How many grandmas have run from a charging hippo?

“By tomorrow, Maggie, you’ll have lived on this earth for two months,” I wrote to my new and only grandchild, “and I’m scratching my head, trying to figure out how I can be your grandmother from way over here on the other side of the world.

“I always imagined I’d be a traditional, quaint grandma like my grandma, the kind that sits in a rocking chair and knits baby blankets.” (from Chapter 1, Grandma’s Letters from Africa)

Yes, I dreamed, and expected, I’d grandparent in the ways my beloved Grandma Mac had. You couldn’t ask for a gentler, kinder, more loving grandmother. She was soft-spoken and preferred to live quietly in her home, a home full of love that she and my grandpa had created. I loved them with all my heart and their home was always a safe, happy place.

Grandma was always doing things for others—sewing, knitting, or crocheting clothes for her grandkids.

And cooking delicious meals. Sundays after church, my parents, little brothers, and I used to pile into the family car and drive the hour to my grandparents’ home. Usually my aunts, uncles, and their families were there, too, and we enjoyed gathering around Grandma and Grandpa’s dining room table. They lived on a tight budget but Grandma always served delicious meals, often featuring vegetables and fruit from her own garden.

That was the kind of grandmother I planned to be, I longed to be—but, instead, I lived half a world away from my granddaughter, Maggie. And I just knew my son Matt, and his wife Jill, would some day have another baby. And that my daughter, Karen, would one day marry and have babies, too.

It broke my heart to live so far away.

And my grandmothering couldn’t have been more different from what I expected.

In Africa, I stumbled into adventures most grandmas could not imagine. I wrote this to Maggie:

“How many grandmas have drunk tea in a pot cleaned with cow’s urine, or run from a charging hippo? How many grandmas have cooked breakfast over a fire, only to have a baboon poop in it? How many grandmas have jumped out of the way when a Maasai elder spit at them?”

Here’s what was happening, the “why” and “how” I ended up in Africa:

“For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord.

(Jeremiah 29:11, NIV)

“For my thoughts are not your thoughts,

neither are your ways my ways,” declares the Lord.

“As the heavens are higher than the earth,

so are my ways higher than your ways

and my thoughts than your thoughts.”

(Isaiah 55:8, NIV)

We humans make plans, but the Lord has the final word. . . .

the Lord decides where we will go.

(Proverbs 16:1, 9 CEV)

That information helped me take a new look at what God was asking me to do—but I admit that, at the time, it seemed both God and my husband wanted me to willingly allow a tragedy—living half a world away from my kids and grandkids.

But, Samantha Conners writes:

“God doesn’t call us to do things

in order to make our lives terrible.”

And so, long story short, I moved to Africa.

Eventually, I would learn that God’s plans for me were good.

And, despite the pain of being separated from family,

our years in Africa turned out well.

Come on back next week and I'll tell you about it!