Day in the Life

My Mother’s House - Ramona

Wake up; look around at the enormous amounts of things that need to be done. Make rice based hot cereal and red tea. Watch the Daily Show with Jon Stewart. Make some lists and leave the house. Today I am glad for the professional umbrella maneuvering skills learned on the people saturated, typhoon drenched and narrow streets of Hong Kong.

A Starbucks - Point Loma

Don’t order anything but a glass of water when a tickle in my throat disallows any further conversation while meeting with the missions leader at a major church in the area. For the first time I am not nervous about the future of a large church’s international missions agenda. The seeds of many prayers planted years ago are beginning to bud and I am expectant, thinking of what the fruit will bring in from the harvest.

Doctor’s Waiting Room - El Cajon

I am waiting to see my doctor so she can approve me fit to work ‘in a crisis situation, such as war, famine or epidemic, in order to bring relief assistance’ because ‘the candidate will be living and working abroad in situations which may often be physically and emotionally stressful […] in remote areas, often in tropical heat and humidity with reduced access to medical facilities’.
A tetanus shot from the nurse and hug from my doctor later, I am one step closer.

Claire de Lune - North Park

Hat, jacket, scarf, boots and green tea keeping me cozy against the wind and the rain. No internet here, so I can focus on reading I told myself I would have done by now – and yet I blog. There's a guy running across the street with very white shoes on. Surprisingly mainstream music blaring just over the constant chatter of excruciatingly hip hipsters. Andrea is on her way. I wish my friends came in travel size. Pockets of the planet have claimed fractions of my heart’s capacity for missing people and I wonder how much more I can take. A creepy man who has been outside staring in the window for the past 15 minutes has just come in and dramatically shivered – now he stands at the same window, looking out.

Andrea is here. I am happy.

House Church - Clairemont

Tonight is an evening with some of the rocks in my life. The type of people you can call for anything – surfing, prayer, house-sitting, dinner, drinks, jam sessions – who have seen me through some of the very best and very worst seasons of life over the past five years or so. Only two more Wednesday nights with them, which makes me sad. However, I know they go with me in spirit and prayer and in that I take a deep comfort.