild love. I love them. I love their lives and their blessings. And when I begin to love them and throw the envy away, I can see my own life and think a little more like Teddy. The pain and the difficult are what make our lives so beautiful. Their lives are full of pain and difficulty that I do not see. I would not trade my hardships for anything. Out of my hardships have come my greatest treasures. 

So during this time of Lent I want to keep my heart full of love and not of envy. Writing this one upon a my heart:

Per our conversation

Charleston Recommendation- Edmund's Oast

This restaurant catered last nights' Billy Reid party. Fantastic food & libations. 

I want to go for brunch for those eggs and that spinach. 

www.edmundsoast.com 

Garden & Gun like 'em too!

3. Need to please

“Only those who value and understand themselves can value and understand others. Only those who can communicate honestly with themselves can communicate honestly with others.” Danny Silk- Keep Your Love On

Yesterday’s “fear” was a perfect introduction into today’s “need to please”. Manipulation, control, fear and withholding love in relationships produce a “need to please”.

As a missionary, I depend on other people to give me money. With this money comes, for me, a huge responsibility to steward it well and to work really, really hard. It is innate in me. I take every donation seriously and see it as an investment in helping the poor and I want to give the donor great results. I want to educate children, open schools, create businesses and change cities with every penny. Yet, I am sitting in Charleston, grumpy because it is raining and I can’t go to the beach. I don't know exactly when I am going back to Africa. It is one of my biggest struggles, to let go and realize that I don’t have to perform. I deal with this one daily. This is my “need to please” that I need to overcome. It only results in an unhealthy pressure of needing to perform and allowing others to control me, even without them knowing it! It is my own fear and my own pressure to perform because I don’t want their love (or money) withdrawn. It is such a hard struggle, to live my life freely, accountable to God and trusting that He will provide. He will show me the next steps in His timing. My over-performance is only a subtle form of manipulation, where I am proving to others that I am a good investment, rather than simply trusting God and allowing them to love me with no strings attached.

Getting this one right is huge. My need to please others falls right off when I am in His presence. There is no room for fear there. In His presence, I see my worth and my value and when I am full of Him, I see yours.

P.S. I received such sweet response from previous posts as others shared with me their thoughts on “fear” and “guilt”. I would love to hear your commentary and wild tales of “pleasing others”. 

Mugabe and the White African

A beautiful documentary about bravery

2. Fear

Fear – God is on my side. In him I am more than a conqueror. (see Romans 8)

Fear. This is a tough one. This is one I have wrestled with more this past year or so than ever in my life. I can't quite figure out when or why or how but I now have moments of crippling fear that are usually complete nonsense. I know it stems from living in Pemba and I am fairly certain it is from nothing concrete, but something spiritual. It probably has to do with something like this:

Ephesians 6:12
For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. 

When I was assaulted, my first reaction was not fear, but to retaliate and attack. I ran after him with plans to jump on his back, claw his eyes out and bring him down. There was no fear. Until later, after watching him being beaten, not trusting the police, standing so isolated in a vacant field, my belongings scattered in the dirt under a boabab tree. That was when I realized I was completely helpless in the natural with no one there I could trust and everyone around me against me and that was when I prayed. It was later as I watched my attacker empty his pockets of amulets and condoms that I realized just how mightily my Father had saved me in that moment. 

When I was a child I used to go with my dad to repair the Ham Radio repeater on top of the fire tower in the Airline community of Hart County. I shimmied up there right behind him. The steps into the tower room were too far apart for my short legs so I would wait at the very top, swaying gently. I would sit and look over the fields and the blue mountains in the distance and enjoy the view. A few years ago I attempted to join friends in climbing a similar tower at a hunting lodge. I made it up three levels before my knees began to quiver noticeably and my legs simply wouldn't climb. I wanted to go to the top but my body would not let me. I had to laugh at this silly fear that had suddenly crept in somewhere between 9 and 32. So odd. So silly. When did I develop a fear of heights? 

Fear. It can be completely irrational or incredibly tangible. But Romans 8 says:

⁶ For to set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace. and 

³¹ What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? ³² He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things? ³³ Who shall bring any charge against God's elect? It is God who justifies. ³⁴ Who is to condemn? Christ Jesus is the one who died—more than that, who was raised—who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us. ³⁵ Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? ³⁶ As it is written,

“For your sake we are being killed all the day long;
    we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.”

³⁷ No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. ³⁸ For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, ³⁹ nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Fear doesn't always surface in the big moments of snakes and rats and captors and creaky high towers. It sneaks in the back door too. I fear the unknown. I fear running out of money. I fear what others think. In the book The Artisan Soul, Erwin McManus writes, "We live in fear of failure, convinced that failure will prove us to be frauds. We have bought into a lie that creative people never fail and hence failure is proof that we are not creative. So we get back in line, our dreams in check, and condemn our souls to a slow and painful death. Fear is the shadow of creativity. When we choose to create, we bring light to our fears. The darkness does not prevail over us. The creative act is inherently an act of courage. We are born to far too many fears and far too great a darkness. It is only when we find the courage to create that we are freed from those fears and that darkness." 

Fear is so crippling that it can rob us of who we are created to be.  Fear can rob us of who we were destined to be and our purposes here on earth. Our creativity and self expression and how we relate to and touch the lives of other can be impacted by fear. But He doesn't call us cowards. He calls us conquerors! We can overcome them all. I have no desire to climb a fire tower but I refuse to let fear prohibit me from being who I was created to be. I cannot let fear of lack or fear of man and his opinions rob me of my destiny. 

So today I am calling myself out on my silly fears of the unknown, of running out of resources (of which He is in endless supply) and fear of the opinions of others. I am burying them in the same place I put my guilt yesterday. Thank You for the cross, that wondrous cross and for sending Your Son. Who stands right with me wherever I go, roaring like a lion in the face of my captors. He is constantly by your side. He is always cheering you on. He is full of all the courage you will ever need. Lean on Him. 

Vamos conquistar o mundo!

-Grace

1. Guilt

Today is "No Guilt Day" in 20 Things to Give up for Lent. 

Guilt sneaks in all the time. "I feel guilty for not calling her back." "I feel guilty for not going to her party." "I feel guilty for having clean running water when Veronica doesn't have that." "I feel guilty for judging her." Guilt for:

-falling short

-not fulfilling expectations of others

-past sins

-having too much

-and everything else under the sun

It is a full time job, sorting through all the guilt that slips in and rides on your shoulders all day long. But today and every day from now on, I am burying it. Carrying guilt does no one any good.  I often brood in my own lack and insufficiencies and sin and Jesus already died for all of that. Repentance and forgiveness are glorious things. Guilt will kill you. When we wallow in guilt and take our own sins and fret over them, we are not living the resurrected life. Paul says it way better than me in Galatians Chapter 2.

¹⁶ yet we know that a person is not justified^[b] by works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ, so we also have believed in Christ Jesus, in order to be justified by faith in Christ and not by works of the law, because by works of the law no one will be justified.

¹⁷ But if, in our endeavor to be justified in Christ, we too were found to be sinners, is Christ then a servant of sin? Certainly not! ¹⁸ For if I rebuild what I tore down, I prove myself to be a transgressor. ¹⁹ For through the law I died to the law, so that I might live to God. ²⁰ I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.²¹ I do not nullify the grace of God, for if righteousness^[c] were through the law, then Christ died for no purpose.

Even my noble guilt of feeling unworthy to be born in America, does not do Veronica nor me one bit of good. Feeling guilty for sin "nullifies the grace of God." So today I'm taking Guilt to the wonderful cross all day long and nailing it there. It is no longer mine. Or yours. So join me.

20 Things to Give Up For Lent

This is just beautiful and came from the Lutheran Church of the Good Shepherd- Old Bridge, New Jersey. 

 And these are things to give up not just for Lent, but for the rest of your life.

• Guilt – I am loved by Jesus and he has forgiven my sins. Today is a new day and the past is behind.
• Fear – God is on my side. In him I am more than a conqueror. (see Romans 8)
• The need to please everyone – I can’t please everyone anyways. There is only one I need to strive to please.
• Envy – I am blessed. My value is not found in my possessions, but in my relationship with my Heavenly Father.
• Impatience – God’s timing is the perfect timing.
• Sense of entitlement – The world does not owe me anything. God does not owe me anything. I live in humility and grace.
• Bitterness and Resentment – The only person I am hurting by holding on to these is myself.
• Blame – I am not going to pass the buck. I will take responsibility for my actions.
• Gossip and Negativity – I will put the best construction on everything when it comes to other people. I will also minimize my contact with people who are negative and toxic bringing other people down.
• Comparison – I have my own unique contribution to make and there is no one else like me.
• Fear of failure – You don’t succeed without experiencing failure. Just make sure you fail forward.
• A spirit of poverty – Believe with God that there is always more than enough and never a lack
• Feelings of unworthiness – You are fearfully and wonderfully made by your creator. (see Psalm 139)
• Doubt – Believe God has a plan for you that is beyond anything you could imagine. The future is brighter than you could ever realize.
• Self-pity – God comforts us in our sorrow so that we can comfort others with the comfort we ourselves have received from God.
• Retirement – As long as you are still breathing, you are here for a reason. You have a purpose to influence others for Christ. That does not come to an end until the day we die.
• Excuses – A wise man once said, if you need an excuse, any excuse will do.
• Lack of counsel – Wise decisions are rarely made in a vacuum.
• Pride – Blessed are the humble.
• Worry – God is in control and worrying will not help.

new day. new city. holy God. holy yoga.

 "Also, seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you into exile. Pray to the Lord for it, because if it prospers, you too will prosper.” Jeremiah 29:7

I have been dwelling on this today. This is how I feel about this city and this place in my life. I am simply getting to enjoy the peace and prosperity (and beauty) of Charleston, The Holy City. It is called The Holy City because of all the churches in view along the city skyline. There are over 400 places of worship here. I view it as holy because it has a Harris-Teeter on every corner, a Target and tennis courts down the street. Yet this is simply what I feel God telling me about my time spent here in this city. "Soak up all that has been laid out before you. Come and feast your eyes on all that inspires and delights you. Dine." I am and I am loving it. 

Today I joined the retired ladies for morning Holy Yoga at the Isle of Palms Methodist Church, where Ellen read from God's word and anointed our heads as we departed. It was lovely. I slid, leaning on my big red cart, all over Target with the mom's in yoga pants and bought yogurt. Dairy still is a precious commodity to me after living where it was hard to find. I then went to Harris-Teeter and bought organic greens and apples for juicing. Salve to my soul. I also went to the local produce place, Boone Hall Farms for fresh local vegetables and even fresher fish. What a glorious life? I get to soak it all up and benefit from the success and wealth of this city and her many markets and shops and museums and parks. I get to dwell in her peace and I don't have to be afraid. It feels so good to feel safe.

As I write this I feel overwhelming, heavy, weighty peace and feel sad and sorry for the part of me that was a little traumatized- that piece of me that realized that I am not always safe and there are dangerous places. But this is my Holy City and He is so, so very near. 

Tennis clinic tonight!

xo, 

g

Miranda

British humor never gets old, when you can understand what it is they're even saying. Miranda is quite posh though. You will LOVE her. I do. (click here to watch series 1 episode 1)

www.huffingtonpost.com

Charleston Day One

I now believe in love at first sight. This place is fantastic. Now I just need to find some diversity and I will be happy. A little culture, a little juke-joint, some ethnicity. If only I were here longer, I would join the tennis club and the Charleston Library Society. Went shopping at Billy Reid for some "low-fi Southern-bred luxury." It was lovely. Despite being overcast, the street still exuded intrigue and romance and sweet Southern gentility. 

King Street walk

Billy Reid 50 King Street

I want to join.

Ravenel Bridge

mount pleasantly surprised

I've arrived. Mom and Dad were going to Saint Simons so I caught a ride with them. We stopped at the Pecan place in Wrens. That whole drive between Hartwell and Swainsboro is pitiful. No cell service. Nothing but Fred's Dollar Stores. Almost as desolate as northern Mozambique but not quite. We ate dinner at Cheddar's in Pooler. A little off the beaten path but worth the detour and owned by a friend of mine who rolled out the red carpet for us. If you are ever in the area I highly recommend it as a pit stop. As well as that pecan place in Wrens. They have clean loo's and chocolate. I have been here for only 12 hours and 8 of them I was sleeping but I have already found the tennis complex. It is less than 2 miles away! They offer real clinics and lessons and have clay courts and hard courts and ball machines! I am so excited to make this a part of my life. Even if it is only for three weeks. 

I also have plans to meet my friends the O'Hara's who I met on Ibo Island and live in downtown Charleston. It sounds right out of Gone with the Wind but their last name really is O'Hara and they live right on Meeting Street. It reminds me of that time I had a meeting in Atlanta where two men at the table were Rhett and Ashley and no one else saw it as funny. 

I'm going to an event at Billy Reid Wednesday night. I have not worn a dress or stockings or heels in years. I haven't schmoozed or socialized in fancy circles. What is it that people talk about these days? Do we still talk about Obamacare or is that over now? I am mostly going for the food and to smell the men. 

We are going downtown today to window shop and browse and just because we can. Church tomorrow. More soon.
xoxo, 
grace

a Southern Cities Tour

I am leaving on Friday for Charleston. When in Moz I dreamt of cities like Charleston & Savannah; of architecture and fashion and delicious food. I took notes from my Southern Living magazines of restaurants and shops I wanted to see. Their creativity inspires my own. Kind, gracious friends have invited me down for just this. Three or so weeks in Charleston to go and window shop and explore and write.  Disciplined writing, every single day. Eating healthy and tri-weekly tennis matches. I am going to soak in the South, spend my days writing and I will be helping a friend who wants to publish. I don't know exactly how to help but so far reading and giving my opinion seems to help her and I hope she will do the same for me. In addition, I  am also seeking out a small business opportunity that may help fund my extended travels/life in Africa. I am always looking for a way to sustain myself and creative ways for "tent making" as I live abroad. I also think my friends are trying to convince me to stay and showing me the best of one of the greatest cities in the U.S. is smart, but it won't work. I am planning on leaving for Cameroon as soon as possible. I don't know quite what else Charleston will bring, but I just know it is one of many stones that do not need to be left unturned. I am at a really unique juncture and been given a great gift to go and explore this timeless city. I'm excited to see what will become of it. I have a feeling it will be much more than I have imagined. Immediately following my time in Charleston I will be going to Nashville to explore Thistle Farms. I am meeting with their director and am hoping to be able to help them in their social businesses in Africa. Both of these trips remain a little vague, but I feel they are necessary points of interest in the journey. So today I am attempting to pack to be gone for a month, for warmer weather of the coast from a pitiful wardrobe of outdated, wrinkled GAP just unpacked from the attic. I've got work to do, no time for trend setting. 

recent fossil hunting in lake weiss, alabama with the boys

the new neighborhood

morning walk in the new neighborhood

lake weiss, alabama with the boys

the hardware store with nathaniel- rome, ga

Oh, and I moved. I call it The Treehouse as it is perched up high in the woods on the lake in deep Reed Creek. It is perfect. It's brand new and spotless and has hot running water and electricity. All a girl could want. 

Thank you for your continued love and support. Big things are happening in the midst of all the stillness. I can feel it. 

XO, 

Grace

Snow Day

this was good, this was God

I have been avoiding you. All of you. Here and in the grocery store. I avoid you because I know that you are going to see inside of me and because you care, you ask. I learned a long time ago that you can’t fool anyone or maybe  Abraham Lincoln taught me,

“You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can not fool all of the people all of the time.”

Either way I simply gave up guessing who is who. I avoid you because you are going to ask that dreaded question, “When are you going back to Africa?” and the answer is (eyes down, head down), “I don’t know.” But honestly I do know all that I need to know. I just don’t know how to give you the answer you want to hear. I know that, for the time being, I am not supposed to go back to Mozambique. I know that the foundations I built there are being built upon and it is not my job any longer. I know that the programs I established there are flourishing under those who are running with the torches I passed. I know it is not my role to stay there and administrate but give others the space they need to make these programs their own. Letting that go was not easy and coming to that realization was painful. But that is one thing that I do know.

I also know that I need to start to do a few things for myself. I am not saying that I live a fully selfless life, being single I get to be quite selfish every day. But I want to cultivate something that was fully my own and so I attended a writer’s conference. It was this past weekend in Nashville. Dad let me borrow his truck and friends of friends offered their futon and off I went. Y’all know how much I adore the South and driving up to Nashville felt like visiting cousins, comfortable and familiar. I had no idea what the weekend would entail but it didn’t matter, this was something that I needed to do for myself. It was symbolic of me taking a step, putting my African missionary identity on the back burner and stepping into something new and solely for myself.

For ages I have wanted to be a writer, to write something good, to publish something incredible. Not for recognition or fame but to challenge myself to get good words on paper and tell a story. I want to help others’ get their stories out and I want to tap into these ramblings in my head, otherwise they sit in there and harass me. Years ago I was asked to write out 100 dreams and I think I could only get to 36, but they included; surfing, moving to Africa, living by the ocean, learning to sew, and writing. So now I am here, in Nashville, going to a writer’s conference.

It was a conference for women, so naturally when the women around the room were asked why they were there, they all over shared and cried. Everybody, except me. I don’t over share because I am a Davis and I don’t cry because I lived in Mozambique where my compassion would cripple me if I cried over every thing that grieved me. So for now, I’ve stopped. I met a publisher there and decided that I wanted my next job to be one that involved reading books all day. But I still find it hard to put on shoes and show up on time and not eat with my fingers. But I am getting there. There they showed us what the whole publishing process looks like. I must admit that I listened with someone else in mind and not myself. I do that often. “That sermon is really what So and So needs right.” So I took notes wondering how I could help So and So publish their book rather than my own. Self reflection even in ones own mind is so stinkin’ hard. Because if I admitted to myself that I wanted to publish the book and then I go weeks and months without even blogging to those I love, I would feel like a failure and I am already avoiding you in the produce aisle.

So there you go. I want to write a book and publish it and so now that I am home for Lord knows how long I went to a writer’s conference with a bunch of white people with shoes on and I kinda liked it. I got to wear that sweater that I bought at j.crew, so that was good. We had biscuits for breakfast from Loveless Café and that was good. I left thinking that the only thing stopping me from writing a book was myself and that was good. I learned about a lady who started a social business not unlike my own but instead of being in Mozambique, it is in Nashville. It is a little business that works with women; former prostitutes and addicts. They have a café and their hand made beauty products sell at Whole Foods. It is not unlike the model I want to see at Galeria dos Sonhos. I have tentative plans to go back and check it out.  And for the first time in a long while I got to experience “church” in a house on a hill in Tennessee, as women over shared in a safe space and felt loved and accepted and were encouraged and challenged and changed. So that was good. Even better than the biscuits.

My invitations back to Africa all still stand and I still roll my eyes when Americans talk about the poverty here and suggest I do something locally. But I am starting to see what God may be showing me. I just need a little time with Him to determine our next step. I am ready for it all to be in place so that I can buy plane tickets and plan my wardrobe, but He isn’t pushing or pulling in any direction. I just keep hearing Him say, “Rest. You’re gonna need it.” And now, I am under a blanket, watching snow melt doing just that.

Love, Grace

www.lovelesscafe.com