Sunny Florida?

I'm pretty sure it's rained almost every day we've been here.  It might have something to do with that hurricane (is it even a hurricane?) off the coast.  I'm not really sure, but it has been pretty stormy.  So welcome to stormy Florida.  Luckily we don't really care.

We've been able to get some time at the pool a few times when it's been nice.  We finally decided to put water wings on the kids and have them try them since they had never used them before.  Game.  Changer.  It was great.  They did awesome!  Leah took A LOT of warming up to them, but eventually she got the hang of it and went crazy.  It was really fun to see them so happy.

The transition has been a lot harder on all of us than we anticipated.  Noah is still having a pretty hard time and throws a lot of fits.  Leah is still being super defiant (did I ever share the story about her hiding from us in Kohl's?).  It's not all sunshine and giggles in our house, that's for sure.  So we're taking it all in stride.

We did do something fun though with the kids.  We designed a photo album of Venezuela pictures.  We let the kids pick a lot of the pictures and told them they would have it to look through whenever they missed Venezuela or felt sad.  We're hoping it will help with some of their emotions and help them communicate a little better.  We're trying to help them express what they're feeling, even if it's being mad at us.  Maybe this will help.

If we look at both Jeremiah and Jesus, we learn pretty soon how living for God does NOT equal personal comfort.  Living for the Lord and becoming increasingly uncomfortable go hand-in-hand.  When you and I take our lives and add "with God" to them...we find ourselves saying and doing things we would have never done without him.                                    -Pastor Tim Farrell, from the church we attended this week

Dependence, humility, simplicity, cooperation, abandon--these are qualities greatly prized in the spiritual life, but extremely elusive for people who live in comfort.             -Yancey

These two quotes resonate a lot with us right now.  We've noticed our tendency to want more, feel like we need more and just have an overall sense of entitlement.  We really want comfort right now.  We want things to feel easier.  And it's almost been a bit comical to watch as random things go wrong here. Like our dryer being broken, water leaking into our place soaking the living room and our bedroom carpet and missing things from our suitcases that we're positive we packed from Venezuela.

God is redefining our comfort.  He wants us to rely on him, regardless of how comfortable we try to make our lives.  So we sit back and we take these things as they come.  In our worst moments we yell at each other and treat each other badly.  In our best moments we laugh and say things like, "it feels a little bit like living in Venezuela."

And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life?  Matthew 6:27