The Grind

It's been FOREVER since I posted here. Sorry!

But if you knew what we've been up to lately, I think you would understand.

We've been doing the thing that I probably hate most about our job: Moving.

Moving Day: Chaos hits our living room

Me by our "moving truck". The guys who loaded it kept giggling about being in a photo with the American lady.

Our daughters' last moments in Payo, saying goodbye to our house & to some very special people we had to leave behind.

And moving 3rd-world style: packing up every last thing ourselves, hiring some guys with a huge vegetable truck to come move all our household goods, and discovering that the house we've moved into hasn't been maintained in a very. long. time.

The veggie truck backed up to our new home (which is behind the little pharmacy on the left)

It's been stressful...all the expected stresses, compounded by unexpected stresses have worn me down. All the paint in the new house failed, so after a week in the house, we had to move all the furniture and paint sealant on every wall. The fridge stopped working. We had to buy a new toiled because the one we hadn't already replaced had "issues" and had been installed incorrectly. ...And the list could go on for miles, but I don't want this to be a whiny pity party for us. That's not really what this is about.

Some dear friends helping to unload that pesky fridge

It's just that I've found myself reflecting back on the past 8.5 years we've spent in one place on this island. A place that had finally started to feel a little bit like home. I've been thinking about how God was faithful to us in all of that time, & how he'll certainly be faithful to us in the future here in San Andres, no matter how uncertain it feels to us right now.

And it's weird, because one of the things I've found myself most thankful for is another thing that I really don't like about our rural, 3rd-world life: the daily grind.

You see, it takes a lot more work just to live out here. It seems like everything takes more effort: there are no convenience foods, so everything has to be made from scratch. We didn't grow up in the school system here & still find it completely foreign, so it takes a lot of effort to shepherd our children through a system that we don't really understand. The power goes out a lot, and the internet is super sketchy, and...well, you get the picture.

Our youngest daughter hanging around in our new living room after a morning when she puked all over our new teammates' table at breakfast. Good thing Tom got the TV working that day so that she could just hang out while we unpacked.

It can be a real grind to raise a family out here, and sometimes I feel worn thin, exhausted from the heat & the effort it takes just to survive out here, much less reach outside myself to do something productive that might be a blessing to the people around me.

So why in the world am I thanking God for the daily grind of this life?

Because it has changed me in ways that I don't think I would have changed if my life was more comfortable. (Now, I'm not picking on anyone who is living back in the West...we all need to be in the place that God has called us to. I just seem to have experienced a lot more positive changes in who I am since we arrived on the mission field. Maybe I just need a bigger kick in the butt than most people.)

For those of you who are parents, think about your early days with your child(ren)...sleep deprived, always unsure of what was coming next, feeling like your whole life had changed, and not always for the better! You wondered what you had gotten yourself into. You discovered the depths of your own selfishness (at least I did). During that time of my life, I sometimes found myself wishing that parenting was a 9-5 job, with time off in the evenings, on weekends, & for scheduled vacations.

But I never would have been as invested in my children, discovered nearly as much of my own selfishness & sin, or changed half as much if I could have set my own schedule. It was the 24/7 nature of parenting that demanded I step up, take responsibility, & examine my own life & choices. It was what made me run, over & over, to God for his help. Because it was glaringly obvious I just couldn't handle it all on my own.

Our missionary life has been similar. It's the 24/7 daily grind: the inescapable heat & cultural ambiguity, the insanely long stretches of time away from loved ones, the thought of eating rice again, the necessity of getting into the culture just to survive, that have been God's loving touch to change me. He has grown my faith, helped me understand his love, planted seeds of compassion in my heart, & given me a joy in him that I did not have before we started this cross-cultural life.

It's strange to thank God for one of the things I intensely dislike about our life, and yet, such a relief to see that he has been using even the most difficult things to bless me. And so, sometimes, when I'm ranting about the latest power outage or the fact that there doesn't seem to be any butter on the whole island, anywhere, this week, I am encouraged to remember that my God has shown me his faithfulness in this, too.

"And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose" -Romans 8:28

Some local boys who came to watch us move in