5 weeks in the states, Part 2

Winding down to the end of our time here in the states, we begin heading back to Honduras at 12:30 am Sunday...love those red eye flights, that will probably leave us with red eyes!

Our time here in Oregon has been good, although somewhat bittersweet.  Michael was looking forward to having "his life" back for a time, but found that a lot of his friends had moved on, whether that was simply on to high school group or literally away. It's hard to explain that to a 13 year old that the only thing that never changes, is that life ALWAYS changes.  Difficult lessons are starting to be learned, about being content wherever you are and that life will eat you alive if you let it.

We have been super blessed to have a house all to ourselves, to be able to run around in our jammies and watch tv, to just do nothing.  A post from Jamie hit a little too close to home as the down time has given us the ability to see areas in our lives that were beginning to burn and need some serious attention and clean up.  Talking with pastors and friends we are putting some good things into place and motion to do that...but it's a little scary.  I mean, seriously, I don't want to look at all the mean nasty things I do and say to those I claim to love.  I don't want to admit that a good deal of the issues in our family are my fault entirely or even in part (shudder!).  I've been through counseling before and honestly, it sucks.  Getting real with yourself and others and changing habits and attitudes, well it's not fun and it's a lot of work.  Avoidance and denial are so much easier, don't you agree? And it is ever so much easier to say "if we weren't in Honduras...". 

Well, if we weren't in Honduras we'd be so much more distracted by American Life that we wouldn't need to stop and look at issues and areas needing change.  If we weren't in Honduras we would blissfully go about our days with the illusion that we were safe and secure.  If we weren't in Honduras we would definitely get FAT because we've pretty much eaten our way across the United States...mmmm, Sonic. 

But we are in Honduras and the distractions aren't there, so areas of life that aren't working like they should become really difficult to ignore.  The endless viloence makes it impossible to mistakenly believe that we have any safety and security apart from being in God's hand.  And beans, rice, and mangoes make it easy to keep your weight a little closer to where you want it.

I read an article n the Oregonian about a police officer who is responsible for 50-60 gang members on probation and parole.  The article talked about the difficulty of keeping them on a good path and stated that there have 7 gang homicides in Portland this year...this year.  That took my breath away.  In Honduras we have that many every day.  In 2010 we averaged 16 murders per day, 60-75% of them being gan related.  I'll let you do the math, but in an instant it made me see why a lot of those bad attitudes and behaviors have developed.  In order to deal with the relentless images of murder and tragedy all around, we've just turned  our emotions off.  The sucky part of that is you don't get to pick and choose what emotions shut down, they pretty much all just turn off.  It's too freaky to feel what you're really feeling when you come around the corner and see a guy that just had his head blown off, or you see a body tossed onto the side of the road like a bag of trash.  So we just stopped feeling, anything.  Little automatons running around doing what we're supposed to do, saying all the right things because it's been scripted out so well, and painting on a happy face like a bow on top of a pretty package. 

When the defenses started to come down after we arrived, because we weren't living on high alert anymore, the walls started to crumble and those feelings that were shut off, well they are just all kinds of confused now.  So now we have a pile of yuck that needs to be sorted out and cleaned up.  Thankfully we have amazing people in our lives that are committed to helping us do that. 

So the packing has begun, trying to make sure we're not over 50 lbs a bag with 2 Kitchenaid mixers onboard will be a challenge, but we'll see.  Brian and Michael fly through Panama and have a night on the Panama Canal next to the Bridge of the America's.  Brian James and I (with our mileage tickets) fly through Houston and will stay with friends for the night.  The 27th we hit the ground running with a presentation before 25+ Rotary club members to ask them to commit to raising funds for Micah 2.0. 

Other than that, it's bon bons and Spanish soap operas, baby...as my husband likes to say.  Thanks for your continued love, prayers, encouragement, and support.  We'll see you again soon.

Peace