“I had a farm in Africa, at the foot of the Ngong Hills.” 

--Karen Blixen, Out of Africa

So begins the film Out of Africa.  Meryl Streep portrays Isak Dinesen in her transformative journey from Europe to Africa and back again. In the film, Karen Blixen creates a new life for herself, a life she may not have thought possible. She defies expectation--a woman managing her own farm without a husband to help her. Technically she has a husband, but his interests lie more in womanizing and hunting than in farming. By the end of her journey the men in the local club who had at first shunned her, now toast her accomplishments. Their toast recognizes that the limits they had assumed bordered a woman's life were artificial. They toast her courage, to face and overcome hardships, and emerge on the other side.

That phrase--"I had a farm in Africa"--has been rattling around in my mind for the past twelve months ever since I entered a painful, terrifying period which started with the unknown and ended with my life transformed. I walked out of my old life, and holding tightly to my five children, entered a new one. While the geography of my transition was not sufficiently grand to warrant a John Williams score, the shift was no less dramatic. I thought I had entered into an abyss, the heart of a darkness I neither understood nor knew how to navigate without possibly losing my mind.  

Much to my relief, spasms and waves of relief over a long period of time, I did not slip into madness or embrace a Kurtz-like oblivion. Instead I discovered steps along a path already created for me that led to a sanctuary in the woods, a tiny cottage in the mountains.  Our time there, in that tiny house, may have seemed like hardship but it was actually Providence, complete with all of the old-fashioned grandeur of that word. On our journey, we were accompanied by angels, miracles, and the patient, loving hand of God.

Within twenty-four hours after I left my home, friends fiercely and generously surrounded me, and we were given a new place to live. While I want to publish the names of the two generous people who handed me keys and told me not to worry about rent for "as long as you need," I will allow them anonymity here. 


The seven hundred square foot cottage may seem inadequate in the abstract. Frankly, it was probably practically inadequate, too. One bathroom for six people. A potty-training boy and five females. Is that even possible? From the moment we arrived, we knew our time there was temporary. I lay awake in the small hours of the morning and stared around that tiny space while the sleeping inhalation and exhalation of five children hummed around me. Two on the futon on the floor with me. One more on the Murphy bed behind the couch.  Two more in the bedroom steps away.

I love my children, but I did not want them drooling on my pillow and kicking me in the kidneys permanently. When Karen arrived in Africa, she did not anticipate a return to Europe, but I knew the six of us could not stay here long, both because we did not want to try our friends' generosity and we needed more square footage.  

In the film Denis leaves Karen in solitude for long periods of time. She resents this...as much as any woman can resent Robert Redford dressed like this:

In our house there was no solitude. Quiet stretches to contemplate and shape a story for our future did not exist. Each of us slept with at least one other person within arm's reach. My youngest ate his meals on the floor, using his Lego board as a table. School mornings were a jumble of arms, toothbrushes and curling irons in the bathroom followed by a frantic flurry to find shoes and backpacks piled up around the base of the wood stove.  Imagine how many pairs of shoes you own. Now multiply by six. Add in the organizational skills you had when you were 13, 11, 10, 5, and 3. The answer to this math problem is that you can't find your shoes.  

We didn't have an oven, so the previously frequent morning muffins and bread puddings disappeared. Affectionately dubbed "guilt muffins" by me, baked goods were a before-school gesture that helped me stave off the feelings of inadequacy faced by so many working mothers.

Instead, cold cereal or toast were the only possible options, and the eleven year old's penchant for smoothies, while a welcome change, also meant an alarm clock of grinding blender gears all too early in the morning. Why is the smoothie loving child also the one who rises first each day?  

Human beings can make anything work with the right attitude. There are always others who have it worse than me, a mantra that has fueled my perseverance through many a dark hour. I have found anything is possible, and not just survivable, but joyful.  

Just look at it--small, but inviting and warm--a sacred refuge. Please, Dear Reader, do not misunderstand me. Space was a problem, but the place, people, and landscape were only blessings.

Did you know Santa summers in the Sierra Nevada mountains? He fixes toilets and hauls garbage cans. He has his own wolf pack since it's too far south for his reindeer. Snow white beard and generous heart, the twinkle in the eye...all are still there, just put to use in other ways. My children have gone on adventurous treks with him up hills and into rivers.  Ask them; they will tell you.

My journey was not marked by a tense standoff with a lion or an airplane flight surveying the changing landscape of the African plain. However, the majesty of Africa's animals have nothing on the enormous grey lion, who perched on our bed and lounged in our front yard. He allowed my children to pet his mighty mane while he rolled on the gravel drive.  He walked out into the night and did not return, but we shall not forget his visits and hospitality, allowing us to share his home.

There were herds of deer who ambled through the yard and up the hill behind our bedroom windows. They paused curiously, wondering what we were doing there, and then moved on.

And there were two angels.  Did you know angels sometimes reside in ordinary homes? They maintain regular jobs and the mundane details of their own lives, while simultaneously generating magic and grace, beauty and joy, in the lives of others. They alighted in my front yard and whisked my children away for ice cream one warm summer evening. They picked up my children on a roaring metal steed and rambled around the mountains, even into the river to squeals of delight. They delivered lemon cake and stopped by just to make sure we were okay. They listened to me while I rambled and unpacked the fear and frustration, questions and worries of my heart. Angels come in human form, of this I am certain.

Sometimes the Lord pushes us away from all comforts, and allows us to journey into the terrifying unknown. Far from frightening, what I found was a way already prepared. The road rose to meet us, bringing necessities and graces alike. There was little physical space but unlimited emotional space, psychological space, in which I could remake my life, reimagine the possibilities of happiness for my children, and heal from years of lonely struggle. 

"Perhaps he knew, as I did not, that the Earth was made round so that we would not see too far down the road.”― Isak Dinesen, Out of Africa

If I had continued to wait, not changing my life until it was convenient, affordable, and safe, I would not have changed anything. Instead, walking into the darkness led me to see that I need never fear. Ironically my favorite passage in Scripture is the verse "Be still and know that I am God." My experiences in 2013 illuminated what that verse has always meant, but I had not seen clearly. Our comfort in this life comes from God, yes, but He does not work alone. I did not need a mystical experience or radical conversion. I was shown that all around us, everyday, people do God's work in our lives. Friends. Colleagues. People from my church and community. Family far away. Sudden strangers. All conspired to guide, teach, and love me through it, and they did the same for each of my five children. Thank you. You know who you are. You have been prayed for by six grateful hearts, and you will remain treasures to us as we continue along paths known and unknown.  

“When in the end, the day came on which I was going away, I learned the strange learning that things can happen which we ourselves cannot possibly imagine, either beforehand, or at the time when they are taking place, or afterwards when we look back on them.”    
― Karen Blixen, Out of Africa

Gertrude Louise Silveira

To tell a story about my grandmother, Gertie Silveira, is to tell many stories.  There can never be just one.  Some are goofy anecdotes about how she bought the can of Crisco, opened it at the register, drove home, and never paid for it.  Others are inspiring tales in which she and Papa didn't think twice about opening their trailer and their lives to a homeless couple. 

All stories reveal the same character trait: generosity.  My grandmother used her life to be the hands and feet and heart of Jesus.  She did not need to preach loudly or quote Scripture or ever point out the sins of others.  Instead,  she lived out the gospel in the way we are all called to do so:  through the work and actions of our lives. 

It was not unusual to arrive at Grandma's house and find people I did not know, and they were not just relatives I couldn't remember!  They were friends of friends or perhaps weary travelers who knew that a certain address on W. Hwy 140 is always a safe harbor.  There you will be given dinner or breakfast, a cup of coffee, and a warm bed with a handmade quilt. There you will be made to feel like family, whether you are related to Gertie or not.  She did not quibble over such distinctions.  

On the last day I saw her, I held my grandmother's face in my hands.  I said these important words to her:  "Woman, the happiest moments of my childhood took place in this house with you and Papa."  Ernest Hemingway once said, "Write the truest sentence that you know." Hemingway was right.  I don't know if I have ever said anything more true, and I am thankful I did.

My early childhood was waking up to the sounds of Grandma cutting, setting, and perming hair in the back porch, of sitting in my mother's lap while she and Grandma told endless stories, catching up on all of the people in our beautifully large family.  The smell of coffee and the rapid chatter as only the Avila female family line can achieve were the start to so many mornings while Dad and Uncle Kevin were duck hunting.  

As I grew my summers were spent picking blackberries on the canal in Papa and Grandma's aluminum boat.  Purple fingers, getting stuck on sandbars, loading up bucket after bucket that would become delicious, tart cobbler or pie.  We canned peaches in the backyard.  We also canned A LOT of apricots one summer when my sister, Kimberli, and I decided to see if we could pick enough of them from Grandma's tree to fill the entire surface of the pool.  It was an ambitious goal, and we came pretty close before Grandma discovered our treachery.  She later told me how angry she was, but it is a testament to her patience, her kindness, that I don't remember her anger.  I just recall picking those apricots and then canning them the next day!  I didn't know my childhood was like the romance of an old-fashioned American novel.  It was just Papa and Grandma's house--my favorite summer destination.

My second child, Claire, was born on the anniversary of Papa's death, and he never knew any of my children.  They never helped him make milk cans full of punch every July or watched his identical routine every afternoon after work like I did. They didn't get to follow him around the backyard doing his chores or receive fierce hugs from a man with a rock hard chest and saintly, quiet patience. 

However, my children were blessed with many years with Grandma.  They couldn't wait to make a bed on the living room floor with quilt after quilt--the bird one, the jeans one, the one where Mom could tell them which squares came from my shorts or Beanie Grandma's dress.  They thrilled to the smoky kitchen that meant hot, impossibly thin pancakes or finding cats Grandma saved in the backyard.  It is a rare gift to know your great grandmother that well, and I am happy they will be able to remember her on their own and not just through my stories.  

I do not know how to grieve a woman who is so woven into the fabric of my life, of the lives of my children.  I feel gratitude that God allowed her to stay with us for so long, and the only thing that lessens my sadness in losing her is to know she is reunited with the husband she ached for every minute after he was gone. 

This Christmas I will miss the endless parade of Santas around her home, but I will feel extra joy knowing that Grandma is finally home for Christmas, in Papa's arms, in the love of our Heavenly Father where I am certain she is being given an eternal reward for the life of generosity and profound love that she gave to all of us.