Fresh Perspective

  After a year-and-a-half of inactivity, I pull my Littman Classic Stethoscope from its tucked away position to listen. I am delighted to at last be using my training, love, and gifting in this foreign land. I am not practicing nursing in Lebanon, but due to the circumstances I was able to assist a few neighbors who needed a little home support. However, I am not happy about the circumstances that have brought about this opportunity. Undoubtedly, it has affected your life also. Corona Virus. The lungs I listen to are too quiet, meaning not enough air is flowing through them. That is true for Lebanon also. This nation is in a 3-week total lockdown, where passes must be obtained to drive anywhere. Supposedly, you are not allowed even to walk outside your home, but some people are. Our hospitals have peaked capacity. Friends who sat in emergency rooms with loved ones described the scenes that they witnessed as unbearable, as sick people…extremely sick people…would come and be...

  Our first morning back in America. A sun kissed dawn. PC: Darron Boyd To America and back to Lebanon Covid free, despite high numbers in both countries, is nothing shy of a miracle and we are so grateful. Our time in the States was precious and hard all in the same breath.  The first three days were a high for me, as all our guys + girls were present, in addition my parents who took the risk, and my brother and eldest son who took the flight. So, there we were, all together. A first family Christmas in 10 years, was just such a treat. I will treasure the memory of Mia taking the lead in the kitchen.  WHOO HOO a girl at last!  I will never forget Meredith’s tick-tock potatoes and Tyler’s gloves he gave to my Dad. Games were played. Stories were told. A treasure beyond words. Then everyone scattered, except Darron, I and the two youngest boys. Off we went to Darron’s Mom’s and brother’s home. For the next 15 days we hunkered d...

  I knew that their one room garage home was small. Oppressive. Dark. Full of outside persecution, unfriendliness, and distress. Inside was hardly a shelter. Yet, it was all they had for 3 awfully long years. 3 years of not enough room to even walk about. 3 years of inhumane living conditions. Could we call this a refugee?  Hardly. They called it a prison.  But aren’t refugees supposed to find refuge? Could hand outs from the UN create refuge? Or food baskets? Or food vouchers? Or random donations of clothes and various pieces of broken old furniture equal refuge? Certainly, all these things helped. However, at the end of the day safety in shelter is necessary to move beyond bare survival. Two months ago, the three ladies that lived in this “home” were brave enough to trust me to start making cards. At first, I think they just thought it was a fun craft, but when they began to understand that this could be a livelihood for them, their eagerness to sew matched...

  Ten Thanksgivings. Nine Christmases. That is a lot of holidays to spend without family. It spans a young child becoming a teen or a teen becoming a young adult. Ten Thanksgivings without grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins equals a decade of memories not made. Nine Christmas’s apart is not a frivolous moment in time, but instead it represents a depth of understanding and experience. This is what our lives of living overseas has cost. 8 of those in Indonesia, and the latter in Lebanon. Those holidays have stretched us, as they have a way of highlighting choices made, unimaginable distance, and our unavailability. Even. To. Our. Children. It is rather ironic that on this tenth Christmas holiday we are flying to the USA. One would think that with a national pandemic threatening to undo our fragile world, and clear advice to not gather that this would be the one holiday that we would dutifully stay. But no. Crazy as it feels, the need to be present in our 15- and 17-year old’s...

  When we were thinking about moving to Lebanon, the dream of working with the refugees began to take root in my heart. Honestly, I have only been able to fullfill this dream in scattered moments. Yet despite how small these encounters are they move me beyond words. My refugee friend's stories are filled with much more than running from a war and a displaced people. So much more. They include family members killed by ISIS, rape, beautiful homes taken away and I don't even begin to know the sum of the pain. Add to that the poverty, discrimination, and the lack of hope they find here. I am left to ask, how do you impower the poor among you? This is a question that has been grappled with by powerful vast organizations, world leaders, everything in-between, and by me. Perhaps by you also? It is one thing to hand out the fish.  It is another to provide the fishing gear and the know-how. Which would you rather have? Personally, I like being in control. The la...

  Last Sunday I kind of plummeted on the mental well-being scale.  I was restless and fussy, cranky, and dissatisfied, grumpy and in a need of a change of scenery.  I was able to voice my feelings to Darron and was able to express that I needed his attention.  I had fallen into the comparison game, mix that with a good case of mid-life who am I, where am I, and that equaled a woman in need of some focused listening. Fortunately, Darron cleared his schedule from some pressing things and took me into the mountains of Lebanon for a hike. There he listened to me process out loud all these jumbled up feelings and wires that were misfiring in rapid succession. He took me to a scenic Arabic diner and fed me some tasty Lebanese food, as we tried to dodge the shisha smoke that is freely permitted. We reaffirmed that the last 22 years of my life had indeed been focused right where we wanted it, on raising the 4 boys. That my said “accomplishments”, or lack thereof...

 I have a magnet that hangs on my fridge that states how I once felt about our family happenings.  It declares, “If it is not in a scrapbook then it didn’t happen”. Pre moving to Papua, Indonesia I was an avid scrapbooker. However, I did not take my papers, glues, pens, stickers, albums, and more (much more) with me, because I believed that the humidity would be to harsh on them. Instead I became a blogger. In many ways blogging has been much more fun because it has allowed YOU to come with me and I am so grateful you have. Your prayers, interest, words of encouragement, and readership have all been more inspiring than an album of photos that rarely gets opened. I am sure that some of the things I write about are humdrum to you…but something really important happened this summer and as the new saying should go, “If it is not in the blog, than maybe it didn’t happen.”  Well, we do not want that to be true, do we?  So, bear with me as I log a few beautiful facts a...