This Life Therefore: #TBT--Friends and Europe Semester

As I have mentioned, we are trying to slow things down around this year. I would like to be more intentional about how I spend my time and how I communicate, especially with the ninjas/niñim (the kids). I also would like to "get caught up" with life--does that ever happen?--and as such have started sorting through photographs that I haven't seen since I took them...sometime over the past three years.

It's great fun and longing and loneliness and gratefulness to see all of these photos again. One benefit is that I came across a photo I took early on in Athens, just because it made me think of a friend. And then I remembered that I took several of those while in Greece, missing my friends and being reminded of them in so many mundane moments. And I remember how grateful I was for any word from them, and how waking up to a message (written and sent in deepest night, Athens-time) would reel me back in, remind me that I am in fact a vine tendril or branch of something bigger, and that my identity was so much more than the work I was doing in the moment. It was good work, and I am incredibly grateful to have had it. It was also a gift to be tangibly reminded that my identity extended far beyond its borders; its triumphs and failures.

I am still grateful for that. And for how they continue to be my friends and care for me (each in her own way) now, during what sometimes feels a bit like a long, slow walk in the desert after last year's Exodus.

And so, rejoicing in each of my friends, I post "their" photos here for #TBT (Throwback Thursday, Mimi!). And I would remind them that I mentioned each of these locations last September, challenging them to guess who was who. :)