Wait, we ARE still in Kansas

Last night as we were pulling out a couch into a bed for the girls to sleep on, we scared up three spiders.

“That’s brown recluse,” Jevon’s brother said.  So I killed one with my flip flop, and he killed one with his knife, but the third one retreated back into the dark safety of a deep crevice in the upholstery.  I ground the toe of my flip flop into the crevice where that wretched third one disappeared, but it was gone.  We might be paranoid, but Jevon and I decided to have Cali and Karina sleep on something else instead.

“I think God is preparing me for Brazil,” I told Jevon.  I guess sooner or later I have to face the fact that poisonous creatures can be a threat even in a house.

I was going to say “We’re not in Kansas anymore”, but wait!  This IS Kansas.

As our departure date nears, people have started asking me if I’m scared of the bugs and snakes and fish.  Well yeah, sometimes, especially when people show us episodes of “River Monster” and Jevon gets all homesick because this crazy stuff looks familiar to him.  If you want to know the truth, I’m half-afraid when I swim in the Lake of the Ozarks because I know there are snapping turtles in there.  Who knows if Jevon will actually be able to persuade me to swim in the Amazon where there are electric eels.

But the truth is, I feel most safe doing whatever God wants us to be doing.  None of us is immune to tragedy, as we all know by now.  But at the end of the day we have to be able to close our eyes, ignore the tickle at our feet and the paranoid voice in our brain yelling “spider!” (it’s probably just my own hair), entrust our lives and the lives of our children to God, and go to sleep.  Not because God never lets bad things happen.  But because He determines the results and He is there to help us through whatever happens.