Externally Processing My Way Through Life

I know I have a whole mission trip to post on...but I'm not sure I can do it justice now. Actually, I'm not sure you can ever do those trips justice with words. It's just something you have to experience.


Any how the gist of it is, I feel torn. Torn between missions and ministry and my heart for that and my current call for the season to be a great mom and wife and to invest in my family. It's a hard line to walk and I feel like I'm always leaning to hard to one direction.

I feel like I'm taking too much time way or neglecting my family when I do the level of ministry that I want, and when I throw myself into my family and neglect serving I feel like I've lost a part of myself.

I think this is the tight rope walk of parenthood. We have to give up some of ourselves and desires to be good parents, but we must maintain outside connection and activities to not loose ourselves in our children...who need to learn to be self sufficient and will eventually be gone.

Other than torn...it was a great trip. Different from others (in it's essence and location) but mainly because I had a different role. Instead of being the main participant or helping create the tone of the trip, I went as a leader which ended up being more of a directing role.

I helped plan and communicate the ideas of VBS each day, but other than that the students ran the show. The first day I tried to help set the tone by jumping into conversations with others and working hard, but after that I tried to back off and make sure the students had every opportunity to be the ones communicating and interacting.

I felt like I was there more to serve the students and enable them to have an impactful trip. One that hopefully opened their eyes and gave them the desire to do more.

And I think that was the best part. Getting to see mainly 15 year olds jumping into conversations with intimidating people, listening, praying, helping. Not being afraid to do some hard work and stepping up and taking leadership. Especially my girls. I know their struggles and hang ups, and to get to see them work through those and take huge steps that week was awesome. It was a reminder of the opportunity I have every single week I help lead them to make an impact.

I wish I could write notes to all of their leaders and parents telling them how proud they should be at what their students did that week. I was especially blown away by the guys. I pray that Josh and Jack will be in the same place as some of our students at that age. I got to hear 15 year old guys talking about their parents with respect and admiration and see them step into leadership roles...they were respectful of the girls and of the leaders. So neat to see.

So that's the summation of the trip. God is good.