for if you're anticipating rain

The last time I was in Nicaragua, it was the rainy season.

I mean really, REALLY rainy season. More water than you've probably ever seen in your life, unless you live in a tropical forest or under the sea.

And so as I'm building up expectations of what it'll be like when I step off the plane on Friday afternoon and onto Nicaraguan soil, in my mind, it's a steady downpour. I envision myself entering a place that is wet and rolling with run-off and scattered with milky puddles of water. But it won't be like that. Nicaragua is in a different season, one that is probably a lot dryer and a little cooler (probably still hot though) and breezier.

The point is - it'll be a different Nicaragua that I'm going to. I just keep having a hard time remembering that.

I spent some time the last hour just asking the Lord what that means, that as I prepare for this trip there is actually so much that I simply can't prepare for, because I just don't know. In my head, I can imagine that I know the drill, but I don't. I don't know what things will shape me this time around, what people, what events. It will be a different experience - I am a different me.

As I've been thinking about that, I've also been thinking that life in general looks different every single day, even when we think it will look the same. Our expectations are blown in so many regards, so much of the time. I have had very little luck trying to anticipate things in my life the past year, and yet I often have some warped sense of confidence about what life will be. I measure it out, I plan for one thing or the other, I expect things from my days. But stuff changes, you know? Even if we don't want it to.

Gosh, that's a hard thing for me, I'll admit. To know that life is not constant or predictable. But yet, it's a good thing too. It's a really really glorious and beautiful thing. The plan of the Lord is not still. He is showing us something different in each day he offers up, in each minute where he says "live this...walk through it...you won't be on the same on the other side".

So you can pray, if you'd like :) Pray for me and this trip, that it would be a time where I trust in the Lord's dreams and not my own, and where I throw aside expectations and wholly-heartedly receive the new things he'll teach me when I'm there.