one week.

a cold week.

a scarf and winter coat week.

a wedding week.

one whole week that i slept in a big fluffy bed and ate lots of delicious things and saw my people. and then on one of the days, the thursday actually, my best friend got married. and that is really the whole point of the cold, scarf, winter coat, wedding week. i loved it. congratulations sarah and cub! best friend weddings are the greatest kind of weddings. it went entirely too fast and a week is rarely enough but sometimes it's all that's there. im thankful for it.

my nights and days are basically back to normal... cept i leave tomorrow and they'll get all out of order again. but it's totally worth it. staying up late with tons of energy makes me feel... super-human. like a vampire or something. hah. i thought of twilight... how sick.

today i went to walmart for some last minute stuff before my flight tomorrow. i needed tooth paste; so i went to the tooth paste aisle. i've been there so many times before but this time i seriously despised it. why does there have to be so many? i was so overwhelmed! i didn't even know where to start... i was lost in a sea of tooth paste. in that moment i had a really hard time with the fact that my culture lives and moves and breathes surrounded by excess and plenty and often times too much. i mean... having a choice between which tooth paste you want is fine, nothing wrong with that. but think about it - it's someone's job to come up with a cooler more attractive toothpaste that you and i will buy. how does that help the world? seriously people TOOTH PASTE! if you're in the tooth paste business you should feel shame right now...

just kidding. thats not my point. maybe when i come home to America and her ways ill see the art in getting to chose the right most perfect tooth paste... but right now it just seems a little unnecessary.

i'm ready for the simplicity of Tanzania. and i anticipate the newness of india. six months is about to happen. its just me and my back pack again; if it doesn't fit it doesn't come. and we shall begin anew...

more to come soon.

Beginnings.

To my left cockroach crawling on wall. To my right clothing hanging on line strung from window bars. In front two classmates doing Pilates. Nothing worth mentioning from the back.

My world has become consumed with babies. And I find that I like it. But Tanzania has taught me this time, not America. What will happen when I return to America and her ways? I wonder what she’ll think of me.

Hospital.

Beginnings.

Could this be right?

It is right.

There were two infant deaths today. When I walked into the hospital there was a little girl wrapped up. Later there was a tiny, tiny baby boy who was came very early. Too early. It has been an odd processing journey. My first reaction is why? But I know that will never get answered so I move on to how? If that doesn’t get answered it’s on to what do I do? Where do I fit into this equation?

There is rarely proper time to do anything at the hospital, but mourning the death of a precious baby is important. I try to make space. I imagine I’m in an empty room where it’s me, Jesus and the baby. He’s holding her and tears are just coming… he can’t finish her story. He had it all planned out and only got to just finish the cover page. The inside pages will be blank. His creative father heart is denied. It’s a crude reality… this thing. Death. We were never created to handle it. We weren’t made to loose in that way. My mind can’t comprehend any of it. I hate it. But I can’t get rid of it… some days it’s all around me. Confrontation of the worst sort. Stemming from lack of… what? Prayer? Medical supplies? Timing? But that’s not fair. I just don’t understand.

And life at the same time. Healthy, breathing, thriving babies. Why this one and not that one? How can this be reality? My job is to commit little tiny brand new beings to Jesus… and now I realize that that means breathing or not breathing. Heart beat or no heart beat. God grants grace… and I cling to the hope that he hears my prayers and will breath life into the lifeless little ones. And when control is stripped away from me he grants the grace to walk into that hospital tomorrow and face another day.

“Hope is not a ball and chain that we drag around, but it is of utmost value because it carries us through the darkness and tells us that a brighter day is coming. It tells us that a brighter day is coming, not because we deserve it (we don’t!), and not because we’ve earned it (we can’t!) but because God loves us, and desires to give us that brighter day. “I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full,” Jesus said. I don’t for a moment pretend to understand the darkness, or to know why the valley’s can seem so incredibly low. But this I do know. The valley is not where we are meant to stay. It is a part of the journey, but it is never our destination. And the key to getting through the valley is not to abandon hope, but to hold to it with all that we have, with prayer and fasting, with tears and crying out to God because it is God Himself that we need to encounter, it is God Himself that is our hope. Our hope is really not that our prayer will be answered, though God does that too, but our hope is that we would in clinging to hope, cling to God.” -Jerry Ireland