When All Your Dreams Come True

What do you do when all your dreame come true...but they are not what you expected or dreamt?

I am not even sure that question make sense, but it is the place I have found myself over the last few months. Everything I dreamt and prayed about was happening. I was here in London where so many people's dreams come true but there were times I did not feel so happy to be here.

Now don't get me wrong  I am super excited to be here. I feel this is where we are supposed to be but there have been some hard and lonely days.

There have been some days where I have wondered if we made the right decision. Days when it seemed like what I wished for was not the reality of what we got. Days when I wondered if we had anything to offer, anything to give. Days when I worry for my girls and wonder if we put our dreams before their needs.

Moving to the mission field ( wherever that may be for you) is never an easy thing. Even if it is all you dreamed and prayed for. When the excitement of being in a new place wears off, your left with a broken heart for people you left behind, for a ministry you left behind. You long for days where things were easy.( where you know your way around, you know the bank system, you know how to pay your bills, etc). You long for recognition of who you are and what you done (no matter how superficial that might seem), you long for a minstry of your own..something to sink your teeth into.

There are some really hard days where you want to pack it up and go home to all that is familiar and where you actually felt like you  were at HOME. To a place you felt needed and appreciated and loved ( oh how it looks different after the fact haha)

So what do you do when all your dreams come true, but it is not turning out the way you dreamt it would?

Well I cried a little (or maybe a lot), I sat at home and ate far too much chocolate. I watched numerous episodes of Come Dine with Me, I sat in a room upstairs with my daughter and cried some more.... but I also dug into the word and into God.

As I began to let his word sink in, I decided that nothing was about to change anytime soon, and I just spent time talking to the Lord. Me and the Lord has some pretty full on honest conversations in those early days.

But as I clung to him, he became my home and refuge. I asked him to show me the blessings around me, I asked him to give me new vision, fresh eyes. I asked him to remind me why we chose as a family to do missionary service.

He reminded me. We chose this, becasue we wanted to be uncomfortable, we wanted to be challened,  we chose it so our children would experience the world and many different cultures, we chose it because we felt God could use us and we chose this because we wanted to be a part of building Gods kingdom. None of those things had changed... and it seemed we forgot that is what we prayed for. Yet he had not forgotten and  he reminded me.

He challenged me about about my desire to be comfortable even here, he challenged and rebuked me for my judgements about people who had served overseas before us,  he challenged me about my desire to be known and for my past accomplishments to be known. He challenged me about my selfishness and small world thinking. He made me depend on him and not my surroundings.

Even on days when I felt lost and alone he was with me and together we got through those days. We still get through those days together.

And now 4 months into this journey I see the plans he had for us all along coming into view.  We cant see the whole picture yet but we see glimpses of the future. We see that God has not sent us here and then just forgotten about us. I am seeing HIS dreams coming together and starting to form into something beautiful.

So what do you do when all your dreams come true....you give them to God and ask for HIS dreams to come true instead.  They are much better than anything you could dream up.

Shopping in London

So shopping in London has been an interesting experience. It has everythng you could possibly want, but not where you might expect or want it to be.

There is no Target or Walmart here and you could say some Supermarkets like Sainsbury or Waitrose are miniture ones of those, but truly they are not the same. There is no one stop shop for it all. Which is fine I guess, except when you want it all in one place.

Case in point...we do public transport and so the least amount of traveling you have to do when shopping with two little ones is best, but that is kind of impossible here. When planning for Alina's bday party I had to go to one shop for the food, another shop for her present, another shop for the plates etc, and a few different shops for the decorations and table items and another place for pictures. It was a bit of pain to say the least.

Now shopping online is a big deal here, but I am a visual person and I need to see it in front of me. There is a store here called Argos which is kind of like Target, execpt there is no store...you go into the "store" read through a huge giant catalog, write down what you want, pay for it and then stand in line while they get it or send it to you.Ahhh I hate it. I want to walk through aisles and see things for myself, touch and feel things. It does save you money though as you don't generally do any impulse shopping.

Also stores here close EARLY. There is only one late night of shopping and that is Thursday nights. Otherwise stores shut at 6pm and supermarkets around 10pm. Supermarkets shut at 4pm on Sundays.

I don't really have a problem with this, as it is nice that people don't have to work all crazy hours and that life is not centered around shopping, but it is a pain on Sunday evenings and you have not planned ahead...which is usually my case.

There are a whole lot of mom and pop type shops here and I do like that. I like that big corporations like walmart have not taken over and families get to have their own business's. It's just a pain for a lazy person like me who doesnt want to have to go to a million places to get what I want.

I can say though that I do not shop like I use to. No heading to target to buy things I don't need. I really have to need something in order for me to make the effort. Also I don't have anywhere to store it and so unless I am going to use it, I am probably not going to get it.