Dogs, Coffee, and Plans

These past couple days I have started to truly take in everything America has to offer. I figured I better start being thankful and enjoying the little things I can do in America, since for about 5 months, it’ll all be gone. I started enjoying the long car rides by myself (and the ones with 4 kids in the car), the opportunity to take a nap, the food, water at my fingertips, showers, country music, etc.

So I completely believe God has a sense of humor, and apparently He is trying to help me with this whole saying goodbye thing because I will definitely not be sad to leave dogs behind. After pet sitting for 5 dogs for a week, I start to look forward to the 5 months without dogs as pets, not to mention God totally makes me laugh or tests my patience with these dogs every day! From the first day of a dog running away, to the second day of a garage door breaking to falling onto a gate, cutting myself, and landing flat in the middle of dog poo. I mean I literally couldn’t help but laugh.

But that’s just it. Not only does God have a sense of humor, because He totally knows how stressed I am with everything, but He also has the most perfect time frame. Today I sat in a meeting expecting to completely surprise the person who had planned my 10 day trip to Zambia, and for him to tell me it wasn’t possible to stay in the country for 5 months because my visa would expire. And instead he didn’t seem surprised at all. In fact, he acted like he knew this was coming. And we have been on countless phone calls since that meeting getting all the details worked out. Can I just mention that it is 9 days before I leave and we are just now figuring out the details?! But the cool thing is watching everything fall into place. Like God just told me to “sit back and watch my time line all fall into place.”

And that’s when I realized that the hardest part is completely letting go of ourselves. Once we promise to do ANYTHING for His Kingdom, the only thing we have to do is take the steps through the doors He opens. Of course following Christ is difficult in a fallen world, I mean we are fighting a war after all! I mean that literally just occurred to me this week, that we are fighting a war! And I am over here worrying about what I look like or what I will eat for dinner…

My dad and I were talking this week over coffee and we came up with the conclusion that it’s not hard to say we should follow Christ and do the right thing, but it’s hard to do it. It’s not hard for me to say I’m going to Zambia for 5 months and booking my plane ticket, it’s hard to get on that plane in 9 days. It’s not hard to decide what is morally right and wrong, it’s hard to do the right thing.

So these are just my ramblings going through my head about how awesome my God is and how beautiful His time frame and plan is. While goodbyes will be hard this weekend and next week, I can’t wait to start this adventure of making new relationships, showing God’s love, and being around some of the most joyful and loving people in the world!

Africa bound in 9 days :)