La Sonya

Words from the Small Steps for Compassion house. One day soon I think Happy will wake up and billow forth words from her tiny mouth. I'd like to think that I've helped her learn a few of those words.  She's getting quite a few words down and is remembering when she should say them too. We're proud! Happy and Tangawizi are best friends. She loves to talk to him, pet him, attempt to ride him like a horse, poke him and give him his plastic bottles and he of course lets her do it all and in return tries to steal her sticks.

"I wait for the Lord, my whole being waits,    and in His word I put my hope." Psalms 130:5

In 2003 my world changed. I went to Santa Barbara, Honduras and lived and worked with children. In those short months my world changed completely. I gained confidence in who God is creating me to be, how to communicate in Spanish and how to love deeply. Me and Nahum Me and Happy In 2011 my world changed. I went to Usa River, Tanzania and lived and worked with a community. In those short months my world changed completely. I gained confidence in who God is creating me to be, how to communicate with those around me and how to love deeply.

Here I am, May 23, 2012 and my life is changing drastically once again. In two weeks I will be traveling to America and not returning again to Tanzania. This was a hard choice to make but I have felt a strong peace that came along with it. In the last eight months I have learned a very large amount of things/facts/nuggets about myself. Some of them good and encouraging with others slightly shocking and humbling. In my time here I have seen God work in amazing ways; from giving me courage and wisdom to do new and hard things to working things out in His perfect timing for us to help Happy and our current volunteers. I have grown closer to the One who knows each intimate corner of my heart and I trust Him deeper than I ever did one year ago. I followed Him here and I know that He is now guiding someone else here to take my place as well as guiding me somewhere else back in America. And through it all He is teaching patience and trust. I will miss my special times with Happy. Readin...

The stars are out tonight. It's the first time I have looked at them in a long time. It's been cloudy in my soul, a mirror image to the sky. I look at them, I mean really look deeply at them, They are more to me than some bright dot in the sky. They are a way to see past all that I am. God, who calls them by name, He must remember me too then. God, He calls me by name. The call stirs deeply in my heart, Something I can't explain The memory of another place, with other stars. To see the stars in their familiar shapes, In the patterns that mean so much to me They are a glimpse at the past and to the future.

I'm sitting here in the kids bathroom at the house. I've been in here for over an hour. No there isn't a tornado, earthquake, or end of times drill, I'm in here because we are potty training Happy. She normally goes number two around ten am. So today we are trying to sit on the toilet until she goes. However it's almost noon and she hasn't gone yet. She's really funny because she doesn't like to go to the bathroom on the toilet. She doesn't mind sitting there but once she has the urge to go she starts to cry and fidget. She'll try to stand up and she'll get angry. Then when she can no longer fight the urge, she pees. Once that's done she's no longer crying, angry or fidgety. It's funny to me that one can be so upset at feeling better. But then again I guess I'm not two and a half. Anyway since we've been here for so long I know she's got to go number two and the fact that she's fidgeting, crying and moving arou...

We all learn to talk at one point in our lives. For most of us our first language is English and that's where we stop. For a few it's two at once. Happy is learning two at the same time, English and Kiswahili. Funny things is I'm learning right along side her. What really makes it funny is when I don't know what she's saying because she is still learning to put words and sounds together. So she might say something like appaju or acha or lala. A non Kiswahili speaker might say, "Oh listen to the cute little girl put words together!" but what they don't know is she is actually talking. For the longest time we thought she was just saying sounds and her favorite was appaju. Then the other day while some people were here at the house working on the water situation I heard a man say, " hapa juu ". Ahh! He's talking baby? Nope, she's talking Kiswahili. So I realized that all those times Happy was actually saying, "up here/there...

She got up again and looked in the mirror. For a second time that day she saw a reflection that she did not recognize. How long had this been going on, for how long had the mirror been reflecting this strange image? She knew what face should be looking back at her and this was not it. What she saw was dark, weak and lost; surely it couldn’t be her own likeness. It must be a smudge or a shadow from the window; it must be anything other than her actual reflection. Turning away from it she closed her eyes trying to make the image that seemed to be burned into her memory disappear, hoping that the next time she looked the mirror would show more promise, more hope. That the next time she would see what her Maker saw, what her Maker intended to be in her reflection. Walking out of the room she heaved a deep sigh, wondering what was wrong with her. 

I love it when you find something that speaks the words that you wish you could.