Car Craziness!

Living in Dallas for just over three years, one learns to ignore car alarms. Most of the nights that we lived there, somebody's car alarm would go off outside our window, and for the first year or two I would actually drag myself out of bed to determine if it was mine...and it never was. Ever.

So I got over it. I would hear a car alarm, and I could guarantee you that it was not mine. And in Dallas, I would be right.

Now we live in Peoria, and though car alarms are still heard, they are not nearly as common as before. Add to that the fact that we have nobody living next to us, above us (we live in a duplex), across the street from us, or next door to across the street from us, and it would be pretty obvious to anybody else that if you hear a car alarm while in our apartment, it IS mine. It has to be...there aren't any other cars out there.

But I was tired, so I ignored it. And eventually it stopped.

So I thought nothing of it until I woke up to go to work and decided I would drive (I usually walk the block and a half to Central, but it was raining). I get out to my car, and everything seems normal. I unlock, and the dome light doesn't turn on. I open the doors, and the dome light doesn't turn on. I get in the driver's seat, and finally the dome light kicks on. And stays on.

Now, I don't know what's going on here, but I'm beginning to wonder (hope?) if my car, a 2004 Saturn Ion, has a mind of its own. I mean, I feel like I'm driving BumbleBee, from Transformers, only it's not quite so sweet and it doesn't become a huge robot of awesome to fight aliens or anything. But seriously, I can't get the alarm to turn on, I have a dickens of a hard time locking it, the dome lights won't turn off, and I'm convinced that pretty soon it's going to start picking the radio station for me.

It's been a good day.

Stress Tolerance

According to people around me, I have every right to be stressed out, overwhelmed, and unbelievable anxious - all of which give me every right to devour ice cream in mass quantities. I typically have a hard time believing it- perhaps because I tend to bury that stress in said ice cream around 2 a.m....

After all, we serve an amazing God who has taken care of our every want and need. We don't deserve His goodness and grace and yet he lavishes uncountable blessings on us every day.

But, considering that since December, Luke finished and graduated seminary, we spent 2 1/2 weeks in Zambia, I lost my job, we moved halfway across the country, started new jobs (several of them), have to balance the hours between multiple bosses and jobs, found out our leasing mananger in Dallas got fired so they're not honoring her decision to let us out of our lease early and coming after us for the money, spent a week back in Dallas for a conference followed by a few days in Chicago followed by three weeks in Charlotte and now we're settling into a new church, making new friends, and raising support to move to Zambia. Oh, and all of this while trying to establish healthy boundaries in an important relationship in my life and seeking my true identity outside this relationship. ... Breath ... I guess we have reason to be a bit overwhelmed.

Oy. So when we were at SIMCO (our missions orientation), they had us take a stress inventory. We were given a list of possible stressors in life all with a number value and asked to think about what we would experience our first three months on the field. The idea was to show us that when we totaled the list of the items we checked, we would be far above normal or even manageable levels of stress - getting us to think about healthy ways to handle that stress before we go. That said, Luke and I then filled out the inventory for the last three months of our life - and the total was way higher. This was two days after I was having the discussion with Luke about how good God is to us and how easy life seems to be. Apparently we have a pretty high stress tolerance.

That said, this morning was definitely a "bury your thoughts in ice cream" morning (not the healthiest coping mechanism, but hey, sometimes I don't realize all that's going on until after I have made those choices). Frustrated with myself and feeling like I wasted all sorts of time, I was kindly reminded on the phone by a good friend and mentor: "Tiffany, you've been through a lot. Don't beat yourself up."

So after a great de-stressing, de-programming bike ride, all I really want to do is curl up with a good book in comfy pjs (healthy coping!). But, off to work. And then work all day tomorrow. And then, we're escaping life for a few days to go way far north and enjoy God's good creation. Just wish we didn't have to drive 8 hours to get there.

Website Coming Soon...

We just wanted to let everybody know that we are in the process of putting together a whole new website. We will continue to use this blog, as it has served us well and we know that a fair number of people read it. The new website, when it is up and running, should be much more interactive and informative about what we will be doing in Zambia. We'll let you know when it's operational. Until then, feel free to keep asking, as it keeps me focused on working on it...

Latest Prayer Letter

Tiffany never ceases to amaze me. We've been back in Peoria for just over two days now, and she has already cranked out this month's prayer letter. The only down-side...this month's color scheme is pink.

Anyway, here it is...and if you haven't received it in your email inbox, it means we don't have your email address (or we do, but we've typed it in wrong).

Go ahead and click on the letter and it will open up a full-size version...a really, really big full-size version...that you can print off or read or whatever.