sort of like splunking...

Things that are running through my head as we are crawling on our hands and knees through 2 by 3 ft tunnels in Israel:

I hope Al Queda isn't hiding around the next corner....
......Why don't we have a flashlight?..........Am strangely comforted that someone's butt is in my face..........Ow! Ow! OWWW!! What is that?!
Oh. a tick. In my arm.

That's when I started crying (a little bit) and panicking as it was pitch black, dank, and every claustrophobe's worst nightmare. But dangit, we were doing team bondinng, and nothing seals friendship like hanging on to eachother's ankle's for dear life and removing ticks from arms by light of a camera flash.

Maybe I'm not making myself clear here.

We were dropped off at these caves in the foothills of southern Israel and instructed to crawl into a jet black tunnel---watch out for that 10 foot drop off---sans flashlight, and thanks to David and Abbie not being afraid of ANYTHING, we somehow made it out of the tiny tiny tiny tunnels (by way of a traumatically difficult and small hole to crawl out of. I believe that this must be what childbirth is like for the baby: what is that bright light? I'm being squashed. HELP! HELP!... no wonder we've repressed that memory).

And aside from the probable lyme disease that I caught from ol' ticky-poo, wriggling through the caves was the craziest most fun thing I've ever done. Don't worry, I'm not an adrenaline junkee now, but it was cool to be completely surrounded and enclosed and in a place where a million bad things could really happen (walls collapsing, water flooding in, terrorists, bats, someone in front of you farting) and to really have to take my thoughts captive.

I know that I am not the only one who struggles daily to control my thoughts on topics varying from relationships to body image, fear of death and doubts of faith, but it is so important to be able to dwell on things that are true, lovely, edifying etc and in this specific instance, to remind myself that I belong to a God who put those danky little tunnels in the earth in the first place.

And if God can deliver us from the bowels of the earth, just like he did with the Messianic Jews who were hiding in those very tunnels from the Romans in the early second century, then he can most certainly deliver us from our paralyzing claustrophicizing (new word. dig it)thoughts.

I'm trying to think about a parallel I can draw with the tick and some other kind of spiritual epiphany, but I don't want to push it.

Thanks for praying. Life is good here.

rachel

ps. i'm really going to try to get a hold of some picture to put on here, but i didn't bring an adapter for my camera...silly me!