I have kind of a nomadic spirit in ways. I’ve always been fascinated by the notion of other places and people, always loved to travel, always wanted to taste more of the world. It’s partly what drew me to Jason when we met–I recognized a very similar spirit in him, and it was attractive. Jason had just returned from Africa in the Spring, and when our lives intersected, I was only three weeks past my first brush with the continent myself. We had both sworn off dating, and we were both in trouble 🙂

Over the weeks and months that followed, Jason and I became fast friends, fast dreamers, and fast to fall in love. The same country, nearly halfway around the world, had brought us to the same page in our lives. J challenged me about where my life was headed, what I wanted to do, what mattered the most. He taught me about God and trust and diving in with your whole self. He encouraged my adventure with YWAM in Australia and Egypt and back again, and eventually (in August ’06, almost exactly two years after we met), we led a team of students on our first trip to Africa together.

It’s not surprising that four months following, we were engaged, getting married, and shifting our lives to move back to Africa the following June. That gave us three months to plan the wedding, and three more months to raise funds, move apartments, attend missionary training and say goodbye to family and friends. We boarded a plane with three pieces of luggage each and ventured out into the unknown for the upcoming year.

Our time in Africa requires far more than one blog post, and blog about it we did as we traveled and ministered and met adventure and heartache and challenges all at once for a 12 month span. We developed friendships, adjusted to married life in an untraditional way and created memories that we will always tuck away between us in the years to come. And when we came home (three years ago this coming June), we had a lot to learn about love and living and transition on our own turf.

It’s been a wild ride in a lot of ways. We look behind us now and wouldn’t take back any part of the experience, but it was hard and trying, and it continued to be for a long time after we unpacked our bags.

I’m writing about this tonight because it strikes me that three whole years have passed–that we have grown that far away from Africa in a lot of ways, and that we have made up for that distance in growing closer to each other. There is no way that our lives would be juxtaposed as they are right now if we hadn’t been on such a journey then; we might not have peace about being still, staying put. We might have oats to sew that God took care of for both of us, 8,500 miles from home. There is a groundedness about us now that didn’t exist three or five or seven years ago, despite our desires to someday return to the places we’ve grown to love elsewhere on the planet.

It’s good to be grounded here for a season, however long that may be. It has given us the chance to move into ourselves and to better establish our hearts and our family. When Baby Kehrer comes into this world this Spring, we have a place to bring him or her home to, and we’ll be able to have confidence in the security of it (at least as much as one can have in worldly things).

Together, we have planted our feet. Not only in the states for a time, but in our space, in our family, and in the direction we think that God is calling our lives. The future is entirely unknown, but it always has been. What we know is in our hearts, and under our roof, and in this belly, drawing us closer to the place we most belong.

“But blessed is the one who trusts in the LORD,
whose confidence is in him.
They will be like a tree planted by the water
that sends out its roots by the stream.
It does not fear when heat comes;
its leaves are always green.
It has no worries in a year of drought
and never fails to bear fruit.” Jer 17.7-8

may it be so,

mm