yup – that’s what we did

It feels like there are frequently times in our lives here where we have to stop and almost double-check if something just happened

There is the more surreal: “Did we just drive across the country during a military coup d’état and we didn’t know it?”

There is the bizarre: “Did someone just knock on our door and hand us a live rooster?”

There is the funny “Did I just confuse two Kirundi verbs and end up saying something highly inappropriate?”

Then there are the things we do, that make us question our own choices, if not our sanity.

“Did we really just send our kids to boarding school in another country in the middle of the worst pandemic in a century?”

yes.

Yes we did.

(our teamate Jess wrote about her experience leaving their daughter for the first time )

The school has been incredibly proactive, organised, and agressive in their approach to controlling the pandemic. Our kids have been living in increasingly large cohorts, as the school cautiously allows more interaction among the students and staff present. The result is actually shocking. The fact that they have no active cases or anyone in isolation due to exposure despite having 100’s of people fly in from all over the world is amazing.

But that’s just the unique part about this drop off. All the other bits that are normally there – still require to be faced.

The feeling that you are being robbed of years with your kids that others don’t have to give up.

The knowledge that you’re going to miss out on events, activities, milestones.

etc

etc

etc

In some ways I hesitate to say ‘it gets easier’ – because it’s so hard, it’s hard to imagine it being harder. But, then I recall the first few drop-off’s. When neither us nor our kids had any idea what to imagine. When we didn’t have the solid network of friends and colleagues there to support out kids. When we didn’t know what the school was like, how it worked, what to expect.

Then we look back – and see how God has been faithful to our kids and us as a family over the past five years. There have been many, many hard things – but there have been so many good things.

Our kids have grown in so many ways – that would never have happened otherwise. They have made friendships that could only be forged in a situation like that. They have experienced so much. They have been challenged, really truly challenged – spiritually, emotionally, socially, academically.

It almost feels as though HARD BUT GOOD is a theme that I’m supposed to be understanding.

Hopefully I’ll get it eventually.