Sunday Funday January 26
Prayers and Praises
Praises that Caid is back and we have some time together as a family! We also had a chance to visit some friends, and have the first Taco Tuesday of 2020!
Praises that after my filling broke, I was able to go to a dear dentist friend who fixed it unpainfully, and as a gift.
Praises that our friend Claire, who is studying this semester in southern Brazil, made it here safely: we have been enjoying her good conversations and babysitting services.
Praise for a quick surprise trip to the beach. Video to come soon.
Interweb Reads:
When “Doing Well” means looking messy: “Yet all that crying and processing with those women was healthy. It did forge new friendships with women who saw my true, undone self and loved it. My vulnerability drew them to me, rather than drive them away. All the grief and loss I felt found a place to be held, which was exactly what I needed. What if doing well in transition means we look messy? What if it means the boxes stay unpacked for a while because instead we’re doing soul work? What if it’s needing to stop regularly just to have a good cry? What if it means we do less but feel more? What if it looks like us not being ourselves because we’ve lost part of who we were and we’re willing to grieve the loss before we scramble back to creating identity?” (A Life Overseas)
Hospitality as sacred space: “Henri Nouwen, in his book, Reaching Out, refers to this space as hospitality. “Hospitality,” he says, “means primarily the creation of a free space where the stranger can enter and become a friend instead of an enemy. Hospitality is not to change people, but to offer them space where change can take place…It is not a method of making our God and our way into the criteria of happiness, but the opening of an opportunity to others to find their God and their way.”" (Velvet Ashes)
“They Look Down on Us”: This is long and I still have a lot to unpack with it, but let’s say that missions has—and should always have—a lot to process and change.