Remember what is true

God is good.  God is love.  God is sovereign.

I love a good mix of upbeat and contemplative worship songs on Sunday mornings.  It lets me be joyful and praise God for all that he is, but also lets me mourn how far we often stray from the path God intends for us.  This morning, I didn't feel like playing the upbeat songs, though.

It's hard to sing "hallelujah" when your city is still reeling from a mass shooting less than a week ago.  It's hard to sing about how "if our God is for us, what can stand against?" when there is an ongoing terrorist attack in a country you love dearly.  It feels like I'm singing something when all evidence points to the opposite.

At one point in the Hunger Games trilogy, the main character, Katniss, goes through a time when there is so much chaos around her, she starts to forget what is true and what is her imagination.  When she starts to lose sight of what's real, she goes back to the basics and reminds herself of what she knows is true:  "My name is Katniss Everdeen.  I am seventeen years old.  My home is District 12.  I was in the Hunger Games."  There is turmoil all around her and she doesn't know who to trust, but she can remind herself of who she is.

There is turmoil around us in this world.  There are shootings every day, terrorist attacks, broken families, and broken lives.  It's hard to know who to trust, and it's hard to remember that there's still good in the world.  It's days like these that I need to go back to the basics and remind myself of what I know is true:  God is good.  God is love.  God is sovereign.  I have seen God pull a phoenix from the ashes of a broken life, and I have seen God use terrible situations as opportunities to show how great he is.  And God can use even something as awful as a terrorist attack to create something beautiful.  It's just hard to remember when the headlines cry about death and destruction.

So, even when it doesn't feel real, I remind myself of what I know to be true:  God is good.  God is love.  God is sovereign.

Finding balance

I've been home from Kenya for three weeks now.  Most days it feels like it's been longer, like time is trying to see how slowly it can pass before I lose my mind.  But some days it's as close as the air in my lungs, a part of me that I can never really be far removed from.

I stopped by Wegmans for a couple of things after work today.  As I walked down the stairs to the parking garage after making my purchases, a family with two small children made their way down behind me.  "How many steps are there?" one of the kids asked the other.  They found their answer the obvious way:  jumping down one stair at a time, counting each as they went.  One, two, three, four...

My heart stopped for a moment as I was transported to another set of stairs and another pair of preschoolers pondering the number of steps.  In my mind, I saw Elijah and Kanje, two of the children at the Tania Centre who loved hanging out with me, but didn't know much English yet.  We spent a good part of one afternoon at the school store, which had a staircase on the back, running up to the top of the steps, and counting each in English as they hopped back down.  My heart was bursting with pride to hear those itty-bitties counting the whole way to 13 without my help, and the whole way to 20 with just a little help on those pesky teens.  We must have counted those stairs a hundred times, until I was begging them to do something, ANYTHING else but count the stairs again.

I've almost found my balance of enjoying my life here, while still missing Kenya.  It gets easier every day to understand that I can be happy here, and still love and miss Kenya without feeling guilty about being happy.  And I'm usually able to look through my Kenya pictures without many tears, remembering how much I love those kids and how much love they gave me, and still move on with my day.

But some days I just really want to be counting stairs with Elijah and Kanje again.

(There were 20 stairs in Wegmans, too.)