Monthly Archives: December 2010

December 31, 2010 · 6:20 pm

Of Things Unseen. [He Writes Better Stories.]

“So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.” 2 Corinthians 4:18

 

A year ago today, I was trapped in the throes of one of the most excruciatingly miserable weeks of my life. [Let’s just say that in my humble opinion (and not that I normally have one), the world would be an infinitely better place if we just built a concrete wall around Cote d’Ivoire and tossed some lighter fluid and a match inside. And that’s my final word on the matter.] New Years Eve found Christy and I vehemently swearing up and down that we were going to leave Senegal, shake the dust off of our [dirty] heels, and never look back. I believe there was even a lengthy discussion entailing a Walmart rubber dingy and detailed speculation as to whether or not we could feasibly row one across the Pacific. [And let me tell you, had we been able to find a Walmart on this continent, there is a 99.79% chance we would have tried it.]

…to my retrospective embarrassment, we were also belting “God Bless America” at the top of our exhausted, enthusiastic little lungs with more pent-up patriotic passion than the 4th of July, and making lists of resolutions comprised of things like “stay stable” and “don’t eat chocolate chip pancakes and rice for every meal.”. But that story may be best left locked up in the vault.

My grand plans, if any, entailed muddling through the rest of my time in Senegal, SPRINTING back to the land of the free, kissing the tarmac in beautiful Raleigh and then spending the remainder of my days curled up in a gloriously overstuffed chair at Starbucks conducting research on just how much caffeine the human body can tolerate. 

From my point of view, there just wasn’t much to see standing on the brink of 2010. The brink, in fact, looked rather dire and bleak. And then, Lord help us all, Jesus asked me to commit another  year of my life to Dakar! [The nerve.] Believe you me, if you’d offered me a million dollars and an espresso machine I still wouldn’t have been able to hazard a guess as to His reasoning. I suppose that’s why He’s God and I’m not.  Last year, Jesus very tangibly asked me to “fix my eyes on what is [was] unseen”, and in faith, follow Him and trust that He knew what on earth He was doing. Faith is, after all, a belief in what you can’t see.

Can I tell you something that’s absolutely thrilling to me? Now, a year later, I can “see” some of what He had up His sleeve. And it makes me want to hand Him this next year, too!

I am inexpressibly grateful that Jesus had grander plans for me than my aforementioned Starbucks sit-in, and that I listened. It’s been difficult-make no mistake. I try to be really honest about that here-if you’ve been reading for any length of time, you know full well that following Jesus back to Africa has entailed tears and homesickness and more than a few temper tantrums. But now, standing on the brink of 2011, I am extraordinarily excited to follow Him through this next year. Goodness, if this last year is any indication, there’s no question that I’ll miss out if I don’t! I started thinking yesterday about what wouldn’t have transpired had I ignored Him in 2010 and hopped in that rubber dinghy.

Aside from becoming shark bait, I wouldn’t have met Miriam. Or Bineta. Or Aya. Or Fatou Ba. Or 1,000 other girls that have names and faces and stories too-stories that have drastically altered every shade and subtle nuance of my life.

 I would not have become betrothed to sweater vest man very much against my will, and consequently would not be cheating on him with the Mohammad the fruit stand man.

 Come to think of it, if I’d gone with my plan, Ben and Dayton wouldn’t be in my life. And a year and a half after meeting

With some of my girls. Miriam is to my immediate left, Aya is to the right.

 those boys, it is entirely impossible to imagine life without them. They’re part of my family, now.  

If I’d opted for my plan, I wouldn’t have gotten to traipse through Europe with some of the most fantastic people I’ve ever had the privilege of meeting.

I wouldn’t have gotten to watch twenty six people fall in love with Senegal and what God’s doing here on the crazy ride that was our summer project.

And if I’d gone with my plan, there’s a boy I wouldn’t have met. Granted, we then would have avoided the whole “I’m sorry I crunched your laptop screen to smithereens” conversation,  [another story I’m locking up for now] but crunched screen and all- I’m glad that he came into the picture.

That’s just for starters.

My point here is that Jesus is good. Really, really good. And He’s worth following. There is so much hope and promise that comes with this new year-not because I have great plans, but precisely because I don’t!  Jesus does. Which sounds trite until you realize that’s it’s actually true. And then…well, that changes everything, doesn’t it?

So here’s to relinquishing our colorless dreams, dwarfed goals, and timid, elementary plans-because we were created for so much more.  Here’s to allowing Jesus to author our stories this next year- when it’s excruciating and uncomfortable, and when it’s effortless and exciting-because at the end of the day, it is always, always worth it. His stories are infinitely better than ours, anyhow.

To things unseen.

Cheers!

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Filed under God's faithfulness, Holidays other than Christmas, Joy, My favorite people, Senegal, Summer project, Team

December 30, 2010 · 11:49 pm

I Still Want a Hovercraft.

The level-headed punk himself.

In approximately 24 hours, like it or not, we’re going to be thrust into 2011. [And for the record, I think I’m going to love it. More on that later.]

It’s entirely amusing to think about the things I was dreaming about ten years ago. Back in 2000 I was thoroughly convinced that by this point, we’d be flying around in hovercrafts and dressing in aluminum foil.

…come to think of it, on New Years Eve in 1999, my family had subscribed to every word of all that “the world will implode at midnight”  Y2K nonsense-and had bunkered down with enough bottled water, AA batteries and canned kidney beans to…to…

…huh. We really ought to have done a better job of thinking that one through.

I think we even filled up the bathtub with water for just-in-case purposes. I don’t know how you batten down the hatches for an emergency in your family, but in mine, for some unfathomable reason, we  fervently believe that we can solve any crisis from an earthquake in California to a riot in Jakarta, by filling up the bathtub.

Given my slight flair for the dramatic, it should come as no surprise that I was mildly crushed when the clock chimed midnight and nothing happened. [Am I alone, here? Break it to me gently!] The new decade was ushered in quietly, sorely lacking the firey explosions and general mayhem that my wide-eyed thirteen year old self had been awaiting with an elated glee that in retrospect, probably should have been resolved with a therapist. I was left dejected, sitting alone with my dashed hopes of mass-hysteria and a veritable mountain of ubiquitous water bottles.

My brother Stephen, on the other hand, completely nonplussed, simply went and drained the tub.

I just sat there and shot him the stink eye. His levelheadedness sometimes makes me want to punch him in the kidney.

I don’t know about you, but I intend to insure we do our part in Dakar to welcome this new decade with a little bit of bedlam.  I’ll let you know how it goes.

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Filed under Family, Holidays other than Christmas

December 29, 2010 · 7:42 pm

They Tried To Make Me Go To Rehab.

Rome: home to the best cappucino of my young life. Italians know their coffee.

I know. You’ve been  up all night with your glassy red, bloodshot eyes glued to your computer screen, nervously wringing your hands while you  anxiously awaited news of my beloved coffee pot with bated breath.

Thank you for your concern. Truly, I’m touched.

Now…are you sitting down?

It’s dead. I apologize for the blunt delivery. It’s been a hard day for all of us.

I woke up this morning, [having spent last night praying and fasting that my demonized coffee pot would magically repair itself overnight and flicker to life after a 24 hour hiatus from it’s java-brewing-duties], and decided to test the thing before I put any actual coffee grounds in.

When you live in Dakar and all the meticulously-rationed coffee you own in the world arrived on the airplane with you in your impossibly overstuffed royal blue carry-on, you just don’t take foolish chances.  [Er, unless you are me yesterday morning.

The inagural pot of coffee in my "Funix" coffee pot. Sounds promising.

 Lesson learned.]

This time, the monstrous little contraption decided to shake things up a bit, and short circuited the electricity in my entire apartment.

Which was just. perfect.

Feeling very hopeless indeed, I resolved to make the best of a rather dire situation, and asked myself only remaining pertinent question: What would Lucille Ball do? I then crumpled to the middle of the sticky kitchen floor, resigned myself to my bitter fate, and asked Christy to pour ice down the back of my blue tank top and stick my pinkie in an electrical outlet as an unhappy [but sadly, absolutely necessary] substitute for my cup of Joe. [Joe, if you’re reading this-I love you.]

Life is hard on the farm.

Serendipitously, Ted and Ben wandered in just as Christy was about facilitate my impending electrocution and jolt me back to the land of the living. Recognizing that they too are bound by the rules of the Geneva Convention, the boys took pity on my wide “why do bad things happen to good people?” eyes and offered to go buy me a new coffee pot.

Okay. I may have begged. Just a little.

Suddenly, everything started to sparkle and fat little baby cherubs began to play harps and flutter around my living room.

Two hours later, I was caffeinated.

[“It’s aliiiiiiivvveeee!"]

In other news, Mohammad the fruit stand man is apparently very concerned about me. He hasn’t seen me run by since my exile to the couch twelve excruciatingly long days ago, and asks Michelle every day how I’m feeling and where I am.

Mohammad the fruit stand man.

Soon, my love. Soon.

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Filed under Team, The daily grind

December 28, 2010 · 7:42 pm

Desperate Times Call For Starbucks.

At tea with Danielle. Who refuses to drink coffee with me. And thus, this picture really has nothing to do with coffee, and everything to do with loving Danielle. We're going for visual interest, here. :)

I’m going to force myself out of the fetal position and peel myself off the floor just long enough to tell you this story.

You can’t HANDLE the story!

[I can’t handle the story.]

But then so help me, I’m going right back from whence I came.

In an effort to get to the bottom of why I can’t walk, the past several days have been a flurry of doctor’s appointments, extended phone calls with my new best friends at SOS, blood work, new appointments with new doctors that didn’t attend medical school on-line [and truth be told, my theory is that Doctor # 2’s parents named him "Doctor", thus he didn't feel the need to bother with trivial little things like a degree...], and a whooooole lot of bed rest.

Now, brace yourselves. This may come as a bit of a shock to you, but after spending the last eleven days on the couch, I am entirely convinced that I am not cut out for the sedentary bed rest lifestyle that has been rudely thrust upon me. In fact, I am entirely convinced that there is not a sedentary bone in my body.

 I digress.

This morning, I was scheduled to pick up the results of my blood work downtown, and cart them over to Doctor #3. [A delightful little French man that reminds me of Santa Clause. I wish he would adopt me.] My eyes fluttered open, I stumbled off the floor and gimped into the kitchen, to make my first pot of coffee.

Because that’s how I roll in the morning. To all of you that elatedly leap out of bed, grab your yoga mats and cheerfully greet the day with your best sunrise salutation-I salute you. As for me and mine: we need artificial stimulants. And I

One of my very last caramel lattes before hopping a flight to Dakar three months ago. Venti: the way life should be.

 don’t care who knows it. You just keep your earthy-crunchy-granola-hippie lifestyle to yourself, hand me my caramel coffee and then back away slowly. I promise, we’ll be best friends again after a pot or four!

I flipped the switched on my little blue coffee pot, and suddenly the thing started to moan. I mean, mooaan. I once helped kill a chicken in Romania. I named him Herbie. I ate him for dinner. And this morning, my coffee pot sounded strangely like Herbie the chicken did right before…well, you know.

Before I could say “café au lait”, the gray tile counter was covered in a tsunami of water and coffee grounds that poured out in a torrent from the bottom of my pot.

Desperately trying to will my nervous system into latency, I did the intelligent thing, and simply refilled the pot and repeated the process.

What’s the definition of insanity again?

Cue the moaning and coffee ground tsunami.

At that point, I started implementing relaxing breathing techniques and attempted to talk myself down from a wicked episode of tachycardia.

Sniff sniff. Wail! Sob.

At the Starbucks right outside of Versailles. Bliss.

I had no choice but to stumble into a decrepit yellow taxi and venture into the heart of Dakar in an un-caffeinated daze. It was entirely confusing-for the life of me I simply couldn’t understand when on earth the sun got so blindingly bright and everybody started shouting.

And yes, we now have a tentative diagnosis and it looks like I won’t die after all. Not this week anyhow. Ten more days of bed rest and enough pills to keep an 80′s hair band happy for a month of Sundays, and I ought to be up and walking again! Just ten more days…

…but the real emergency here is my coffee pot. Priorities, people.

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Filed under The daily grind

December 26, 2010 · 4:18 pm

Dashing Through the Sand.

This is what I was up to on Christmas Eve, while everyone else slaved over dinner. ...in fact, this is what I've been up to since my legs staged a coup last Friday!

Good…morning?

*Yawn

Alright, first things first. I don’t know about you, but I absolutely abhor the thought of giving up Christmas music so quickly!  I simply don’t see a reason for it. This one has been stuck in my head for about seventeen hours now-I kid you not, I’ve probably played it on repeat no less than twenty times just this morning. It’s got all of the sweet flirtation of “Baby It’s Cold Outside”-which routinely gets stuck in my head every year from about October to February. Give it a whirl.

 

Perfect. Now that we’ve got our mood music, I can go ahead and admit that I slept through call to prayer #1. And #2. …and quite possibly, #3. I can neither confirm nor deny that one. The point here is that Christmas tuckered me out! This may even call for a nap later. I wonder if Dayton will let me borrow his snuggie…

…nooot a chance. I don’t think the boy’s taken off that monstrosity since Ben gave it to him yesterday morning-we’ll be prying it off his cold, dead body one day. Or rather, his snuggly-warm dead body. [And there, you have the sheer genius of the snuggie. Currently selling

Christmas Eve dinner!

 like hotcakes in Japan.]

Sleepy and snuggie-less, my mug of caramel truffle coffee [Divine. If you’re a coffee drinker, switch immediately.] and I are here, as promised, to regale you with stories of Christmas in Dakar!

We rolled off the floor at about ten thirty AM, and were unwrapping presents by eleven. [And THERE you have the

Right before caroling on Christmas Eve!

latest Christmas morning I’m going to experience for approximately the next eighty-seven years.]  Now, confession is cathartic, so here’s mine for the day: My name is Ashley, and I am the world’s worst gift-giver.

Whew. I feel cleansed.

But it’s no exaggeration-for all of my wonderful intentions and as much as I adore the people I shop for, nothing throws me into a panic like having to pick out the perfect gift for somebody. I’d rather be boiled alive in a vat of hot chocolate, or have my gums scraped repeatedly with an ice-pick. I’m not kidding. I prematurely age approximately eight more

The boys unwrapping the African shirts we had made for them. Get in line, ladies...

 years every time a friend of mine has a birthday.

Drama, drama drama.

Given that I’m so exceedingly, atrociously awful  with this whole gift-giving thing, I’m always entirely caught off guard when somebody is really good at it. And let me tell you, I have five teammates that are. Michelle, for instance, has been listening to my grandiose plans to track down a fabric market in Dakar, find a tailor, and have an apron made in a funky African

The snuggie. Me-OW.

fabric for months now. I’ve been talking about it for months-but it’s always just sounded like too. much. work.

I’ll give you one guess as to what that sweet girl had under the tree for me yesterday.

And then there was Ted, who found the. most. gorgeous African scarf I’ve ever seen. I have the world’s most persnickety, obnoxiously picky taste in clothing-and over the years have perfected the delicate art of placidly arranging my face into a faux-excited “oh I absolutely adore pleather!” expression. It’s entirely convincing-puncuated by elated gasps and exclamations that would suggest I’d just won a trip to Paris or gotten that pony that’s been on my Christmas list for 23 years straight. But secretly, I’m always cringing. Dayton understands this about me, and apparently when Ted told him he was off to track me down a scarf, he simply rolled his eyes and shuddered, knowing full well that nobody should ever attempt to pick out something I’m going to end up wearing. [Or rather, that they hope I’m going to end up wearing. ;)]

The boys unwrapping the grill we got them. ...the grill that wouldn't light last night, resulting in a two hour fiasco that left their male egos forever bruised. Merry Christmas!

 

…to both Dayton and my stunned amazement, I didn’t fake a thing yesterday. LOVE it. Somebody’s Mama taught him well.

Ben, being one of the most thoughtful people on the planet, had snuck a stack of my favorite classic books onto the plane last October, and has been hiding the stash in his room ever since. In fact, Ben had all of his Christmas shopping done in October! Why oh WHY am I not that thoughtful?!

Dayton gave me some beautiful glass Christmas swizzle sticks for my coffee [where he found those in Dakar, I’ll never know], and he found us CHAIRS! Glory hallelujah, we can now seat

Ben: "It's like we're a family!" Ashley: *exasperated sigh "THAT'S what I've been TELLING you for two years!" Aaaand cue the laughter you see here.

four people around our little kitchen table. Epic poems will be written about him for years to come. I may even do a lyrical dance…just as soon as my legs decide to start working again.

And Christy…bless her. About a week ago, she looked at me with an amused grin, and this is the conversation that ensued:

Christy: I don’t have anything for you for Christmas.

Ashley: …yeah, I haven’t gotten you anything yet either.

Christy: There’s nothing in this country that I want.

Ashley: Me either.

Christy: Do you want to just not get each other anything?

Ashley: …we’re going to be friends forever, aren’t we?

We gave each other the gift of blissfully stress-free jack-squat. Which might sound grinchy to you, but was hysterically

Unwrapping the clues that led to our chairs upstairs!

 perfect for us. [And in my defense, her birthday present is tucked safely away in my super-secret hiding spot! I'm all over it this year. :)]

The rest of our day was spent throwing together brunchfest [and guess who found bacon in a Muslim country??], watching the Grinch, skyping with friends and family back home, eating dinner together…the usual cast of characters that you fully expect to enter stage left on Christmas day. And it was magic. There are only 364 days left until Christmas next year-and can I just say in all sincerity, that I am silly excited?

Stay tuned for tomorrow’s story, tentatively titled “Why no one in my family should ever ever EVER take Ambien no matter HOW badly they want to fall asleep.” And oh boy, am I ever going to get it for telling you that one…

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Filed under Christmas, Joy, Team