"With grace my feet, and faith my eyes"

This is the point in time where I think I'm supposed to be unable to sleep from excitement and anticipation. And, while it is 1 a.m., I can't quite muster the words, "I'm excited!" in anticipation of the next couple days. I'm wondering a bit what is wrong with me - shouldn't I be basking in the glow of international travel? Of new shoes and passports and glossy magazines to read on the plane?

Maybe it's that I've done this a few times and I know what it's really like, but recently this entire process of preparing and going to Lithuania has not been one of tremendous enthusiasm. I nearly lost it crying on two separate occasions this week - not because I'm leaving, but because I'd been disconnected 4 times by Sprint and twice by my credit card company while attempting to clean up some of the messes created by having had my purse stolen last week. Tears of frustration are not nearly so romantic as tears of good-bye.

So, it has been a hard and stressful process to get these three bags packed, one dictated less by the Spirit than by my to-do lists. This is the real side of obedience - the place where you spend hours on hold and begin to realize just how much you'll miss American coffee.

On our way home from a movie tonight, Kelli and I were talking about love and how true love messes up your schedule. Real love will upend your life and your plans, and you won't care. This is true in romance, and it should be true with the Lord. When we really love Him, it will indeed interfere with every aspect of our lives. He will upend them, and if we love Him, we won't care.

At the beginning of this adventure, going to Lithuania didn't feel like a burden or an act of obedience, but rather like a beautiful gift, one I could hardly imagine I was worthy to recieve. That's what it feels like to obey out of love - it doesn't feel like obedience at all. Now tonight and these past weeks, this gift, this adventure has not felt like the beautiful present that it did back in April. I'm over the honeymoon stage and I haven't even gotten on the plane yet! Nevertheless, I think this is the time where learning to love and obey God start to become more difficult, but, like all relationships, this is where the good stuff - the deep heart stuff - really begins.