The Drain

Hello All!

I hope your Lenten season is going better than mine (whose bar is depressingly low right now). I have to say I'm disappointed in my steadfastness. I have done pretty well with my no meat lenten fast, but I don't feel that I have accomplished much with it. I'm actually thinking I may extend parts of my lenten sacrifice through the summer. The Great Deceiver has definitely been at work on my person the last few weeks. I am nearing exams, and we've all had bouts of sickness, meaning that I've had to skip class, stay up late (if not all night), and stress about the wacky process of getting into pharmacy school. I always thought I handled stress very well, but throw a couple of kids into the mix and it is a whole new monster!

At times like these, I am fascinated and in awe of single parents. I know I joke about being a preacher's widow, but at least I know that if I need Mike for something, he is usually right down the road. I have the luxury of going places by myself if I need to, and of telling someone else that it's their responsibility to wash the crayon off the wall and change the light bulbs in the nine foot ceiling. And if I whine and complain enough, I can convince my husband to take the kids somewhere for an hour so I can clean without a small person coming directly behind me like a wrecking ball. This also applies to the parents whose spouses work out of town, or for other reasons can't be as available to help at home.

I catch myself complaining all the time about how tired I am, and how the kids are driving me crazy. But four days a week, I spend two hours with a guy who makes me feel so unjustified in those claims. Geoffrey and his wife met and married at a mission in Nigeria, Africa shortly before he came to the states to attend school. How he landed here, I don't know, but I have known him for the last two years and he has greatly blessed my life. His wife is a nurse, and he is an orderly at Cooper Green Hospital in downtown Birmingham (this is commonly known as the indigent hospital). They have two children, who he really only sees on the weekend because he works all night and drives straight to school once he leaves there. He sleeps in his car in between classes. He maybe has an hour or two to go home and change clothes, eat a little something, before he is back at it again. But he insists on taking Saturday for his family and Sunday for the Lord, who he has no reservations about praising in honest joy and sincerity to whoever will listen. We have spent many hours this semester speaking our love of the Lord rather than studying chemistry as we should have been doing, but I can't regret choosing Him over NMR spectra.

I pray for Geoffrey constantly. That he makes it into medical school, that he and his family are blessed by the sacrifices they have to make. That the Lord watches and protects him and his loved ones when they finally move back to their homeland, and that his children don't resent their parents for moving them from 'their' homeland, because they were both born in the U.S. And I pray that God would allow me to feel one tenth of the passion they feel for spreading the Good News of Jesus, no matter what the cost. So every time I feel so drained, like my joy has been leached out of my life, and I start to feel sorry for myself, I will remember Geoffrey, and cry tears of joy, sorrow, worry, and hallelujah over such a beautiful and inspiration man.