Electric

So for the past 3 days the electric here seems to have decided to play a game of hide and go seek with us. It started Saturday morning when I woke up to my first rainy day since arriving in Honduras. It rained most of the day and dipped into what I now consider "very cool temperatures." The wind was howling and the sun had disappeared. There were times when I really thought that our tin roof was going to come flying off to leave us exposed to the world and everything mother nature had to offer. It was just crazy. I mean to be 90 one day and like 50 the next made me feel like I was back in Ohio. It was most certainly too cold to send our already sick kids outside to play. So we spent a miserable Saturday locked inside the house. The kids act as though it is about 20 below and at times I would like to agree. So they walked around the house in their long pants, sweat shirts, socks, shoes, and yes even their tabogans!

Then sometime Saturday evening it happened...we lost electricity. It was still out when we woke up Sunday morning and would remain off until early evening Sunday. However, our joy of having it back on would be short lived as it promptly went right back off only a couple of hours after being on. This time when it went off it stayed off until mid-day today. Then when it finally came back on it played the flickering game for the rest of the day just enough to keep us all crossing our fingers it wouldn't go back out for good again. I tell you this not for sympathy because that is the last thing my overreacting emotions need to be playing off of. However, I want you to grasp what we really have been dealing with the past few days. As we belly ached and complained our way through the hours of darkness I realized how pathetic we are. Somewhere in the past years we have forgotten how to do anything that doesn't require electricity and seemed helpless to entertain ourselves and live life without such a luxury. All I could think was "I have so much to do this can't be happening right now." Instead of complaining my time might have been better spent in other ways. Also I began to think of the darkness people experience in life every day. We all have walked through times of darkness and for a lot of us our instant reaction was to complain. We cried out to God and said why am I here and when will it end. We said this isn't a good time I can't deal with this now. We were so busy begging to be back in the light and living the life of ease that we missed the point of the darkness. We missed the lessons that could have been learned. Instead of spending my extra undistracted free time with my bible and journal in hand I opted to sit on my butt and complain about what was going on. I was so worked up about not having electric that i couldn't even enjoy the few moments of peace and slow paced living that it brought with it. So I challenge all of you to in your moments of darkness don't cry out why now but instead see what you can learn from the darkness and move on.