Put me on a plane, a boat, or a train, and I promise one thing: I’ll get motion sick. Travel plans make Dramamine my new best friend. I wasn’t always this way. Perhaps it’s a lovely ailment that comes with age. Whatever the reason, it’s annoying. However, I can sleep off motion sickness far quicker than I can recover from the learning curves of life.

I have another life. It’s a life I love but it’s not a life I own. It’s a borrowed life; on loan from the African soil. It isn’t mine to keep.

It’s a life where a rooster unapologetically announces the morning and simple moments tug at my arm to take notice.

I was tempted. Really tempted. I was offered a long-awaited and prayer-saturated professional opportunity I’ve been hoping for. But the offer came with a catch.

I can’t divulge specifics, but I can say this: accepting the offer meant diminishing who I am as a woman in ministry. My ministry credentials, which represent God’s call on my life and required years of study and hard work, now stood as a barrier due to man-made restrictions.

“Welcome to the 1800’s.” My words dripped with sarcasm and a bit of delight. As my kids sat stunned from the realization that no electricity meant no internet, I lit a hazelnut candle and settled into the unexpected. No storm, no warning, no reason, but no electricity.

Well, it finally happened. I guess deep down I always knew this day would come. My faithful pink and white Crocs, sandals I took on every trip to Africa, finally gave out. Ironically enough, after all, I put them through in a decade of use, they simply split walking around my kitchen.

In the same year, our daughter moved away for college, we lost our beloved dog of twelve years. You know I miss them when I resort to holding my son’s pet lizard. A bearded dragon, to be exact. We purchased him (him? her? can you really tell?) years ago when my son aspired to be a zoologist.

I am the worst gift wrapper. My ability to accurately judge the amount of paper required to fit around a rectangle box without leaving an inch of present peeking out is severely compromised. Perfectly coiffed triangle corners meticulously donned with invisible tape? Forget it.

Americans will spend more than 450 billion dollars on purchases that accompany the Christmas season. We go to great lengths to find the perfect gift: take laps around the mall, scroll through the monstrosity of Amazon, or, alas, pick up the last-minute Starbucks gift card.