Hoy Es Domingo: The second Sunday

Well, we're about 1.5 weeks into 16 here in Nicaragua, and this last week has been a lot smoother than the first. Same issues (bugs at night, exhausted kids, we don't know Spanish) but we're handling them better.

There was one day earlier this week (Wednesday) when we were planning to spend an entire day at the beach lying in the sand... but took a wrong turn and drove towards a colonial city called Leon instead. That day was the turning point in this season of the trip: the time when we realized we could either sit stubborn against the will of adventure or we could just embrace it. We could spend another two hours backtracking and finding the beach, or we could move forward and go to Leon, doing the beach another day. We realized then (again) that our well-laid plans should be held with a loose and gentle grip - here, now, always.

Where have I found God moving in word or spirit?

Right now I'm doing the Beth Moore Children of the Day study which walks through 1 & 2 Thessalonians with a fine-toothed comb and a fist full of grace. Every day I have been making sure to carve out at least 20 minutes away from the girls and John to just go through this study and it's kept me grounded in moments when I feel like I have no footing. I bet all my friends back home could say the same for their time in the study. But there was one thing that really stood out to me this week and I started to speak it over my soul, especially in moments when I feel dryness, when I feel consumed with the fact that we are currently in a desert season, separate from our community and being refined over fire and it's hard and it hurts:

Ezekiel 37:4 - Then he said to me, "Prophesy to these bones and say to them, 'Dry bones! Hear the word of the Lord!'"

Dry bones. There's a song about being in the desert and it uses the words, "when all that is within me feels dry". When I ask, why Lord? Why are we here? What is your vision for us? Why can't I hear you right now when I could so clearly just short weeks ago? Dry bones, hear the word of the Lord.

I want to be drenched in the word of the Lord. I want these dry bones to grow flesh and walk and to walk in the way of the Lord constantly, even when it's hard, even when my kids are taking their turns screaming and I want to join in, even when it's too hot to think.

I feel a stronger call this week to hear the word of the Lord as I move forward, and to pursue His word and chase after it in the same way I am chasing after a new language and trying to drench myself in it. When I feel dry, I want to soak in the word of the Lord. Hear it. Grow flesh, my soul. Walk, these bones. Drench.

Where have I found God moving in my family?

I appreciate myself as a mother a lot more now than I did just a few short weeks ago. I thought that when we arrived here, I'd be doing more full-time momming and was worried what I would look like without the distraction of work to keep my attention shifting when parenting became overwhelming... but right now I hesitate to respond to an email because I simply don't want to. Yesterday I spent far too long doing a job that normally takes me twenty minutes. I appreciate the role that I played this past summer in our family life because I can see now that I've always been full-time momming and I was working more out of necessity than distraction, and am now able to prioritize my girls a lot easier than I thought I could.

I also appreciate the fact that us 4 are always together. For five and a half years I've had the good fortune of having John by my side for the majority of a day, and for 2.5 of those years we've had a child by our sides most of the time. I realize that this is a luxury equivalent to living on vacation all the time (not that it's a vacation all the time, but it's that kind of awesome), and I want to acknowledge that now before this season of life changes or ends - whether because the girls go to school or one of us changes vocation or whatever it might be. I hope, though, that we can keep this rolling. I like it.

And I want to give God the credit for setting us up to be up in one another's grills all the time. It keeps us accountable, we know we're loved, and we're the kind of people that need it. Being a full time family is part of our mission.

Where have I found God in Nicaragua?

I think I expected to come here and see things I could fix. That's the type of person that I am: I see something done a way I wouldn't do, I want to take control, I want to fix it. I'm pretty sure my understanding of what we would do when we arrived was something like: See a need, join a current ministry, fix things, find purpose.

But we haven't felt that way yet. Maybe that's why it's so hard for us to see the big ol' "why" we're here. There are dozens and dozens of real needs: there are orphans that need caring for, widows that are lonely, people in the process of adopting that are facing a mountain of challenges. There are houses that are mostly comprised of tin everywhere. There is a string of corruption within the government and a lack of real wisdom in national spending. There are a slew of physical needs and many hundreds of medical needs all over the country that aren't being met. This is the second poorest country in the Western hemisphere...

...But there hasn't been a mission that we've heard of yet that we want to tie ourselves to fully.

We look around and we see such beauty; we don't see a broken country, we don't see broken people. This is a broken country, filled with broken people, but they're no more broken than we are.

We've found God in Nicaragua, so far, by finding brokenness in ourselves and in turn a need for Him. Let's get rolling with letting God sort out this mess before we start mopping up others'. And let's be real about the mess within so that others can be real about theirs.

We're all perpetually on mission. We're just looking for ours while we're here.