The Grocery Cart

On a recent visit to the grocery store, as my friend Kristin and I were walking through the parking lot, a grocery cart full of bagged groceries came rolling away from the store and into the parking lot, heading straight towards us. I suppose we could've just taken it to the car, considered it a gift, and cooked dinner with whatever that kind soul had happened to purchase. But then the kind soul would've had no dinner, so we pushed the cart back towards to store, looking in all directions for a potential owner. The only person in sight was standing with his back to us, totally absorbed in obtaining a free pizza sample from the pizza sample guy standing on the curb. We parked the cart behind him, went on to get our own free pizza samples, and watched as he finished his pizza, turned around, and pushed his cart away as if nothing had happened. He had no idea that two random girls had saved all of his groceries from rolling away into oblivion.

You know, I'm pretty sure God does something like that for me at least five times every day. And I usually just keep eating my pizza, totally oblivious of the gratitude I owe Him.

Love the place you're in

I've been back in the US for over two months now and (as might be inferred from the profound silence on the part of this blog over the past two months) life has been moving along at full speed. There are a lot of things I enjoy about being back in my home country . . . being able to pay for all of my vegetables at the same time (with a credit card!) instead of scrounging up exact change for each pile of carrots I want to purchase . . . being able to simply drive to the store and buy new socks if I need them . . . eating moose tracks ice cream . . .

But there are also things I miss about life in Papua New Guinea . . . seeing people I know every time I go to the store . . . being able to walk everywhere . . . eating dinner with friends as a routine part of life . . .

Love the place you're in, that's what I say, because it would be far too easy to spend all your time missing the places where you're not!