a year ago today...God's blessing all over the chaos

(I wrote this in April, April 4th ish - and I realize I didn't post it.  Honestly, some of these "milestones" seem strange to celebrate.  This is one of them.)

A year ago today, we went to the airport, got on a plane and (tried) to leave Irkutsk.  I wrote about the experience here.  Long story short - the airplane blew an engine which caused a 9 hour delay.  Funny thing - Anya still remembers that 9 hours!  She was such a trooper...playing games, waling around.  I was more irritated with the whole things than she was!

I was so mad about being delayed a week from going home.  There was some drama with our passport (not sure what it was all about)...but God was protecting us.

A week earlier, there was a terrorist attack in the subway system near Red Square in Moscow.  The attack happened on Monday morning. The morning we were supposed to be there. I can't imagine the chaos in Red Square that followed that attack.  The overwhelming fear of the people.  Not something I would want to be a part of our memory.

You would think that God's protection would have changed my attitude, and taught me to always TRUST HIM and HIS timing. This is where intellectual-reasoning and emotional-reasoning collide.

Yes - intellectually I got it.  God was in control.  But for people like me (and I realize that I am not so unique in a lot of ways), it is hard for we (those that are "do-ers") to stop trying to DO. Allowing God to be in control is something I fear will be a lesson I need to learn over and over and over again

Maybe today that is the bigger lesson; stepping back and (again) giving the glory and praise where it is due.  Praise in the big and small stuff.  Praise in the meltdowns, the temper tantrums (mine and Anya's), in the struggle and yes...in the glory of it all.

Learning to Praise Him in the times of pig faces, silly faces, mean faces and kissy faces is something I don't think we ever really learn to do...if we are honest with ourselves...or do we?

Mayberry + Halloween = costume parade

We're fortunate in that we live so close to a decent size city, but are in a very small town school district. The town where Anya goes to school is known because of the large Amish / Mennonite community. This makes for a very nice dynamic in the schools, and a very conservative environment in the town.

So when Halloween came around, I wondered what we would do, where we would go, if we would participate. When I heard about how our little town handles Halloween, I loved it - and we decided that was how we wanted Anya to be a part of Halloween!

There are a lot of schools of thought out there about this "holiday". To us, it isn't a holiday, we aren't celebrating anything. We simply are engaging in a seasonal tradition by carving pumpkins and allowing Anya to dress up in a costume. For us, it isn't anything scary, satanic or spooky...it is simply a little girl dressing up as Ice Cream and running from house to house with her friends. And that is how our little town thinks about it too - a celebration of the children.

Since the majority of the area is made up of farms and rural homes, everyone comes into town and collects treats (for please and thank-yous) up and down Main Street. There are several churches along the route, and they open their doors to the community by welcoming people and passing out candy to the kids. One church also offers a meal, free of charge, to anyone who wants it - don't you love that? Rather than condemning they have decided to embrace and take advantage of those who might be looking for a church, or seeking an answer. I actually saw one Pastor praying (off to the side of the line of kiddos in costumes) with one of the parents.

After an hour or so of getting to as many homes as possible, all the kids meet near the center of town, the street is closed and the parade starts. All of the kids march around and the town council (or maybe town Marshall...not sure) offer prizes for the best costumes. We saw a jelly fish, 3 little pigs, lots of princesses and Supermen, so many cats and dogs I lost count...but what I noticed was the absence of Snookie, Lady Gaga or anything scary.

For Anya, a child who complains about new things (until she does them of course) and is easily scared - this was the perfect way for her to start to learn about this American tradition.

The best part of our Halloween / Parade / Costume Festival were the lessons learned. We went around with 2 other families - between us we had 3 kids. At one house, one of the girls didn't get a piece of candy (for what ever reason). So Anya gave her one out of her bag.

Anya got 33 pieces of candy (don't you LOVE that? Not an overload of candy that you have to say "no" to a thousand times a day). When we got home, she was very excited to spread out the loot to see what she got. She divided up all the candy into 3 piles, and gave one to me, one to Marty and kept one for herself. She said, "not fair that Mommy and Daddy don't get candy too".

Now what kid do you know that does that?