4August2014 Two Regrets

Since we're unemployed, there has been some time for reflection about our last couple years in the States.  Not much time mind you.  Doctor appointments, last minute errands and packing up the house AGAIN (selling, donating, giving away and disposing of....stuff) is consuming most of our waking hours.  However, there's been some time for reflecting.

Today I'm thinking about regrets.  What are some things that I regret since we landed back in America.  A couple things come to mind, immediately:

1. We lived too stinking close to Bojangles.  A large sweet tea and a bacon, egg & cheese biscuit has very little nutritional value.  Add a bo-berry biscuit (if you're not from the South you need to Google this sinful concoction) and you're in a sugar, fat and more sugar induced coma for hours. It's taken me nearly four months to get rid of the forty pounds due, at least in part, to the proximity and availability Bojangles.

2. We lived too close to Krispy Kreme.  Never mind.  See number 1.... 

3. Okay both of those are pretty trivial so I guess the only real regret has been our inability to reconnect with the Body.  Lately I've been convicted about that.  Hebrews reminds us not to forsake the assembling of brothers.  The Message puts it like this, "...Let’s see how inventive we can be in encouraging love and helping out, not avoiding worshiping together as some do but spurring each other on, especially as we see the big Day approaching."(10:25)  When we walked off the plane in July of '11 we were pretty battered and bruised.  The initial euphoria of being on the same continent as loved ones, seeing green everywhere ("green" as in green grass, green trees, green everything) and being able to worship together with large groups of like-minded people, without fear, wore off.  I didn't really know the extent of that whole battered and bruised part.  So when the cultural shock hit us it caught me off guard and rather than investing in others and "spurring each other on," we withdrew.  That's regrettable.  Now, by God's grace, but ironically enough as we prepare to depart again, we are just now to the point of reconnecting.  Losing forty pounds was a lot simpler.