My heart sank.
After the high of an incredible God-designed trip, it felt like a slap in the face to return home to a trickle of water, before it died out completely— men digging up the ground to find the source of the leaky pipe, which will take days to find.
And yet, my girls came round me, squealing,
“We are SO happy you’re back, Mama!”
“We know we’re gonna spend the week without water but it’s OK, Mama! We’ll show you how to bathe and wash your hands without a tap!”
“This is like preparing for camping next time!”
Living in a developing country has its challenges. I don’t want to romanticize it- Cliff beats the brunt of the stress of uncertainty, of finding solutions, of doing dishes in a bucket, of staying up late to fill barrels of water from an outside tap because water from the government only comes in at night.
But if there’s one thing we’ve learnt and I tell my girls— is that every challenge we face as a family, is an opportunity to grow or to fail- to grow in creativity, adaptability and resilience, which they’ve done so well; or to complain and wail, which I’m often tempted to do.
What could have been an incredibly stressful return home from the contrast of Oxford, an immaculately Proper place, was transformed in moments by my girls’ lenses of sheer delight and joy.
As I apologized for not being able to cook up a storm for them as promised, and instead came up with a one-tray meal of potatoes, carrots and peppers for dinner, my 6-year old reminded me, “It’s OK you can’t cook a fancy meal cos the water is out, Mama. Your food is yummy because it has your love in it.”
And that’s when it hit me. We can get through anything if there’s love in it—
It will be okay. We have not failed as a family living here. We are experimenting with calling, learning, leaning into what we do know to thrive in the unknown. And I hope those skills, unteachable within a classroom, will serve our girls for decades to come as they go out to impact a world that’s suffering and unpredictable, with their joy and relentless delight. 💛
“I love you, Mama. Today is the best day ever.”
“I love you too.”