Muita Coisas (Many Things)

I've spent the last three weeks traveling, I'm back in Manaus for a week and will probably (it's Brazil, plans are never set in stone) be traveling for at least another three weeks. There's no way to share EVERYTHING that's been happening so I'll share specific stories from the past voyages in separate posts. But to generalize a lot in a short paragraph: God's really doing some good things in me. I think. I hope. He knows he needs to. Most of the time, I think I'm a pretty decent person. I'm kind to animals and children, for the most part. I try to do what's right, try to be gracious and compassionate. But I'm seeing things that I dont really like about myself. The way I react to things that might not even be there, how selfish and lazy I can be, how petty and jealous I can be. Recently I explained what's going on to a visiting American like this. I'm learning more and more portuguese, more words, better sentence structure, etc. That knowledge accumulates to make me better at speaking an understanding. What God is doing in my life is the exact opposite. Its peeling off layers of what I think I know. Not like an onion whose layers mostly yield or are in the process of falling off, but like a potato that has to be peeled with a potato peeler and you have to hack away at some brown spots. That's how I'm being peeled. What I thought I know or figured out, all the ways to keep my heart safe, a great deal of it, cynicism and sarcasm, it's getting peeled away. So I am in process. Oh, probably forever. But for sure right now.