Question: Are you the fun parent?
I am not.
Question: Are you the fun parent?
I am not.
Confession: My heavenly intentions for Thanksgiving are often clobbered by my oh-so-real life.
I would love to be preparing our hearts all month for gratitude, but I find myself picking up someone else’s rank gym socks. I would love to be stuffing a jar with slips of paper declaring our thankfulness, but can tend to stave off a little more teenage complaining instead…?
A friend told me recently of a trip he and his wife to Hawaii took several years back. After dropping his wife at the terminal for the flight home, he was the only person on the rental car shuttle. He recalled the shuttle driver’s words: “I think I need to go on vacation.” My friend laughed when he told me this. Where do you go on vacation when you live in Hawaii?
Having friends who used to live in Kauai, I know that wherever you live, life is never all bliss. In fact, one side of my house looks over a little cabin serving as a VRBO (Vacation Rental by Owner) year-round. And God seems to use it to tap me on the shoulder: Just a reminder. You live in a place where a lot of people go on vacation.
Author’s note: This post, originally posted around last year’s American Thanksgiving, is not at all intended to be a political statement regarding the recent controversy over refugees (see this article for a Christian point of view on the tension between security and compassion). It’s simply a memo to myself as I look at Thanksgiving any time of year, in light of what I’ve learned from the crazy-fun group of refugees I teach on a weekly basis in Uganda.
Sometimes I’m as much a student of them as they are of me, as they sprawl in their chairs there in the sticky heat or the lazy afternoon sun.
Author’s note: This post is not at all intended to be a political statement regarding the recent controversy over refugees (see this article for a Christian point of view on the tension between security and compassion). It’s simply a memo to myself as I look at Thanksgiving this year, in light of what I’ve learned from the crazy-fun group of refugees I teach on a weekly basis here in Uganda.
Sometimes I’m as much a student of them as they are of me, as they sprawl in their chairs there in the sticky heat or the lazy afternoon sun.
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