Ale La (Go There)

in·ter·ces·sion /ˌin(t)ərˈseSHən/ noun - the action of intervening on behalf of another Last week, before flying out to California, I was awake in the middle of the night, feeling my baby move inside my growing belly bump and crying into a pillow. My friend Megan had just been told that the doctors thought her baby boy had cancer. This precious boy has eyes that light up when he smiles at you. He is the epitome of an almost three year old; he is learning to share, he loves being in any kind of water, and would watch episodes of Dinosaur King on repeat for hours if you let him. Cancer. I can’t even process that word when it is attached to Lester, and now the diagnosis has been confirmed as Acute Myeloid Leukemia. And so I pray, and in my prayers I invite other people to pray with me, but what those prayers look like might not be what you would expect. What I think of as prayer has changed a lot over the past 7 years. I used to think that ...

Love is the currency that keeps it's value, despite distance, time zones or experiences. I am so rich and blessed in love. Lately I have been thinking a lot about family. Some of the members of my "real" blood family came to visit me for this last MMI project in Cuzco, I have been saying goodbye to all the people who have become my family here in Peru, and I have been hearing about how one of our patients is  struggling through prognosis of terminal cancer without a family, so "family" has been on the brain. My "real" family arrived on the Saturday before the Cuzco project; my Mom, Dad, brother Michael and cousin Laura. I met them at the airport. We cried a little and hugged a lot. They got to meet all my MMIers and spend a week with us in the clinic. Having my blood family and my MMI family together for one week was both really wonderful and really strange. I kept wishing for more time, for more meals, for a larger table so that we all could si...

This morning I looked at my journal and realized that I've been neglecting all the stuff that is swirling around in my heart. It's cheesy, and I know a lot of people don't journal any more, but for me my journal is a place where I realize what I'm feeling in my day to day life. It's like talking to a close friend. It's the most honest place of my prayer life. It is full of mistakes, bad spelling, terrible handwriting and sometimes bad words, but I know that God can take it. He already knows all of that anyways. The problem is that for the past week, I haven't been journaling very much. It's more like I have been bullet pointing the things that happen in my day to day life, and avoiding how I feel about them. I arrived in Lima on Thursday afternoon and got settled in to my guest house in San Miguel. This guest house was a surprise plan. Which means, I thought I had a plan and then SURPRISE, this happened. I had originally planned on staying with some ...

I want to be real. Well, that’s only partially true. Here’s a statement that is a little closer to the truth.  I want to be real but also appear perfect, but also deep, deep down I want to be known. And because I want to be known, I know that I have to be real. I haven't done my taxes yet, my room is perpetually messy because I hate putting laundry away, and I swear more than you would like to think. Whew! So, here is a true confession. In the past week, I have had quite a few breakdowns. The first came quite unexpectedly, when I came home from Wednesday night with the kiddos at the church and was in a bad mood. I quickly retreated to my room and asked myself, “What the HECK?” (Truthfully, I did not say HECK but it started with H and had four letters) Then, I remembered... Breath in, breath out. It just so happens that I had been stuffing my emotions all day. In the morning I had a two hour conversation with a friend who has some tough stuff going on in her life, a...