I have just collected our two most recent prayer updates to email to the blog, you can read them below. Sorry to be out of contact. It seems the more emotionally and physically draining life here gets the less able I am to write. When you see that I haven’t posted updates it probably means we need a lot of prayer. Of course my head says that I should post more so that you can pray better, but in reality it doesn’t work that way. I can’t seem to write when I’m barely keeping my head above water as I feel I have been over the last week.
God is teaching us good lessons in relationships, culture and dependence on Him right now. Though we are struggling with difficult things our hearts are well. After last week’s stress and upheaval, we left for just two nights and headed to a remote part of the country just to pray, reconnect as a family and get away from the rumors and questions for a little while. It was a good thing.
I think I am struck more and more lately by how hard-hearted I am in the midst of a lot of suffering. I feel convicted about that, sad about that. Sometimes something comes up that reminds me how much I have seen in the last year and how it has changed me in some dramatic ways. I need God to show me how to be wise yet gentle and how to love people well. There is a bottomless pit of loving needed here and sometimes I find myself rushing past people to get to my real ministry. Of course the real ministry is being present with whoever is in your life and loving them well. It’s the endlessness of those people and their needs that is overwhelming.
This week Naomi and Quinn are off from school (due to travel of a lot of the team and interns). I am hoping for some good time with them. Meanwhile David and I are involved with the reopening of the school, parent and staff meetings and fall out, etc. That takes a lot of time and I am thankful for other team moms who take N and Q in when I am working. The needs of our house workers (for care, love, guidance, support) is a constant that faces me in the morning of every single day, even as I put real energy into what has to happen to get dinner on the table each night. Neighbors continue to fall seriously ill regularly and other neighbors continue to find new ways to cheat and deceive us to get a handout. Meanwhile friends and partners in ministry continue to choose to make big mistakes with their lives.
And we all continue to need Jesus, desperately.
This is my life, now-now (as they say here), briefly. I hope you can appreciate our lives and work even when I can only write poorly and sporadically. You are getting the reality of my life, glorious and not so.