Not to sound cliche, but the saying "when it rains, it pours" felt far too true for me this past weekend. Now first, I must say, this was anything but a normal weekend. Of course ever since moving to Indonesia, there really is not much of a "normal" to my life, but this was definitely far beyond the ordinary, even for living here.
First, almost all 6 of us have been sick with coughs for a week now. To add to that loveliness, mine moved to my lungs and both Tyler and I could hear the gurgling/wheezing of my deep breaths. My thoughts started drifting to pneumonia, just what I needed, right? Well, life moves on, and Tyler went to work last Friday as usual, going interior on a flight with another pilot who is training him. Well, because of weather later in the day the guys weren't able to fly home. They were literally right over Tarakan but unable to land because of weather, so they turned around and slept elsewhere for the night. I tried to take this change in stride, but my blood pressure started rising as I was seriously getting concerned about needing to see a doctor and get checked for pneumonia the next day.
As Friday afternoon wore on I could see storm clouds coming, and it began to rain. Now because of how the city's power is run (on generators), they often turn off the power for the whole city when there is a storm with lightning nearby. So, just as I was processing Tyler's absence for the night/what to cook for supper, the power goes out. Boom. Fortunately there is a reason most of us bring our gas ovens from America, and I could still cook up some eggs for supper despite the power outage. However, we have no water when there is no power, so simple things like cleaning up dishes, washing hands, flushing toilets, etc, gets a bit tricky. When the power didn't come back on after an hour and it was getting dark, I decided to meet a friend and her daughter for drinks with the kids just to pass the time (sitting in a dark house with no power in the heat is a challenge). I load up all 4 kids in the rain and we go out for drinks (some restaurants and stores have generators for such outages). When we finally got home the power had returned, thankfully. I finally get all kids to bed, clean up the dishes as quickly as I can, try not to think about the gurgling/wheezing in my lungs and go to bed, knowing I"ll be up during the night with the baby and anything else that might come up.
Come Saturday morning...we make our traditional pancakes for breakfast. By the time we finish and I am attempting to get things going for the day, 9:00 hits and BOOM, the power goes out. Again. Ok, so a few weeks back we were having LOOONG power outages, like 8ish hours for 2 days and then a day of rest. Begin cycle again. It'd been 1.5 weeks since we had a long outage, so I guess we got lazy. This was no 20 minute power outage. After 2 hours I was starting to feel desperate. Tyler wouldn't be home until 4ish (at that point), we were almost completely out of clean drinking water, I hadn't set aside extra water bowls/buckets for washing dishes or anything else, and I was concerned about my health. By the time my friend dropped by to pick something up, I pretty much fell apart. Though her plate was already full with a busy schedule, she graciously took 2 of the kids with her for a little drive and to get us more clean water for drinking, and also offered to take me to the doctor to get checked. After 4 hours with no power I was happy to load up all of us into the air-conditioned car and drop them off at her house for her husband to watch while she helped get me to the hospital. Thankfully there was no line and someone was able to listen to my breathing, take an x-ray, and decide I do not have pneumonia. I was very relieved about that but still a little anxious about the wheezing. With that worry put to rest for now, we returned to my friends house and spent the afternoon there trying to wait out the power outage. It ended up being another 7 hour outage. During the afternoon talk started to come from Tyler and the other pilot that they might not make it back. Again. Bad weather had closed in around the city they flew to that day, and they were stuck. Seriously?? I felt ready to drop with weariness and frustration. We went out with our friends for supper, since I had obviously not had any time to work at home all day. Unfortunately Katelyn had also not had great naps all day, and supper out was nice to be with people but I was completely exhausted and so was the baby. We made it through that and finally headed home to clean up and get to bed. Phew. Made it through the day.
That night I was so thankful to see an encouraging devotional that a friend shared on her facebook page. It was a reminder that He is enough. God's grace truly is sufficient in our weakness. When we are weak, He is strong. I don't write this to say that I did a great job, or even a good job, leaning into Him and letting Him be my strength. But even though I was "weak" and lost it a couple of times, He still showed up in the small things. He still carries me through when I can't see it, when I am too weak to ask for help or even when I don't know if I trust Him to carry me through it. A lot of what happened over the weekend was mostly inconvenient, uncomfortable, out of my control, frustrating. wearying, physically exhausting. I know my situation could be 10 times worse. I don't know how God can listen to all my whining and complaining about power outages and heat and illness and taking care of 4 kids alone when I have so much to be thankful for. One of my favorite books to study this last year has been James. I can truly understand and finally get what it means when he talks about trials and suffering (and I do mean more than power outage trials...it's been quite the journey for us in the last 2 years). For most of my life I think I've observed how to avoid trials, how to overcome suffering and trials, how to pray through a trial and wait for it to be over. But I've never learned how to LIVE IN trials. How to walk through it with grace. How to expect it. To pray not for it to just be over, but for these trials to count. Oh God, make this trial count! Use it to humble me, to teach me how to walk WITH You in life. We are not supposed to be surprised by various trials, but somehow I still am. Every time. And I want out. I want my comforts back! I don't like to have my character continually tested. Didn't I already go through this? Over. and over. and over again.
Another prayer that has been on my heart is to teach me STABILITY. As I go around and around these same mountains, I want to pray "Lord, help me be more stable. Help me learn from the past trials. When they come again, may I walk through it a little closer to You this time. " The Lord and His love and character never change. If that is true and I want to be like Him, then that is a quality to strive towards.
So back to the weekend... Sunday morning at around 6:00 a.m. the power goes out. I'm still sleepy and it hardly registers, but I immediately think "again?!" No way! Will this be 20 minutes, or several hours? Thankfully about 30 minutes later it turns back on. Well, our day is started, so I put together our normal baked oatmeal for Sunday breakfast and try to think about how I can do "church" at home with the kids. As I'm in the middle of an encouraging skype chat with Tyler's parents Tyler finally walks in the door. It is 10:45 a.m. Everyone is so happy and I am so relieved. I truly can't do this parenting this alone, I miss the companionship of the love of my life when he is gone, and I appreciate all that he does for our family even more when he's been gone. I also have to say that even though it was tough to be without him, I am thankful for the decisions the chief pilot made to be safe and land elsewhere. I am thankful that our pilots are trained to make sound and wise decisions, even if it is inconvenient! Praising the Lord for their safe return.
As Monday rolled around today I was entirely unprepared for the start of a new week. Caleb's first full week of school began today, as well as homeschooling Aaron in kindergarten. I'd done nothing to prepare, even leaving the dishes last night which meant a VERY loving husband meeting a very real need to clean them up while I homeschooled Aaron (2 hours of dishes, folks!) Well, only I will "know" all the things I couldn't get done or prepare for the week. The kids will have crackers instead of healthy homemade snacks for a few days, and eventually I'll get caught up on stuff. It's raining now and I can't help but wonder "will the power go out again soon? should I get showered before we have no water for awhile?" And life goes on. Deal with it as it comes. And pray for God's strength in our weakness, because He is ALWAYS stable. Always loving. He is Enough.
