Life as we know it....

It is amazing to me how in one second your life can make the 180 decree turn around ( for me it was a phone call) and then in a matter of time it becomes the "familiar" the day to day familiar...that is life for us here in Guatemala with market days, cobblestone roads, La Bodagona ( our grocery store here in Antigua that is a sad substitute for Super Wal-Mart or Target, I have to say) laid back, crazy busy, hands on ministry in orphanages, coordinating adoptions and visiting families and teams, impromptu calls from friends to meet at McDonald's ( yep, we have one!) or the central park daily ( and why at home do we have to plan a month ahead of time for lunch, Catherine?) bottled water, lots of beans and tortillas, scheduling your day around your baby's nap time, living for Madi to wake up from her nap, peer over the pack 'n play and light up when she see me and in her sing song baby voice say "Hiiiiii" ( with a Texas drawl no less!) being a phone call away from meeting for coffee, praying and brainstorming together with other believers in ministry....the list goes on, but there are some things I pray, I am never "familiar" with or "used to" maybe I should say.... beggars that live so drunk or drugged out that they call "home" the sidewalk in front of my apartment, sometimes having the luxury of other warm bodies who are also drugged out to lie with under a tarp, mothers enlisting their children to beg, the children of a orphanage I know where they are drugged into compliance and silence for something as simple as throwing their pillow out of their crib because they are so desperate for stimulation of some kind, something other than looking at the ceiling, poverty that you can't get your hands or mind around, hopelessness of an orphan who knows he is not loved or wanted, the smile of a child so twisted with CP, caged in his crib day in and day out with no hope of anything different, "tomorrow" the tears in the eye of a man who has served this country and these children for years and yet can still cry over a simple story, an account of a little girl pushed aside by her family for being special needs, sitting at the kitchen table with Steve and Shyrel Osborn ( with Amor Del Nino) and Shyrel saying "I want to be the person they call when no one else will take a child" (and that is the bedrock of their ministry and the testimony of the anointing of God on their lives) I never want to forget or become desensitized or detached by the pain, the sorrow, the hopelessness and the desperation.... YET, I desire on the other hand to soak myself in it, because I know the flip side, I have seen it in my life....His redemption, the hope, compassion and LIFE that He brings.....His song and vision over us... That we would know Him, in the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His suffering......