Everyone needs a little piece of optimism.

"It’s a wonder I haven’t abandoned all my ideals, they seem so absurd and impractical. Yet I cling to them because I still believe, in spite of everything, that people are truly good at heart. It’s utterly impossible for me to build my life on a foundation of chaos, suffering and death. I see the world being slowly transformed into a wilderness, I hear the approaching thunder that, one day, will destroy us too, I feel the suffering of millions. And yet, when I look up at the sky, I somehow feel that everything will change for the better, that this cruelty too shall end, that peace and tranquility will return once more"

- July 15, 1944, Anne Frank

Neema

I am a sister, mother and friend to twenty one orphans in the town of Ngong, Kenya. Aging from eight to eighteen, they are the reason I am who I am today and talking about them is enough to reflect my true heart. To explain myself apart from them would be dishonest because they are on my mind constantly. I spent only eight days with those precious children two Junes ago and found myself completely in love. Their smiles were captivating, a window into the most open and trusting hearts I had ever witnessed. They sang of struggle, knowing the word all too well and held my hand tight enough to tell me they would never let go. From the moment I met them, they allowed a relationship to be built, one that I had no idea I needed until I was connected in a bond that truly knows no boundaries.

Half-way around the world, I still feel their love as strongly as I did when I was shivering in that hard dining hall for a movie night, a rainy night, with a green plastic chair to sit on and little Sharon asleep on my lap, Grace leaning on my shoulder. I cherished every second of being their shelter that night and they did not leave my side for the rest of the week.

I felt weak to leave them in Kenya, like I wasn’t strong enough to take them home with me. Home. I don’t think I really understood the meaning of that word, and so many others before I met the girls at Providence. They re-defined every single characteristic I thought I had or wanted to acquire. They had faced trauma like no one I have ever met to get them to the orphanage, to a safe place. Yet their hearts were full, so full. Their faith unshaken, like no hunger, rape, disease or death would ever stop them from loving their God. To think I was there to minister to them. They taught me more about myself and my faith than they nor I will ever understand and as if the hand-written letters in broken English, foam pictures of butterflies and hearts, threaded bracelets with colorful beads and drawings of the important things in their life, of me, of them, of me with them weren’t enough, their laughs and tears left a mark on my heart that no American luxury can take away.

No matter how appealing the ability to drive to the grocery store, shower with warm water and sleep without a mosquito net around my head are, I would give every single day living in Nashville if it meant I could spend my life with my family in Kenya. The hardship there is real, more so than the first-world problems that I find in this country of comfort and pride. They get it in Kenya. They understand the true meaning of life with spiritual richness and no material fluff to distract them from how they should live their lives. They have the kind of undying faith that God wants all of His children to have, the kind He sent his son to teach us about, the kind that Jesus died with and for. The girls in Africa understand that.

A dark face looked into my soul and gave me a name that I have since not forgot. She called me Neema and I was her best friend. At the time I thought she was just saying Megan in Swahili. I found out later that the name is an African baby name meaning “born in prosperity”. I can’t help but think of the true meaning behind this title. Maybe it was meant as a reminder, to not only be grateful for the blessings I live with but to be inspired to help others do the same, or maybe it was meant as a wake-up call. I now know that I am called not to this place but to another, to the land of red dirt and black skin. Whatever the meaning is, I am willing to find out and hopefully sooner than later. I am not just another Megan on the street. I am Neema and I belong to the children in Kenya.

A life worth sharing...

For Graham

     Real story-telling doesn’t need any words at all.

     Two eyes connecting you to a life are enough

     to drive you seventy-five head-first into a divider of the past

     making you break it, break yourself back

     to a girl with some kind of kind in her voice,

     converting the blues into a tendency towards melancholy

     or my past.

I shape-shifted my way through every class

of girls, drugs, songs and hoops

being the only kind of asshole you have to like,

telling myself I didn’t have to care,

as long as I had a court to lay my head on

and a bag of coke to take me away

from the white Halls,

my own home in hell

as an 18-year-old,

I’m the ultimate romantic

beneath a skin of damaged

rebellion and Clint Eastwood,

nose ring and all.

Late nights left me

tripping over everything but my shoes.

I felt a hand on my shoulder binding me down

with the same kind of grace I was told to live by,

from a Presbyterian pulpit,

pushing my 1.75 GPA in my face

telling me that I just didn’t get “it”

and making me become a man

of more than just soft eyes.

When Caroline went silent

they didn’t leave the side of her crib,

crying more tears than she had breaths

to breathe in a world of addiction,

divorce, death and Captain Hook,

with an exhale of hope

the way only a child can.

When you’re sad and when you’re lonely

And you haven’t got a friend

Just remember that death is not the end

And all that you’ve held sacred

Falls down and does not mend

Just remember that death is not the end

Not the end, not the end

Just remember that death is not the end

He fell down south,

the enemy of his family

with the world piled on four wheels,

a hole of substance taking him

farther.

Father.

Three years away kept him alive.

He was a friend to his son

on the rougher side of life,

just another channel on talk radio

with a need for change.

Before I knew it I was lost

in a war I didn’t begin by sneaking out

for the five hundredth time.

It was miserable

but we were miserable together

and there is something really beautiful about that

so I survived the world in camouflage

and made my way to a state of purpose.

I took my Harley to Yuma,

to the River Theme of folk rock.

She was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen,

and they say I’m well-spoken.

She took my heart to Nashville the next summer.

I never heard from her again.

     I still love the city, love her,

     thrive off the way she hypnotizes me

     with a grimy type of comfort

     telling me to Stay All Night,

     to remain undefeated

but I come alive

in the blue and dirty of Memphis,

finding fulfillment in the back of a juke joint,

a hard drink in hand

surrounded by the kind of rough people I prefer,

and a couple of Black Keys

to take me home.