We were laughing the other day, Alicia and I, about how much
of life out here is just very routine and normal. Obviously you don’t blog about wiping
counters and folding laundry and letting the milk boil over—again!—but the normal
routines of life are what take up the majority of our time.
So I shouldn’t have been surprised when I was sitting on my
couch in the livingroom last week and a strange creature came hopping/flying
down the hallway at me. It wasn’t really
FLYING, but it had so much dust stuck to its legs on the back that it gave the
appearance of wings flapping. As it
bridged the gap between itself and me, I realized that it was a toad, obviously
trying to escape from the house after being bogged down in some of the
less-cleaner rooms (“Under YOUR bed, mom,” says Lauren).
Along with getting rid of the dirt (and yes, we sweep and
mop every day in this dry-season
dust), I have also been purging the stuff that constantly accumulates (how does
it manage to DO that?!) with help from my girl Kate, “Mom, that stuff you’re
looking through is like a junk drawer.
Only it’s not a drawer, it’s just junk!”
Thanks, Kate.
That was all the incentive I needed from the
not-quite-four-year-old.
The challenge is always to find joy and meaning in the
mundane. Not all of life will be a
glorious adventure. It’s easy to see
African life and pictures of cobras and hippos and damaged eyes and think that
every day is filled with astonishing escapades, but really those pictures are
just 1 or 2 times in between many, many days of “same.” And God seems to do His work on my heart most
often as I learn to serve, whether it is big, earth-shattering things like
holding brand-new baby Sophie, thrown in the outhouse and rescued, or just getting up
again to go help my own three-year-old in the bathroom or remain kind through the whole day of
school.
Speaking of eyes, Hannah’s continues to heal, and we pray
that it may heal all the way. I have
been SO challenged lately as I have read through a book by Joni Erickson Tada
(and how could I argue with her)
about suffering entitled, “A Place of Healing: Wrestling With the Mysteries of
Suffering, Pain and God’s Sovereignty.”
In it, she reminds us:
“The saint is to remember, that God is the judge as to
whether or not He will display Himself and His power by a miraculous act, and
also when, where, how, and with whom this will be done; and he is to keep
constantly in mind that God is just as faithful and loving when He does not so
display Himself as when He does.”
