Finding Balance

Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid.
John 14:27

Things at school have settled back into the usual routine.  The new students finally have their green and navy KEMPS uniforms, and the daily schedule has been set after several rounds of changes.  This year I have been made the “class teacher” of fifth grade.  While this title comes with additional responsibilities – taking attendance, being in charge of discipline, making sure the class is clean and orderly – it has given me a sense of ownership and permanence that I didn’t feel before.  Fifth grade is a new class for me.  Coming from fourth grade where their entire curriculum was focused on the national examination (the entire class scored A’s!), these students are focused and hardworking, but also excited, and a bit unsure of what to do with the new independence that they are receiving in fifth grade.   They are funny and kind and I love teaching them.  They also think it’s pretty special that I get to be their class teacher. 

Now that Joseph and I are living together on campus, he is feeling a new sense of ownership and permanence as well.  He takes pride in caring for our home and the surrounding campus and is always thinking of new projects he can start, especially after getting some new tools for Christmas.  Last week he started building a chicken coop.  You may remember he built one when we were living in Morogoro, but we had to leave that one behind when we moved to Bukoba.  Of course, the new chicken coop needed to be bigger and better than the last, as he’s planning to get at least ten chickens to keep us well stocked in eggs and meat.  It’s so fun for me to watch the kids surround him as he works.  After the school day, the boys will change into their play clothes and sit watching quietly, waiting for Joseph to ask for their help hammering a nail or handing him a tool.  Even staff members stop by and watch him, asking questions about parts of the design or where he learned to be a carpenter.  He modestly responds that he’s not a carpenter, he just learned by watching others work.  In the evenings when he recalls anecdotes about the boys trying to help, and I remind him that his presence here is important, especially for those boys.
    
This is the longest I’ve been away from home since moving to Tanzania in June of 2018.  Although I hadn’t planned to originally, I ended up making trips home every six months.  Then of course last year after arriving in Bukoba in February, I was sent home just a month later due to COVID and stayed for almost four months.  While I miss home a lot – my family and friends, modern conveniences, Mexican food – I think I am finally at a place where I have found balance in my life here.  What I mean by that is that up until this most recent return to Tanzania, every time I came back after being in the US, I felt like I had to give up my routines and my comforts to be truly present here.  That if I made self-care a priority or spent extra money on American grocery items or put effort into making my home comfortable by my standards, that I was somehow betraying my calling to serve in Tanzania.  I didn’t know how to balance the world I was living in with the parts of home I carry with me everywhere I go.  Once I identified (with the help of my therapist) that I really was wrestling with this balance, and gave myself the grace to find it, rather than running from one side of the see-saw to the other, I felt incredibly at peace.  I finally feel free to change the things that made me uncomfortable (we now have running water and a working hot water heater for showering!) and am in turn better able to accept the things which I can’t change (regular electricity outages, spotty internet, etc.).

God called me to Tanzania to use the gifts which He has given me to serve His people, to bring love and joy to my life, and to the lives of everyone I meet.  But you don’t need to be living on the other side of the world to experience imbalance in your life’s calling. I’m sure many of you can relate exactly to the internal struggle I described.  If you’re trying to find that balance, give yourself the grace to make changes, and if you’re still feeling yourself sliding towards one end of the see-saw, make another.  Trust me, the peace it brings will be worth it.  

Mungu akubariki, 
Allee

Making progress on the chicken coop


Watching Mr. Joseph during the lunch break


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