I wish I had the time to write more in depth, but I am on dial up here in Kenya.  This is an amazing trip with amazing people.  It shows me once again how much we have at home and how much more we need to give up to help others.  Mission trips shouldn't be just an opportunity to show us "how blessed we are at home", but rather, an opportunity to stretch us into further obedience.  I have so much at home it makes me think of the end of Schindler's List where he is saying, "I could have done more..." 

I can do more.  We are called to be an active part in ministering to the poor....not just donating our money or clothing.

The disciples who first followed Christ were dreadfully out of step with his cause when they pointed out a blind beggar and asked Christ who had sinned--the man's parents, or he in his mother's womb--that he should be born blind (John 9:1-7)  No doubt they had seen this beggar many times before and had reacted with the same kind of theological curiousity.  What they saw in Christ's response was hardly standoffish.  It clearly demonstrated the distance between Christ and his followers in regard to responding to people's needs.  His was a response of compassion, not curiosity and judgment.  He marshaled his resources to grant sight to the beggar and claimed that the blindness was actually intended to provide a moment when God could be magnified through Christ's compassionate touch.

Aren't we just like those detached disciples?  When we hear of trouble in someone's life we are far more interested in the details and an analysis of what, why, when and where than we are in finding out what we can do to reach out and help.

--Joseph Stowell

Here's hoping that I can be part of the body of Christ on my mission trip to Kenya.  Here's hoping that I learn how to reach out and help more.

I leave tomorrow.  Hopefully, I will get a chance to write while I am there.

A couple weeks ago, when I was bummed out for many reasons, I came across this passage of scripture twice in one day:

"It is better not to vow than to make a vow and not fulfill it."
Ecclesiastes 5:5

I am a quitter. 

I am someone who cannot stand pain, and I want to quit when things aren't going my way.  I've been that way since childhood, and I remember my parents lecturing me about keeping commitments.   I've been that way in relationships, always looking for the initial "high" that comes with dating and then promptly wanting to leave a relationship when the going got tough or "normal".  I was that way in my professional life.  When a job got too stressful, I successfully got myself recruited into a different position and relocated.  I was that way with life.  If something was out of my control, I drank to numb it.

The thing about God is He wants me to be obedient.  If I make a commitment to Him, He expects me to keep it.  It's the toughest thing about getting honest with life and having a strong spiritual relationship.  The week I was pretty depressed, I got some bad news about something that I saw as a spiritual door closing in my life.  But, perhaps it wasn't, now that I look back on it.  Perhaps, it was just another "not now...", as God so often likes to do with me. 

When that scripture was brought to my attention several times in one day, I saw it as a challenge.  I heard God saying, "Let's see you bring this Kenya mission trip to fruition and get this "vow" under your belt".  I was having feelings of resentment of having to lead this trip when everything seemed to be going haywire.  I wanted to quit, and I wanted to quit badly.  I don't think I needed anything else on my plate that could have contributed to that stress.  And so God issued a "not now" to the other issue in my life.  As they say in AA, "Easy does it." 

So often, I get on a roll and feel a spiritual call, and I start to do everything in my time.  Life doesn't work that way, though.  We work on God's time, and God doesn't operate in minutes and days and weeks.  He works in His own way.

(In fact, in Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis best explains how God can "see" everything that happens in our lives, the future and the past, and yet still gives us free will...it still boggles my mind to think of heaven as another dimension that is "timeless".  Can you fathom an existence without time?  Difficult, isn't it?)

Trudge left this comment on my last post:

"Thank you for reminding me to be grateful for my washer and dryer"

Seriously.  If you have one at home, take a moment to give thanks.  I hate doing laundry.  Yet, when your washer has not worked for two weeks, you realize how much you come to depend on things you just take for granted.  I joyously did several loads of laundry yesterday.  Never before have I been so thankful to have that wonderful appliance.  (But I still have a heck of a lot of folding to do....)

Things are going well here.  Being a procrastinator by nature, I still have nothing planned yet as far as what I am taking to Kenya at the end of the week.  I am starting to look forward to it, but at the same time, it is so long to be away from my family.  I haven't been gone from them this long since I went to treatment last May. 

I guess right now there is so much spinning around in this brain of mine that I can't focus much on writing on a single subject.  Sometimes I just feel inspired to write, other times my mind comes up with nothing.  My head is still reeling from the $450 repair estimate I just got from the Sears guy five minutes ago.  I have only had this Kenmore washer two years, and it already is falling apart.  High efficiency washer, my a*s. 

But I have to have pack something to go on this trip, right?

Grrrr...

The kids and I had some "old fashioned fun" (hardy har har) last week and washed the clothes in the bathtub.  That is a lot of work!  I am so glad I was born in the modern era.  God must have known I wasn't cut out to be some pioneer woman. 

It's my husband's birthday today.  We had an awesome weekend with the kids in Carmel and Big Sur.

Here is Isabel after she succeeded in smashing all of Bryan's cake into a giant pile of mush. 

In Big Sur at Pfeiffer State Park.  Amazing scenery and I love the redwoods.

Ian and Isabel showing off their Monterey Aquarium Jellyfish and Starfish Tattoos.  (and that abomination on his other arm that his friend gave him that I cannot get off of him!)

Greetings from Carmel.  This is my favorite place on earth, and I am so glad we live only a few hours away.  Especially since it is 100 degrees in Sacramento and only in the 60's here!  I love the second picture with Ian and the seals on the rock below. 

Oh my gosh!  I leave for Kenya in less than two weeks.  It's stressing me out. 

Actually, the planning of it is stressing me out.  I am NOT a planner, and in taking the "lead" position on this trip, I have to deal with details.  Details, details, details.  I spent the afternoon at the church today going over details.  I thought I was going to die.  I just want to strangle people who get so caught up in details that they can't see the larger picture or realize that we are going to have to play it by ear in some cases.

But I guess if everyone was more like me, there would be only larger pictures and nothing would get implemented.  Sigh.

I feel like I should be more excited about this trip.  Maybe it will come soon.  I usually am thrilled to travel, but instead, I feel unusually apprehensive.  I guess I'm getting older and less adventurous?  It's funny (not funny ha ha, funny peculiar), but I still carry with me a sense of dread.  It's an alcoholic trait, I have been told. 

I think because we are addicted to chaos, if things seem calm or relatively "normal", it doesn't seem right.  In the old days, an addict like myself would go kick up some more sh*t to make life more exciting.  You unconsciously create chaos because calm scares you.  However, in recovery, you learn to accept and even like the calm.  And then, once you learn to like the calm, you are afraid that something is going to happen to disturb it.  Basically, when in active addiction, you don't think you are entitled to happiness, so you go around creating your own unhappiness.  Then, you sit around and complain about how everyone has done you wrong.  In recovery, you learn that you are responsible for your own happiness, and the calm becomes positive.  But some days, I still feel deep down that I am not entitled to happiness.  I know this is my issue, and not how God feels.  I feel like in some great cosmic way, I am going to get snuffed out or squashed like an ant.   I think traveling has always brought that fear up in me in some ways.   

It is perhaps where my faith needs some work.  Because karma (or the Buddhist view) is getting what I deserve, and if I got what I deserve, I would be squished like a bug.  Karma is not how God works because I do deserve to get squished like a bug (everyone does because no one is perfect in any way), but He will forgive us if we let him.  But it seems as if I deeply hold on to the "something is going to happen to me" approach BECAUSE I have done so much wrong in this life.  This is why Jesus was sent to us.  It took me a long time to comprehend that.  He died, so that we didn't have to bear the "karma" burden.  He died so that if we fully accept God in our hearts, we are forgiven.  We don't have to bear the burden of the terrible things that we did if we accept the change and the challenge that God has in store for us. 

I sound so evangelical, don't I? 

It's for my own sake, as well as others that I write that.  It is trying to fully accept that I deserve happiness and forgiveness.