In the early hours I slowly make my way down the stairs, pour my first cup of coffee, and settle in at the kitchen table to watch the dawn through our back slider. Somehow I need this routine of stillness, of watchfulness, of absorbing the natural world in silence while my body rouses itself from a night of broken sleep. I need it daily. I drink in the way the tree branches hang heavy with dew, the birdsongs echoing soft in the treetops, the hibiscus flowers that have closed tight and dropped to the ground overnight…

As I’ve struggled over the years with my mental health, I’ve come to realize that there are certain things that bring me out of my dark, anxious spaces and give me a chance to reset. Things that draw me back to Mother and allow me to set aside every debilitating thought and just simply exist. Things that remind me how carefully crafted this beautiful planet is and how blessed I am to be a part of its rhythm…Things that ground me.

Silently watching the dawn break and the world wake is one of those things. It reconnects me, recharges me. It’s like being given air when there’s none left in my lungs. Every morning, wake, watch, breathe air, reconnect…reground.

Grounding is a ritual that I’ve come to learn I desperately need…My body craves it. My mind shuts down without it. Sometimes it’s the only thing that can seep through my nervous system and convince me that it’s okay to keep going. Grounding, in its various forms, is a therapeutic practice of reconnecting to the earth. You see, every system in our bodies depends heavily on an electrical charge moving through the water inside us in order to keep running, and those very electrons are something we absorb from the earth. Before pavement and rubber soles came between us, we had a consistent, completed circuit with our terra… An abundant source of energy that we could soak up through our feet. Perfectly designed. Absolutely needed. And now, almost completely severed.

I know that in my own hurried pace of life, I feel that loss daily. It’s why I need to watch the morning in silence for so long. It’s why I need to sit still and sense the breeze on my skin. It’s why I need to walk through the grass in my bare feet, and why I need to feel soil on my fingertips…

A few weeks ago I spent three days with my graduating class from high school in the beautiful city of Montreal. Although it had been thirty years since some of us had seen each other, it felt oddly comforting. It was easy. Natural. Familiar…Like breathing air again.

I have felt a strange closeness with these mates over the years that I can’t fully understand or easily express. Many of us met in early childhood, having come from many different places around the world. We journeyed together through the most awkward and insecure years of our lives, witnessing each others’ happiest of moments and worst of heartaches. And then on a hot summer evening in 1996, we walked across a wooden stage in our red caps and gowns and parted ways, scattering back across the globe. And as Third Culture Kids being launched into unfamiliar places, we lacked the firm footing of a permanent home to root us. To remind us who we were and where we came from. And for me, that loss was immense. I once tried returning to the place we grew up together, hoping to recapture something of what I’d left behind. But it was gone.

That experience severed something inside me that I haven’t yet been able to repair. It’s why I have spent decades trying to find where I belong. It’s why I still struggle today to find firm footing everywhere I go.

It took me many years and many miles to finally realize that home is mostly about people. And these particular people? When I’m with them, I AM home. I am part of a larger, deeper story rooted in the solid soil beneath my feet.

And it feels like grounding.

Hearing their voices—seeing their faces—somehow, it feels like absorbing those electrons that my body has been frantic for. It feels like reconnecting to the earth, to my terra, to my origins. A pathway back to who I was before I began to realize how very lost I felt. It’s a space where I don’t have to try to explain where I’ve come from or why I am the way I am. I don’t have to reach desperately deep for the words to describe that Weight that sits at the base of my soul, unnamed and unacknowledged during the daily rush of life.

It’s a space where everything I’m still trying to understand about myself simply doesn’t need to be said or dissected. Because amongst these kindred souls, they already know.

Those three short days in their collective presence began a much-needed repairing of what has been severed in my soul for far too long. And to my ever-struggling spirit, it feels very much like being given air just when there’s nothing left.

(So to my kindred souls from 1996, THANK YOU for every effort you make to reconnect. It means more than you know. 🖤)

In Nigeria (where I lived until I was eighteen years old) many families sleep in one room, sometimes all in one bed. Babies are often carried around all day nestled against their mamas’ backs, even if she’s frying yams in hot oil or carrying water in heavy buckets on her head. Babies learn to sleep amidst the daily rhythms of their families’ lives, swayed effortlessly throughout the tempo of the day, wrapped tightly in colorful zunnis, memorizing the feel of their mama’s skin. When I was a new mother in America, however, the guidance I was most often given was to “sleep train” my babies. To leave them alone in their cribs. To put them in a separate room and just let them cry until they fell asleep.

 I did try out this advice at first…my partner and I had our first baby when I was twenty four. I knew nothing about being a mother. None of our friends were having babies yet, so we found ourselves wading through an ever-deepening bog of isolation. My first year of motherhood was a foggy mess. I had been off my meds, not sleeping, growing further away from my partner through buried resentments, struggling throughout the day to soothe a colicky newborn, and I was intensely lonely. I tried every night to get my baby girl to sleep in her crib like all the books said I should, but she just wouldn’t. I tried with all four of my babies. But I always found myself spending hours listening to them cry alone in their cribs, while I sat slumped on the floor outside their room sobbing into my hands. I simply couldn’t endure it. So, night after night I brought my babies to bed with me. And night after night they would sleep serenely at my side. And yet, every day I struggled underneath the weight of feeling like a failure. A failure as a mother, because I hadn’t trained my children to sleep alone. 

 But the years tumbled through and my children did begin falling asleep in their own rooms. And even then, they would still sometimes crawl into bed with me in the wee hours. I suppose they felt safe there, because they would actually sleep. And I would actually sleep. And eventually I understood that answering their cries and holding them close while they slept was not something I needed to feel ashamed about. In fact, giving them gentle comfort and encouragement when they had needed it was a natural way to respond. And allowing them to sleep amidst the daily rhythms of my life—while feeling close and cared for—was a sweet gift of reassurance. There was always something strangely calming about holding each one of them. Their brown eyes were so deep and lovely that each time they looked up at me, everything melted away. Nothing else mattered.

Whatever your story may be, I hope you can find rest in knowing that by answering their cries, you are giving your littles exactly what they need: a guarantee of your presence and of your love. And please remember that you are a remarkable parent, even in the moments when you simply can’t attend to one more need and you find yourself slumped on the floor and sobbing into your hands. I hope you keep persevering, even through the most exhausting of days. These moments spent sleepless in the wee hours holding your babies are preciously fleeting. And I promise—even if it feels like forever— sleep will come. 

This project has been so very long in its making stages that it’s a bit surreal to actually hold a hard copy in my hands. Written years ago when I was still a young, sleep deprived mom of only three little hellers, rewritten just for fun when Four came along, and years later came to life when One painted its images on scraps of watercolor pages. Lovingly designed and laid out by my sweet sister-in-law, these treasured pages are priceless to me. And I’d love to share them with you. 🖤

To purchase, please visit

https://shop.ingramspark.com/b/084?params=P9Z7aBPVqW6j3EOiys8HWvobxIoUaJhCevjkxpThMm1

“A backyard is a novel about us, and when we sit there on a summer day, we hear the dialogue and see the characters.” Garrison Keillor

The birds flitter from high branches down to the patches of yellow grass that litter the Truxton’s yard. They seem joyfully unaware of the silent man who keeps vigil on them every afternoon.

Dad sits quietly beneath the shade of the ndu, its grass roof stretching above him like a separate sky. His soft eyes move carefully from tiny wings to the bright colors on the backs of these West African birds that peck at the seeds near his feet. They chirp quietly, serenading the stillness of ferns that surround the ndu and climb the base of the old Flame Tree.

 A small bird leaps from the ground and darts up towards the branches of the large tree, carrying Dad’s gaze with it. His eyes linger there, caught by the brilliance of red flowers that spring from its branches and shower down in petals upon the grass and the dry roof of the ndu.

The West African savannah is dotted with an endless sea of low thorn bushes and tall grasses. Yet there exists a giant among them: the Flame Tree. It towers above the land with its broad branches that provide shade when the sun beats hard, and shelter when the rains cascade. Its red flowers paint splashes of color onto the persistent greens and browns of the landscape. Its large roots pull up through the soil and serve as an evening resting place for sleepy villagers, while strong branches facilitate the games of young children. Seed pods dry into shaker instruments to use in church, and the strong wood from its limbs are burned for heat and for cooking. The Flame Tree has served Nigeria for generations, protecting and providing for its people. Yet of all the Flame trees that have rooted themselves deep within Plateau soil, the largest and most beautiful stands behind the Truxton’s house, stretching its branches over their tin roof and over their lives.

Dad notices that his thoughts have been wandering with the moving branches above him. The tips sway slightly in the gentle breeze, dropping three red petals onto the grass.    

This tree hasn’t always been there. It took shape many years ago with the first arrival of Charles and Beverly Truxton in Nigeria. They were new missionaries, eager to experience a foreign culture and to work side by side with Her beautiful people. Yet they must have moved with some trepidation…they had needed to leave behind them everything that was familiar. They left behind family. They left behind friends. They left behind the comfort of certainty. Were they doing the right thing? How much of a struggle would it be? And what if they decided to have children? What then?

They settled in a small town in Plateau State, above the humid heat that the rest of the country lay in. A house made of cement block awaited their arrival, sitting patiently behind the other houses that lined the dirt road on the hospital compound. It was empty, but soon filled with the love and determination of two human souls. Together they grew a passion for the Nigerian people that crossed their paths each day. They prized the beauty of the savannah and the Plateau, and they felt the wonder of the giant Flame trees which spread their long full branches over the dusty earth. They, too, felt its mysterious and unexpected security.

As the years passed, the Flame tree grew. And as the new Flame tree sunk its roots deep into Nigerian soil, the new missionaries planted their lives deep into Nigerian life. And the tree grew with them, standing firm beside their house, spreading its branches over their tin roof, reminding them of the care with which they planted and cultivated this new seed in a new country. It became their symbol of the beauty that can lie in one single act of trust. It became a favorite story for their three children who through the years played on that tree, hanging from its branches, crawling over its roots, begging to hear the story again and again about the big tree that came from a tiny seed.

But time can never stand still, so the years ran by us and now all of the stories have been told, and all of the children have grown and traveled back across the ocean, and all the fear and excitement of newness and change has settled into a kind of peace. Yet through the years of growth and change, there was one thing in the Truxton family’s yard in Jos that never moved: the Flame tree that Dad planted. It remained there, solid and constant, and I believe it still does. It has endured. With the flourishing of its flowers, the spreading of its branches, the strength of its trunk, the laughter in its memories, and the depth of its roots, the Flame tree grew to be the largest, strongest, and most beautiful of all in its area. And I do truly believe that it’s because it was nurtured with the most love.

As a young third culture kid I often felt…misunderstood. Unseen. To my Nigerian peers, I was (for the most part) just another expatriate living in their country. Not quite fully belonging. To my American peers, I was a little bit weird. A little bit behind. Not quite one of them. And even amongst my fellow third culture peers, I always felt out of place. Misunderstood. Unseen.

I took my invisibility with me over the ocean when I left Nigeria at the age of eighteen. I carried it throughout my college years as I struggled to find my voice. To find my people. But nothing stuck. My voice faded and so did my friendships. Still misunderstood. Still unseen.

In my husband I found a deep friendship that fought to see me. He fought hard. (He still does.) But then I was pregnant and the isolation hit. None of our friends had children at that time, so we were immediately hurled into a space that was deserted and confusing for us both. Our friends moved ahead with their lives, while we diverted down the joyous (yet desperately isolated) road of parenting. But I sunk much deeper into the loneliness than I could have expected, falling away from Jon. Falling away from our new daughter. Falling away from everything.

A part of me did eventually begin to surface, but not all of me. Not really.

As our family continued to grow and Jon became increasingly busier, I threw everything I had into being a mother. I spent every waking hour with our babies, as well as every sleepless night. Some nights their bodies cuddled in our bed next to me, other nights I was in their beds—reading one last story, singing one last song, rubbing their backs until they fell asleep—and many nights I spent on the floor, laying next to their bed, holding their hand.

I was mama, but Martha was still trying to find her voice in the chaos and in the quiet. Still invisible. Still unseen.

I poured so much of myself into my children’s lives as little ones that now as teenagers I feel completely emptied. I feel desperately inadequate. They pull away from me, as teenagers do, and I have no idea how to reach across that distance and bring them back. I have no idea how to let them know that I see them. I have no idea what words to say. And every time I do reach out, I’m reminded of just how far away they have moved from my grasp. With each day that passes I feel myself falling away again, from everything. Deeper this time. Much, much deeper.

Today I find myself looking in the mirror at a stranger. She looks like me, but I don’t know her. I don’t even like her, really. She has wandered down a thousand paths, grasping for her voice, desperate to find something that helps all of the falling away and the loneliness make sense. Something she can grasp confidently amongst the ashes strewn behind her, some way she can feel known, if only to herself. I stare at the brown eyes looking back at me now, trace the age lines appearing, each one marking a decade I barely remember. A series of moments piling much too quickly into years that I can never reclaim.

Martha, moving perpetually from one state of isolation to another, never truly being seen. Not even by herself.

I did look for her…I did try. Really, I did. But in all those years and through all those moments and amidst all that uncertainty, I guess I never did find her.

One day, I know I will. At least, I hope I will. One day I hope I can sift through all of these moments and realize they were a beautiful story all along. And I will find myself amongst its pages and I will smile. But in the meantime, I’m trying to learn to love that stranger in the mirror. One age-line at a time.

This year felt saturated with loss.

My oldest child removed all of her belongings from our home that she’s lived in since she was a young girl and moved three states away from us. Mid-year, I had to leave a job and coworkers that I adored. My hopes for my thirdborn returning to in-person school in the fall failed. My youngest decided (quite abruptly) that he was now too old for bedtime reading with me. (I know that sounds insignificant, but those moments were so precious to me.) My sweet, dear father-in-law breathed his last, and we are all still trying to figure out what this new, emptier normal is supposed to be like. And lastly, my own precious family of six is walking through a dissonance amongst us that I am grieving so deeply, and that I know will be long and difficult to rectify. So much loss. …

We went into town the other night to walk around the lake, and the lights felt so calming. Each little candle—lit carefully and quietly night after night by people I’ve never seen—had such a small flame, flickering now and then in the cold night breeze. On their own, they were so simple, so faint. But they were placed one after the other, encircling the whole lake, and it was so beautiful. So calming.

I guess my hope for 2024 is that I can find the little candles of joy in each day—I know they’re there, somewhere, amidst the disappointment and the loss—and that I can place them on my path, one after the other. And maybe some day I will be able to step back and see that I’ve managed to illuminate the entire dark lake.

Most mornings before work I park my car and watch this willow sway quietly in the breeze. As the months have slipped by, I have watched silently as it’s leaves turned from green to gold, and on these chilly mornings I have watched them slip quietly from its weeping branches. One by one they have fallen to the ground as this beautiful giant begins releasing its hold on what used to help it breathe…what used to help it drink in the sun. It’s doing what it needs to in order to survive the cold, dark days ahead.

Today—Thanksgiving Day—felt a lot like trying to process a strange kind of grief; a grief that can’t really be named…can’t be grasped or even touched. It mingled uncomfortably with moments of joy and laughter. I know I have a lot to be thankful for, but I have felt so deeply this quiet, slow death of the way I used to think my life would be. So much has fallen away from me. Each day I release another leaf, my fingers growing tired of gripping these things that no longer help me breathe…can no longer offer me life. And as painful as it feels in this moment, I will keep releasing whatever I need to in order to survive the days ahead. Because my people need me. My dearest ones…they need me. So although at the end of this I may be nothing more than bare, weeping branches, I will brace myself against the winter, knowing that on the other side—one day—there will be green again.

On our last day of vacation, storms came through and completely changed the shape of the shore. My youngest, being curious about anything that he doesn’t yet understand, was drawn to it. So we went for a walk. It was breathtaking. Tide pools, sea foam skittering across the wet sand, the angry waves, the strong wind, mini rivers barreling over channels that had been cut into the sand by the powerful tide… I drank deep of it. And it struck me how even there—amongst the chaos of storm’s aftermath—I still felt a sense of peaceful wonder deep in my spirit.
I’ve never been great with change. I crave it and I hate it all at the same time. I’m pretty much always a mess, wanting things to be different, but resenting it when they are…
This fall our family is facing some major changes, and I’m wrestling with the fear, the excitement, the hope and the dread all swirling at once. And as I try to come to terms with just existing in this dissonance, I can’t help thinking back to that stormy morning on Emerald Isle, walking barefoot with my youngest. Despite the chaos of the shore that morning, we were excited to see what lay ahead as we sunk our toes in the wet sand, feeling awe at Mother’s power all around, the warmth of the ocean, the wetness of the wind, the immense beauty of it all… and that feeling of peaceful wonder deep in my spirit, that I get to be here in this life, breathing it all in.

As my eyes open, I know we have been traveling for quite some time. At least, I believe we are moving…I can feel the wheels turning beneath me. Beyond the window is only darkness. This road I travel offers no answers to the questions I prod my weary mind with day in, day out. It is a long road. The darkness outside creeps upon me and surrounds my body with its cold, questioning emptiness and I sit, knees touching, hands clasped, tightening themselves deeper into the warmth between my thighs. The only place that brings solace. Crumpled this way, the loneliness almost disappears. I am closer— if nothing—to myself.

I lean my head against the window, face turned, brown eyes desperately searching beyond the scuffed glass of that backseat window belonging to an old Peugeot. I search for something—anything—a form that might emerge from the fingers of the night. My five year old voice whispers out into what feels like an endless void, Paint me something—sand, palm trees, ocean—anything at all… Anything to ground me, to make sense of this moment…

But we keep moving along this road, the absence of street lights creating a thick darkness where landscape should be. Yet I know there is an ocean somewhere beyond the deep night…I feel it’s presence. I can hear the steady crash of the waves, smell the salt thick in the air. Those waves, somewhere beyond this glass, crashing onto saturated sand that still does not hesitate to drink its fill. I can almost see it. But can I? Do I dare to drink in the hope of something I cannot see? Cannot touch? Were I to stumble from the confines of Peugeot’s glass, would my feet carry me far enough—close enough—that I might stretch out my hand and touch the very waves that soothe my ears tonight?

My soul still wanders at this moment, just as on a road in Liberia so long ago, and I know not where I travel to. My mind searches a dark space that offers no images to satiate my desire for something real—for something to see—something to grasp. Answers. Direction.

And yet, sometimes I believe I can hear the distant crash of waves somewhere, or catch the briefest whiff of salt in the air, and I think maybe. Just maybe there is an ocean somewhere beyond all of this endless night.

Creator, Ubangiji, Allah—lead me to the soothing touch of rhythmic waves on warm, tired flesh. I long to touch it.

I have cried many oceans for it.

Lately I’ve felt unearthed. Squeezed tight and pulled from my grounding. Quickly yet quietly removed from my community.

I’ve had voices telling me that I can’t believe what I believe and still be a true believer. I’ve had people I respect telling me I can no longer serve if we don’t see eye to eye. I’ve had loved ones imply with painful silence that I can’t truly love One while accepting the other…

This new, unexpected reality has left me reeling. How can it be so easy to see and to love someone exactly the way they were created to be, yet at the same time so heartbreakingly difficult to reconcile the voices swirling around that see it all so very differently?

I’ve heard so many songs lately about finding hope in the dark places, but where is the true dark when I see it one way and you see it another? When what brings one person joy is the very thing that causes another to grieve? Where is the true hope when it’s the believers that seem to be causing the most harm to the marginalized? Where is God?

The warm breeze yesterday was such balm for my weary spirit. I opened one of our windows, curled up on the couch and just sat there, breathing it in; watching the sun set behind the pines… the slow descent. The gentle softening of the day. The quiet. The warmth. And as night descended, I found my way outside to be enfolded in it; the clear dark skies enveloping all of me with its saturated quiet and its sprinkling of stars. I laid my head back and looked up, drawing lines between the heavenly bodies, wondering where my faith was to be found in all of this loss; all of this unearthing. And then the bells began playing from somewhere in Churchtown, a delicate shattering of the deep silence. Praise to the Lord, the Almighty. It was brief, almost distant. Once through, on the hour. I tried to remember the words I had learned as a child…But will it even matter? I feel stranded now in this endless desert; uprooted, wandering…faithless? But then the words ignite recognition, awaken the hope I thought was gone: “Ponder anew what the Almighty can do.” Oh those sweet bells. So brief. So life-giving. Creator reaching down and reminding me that I haven’t been forgotten. My family hasn’t been abandoned. My sweet children are seen and loved exactly as they are, precisely at this moment. Ponder ANEW what the Almighty can do. The Almighty. The Reconciler. Teacher. Outcast. Crucified.…Oh to breathe deep of this reminder that I am seen and cared for even here, when I can no longer reconcile what I was taught as a child with what I know in my heart.

As the chill begins to settle on the night air, I know I must wait for reconciliation. It may not come tomorrow, or even in the brief while that I have breath in my lungs, but I will do the work. I will begin the painful silencing of the voices that deepen any despair in my spirit, and searching instead for the hope that Ubangiji whispers in my ear. Behold, He is doing a new thing. Do you not perceive it?