east west

I could be nothing without you

So this time around, Mt. St. Helens decided to wear the lenticular cloud. I desperately wanted it to look like she too was wearing a hat - but it just looked like some kind of lopsided horizontal explosion. Which actually is more fitting for this week.

My Iraqi family is becoming more beautiful. Every time, I find out a little more about them - and have yet to leave an English session without crying. Last night...they told me how they made their decision to leave Iraq and come to America. Not that they had much say in the matter after....what they went through. Due to their privacy, this probably isn't the best venue to discuss their experiences. But by the end of the conversation, I was left undoubtedly believing in a God with a plan and a God who protects. And the thing is - they're the ones who credited their lives to Him. I think back through my recent conversations with friends, and I cannot think of one single instance where God came up. But with this family, it was almost immediate. Being with them is cathartic - and I'm rapidly losing sympathy for the client who didn't receive her $5,000 leather lounge chair in time for her open house.

Perhaps that stayed with me through the day and on towards tonight. Through upstairs conversations that stem from such different viewpoints that we simply cannot agree on even one statement without somehow insulting the other. What one sees as strength, the other sees as weakness. Quite an entry right back into the world of apologetics, which I must have left somewhere around eight years ago. Not that I necessarily intended to return to it quite the way that I did (that old Southern Baptist guilt permeates everything I touch).

Discovered new music that is simultaneously providing the soundtrack for all of this. For undoubtedly believing in God's protection in allowing my Iraqi students to live and for trying to figure out how to show a post-doctoral candidate that faith in God does not equal fragility.

posted by jessica @ 9:30 PM