building the house i'm in

i spend a lot of time pondering what exactly i am supposed to be doing in life, while it's screaming all around me.  sitting right in front of me. following me, tugging on my sleeve. 

the questioning and pondering is especially loud being here as a missionary, and whenever zoe is struggling.  competing priorities- all important things.  it's hard to decipher if my struggle with work/home balance, with doctoring/ mommying balance is generated out of desire or guilt.  am i running toward something or away from something ?


here i am.  here i have been called. as many things.  as a doctor in a place with a lot of sickness and need, and as a mother in a place with a lot of challenge and need.  and primarily as a follower of God, a seeker of truth, one struggling to love better, to both try harder and surrender more, to do the will of Him who has given me so much.

oh but i forget that last part often.  i live battering around how to do those first two things- how much time to devote to each- how to find that place of deep satisfaction.  but that place is only found in the last part.  deep peace is only found in the following, the trying, and the surrendering to the one who is love.

i like to think my way out.  i like to convince myself that i am needed here as a doctor- that i'm indebted to those who have sent me here- that i need results-good reports on all the people that i'm helping- the programs that i've started- the sustainable ways i've brought change.

i want to do all those things.  they are fun and important and rewarded.  they build resumes, they help raise funds, they sound good when talked about at dinner parties.


'give careful thought to your ways.  go up to the mountains and bring down timber and build the house, so that i may take pleasure in it and be honored.  you expected much, but see, it turned out to be little. what you brought home, i blew away.  why? because of my house, which remains a ruin, while each of you is busy with his own house.' haggai

it's time again, to look at the house i was given.  to do some of those things that aren't always fun or rewarded but are so important.  they don't build careers, or fund raise and they don't sound great at a party.  


right in front of me, there is great need.  right in my own house right now, there it is.  will i meet it?  will i try to clear my plate of the sexy, ngo-ish, public healthy, medicine clinicy- things that i came to africa to do, and first try to meet the needs at home?  or will i live in a place of indecision, of fight, of turmoil?  will i be able to embrace and treasure the hard things i've been given or will i run from them because i have bigger things to do?


about a month ago i was pretty sure that we'd arrived well as close to arriving as we might ever get.
i was living in a place of thanksgiving and joy and awe at how well a confusing mixed up life was beginning to look. i was relaxing into another year of even better- zoe going to school.  of the end of a long hard season and the start of a new glorious one. 


this week i was quickly reminded that zoe's life is a roller coaster and always will be.  i had forgotten.  i had enjoyed the forgetting.  it felt really good. it looked really pretty. it looked like i could return to the land of normal- i could run toward the world of ex-pat, missionary, doctor-in-africa.  finally. 


last night when we got home from our trip to the pool, she got so mad that mike had helped her into the car- back an hour ago when we got in the car, that she kicked the back window out of the car.  it shattered all over the driveway.  she was so stuck on the idea of being helped- it had sat and stewed in her mind for the entire trip- that she lay down in the back seat and let it all out through her feet.  a lot of things were shattered in those moments- things that might take longer to fix than a window.


here i am.  here is where i'd be no matter where i was.  here with a girl who is so beautiful, who has come so far, but who is also so challenged and take so much time and energy, and will take even more over the next 7 teenage years. 

i know what comes first.  i know i need to build my house- build up my girl- be in my life- the here and now of it- loving it- trying- surrendering to the hard, honestly unwanted seasons, crawling toward the cross, begging for help, crying when i need to cry and remembering to laugh, to laugh a lot, and to be thankful always- even with shattered glass and expectations, because no one was cut, no one was bleeding.  we've been here before and we've been better and we've been worse and we will get there again.