Naya Ku Boma

There is a phrase that has been tickling the edge of my mind today. Every time we would start down the dusty road to the village in Zambia, our friend would yell after us, “Where are you going?!” 

“Naya ku boma,” I would answer. I’m going to the village. And we would all delight in the quick exchange and in his resolve to teach us his beautiful language.

Today, I am delighted to say it once more. 

Friends. We’re going to the village. 

A different village and a different journey, but one that we are immeasurably delighted to undertake.

After much prayer and searching, we have committed to a 1-year internship with Choshen Farm in Fimpulu, Zambia. (It’s a much longer story than that makes it sound, consisting of some impromptu emails, a fortuitous dinner date, and a great deal of careful consideration and planning, but we’ll leave it at that for the moment.) We have pretty much all of the emotions right now, with excitement and something between contentment and assurance being the predominant two. I encourage you all to head on over to ChoshenFarm.Org and check out what these folks are up to. It is Kingdom-focused living, and we are honored to be a part of it.

While you’re at it, check out the “Fimpulu” and “Fundraising & Support” tabs at the top of our newly updated family blog! There, you’ll find details about what we’ll be up to during our time with Choshen and how you can help make it all possible.

If you would like to be a part of our email list, you can contact us at dtsuell.gmail.com. We’ll send you monthly updates as we prepare to launch into this endeavor and continue to keep you updated once we’re there. If you’re a fan of snail mail, we would be delighted to send you a paper copy instead! Simply put, this is not something we can do alone. We treasure your prayers and are oh so grateful for your support.

We hope to depart sometime in late September or early October. Our salaries at Choshen Farm are entirely dependent on donors, so between now and then, we’ll be doing a lot of traveling and networking for fundraising purposes. If your church or group would be interested in hearing more about what we’ll be up to or supporting us financially, just drop us an email or comment below and we’ll set up a date!

We praise God for His faithfulness, and we thank Him for you, our family and friends, whose support has meant so much to us along this journey. As always, may every step bring Him glory.

Breaking Radio Silence

There are many reasons to maintain radio silence (or, erm, blog silence?). Sometimes you just don't have anything to say. Sometimes you have a million things to say, but they need to be said to your God and the people closest to you, not to all of cyberspace. Sometimes you don't know your next move. Sometimes you do know your next move but aren't ready to broadcast it yet. Sometimes your world is expanding and changing so quickly that your creative expression can't keep up, so you focus on just taking it all in instead of trying to document it.

There are many reasons to break radio silence. Ladies and gentlemen, it is time.

We have some catching up to do.

My amazing daughter is six months old now. She is crawling, babbling, pulling up, and loves the trashcan in the bathroom more than anything in the entire world except for maybe bananas. Her daddy and I are a close third.

  
My amazing husband graduated with a Masters in Social Science from the University of Chicago. I am at least three times more excited about this than he is (BECAUSE PRAISE JESUS IT IS OVER).

 

I'm not a school nurse anymore. It was too slow; I needed something more challenging. Now I work as a pediatric nurse at a residential facility for foster care kids with often complex medical needs called the Children's Place Association here in Chicago. It's pretty much the best thing. More on that at a later date.

We are, in a word, joyful. We have fallen in love with this city-- a twist I definitely didn't see coming. Oh, it has its problems, sure... the crime rate is a little irritating. Coming home last week to find that our apartment had been robbed was really irritating. The knowledge that winter is just right around the corner is the most irritating. But we love it. The way you love a dog even if it has fleas or occasionally poops on the floor.

This last year, our lives have been consumed with school and new city and baby and new job. We never stopped praying and considering our near future, but it was difficult to ascertain a clear direction or make any kind of real plan. Now that some of those stresses have resolved, we are elated to finally share where we are in this journey with you.

We believe, with all of our hearts, that we are called to return to Zambia. And that call finally seems attainable.

David is currently working on a Fulbright application that would provide funding for 9 months as well as invaluable contacts all over the country. If this works out, we will leave February of 2016. Zambia Fulbright applications go through two stages of review. We will know in January 2015 whether he made it through the first stage and by May 2015 whether his project proposal has been accepted.

We are also in talks with an organization called Teach Beyond that places missionaries as teachers. They're not currently working in Zambia but are very positive about starting a presence there. If Fulbright works out, we are hoping to do some of the leg-work required for this arrangement while we're in Zambia for those 9 months.

Last weekend we went with our church to a retreat center in Michigan. One afternoon we were playing cornhole and casually chatting with our pastor about our plans when a retreat center employee happened to walk by and overhear. Turns out his son's church recently started some very promising work in Zambia, and they need teachers and nurses. Hmmm... He immediately called his son and handed me the cellphone. At the very least, we are people with the same beliefs and mission working in relative proximity to each other, and that kind of support is invaluable.

These possibilities are all the result of several years of prayer, research, and sincere thought. We haven't shared every step of the journey publicly out of respect for our family and friends, who naturally struggle with the distance this will bring. We are sharing now because, above all else, we need your prayers and your accountability. No man (or missionary family) is an island. We welcome your questions and your thoughts. Feel free to leave them in the comments, or just shoot us an email.

Thank you for walking with us on this journey. May every step bring Him glory.

Teresa Leone

You are a mystery to me.

I expected to be overwhelmed, I think. I expected to be so awestruck upon meeting you for the first time… And I was, truly, but in a way I could never have anticipated. It was a quiet awe. A whisper deep in my heart. Because I think I have known you forever. We have been best friends since the beginning of time. You are an inseparable part of me.

Your daddy and I dreamed about you almost from the very beginning of Us. You have a wonderful daddy. The very best in the world. We picked out so many names for you and your brothers and sisters. They were just names at the time—names strung together by two fools who were so incredibly in love with each other and life together. And we still are, and we always will be. We didn’t even know you were missing from the dance until you joined hands with us.

I keep reaching for my belly to play “find the baby feet” with you. Those were the best worst mornings, when your persistent rolls and kicks would wake me long before the first rays of dawn crept through the blinds. You danced even then, twisting and twirling to the beat of your own little drum, contorting my belly into shapes I was sure it would never recover from. I would run my hands over your form and delight in your spunk, your refusal to be content in such a small and confined space. We are just alike in that way. Gypsies don’t do well inside stone walls, my darling, and you are the child of two gypsy souls. Someday you will wander the world… I know it. And I will encourage you in it, because as much as I will want to selfishly hold you close to me, I want even more for you to live with reckless faith and resolve, to value what is good and right over self-preservation.

But for now, you are most content curled up on my chest, your feet nestled in one of my hands and your face burrowed into the hollow of my neck. It really is okay if you want to stay that way forever.

This morning we watched the snow fall together, blanketing the city in a purity that whispers of redemption and hope and joy. I treasure the time we spend together when the rest of the world is still rubbing the sleep away. Your steely eyes seem to look right into my heart. I hope you like what you see, my love.

You are named after people who believe in the call and the promise of “on earth as it is in heaven”—people whose compassion and love and gentleness of spirit have taught your mommy more than you could ever know, though I will spend the rest of my life trying to teach you. There is a woman who shares your name from my childhood church that I was always very drawn to when I was younger. Her heart is gentle and tender and kind. I know that yours will be too. Teresa means “harvester.” Your daddy and I are drawn to a people and a world in need, both physically and spiritually. And yet, we know full well that change is slow, like a seed enveloped deep in warm soil, with tiny tendrils reaching out for water and light, ever so gradually growing stronger and taller. We want to plant those seeds, little one. Our deepest prayer is maybe, just maybe, you can someday harvest what we hope to cultivate.

Although really, truth be told, your daddy picked out your first name. He has a certain affinity for a saint and a nun from Calcutta of the same name. I hold a particular fondness for the latter, so it wasn’t a hard sell.  “I try to give to the poor people for love what the rich could get for money. No, I wouldn't touch a leper for a thousand pounds; yet I willingly cure him for the love of God.” I love that quotation, because it responds to the question and the misunderstanding that Daddy and I face so often—we go to those in need not merely for personal or professional reasons or because of some kind of sad pity or guilty obligation, but rather because Love compels us, and that kind of flame cannot be put out.

I picked your middle name out when I was in the 7th grade. God sent me a guardian angel, you see. Leone is her middle name too. She gave me my first real job. She taught me how to drive too fast. She tells the very best stories about her life, and so I love taking long car rides with her. She showed me how to crochet (which is why you  really have her to thank for your plethora of slippers and hats and blankets). She demonstrated, in a way I have never seen before, what it is to love unconditionally and to love “the least of these”-- even if it meant that other people didn’t understand, or got jealous, or lashed out at her for it; even if it meant that yet another person spent another night on her couch, or showed up at her family’s Christmas party, or conveniently visited around dinner time each night; even if no one said thank you; even when she was sometimes taken advantage of. She sat and read and studied scripture with me in a way that no one ever had before, and she confirmed the sneaking suspicion in my heart that God meant what He said in all of those verses and stories about Samaritans and little children and glasses of water given in His name, and so she steadied my fragile soul in the face of complacency and selfishness and pride and all of the other vices that your momma struggles with. I could fill page after page with stories about her for you, but somehow, that doesn’t seem right. Those stories should be whispered softly in your ear and held oh so close to your heart.

And there will be plenty of time for stories, and plenty of stories to fill that time. Adventures for our minds and hearts to share.

Until then, I will leave you with one-- one that I hope you will be a part of, Teresa Leone. Because Leone means “lion.” Teresa Leone. The Lion’s Harvester.  

Once upon a time, there was a Lion named Aslan…

How Time Flies

Time passes absurdly quickly sometimes. Or maybe David and I just cram more into a given chunk of time than people might generally choose to do.

In February, he proposed (I truly thought he was never going to ask…).

One week later, we set the wedding date for June 8^th.

But then we found the perfect reception place, only their only opening was for May 11^th.

So we moved the wedding up.

Then we planned a wedding. In about 12 weeks. Don’t ever do that to yourself.

Of course, the reception spot was too good to be true, and it ended up being moved to an entirely different location after a lot of frustrated conversations. That’s okay. The second spot was even more perfect.

On May 4^th, we graduated. One week later, we got married.

David  repeated after the preacher…
“For better or for worse,

For richer or… well, probably for poorer…”

Preacher Len told David to stick to the script.

I tried to keep my eyes open really wide for all of the wedding pictures, because I was very tired and emotional and hormonal and had cried for a good bit of the morning, so I was afraid they were puffy…

The next morning we had Mother’s Day lunch with David’s family before jetting off to Massachusetts for a week long escape/honeymoon. We weren’t watching the time and nearly missed the plane. No worries. We flew United—they delayed every single flight that we even looked at. We made it in plenty of time.

We landed in New England very late that night. Have you ever rented a car in the dark when you’re exhausted? Don’t. Also don’t ever drive a rented car for 3 hours through mountain roads after your phone (which is also your GPS…) dies, because all you will be able to hear is the car-rental guy’s warnings about how much insurance you should have bought from them. It was so dark and impossible to see.

But if you do, and if you get pulled over for making a U-turn in the process, DEFINITELY act lost and Southern and mention that it’s your honeymoon. Anyway, the cop probably only pulled you over because you had turned on only your parking lights instead of headlights.

It was a little less difficult to see after that.

We finally made it to our little mountain ski lodge and slept for an exceptionally long amount of time. At the end of a week of tennis and hiking and too much eating out, we drove to Yale Children’s Hospital to hang out with Abner’s family. Guess what?! None of the restaurants in New Haven have Spanish menus! And I have no idea how to say most sea foods in Spanish!

We eventually wandered back to Nashville, moved in together, and worked our way through the summer. A couple of months later, we found out that sometime next February the two of us would become the three of us.

It’s a girl! Teresa Leone. We’re pretty excited. I hope Africa is preparing itself for the Suell invasion.

I took the NCLEX and passed it in 75 questions (that’s a good thing), which was nice.

I applied for about three million jobs and finally found three part-time positions that melted into full-time employment.

David folded a lot of shirts at Brooks Brothers.

I applied for and received an RN license in TN, which was really easy and took about 10 days total.

Then I applied for and (eventually) received an RN license in IL, which was absurdly complicated and took about 3 months.

Then life got boring so we moved to Chicago. David’s grad school program might have had something to do with it too. Have you ever lived in a studio apartment? With another human? And a tiny human on the way?

We like adventures.

Although I would be okay if some of the more… ahem… “exciting” parts of our adventure would resolve, like our current unemployment…

Our toilet was clogged up when we moved in. And the carpet would be much easier to look at if we could put an area rug over it so we wouldn’t have to look at it. We got a new fridge! But only after our other one quit working. At 10pm. The day we bought $200 of groceries. Our maintenance worker is on a first name basis with us. He’s a lovely man.

Now, we’re sitting at Cafe53 just down the road from our humble abode. They sell gelato here. I highly recommend the turkey Panini and the iced chai. David spent the morning in a class about African colonialism and post-colonialism, which has us both pretty excited. The weather is wonderful and fall and crisp. I filled out so many job applications today that I now have a series of otherwise useless facts memorized—like the phone numbers of every employer I’ve had for the past 6 years, and the address of my high school… Lorna mailed me some baby yarn so I can make more baby booties, and it should be in tomorrow.  I made some baby bunny slippers. They’re incredibly cute. Hopefully we’ll have internet at the apartment by early next week. We found a church (wasn’t hard… it’s three doors down from home…) that we adore and will definitely keep attending.

AND a new grocery store just opened up RIGHT ACROSS THE STREET, so we don’t have to walk a mile to buy milk from CVS anymore.

Let me tell you, folks: This is the good life, right here. And we’re loving every second of it.

Bus Protests

Perhaps my greatest weakness is my rashness. Or maybe it’s recklessness. I prefer the term “passion.” Described by coaches, friends, and jr. high teacher as “fire-cracker,” “hot-headed,” “strong-willed,” “spit-fire”…. Sometimes manifested (in my slightly more redeeming moments) through intervention on behalf of the helpless. If I’m honest though, the fire-themed descriptions mentioned above are a more accurate representation of the dangerous and damaging potential of a temper untamed.

The Peace Soldier bus may be my least favorite form of transportation in Zambia. Don’t get me wrong; I’m sure there are worse. The overnight bus from Kazembe to Lusaka isn’t exactly a barrel of pure joy. I think my issue with the Peace Soldier bus is that since it’s just a “short” trip, I still feel obligated to be functional when I get to wherever I’m going, but the trip is so exhausting that I just want to curl up and groan myself to sleep.

This last summer, several of us were on our way back from Mansa via the Peace Soldier bus. Much fun. After David successfully warded off a local man who wanted one of the other volunteers to marry him (she happens to be Chinese… he kept saying, “I like her breed.” *shudder*), I traded seats with a rather portly gentleman so that I could sit in the back seat next to David. On my other side was a mother with 2 young children.  The back row had 4 seats. The woman held the littlest boy on her lap while the preschooler occupied the last seat.  She seemed terrified of inconveniencing me and kept apologizing profusely while scooting the child closer to her to give me more room.

Just before the bus was about to leave, the scrawny pushy guy who takes the tickets opened the door at the demand of an angry and blustering man on the outside. The exchange was in Bemba, but it was obvious that the man wanted on the bus. He did not have a ticket but was offering the ticket man money.

Just one problem. The bus was full.

The ticket man stepped back on the bus, glanced around, and zoned in on the woman with two children sitting beside me. He yelled something at her, and she responded similarly. The back-and-forth quickly became heated, and the woman whipped her tickets out of her purse and began frantically waving them at the man while holding her other arm protectively in front of her preschooler in the seat next to me.

Unable to keep my mouth shut, I joined the conversation.

“What is the problem?” I asked.

“Ah! This woman, she has two children. The children can sit on her lap or on the floor. This man needs a seat.”

Never mind that it would have been physically impossible for even the skinniest of children to wedge themselves between the seats to sit on the disgusting floor, or the fact that the woman’s lap could not possibly have held both children, OR the obvious issue that she had purchased TWO seats and was only occupying TWO seats.

“How many seats did she purchase?”

“My friend, they are just small children.”

Ohhhhhhhh that was soooo not a good direction for him to go with this argument.

“Answer the question. How many seats did she purchase?”

The man decided to switch tactics.

“Ah, my friend! 5 people can sit in the back row! There are 5 seats in the back row!”

Let me interject and point out that he made two different statements. On one hand, 5 skinny people could probably have fit in the back row. We were not 5 skinny people. We were a large David, Meg, a 5-year-old, a 4-year-old, and a well-fed mother. His other assertion—that there are 5 seats in the back row—was simply wrong.

“You are wrong. There are 4 seats in the back row.”

The entire bus was now chortling their amusement as they watched the display.

“Musungu, you are blind!”

Spit-fire tendency triggered. I flew to my feet and my voice amplified a bit as smoke and brimstone poured out of my eyes.

“Count them with me! ONE! TWO! THREE! FOUR!” I gestured wildly at each seat as I numbered it. “Four seats! If there is not room for your friend outside, then he should have bought a ticket. The back seat is full.”

And with an air of finality I sat back down.

The bus ringing from the laughter of its passengers, the door finally shut and we pulled away down the dusty road.

Back in the good ol’ U.S. of A., I ride a different kind of bus. It’s actually a 15-passenger van, and I pack it full of homeless kids each weekday to shuttle back and forth from various summer camps.

Some of those kids are a little rough around the edges. As in, really rough. An 8-year-old made me cry last week. Sometimes I have to be a little more firm/harsh with them than I would be with the average kid.

Today, I had a rather humbling and heartbreaking realization. Somewhere along the line, the “fire-cracker” part of me that makes me capable of not just handling but also loving on and positively interacting with these kids kind of took over and mutated. Firm and harsh became my default. This became glaringly obvious when I barked at a first grader with a stutter (because he was drumming on the seat in front of him and I had asked him to stop twice) but then caught his hurt and fearful expression in the rear-view mirror.

So the second time in living memory that I stood up and addressed a bus full of people, it wasn’t to blow my top. It was to apologize.

The great thing about kids is that if you’ll just level with them, look them in the eye, and acknowledge you were wrong, their hearts are usually still soft enough to forgive and forget. They hugged me like always as they got off the bus. One of the teenage boys who usually rides with us but whose mom had dropped him off that morning stepped out of his basketball game to shout my name, flash a grin, and wave. The pre-teen girl that has become like my little sister dodged three counselors on her way to launch herself onto the bus and give me a hug (her mom had also dropped her off, so she hadn’t ridden with us—also, we did have a discussion about obeying the counselors as a result).

I have thought a lot in the past week about doing right things the wrong way, particularly in regards to my speech and whether I consider my words before they come rocketing out of my overactive mouth. I think I could have handled both bus situations better. It was right of me to stand up for the woman on the Peace Soldier bus (the first time I rode the overnight bus from Lusaka to Kazembe, the bus operator made a woman with two toddlers sit on the rancid floor so she wouldn’t be “in my way.” I was new to the culture and the country and a little bit paralyzed, so I didn’t speak up. I vowed it would never happen again…). I think it was also appropriate to shut down the blooming percussionist this morning.

But in both situations, I failed to speak in love, and so I failed to represent my King or set an example that the children watching would have done well to emulate. I became just one more self-entitled bullying Musungu and one more authoritarian adult. I do not wish to be either.

The words of my stuttering drummer left me with a smile as he departed the bus so very early this morning: “Don’t worry, Miss Meg. Your day will get better. You’re always nicer in the afternoon. Maybe you just need a nap.”

It seems there is hope for me yet.

All in a Daze Work

On Mondays, I work at the refugee clinic.

This week I spent the morning shirking my duties in favor of wooing a 4-year-old Nepali girl into becoming my best friend.

She was not impressed.

I offered stickers, and she snatched them and crumpled them up. I gave her crayons and a coloring sheet and she shredded the crayon wrappers onto the floor. I made faces at her. I animatedly bit the heads off of animal crackers.

She just sat sullenly in her chair and stared at me, the wild-haired slightly disheveled mess of a blonde white girl hopping around on one foot like a complete idiot in my attempt to make her smile.

But I noticed that no matter what I did, she watched me.

So I hid from her.

I stepped behind a door, and she leaned to the side to find me. I slipped beneath a table, and she found me there too. Luckily she was at the age where all I really had to hide was my face, so this game wasn’t too difficult. Finally she had to slip off of her father’s lap and take three full steps to the side to find me. And then another step. And then one more closer. Before long, she was four feet away from me, giggling and chattering in Nepali. I made a movement toward her and she panicked, so I just stayed where I was and tried to hide behind my own hands. She started to get nervous. I grabbed a hair elastic off of my wrist and gently shot it at her. She startled, but then picked it up and shot it back at me. Of course this was terrifying and I tumbled over dramatically.

The next half hour was full of giggles and laughter and all the joy that one little conference room could hold. The Cuban couple in the corner delighted in watching this little one play. The little boy having his blood pressure taken stopped crying. The whole room was transfixed by the joy of a child.

Afterwards, a translator I have never met before came up and introduced herself. "You did wonderfully today," she said. "You're a natural. Keep it up."

Mondays are good days.

On Tuesdays and Wednesdays, I work at a family homeless shelter.
My job is to hang out with the kids and transport them to whichever camp they are going to that week. Quotes from our journeys:

Chloe, age 11: “Miss Meg, you’re gonna be a good momma.”
Me: *flattered* “Well thank you. I hope so.”
Chloe: “Yeah. Remember when you yelled at us for choking each other on the bus the other day?! You were just like a mom.”
Me: ……….

Imani, age 8: “Wow Miss Meg, you work 3 jobs?! You must be so rich!”
 
Me: “Dayon, are you wearing a seatbelt?”
Dayon, age 13: “mumblemumblemumble….”
Me: *hits the breaks slightly harder than necessary *
Dayon: “OKAY! I’LL PUT A SEATBELT ON!!”

On Thursday and Friday, I nanny for a 9-month-old.

She’s pretty great. She’s just learning to talk and will mimic literally any sound I make.

So I taught her to say “dada” while simultaneously growling.

She sounds just like Darth Vader.


So that’s my week, over and over again. Never boring. Sometimes exhausting. And occasionally interrupted by something marvelous, like today’s phone call from Zambia. A dear friend is there right now and let the village boys use his phone to call us. I may or may not have cried a little. 

David and I spend a lot of time thinking about last summer and dreaming about the future, which is hurtling towards us at the speed of light. I certainly get my fill of kids here—refugees, inner-city homeless, and 9-month-olds enticed by the Dark Side. But my heart still drifts to those dusty red streets at night. I dream about them—about the ones who have passed away, and the ones who are growing up without me, and the ones on the streets who can’t seem to stay out of trouble. A few years can seem like a lifetime to a child, and so I wonder what it will be like when we return. Some of them we may never get to see again. Allan has moved to Chipata. Gift is in Lusaka. Others are still there and probably always will be, like Albert and Nicholas. Some were so young that they won’t even remember us—little Mercy and Eunice.

I dream about learning their language, living alongside them, stepping out of time and into a different world where life is terribly hard and beautiful. I dream about the clinic and the mission hospital, and I wonder where my place will be. I dream of a classroom packed with 9^th graders and I know where David’s place will be. I run my hand over the rough cover of our Bemba Bible, and my heart aches for a people who have heard of Christ but scarcely see His hands and feet.

Oh, I have so very many dreams.

But they will have to wait for another day, because it’s time to pick up Chloe from camp now.

Gotta go put my mom voice on.

Crazy Little Thing Called Love

 

I’m a bit of an adventurist. That’s a diplomatic way to put it… “adrenaline junky” might be more accurate. I thrive on the excitement of the chase, the challenge of an unsolvable puzzle, and the dare imbedded in the doubter’s scoff. Love, I think, is the greatest adventure I have ever embarked upon.

It’s a many-faceted and devilishly tricky endeavor, to love another person. The more I learn and experience about what it is to love, the more I discover about what it is to be loved (because sometimes letting that happen is even harder) and how little I know about the whole process after all. And I’m not just talking about that wonderful man I just married (though I am head-over-heels stupid crazy in love with him…). I mean all kinds of love: The love that delights in holding a screaming Salvadorian toddler and considers the 10 seconds of dancing with him to be the highlight of this century. The love that lies in wait in the back of my mind for nighttime to come, that it might grace my sleep with the most vivid and tactile dreams of familiar brown faces, tiny dirty hands, playground romps, and time-out tantrums. The love that longs for love-thirsty places—understaffed hospitals and refugee clinic and the orphan’s heart—that it might plant and grow and fight and defend and catalyze. The love that agonizes needlessly over its requite while two young adventurist fools waltz around each other for a couple of years until they wake up married one day. That kind of love.

C.S. Lewis described the New Narnia as being something like an onion, except beneath each layer was found a layer even greater and deeper and more mysterious than the one before. It is somehow fitting that love is kind of the same way.

I was speaking with a first-time mom the other day, and the topic turned to whether she wanted to have more children. “I know this sounds ridiculous, and I know that I would, but I just can’t imagine loving another child as much as I do her,” she said, referring to the cackling 8-month-old who had just accidentally wedged herself between a shelf and a dresser. “It’s like your world grows somehow… like your capacity for adoration swells to a level that you could not have previously imagined.” Love changes you, grows you, stretches you.

And so that’s my thought for the day. No grand moral; no tantalizingly intriguing query.

But hey. I’m a newlywed. I should get at least one free pass to gush about love and mushy things.

In related news, I hope that you enjoy these love-inspired photos as much as I have.

The aforementioned wonderful man...

And the aforementioned screaming Salvadorian.