Bittersweet

I am super excited to be heading back to a place I fell in love with.  I even got a call from Osvaldo and Rossy confirming the pick up time tomorrow in Managua...

I'm anxious about the last minute trip to Wal-Mart and packing and getting it all together.  I know it will all fall into place and get taken care of...

I'm sad to be leaving my family in the midst of something tragic.  I know the Lord is bigger than me.  I know I am not in control.  I know praying is the best thing I can do right now and I can pray from anywhere...


I depart at 7:00 from Charleston and will land around 11:20 in Managua.  From there, I'll be picked up and taken to Chinandega, where I will stay the week with Pastor Osvaldo and his family.  I cannot wait to see what the Lord does -- BIG expectations!

YOLO

YOLO = you only live once.

I think this is going to be my new motto.  How am I living?  You?

I've been thinking about life a lot the past 20 hours.  A dear family friend is in the ICU after a car crash.  She's young and vibrant and hanging on for dear life.  Grateful for your prayers.

Psalm 107:1-2,19-20,35
Oh give thanks to the Lord, for he is good, for his steadfast love endures forever!  Let the redeemed of the Lord say so, whom he has redeemed from trouble...then they cried to the Lord in their trouble, and he delivered them from their distress.  He sent out his word and healed them, and delivered them from their destruction...he turns a desert into pools of water, a parched land into springs of water.

Getting ready.

Packing.  I've been putting it off and off and off until it has to happen tonight. Leigh's coming over for our routine "pack and play."  It just makes packing more fun.

Courtney joked with me this morning because I packed 3 to 4 weeks in advance when we went to Haiti last summer.  I guess you could say I'm getting slack more comfortable with these things?!

So many thoughts are running through my head as I attempt to pack here and there and mentally prepare for this trip.  I've read two blog posts this morning that struck a nerve.  One and the other:

Here’s a convo from my facebook feed recently.

Friend of Mine

I just dropped by iPhone! And the glass is completely shattered!! Grrrrrr!!!!!

Top of Form

Her Friend

OMG!! That is my greatest fear!! I’m really sorry you are going through this! I would cry!

Friend of Mine

I am really upset! I’m going to cry!! It’s going to cost sooooo much to get it fixed!

Her Friend

Yea, I would cry too! I totally understand!!

Seriously?? Is that worth out tears? Today I held the hands of a woman who buried her baby in the ground lat weekend. She could hardly walk as the trauma and grief had caused her to ignore her physical pains of recent child birth and infection had spread. Her infant son’s life is in the balance as the ‘disease’ that took his sister threatens to invade his small body if Mama can’t gain strength to feed him.

I sat next to a woman too full of pain (shame?) to lift her eyes. Her bloodshot eyes showed the stress of sickness coming to near. Her daughter sat uncomfortably on her lap, but no amount of adjustment or soothing causes hunger pains to leave. Her loose skin and small stature made their poverty too obvious.

I hugged a friend I’ve gone months without seeing and laughed along with her as she gripped at me for not visiting more. I looked inside her home and we talked about the water that enters when it rains, not too surprising as it is built on top of a swamp. The house is built on the same land she tried to live on a year ago when the police came and beat her and stole all her belongings. She’s sure she’s safe, I express concern.

These aren’t the extreme. Just a few of my friends I passed on my normal route today. Just the ones that came to mind as I thought over my day. Just the few I’ve seen in my small corner of the world. A small corner of a world where disease and poverty and injustice are rampant. A world where lives are taken every minute by things that should not exist.

Yet in another corner of the world, we can be upset by iPhones, traffic, heat, football losses, expensive clothes, etc, etc, etc.

I’m just not sure that’s ok.

There's just something

about Scott Disick that makes me smile.  He just knows how to rock a cane.  Oh, yeah, there's the fur lined cape, too.

Beach bum

This weekend was nice and relaxing; however, the weather did not lend itself to getting a tan.  The weather today was gorgeous and the beach beckoned my name.  An hour out there was just what I needed.

Wise words

I read this on Sarah Sass's blog and had to steal it; thanks, Sass!

In June of 1971, just days before his 26-year-old son, Michael, got married, future-U.S. President Ronald Reagan sent him the following letter of advice. It really is quite stunning.

(Source: Reagan: A Life In Letters; Image: Ronald Reagan, via.)

Michael Reagan
Manhattan Beach, California
June 1971

Dear Mike:

Enclosed is the item I mentioned (with which goes a torn up IOU). I could stop here but I won't.

You've heard all the jokes that have been rousted around by all the "unhappy marrieds" and cynics. Now, in case no one has suggested it, there is another viewpoint. You have entered into the most meaningful relationship there is in all human life. It can be whatever you decide to make it.

Some men feel their masculinity can only be proven if they play out in their own life all the locker-room stories, smugly confident that what a wife doesn't know won't hurt her. The truth is, somehow, way down inside, without her ever finding lipstick on the collar or catching a man in the flimsy excuse of where he was till three A.M., a wife does know, and with that knowing, some of the magic of this relationship disappears. There are more men griping about marriage who kicked the whole thing away themselves than there can ever be wives deserving of blame. There is an old law of physics that you can only get out of a thing as much as you put in it. The man who puts into the marriage only half of what he owns will get that out. Sure, there will be moments when you will see someone or think back to an earlier time and you will be challenged to see if you can still make the grade, but let me tell you how really great is the challenge of proving your masculinity and charm with one woman for the rest of your life. Any man can find a twerp here and there who will go along with cheating, and it doesn't take all that much manhood. It does take quite a man to remain attractive and to be loved by a woman who has heard him snore, seen him unshaven, tended him while he was sick and washed his dirty underwear. Do that and keep her still feeling a warm glow and you will know some very beautiful music. If you truly love a girl, you shouldn't ever want her to feel, when she sees you greet a secretary or a girl you both know, that humiliation of wondering if she was someone who caused you to be late coming home, nor should you want any other woman to be able to meet your wife and know she was smiling behind her eyes as she looked at her, the woman you love, remembering this was the woman you rejected even momentarily for her favors.

Mike, you know better than many what an unhappy home is and what it can do to others. Now you have a chance to make it come out the way it should. There is no greater happiness for a man than approaching a door at the end of a day knowing someone on the other side of that door is waiting for the sound of his footsteps.

Love,

Dad

P.S. You'll never get in trouble if you say "I love you" at least once a day.

Covenant relationships

Heard this from a wise friend last night, "covenant relationships are the ones that stick.  They're your people.  They're the people you stick with even when they make you really mad."

So grateful for my covenant relationships.

Who are yours?