It's Out of My Control

When we moved here I decided to start a personal journal, a new concept for me. Granted, I haven't exactly made regular journal entries but when I do, I often find it to be an uplifting experience. One of the main reasons is that when I get back to the States, I don't want to reread a journal full of complaints, and negativity. Therefore, I tend to work to steer my writings into a more positive direction. And when I do, I find that often God opens me up to a particular lesson or awareness that I might not have otherwise realized (I'd encourage you give it a try as well). Today's journal entry was a good realization for me and so I thought I'd share the gist of it with you.

As I was in the middle of writing today, we were stricken with another power outage. Only this time, upon investigation, we realized that it was not a blackout but rather, the electric co. had shut off the power to our apartment. Apparently, the landlord had gotten the bill and failed to share it with us, resulting in a non-payment and subsequent shut off (just 10 days after the bill was due mind you). We immediately paid the bill but were told that it'd be all day before power would be restored.

The irony of this is that I was in the middle of journaling about how living here has been a real lesson in patience. Things break, all the time. Things get fixed, very slowly or not at all. Appointments get scheduled, circumstances sometimes result in reschedules. Grocery lists get made, items are regularly missing from the store shelves. It's easy to view these all as bad things but living here has taught me that with the bad, comes a lot of good as well. "Belizean time," as we like to call it, forces me to spend a lot less time being angry and feeling stressed--it just is no way to live. It really does force a person to slow down and not be in such a hurry all the time. The result, I believe, is a lot let stress in our lives. In spite of the struggles that many Belizeans face (whether they know it or not) I tend to see them as living far less stressful lives than their American counterparts.

So as I began to ponder this--wonder why I don't live this way in the States--and reflect on how changes can be made in my personal life as I return to the U.S.. I feel like I finally can begin to understand it now. So much of one's life is out of our hands and living here makes that incredibly obvious. The problem is that in the States, with our modern conveniences, our 8 hr workdays, and our ability to fill up our free time with errands, activities, and subsequent obligations, we inherently come to feel that we are in control of our lives. And the more we try to control, the more stressed we feel. Now hear this: God is in control, not us. In Jeremiah 29:11 He makes that very clear. 'For I know the plans I have for you,' declares the Lord, 'plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.' If I just stop, step back, and choose to stop feeling the burden of everything I'm involved in then I'm giving it up to God--the one who is and should be in control and the one who wants nothing but the best for us. Choosing to put it out of my control at all times is what I've done here out of necessity but only now have I come to learn that actually it's a necessity everywhere in the world not just here. We must stop wrestling with our Savior to be in charge--we'll never win that battle anyway. I'd encourage you to try it yourself as well, in all aspects of your life. I'm sure that once you do, you too will feel liberated by the freedom that ensues. God can handle it all and if we'd just let Him do His job of loving and caring for us, then He'll remove the stress and fill us with the peace that can only come from Him. Now, I feel so good to be able to say "it's out of my control." It makes life feel like what it's actually supposed to be, and that is good.

Texas Hold 'Em Fundraiser

This fundraiser is being organized by some close friends and supporters.  Sounds like a fun event!  Please help by sharing this link with your friends.  RSVP is on the bottom of the flyer.

Tropical Rain

   When you live in the tropics you experience tropical weather, plain and simple.  We live in the tropics.  Where we live gets 160+ inches of rain each year.  That's a lot of rain.  Bear in mind that the majority of that rain falls during the rainy season (June-Nov.) and about 90% of which falls at night.
   Seeing that we've lived here now for over 2 months, we'd arguably say that we've seen our fair share of rain.
   The one comment that we most often hear from people around here is "are you tolerating those awful storms?" Andy and I never fully understood. We liked the rain, we welcomed it.  Every time it rains the air gets cooled down and the heat becomes that much more bearable.  If it had been up to us, we'd want it to rain every night.  (Though really it pretty much does.)
   Well last night, we finally understood what they've all been talking about.  Three nights in a row now we've had big storms.  The 2nd night included a power outage that had all 5 of the kids awake and unsettled.  When we lose power in this town at night it gets black and we're talking pitch-black-unable-to-see-your-hand-in-front-of-your-face-black.  When it gets that dark it's hard to move around let alone work to calm the fears of 5 frightened children.  Needless to say it was a long night that night.
   Thanks to our daughters' homemade rain gauge, we've been able to keep track of the rain here.  Over the past 3 nights we've received over 9" of rain.  Last night, we got 5" of rain--4 of which fell in about 45 minutes time.  We live on the 2nd floor but no one, and I mean no one can do much to prevent 4" of rain in 45 minutes from wreaking havoc.  Fortunately for us this was another night in which we found ourselves with a frightened child standing over our bed.  As I escorted her back to her bed that's when I realized what the rain had done. It had come up under our front door and flooded half of our living room, hallway, master bedroom and bathroom.  So at 1:30 a.m. we did what we had to do.  We cleaned up the water.  Within 30 minutes we had the water swept up enough to where we felt like we could go to bed.  Our neighbors, Peter's family, didn't fare so well.  They live on the ground floor and had probably 4 times as much water in their house as we had.  It was disheartening to watch them sweep out so much water from their house in the middle of the night.  Yet I would consider their house to be one of the more sturdy structures around.  Many houses here have openings in their walls as well as where the walls meet the roof--a lot of places for rain to come in.  I imagine that there were a lot of people up last night trying to dry out their houses.  I also imagine that a few slept through the storm and awoke to even more water to clean up this morning.  This whole town will be moving a bit slower today.  Nearly everyone will be that much more tired.
   After 2 1/2 months of living here we finally seem to get it.  Rain can certainly be a good thing but it can also create a lot of burden.  It can literally drain you of your energy and leave you feeling depleted.  As we continue to pick up the pieces of last night's storm, we certainly won't take the rain for granted.  Not any time soon anyway.