Living Life in the Little Things...

Kewpie Dolls are alive and well selling Mayonnaise in China

 

If you finish making s'mores cupcakes and there is just a little chocolate frosting left it should be eaten not put in the fridge!

Sugar Dives are always a good pick me up especially if they come with lots of love from a friend from the original Sugar Dive in Nashville!

Can you say yummy?!?!?!  No, I did not eat it all at once!

If the Label on the chocolate states that it is "Quality Squared" does that count as a square meal?

5:30am is never to early for breakfast at McDonald's with friends who are visiting

No matter how beautiful the basket from the orphanage staff is, or how grateful they are...it doesn't make me miss my babies less, just makes me grateful that the staff they are returning to cares.

Things I have learned in China- if you run out of the really nice cotton rounds for cleaning your face- eye patches are a good substitute and since we have pretty close to 2500 of them it will be a few days before those run out.

If traffic seems more congested that usual look for John Deere...this was the first of 15!

Note to self if you are feeling a little homesick, sipping iced tea and reading Southern Living's Welcome Home Porch edition is not a wise decision!- Now I do need that Squared Chocolate!

Dear Marketing- If you hope to break into business in the west you will need to loose the whole snail thing...not really planning to put this on my face no matter how intense the care may be.

I have lived here for years and I will never get used to the crooked pictures...I want to straighten them every time I walk by but they will be moved back so as not to allow evil spirits to perch themselves on the straight edges of the frames

Chips from Pleasanton, California! Who would have guessed?

Treasured Avacados from the Philippines

Daddy and Uncle Ron would be so happy with me! Yes- I did slice it right onto toast and just eat it up thinking of you all!

Sunday Scribbles

 

A usual Sunday morning here in the Big House would mean rounds at 9:00am instead of 8:00am.  It would mean that I would probably try to make something for us for breakfast before we nurses joined the others on the 6^th floor for a time of singing a few praise and worship songs and praying together before we ate lunch as a group.  Usual would be only one or two interruptions to run check on children or answer an ayi’s question.  But this is not a usual Sunday morning.  This morning I find myself alone in the Big House…by alone I mean without other foreign staff/family.  I stood on the steps and waved goodbye to the Martin family as they drove off this morning headed for Beijing and without the other nurses in house I felt alone- I should be getting used to this feeling!  I poked my head into a couple nurseries double checking a few little ones as I made my way to a quiet spot.  Praise music playing in the background I reached for my Bible and out fell the notes…you know all those little pieces of paper that you jot things on when you are sitting and listening.  I rarely have the opportunity to attend a fellowship where a message is being taught so you better believe that when I do there are scribbled notes here and there on whatever scraps of paper I can find and they are tucked away in the pages to be gone over again.  So now here I sit with these notes.  I turn them over in my hands reading edges and borders with things like:

Ø  Abide in Christ really abide in Him- when we are living in a foreign land, far from what is familiar, we are at home if we are abiding in Him.  “Abide Consistently, Obey Instantly.”

Ø  In abiding there is the promise of a Helper, and the promise God made to His people still rings clear, “I will put My law within them and on their heart I will write it.” (Jeremiah 31:33b) Am I learning that Law well enough for God to write it deep unto my heart and soul so that I am able to obey instantly His truth?

Ø  How do I react to truth?  “Men stumble over the truth from time to time but most pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing ever happened.” –Winston Churchill  

Ø  Vocation or Occupation… It is not one in the same but rather the finer points that separate one from the other.  One is simply a job that you do, while the other is what you spend your life and energy for.  There is a difference seen in who and why you do either and or both.  There were scrawls along the edge of the page…Nursing here has it become my vocation rather than my occupation?  Often the nursing that I do feels as if it is the only value that I have and that my occupation of being a nurse becomes the priority over the vocation I have as a member of the Body of Christ, a blood bought bond servant of the Most High God.  My skill set is not where my value lies.  Words ringing true reminding me that I have a vocation that has an eternal value and that I need to focus on that… hooray for reminders in the scribbles and scripts that make me think about and consider the hard stuff.

 

"Momma, I Don't Feel Good"

July 3, 2014

Dear Ones,

“As one whom his mother comforts,

So I will comfort you:”

Isaiah 66:13a

  “Momma, I don’t feel good.”  I could hear the grogginess in her voice on the other end of the line it was clearing quickly but I knew I had awakened her but I also knew that it was OK.  In the wee hours of her morning, it was OK.  I had only been in Beijing for a couple of days, it was a quick temporary transition to provide nursing coverage to the unit here and now I was alone away from familiar and I had spent the past couple of hours on the floor in the bathroom vomiting.  I was exhausted and all there was left was a miserable sick feeling and the occasional dry heaving.  I needed my momma, so here I was calling her not because she could hold me physically from the other side of the globe but simply because that is what you do when you know that Momma’s soothing voice even over skype will help make some of the yuckiness of it all go away.  There were the gentle quiet questions, “How many times have you thrown up, is there any Sprite in the fridge where you are staying, do you have any medicine you can take, are you running a fever?”  I am a nurse and an adult but no matter how old I get I still find comfort in hearing her ask me all of these questions.  I know that Daddy couldn’t run to the store to get me Ginger Ale and sherbet or stand guard to see if there was more he could do or messes he could help clean up, and I knew that Momma couldn’t sit on the floor by me wiping my head with a cool wet cloth and tell me it would be over soon like she did so many times as I was growing up but still waking them and having the response be the same somehow in the vomiting of it all made me feel better.  There really was no one else I could call, no one else was here.  After spending a good amount of time watching me by skype, praying over me and waiting to make sure I could find a can a sprite somewhere in the strange surroundings we said goodbye, with the promise that they were going to call back in a bit to check on me.

   I pulled myself upright,  and went to finish my duties, I double checked everything afraid that in my fog I would miss something all the while praying hard that God would take special care of each of us tonight , me and my little ones.  As I lay back down in the little room I was staying in hot and flushed, I began to ponder the moment I found myself in and a tear slipped down my cheek- just for reference it is never good to mix tears with nausea and vomiting as it usually ends in a worse headache than you started with but there it was.  I thought of the story of Elisha and the Shunammite woman and how when her promised little boy was out in the field with his father and began to complain of not feeling well that his father instructed the servants to carry him to his mother.  How when they brought him to her she sat him in her lap, because that is where sick little children should be. I began thinking about each of my little ones and praying that by God’s grace they will have the chance to lay on the floor of a bathroom, sick and vomiting and call their Mommas, what an incredible blessing I have been graced with.   The tears fell as I prayed once again that God would send them each Mommy’s who will teach them what it is to be comforted.  I want them to know what it is to have a mother’s hand rub their back and wipe tears and sweat from their feverish faces.   To know the safety and relief that comes from a trot down the hallway in the dark of the night to a mother’s bedroom where at the sound of your voice she is awake and ready to take action…”Momma I don’t feel good.” 

Grace Alone,

Mariah

PS:  Just so none of you are worried about me I am all better, very grateful that whatever hit my system only lasted about 18 hours.