treasure

Four days until I board a plane for a visit home...

I can barely concentrate.

Been trying to write a bio for the WMF website for, oh, 3 weeks.  Three paragraphs.  Not brain surgery.  Who even really spends time studying bios?  But I am having a difficult time choosing words and phrases.  Too prideful?  What am i afraid of?  Silliness...and yet, here i am writing this.  and my sister, who writes bios for people all the time, even gave me a template...

After a week at a different location, we started going again to the camp for the kids from the internat/boarding school we've been working with this spring.  

T, a 14-year old girl and friend of mine, asked me today if I had visited my family yet.  She's taught me a short poem in romanian, a few games, and some moldovan folk dancing - in short, taken me under her wing, so to speak.  She is at this camp all summer.  She was at the internat/boarding school all week during Easter.  T has no one to go home to.  She has no parents or family to visit.  This beautiful, young woman with long brown hair is pretty much on her own.

looking her in the eyes, i forced out the words, "no, i leave friday for a month.  but i'll be back in august."

suddenly, my planning and anxiety and worry is pretty empty.  i get to go home.  for a whole month.  and into the encouraging and loving arms of friends and family who are amazing beyond what i can express.

and suddenly i kind of don't want to go.  i just want to stay next to her and try to converse and listen to her laugh.  wanting to sit in the presence of Jesus together.  i've always pondered that "treasure" that the guy in the parable found when he sold everything and bought the land where it was buried.  Jesus said the Kingdom of Heaven is like that treasure.  Matthew 13.

Today, i wonder if treasure is T and her peers at the camp. 

Being together with them in the presence of Jesus while making bracelets, playing chinese checkers, and chatting - that is the field purchased.