The head of missions in our church, Pastor Terry, came and spoke to my Ladies Sunday School class this morning. As always he did a wonderful job, he spoke about a trip in 1989 to Nicaragua when the Contras and the Sandinistas were still fighting it out. He had a great story about how both sides had heard his testimony at the same time one evening, he learned this later after there was peace, but I took away something entirely different from his talk.

A south Texas, Mexican-American preacher, Pastor Rueben, who has visited our church many times over the years had felt called by God to minister during that war torn time in Central America. He prayed to God, “Send me where no man can, or will go.”

I was in Tegucigalpa, Honduras and the surrounding area during that time of conflict, I’d had to run back to safety one night when a man on a motor scooter sent bullets flying, the American embassy was burned then, and on May Day, my blonde daughter and I fled the city with the other Americans, warned that it was not safe for us. The state department had issued a travel advisory, when I reported my whereabouts, I was told I was on my own.

I was there for my first adoption of three school age sisters.

I kept thinking today of Pastor Rueben’s words, “Send me where no man can, or will, go.” Sometimes that’s how I feel in the adoption world, in the adoption of older, traumatized children. I never prayed those words, but I have definitely felt called, and I suppose that is where I get my inner fortitude.

Today after my positive, “we all go to church,” post, all heck broke loose. Bad attitudes, truculence, aggravating behaviors and ugly words were spoken by my children. Who didn’t see that coming? I could hardly concentrate in church, I could feel my blood boiling rapidly in my veins as a PMS-possessed sixteen year old went passive-aggressively annoying, and a nineteen year old chose to act like he wasn’t texting on his phone. Don’t pee on my leg and say it isn’t raining kids.

Apparently my cell phone fell out of my purse at some point, I’m perturbed about that, and I came home madder than a hornet. I’ve found that hard work eases my tension so instead of lashing out at anyone, as they do to me, I turned the proverbial tables and stood at the stove cooking and individually serving everyone hand-fried in my best black skillet, bean and cheese burritos. It took over an hour of solid cooking, one good kid by my side assembling the burritos…calmed me down pretty much as I’ve gone where no man could, or would go, deep within this family of 39 kids.