Thoughts the night before we leave

It has been a really good furlough. And tonight, our last night before we fly back, it's over. We've spent the week packing, running all the last minute errands that come with moving and leaving. I've used an automatic washing machine one last time. Savored ordering a drink at Starbucks one last time. Loaded dishes into a dishwasher one last time. Not all hard memories to leave though... I paid $4 a gallon for gas one last time! :)

We took the boys to Disneyland yesterday, compliments of my grandmother's Christmas gift to our family. It was fun and beautiful weather and magical just the way I had prayed it would be. Caleb's eyes lit up watching the dolls dance in "It's a Small World." Elijah bravely rode BY HIMSELF on a ride, just because, at 8 years old, he could. And Ezra commanded the ship in Storybook Land when the boat driver set him up high on the back railing - he was so proud of himself you would have thought he owned the boat. Was a beautiful day. Late at night as we were watching the parade and the princesses dance by, it hit me that this world - this American world where parents give their children wonderful, special experiences just for fun... was the same world of our overseas life... where little girls like Penny don't feast on fireworks and princesses but starve for breathe and die slow, painful deaths to undiagnosed, yet, easily treatable diseases. 

We are about to leave the one world and enter the other. I cried yesterday when I saw my little boys gasp for excitement at all the wonder around them. I know I will cry in the months and years to come at the injustice and pain and sorrow that is part of the world we have adopted. I don't know how the Lord does it - smiling with all the little girls and boys so excited at Disneyland and yet weeping as little ones miles away suffer unknown and unnoticed. 

I am thankful tonight. Thankful for the good months we have had here. Thankful for how my soul has been fed and filled and rested. Truthfully, I am scared to go back. But I am thankful for the chance to work and reach out and grow and be tested. Hard life, we live sometimes. But rich.