Pupukahi i holomua.

(unite to move forward)

With a sunburnt nose and about 1,000 new freckles, I returned from a family vacay to Maui, Hawaii. During our week on the island of the valley, my adventuring spirit delighted in ATVing all over a red dirt mountain, swimming with a sea turtle friend, and speeding through the air on a zipline. I owe my daily enjoyment of the sunrise to the time difference and I discovered that I love macadamia nuts.

It was a battle for me to go on this trip... I was nervous about requesting vacation time so soon after taking three weekends off for Africa. What I hadn't anticipated was my struggle with the sharp contrast of the luxury and indulgence of a vacation in Hawaii with the need and poverty I saw in Africa last month. Why do we get to splurge on ourselves for an entire week when there are people who can't afford their basic necessities for a day?

It's easy for numbers and statistics regarding the poor and needy to seem cold and distant. Orphans are easier to ignore before you know their names. They are easier to ignore before you see their faces. It is easier to pretend they're not real before you hold them in your arms. But once you do, everything changes.

[Radical. David Platt]

It's a question that, unfortunately, I don't know the answer to. I don't know if it's okay for us to spend frivolously instead of using the resources we have to meet others' need. I honestly don't know if it was okay for me to be in Hawaii.

My inner tension was coupled with tension from some very un-fun family dynamics during the trip. However, I believe there is a certain beauty in allowing our loved ones to see us at our weakest. To not hide the tears. To acknowledge the hurt. Though there was pain, revealing those wounds gives us the opportunity to heal them. To learn how to not hurt each other. To be aware of the way we love each other.

Color of the day: pacific blue. the color of the warm island water, the color of a water that washes away hurt, tear, and questions; of a water that hopefully gives us clarity and healing.

It came upon a midnight clear.

I laid in bed last night, not sleeping. I could hear the whirl of my fan, and felt the softness of my mattress. I thought about the walls that housed me and the glass of ice water beside my bed. I tried to will my comforts go away, but they wouldn't budge.

I felt suffocated. I couldn't breathe with all that stuff around. So I got up, grabbed a flashlight and my Bible and headed out the door. Hopped in my car and headed due west.

The midnight sky became lost in the murky blues of the ocean, and the light of a fishing boat was the only sign of a horizon line. I settled easily into a nook, no stranger to this cliff. It is my place of rest, of seeking, and of vulnerability. When I sit here and look straight out, there is nothing but sky and water. I can hear the waves rolling below me, but I can't see them.

Here, I can hear God. Here, everything is made clear. Here, all the love in the world pales in comparison to His. All the wisdom of the world is nothing in comparison to His. He took my stress and turned it into comfort. He turned my confusion to reassurance, and my worries to trust.

It surprises me how caught up I can get. Yes, in work and bills and friends and life, but even in church. I can get caught up with spending time with people who talk about God, and I somehow let that replace actually spending time with Him.

But when I do come to Him, I realize there's no replacement. Today's color is midnight blue- the color of the clear night sky in the summer and the clarity in my heart.