Three days and counting . . .

We have only three days left before we leave for Ukraine. I think we're set. We're pretty much packed . . .stocked up on Pepto and peanut butter. We've both polished up our testimonies . . . but truth be told we don't know what to expect. I mean what's God doing sending this predominantly stay-at-home mom and busy, never-left-the-country husband of hers out of the country on a missions trip? Life has just been crazy these last few months, this trip pretty much topping the list. I would say at least 99.9% of the people I've told I'm going on this trip have gasped and said with shock and disdain, "What about your boys?" Don't feel bad, you overwhelming majority, I gasp at myself too. I mean, what am I doing? Okay, here's what I'm doing. I love my little boys like I could never have imagined. I want the best for them, in all circumstances. What I've always thought the best to be was to be with them . . .all the time. And I have been. I rarely have left them with sitters or family, even to date my husband or spend nights out with girlfriends. But really what I know in my heart is that above all, "I am my beloved's and He is mine." God wants me to go on this trip . . . I think mostly to support my husband who knew two years ago we would go on this trip. My boys will be in amazing hands while we are away, as well as in the Most Amazing Hands. Two of our dear friends will be staying in Ukraine as the rest of the team returns after two weeks. The wife said to me this week, "What an amazing seed you're planting in your boys. To make sacrifices for God's glory is good." The pain of missing my children for those two weeks and for them to miss me is a huge sacrifice. It will not damage them, though. I want them to know me as a woman who puts God first and I have hope that they will see this through this trip. It gets too easy to live like the world . . . a house, the jobs, the minivan, mattering way more than they should. If I tell Him I'm all His, I have to be ready to go where He wants me to go an do what he wants me to do. I think the boys are going to understand this someday. They'll probably want me to go back after I come home and start smothering them with two-weeks worth of back-logged hugs and kisses. I can't wait to show Aidan the pictures of the children that we gave his toys to, the very toys he picked out to go to children we would meet there. I can't wait to show the kids pictures of people whose names sound "different" to them and then explain that they are our new friends whom we won't ver see, on earth, again. It's an amazing blessing that God has put before us. It's exciting. I can't wait to blog some of the lessons I learned when we return. Dahsveedahnyeh!