Imbalance...

"The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases, His mercies never come to an end...they are new every morning, new every morning, great is thy faithfulness"...
Lamentations 3:22-24

I am clinging to that hope right now.

It has been a long week of saying goodbyes to moms we dearly love,
finding out indeed that the cancer is taking over Neena's body,
the cleaning of 2 comforters, after Levi misses the garbage can placed right next to his bed,
and a hospital stay in a country that can at times like this, still feel very foreign.

Life feels very imbalanced right now. We are weary from sickness and our hearts are heavy.

I think it is timely that I have started reading, Found Art: Discovering beauty in foreign places, by Leeana Tankersley.

This is an excerpt of Lisa describing what she felt like when she first stepped off of the plane onto the foreign terrain of Bahrain,

"Change is horribly uncomfortable. Like the wrong pair of jeans, change pinches and squeezes in the most inconvenient places. A lot of wriggling and writhing is involved. Maybe even some sucking in and prone posturing. Just when you think you've fit in, you realize you're spilling over the top and sides in the worst way. Very, very little ease.
If I would have had the energy on the first night, I might have thought more about where I would fit in, not only in a new country but in a new marriage, in my relationships back home, in the new relationships I would inevitably forge in Bahrain, in whatever awaited us after this tour was over, in my faith. I might have thought through the transition more carefully and intentionally and acknowledged that loss is the little sister who always tags along with change. All of this was far too much to process in the moment, however, and I succumbed to the disorientation.
A bigger picture- the one I was unable to see and the one we are all unable to see when we're overwhelmed by the immediate intensity of change-surely existed. In a very short time, I would begin to get glimpses of the divine metanarrative containing some important invitations for me, none of which I would have had the slightest bit of time for in the equilibrium and orientation and familiarity and comfort of my former life in San Diego.
Though I had lost some safety and belonging and planted-ness in this uprooting business, I had gained a great gift -imbalance. Not until I was set on my ear did I begin to see life a bit differently. The bigger picture exists each and every day, but normalcy (and a few other things we will get to) had dulled my senses. Imbalance, once I was able to survive the initial shock of it, began returning my ears and refocusing my eyes, and life became literally breathtaking-as in, I was finally able to stop and take a real, live, sustaining breath."

Certainly, we are not experiencing all of the changes that the author is describing, but definitely the room of life is spinning and our equilibrium is off. We are trusting that God is refocusing our eyes on Him and is breathing new air into our lungs and that one day soon, we will look at this imbalance as a gift.