We are taking our children with us to Uganda in 4 weeks for a ministry trip and so we are in the midst of preparations and determining our schedule over there. One of the young women from our home church growing up is currently living in Kampala and running an orphanage. She has a couple of extra beds right now so while we are over there Naomi and the kids will be able to stay there and help out.
I got this figured out while I was at the office and I was pretty pumped about the opportunity for our kids so when I got home I announced to Naomi, '...there are some extra beds at the orphanage so we can take the kids and they can stay there...'. Now to the informed, this sounds like a completely appropriate statement about an exciting missions opportunity, but for my 7 year who came into the conversation at that point it didn't produce the same response. While Naomi was responding to my comment with a, '...that's fantastic!..' she happened to glance over and see a very despondent look on Hudson's face. With a downtrodden, and somewhat anxious, response he said, 'but I don't want to go to an orphanage.' We quickly realized the misunderstanding that had taken place and provided Hudson with some clarification and then everything was fine.
We laugh about it now (hopefully Hudson won't need counseling later in life!) but it really emphasized to me the importance of clarity in our communication. It is so easy to have a misunderstanding and then run off with it. I have seen so many people struggle with issues for far longer than they needed to simply because they never bothered to get further clarity on an issue.
So let's make sure we don't ever drift off to sleep thinking we are going to be abandoned in an orphanage.
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