Do not worry...

but in everything, by prayer and supplication, make your requests known to God.

We leave for Honduras Sunday morning at 6:05 AM. Please don't let me oversleep!
I'm one of the youngest members of this team, never been on a medical team before and never led a team before. I am the leader.
I don't want to look like a complete goof at the airport trying to get everyone's tickets, donation letters, passports, luggage...where they're supposed to go. Looking like a partial goof is fine.
I'm gonna be carrying a lot of money and that scares the bejeebees out of me.
I'm taking Mefloquine for my anti-malarial this time. Um, side effects include anxiety, insomnia, vivid dreams. It has me anxious about how I can have vivid dreams if I can't sleep.
What if we lose half our luggage? Or just some that have our meds in them? We have everything mixed around, but oh, I so want to have all our luggage arrive at the same time we do.
Those dadgum customs and immigration sheets we have to fill out. Don't know why they're confusing to me. Perhaps because they're legal-ese...in a foreign language.
The health of the team - I really don't want anyone to get hurt or sick. I have two heart patients with me. Glad it's a medical team so I know I have a doctor that can speak English.
The unity of the team. Oh, how I pray for true camaraderie, genuine compassion and holy vulnerability. (I made up that "holy vulnerability" thing - I mostly mean that I want everyone to be vulnerable to God in a whole new way that, in turn, allows us to be vulnerable to one another and those we are serving.)
I don't want our expectations to get in the way. I don't want to expect my team members to react in a certain way or be disappointed if I don't feel like they're "getting it." How judgemental and off is that?! Geez, Jennifer.
Setting up the clinic and pharmacy are huge tasks. Ain't never had no part of that before. Wee bit intimidating.
Hope we have enough medication. Hope we are taking the right medication.
Hope the Vacation Bible School works out okay. Don't feel like we've planned well on that and it's falling back in my lap. Which isn't a bad thing because it's my favorite part, but I really tried to delegate. Just hope we can all get on the same page and the kids are blessed.
My mom and kids at home. My goodness, I didn't realize how busy and chaotic our lives are until I have to make a spreadsheet with who goes where when, gets how much medicine at what time for how long, eats what kind of food, and how often you have to do laundry and run the dishwasher. I just don't want them miserable (okay, or sad) while we're gone.
That we are "culturally intelligent" in all our attitudes and interactions.
Oh, I so pray for my husband and I. This is the first mission trip we've been on together since the one we met on 15 years ago. I'm so hopeful - giddy, actually - that we will have the time of our lives together! I'm considering this our 15th anniversary trip a month early. But then, there I go with expectations again.

So after listing all those worries prayers, I can see that they're surface, selfish or superficial. Guess that's why we turn them all into prayers because then we can see what our heart is focused on.
Here's what I want to be focused on: our purpose. God has been stirring this purpose in my heart for over 4 years now. I have known that I would come back to Honduras with a medical team. I have seem Him do some pretty incredible things to get us to this place. And our purpose is to meet the spiritual needs of a beautiful community in the midst of meeting the physical needs.

I pray that every act, word, and gesture undeniably points to our God as the Provider, Sustainer, and Savior. And the little church across from the clinic knows Him!

What I learned this week

Kindergarten field trips use up kindergarten teachers' patience.

Unsupervised children will always use an entire bottle of shampoo.

McD's cappuccino is gross.

American politics are fascinating and disgusting at the same time.

I'm not as good of a mom as I thought.

I'm not as bad of a mom as I thought.

Strep really is very contagious.

I'm not always brave enough to sing "Let the earth beneath me tremble, let the enemy pursue, I can face it all as long as I have You."

Flossing only the two weeks before a dentist appointment always reaps a "your teeth look wonderful" compliment from the hygienist.

Marriage retreats mean you can't retreat.

I really hate cleaning up pee.

No matter how important and jam-packed my schedule is, cuddling and reading with a sick child negates every other plan.

It's possible to cross my arms in church and not sing a word of a worship song because I feel hopeless - and still know that it's all going to be okay.

Participating in a Modern Dance class with teenagers is really intimidating.

Parenting is hard...and scary.

Being the leader of a mission team is requiring more faith than I ever imagined.

Although it's not all usable, my voice teacher says I have a 3 1/2 octave range. Are you kidding me????

Friendships grow deeper at The Bread Co.

My God is bigger.

I average a Wal Mart trip every 26.3 hours and spend an average of $57.83.

"You always have more breath than you think" has more to do with life than singing.

When God speaks...

I really would rather just curl up in a ball and not take the challenge. I've rather liked my easy life. And then I hit a really rough spot in life. And then Pastor Mike has to go and preach on intentionality (something I thought I was doing well. Um, no). And then tonight I sit down to finish Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis. And this is what God must be wanting me to really get today...

"When a man turns to Christ and seems to be getting on pretty well (in the sense that some of his bad habits are now corrected), he often feels that it would now be natural if things went fairly smoothly. When troubles come along - illnesses, money troubles, new kinds of temptation - he is disappointed. These things, he feels, might have been necessary to rouse him and make him repent in his bad old days; but why now? Because God is forcing him on, or up, to a higher level putting him into situtations where he will have to be very much braver, or more patient, or more loving, than he ever dreamed of being before. It seems to us all unnecessary: but that is because we have not yet had the slightest notion of the tremendous thing He means to make of us."

And a little earlier in the chapter he says,

"'Make no mistake,' [Christ] says, 'if you let me, I will make you perfect. The moment you put yourself in My hands, that is what you are in for. Nothing less, or other, than that. You have free will, and if you choose, you can push Me away. But if you do not...understand that I am going to see this job through. Whatever suffering it may cost you in your earthly life...whatever it costs Me, I will never rest, nor let you rest, until you are literally perfect.... This I can do and will do. But I will not do anything less.'"

"We may be content to remain what we call 'ordinary people': but He is determined to carry out a quite different plan. To shrink back from that plan is not humility; it is laziness and cowardice. To submit to it is not conceit or megalomania; it is obedience."

Dang it. Gotta leave the pity party early and start doing that brave, patient, loving, obedient thing.

Carpe Diem

When I get a chance I'm gonna blog about these things:

• homeschooling, Singapore, and PTA (and yes, they all relate)
• status quo, status symbols and status updates
• hunger (world and otherwise)

But for now, I gotta share my evening. Chris is working late so it's just the kids and me. They played outside til after dark and once I had everybody rounded up and in the house, they reminded me that I had said we would bake cookies. It was already 8:00 and I really just wanted to get them in bed so I could clean up and play the piano. But something in me knew that this was a carpe diem moment.

Now, we've baked cookies together a gazillion times, but this was just special. I miss my kids terribly now that I'm not homeschooling and our time together always seems so rushed. They're less satisfied hanging out as a family now. That really bothers me, but I'll save that for the homeschooling blog. So tonight this cookie baking thing opened my eyes a bit.

Usually I'm the one directing the measuring, pouring, mixing. But not tonight. Tonight I sat on the opposite side of the counter and just watched all four of them take turns, share, encourage, and create together. Made my mommy heart swell. We ate dough. Tasted butter. Laughed. Licked sugar right off the counter (well, I didn't).

My take-away from this is that I passed the baton tonight. I've instructed, guided and modeled cookie baking and now they donned their aprons and tackled the process themselves. While I love cooking with my kids, I'm usually less than patient. It's just plain stressful for me to watch the mess exponentially increase by the minute. But they've still learned from me. I think God was just giving me a glimpse of what I'm passing on to my children. Oh, that they will learn to pray and rely on Him, that they have seen beyond my impatience and fastidiousness. I pray they have seen something in me that they can grab hold of and know that our God is magnificently loving, even if I am not. Oh, that I will one day see the baton of faith richly passed to each one.