This has been the LONGEST year of my life! Before this year, I’d have said that the wait from age 7 to age 10 took the longest.

It was around the age of 7 that I made a decision for baptism but was informed that I was too young to follow through with my decision. In retrospect, I think the elders were right to hold off on allowing me to be baptized. It allowed time for the decision to be solidified, tested my commitment, and provided an opportunity to get grounded in the teachings of the Bible.

The other thing I began waiting for at age 7 was to become a Pathfinder. They started a club at my church and you had to be 10yrs old to join it. My 11yr old brother joined and they made an exception for my 9yr old sister to get in a year early. But, in spite of my beggings and pleadings, they could not let me in 3yrs early (although I thought myself mature enough).

Finally, when I was 10, I joined the Pathfinder club and was cleared for baptism! Those three years took f.o.r.e.v.e.r. because I was waiting on the fulfillment of some significant life events.

But this year has been, by far, the longest year of my life. Probably because it has been filled with multiple significant life events.

Getting married in May, for one, was a big deal. Funny thing is, at the time, it didn’t seem that huge of a deal – it just felt right. And moving into the same living quarters with my husband also felt like the natural progression of our friendship. Looking back at our May wedding pictures, though, I realize how inexpressibly happy I was at that time. May 10, 2015 was probably the best day of this year for me.

A month or so after our May wedding, my husband and I learnt that we would be welcoming a new member into our newly established family! It was a happy surprise! And fraught, since then, with oh so many emotions. It’s waiting for this baby to arrive that has slowed time down the most for me this year.

No-one ever told me that being pregnant takes a LONG time! Everyday is long and the nights are even longer (with all the trips to the bathroom). It takes forever to get from one week to the next, let alone from one trimester to the next – Firstly because of the nausea, then the fatigue, then the heaviness of carrying extra weight and the discomfort of any postural position…be it sitting, or lying down.

We’re down to 6 weeks before our due date. I am so glad to be counting down weeks in the single digits now! Yes, I’m excited to meet our son! But I’m also excited to have my body back. And to have my brain back – it currently feels like mush (something else I wasn’t forewarned about).

ps: everyone’s experience of pregnancy, I’ve been educated, is different. Even each successive pregnancy differs for each Mom. So if God should so bless us with another child in the future, maybe it’ll fly by next time!

So with my mushy brain, I had the privilege of addressing the General Conference in session for one of the morning devotions. Being in my first trimester and feeling nauseated and exhausted, all I remember about the experience was much prayer and gratitude to God for sustaining me through the experience! The fact that a snippet from my sermon that day was used in a Young Turks video about Ben Carson later in the year just underscores God’s work in spite of ourselves.

After our second wedding in Zimbabwe (which was another undertaking altogether), Arch and I moved all our stuff to Lansing where I started a new job with an old employer. The weight of starting at a new job was mitigated by the fact that I was working with some old friends and that some of my responsibilities were familiar.

Arch and I also started searching for a house to call home. It only took us a month to find the place. With pre-approval letter in hand, we moved forward with the mortgage process only to be declined one week before our closing date. Thankfully, the sellers were willing to wait while we started the whole process again with another lender. <sigh> I’ll write about that whole experience another time – it was terribly trying!

With only two days to the end of the year, we were finally able to close on our new home! And end the housing saga. Thank God!

So in summary:

This year I got married, got pregnant, spoke at the international gathering of the world church, started a new job and bought a house. Those are the major points.

It’s been a long year, filled with very high points and very trying moments. And I’m so thankful for God’s constant guidance through it all. He is so faithful!

As soon as the baby arrives, I’m pretty sure everything will speed up again. Remains to be seen. For now, I wish you all a happy new year filled with the presence of God at every step.

It has taken me over a week and a half to synthesize why the backlash towards Syrian refugees (in withholding them asylum on the grounds of the Paris attacks) bugs me so much. Even now I’m not sure I’ll manage to clearly and concisely summarize my thoughts, but I’m ready now to take a shot at it:

1. Oversimplification/Stereotyping

As a means of simplifying otherwise unmanageably complex social relations, stereotypes, are useful. They help us organize things neatly into boxes so that we can find some space to navigate our human interactions. But stereotyping comes with the connotations of OVERsimplification…a carelessness in deciding who to place in what box or a decision to use too few boxes (That’s the error I’ve heard repeated when people would qualitatively equate ascribing to Islam with voluntary involvement in the fascism of Nazi Germany). Not every Muslim is a terrorist – just like not every terrorist is a Muslim (frustrating to have to state the obvious…!).

2. What happened to loving your enemies?

Even if every Muslim were to be typecast as the enemy, how could a Christian refuse to help an enemy in need and still claim to be a follower of Christ? Is Jesus not the One who said to “Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you…”? And that parable of the good Samaritan…?!

No, it seems to me that mistreating those who mistreat you is inconsistent with Christianity. Paul puts it this way, “Dearly beloved, avenge not yourselves, but rather give place unto wrath: for it is written, ‘Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord.’ Therefore if thine enemy hunger, feed him; if he thirst, give him drink: for in so doing thou shalt heap coals of fire on his head. Be not overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good.” Romans 12:19-21

3. In Whom do you Trust?

Our fear is that if we treat others with kindness, especially those who we perceive to have wounded us, our kindness will be mistaken for weakness. And we don’t want to look weak! We want to project strength to ensure that we are never mistreated again. It’s all about protecting ourselves, you see.

But, I ask the Christian, what happened to “God is my refuge and strength”? What happened to “My help cometh from the Lord, which made heaven and earth…The Lord is thy keeper: the Lord is thy shade upon thy right hand…The Lord shall preserve thee from all evil: he shall preserve thy soul. The Lord shall preserve thy going out and thy coming in from this time forth, and even for evermore.” Ps 121.

Rather than trusting our safety to God completely, the fearful brand of so-called-Christianity subscribes to the unbiblical “God helps those who help themselves” platitude. It would be more truthful to say that God helps those who trust in Him! The Christian does not have to worry about protecting themselves because God’s already got that covered. All that remains is to remain faithful to Him.

4. Religious Liberty

My understanding of American history is that religious liberty has long been a value this nation upholds. But the Seventh-day Adventist Church does not advocate religious liberty because it is a denomination that was birthed in the USA. Rather, this legacy is ours from God’s own example.

He could have created human beings without the power to choose to obey or disobey but Genesis 3 corroborates the reality of human freedom of choice. Moreover, the cross of Calvary demonstrates the lengths to which God is willing to go to protect humanity’s freedom to choose. At cost to Himself, God safeguards the individual’s liberty to choose their religion (knowing that many will not choose Him!).

In step with God’s own example, Christ’s followers are committed to preserving the freedom of every human being to choose who/when/how they worship…even when those choices aren’t in line with my own choices. Yes, as a Christian, I must do all I can to preserve every individual’s freedom to decide their own religion; be it Islam, Buddhism or Pastafarianism (yeah, the satirical religion that worships the flying spaghetti monster).

These are probably my top 4 reasons why the anti-refugee comments have bugged me. Each of which I could write an entire separate blog post about…But I’m tired and it’s way past my bedtime so this’ll have to do for now.

Oh to have more Christians who are more like Christ!

All throughout our courtship, we’ve joked about updating our relationship status on FaceBook to “It’s Complicated.” You see, our cultural differences made for an interesting scenario on who to tell what – when. (And now I’m debating if I should try to explain it all here…And I’m shrinking from the task! <sigh>)

Well, when Archie and I first got together, I had to ask him not to update his FaceBook profile or change his profile picture to include me in it. It was a challenging request for me to make because I didn’t want him to misunderstand my request as insinuating that I felt our relationship was something to be hidden or ashamed of. Yet I had to ask this of him in order to follow my culture’s protocol for informing my family of the development. As evidenced by the fact that we got married, Archie was very understanding and accommodating!

Our relationship, thus far, has been this continuous journey of navigating the various cultural expectations of us – Frustrating at times…Fun at other times…But always enlightening! The classic illustration of the differences we worked through is physical closeness:

During our courtship, we went to visit Archie’s Uncle and Aunt in St. Louis for a weekend and when we were leaving, they wanted to take some pictures of us, so we stood next to each other. Archie’s Uncle says, “stand closer!” so we did. But I guess we weren’t standing close enough so he repeated his request with the remonstrance that we ought to look like we like each other in the picture!

By contrast, when Archie came to visit my family in Zimbabwe, he was under strict instructions to make no physical contact, whatsoever, with me. Generally speaking, the men and women would sit separately during meals (I didn’t notice this until Archie pointed it out, actually). But Archie would always come and sit next to me – not super close, but it was, still, an anomaly! All through his visit, I felt like I kept pushing him away for the sake of cultural propriety.

Our first engagement was on September 26, last year. It was just the two of us, with his ukelele, at the beach at sunset. It was perfect!

It had to happen then so that we could initiate the Zimbabwean engagement process which ended up happening on December 28th. Well, what happened on the 28th of December was the Lobola proceedings, which meant we were, by Zimbabwean custom, considered married, but we took it as an engagement because we wanted to be married by a Pastor. Oh, and the other engagement date was Christmas Eve with Archie’s entire family and all the wonderful bells and whistles!

If I were to pick one of the engagement dates, I’d probably pick December 24th as our primary one. It came at the most welcome time. And it was special to have Archie’s family there to witness it. While the other two dates are significant, they seemed somewhat incidental.

So we set August 16 as our wedding date – and it just happened! It was an amazing experience to have all these parts of my life converge in one day! Friends from pre-school, all through Pearson and Wellesley, and even my most recent boss was there! Since it was in Zimbabwe, my family was there, but it was extra special to have representatives of Archie’s family there too! The ceremony and reception were a mix of cultural customs and flavors – Yum.

When we got married on May 10th, earlier this year, it was also perfect in its own way. Very small, very intimate, short and sweet in our friends’ backyard.

We went out to eat afterwards then drove a couple hours away for our mini-moon. It was so easy to plan and execute, stress-free and chill – and in that sense, quite dream-like. But none of our families were there – it broke our hearts. And to respect my family’s wishes, FaceBook was off limits in announcing it; so the word had to get around one person at a time.

We have potentially one more wedding to go (I mean a wedding where I’m the bride and Archie’s the groom). It’d be in California, since most of his family wasn’t able to make it out to Zim. An excuse to get the family together, you know, and celebrate! We don’t have a date on that one yet but that’d make 3 engagements and 3 weddings!

Between May 10 and August 16 for a wedding date, it’ll have to be May 10 because we took our vows that day before God and witnesses, and we signed our marriage certificate that day!

But since it was less than perfect, I’m thankful we had the opportunity to celebrate our marriage with friends and family this month! It also initiated me into the world of real wedding planning i.e. working with multiple vendors and competing wishes from various sectors…If only we could have combined the chill aspect of 5/10/15 with the thrilling joy of friends and family of August 16 to make for the absolutely perfect experience.

So 3 engagements and 2 weddings later, I think I’m thoroughly married. It’s no longer complicated!