This Is It

   I don't think I'll be eating much today. There is entirely too much emotion and anticipation in my gut for there to be any room for food.
  Tomorrow I leave for Kenya, Africa.

  Just typing that sentence makes me shiver and shake my head in wonder. I've always been a firm believer that dreams really do come true........

   For everyone else.

  Somewhere along the line I instituted my own personal rule that I would have to earn my keep in God's family of beloved sons and daughters. What He was offering was really too rich and too good for me to just help myself. I would easily and gladly take my place at the back of the line, and when I got too close to His outstretched hand of love, I would quietly slip to the back again, feeling that to even be in the line at all was enough. More than enough.

  Let's not call that humility, friends, if that's what you're thinking.

  Better to call it like it is.....a girl living and embracing a complete lie.

  The truth has been there all along, but it began to be unearthed when my four year old son got all tangled up in wires and catheters, IV's and central lines. It's just like God, out of so much pain and fear and the threat of death to bring about my life. He has a way of doing everything backwards, but it ends up being the right direction all along. As directionally impaired as I am, I get confused with this kind of help.
   But being confused is a small price to pay for living out who God says I am, and who I have been from the beginning.

   Before I go, here's a snapshot of another boy I love. His name is Alex and he lives in Uganda, Africa. He is one of my Compassion children and his letter landed in my mailbox yesterday. Attached was this photo of him, looking pretty sharp in the new clothes he bought with the Christmas money we sent for him.
  

    He sent me his love and his thanks, as well as a greeting from his entire family. You gotta love Compassion for making a relationship like this possible. One sponsor. One child. Hope.

     While in Kenya, I will be attempting to share adventures and pictures as they unfold. If you don't hear from me, it means I've either been kidnapped or the power is out. Both of which would be terribly inconvenient.