A Tuesday Slice of Life

If you see this on Tuesday, pray for that incredibly good-looking guy on the far right who is now sitting in a testing center in Richmond VA slogging through seven hours of clinical questions that will label him with a number that will largely impact his next 5-7 years of training.  And the also incredible guy in the center is slogging through week 10 of sleep deprivation, calorie restriction, constant marching, and hostility, with hopes that on Friday he'll be told he can go on to the next 3 weeks of the same, only this time in waist-deep swamp water in Florida.  The other two are writing papers and taking tests and planning summers and growing as humans with friends and sports and fellowship.  Miss them all.

Meanwhile here in Kenya, the world is slightly more aligned as Scott returned from his time helping his mom and dad in California, and I hosted our delightful Bundibugyo Team Leaders.  Just over 4 years ago we were part of the plot with Josh to get Anna out to Naivasha for a surprise:  he was proposing. So this trip we re-visited Crescent Island and Elsamere and reminisced.  It is a treat to walk with people over time, to be part of the important moments in life.  Michael Masso happened to also be taking students from South Sudan to see the animals.  Our stories are like that--longterm friendships, marriages, new life, rescues, opportunities, and also war, displacement, losses, sadness.  All mixed together in the complicated pattern that only God can redeem.

But sometimes there's a giraffe right over your shoulder, and the sun is shining, and the wind is blowing, and you're with people who fill your heart.

And other times, you're wading through a ward where a ten year old with newly diagnosed AIDS and probable TB is crying because of chest pain and looking pale and dyspneic, or one of the beds in the acute room of the sickest patients has not two but THREE babies with three moms jostling for space, or newborns are convulsing with meningitis.  And you come back to squeeze in time on the computer to write up policies, edit MOU's, plan travel, respond to new recruits, work on a lecture for Thursday, write letters, respond to questions about student sponsorships, or sort through Kenyan taxes.

Life is rich with meaning, and challenging with the pull of so many directions.  Listening and longing for Jesus to be enough for all of the above, and more.