a wwoofing update

A couple of explanations, first.

One, I am a bad traveler and forgot my power adapter. The one I bought at the airport doesn't work. Therefore, my connection to the outside world is a bit more limited than imagined.

Two, I have a beautiful, new-to-me digital SLR that I am getting adjusted to. However, no laptop means no pictures, yet. Sorry to all who are waiting.

Three, I was hoping to launch a separate blog for my wwoofing adventures and keep this one for more personal reflections. Alas--time lacks for this wwoofer, as do the photos I would like to anchor said site with. Maybe next month.

I set off three weeks ago from Kansas City, intending to spend the growing season (March-fall) traveling from farm to farm in France. My mission is to explore various varieties of farming activities and areas of this country I love. To do this, I'm using WWOOF France, an association that provides a directory of organic farms who are willing to host people like me with room and board in exchange for work. No money is exchanged, only ideas, skills, cultural identities, and other intangible treasures.

Upon my arrival, I spent a week amidst my Parisian friends. It was so joyful to reunite with the Chapuis family (the kids being 9 months older and wiser than when I left them), house-church friends, and the YWAM Paris team. I was able to practically prepare things like my French bank account and cell phone, and arrange transportation to my first host farm.

I'm nearing my two-week mark here, here being La Ferme des Vignes, La Grande Verrière, Burgundy, France. I decided to come here because of the hilly landscape and because they raise goats for cheese-making and bees for honey--two areas of production that intrigue me but that I knew nothing about.

Olivier and Julie, along with their 22-month old daughter, Colline, have enthusiastically integrated me into their home and professional lives, including a rigorous schedule (They have, however, given me the luxury of a day off on Sunday, which is not the case for them). For the curious:

7 Wakey-wakey
7:15-8:30 Milking the goats, feeding and inspecting the kids
8:30-9 Little chores or preparing breakfast
9-10 Breakfast (locally produced artisan bread, home-made jam, herbal tea)
10-1 Putting the goats and cows out to pasture, cheesemaking or other work
1-2 Lunch
2-3 Rest
3-5 Work outside or in the barn
5-5:30 Snack break
5:30-8 Milking and kids
8-9 Little chores, dishes (a once-a-day hoopla for one of us), preparing dinner
9-10 Dinner time
10 Down time and bed time

Several times a week, there are interruptions for either Julie or Olivier, such as the CSA delivery on Monday nights or the market at Autun on Friday mornings. This week I was able to accompany Julie to the market and participate in selling their artisan cheeses.

Although the schedule and amount of work have taken some getting used to, I am thankful to be pulled into what they're doing. They often insist that I do the more interesting or challenging activity in order to learn; they, on the other hand, will do the dishes or other grunt work once I am capable of doing the trickier stuff on my own.

So it is that I am accumulating new skills. I am getting better at milking the goats; we use a machine, but have to do the first "pull" by hand, so it's coming slowly. Olivier taught me how to chop wood with an axe the other day, and though I have a few gnarly bruises on my shins, I chopped a pretty pile, too. The many steps of making several kinds of cheese are beginning to make more sense. Friday Olivier let me make the tomme cheese, which mean my arms to the elbow in a copper vat of nearly 100 liters of warm milk (very pleasant, as it has been quite chilly still). Herding the goats is doable now, thanks to our border collie, Fanfare, although the cows are another story.

Aside from all I'm learning, there are a couple of outstandingly wonderful things about being here. The landscape is just lovely; we're halfway up a large hill with another hill across the way, green pastures and budding woods spread out before us. I can't get enough of it, and when I'm tired or discouraged it helps to just look up and around. The other is the quality of hospitality and congeniality with which I've been received here. Though the home is a mess and I have been put to work, I feel accepted and given to at the same time, especially since the French are often much slower to open their inner lives to strangers.

The days is drawing to a close, and I'm going to go outside for another walk before the sun goes down. Please comment or ask questions if there's something you are interested in or want to know!

taking and making shape

It’s a gloriously temperate Thursday night in Kansas City. There’s a group of a dozen or two people laughing in the living room below me. 

What am I doing? I’m pumping my fists in the air to some music, joyful that I am learning to knit socks. 

I knit, but I don’t have a knitter-brain. It’s just something to occupy my hands, sometimes, a way to create what I want to own. The fact that stitches work together to create something shapely out of yarn is pretty miraculous in my world—hence the celebratory actions! There were a bunch of things on a pattern, that I executed (thanks to a little help from a British lady on YouTube), and now I have part of a slipper. 

The thing the knitting bloggers tell you is to follow your pattern and trust that it will work, especially when dealing with sock patterns. “One step at a time.” 

On the wall above my desk I have a yellow piece of paper with a freehanded map of France on it, and little names of farms I might like to visit penciled in. Below that I have some Post-Its with the names of the people who run these farms. These are reminders to me of where I am going, who I am going to, soon. Still, they are abstract and hold only a breath of a form, like a connect-the-dots design.

Tonight I looked this map while I was in the middle of being amazed by my sock pattern’s success. They are alike, in a way. I’ve not felt like the greatest adventurer or risk-taker, in my life. While I have experienced some wonderful escapades, the great travels and things of that nature have seldom been my idea. They have made me very, very afraid. The thought of experimentation has found me crippled with fear. Failure. Lack. Being alone. Not being enough. 

What if there was no reason to fear? What if there was assurance that things will be taken care of, that there will be enough? These questions outline the back-and-forth movement of my thoughts and emotions as I prepare to go. Deep fear and insecurity mingle with simple lack of knowing how to proceed. 

There’s a moment of choice: I look at another possibility. I am loved. I am capable. I will never be left. My dreams are good. I make a decision to follow through with my plans: buy a ticket, make a transatlantic phone call, write an email. Furthermore, I share with joy and anticipation. I laugh and rejoice. 

Stitch by stitch, things are taking shape. A season is becoming visible to me, now. From where I sit in my Kansas City home at the Bolers’ house at the beginning of February, I look forward. I see months of discovery, experimentation, joy, perseverance, and so much love. There will be laughter, hikes, bee stings, breathtaking landscapes, smelly clothes, criticism, tears, so very many wildflowers, and knowledge of how to make them useful. Many of the people who populate these reveries have faces already and bring smiles to my face. Others have names. Others are a dream in my heart of welcome, instruction, and if we’re lucky, a little romance. 

The moment when shape begins to exist is a good, exciting time. I am grateful for it.

...and then I bought a house.

 The news is out and the deed is done. I bought a house. Ta-da!

“So, are you not going back to France, then?” is the logical next question I get a lot, a good one if you were been told by me upon my return to Kansas City that I intended to go back to that beloved country come springtime. When I respond that no, my plans to return to France have not changed, you might become very confused. Or, perhaps that already happened to you and you remain befuddled. I don’t blame you. But I am doing lots of explaining these days, to help convert the Befuddled to the Befuddled-But-Excited.

That’s what I’m here to do this evening. Let me tell you the story.

It all began several years ago. I had been learning about gardening for some time and had begun to read books like Wendell Berry’s The Unsettling of America, which revealed to me the dire state of agriculture in America. During this time, I discovered that the vast farmlands of the Midwest that had spoken to me throughout my childhood were in danger.

My grandparents on my mom’s side passed away within a year of each other, around this time. This left an inheritance to my sister and myself, our mother no longer being alive. It also left a material question: what would become of our family’s land? A portion of our great-grandparents’ original homestead had been owned, loved, by our grandpa. Would we purchase it together, and keep it in the family?

Becca and I decided this would be more complicated than it would be fruitful, and so we allowed the land to be purchased by the farmer who had been renting it for years. It was hard for me; I felt a responsibility to the land and it seemed nearly treacherous to turn it over to someone who was likely using the type of agriculture I had villainized in my mind. Yet, at the same time, the inheritance provided a rare opportunity. While many wannabe farmers’ primary obstacle is the purchase of land, I became aware that the money I was receiving would be a valuable leg-up to the eventual purchase of property.

Over time, I have set it apart, in my heart and before the Lord, to the sole purpose of caring for the earth. Practically, I have been unsure of what to do with that sum in the meantime, and hesitatingly put it in the bank, separate from my personal finances. While I was in France last year, I had some interesting conversations about money. Jonathan, for whom I was working, questioned the ethics of putting money in the hands of banks, since the morality of their choices can’t be known or fully trusted. Another friend told me about money he was going to receive after his father’s death, and challenged me without knowing it when he told me how he was already looking at it as the Lord’s, not his, to control. When I told him about my own situation, he asked me bluntly, “Well, what is your money doing?” I could not answer, but knew that at the very best it was not doing anything good.

I returned to Kansas City in the summer and found many friends who were shifting households. Many of them were looking to establish new community homes, but finding it difficult to rent homes in Midtown. One night, a scheme popped into my head of how I could buy a home here and yet be free to leave the country. I drew a diagram on a Post-It and put it somewhere. For two months, I hopped houses, at once enjoying the generosity of friends and the pleasure of living life with them, but also longing for a space of my own.

Then I moved in with Jonathan and Kate and their son Matthew. This was itself a miracle and a response to specific requests I had been making to my good Father for months. Jonathan is uniquely up-to-date on world news and economics. It wasn’t long before he was briefing me on the economic future of our country and the eventual demise of our currency. Of course, I thought of the nest egg I had sitting in the bank, a number on paper that could as easily and quickly disappear as it had become mine. Next to that thought was one of matronly protection; it was given to me and I must not allow it to be diminished or destroyed. It had a purpose to fulfill. Could the number become something concrete and yet useful? Jonathan and Kate had used the realty services of a friend to find and purchase their home; they sang his praises. After several conversations with them about the scheme I had outlined and hidden on the Post-It note, I called Rustin and told him about it. We talked about the present and future real estate market. He told me he would pray about this and we set a time to talk.

On my end, I prayed for specific traits in a home that were a must: separate living spaces for couple / singles, sun and / or extra space in the yard for extensive gardening, good bones, a well-laid-out kitchen, needing some, but not too much, work. A week and some later, Rustin and I were touring homes in Midtown. We looked at six. The first four were gross. The fifth responded to all my criteria, and felt peaceful and graceful to boot. We decided to move forward, so I invited a couple of friends whom I trust to come feel it out. They came out two days later.

That afternoon, I had a massive breakdown. Though I loved the idea of owning a home, I knew the responsibility it is, and it overwhelmed me. Could I take on a property without knowing who would live there? Would it force me to work and live with people I didn’t trust? Would it submit me to years more adaptation to the whims of those around me? Would it tie me down and prevent me from pursuing my dreams? Fear and loneliness closed around me as I wept. I called Rustin and told him that I didn’t think I could commit to anything, and asked him and his wife to pray for me.

The next day, I woke up with a scripture and a song in my head and heart. In the presence of all my questions, he said, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” (2 Corinthians 12:19). He sang, “Draw near to me, and I will draw near to you. Pull on the strings of my heart, for I long to respond to you. All my love is for you; all my love is yours. I’ve made a place for you here, so come on! Come on!...” (Bethel Loft Sessions). Then he spoke some things that brought clarity to my freak-outs.

Peace came. I got excited. I thought how the house corresponded to specific prayers. Other “coincidences” filled me with joy and confidence. For example, a girlfriend, praying for me before my departure from Paris, told me she saw the number 4, and felt like maybe there was a choice for me during my time in Kansas City involving a 4. A taxi lives on the curb in front of the house. You want to get a ride? Call 444-4444! I had a conversation with the Lord about the address of the house. Previously, I had disliked the street it’s on, without real reason. “Why here, Father?” I asked. Immediately, I saw the number 37, part of the address and the cross street. “Psalm 37,” he whispered, firmly. Ah, yes! Psalm 37! The psalm that I have held onto for several years! The psalm that has many promises for the humble, the righteous; that encourages us to dwell in the land and cultivate faithfulness; that says those who trust in the Lord will inherit the land. Of course. I won’t complain about the address any more!

A day or two later, I woke up ready to make a decision. I let Rustin know I wanted to make an offer. While none of the details following the purchase were clear, I sensed that my faith would create a reality beneath my feet as I walked in it. We went through a couple of weeks of inspections and back-and-forth. Even though there is still some risk that things behind the walls are not in great shape, it felt more and more like the best decision, as I continued to walk through the house and share about the process with friends and family.

And so I went to some banks, borrowed a car, and wrote a really big check. I received three keys in an envelope, and a house became mine. I became a Homeowner.

There are lots of amazing things about this story. I am really humbled by it—most of all that God has made me a steward of something big. It means he trusts me, and that’s so cool. The other thing that baffles me is that this story is only beginning. I have been given an incredible, young, trustworthy, capable friend as a general contractor. We’re really thrilled to be working together and dreaming over this home. Every time we meet, we finish by a series of “Thank you!” “No, thank you!” that goes around at least twice. I love that. In the months to come, we will partner in the restoration and equipping of this house. It will be made beautiful. During that time, Father will provide some people to live in and love this home, and partner in its destiny of welcoming people from outside.

I will prepare the home and prepare to leave, at the same time. I will depart from here, leaving my things and friends in it, and fly freer because I am anchored to it.

home and moving on

the home of my youth...

Today is a sad day, a day of a rite of passage. 

While I’ve been making sandwiches and cleaning tables at the Filling Station, bantering with my co-workers, my dad and step-mom are managing movers and moving trucks. They’re emptying the house my sister and I grew up in, and filling a new one that is just for them. 

For months, I’ve been preparing for this. I mentally began sifting through my belongings while still in France. Then I came home, and donated several big bags and boxes of band t-shirts and miscellaneous home décor in within several days of touching down. Then came the drawn out, finer-tuned process of choosing and organizing memorabilia from childhood, and parting with what I can. There was the rental of a U-Haul and a storage unit and the mobilization of heroic volunteers to pack them. Lastly, only a few days ago, there was that inevitable final packing of the stuff that hasn’t gone anywhere else. 

In this, there is for me a clear turning of the page, summed up by the rather dramatic “I DON’T HAVE A HOME ANYMORE!” that has echoed through these months. My parents’ home has been like an anchor to me, in all these years of singlehood and the jumping from home to home and roommate to roommate that involves. There, I could go back and put my roots down, be who I always have been while I remain who I am today. That home has remained stable while so many other factors in life have continued to swirl and change. 

Now, however, is the time for that to take on a new shape as well. Dad and Joan need a place that’s theirs, not my mom and dad’s and my sister’s and mine. They need a home adapted to who they are now. Truth be told, so do I. I wouldn’t have chosen this, being the nostalgic sort, yet I can tell it’s just the thing for this season. Time to call the past done, to take responsibility for its remnants I intend to haul behind me through life. Although it’s right, it’s not easy. I grieve losing this place and the with-ness of the past that it embodies. I will also miss the ease of navigating its rooms, its drawers, its stairs that I know by heart. More than anything, I will miss the faint presence of my mother that I experience only there. 

So, in this time when my childhood home fades from my life and I plan to go migrant this spring, I long for Home, without even really knowing what it means. A constant comfort to me is this passage from Hebrews that tells me I am not crazy, but am actually in the best of company. 

“All these people were still living by faith when they died. They did not receive the things promised; they only saw them and welcomed them from a distance. And they admitted that they were aliens and strangers on earth. People who say such things show that they are looking for a country of their own. If they had been thinking of the country they had left, they would have had the opportunity to return. Instead, they were longing for a better country—a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared a city for them.” Hebrews 11:13-16

click, click

a night at the Boulevard, watching the Olympics. photo by Erin Rufledt

There are times of life, I am convinced, that are conducive to different art forms. There are long, rooted sorts of seasons that are like contemplative novels, others are better suited by poppy dance songs, self-deprecating cartoons, or haikus.

Today, I decided that this is a snapshot season. Not only does my moving-every-week rhythm have the same choppy, spontaneous quality to it of a random photo album; actually, my life is just beautiful and quirky in the way that sets up the best photos like a winning volleyball spike. How many times a day do I wish I could focus, blink my eyes like a camera’s shutter, and wind up with the image before me in an album?

It’s funny that I say this nearly two months after returning from the city many people consider to be the most lovely, charming city in the world, don’t you think? The thing is, though, that I see my hometown and all its characters differently now than I ever did. Oh, Kansas City! Rich in color, texture, full of cowtown charm!

Just now, I’m wondering if my urge to snapshot these things is deeper than just the prettiness of everything. Life is all full of change, everywhere I look. My close friends are getting hitched so fast the marrieds are now outnumbering the singles. Some have moved away; I plan to. Meanwhile, my family is getting ready to sell the house my sister and I grew up in the suburbs, and the houseful of ladies I have called my own is breaking up. To prepare for this double-whammy move, I’m clearing out old clothes and ratty kitchen gear by the boxful. This process is extra-pressured because I’m also working up towards a season of transient farm work in the French countryside, starting in the spring if all goes well.

Friday afternoon, I sat outside a Crossroads storefront with two of my dearest friends. We lounged in vintage chairs and couches, feet propped up next to a cow’s skull. The sun lit us enthusiastically from low in the sky, as if preparing itself for its own TGIF night on the town. Behind us, in the store, were a dozen local farmers selling their produce; to our right rose downtown Kansas City. It was a simple moment, but it was thick with the substance of place and friendship.

Can’t I just capture some of these moments? Can I take this precious time with those I treasure and put them into tiny form, Polly-Pockets or holograms to someday reproduce this? For whatever reason: Nope. I can’t take even a paper-thin slice of this and develop it for another day. Even real photographs, on thick, matte paper can’t bring this back.

Carpe diem it is, then. Not just for the sake of “living it up.” I guess that while I am tempted to hoard these times like a million vacations photos, I suppose doing so would trivialize them in the same way. A moment lived well is dear because it doesn’t come back.

So let’s throw out the Hulu and the Netflix, set the alarm for good and early in the morning. Let’s dine together, walk together, help each other pack and move. Do that thing where you make drinks to sip during a movie, then get so wrapped up in conversation over the cooking of the popcorn that you end up plopped in the living room all evening, movie forgotten. Linger in the kitchen, seated on the countertops; talk through your toothbrush about your day’s triumphs. Because it’s the last of this.

the changing of seasons

Well, hello, July 28. I quite like anniversaries, and today is one. It’s one month since I left Paris. I crept out of a quiet apartment before dawn on June 28th, slid out of France on a train, glided out of Europe on a jet plane, and found America, resplendent in her rocking chairs, friendly service, and soft bodies ready for hugs. 

Many people, myself included, have been concerned about my transition. While for most of us, it seems completely normal and right for me to be here, I’m lucky to have good friends who care how I’m feeling and how the second giant change in a year is affecting me. 

Blanket response: “I’m glad to be here.” 

There’s something funny about these short-lived experiences abroad. When I’ve come home from stints in France, I’m often asked to compare what I think of as “my two countries”—a natural question, I guess, but one that also breeds a sort of anxiety in me. Why? I end up feeling like I have to choose one or the other. You’d think that somewhere, I hide a checklist of what I like best in each place. I don’t. 

“It’s not better; it’s just different:” the slogan thrown around by the exchange agency I went to France with at 18. It’s a phrase that gently changes your paradigm away from comparisons that can lead to anger, frustration, and bitterness—not just with your host culture, but also with your culture of origin. 

These days, I still agree with this point of view. But this time around, I don’t feel that pressure. I’ve been working to eradicate that dualistic view from my mindset. On the other hand, there’s a larger principle that is at play here. 

 It has to do with seasons. Go figure: being back in Kansas City, I’m also back to gardening, back to the land. Staying at the house where I’d lived and gardened before moving to Paris, I get to once again enjoy the fruits of this plot of dirt. Luscious tomatoes, crisp greens, fragrant herbs are all a few footsteps out the back door and totally abundant. There’s all I could want of them. Similarly, a trip to the farmer’s market proved that oodles of peaches and more pounds of watermelon than I could carry are affordable enough to eat to my heart’s content. 

 In the middle of this process, I started reading Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver (READ IT). In essence, she shares about how her family chose to eat only off their own land and from farmers they knew for one year. She has beautiful and hilarious insights into, well, everything. I’m keeping notes. The thing that caught me today was this. She’s talking about the importance, and the ultimate tastiness, of eating food that’s in season, namely watermelon. I quote: 

 “But it’s actually possible to wait, celebrating each season when it comes, not fretting about its being absent at all other times because something else good is at hand.” 

So true, about watermelon, tomatoes, and the like. They’re better fresh, in season than out of season. Delightful. Sublime. They are worth waiting for to eat in their prime. 

Then I thought about life. One thing I’m proud of is that I lived those 10 months in Paris like there was no tomorrow. In relationship and in adventure, I savored that city, that country. It wasn’t always easy, but I tried to live it for all it was worth. 

Then I came home. What do these months in Kansas City look like? In a nutshell, simplicity: work, learning, teaching, and being a friend. I’m also skin-on-skin with Kansas City in a way I’ve never been, now that I’m getting around on foot or on bike in this sprawling mess of a city. My prayer is that I would love and engage with Kansas City as well as or better than I did Paris. I’m loving the re-discovery of its smells, its heady humidity, and the textures of crumbling asphalt and dry-crackling grass. With loving looks at sherbet sunsets and awkward interactions with the population around me, I’m celebrating this place and the season that has me here. Waiting those months to come home to Kansas City and the people I love here has made it sweeter to me than it has ever been before. 

Being away has freed me, somehow, to truly love. On the other hand, as I fast from France, I learn to love her more deeply as well, and her absence from me is making my heart fonder for her and her people. And so I find myself in the trial towards contentment. I love what is before me in all its splendor, knowing the next season will hold something different, but equally delicious.

Merci

 Mes amis, 

Je vous écris de Kansas City, de la maison où j’habitais avant de partir. Depuis quatre jours, je retrouve ma famille, mes amis les plus proches, le jardin qui avait été à moi, tout dans l’été chaud et fructueux du Midwest américain. 

Et je pense à vous. Quel cadeau de pouvoir partir, de devoir partager et résumer ces 10 mois (même pas) passes à Paris! Je me rends encore plus compte à quel point c’était bon, riche, nourrissant, redempteur, surprenant, et beau. Je suis remplie de gratitude envers Dieu et envers vous, parce que vous étiez ses outils guisés et tranchants pour faire des choses merveilleuses. 

Pour ceux qui étaient à ma fête d’’à bientôt,” j’avais partagé mon histoire avec la France, qui est une bonne petite histoire qui prend du temps à raconter. Ce n’est pas trop la peine de la dire ici. Pourtant, je sens que je dois insister sur les remerciements. 

Merci de m’avoir accueillie dans vos maisons, dans vos cafés préférés, et dans les endroits que vous aimez partout dans Paris. Avec vous, j’ai découvert Paris comme elle est en vérité--et donc j'ai pu l'aimer en vérité aussi. Maintenant je change les perceptions de Paris qu’ont la majorité des gens avec qui je parle. Ils me demandent si c’était dur et froid; je dis non, au contraire, c’était ouvert et chaleureux, et j’ai connu beaucoup d’amour. 

Merci d’avoir été généreux. Certains m’ont invité à manger, à boire un café. D’autres m’ont offert des petits cadeaux opportuns ou même m’ont passé une enveloppe avec du liquide dedans pour me bénir ou m’encourager. A chaque fois, je me sentais vue, apprécié, et affermie dans ma place et mon appel pour la France. Ensemble, vous avez contribué aux cadeaux choisis pour me dire au revoir. C’est fort de faire ça. 

Merci d’avoir prié pour moi et de m’avoir encouragé et défié. En faisant cela, vous vous êtes joignés à moi, m’ont donné beaucoup de sens et de valeur. 

Merci également de m’avoir donné de la place dans vos vies, de m’avoir partagé des choses profondes, des réflexions ou des questions que vous vous posez. Souvent, quand je discutais avec vous, je réalisais dans le moment que c’était un vrai privilège d’être permise dans vos vies personnelles et, parfois, de lutter ou de travailler à vos côtés. En plus, c’était tellement fun ! 

Vous êtes des trésors, et je suis si contente de faire partie de vous. 

Très sincèrement, 

Maggie 

My friends, 

I write you from Kansas City, from the house where I lived before I left. For four days, I’ve been seeing my family, my closest friends, the garden that had been mine, all in the hot, fruitful Midwestern summer. 

And I’ve been thinking of you. What a gift to leave, to have to share and summarize these (not even) 10 months spent in Paris! I realize even more how good, rich, nourishing, redemptive, surprising, and beautiful it was. I’m filler with gratitude towards God and towards you, because you were his sharp and piercing tools for doing wonderful things in me. 

For those who were at my goodbye party, I shared my story with France, which is a good little story that takes time to tell. It’s not worth it to share it here. Still, I feel like I must insist on the thank yous. 

Thank you for welcoming me in your homes, your favorite cafés, and in the places you love all over Paris. With you, I discovered Paris like she really is--and therefore love her as she really is. Now I’m changing the ideas of Paris that the majority of people I talk to have. They ask me if it was cold or hard; I say no, on the contrary, it was open and warm, and I knew lots of love there. 

Thank you for being generous. Some of you took me out to eat or for coffee. Others gave me little gifts at the right moment, or even passed my an envelope with cash inside to bless me or encourage me. Each time, I felt seen, appreciated, and affirmed in my place and my call for France. Together, you contributed to gifts chosen to say goodbye to me. It’s powerful to do that. 

 Thank you for praying for me, encouraging and challenging me. In doing so, you joined yourselves to me, and gave me lots of meaning and value. 

Thank you also to have given me a place in your lives, to have shared with me deep things, reflections or questions you’re asking yourselves. Often, when I was talking with you, I realized in the moment that it was a true privilege to be allowed into your personal lives, and, sometimes, to fight or to work at your sides. And, it was so fun! 

You are treasures, and I am so very glad to be a part of you. 

Very sincerely, 

Maggie