Home Again

Well, I've been back in North Carolina for about 42 hours now.  I promise I'll be writing more about my experiences soon - just give the jetlag fog some time to clear - but some random current thoughts:

  (1)  After a week of dressing to respect a culture that expects knees to be covered for modesty's sake, it feels positively wanton to wear skirts that hit just above my knees. 

  (2)  I missed you, cheese. 

  (3)  If you return to work the next day after a trip 7 time zones away, take notes on EVERYTHING because your memory won't be worth squat. 

  (4)  Even the prettiest skies in NC will pale in comparison to the skies of Maasai land in Kenya. 

  (5)  Seriously, how do people live without cheese?

  (6)  Oh how I missed my highest high heels! 

  (7)  Nothing beats the hugs you get from your wonderful husband and kids at the airport after 12 days away.  Nothing.  Not even cheese.  ;-)

Allergic to Change

This week we had a scare that Elaine might have strep. She felt run-down and had a rash all the way around her neck and strep has been going around in our school. For several hours and a visit to the pediatrician later, we find out she just is run-down from a late night the night before and the rash is from her brand new "Daddy's Girl" necklace Jason gave her for her birthday. It seems our girl has an allergy to her new piece of bling.

 

Within a few hours of removing it, she was feeling much better. The itchy, irritated skin was healing quite nicely. But it made me think about how so many of us - myself definitely included - are allergic to change. It makes us itchy and irritated emotionally and just leaves us feeling out of sorts, just like Elaine on Friday. But as adults, it is rarely as easy to backtrack from the changes and go on as if nothing happened. That's because change usually leaves behind those tracks on our mind and emotions that don't dissipate the ways mere physical marks would. And isn't that good? I hate change when it is happening. I mean, seriously y'all - I *HATE* it. But you know what would be worse? 
 

To never change.

 

Cause I know that some of those itchy, irritated reactions to change made me a better person. Let's face it - I think my kids are lovable but if they are the same people at 35 as they are now . . . Well, I bet not many people will want to befriend an adult who is whiny and impulsive and prone to stomping her feet and huffing off when she doesn't get her way, you know?

In four days (FOUR!!!) I leave for Kenya and some definite changes. Oh I'll look the same when I get home and I'll live in the same house and drive the same car to the same job but I'll be different. I'm facing now that it will mean some itchy, irritated feelings, something I don't always handle gracefully. But I'm going into thiswith my eyes open, expecting those feelings, and trying my hardest not to be whiny and impulsive and prone to stomping my feet and huffing off when I don't get my way . . .

 

FREE COUNTDOWN WIDGET

One logistical note: I won't be blogging in real time from Kenya. Besides the logistical difficulties of getting a solid internet connection, we have decided as a team that safety concerns are best served by not flooding social media, including Facebook, with our daily activities in-country. I will be writing though and plan to share those thoughts and experiences and even my allergy symptoms to change with you when I return. Thanks for taking this journey with me!

Countdown starting . . . NOW!

OK, so I've been radio-silent for several days now so maybe you are wondering what is going on with my trip. 

Let's start with the biggest part: I'm still going.  YAY!  Oh the trip will look a little different now.  No getting to know the urban jungle that is Nairobi.  OK, a little downer but NBD.  It also means no shopping in the Marketplace in Nairobi.  :'-(  Seriously people, if you know me you know I was digging the idea of combining two of my favorite passtimes: shopping and nagging.  I was planning on getting some DEALS.  {sigh}  But really, seeing Nairobi and shopping were going to be fun but that's not why I'm crossing the ocean and flying blu-million miles so I'll deal, 'cause I get to go play with them:

 

OK, so what have I been doing?  Well there was a successful fundraiser that helped cover a nice piece of my trip costs.  WOO HOO!  But during the fundraiser, I managed to injure my printer and slaughter my laptop.  It's dead, people.  I mean, deader than dead.  Oops.  Thanks goodness it was a work computer and IT doesn't ask too many questions . . .

This also happened:

 

Jason is off with a team from our church to serve with the Appalachia Service Project in Wyoming County, West Virginia.  I'm super excited for him.  I've been on three of these trips, starting back in college, and while he has heard all about it, I'm still not sure he has any idea what it is really going to be like.  He left today and gets home Sunday. 

 

In other news, Colby's Fairy Tale Ball is tomorrow at school and Elaine turns 9 on Saturday and my oil needed changing and my car needed to be inspected and oh yeah . . . .

 

I LEAVE IN ONE WEEK. 

 

One week y'all.  ONE WEEK.  Pardon my shouting but what the heck?  Where did September go?  Forget September, where did August go?  Anyway, I've been distracted to no end so this sort of snuck up on me.  Some might think that is a bad thing but I'm seeing it as a gift.  If I think about this too much, that is when the butterflies get going and my mind starts swimming.  I want to plan and make lists and mark things off lists and all those human things we do when we try to control God-sized dreams with our human-sized capabilities.  So I'm embracing the mundane distractions.  Not because they are more important but because I trust God has got this.  God gave me this dream.  Then He told me to WAIT.  Wait a lot, people.  Two years of waiting.  Then He said Jason should go.  And I should still wait.  But now He says go.  He is in control of this.  He doesn't need my butterflies and swimming thoughts - He just needs my obedience.  So I'll live my mundane life for the next 6 days.  But on the 7th, I obey.