After traveling for almost a week and making many stops along the way David and I finally arrived in Reno late last Thursday. We are staying with his parents. We spent a long day Friday shopping for essentials: good close toed shoes, sterling silver wedding bands, underwear, a camera tripod. It looks like Reno will be the final resting place of a good portion of the stuff we packed up for India because a check on the airlines website reveals that our checked baggage weight limit is 50lbs not 70lbs as we had optimistically assumed in the beginning. We are going to have to lighten up yet again. The last couple of months are beginning to look a lot like EGW's dream of the little company traveling on a narrow ledge who had to continue leaving stuff behind and tossing it over to keep going. At least trying to make it all fit is going to give me something to do. I've been involved in frantic activity for so long that the lack of it has been alarming and disorienting. Some of the busyness has dissipated leaving behind it a vauge desperation and swirling memories without any tangible object. I'm almost relieved to have some crisis to direct all my residual anxiety towards.
What's worst is the not doing. People keep asking me if I'm scared? Scared? I'm impatient. One has no time or mental energy after the house is gone and the stuff has all been dispensed with for regret or uncertainty. The decision has been made. It is no longer up for review. Such determination and single mindedness does not attest to any saintliness on my part but just a good dose of choleric. If I were a saint. I would go more patiently. I would go more quietly. It was alright when I was surrounded by to do lists and piles of boxes and paint cans. It was awful, but I was busy. This sitting and waiting is much harder. This limbo world between the worlds where nothing moves and no one belongs is terrible. If I were a saint I would not be afraid of the silence.
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Not knowing his destination, Abraham obeyed God and went to a land he would be given. He wandered like a stranger in the land promised to him because he was looking for a city designed and built by God. He died believing without receiving the promise but having seen it from a distance, a stranger and exile on earth. People who wander are not thinking of the place they came from or they could easily return. They desire a better, heavenly country. They please God and he has built a city for them.
Not All Who Wander Are Lost
"A wandering Aramean was my ancestor; he went down into Egypt and lived there as an alien, few in number, and there he became a great nation, mighty and populous.
When the Egyptians treated us harshly and afflicted us, by imposing hard labor on us, we cried to the LORD, the God of our ancestors; the LORD heard our voice and saw our affliction, our toil, and our oppression.
The LORD brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, with a terrifying display of power, and with signs and wonders; and he brought us into this place and gave us this land, a land flowing with milk and honey."
Deuteronomy 26: 5-9
2 comments:
you could look into overweight charges for baggage on the airlines as it may be more inexpensive to pay the overage then purchase some items a second time or for an increased price in India.
I'm afraid it won't be. United has a basic overweight charge of $50 up to 100lbs but our connection flight is with a Russian airline, aeroflot, and they charge 15 euros per kilogram over 23 kg. That's approximately $15 per lb. There are very few things that weigh 1lb or less and cost more than $15 USD in India
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