Six months and "None of these things"

 

It was his birthday last week.  I had good intentions of posting something then, but…they obviously stayed just intentions.  Perhaps that makes me a bad auntie?  I could offer excuses, but I’m sure you’re not really interested in them.

 

When I first met him, he was a chubby little baby with a fuzzy head of hair.  He lost the chubby cheeks a long time ago, and he’s far, far too close to my height now.  Sniffle, sniffle.

 

I miss him like crazy.

 

 

 

He loves creating robots and other things, and he has an imagination that makes mine (at least as a child) look positively tame. :)

 

 

He’s also a huge fan of cake.

 

 

The spittin’ image of his dad.

 

 

 

Such a ham, that Jeremiah.  Especially when there’s a camera around.  Hee, hee!

 

Love you, Jeremiah!

 

- - -

 

I really miss having Susie around.  She left 2 1/2 weeks ago, but it somehow seems longer than that.  (That could just be because my sense of time is really warped right now.)

 

 

We had a really good visit.

 

We did a few fun touristy things (like visiting Gorée Island and the park in the above picture).  We stayed up late with popcorn and Larkrise.

 

We talked.  And laughed a lot...over things like this -

 

"That car won't hit us - it's too nice of a car."

 

"Last night when I turned on the light the cockroaches were having a party in the sink - but they weren't the big ones."

 

"Well, I guess the first car decided to drive on the sidewalk and so everyone else thought it was a good idea."

 

"Look, today there are only six lanes trying to merge into one [as opposed to the day before, when seven lanes were trying to merge into one]!"

 

(She says I stole these from her copyrighted newsletter, but since I was present when they were said, I say it's not stealing.)

 

 

And then there was that statue that seemed to have a problem with its head...

 

- - -

 

It's brutal.  I feel like I'm in this way over my head.  I don't understand it.  I want to quit.  I want to see the whole picture, because taking one day at a time is such a helpless feeling sometimes.  God is sufficient in the midst of the struggle, and His grace is the only reason I've made it to this point.  Were things easier, I might miss that truth.

 

I wrote that 2 1/2 years ago when I was in Linguistics, but it wouldn't be too far off now.

 

I've been here six months.  Half a year.

 

They told me that for whatever reason, the six months point is often hard.

 

And yeah, it has been.

 

I honestly miss shopping at Costco and Target (and I'm not even a shopper, it's just something familiar).

 

Cooking for my family.

 

Spanish.

 

...And a million other things.

 

 

None of these things move me.  I'm not sure if I'll ever get to the point where I can say that.  Sometimes it seems like an impossible goal.

 

And here's where I have to take a minute to review those Bible stories we've been doing in class...

 

How God kept Noah and his family safe in the ark when the storm raged around them.

 

How He took Abraham from his father's house and from his country and led him to a place he'd never been before.

 

How He promised him a son when humanly speaking, it was impossible.

 

How He used Joseph, sold as a slave by his spiteful brothers and later thrown into prison for a crime he didn't commit, to save the lives of his entire family.

 

How He parted the Red Sea.  Fed His people with manna and quail.  Gave them water from a rock in the desert.

 

How He used an army of 300 - led by a nobody from the tribe of Manasseh - to route a much larger army.

 

How He supplied a widow with oil and flour for many days when there had only been enough for one last meal.

 

He is still the same.  He is still the Hero of the story.

 

I know I say that a lot.  It's not so much that I'm trying to hammer it into your heads as it is that I so desperately need to remember it myself.

 

There are times when it's just way easier to see how unheroic I am.  How bumbling and clueless and inept I am.  I can forget that God doesn't bumble.  He's never caught off guard.  He's never wringing His hands in apprehension.

 

He's got this.

 

 

He is our refuge, our safe place.  Always present.  Always with us.  Always unshakable.

 

God is sufficient in the midst of the struggle, and His grace is the only reason I've made it to this point.  Were things easier, I might miss that truth.

 

So here is to six months of grace...grace that I know I don't even see the full extent of.