And the Valleys

I feel like I start every post the same way these days. “Hey, I swear I had the best intentions to update weekly, but I fell short again, so I’m going to try to cram three weeks into four paragraphs. Thanks for sticking with me! (Has anyone stuck with me?)” To quote my little sister, it’s fine. Really, everything is fine.

June faded into July far too quickly and July began with me on a Montana-bound airplane with Gracie and her cousin Katie. (Quick plug for Glacier Nat’l Park.  You need to go.  If you think creation has made you stand in awe of God before, just wait till you’re standing on a lookout across the peaks of the Rockies. Wow.) Actually, I’m going to continue off that parenthetical statement.  For the entire duration of our trip, I had one overarching question ricocheting from one side of my brain to the other:

Where did the mountains come from?  Did God create them in the very beginning, or are they one of the results of Noah’s flood?

At first this question doesn’t seem like a big deal, right?  It’s like, “Whatever.  They’re awe-inspiring anyway.”  But the more I thought about it, the more it seemed to matter.  Here’s why: if God created them in the beginning, they’re just a testament to His creative power.  If, however, they are from the flood, aren’t they then a lasting testament of God’s intolerance for sin and His rightful power to bring terrible judgment?  And what if the answer is both?

For most people the distinction might not be very important, but I’m a mountain-loving kind of girl.  Every time I look across the craggy peaks, my heart swells.  This trip didn’t take that swell away...it just provided the contrasting valley.  It almost said, “Yes, these mountains attest to the glory of God AND how that glory cannot dwell in the presence of sin.”

That was kind of a big deal for me.  In fact, it was such a big deal that I’m going to end this post here.  Think about it.  And I’ll be back before too long.

Peaks and Valleys

We all experience peaks and valleys, right? I mean, I know we do, Mom, but other people must experience them at some point.  So that's how I go through life: peak after valley, valley after peak. Sometimes the cycle takes weeks or months or years.  Today carried all the wonders of both, like a smaller peak and plateau along a greater range of sister peaks.

There are underlying issues that I'll address in a little bit, but for now I want to focus on today.  We started with the peak.  Early morning prayer and yoga helped shake the z's from my eyes. Val and I took our Saturday walk, said hi to some neighbors, chatted nutritional balance, beautiful normal stuff on a bright, hot morning. After our walk, I scarfed down a delicious breakfast of sweet potato hash browns and sesame-ginger tofu. (Cut me some slack, it's delicious to me.) And then I rounded out my morning by experimenting with bean brownies.

Now, I wasn't sure about the brownies, so I brought some over to Val's to share.  We got talking about food, surprise-surprise, and I mentioned cardamom. It's the flavor of my childhood, the scent of Christmas and family reunions, my personal kryptonite.  It's something I haven't had at all during my stay here in Southeast Asia.  Needless to say, when Val pulled an untouched container of cardamom out of her cupboard, I was speechless. When she kept pouring it out into an empty spice jar until it was nearly full, I actually shed a tear. We're calling it a miracle because the original jar is STILL two-thirds of the way full. 

Somewhere in the afternoon, though, memory lane decided to take a severe nosedive into the "oh-shame-I-can't-believe-that's-my-actual-life-story" depths. Then the reviews came back about the brownies. Not good. Slowly but surely, the evening fell flat. Why?

Underlying issues, coming at you. They aren't even real issues.  Two months ago, I requested permission to return to the Philippines in 2018.  The idea was that I would go home in October, then return in January.  A reply came in yesterday with a "still not sure, but here are some things to do in the mean time," but now I'm not sure.  Would God have me return, or would He have me go somewhere else? What will the state of things be when I get home in October? What can I do now to prepare for the future?  And then, of course, I'm nothing if not a middle child.  It's in my nature to make everyone happy, but this future, no matter what it brings, will leave someone disappointed in me.  

Pray that I will get the emails sent that need to be sent.  Pray that I would leave the future in God's hands, where it belongs.  Pray that God would allow me to be confident in His will, whether or not everyone else is happy with it.