I look around our home, the very same home that we lived in as newly weds, considering the eclectic collection of items that fill it ... a cabinet that sat in my childhood family room, a couch bought while we were overseas, a table that once displayed my Mom's lavish food for guests, a thrifted mirror, a gifted bed, a shelf from Java, a box from Bali ... random, yet not so random items. These are the leftovers of the years that have brought us to today.
Inside I also am a smorgasbord of leftovers. Years of living as a foreigner, being stared at, being different. Working always with like-minded missionaries who had our backs, but sometimes didn't. Indonesian experiences that make our souls sing. Memories of our kids laughing and playing in our Borneo yard, dirty hands flinging open the doors, smelly shirts from building the hanger. Loneliness and missing family. Feeling so happy, yet knowing deep pain. Tormenting voices, yet His words in the desert. This smattering of memories clatter around in my heart and make the tears flow.
Tehya is now married and Paeton's a young man. Just Makenna, our baby, remains at home, a butterfly of joy and companionship, as always. Chris and I try to sort through and make sense of the events that have transpired over the past nine months. Most everything has changed: our location, our home, our jobs, our church, our family ... We have experienced the fullness of a poured-out life, and are now trying to process what has just transpired. We are sorting through the remains of sixteen years of summer, two decades of raising our precious kids, being on support and now having jobs, being entwined in neediness and now trying to find happiness in abundance.
Thankfully our Shepherd is not afraid of leftovers. He takes ashes and makes beauty. He takes rubble and rebuilds. So, LORD, hold us and guide us. Give us courage and wisdom. Tune our hearts to sing Thy grace.