Michibiki over Mocha

It's been a week of the normal weirdness of family and church life...one evening I joined my mother at about 10pm to visit a family whose wife/mother had just passed away...the next day was singing at a funeral...and the next day singing at a wedding. Now we're getting ready for a party to which two churches and others in the community have been invited, so I've made five pans of bars in the last 36 hours and we've all done as much yardwork as can be fit in during daylight hours. (Thankfully, none of us are freaking out much yet. It's only Wednesday, and the party's Sunday...)

Oh for the life of a church worker, ne. :)

The week has been a strange mixture of grief and joy, with the wedding and the funeral. Loneliness and a lot of people. New spiritual life and new physical life, as one left to join her Maker in heaven and two others left their individual lives to become one.

Last Saturday, God gave me my first white chocolate mocha since Japan and also my first real "quiet time" that felt halfways "normal"...it was something that felt so good I was flying high for most of the rest of the day...and not just from two shots of espresso. :) Anyway, during the time I found myself devouring Psalms, realizing that while I read Psalms almost everyday in Japan, I haven't really looked at them at all since coming back to America. I read quickly, hungrily, until my eyes caught this verse:

"Send forth your light and your truth, let them guide me;
let them bring me to your holy mountain,
to the place where you dwell."
(Psalm 43:3)

I've been searching for the correct words to pray for guidance for the future...and here they are! I love how the Psalmist's end place is God's dwelling...not just heaven, but His presence, His place of worship and praise. This is where I want to go...not necessarily Japan or America, married or unmarried, with family or far away, in a church or outside of a church. I don't like having so many choices that seem like boundaries. :) But God's light and truth directing my steps into His presence and praise...that is what I seek.

How that translates into funerals, weddings, cleaning rocks in the yard, baking bars, and taking care of screaming children...I don't really know. What that means for past and future relationships...I have no idea. But as Moses was told, "This will be the sign to you that it is I who have sent you: when you have brought the people out of Egypt, you will worship God on this mountain"...as Moses was given a sign for the future, after he had acted in obedience...I'm also trying to hope steadfastly in and pray diligently for a mountain...God's mountain. His presence and dwelling place in my life more and more.

Sigh. These words sound so beautiful and good compared to my life. :) But hopefully it's an encouragement to others as it has been to me...