The Red Sea

I have to begin by saying that one of the things I love about being here in Egypt is the opportunity to travel. I look back over this blog and over our scrapbooks and marvel at the places we've been in the last ten months. We've seen the Pyramids and the Sphinx, churches where Jesus and his family may have stayed while escaping Herod, the site of the Lighthouse at Alexandria, the temples in Luxor, the Mediterranean Sea from both Egypt and Greece, the Parthenon, and now the Red Sea. I feel so small...and next to those things, so young! :) It makes me think of the verse James 4:14, which says "Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes."

We have a friend who has access to two condos on the Red Sea about two hours from Cairo. They're right on the beach, and you can stand on the edge of the sea and look across to the Sinai. It's not that far across the sea--but it is a lot of water to have to part and walk through! I hope God's got home video of all the amazing Old Testament stories so we can watch what it actually looked like once we get to Heaven. I have a hard time imagining sometimes...

Anyway, the Red Sea is beautiful. It isn't wavy like the ocean, but it is a beautiful color. I've been helping my friend decorate these condos, which has been a lot of fun and has really helped the last month go by pretty fast. Each time I've been out there with her, the weather has been great. The condo has REAL grass in back of it, and Luke and I took bubbles out there one time and blew bubbles and rolled around in the clean grass. Our family may get to have one weekend out there at the condos before Luke and I leave for Texas at the end of the month.

This past weekend we went to another place on the Red Sea called Hurghada. We went really cheaply-rented a car for about $25 a day and had a super-cheap hotel room for $7 a night. The car was great and driving was not as scary as I'd anticipated. We went through several checkpoints on the way where they looked at our registration and drivers' license, but waved us on through with no trouble. The roads were good and marked in both English and Arabic.

Hurghada itself was not as pretty or as touristy as I had anticipated. There were tourist shops everywhere and restaurants lined the main street, but the city itself was a little dumpy and not clean. Really, I guess all of Egypt is dirt, so I should quit expecting anything to be clean. However, having grown up with "Give a hoot, don't pollute" I have a real problem with people throwing trash all over the ground and the shortage of trash cans along the streets with heavy pedestrian traffic. It is perfectly acceptable to people here to just toss litter everywhere. Sort of makes it hard to teach your three year old to put trash where it goes!

Anyway, our hotel itself was also dirty. I was sure they hadn't swept the floors in a year; they were that dirty. We brought our own sheets and towels just in case, and used them instead of the sheets that were on the beds already. Lucky I brought towels--the hotel did not supply them. It was more a hostel than a hotel. However, we did pay $7 a night, and it was better than camping, so I'm not really complaining. Also, there were no bugs.

There was a really nice resort near our hotel that allowed us to pay $8 each a day to use their pool, playground, and beach, so we did that on two of the days in Hurghada. The pictures are all from there. Luke had fun playing in the sand, jumping in the pool, and playing on the playground. The playground was awesome! Everything was BIG--there was an enormous teeter-totter swing that I could ride on with Luke and not fear breaking, and the seats on the swings were so deep that I could sit on the swing, put Luke in front of me, and swing together comfortably. They had such neat toys. We really had a good time there.

We also got these awesome beach towels for souvenirs. I'm lovin' it.

The Wadi

There is a dry riverbed, called a wadi, in Maadi. The area is a national protectorate, and there are running trails, nature info, etc. there. It's about a 10 minute taxi ride from our house. Jason went there a few weeks ago on a school field trip and decided we should take a little family field trip. We went one Saturday morning at around 8:00 AM--if you wait much later it gets too hot. Jason wanted Luke to be able to climb all he wanted to, and climb we did! We walked along the top ridge of the canyon until I got a little freaked out and afraid Luke would fall. Then we scooted back down to the wadi. I found a quiet place to sit for a while and Jason and Luke climbed a little more. Afterwards, we went to Jared's Bagels and had breakfast. It was a fun morning!

A Little Less Noise, There!

A friend sent me the link to this article in the International Herald Tribune today, suggesting that I might write about what the noise is like here where I live. Assuming most of you won't follow the link and read the whole story, I'll excerpt the parts that hit home with me. (You really should read the story, though.)

http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/04/14/mideast/cairo.php

"Noise - outrageous, unceasing, pounding noise - is the unnerving backdrop to a tense time in Egypt, while inflation and low wages have people worried about basic survival, prompting strikes and protests.

We're not just talking typical city noise, but what scientists here say is more like living inside a factory.

"It's not enough to make you crazy, but it is very tiring," said Essam Muhammad Hussein, as he sat in a cracked plastic chair outside the corner food shop his family has owned for 50 years. He was shouting as he talked about the noise, though he did not seem to realize it."

....

[Scientists at Egypt's National Research Center] "spent five years studying noise levels across the city and concluded in a report issued earlier this year that the average noise from 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. is 85 decibels, a bit louder than a freight train at a distance of 15 feet, or 4.6 meters, said Mustafa el Sayyid, an engineer who helped conduct the study. "All of greater Cairo is in the range of unacceptable noise levels from 7 a.m. to 10 p.m."

....

"The noise bothers me, and I know it bothers people," said Abdel Khaleq, driver of a battered black and white taxi as he paused from honking his horn to stop for passengers.

"So why do you do it?" he was asked.

"Well, to tell you I'm here," he said. "There is no such thing as logic in this country."

And then he drove off, honking.

....

And so the people shout, and shrug.

They shout to be heard, and shrug because they say there is nothing they can do but join in, honking, banging, screaming, whatever they need to do to make it through the day - or the intersection. The noise is the cause and the reaction, they say.

My thoughts:

First let me say that I love that the Egyptian taxi driver's comment was, "There is no such thing as logic in this country." That made me laugh.

Somewhere else in the story they said the volume in Cairo is basically equivalent to having a lawn mower running next to your head all day. Yes, it is LOUD here. First, there is the call to prayer which can be heard no matter where you are in the city. That's what you would probably notice first if you visited or moved here. Each mosque has its own muzzein, and the two nearest our house seem to take joy in singing the long notes of the call to prayer just a half-step off from each other, creating a harsh, dissonant, wailing sound. Some of my friends think it's a beautiful sound to hear the call to prayer, but they clearly don't live in the vicinity of two mosques with competing muzzeins! They call the faithful to prayer beginning at about 3:30 or 4 AM, and the last call sounds about an hour after sunset. I could hear it just as I began this post.

The next noise you'd notice is definitely honking. I've written about this before, but it's been a while. The traffic is unreal. The only time crossing the street is NOT like playing Frogger is on Friday mornings, which would be comparable to Sunday morning at home. There are VERY few street lights (can't think of where one even is), and the stop signs might as well have "if you feel like it" written underneath "stop." However, drivers seem to be much more aware of their surroundings than most American drivers are. They use their horns to signal that they are getting ready to enter an intersection, to alert pedestrians that they're coming, to express frustration. Usually it's just a quick little beep, but there are many cars with tricked out horns. I wish I could record them for you, because it's amusing what some of them sound like. None of them play "Dixie," but they do have horns that sound like sirens and beep repeatedly and then fade away. You hear horns at all hours of the day.

I've written about the loud schoolchildren outside our house all afternoon long. They play in the street, unsupervised, for four or five hours. People in general are loud here. (My friend Nabeel warned me about this, and I've watched him talk to his family on the phone before in Arabic. It's something to behold!) Egyptians might be having a conversation about what kind of ice cream to pick up at the store, but the way they communicate, gesturing wildly, speaking at the top of their voices, it sounds like they can't stand each other!

So yes, the city is loud, the people are loud, and my ears very rarely get the quiet I enjoyed living in Justin, where the worst thing I had to complain about was the neighbor's incessantly barking dog! I don't know that it's really any louder here than it was on Hong Kong Island, though. When we lived there I felt just as crowded and longed for quiet, without the constant obnoxious ring of cell phones and people yelling, "Wai?" (hello) when they answered their phones.

The whole experience brings new meaning to the phrase "noise pollution." Next time that airplane flies over your house, imagine that it's followed by the call to prayer, a whole lot of honking (sometimes a whole line of cars honking in unison and in the same rhythm), and a street full of kids. Then you'll hear what we hear every day! It's a wonder anyone gets any sleep around here!

Request for Readers

I'm just curious--who's out there reading this blog? It takes some work to sign up and comment, I know--so if you don't mind, shoot me an email at txkatherine@yahoo.com and just say hi. No comments or long emails necessary. And don't change my email address to this address in your address books--it's the one I use on the internet that gets lots of spam. I don't want to publish my other one on this blog. I just wonder who exactly my audience is, so please let me know!

Just Pretend I Was On My Own Writer's Strike

I know I promised the Crete post more than a week ago. Sorry it's taken me so long. So...where were we? We flew from Athens to Crete on our second morning in Greece. It's a really short flight (40 minutes). As soon as we arrived, we rented a car and drove to our hotel, about an hour from the airport.

The scenery on the road between the airport in Heraklion and our hotel in Rethmynon was pretty. We drove along the coast most of the way. We arrived at our hotel a while before we were supposed to check in, and the man at the desk told me the room was not quite ready but would be ready in two hours. I checked in and we left in search of lunch. We found a nice little restaurant called Zizi's, had a good lunch, and Luke even got to play on their playground. It was really nice. We returned to the hotel to pick up our key and had to wait almost an hour longer in the lobby, which is frustrating with an almost three year old. Very hard to keep him quiet for that long!

Finally we were shown to our room. We walked through the resort, past three really nice pools, and up to our condo which overlooked one of the pools. We got this hotel because we traded in our timeshare week, so we had certain expectations in mind for the condo. It was nice and clean, but compared to some we've traded in for in the US and Canada, it had a much smaller kitchen and no washer/dryer. It was nice, though, and we unpacked and settled in.

Jason took Luke almost right away to go swimming in the indoor pool, only to find out that the heater for the pool and hot tub was broken. The girl on duty in the pool area was literally running warm water into the hot tub, turning on the bubbles, and then draining all the water when it got too cool, only to repeat the process. Jason and Luke returned to the room pretty quickly. Luke was blue-lipped with chattering teeth!

All in all, the hotel was just okay. We knew in advance that it was off-season, and knew not to expect everything to be open. However, considering it was a highly-rated resort, we expected it to have some amenities open during hours we could really use them. The indoor pool closed at 7, which meant if we went exploring during daylight hours we couldn't swim at night. Also the heater wasn't fixed until the last day we were there. It was sort of disappointing. We decided early on in the week, though, that we were going to enjoy ourselves anyway. We just changed our expectations from imagining we would veg out at the hotel to expecting to really get out and go somewhere just about every day.

We tried asking for sightseeing advice at the hotel desk, and they were no help. So we went out in search of dinner and found a great little pizza place. We ordered our pizza and then asked our waitress where we should go. She made a little list for us and told us about several places on the island we should visit. We loved the pizza place and went back there THREE TIMES that week!

So after a good night's sleep in our condo, we got up the next morning and went exploring! Our first destination was a little mountain town called Anogia. Our waitress had told us it was an old-fashioned town where we'd see people in traditional dress. She also mentioned that it was a place where the pastime was shooting holes in the traffic signs! On the way to Anogia, we saw signs for a cave. I am married to Mr. Adventure. You know we had to stop. I was expecting it to be like the ones we found at Turner Falls (that are not on the official map)--dark, scary, and claustrophobia inducing. So, I dreaded going. This one turned out to be more like the Natural Bridge caverns or Carlsbad--walkways, lights, even a tour guide. We had to buy tickets to go in, but it was cheap. It was really cool.

After the cave, we went the rest of the way to Anogia. When we got there, there were lots of older women who had black kerchiefs on their heads who were wearing black tops and skirts. If this is what she meant by traditional dress, then we saw it. Nothing else too interesting other than that. We drove through the town and found a place to eat lunch. I chose it because it looked pretty and like it might have a scenic view. In reality, the balcony we sat on overlooked a construction area! It was still a pretty restaurant, anyway, and they also had a little tricycle for Luke to ride on. He had a great time playing while Jason and I ate.

I won't write every detail of every meal in Crete, but let me say this. We live in a country where you can't readily buy pork. All the bacon and ham served in restaurants--even Chili's and Johnny Carino's--is beef. I am not that big of a pork eater, so it doesn't really bother me too much when we're in Cairo, except every now and then when I'd like to make a good breakfast with bacon or sausage. When we're at home, I NEVER order a pork chop, and I rarely ever cooked them at home. Let me tell you, though, I ordered a pork chop at this restaurant and thought I was in heaven. It was SO good. It tasted just like one Daddy would've made on the grill. Same spices, same flavor...so delicious. Look how happy I am! I then ordered pork chops at just about every other lunch or dinner meal where one was on the menu. (I'm hungry right now--look how much I've written about pork chops!)

The next day we went to the mountains in search of snow. Jason was so excited that the mountains were snowy! We drove for what seemed forever before finally reaching snow. We parked the car, got out, threw some snowballs, took some pictures, and got back in the car. Luke enjoyed watching his Daddy throw snowballs and throwing a few himself. I just took the pictures!



The weather in Crete was great, but not predictable. It was cool enough to wear pants and a jacket most days, but there were some days that were really hot, and then up in the mountains we needed real coats. I didn't pack as much of a variety of clothes as I should have. Luke had what he needed, but I was cold!

After seeing the snow, we drove to another coastal town called Hania. It was a really nice town with lots of good restaurants and shopping. We stopped and ate lunch there, then walked around looking at toys and bikes for a certain little boy's birthday coming up. I went in every toy store I could find--on a mission. That's where I found Luke's Fisher Price fire truck that he loves so much now.



The next day we went into Rethmyno, the town nearest our hotel, and visited the Venetian fortezza there. It was built in the 16th century, and has a great vantage point for views of the city and mountains. I expected it to be more like a castle, but it was really acres and acres of land surrounded by stone walls with many buildings scattered inside that were used for various purposes over the years. There is a mosque on the grounds that was built on the foundation of a Catholic church. Hm.

Luke threw a wall-eyed temper fit as we were approaching the fortress, and it was probably the worst he has ever had, before or since. I didn't even know him. So, the first 15 minutes of our visit there were NO fun, but eventually he found his happy place and we enjoyed running through the meadows together, discovering tunnels and climbing and collecting rocks. (Luke loves to find a rock, then exchange it for a bigger one, and then an even bigger one, until he eventually has a rock the size of his head that he can no longer carry around! He's done this since he was about a year old and Jason used to take him exploring in the fields by our house.)
We thought it was really cool that we could explore all around this really old fortress, and no one told us where we could go or couldn't go. We were free to discover and see as much as we wanted to.

The next day we had a slow morning before going back to Hania. It was such a nice town we decided to visit again and see more of it. We had been really warm the day before, so we dressed a little less warmly, which was a BIG mistake! The wind was whipping off the Mediterranean, and we were cold! We walked along the sea wall out to the lighthouse, anyway. In this picture you can see it way off in the distance. You can see we have the stroller, too. The walkways looked deceptively smooth. We ended up ditching the stroller and coming back for it later.


Very pretty Hania harbor with snow-capped mountains in the distance.This is our only family picture of the whole trip--I took it with the timer and it's chopped us all off, but it was so cold I didn't want to wait to take another!
We finally reached the lighthouse and climbed all the way up to the top of the stairs.
Here are Jason and Luke up on the sea wall by the lighthouse.

The next day we stayed around the hotel again most of the day. We did venture down to the beach near the hotel. It was really quiet and very pretty. I love the Mediterranean. It's so blue, and I think I like it better than any other big ocean or sea I've been to yet.
We just walked along the gravelly shore for a while and let Luke play in the sand (and choose rocks, of course).
I just sat still and shot pictures of Luke playing for about 10 minutes. I love these two.

The next day we drove over to a pretty little beach town called Plakias. On the way there we stopped to hike down a lot of steps into this gorge, where there was a little church and a really neat series of waterfalls. Jason couldn't resist the urge to climb, so Luke and I sat and looked at flowers and butterflies and played in this little cave under a rock while Jason explored.
After climbing back up to our car, we headed on toward Plakias. Unfortunately, Luke had just fallen asleep when we arrived in town (the steps wore him out, I guess), so we didn't stop and get out. We drove a few minutes out of town, pulled over, and all three of us napped for a little while in the car!

By this point in the week, our camera battery had almost run out, so we didn't take many more pictures.

We had to check out of our hotel the day before we were scheduled to leave Crete, due to a mix-up with our plane tickets. So for our last night in Crete, we drove back to Heraklion (where the airport was) and stayed in a hotel there. We had fun doing more shopping and walking around the city. Jason ate lots of gyros, and Luke and I ate crepes, which he called "chocolate sandwiches." This one I am eating here had bananas and chocolate in it, and it was the best dessert I have eaten since Christmas. And it was my dinner. Does life get better than eating dessert for dinner?
That's chocolate on my chin.

All in all, a wonderful vacation. We were gone just over 10 days, which is just about when we hit our limit. I was ready to get back home, but not ready to leave Greece. It was a lovely place to visit and we'll have many wonderful memories from our trip there.

Khamsin! (and other assorted updates)

The Khamsin is here! It's basically a Lubbock dust storm all over Egypt. My nose and mouth feel like I've stuck my face inside a vacuum cleaner bag and taken a deep breath. Icky. I didn't really notice it (except that I've been sneezing all day--but I've got a cold so that wasn't too surprising) until Luke asked me if it was getting dark outside. "Silly boy, it's only 1:00!" I replied, before looking outside to see everything looking a murky orange color. I haven't snapped a picture yet but I will later.

Because of all these dust storms, our electrical appliances have started acting up. Our portable DVD player quit altogether this week, so now we have to watch our DVDs on the computer. Thankfully, we have the computer! I am on a quest for some canned air to see if that will help the DVD player; otherwise it may just be kaput.

Other updates:

I talked to my friend Cheryl, whose baby, Billy Jr., passed away last week. My prayer, and that of many others praying for this precious family, has been that God would use this tragic situation to His glory. Cheryl shared with me that she has never felt God's presence more strongly than this past week. Yes, there have been dark, difficult moments, but God has made Himself known to Cheryl, Billy, and their family. They have felt your love, and your prayers have buoyed them during this impossible time. Cheryl was even able to speak at Billy's Celebration of Life Service--to present the gospel clearly to those present, to allow God to speak through her. Please continue to pray for Cheryl, Billy, and Avery in the days and weeks ahead.

Till the storm passes over, till the thunder sounds no more,
Till the clouds roll forever from the sky;
Hold me fast, let me stand in the hollow of Thy hand,
Keep me safe till the storm passes by.*

My outlook is somewhat better this week. God has been faithful to show me, once again, His beauty in my circumstances and surroundings. Maadi is in full bloom--flowering trees are EVERYWHERE, and I've never seen anything like it in Texas. There is one particular, huge tree that has bright red flowers the size of magnolia blossoms, but it only blooms once all its leaves have fallen off. It's really pretty! Other trees have honeysuckle-type blooms all over them, but they're white, purple, and pink. There are other blooming vines and trees whose blooms resemble crepe myrtle blooms. My favorite are the deep red ones. It's easy to focus on the dust storms, but when the storm has passed, God's beauty remains.

We have our travel plans made for this summer! I am going to come home with Luke near the first of June, and Jason will stay in Cairo until mid-July to teach summer school. Though we will not enjoy being separated from each other for that long, it will give Luke and me a good head start on visiting family and friends before Jason arrives. The summer school opportunity was too good to pass up. We're looking forward to coming home, visiting with everyone, shopping at our favorite stores, eating at our favorite restaurants, and stocking up on all the things we can't get here or that are too expensive to buy here.

The days until I come home are now an easily countable fathomable number: 55 days from today. My birthday. What a gift! (Not the 24 hour plane trip alone with Luke, but the present of my family on the other end! Anybody want to volunteer to come out here and make the flight back home with me? Ha!)

I started back to Arabic lessons last week. This session I am in Conversation Level 2 class. I have taken Levels 1 and 2, and the purpose of the conversation class is just to practice everything we've learned in levels 1 and 2. I have continued on with many of the same ladies from Level 2 and the same instructor. I am very happy with that--I like my teacher and his style a lot, and the other ladies are bright. They are French, German, Australian, and Dutch, so most of them are learning Arabic as a 3rd or 4th language. Since I only remember very little of my Spanish, French, and Cantonese (and usually all at the wrong times--like I remember Spanish when I'm speaking to a French person, or Cantonese when trying to tell an Egyptian taxi driver where to go), I feel really dumb sometimes! Still, I feel like I have a pretty good ear for the pronunciation, and it is exciting to be able to converse with people on the street and in shops. During the second half of the lesson, Sami (the teacher) asks if we have questions. We can ask him about something we've already learned or how to say something we need to say in real life. This week I'd made a big list. Everyone in my class got a laugh when I asked my first question: "I need you to tell me how to say: Go away. Leave me alone. Don't talk to me!" (I was thinking mostly of the pesky boys who even now are playing outside our house.) I insisted Sami tell me how to say it in the meanest, most emphatic way possible. I was clear that I did NOT want to be nice. He told me, and then made me practice telling him and everyone else in the class to go away!

We've hired our helper for next year and made our decision about what we'll do with Luke. We've decided to keep Luke in the same school he's in now. Not only am I really happy with it, I think it'll be best for him to have a regular routine of school, nap in his own bed, and then when he wakes up it will be time for us to come home. This will cut out about 1 1/2 - 2 hours of bus time for him. We've hired a full-time helper to be here at 6:30 in the morning (poor thing). She'll give Luke breakfast and take him to school. Then she can come home and clean, do laundry, go grocery shopping for me, whatever needs to be done. At 1:00 she will pick Luke up and bring him home for a little playtime and a nap. Then she can begin getting dinner ready for us. I am so excited--it'll be like I have my own wife, but one who is definitely more conscientious and thorough with the housework than I am! We've chosen a very sweet girl who has two children of her own back in the Philippines. She works for another school family right now, and will begin working for us at the end of the summer. I guess if I have to go back to work, at least when I get home I can be fully Mommy, and not have to worry about catching up on housework. That's the way to do it, huh?

Oh, one more thing before I go. At church on Friday we had Graham Kendrick and his band come and lead us in worship. It was INCREDIBLE. God was present, moving in the hearts of those gathered under the tent at Maadi Community Church. Through worship, He reassured me of His love, His plan, His divine sovereignty. What an amazing thing to be able to approach the throne of God and praise Him for who He is.

Okay, it's 2:30 and I've been putting off lunch, so I'd better stop writing for now. Thanks for reading!

*"Til the Storm Passes By" by Mosie Lister

God's Stories

I am writing this blog entry without knowing really where it's headed.

The last week, though filled with the joy of Luke's birthday and the excitement of returning from a great family vacation, has been really filled with life. Joy, laughter, and celebration have mingled with boredom, disappointment, and anguish.

We'll start with what's least important, and that's me. Despite my efforts to be satisfied and happy here in Egypt, I have hit an all-time low since we got back from Texas in January. I love our house and living near our friends, but there are other things about our area that really bother me. I get harassed more--whistled at, hissed at, kissed at--and today a school child threw a ball at Luke and me (on purpose), hitting me, while we were walking into our gate. He followed that up with some extremely foul language in English. I followed that up by going to get the policeman who watches over our street. Though these situations are not dangerous, they certainly interrupt the happiness and ease of my daily life. Next year this won't be an issue since I will be working and thus won't be out alone much, or out just with Luke much. Nevertheless, these things happen almost daily and that wears on me. On top of this, I've been in a homesick funk. I miss my family so much I ache. It is like there is a hole in my heart that is shaped like Mom, Daddy, Kari, Scott, and Jenny--and only when our whole family is together do I feel complete. I have not returned to Bible study since Christmas, either, since my leader has been out of the country and most of the ladies have joined other studies, which means that I've lost my little group of Christian friends. I hadn't realized how much I'd already come to depend on them in the short time we have been here. In short, I've been depressed. Still taking my medicine--and despite that, depressed.

So Friday, when we went to church, I knew I needed to hear from the Lord. I prayed while I was getting ready to go, telling Him that I am not happy, that I need help, that I know it was His plan to bring us here....now help me out of this funk!

A little side story... My friend Jenni has a blog, and she writes these beautiful things on the blog. She and her husband have journeyed through some tough things, and Jenni writes very candidly about what the Lord is doing in her life. Recently she posted a story about their journey to parenthood, calling it "God's story."

That apparently stuck with me, and that is what the Lord used to call me back to Him during the church service on Friday. I was struck by my own selfishness and self-centeredness (why is it that I consistently--constantly--find myself asking for forgiveness for these things?), realizing that I am making our time here in Egypt MY STORY. In writing this blog, simply telling where we've been and what we're doing, I make it my story. In whining, complaining, wallowing in my frustration and sadness, I make it my story.

My life is not MY story. As a baby, my parents dedicated me to the Lord. As a seven or eight-year-old girl, I made the choice for myself, and gave my own heart and life to the Lord. In doing so, my life ceased to be about me, and became about God, and what He can do in and through me. I keep getting in the way...getting the story off track...adding in my own run-on sentences and anecdotes that don't really matter to the real plot. God reminded me Friday morning that this story is definitely not about me.

So...still I wonder what it will be about? Lord, what will you do with me while I am in Egypt? Why am I here? Yes, I know the reasons being here is beneficial to us financially. I know we have a good time traveling and are able to do so relatively cheaply. But this is not why You led us here.

I have always been someone who needs to know why. I want to know why things work the way they do--cannot just accept that things just "are". I am curious. I like to have a plan and know the outcome beforehand. That is why infertility was such a struggle for me. I wanted to know for certain that I would be a mother--that I'd see the end of that battle. I kept telling God that if I could just know for sure, I would feel better about waiting. That reassurance never came. When I accepted that I might NOT ever be a mother, that that might NOT be God's plan for me, and that He would love me just the same, that Jason would love me just the same, and that my family would love me just the same, I felt a peace about the process. It did not make me want to be a mother any less. It did not make my arms ache for a child any less. But I was able to see clearly the Father's love for me, to hear His voice, and to know the time was right. Every step of the way through our IVF process, God guided me, and I believe He guided the hands of every person who dealt with us during that time.

That is one of God's stories in my life. One with a beautiful outcome. As we joyfully celebrated Luke's third birthday this week, I remembered what it was like to hold him as a newborn, how we celebrated his first birthday party, and then his second. We watched all the videos we have of him on our computer and remarked how much he has changed in just the last year. We were talking yesterday about the way people here can't resist Luke. They constantly touch his head and want to give him kisses. It has finally started to bother Luke. Jason commented last night, "I think God put a special light inside Luke that people are just naturally drawn to. They can't stay away from it." I know that's true. His first two names, "Luke Matthew", mean "Gift of light from God". I think he's perfectly named.

So I said this week has been full of all aspects of life. I've told you about the frustration and the joy. This week has also been full of anguish. Two of my dearest friends lost one of their children this week, at only four months old. What prepares you for this? How do you get through something like that? Powerless to help, I find myself wondering what I can do from here? The only answer I can find is to pray--pray for them, their families, their daughter, that they will lean on the Lord and on each other, for each day that is ahead of them.

Something my friend Linda wrote in her book, Keep Walking, has stuck with me (and I am paraphrasing for now...I've passed along my copy and will have to get Linda to send me a better quote). She talks about how Psalm 23 says, "yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death" not "yea, though I wallow in the valley" or "get stuck in the valley". There are times when the valley is so deep and the mountains in our way too high but God tells us to keep walking...keep moving along in the journey with Him. Pray with me that my friends will find the faith to keep walking. That others will step in and carry them through when they can't find the strength on their own. I pray that somehow this too will become one of God's stories. Will you join me in prayer?

That's our purpose in life, isn't it? To allow our stories, the good ones, the desperate ones, the painful ones, the exciting ones, to belong to Him. I mentioned Linda's book. What a fantastic example of one of God's stories. She wrote it after her son's battle with cancer, and it is a moving testimony to God's power and faithfulness. Linda's an amazing author and teacher, and her book is an easy, compelling, challenging read. I'll link to her site up in the links section.

What will God write for your life? Keep me posted on his stories in your lives, and I'll do the same.