Giles and I booked our tickets last week for our vision trip to Nairobi next month, May 12-21.  We are beyond excited!  I am especially excited for Giles to experience it all and to see it anew through his eyes (and camera lens!).  I am also excited to return, to see how things have changed in a year or perhaps remained the same.  To meet new friends and to seek a clearer glimpse of God’s vision for the work He desires us to accomplish there.

In all candidness, however, I have not had the head space lately to even think about our time there.  Life has quickly crowded in to distract and, at times, overwhelm me.  Also, we are currently going through what I believe to be a difficult step in the process– completing our applications for missionary service– which requires an abundance of time and self-reflection.  All which is good and necessary, but also overwhelming and perhaps a bit painful!  As with each step in this process, I know that God has a lesson to teach us through this exercise, and I’m trying to confidently move forward in that truth.  But it can be so easy to lose sight of the initial calling that He gave us in the effort to peer into the distance.

In weighing these thoughts tonight, I picked up my journal. I often page through it to see where I was a year, six months, or even just a month ago in my journey.  God has taught me that it is important to collect these stones of remembrance, to reflect upon His faithfulness in moving me, growing me, and transforming me.  I opened the page to what I had written almost exactly eight months ago, and I was struck by how God seems to be transforming my musings into reality.  What was once vocalized only to Him on a journal page, I now share here, as an encouragement and an utterance of thanksgiving that God hears the deepest desires of our hearts and answers them in His timing.

~August 17, 2012:  “Enjoying an almost spring-like night on the deck.  A wonderful reprieve from the nearly 100 degree temperatures we’ve had all summer.  Green blades are sprouting up from the dormant grass.  Reminds me of the charred savannah grasses in Africa– new life springing from what appears to be dead.  That thought encapsulated my time in the slums of Kenya.  How I miss it….

Nights like this make me think of some future time with Giles when we will be sitting on our balcony in beautiful Roma.  Sipping from stemmed glasses, reading, perhaps conversing.  Taking in the sounds of the city, ancient but new.  Strolling Campo di Fiori by moonlight.  Observing star-gazers, lovers, and wanderers at Trevi Fountain.  Taking dinner at 9 p.m. when the city comes alive.  I dream it now– maybe dream will merge with reality one day.

Sometimes I believe that I would be content– soul-satisfied perhaps– with being a nomad in this world.  Spending time in many countries, embracing many different cultures.  I love to expand my mind, my small sphere of existence, through cultural experiences.  At times I crave it.  That’s where my heart truly lies, at least I’m coming to realize that.  I don’t want to come and flee.  I want to be immersed.  To fully understand.  I acknowledge that part of my harmony-seeking nature:  to know and be known.  To destroy false divides between myself and foreign cultures.  I honestly believe that we are all one, emerging from the same Creator, each His image-bearers.  I accept that truth into my core being.  I want to break superficial cords to rebuild those of the eternal.  Kingdom cords.  Lord, please grant it.  Maybe this is the restoration that you promised me, so long ago.”