Splashing Lava

I am a planner.
I am all about some plans.
And plans give organization.
I like organization.
Oh, sure, I can manage chaos with the best of them and my rapid fire planning makes me great in emergencies. I recall the day my car caught fire and when it was time to start planning, I put my emotional breakdown on hold to formulate a plan.

We're about to leave to go to ... somewhere.... hopefully.... October-ish.
And to that end I've already started lists and packing and weighing of cargo.
(With two kids, we can't put all the hours that go into such a feat consecutively)

Our cargo for trip #2 in August was gathered and ready within a week after we got into country in May.

And yet for all my planning, my life is still chaos. And it's not the kind of chaos that invigorates but the kind of chaos that pushes and pushes and pushes until you explode like a volcano.

Handwashing dishes is a thankless task that never ends. And with nearly every meal cooked from scratch, there are a lot of dishes. We wash at least a load of laundry a day. We're thankful for the washing machine we have access to in town, but still, it's 3 cycles for the diapers (5 hrs total) and the time to hang all the clothes on the line and bring them in and fold the laundry. And there is no catching up.
There are the babies, a toddler who has emotional needs or whatever, and a baby with biological needs or whatever. And to ignore either would be a detriment. And so all day every day is a crazy fight to keep up with the mundane workings of the household.

But that's not what we're here for.

And when amidst all this chaos, we forgot to grab the laptops on the guaranteed 15 minute endeavor to get everyone dressed, shoes, bilum, hat, diaper bag, past the dog, down the stairs, in the car. Or we forget that the diaper bag is out of Marissa's diapers. And it's these little things, these tiny lags in good planning, these tiny failings that push and push and push.

And so we explode.

By the power of the Spirit in our lives, the explosion is short and followed by apologies because it's nearly inevitable to avoid splashing hot lava on one's spouse when one explodes (but it's not very polite). And a blanket is set on the beach, and while James throws stones and broken coral a solid 3 inches (he hasn't mastered throwing yet), we sit and talk about the heart of our explosion.

We had heard it all before but there's no fixing the unfixable. Laundry won't stop accumulating. Babies won't stop nursing.

This isn't what we're here for! We're supposed to be in the village, learning language, working on bible translation and literacy work, working to see transformed lives through the Scriptures. And instead Jacob is doing more dishes while I nurse Marissa again.

But it's been a reoccurring lesson in our lives that God's timing is better than ours. And there's a reason for why our days are spent planning for abstract plans and mostly housework. The reason eludes me, but the faith in my Lord does not. Instead I pray. I pray to appreciate what I have in the manner that what I have warrants to be appreciated.


Longevity, perseverance is in taking the time to stop. Taking the time to break the normal day and take a deep breath by the sea. And sharing those burdens with one another again.
And now that the pressure has all escaped in an awful explosion, we can start again. And it's not so bad anymore. Because we have a spouse with whom we can explode together, and apologize together, and breath together, and begin again together. It's a precious gift.
And a gift we have because the Lord dismissed our timeline in favor of His own.
So we wait.
To see what joy awaits us this time.