Acacia, illustrator of the four Rwendigo Tales, turns 21 today.
How many people do you know who have published illustrations for four books before they are legal adults? So this is a short tribute to a remarkable life-in-progress. Acacia started helping me when she lived in our house for most of the first three years of high school, commuting from South Sudan. She had spent her early years inseparable from our kids as we all lived in Bundibugyo, Uganda, together, so she was a natural fit in our family. And since she had spent her entire life in the Rwendigo settings, she could see what I was seeing as I wrote. Only unlike me, she could also draw it!
Today we celebrate that artist's soul, the attention to the tiny details like wave ridges in the sand, or the way sea urchin spikes are oriented. Acacia's eye finds beauty, pattern, integration, setting where most of us take the world for granted.
Acacia has also been a lover of animals from a young age, from pet goats and rabbits to a passion for dogs and donkeys. If you read the third book (A Forrest, a Flood, and an Unlikely Star) the featured messenger is a tribute to Acacia, and some of her favorite lines make it into the dialogue. Had she not embraced art therapy as a means of blessing the world, she probably would have worked in animal husbandry or veterinary medicine. But both demonstrate a heart for the overlooked, a willingness to get into the mess to be redemptive, a broader view of this world and its needs with an intent to serve even if it is costly. In other words, spunk.
Growing up in three African countries plus regular immersions into American culture is no small task. It takes a strong dose of resilience to navigate languages, climates, cultural systems, chaos across continents. I appreciate Acacia's imperturbability. She is comfortable enough in who she is to enter into other lives without having to be the center of attention. She holds onto humor, listens deep into the night to her friends, bakes therapeutically, and has a gift of encouragement.
So join me today in wishing Acacia a spectacular 21rst birthday, definitely a somewhere-milestone of grace that gives me an opportunity to thank God and her parents for this life!
Acacia with an acacia . . .
And to celebrate that we go back a few years . . .
Julia and Acacia in their matching outfits circa 1999??
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