Dawn in the Land Down Under

I've long lost any sense of what time it should be, at least according to when I woke up this morning. It's just after dawn here, and since I slept a good portion of the flight, it almost seems right, save for the 4-5 hours I've been awake during the end of the flight. Still....

Nykki was concerned I'd be feaking out. We weren't checked in for our next flight (or the one after that). Our luggage is -supposed- to be moving to our next flight, save the stroller, which in theory is coming up here to meet us for a plane-side check. So much is out of our hands that normally I would be a bit stressed about it, on a good day.

However the blur of jet lag is making me feel... well, a lot of things right now are no longer in my control, so I'll have to let what happens happen. Hopefully the luggage makes it, but I suspect it will. The stroller isn't a huge loss, as the toddler seems to thrive on airports, running around them with an energy I envy. And the rest? We'll make it happen.

Perhaps I'm mellowing. Or it's the jetlag. Perhaps a bit of both. These last two legs are what remain between us and stopping for a while. And the stop will be more unplugged that we get, even on vacation most of the time. (At least until I can fix the network there. It seems they have problems with it and email. We'll see when we get there, I suspect.)

I'm tired. I'm ready for the travelling to be done, I think. Tired of airports and cramps planes. Not much longer now.

Step 3: Brisbane to Port Moresby

On the ground in Brisbane after a flight that continued to run smoothly. Miriam slept most of the way, and then watched Playhouse Disney and Dora on the in-flight entertainment system, and did not annoy our row-mate overmuch. She also did not cry. American Airlines checked us through only to here, so they have a lookout for our bags and are planning to take them off the carousel and recheck them. Similarly, our stroller was planeside checked and is hopefully going to be returned to the transfer desk.
This makes me anxious.

I am wearing a skirt now, unfamiliar as it feels, and have read the section on Melanesian culture in my travel guide. The Highlands are spoken of universally as a wild and fierce people, but fascinating. I cannot imagine - I do not know what to expect. I am a little bit afraid.

My Angel is experimenting with Tok Pisin, and seems to have the basic grammatical structure down. It is mainly a matter of vocabulary from here. We read the phrasebook portion of the Lonely Planet guide and toyed with roots of words. And soon we will see how right we are...

Half hour from now we're to check in at the transfer desk once again. Hopefully we'll have boarding passes. Then when we land in Port Moresby, we clear New Guinean customs before boarding the last leg. And then...

fly by post

in the air somewhere over the ocean. so far an unetentful flight. tot slept 8hrs or 6re, and is watching dora. 2h of flight time left.

Message sent from a passenger onboard a Qantas flight

Limit your reply to 160 characters or message may be truncated.

Step 2: LAX to Brisbane

Flight from O'Hare was smooth, almost disturbingly so. Only the bit where she poured apple juice all over her car seat was problematic. And the bit where we lost her snack cup. And the bit where she threw her goldfish everywhere. Small bits, really; overall this has been uneventful.

We've an hour to go before departure from LAX for Brisbane, and she hasn't stopped moving yet. We're both hoping this presages a crash lasting most of the overnight flight so we can get some sleep.

So far I've managed not to snap at my Angel for anything, and he hasn't been too grumpy despite irregularly ordering coffee, and we're going to Brisbane and it's so surreal I can hardly stand it. I guess I lack the ability to comprehend anything but the 14 hours facing us now, let alone the rest of the trip.
We've claimed a conversational semicircle of chairs for our things. She is running in circles with infantile mania; explaining to us how to wear our in-flight neck pillows; looking out the window at the planes.

Lord, grant me strength...

I keep reflexively checking my hip for my pager and almost panicking when it's not there. It feels very strange to be away at last. For good, even.

Step one: Get to LAX.

It's 7 pm home time, 6 Chicago. Miriam is watching the airplanes through the terminal window and getting excited. I don't know how much she understands; she tells me we're going "up inna sky" on the airplane, and she explains quite well that out endpoint is Papua New Guinea, but she's also quite sure that we're going to see Grandma and Auntie Chelly there. I'm not sure how much I understand, really.

It's starting to become real, now that our luggage is checked and we're ready to fly. We'll have to pick it up in Brisbane, the way things stand now, and check in all over again. I only hope everything arrives with us.

Suffer ye the little children...

I'm sitting on the South Shore line, watching my daughter make friends with a little girl she just met, chattering nonstop. I'm watching, and wondering where this extroverted creature came from. I look at strangers and I'm afraid - so worried about what they'll think, what they'll say - that simple conversation is a daunting task. What if I say the wrong thing? What if they don't like me? What if...
And I begin to understand what it means to be "like a child" - to know no strangers, to be ready to wonder, to approach the world with curiosity and joy. There are no 'what if' moments for Miriam - no worrying about what others will think. She just is - herself - without any artifice.

And what she is is beautiful.

"I tell you the truth, anyone who will not receive the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it."
- Luke 18:17

On a warm summer evening, On a train bound for somewhere

And we're off. Taking the train from our sleepy university town to The
Big City. We made the train with perhaps five, ten minutes to spare.

Tonight: a late night train. Tomorrow, a late night flight. And then...

Leaving work was hard. I won't miss the frustrations. But I will miss
the people. Even some of the customers, believe it or not.

For now, I'll follow the track laid before me.

Leaving On a Jet Plane

I have two days left at work. It's becoming incredibly surreal here, the prospect of 30+ hours of airports and airplanes inching closer. And then... Then the Highlands of Papua New Guinea.

Part of me didn't think we'd actually go. Something would come up, whether it was the swine flu scare closing airports or something more likely, such as licensing not happening. But here we are.

I think I'm fearing the plane ride more than actually going. Eighteen hours in the air. Miri is normally so wonderfully well behaved, but I get stir crazy on trans-Pacific flights, I can't imagine it as a two-year-old. (Though I did do one at four. I don't really remember it, though.) Airports make me edgy. Travel makes me edgy, actually. I just want to -be- there, don't want to deal with all the tedious mucking about in the space, and time, in between. My family's habit of always being pathologically early doesn't help my psyche when it abuts Nykki's more European time frame. Lord grant me patience for this trip, as I suspect I will need it.

I waited patiently for the Lord; he inclined to me and heard my cry.

²He drew me up from the desolate pit, out of the miry bog, and set my feet upon a rock, making my steps secure.

³He put a new song in my mouth, a song of praise to our God. Many will see and fear, and put their trust in the Lord.

⁴Happy are those who make the Lord their trust, who do not turn to the proud, to those who go astray after false gods.

⁵You have multiplied, O Lord my God, your wondrous deeds and your thoughts toward us; none can compare with you. Were I to proclaim and tell of them, they would be more than can be counted.

Do not, O Lord, withhold your mercy from me; let your steadfast love and your faithfulness keep me safe forever.

Psalms 40:1-5,11

Here I am...

It's late at night - midnight-fifteen or so - between Wednesday night and Thursday morning. I've been staring at the blank "compose" box on Blogger for two weeks or more now, trying to figure out how to write a first post.
I don't think I got it right.

These last two weeks - on call every third night for 24 hours at a shift - have been a whirlwind of trying to prepare for something I don't think I'm prepared for. Packing, purchasing, washing, and reading. We have bibles from World Medical Missions - a translation I like, with my name silk-screened onto the softcover. And I've thumbed it and read the passage that was inscribed on the gifting page, and stared at it. And I'm not ready.

I wasn't ready when we knelt in front of the church, with their hands on us and the little one, and prayed for blessings and strength and understanding. But I felt the power there anyway, and the Holy in the touch, and I thought maybe I could be ready. If I had time to think.
I haven't gotten it - that time - there are so many things I have to do before I go that every moment is packed full of doing and there isn't any time for reflection, and now it is Thursday and we leave on Saturday.

Thirty hours in the air: Chicago to LA to Brisbane to Port Moresby to Mount Hagen. We leave at 1900 local time on Saturday; we arrive at 1600 local time on Monday. Somewhere in the air between LA and Brisbane, Sunday evaporates like so much wind, and we land thirty hours and two days later. The idea of this flight - that is real to me, as real as the concrete understanding that we will be seventeen hours with a two-year-old who possesses very few skills that approach logical reasoning in the air. I am terrified by the travel.

I am not prepared for the arrival, for the journey from June 1st to July 2nd, for what is going to befall us in the Highlands. I have not had time to think about it - about the inevitable changes that will befall me, about the challenges that I will face. About what it means to put aside all of the familiarity and comfort of home and go where I am sent.
I am afraid I may not be a very good light on a hill. I am sometimes unsure that I am any sort of light at all, really, coming as I do from a church where evangelism is an uncomfortable and alien term. I find it awkward - frighteningly so - to use the word God in meaningful conversation, let alone to talk about Jesus or salvation or any of those terms from which the modern world has stripped the holiness. They feel empty, trite, as if I am falling into line with an -ology lacking the theos, the sanctity. And so I don't talk about it - I just do what I do and I pray that there is healing in my words and my hands, and I whisper to the Holy in the dark moments and the bright - but I don't talk about it. They want me to talk. To spread the Word that I feel so incompetent to speak about. To evangelize. And I don't know if I can do that.

I know I'm not prepared. I can't quote Scripture and verse. I haven't read the things I wanted to. I'm skimming and cramming for culture while Matt ponders learning Tok Pisin and political and anthropological depths of something I barely comprehend. But I want to go. I want to find myself immersed once again in another world, to feel the power of infinite complexity that shows in all creation. And I have to believe that it's enough that I am willing. I have to believe that the voice within is the voice of the Holy, and that I am a vessel for a love I cannot contain more than one iota of.

Because, after all,

He has showed you, O man, what is good.
And what does the LORD require of you?
To act justly and to love mercy
And to walk humbly with your God.

- Micah 6:8