“Here are your baggage claim tags, sir.  Make sure you keep all 26 of them.”

For a moment, standing at the kiosk in Chicago O’Hare airport, I looked down at two slips of paper plastered with small stickers that represented everything we were taking with us.  In some ways, it seemed like a TON of stuff.  In other ways, it was ridiculous how much we’d shed in order to fit everything into these containers.

Not to mention number 26 itself – our cat, that barely made the trip and has been a source of comfort and smiles even in hard moments.

It’s been a few days, and our bodies are resetting their clocks.  (Gyor is 7 hours ahead of Illinois.  We’ve basically traveled into the future.)  There are so many stories to tell of the moments we traveled.  They say parenting is a great way to be shaped by the Love of God.  Parenting 4 kids and a cat through 2 different international airport experiences will certainly bring moments of “Dear Lord, please help…” 🙂   I can only imagine the whispered prayers of our children, as they followed dutifully with their backpacks bursting at the seams.

Which seems to be a great reminder in the midst of it all.  Our lives are always fully dependent on the provision of God (“Give us this day, our daily bread…”), but we don’t often take the time to declare it.  It’s an important thing to be shaped by – dependence on God.  That’s probably why Jesus stuck it in His lesson on “How to pray”.   It’s why we pray “The Lord’s Prayer” as a family regularly too – as we want our home to be shaped by each phrase as well.

So the question becomes: What will we do today, that will declare (and hopefully exercise) your dependence on God?  Begin by confessing it in prayer…

Promise: More updates are coming.  We’ve finally found the bottom of each container, and today groceries will arrive from TESCO.  The kids have found the local toy store and even tried the nearby gelato.  I’m (Chadwick) increasingly thankful to have married a woman who loves to transform a dwelling place into our family home.