Today is a day of mixed emotions. My husband and I (Ruth) are celebrating our 21rst anniversary while my husband’s family are gathered around a gravesite 8400 of miles away, burying his beloved aunt. So today, his family are celebrating a life and a family reunion at the same time while he is absent and grieving apart.
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Last year, I finally blocked my siblings after yet another family get-together. As usual, I only learned about the get-together when the pictures started showing up on my newsfeed, and I realized finally that I don’t have to acccept the lie that family ties are essential. Today, the pictures of a new family get-together showed up on my news-feed, a family of friends who accept me. I’ve never met any of them in real life, but we have nurtured and cared for each other for nearly four years now, and we just had our first in-person (combo with zoom) get-together. I knew about it ahead of time. I was allowed to contribute to date and time. With my schedule, I couldn’t participate this time, but we already have plans for a next one focusing on those who couldn’t make this one. Several of my on-line family members have gone out of their way to tell me that they missed me and want me at the next get-together. My six-year-old daughter saw the pictures of the get-together with me today and told me, “They look like a nice family. I’d like to meet them someday.” Yes. Yes, they do. They are truly wonderful family to me.
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And tonight, we learned that Andrew Walls died today. This was the man my husband always dreamed of studying under. He was the reason I pushed my husband to begin his PhD in Kenya in the middle of a busy season of life, because Andrew Walls would be teaching one of the classes. He is the reason I encouraged my husband wholeheartedly to return to Kenya during our fulough even while I was in the midst of severe abuse by our (now-former) ministry. My husband finally fulfilled his dream of studying under Andrew Walls for what we assumed (correctly) might be his final class at Africa International University’s Centre for World Christianity, where he was the research professor for the PhD program in which my husband is enrolled.
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For those who have never heard of Andrew Walls or the academic discipline of World Christianity, here are my husband’s words:
“Christianity is, and has always been, polycentric and multicultural and multiethnic and multilingual. But traditional Euro-American scholarship has treated studies of Christianity and Christian histories as though Christianity were an ethnic faith belonging only to Euro-American and Roman-Graeco traditions. The (multidisciplinary) academic discipline of World Christianity aims to restore balance, studying Christianity across cultures, history, and geographies. More than anyone else in the 20th or so far in the 21st century, Andrew F. Walls is the most foundational figure in World Christianity.”
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