One week and counting.....

"Am I ready?", I am asked several times a day.  Ready... what is ready?  Packed? No.  Filled with a grand sense of purpose and an expected moment of fulfillment?  No. Ready to miss my kids and husband and pray they are safe while I am gone? No.  Ready to think of all the potentially scary things that could happen to me while traveling? No.

Ready to have my heart broken, ready to feel powerless while confronted with poverty and suffering on an overwhelming scale.  Yes.  Because I will never be able to prepare myself for any of these things.  All I can do is make myself available and pray that power beyond mine can work through me and do some good.  I go on faith... trusting that I may not see the results or understand the process, but believing that by making the efforts I can somehow be part of a solution.  Here is a prayer written by Thomas Merton that feels applicable....

"My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me.  I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so.  But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you.  And I hope that i have that desire in all that I am doing. I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire. And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road, though I may know nothing about it. Therefore I will trust you always though I may seem lost and in the shadow of death.  I will not fear, for you are with me and you will not leave me to face my perils alone."