Out of My Comfort Zone

I’m generally really good about not losing things.  I’m one of those everything has a place and everything in its place kind of people.  I’m the alphabetize your movies kind of person.  So, when I lose something it really bugs me. 

Somewhere along our road trip I lost the charger for my Kindle - my brand new Kindle I got for my birthday.  My birthday was the day we left for the trip.  Sad, I know.  So, for now, my reading has been limited to the few books we brought with us.  It’s a limited selection.  However, the book I’m currently reading, entitled Spiritual Parenting, by Michelle Anthony, happened to have just what I needed the other day. She writes:

“When my daughter was only eighteen months old, my husband received a phone call offering him a position teaching at a college in Kenya for three months.  My daughter was just a baby, and I wasn’t far from that either. I was a very young mom still trying to figure out this whole thing called parenthood.  During those months in a little village called Kijabe, I grew in ways that are hard to define.

I grew as a woman, as a mother, as a wife, and as a child of God. I was desperate most days, I cried out to God to help me, support me, strengthen me, and befriend me.  I didn’t have any of the luxuries that I had at home…I was profoundly lonely, and I was raising a child without the community of my friends or my family in a foreign place.

During those months that would ultimately shape my life as an adult and a parent, God taught me an enormous amount about simplicity and what was most important in the grand scheme of life.  By the time I left my tour of duty in Kenya, I felt as though I could conquer anything in parenting with God by my side.  Looking back, I see that God was setting up the posture of my heart toward this environment of being out of my comfort zone.”

You can probably see how this spoke to me.  I definitely have my lonely days here in Mexico City.  I have my times when I wonder what I’m doing as a parent.  I’m out of my comfort zone.  I pray that at the end of my time here in Mexico that I, like Michelle Anthony, can say that I have grown, that I have trusted God, and that I am somehow more comfortable outside of my comfort zone.