still somewhere

 It's been a crazy little turn around here, trying to get adjusted and get Matt ready to head to Haiti this weekend...add in our first tornado, getting full-out homeschool back underway, the death of our dear neighbor, and "final" sessions of gymnastics and The Friday Program, with all their little events...Mama is trying to make all the weird ends meet.

How is Haiti us, and this is us, too? How do those two extremes co-exist as we try to keep them thriving within? I don't even know...Except the kids miss the freedom of a seven acre yard perimetered with family, and I deeply miss Gertha and Granny and Gues and Esther and Noel and Paulcine popping in throughout the day, friends and sisters and aunties. I glory again in my dishwasher, the miracle that never stops transforming SO many dishes, relish sweet neighbors and friends (Lady Jane and Sofie spent the tornado in Lady Jane's bathroom) and when so many are without power and small group just got shifted to our house with dinner tomorrow night, I am grateful for pico de gallo for purchase, for tortillas someone else already made.

I bounce equally chubby babies as a week ago, and wonder about two neighbors who lost their homes in the tornado, in the same prayer I'm wondering about a few students no longer eating at Emmaus. 

Three sisters are in one breath so patient with their brother as he potty trains...and in another breath are fighting over who gets to shower first or who gets the last purple popscicle, and I wonder when to speak and when to listen, what to allow and what to say....and how to disciple these most challenging and precious recruits. 

Two weeks ago Jesus met me on a mountain I climbed in the hot sun, and Sunday, in a dark, spot-lighted, trendy one-name church, and I marvel on how He's all the places and never gets overwhelmed.

Our neighbor eats dinner alone, and our neighbor doesn't eat dinner, at all, and as I have felt so many times this wild year, we're still somewhere in the middle doing our best.