Your Ministry is My Ministry

www.PanAm.com ... it's a real thing, baybay

• We beg you for dates and time frames.
• We calendar flights, we set reminders for conflicts, we mark personal plans in pencil.
• We drop off and pick up the dry-cleaning, make sure the laundry is ready in time to pack, renew passports, check you in, charge your luggage fee, forward your boarding passes, maintain your receipts.
• We hunt and gather items for the Dopp kit, snacks for the side pocket, socks for the tootsies, vitamins, prescriptions, double-chocolate soy milk, saline spray and real tears, all to ensure your travels are well stocked, your supplies never run low, that you're always hydrated.
• We make light conversation to distract you as you iron and pack, sort and plan, fix and fiddle.
• We ask God’s angels to guide you through sleep as we tuck you in the night before.
• We rise early to prepare an easy morning for you, waking you gently with the aroma of breakfast and a sweet voice of love and care to bring you peacefully to a new day.
• We bid the Sun to bless you with a fresh spirit as we wake you to go serve in the fields.
• We cover you with blessings of God's peace and health as we kiss your forehead farewell.
• We call down God's ease and a hedge of protection to surround you for safe travels.
• We pray for guidance, inspiration, forbearance, the utterance of God's Holy Spirit, all to enable you to meet the needs of God's children who will come in to your path on this leg of your mission, so that they are blessed with your peace and your care, your open heart, and your available spirit.
• We beg that God returns you to us safely, easily. 

We see you, though, posting pictures from your business dinners, toodling about on your excursions. If we don't stay focused and keep centered, it would be very easy to become jealous, unsupportive, selfish, whiny, possessive, selish, heck, even suspicious (did I mention selfish?),

The salvation is in remembering that, as important as your mission is among God’s faithful, so too is our mission back here. It’s vital that we are fervently praying God down in to the center of our marriage, praying that God's Holy Spirit ensures our own refreshment, helps maintain our own peace, keeps our own hearts glad and happy, so that we can help you come back to center upon your return, and refresh your weary spirit before the whole rigmarole starts over again…
 
for we are the the few, the prayerful, the intercessors …
we are the ministers' spouses...
you get the trips, you get the thanks, you get the fulfillment of direct connection
but we, who too are in service to God, shall be praised: “Many daughters have done well,
but you excel them all.”
and we get the t-shirts.

Go in peace to love and serve God.
Now lettuce go forth into the world rejoicing in the power of God's Holy Spirit.
Amen.