So if you’ve followed us at all, either through this blog or via our monthly updates, you know we’ve been troubled lately. Dallas was going to be our time. We were going to get work done, get our materials prepped for visiting churches later this year, and buy supplies for our next term in Madang. Three months seemed like so much time! Not only could we do all of that, but we would have fun as a family besides! The zoo, the aquarium, the community splash park, trips to the grocery store and Target (yes, those are certainly qualified as fun after more than three years away from “our” stores)!

But it was not to be. I should clarify that by saying our Dallas time was not to be characterized as restful or leisurely. We’re getting things done, but at a snail’s pace, causing a ripple effect of stress at whether we will get everything done we think we need to. And we’ve had so many ridiculous interruptions it’s morphed into entertainment. What new and insane thing will stop us from progressing next? Our family game is to come up with the most creative mishap lurking around the bend.

All of us were sick for about two weeks upon arrival. Once that passed we figured we’d done our time, but I was hit with a debilitating migraine (unusual for me) for one week that downgraded to irritating and slightly disrupting for two more. Just prior to the migraine was the car accident eating up precious time with insurance claims, doctor’s visits, and getting the rental vehicle sorted… and then sorted again… and then sorted a third time. In the midst of that we received a bill from Ray’s ER visit, and it was a punch in the gut. They are charging us for a level higher than she should be classified at, and getting anyone to hear our very definitive argument is taking, well, time.

I’ve become desperate, especially when it comes to our family’s health. The anecdotal stories about essential oils started to wear me down and I finally caved while we were in Italy. The missionaries we traveled with use “hippie juice,” as they termed it, and had positive results. With Willa’s vomit fresh on my shirt from a rough day of travel I said, “Where???? Where do you buy it from?!?!”

Turns out they use a company that’s Christian in origin and tithes to groups like YWAM. If I was going to dip my toe into the river of hippie juice flowing past, at least the money would be spent on good people regardless of its usefulness to our family. We longed for our shipment to arrive during those first two weeks in Dallas as we wallowed in fevers and drippy eyes. We tracked it, watched it move along from California to all over, and then finally, oh finally, it hit Dallas. And then it disappeared. Utterly and completely. No one at the small post office where it was last scanned knew of it. Brian made three different trips to talk to three different managers to get nowhere in the end. Time wasted, and so much frustration. It was gone. I was sick and dreaming of the life altering scents that weren’t filling the house. We complained to the company who promptly sent out a replacement package via a different route. It arrived, and our experiment began. About two weeks later a battered and bruised package sat at our door. The original package. It wasn’t delivered by the post office, so we have no clue where it wandered off to and came back from, but we laughed at the ridiculousness of it all and sent it back to the company.

After some experimentation we figured out the most efficient way for us to disseminate the hippie juice. Using a gift card my sister gave me for my birthday, I bought the right machine from that same company. Again, we watched it. We waited. It arrived at the office (we weren’t going to make the same mistake by sending it to the house!), and it disappeared. WHAT! How is this happening again??? But it did just that.

The temptation to fall into a whirl of frustration and despair was hard to ward off. It’s a small and seemingly insignificant thing, yet it’s another something messing us up. Eating our time and energy that should be focused elsewhere. I prayed and asked God to just stop it all. Stop the headaches. Stop the unforeseen expenses of time and money. Stop the fevers. Stop the weird eye issues. Stop the disappearing mail. Just stop it all!!

We had a friend in PNG who worked with another mission organization. He died last week after getting a shock diagnosis of Stage 4 lung cancer in January. He was my age. He wasn’t a smoker. He had a beautiful wife and four super fun kids. The last time I saw him fills my mind. He was bursting with energy and joy playing with his kids at the resort pool in town. They watched him slowly slip away from them. I can’t imagine anything more agonizing, I really can’t. Nothing we’ve faced this past term or the last two months can even remotely hold a candle to their experience. And what they’ve consistently said as he slipped further away and finished his earthly race is, “Blessed be Your Name.” Even in an acute pain of loss I cannot fathom, his wife is declaring gratitude for the time they were given with him, gratitude for a very terrifying trial deepening her relationship to her Savior, and joy at his freedom. They fought the cancer, they asked God to heal, but they never had my spirit of, “Come on!!! Just make the bad stop!!” Always foremost they expressed, “To God be the Glory,” no matter what it meant for them. I’m not great at it yet, but I’ve stopped praying for health. I’ve stopped praying for rest. I’ve stopped praying for God to stop the bad. I’m praying those things for others, but not us. When I pray for us, it’s for God to be glorified no matter what He allows and that our hearts would be a reflection.