A Little Hobbit After All

You are a very fine person, Mr Baggins, and I am very fond of you; but you are only quite a little fellow in a wide world after all!' 'Thank goodness!' said Bilbo laughing, and handed him the tobacco.

J.R.R. Tolkein, The Hobbit

My friend Michelle and I loaded our girls into her van yesterday and drove to Northern VA to spend a few short, sweet hours with some dear old Uganda teammates. Funny thing is, very few of us ever actually overlapped during our time in Uganda, but our dear friends the Myhres are home for a few months, transitioning after some 17+ years in Bundibugyo to their new roles with WHM in Kenya. And so at a word from Jennifer, we all pretty much re-arranged work schedules, packed kids in the car, and drove to her family home in Northern VA. And we weren't disappointed. Because a chance to be with people whose feet had stood on the same piece of ground as ours, who grope in their minds for the same vanishing Lubwisi words, who taught some of the same kids and often slept in the same houses, and who will probably live, most days this side of heaven, with an ebbing, flowing ache for a place and people few in this world will ever know of - well, that's worth so much more than any traffic DC can throw our way (and boy, DIDN'T IT, Michelle?).

And to see some of the Myhre's  again. Julia, 9 months old when I left in 97, now 14 and lovely, watched my tired, fractious Ellie so I could visit with her Mom. Judy Ayelstock, Jennifer's Mom, still as kind and gracious as when she used to send me Valentines Day cards in Bundibugyo. And 12 year old Jack, born after I left, confident and funny and strong. And to see Jennifer, to hear firsthand a little of what is happening in her heart. To see the love and the ache in her face as she contemplates what it means for her and her family to leave a place that has been home for almost 20 years. And to be reminded, each of us, how we still love it, too. And to know that our hearts are knit together by that love, and even more by our Father's love for us, and for Bundibugyo, which He knows and loves more than all of us put together.

Another funny thing. For many years, still fresh from the field and grieving my own loss in leaving Bundibugyo, I often struggled with jealousy of some of these very same, sweet women. I'd hear that they were there, teaching my kids, living in my house, hanging out with my Ugandan friends, and I'd fight that fear that I was being replaced. That, like Berryl Markham wrote, your remember Africa, but Africa doesn't remember you. But something I realized yesterday, laughing and talking with these women, all of us in the middle of rich and beautiful lives, but still hungering for what's been lost along the way, is that we really are only little fellows in this wide world after all. And that's funny, too. Because you'd think that would be discouraging. But it's not, really. It's a relief. Because God isn't small, not at all. And because He's telling a really good story, much better than anything we could ever dream of. Days like yesterday remind me of that.

I'm so grateful for my time with these lovely women yesterday. To be reminded that my own part in this story, small as it may be, is real. And that it is a big part of my story. Thanks, girls:-)...