I turned 29 on Saturday. It was a pretty simple, quiet day but just lovely. It was the first birthday Gem and I have had together since 2006 so it was really special having her around. On Saturday morning Ryan got up to Nina so we were able to have a 8.30 sleep in. We then had Saturday morning pancakes as usual. Recently, we’ve started having them around the fire which is a bit slower but starting the day around a fire is pretty nice. After pancakes I headed off with Jem and Gem for a massage which was very relaxing and then we had lunch in town.

When we got home I did a couple of chores, although not many as Jem had divinely scrubbed my house from top to bottom as a birthday present. It’s probably the cleanest it’s been since Nina was born. Finally, we got Nina off to bed before our birthday dinner. It was just family, John and Marilyn and the kids and my friend Rosie but just what I wanted. The kids had made pass the parcel so we started the night with that which made me feel very young. Then we had dinner in the new big room and John said we needed to christen it with dancing so dance we did. It was pretty daggy buy so fun. Margrita wanted to play musical stautues which turned into musical chairs. It was the most I’d laughed in a really long time.

29th birthday sufficiently celebrated.

I’ve been meaning to post about this for awhile now. It probably really isn’t the time as it’s late and I really need to get enough sleep but a few posts on the feed about God’s call have inspired me.

Martin and I are heading back to Peru. November 27th we leave. I guess we have been saying we are going to go for as long as we’ve been married so it’s not really a shock but it feels a bit like one to me. I kind of had it in my head it was still a few years from now and then of all a sudden we were going.

It started a few months back. I had started looking at houses thinking that maybe it would be kind of nice to settle down. I knew that we had always said we’d go to Peru but buying a house in Alice Springs was feeling much more appealing. Alice has its challenges but buying a home here felt much more comfortable and safe.

Then we had a few visitors who’d just been in Peru randomly come to stay. They’d been doing some really cool stuff in the development sector and I got all excited about that again. I was feeling very torn. Then Martin decided to quit his job. He’d been feeling very unhappy there for a number of months and finally could no longer continue there with any integrity. When I told our visitors that he’d quit and while I respected his decision I was a bit nervous they just said that things like this open up other possibilities.

So we started to talk about Peru again. Do we go? If so when? What were we going to do there? Would we buy a house there? How long would we stay there? Where would we live? I was feeling very stressed by all these decisions. But I was in my Quaker meeting that week and I was reading Esther and a thought just came into my head. Just make the next decision. All of sudden it feel so clear. We’d go. I couldn’t make all those decisions but I could make the next one.

A week later we’d booked our tickets to Peru. I don’t know where we’ll go, what we’ll do, how long we’ll be there. Really I have no idea. All I know is that we feel called to go. I guess we just have to trust God in the rest. We have ideas and visions and hopes and dreams for what we’d like to do etc etc but we can’t really know anything else until we get there.

Some days I am relaxed with this, other days it stresses me out but Howie’s post tonight reminded me that in the end it’s not really about what we do or don’t do. It’s just about facing the challenge that’s been put in front of us with all that scares me, excites me, thrills me, depresses me and in that trying to love those around us and been open to what they have to offer and what God gives us to offer.