The Whale & Jonah

Saturday morning I awoke feeling as though a giant truck had lept from the road traveled up the stairs and through my bedroom door and hit me! Every so often exhaustion seeps into my system and unfortunately there isn't much I can ever do about it. It wasn't too suprising that hours later I was waking up again to realize my tummy was growling and Aunty Jill & Aunty Jane were still out at a wedding.
They came home later than evening and so did Sonia. I think Sonia has been over almost every single day since I've been here, which is great I'm quite keen to have her around!
Jill works with Refugee Resettlement and I have gone along with her on various trips to see the Conganese ladies she is presently working with. Tonight Omerance & Grace were cooking all four of us dinner, a traditional African dinner that is. I've traveled many places with my family, (europe, mexico, and canada mostly)and every time you eat in a different place it's like learning to feed yourself all over again. Each culture comes with it's onwn dining etiquette, styles of foods, textures, and tastes. Now, the African dinner was absolutely lovely, fish, cabbage, rice, chips, coleslaw, and a few other items that I either don't remember or would completely butcher the name of, but I realized just how spoiled I am when I was gazing over my more than generous plate and was picking out what I should eat quicker as not to obsorb the taste and what looked safe enough to savor.
Beach whales come to the sand because their echolocation malfunctions, they stay there unable to free themselves because they are out of their everyday surrounding. They now have to learn to adapt to the oxygen in the air and the cruel gravity of the earth instead of their naturally wet and buoyant atmosphere. Like a beached whale I was out of my norm and didn't know what to do. I knew that I had to literally "try" everything and eat as much as possible to avoid insulting my wonderful cooks. My stomached seemed to handle things quite well and the Carrot cake that we had brought with us was just the treat I wanted.
I guess it just goes to show that we have everything we need to adapt to new situations and enviroments but because we allow ourselves to first "freak out" and hypervenilate and then give up hope, like the whales on the beaches, we only set ourselves up for failure.
This isn't just true in dining circumstances, coming to New Zealand I was really excited I knew things would be different, but I was willing to accept any changes that came at me. The night before leaving Indianapolis my best friend and I were talking and I began to allow my head to overthink (which is a constant problem with us hyper people). I began to worry about the things that I couldn't control the things that were bigger than me, the very things that earlier on were ok and would just be accepted. I allowed myself to lose faith in myself and setting myself up for a beach funeral. I haven't gained any certain skill that has made adapting to my new enviroment easier, I haven't grown gills or an extended neck, I have simply used the skills that I have. I had the solution to all my worries right inside me.

How many times do we overreact and put ourselves out of the game just because we don't believe in ourselves.

Jonah didn't want to go to Ninevah, I personally think he didn't think he had it in him to change such a corrupt place. God believed in him though and made sure that Jonah got the chance to see it in himself.

We are more than We think We are, We are capable of more than We ever dreamed, and only We can stop Ourselves from doing the unthinkable.