On a journey...

Part of my heart is in the windows of Amsterdam. The windows of the Red Light Districts. Although not the windows per se, but the women each of those windows represent. Women whose identity is “everlastingly loved by God and beautifully created by Him”, and being daughters, sisters, wives, mothers, friends. Women who are not “prostitutes” because their occupation doesn’t define them. It’s been three years since the women in those windows were part of my every day. Three years since I got on a plane with a ton of luggage, making yet another move towards what is now home here in Norway. This seems to be the month of walking down memory lane, and so I figure I might as well take little walk through the streets of Amsterdam... Some windows are empty; representing women who were but are no longer in them. Women who have taken steps and are now living lives of dignity, bringing life instead of slowly dying on the inside. Some windows remind me of the times when I was invited into

Almost ten years ago to the day I sat in this very spot. Also on my way back from celebrating my cousins birthday in Bergen. But the difference being I’d just moved back to Norway two days earlier, and was a little more dazed. Ten years. I remember walking to my gate in Fortaleza. My face red and blotchy from the tears of saying goodbye, and glimpsing through a rare window into the main airport the group of friends-turned-family waving another goodbye as I walked past them. I was so sad to be moving from the place that had been home for the past 6+ years, and yet the sadness in a strange way fuelled thankfulness. Thankfulness for the time I got to live there, and proof that the relationships built went deeper than surface level. Ten years. It still feels so recent, and yet 10 years of living away. It feels like an appropriate moment to stop for a moment and reflect. Fortaleza, Brazil. The amazing privilege of becoming part of the lives of so many people I met on the s