TEARS AND MORE TEARS

9/27/09 Despite the losses and the grieving of those things, Randy and I were deeply moved and spurred on by the tears, the cards, and the gifts. I held one sweet neighbor girl in my arms as she cried and cried. My sister called on our last day and announced she’d be driving down for the afternoon from Seattle to help with the last bit of packing and cleaning. She asked, “Is this insane?” to which my husband retorted, “I LOVE your insanity!” When she bounded in the door a few hours later, all I could do was cry. One friend knew that I like to make chocolate zucchini muffins, took my recipe and two zuchs from my yard, and baked a batch, delivering them to our door 3 hours later. That was HUGE for our sanity! Our friends the Johnsons put our boys up for two nights while Randy and I were cleaning-feigns back at the home. This was marvelous for our sons’ emotional well-being as their sons are some of our boys’ best friends in all the world. Neighbors loaned us bedding for the last month, and students of mine and friends arrived en masse for a one-day blitz. They deep-cleaned windows and bathrooms, assisted with last-minute mailings and mending, entertained our kiddos, did oodles of yard work, and helped me talk through the ordering/narrowing of my home-school materials for phases 2 and 3 of our mission stint. One friend paid one of his employees to finish out our kitchen floor, and then returned to fix our screen door and some siding that needed patching. Two families loaned us cars, and more than one couple shoved checks or cash for hundreds of dollars into our hands in those last 48 hours to help with settling-in costs. In the end, all of our material possessions were stored in four friends’ basements or warehouses. (Thanks, guys!!) The last night in the Portland area, our family at the Johnsons’ house. They live minutes from the airport and had two extra large beds to put us all up comfortably. As I drifted to sleep around midnight, I had tears in my eyes due to the loss but the huge gains we’d already seen. It was humbling. I awoke the next morning, ready to climb on the plane, again with tears in my eyes. And 24 hours later as I awoke in a resort in Hawaii (that a friend helped us get) for a 3-day R & R stint prior to our training starting, I was again in tears. It had been a clean-stripping; a death of sorts, and was the beginning of a new thing.“FOR YOU DIED, AND YOUR LIFE IS NOW HIDDEN WITH CHRIST IN GOD.” Colossians 3:3 “He is no fool, if he would choose to give what he can never keep to gain what he can never lose.”Former Portlander Jim Eliott (whose namesake our son shares and who was martyred doing pioneer missionary work in Ecuador in the 1950’s)