ReCovErIng...

I've been in an oxycotton and vicodin induced haze for the past 48 hours. No, not just for fun, but because I underwent a surgery on Tuesday with a nasty name I'll leave up to the imagination, in and around my colon area. To say the least, it's been painful. Praise God that I got around a potential emergency room visit b/c my bladder almost exploded (so says my doctor) due to inability to urinate. Overall, I would have to unreservedly say I will never ever do this again...I've heard stories of folks needing to repeat this procedure up to three more times - OUCH. My prayer is that the symptoms this surgery is supposed to alleviate will not follow me to Tanzania. It's sort of a "suffer now, and not later" theory - at least here there are such things as doctors-on-call and emergency rooms (though there might be something similar there, not sure though).
Aside from the agonizing last 2 days, Melissa and I continue to move forward with plans. We also continue to have the grace to experience growing excitement, especially with the Lyatuus already there. This past weekend we cleaned out a bunch of "crap" from our basement and it was a strange bitter-sweet experience which helped to solidify that our life here in Columbus is irrevocably changing, and it reminded us that, honestly, we feel it has been really good here so far and we love the life we've built. We've both completed school, started our families, seen God move over and over in our friends' lives, and really believe God's favor has been on us and our lives here...but once we got through the "cleansing" tasks the Lord used those little things to help focus and hone-in our desires and enabled us to embrace a little further the life decisions we're making in Him. He will continue to sustain us and provide for us, and it reminded us that ultimately our lives are not our own. "Use us Lord" was our prayer for the past 6 years, "send us" was our cry - and He saw fit to do so. It's awesome and scary at the same time, to fall into the hands of the living God. Most of the time we live with the perspective that we're somehow running our life. We're somehow in control. Once we loosen our grip just a little, we quickly will realize who is truly driving. It's not us. If we can hold onto that reality, there is no way God will disappoint. God works out everything for our good, and our trust needs to remain in Him and not our strengths or our plans.
Prayers: please pray for a quick recovery from this surgery, it can take up to 2-4 weeks, but I would love to be functioning again next week (god is powerful). Also, we have some financial matters to complete and certain long-term planning that we really want God's wisdom to work through. Also, we sent in all our passport applications, and we would really like those returned without any "hiccups". Only 18 more weeks, so please cover our family and team in prayer as we finish this preparation time. Peace my friends!