Reminiscing...

A year ago today Jenny was just leaving New Zealand after sharing so many wonderful and exciting times together! I hadn't started my blog then so I didn't get to skite about how much that trip meant to me or how much fun we had. It truly was a dream realized! In the beginning days of this month I reminisced at how excited I was a year ago awaiting Jenny, Calicoe, and Dassah's visit to New Zealand.

After our wedding and honeymoon we spent a few weeks in Maryland soaking up time with our Howard family before heading for New Zealand. During this time, Jenny talked of taking a trip to visit. I played along with the wishful idea, hashing out details, thinking it a good way to make New Zealand not seem so far away. I tried to put out of my mind that New Zealand is across an ocean, a couple thousand dollars and a good many hours beyond my loved ones reach. I stepped on the plane with Andrew headed for New Zealand with no expectation or inclination of when I'd see those in my dear family again.

Less than four months later, on Christmas Day, Andrew finished his 12 days of Christmas poem with "And a steel partridge winging Jenny."!!! God even arranged for a little plastic plane to burst forth from the randomly chosen cracker I popped on Christmas morning just before reading the poem. That put a laugh and huge guilty grin on Andrew given his part. Impeccable timing Abba! :) Jenny, Calicoe and Dassah were to arrive on the 3rd of January. It was little short of a miracle that they made it here in one piece with all the ups and down and details of making it happen. They spent a blissful month here and we made so many memories together. Dassah was a trooper at 18 months even camping and boating and watching her mum water ski and fling around on the biscuit.
It means so much to me to be able to share my life in New Zealand with a sister. It's so special that Jenny knows my family here, my friends and the places and sights and sounds that fill my days. Thank you Lord for the gift of sisters and for bringing Jenny to New Zealand last January!

Two for the Birds

Confessing our Cardinal since...

 

Started this after a Christmas gift from Eden reminded me of flying two years ago bound for two weeks with her and family in Maryland en route back to work in Uganda. Despite being avian in nature, her gift didn't remind me of the flight so much as an incident that occurred during the following days. But first some background...

...During my childhood, through reading widely, I became fascinated by places, people and wildlife around the globe. Spellbound by certain names I was, and 'America' was a favourite. Liked it spelt and liked it spoken.“Ahh meh rii kaa” mmm! Also thought North American women seemed mighty attractive and fun...charmed by too many episodes of 'Bewitched' eh? :)

So on rainy days or whenever else I got the big Atlas out, at around 11-12yrs old, I always ended up looking at North America after the usual stops elsewhere on the globe. Funny because, after Tanzania, Brazil was 2^nd on my list of countries to adventure in so why the Northern continent over the South?

Odd too, given my interest in grizzly bears and pumas and dirtbike desert-racing kinda stuff, that it wasn't the more wild and expansive western USA that enthralled but rather the much more citified Mid-Atlantic area around Washington DC and up towards NYC. A select few states intrigued me a lot, little Maryland being one I checked out so many times that I picked the Baltimore Orioles as my American baseball team of choice (not that I followed them much since thankfully :). Tennessee and Kentucky also held my attention cf. others without me really figuring out why (until May 2010; but that's another story).

Being interested in wildlife I soon read of some beautiful birds there; the Blue Jay and Red Cardinal impressed as did Woodpeckers (me being a fan of Woody Woodpecker cartoons). Through my last couple years of highschool a bright Red Cardinal, in perspex, ornament sat on my dresser and then on my study desk through university (I've just been reminded by a sister that I didn't buy it - it was a gift from an Aunt following her first trip to visit relatives in Canada). He then adorned a bookshelf until being packed away in a box over the years I worked in Tanzania. Eventually he escaped such confines to perch on my desk while I studied at GTC until, before leaving NZ for Uganda in 2008, I performed a big de-clutter and decided Mr Cardinals time with me was up. So he landed in an 'opportunity shop' ('thrift shop' in USA speak) less than two weeks before I met Eden for the first time in Karamoja, Uganda.

Time passed and on the 26^th Dec 2009 (Boxing Day) I flew Auckland to Dulles to catch her in America the second time, 4mths since visiting her in Ohio. Interestingly, for the first time ever of the many times I'd looked in the last decade it was cheaper to fly from NZ to East Africa via America rather than Asia so the personal stopover cost me nothing extra financially. Anyway, about halfway through the two week stay at her sister Joli's home, Eden, knowing I liked them, suggested I look out the window to see a Blue Jay outside. Turning my gaze I observed a bonny Blue Jay prancing proudly over fresh snow below a small bush in which I noticed a brilliant Red Cardinal perching. When my keen eye spotted a Woodpecker working the tree trunk just behind them a weirdish feeling grew over me. I watched them for maybe half a minute before they took leave for elsewhere. And then it dawned on me! Once these were my three favourite birds and here I'm seeing all three framed inside one quite small pane of a larger window in the very same state that interested me back then. “Wow God” I amazed, internally praising Him, "you are such a cool Father to me – you had this coming together moment coming together according to your plan over that many years!"

This Christmas Eden gave me a cross-stitch of a Red Cardinal and the word 'HOPE'. When asked why she said because of the story above as well as our own history as a couple with the words 'faith' 'hope' and 'love'.

But God had yet another layer of surprise for us. As you might have noticed Eden hadn't finished the cross-stitch (thankfully she's ok with giving uncompleted gifts :) and has been working on it now and then since Christmas. Well, just a week ago Eden was stitching away happily when she gasped excitedly and recalled to me her own Cardinal story that had only just surfaced in her consciousness.

Years ago Eden had been walking along a path in the woodland part of Libertytown Park where she was wont to go when talking through life stuff with her Lord. This particular day she was a little troubled about a 'boy' matter so was asking God about that and, as was her practice, she decided since she didn't know if this guy was the man God had chosen for her husband she'd be better off praying for her future husband, whoever/wherever he was, as her Heavenly Papa already knew him. So she did. As she prayed she came to a turn surprised to find dozens of bright male Red Cardinals scattered over the path and the field it lead into. Eden had never seen Cardinals in more than ones and twos before that and she knew immediately in her spirit that her prayer had been heard.

God's ways are higher than ours! I praise Him for that - that He has always been at work fitting together the pieces of my life right down to the tiniest detail including the interests and hopes of a dreamer kid that within a few years I'd let the world crowd out for fears of job security etc.

These childish desires were clues to, and now are proof of, my Heavenly Fathers hand directing my life. And these came to pass without me ever working directly towards achieving them. Fulfilled along my often winding way as gifts from my loving Father in Heaven who alone knows the end from the beginning.

Mostly I don't see, much less understand, what He's up to - but when I do recognize stuff like this coming to pass it's both humbling and exhilarating because it's all Gods doing, not mine. Jesus Christ came that we could receive and know life to the full as sons and daughters of His Father, our Creator. There is no other name under heaven by which we may be saved into a life of eternal purpose and meaning.