Familiar things

Moral of the story: avoid driving in foreign countries. You will never reach your intended destination. What was supposed to be a trip to Cassis, a coastal area with rock climbing and cliff diving into the Mediterranean sea, turned into a day long trip to Marseille. Making the best of it, the boys and I participated in the ultimate tourist activity--the petit train. A tour of the ancient port city was quite entertaining for me and I am thrilled that I had the opportunity to spend a day in Marseille. Tomorrow will be another adventure, for I am headed off to several surrounding villages and petite villes in the surrounding area. I am incredibly excited.

Tonight was a no-recipe, no-instruction-from-Laetitia Chinese dinner on me. I love being able to help out around the house and take initiative. I am so excited to one day have my own house and prepare dinner for my kids and my husband. I am in the midst of something grand, something vital for my development. I continue to see bits and pieces of what He is urging me to focus on right now. I teeter on the rocky edges of homesickness frequently as of late, but I think it's mostly a longing for something familiar. I am to the point that I even get excited to listen to American 80's music. We all know that any music circa 1985 is not quality. But, it's familiar.

Familiar: a word so casually spoken, an idea so often overlooked. The word shares the same root as "family." Everyone knows that if all else fails, your family will console you and there is a certain unexplainable comfort level within the family unit that cannot exist with anyone else. Human nature lends to a sense of satisfaction in clarity, in comfort. Culture barks at everyone to "be different," forgetting to mention that if everyone is different, everyone is the same in their difference. We are only set apart by what we believe. When what we believe is both different from culture's pressing influences and true, what is familiar to us is not what is comfortable, or what is clear. Familiarity becomes less about our external surroundings and more about our internal mindset. Suddenly, something new can be familiar because He is there and He is familiar. Make sense? I find that the more familiar He is to me, the more familiar/comfortable is my journey. How true it is that if I am urgent only to know Him, to make Him familiar to me, I need not even anticipate my next move. I am continually reminding myself to focus on this, to sew it into my mind as a way of life, an unshakable belief.

Oh, I could walk this tangent thought forever! But, I am officially tired and feeling a bit overwhelmed today so my thought will continue to digress into even greater confusion. So, here I say goodnight to you. I will record every fantastic view tomorrow, wishing all the while that I had you as my co-pilot here with me (wait, I would probably let you drive, cause we all know how great my driving skills are...).