A life less comfortable

I am avoiding cleaning out our back bathroom.  It has this really ugly wooden closet that is literally falling apart and holds all kinds of medicines and bathroom stuff.  The odor of the closet is repelling.  The bathroom itself is functional but far from any place you'd want to spend time in.  So I read a book.  I planned English class for today.  I washed dishes.  And all the while that back bathroom mocks me.  It is winning at keeping me distant and disgusted at myself for not just tackling the disfunction.  I mean it's only a bathroom filled with bathroom stuff.  I was supposed to start on it yesterday and I successfully avoided it.  So today to put it off again I logged onto my email.  There in my inbox was a blog I subscribe to entitled, "Life is Messy".  Don't I know it!  I don't want to open up that ugly stinky closet and clean it out.  I don't want to deal with all the expired junk.  Who knows there might even be a mouse or two!  Also it's rea

"I think of how sometimes God puts people together, maybe more often than we realize.  We can disregard it, lie to ourselves, find the reasons why it's impractical.  But something within the creation of them connects.  I've been afraid of it.  There is something fearful in revealing our true selves, allowing others to peer intimately inside.  It takes such trust, and none of us are completely trustworthy.  It's a risk, and there will be disappointment, opposing views, disenchantment, but the fusing of two imperfect lives is something of the divine." -- "The Salt Garden" by Cindy Martinusen-Coloma Years ago Amanda and I challenged each other to define friendship.  It seemed such an easy thing, to define something both so ordinary and extraordinary and something so intrinsically woven into the human experience.   I mean childhood friendships predate being able to tie our own shoes or print our own names.  Yet I found it to be so illusive and difficult to

The dreaded time of being the last teammates in Libreville has arrived.  Hannah has flown away, Leanne has flown away, the Envision center is just a memory, and it is back down to just Steve and me as we live and breathe here in the sweltering capital city by the grey-green sea.  I skyped briefly with Hannah last night (before losing power) and we marveled that just over a week has passed since she left.  It seems much longer.  The last time we lost teammates here in Libreville marked the beginning of a very challenging and lonely time and I very much did not want to go back to that thorny place, thank you very much!  I felt we were fairly well recovered from that difficult time and on track for a new normal that involved being actively engaged with teammates and sharing in ministry together.  So I was sorely grieved to realize that new normal was to be tossed out and we were to be ushered into another period of adjustment.  One that did not include close teammates.  One that might tak