Phnom Penh Pals: Team Helm in Cambodia

Lust isn’t always about bodies. Lust is about our eyes — where we set our gaze. We covet what we allow ourselves to linger on, especially in regards to others’ possessions and experiences.  Any scroll through social media can bring up those desires: good books on a soft carpet in front of a warm fire. Wide open roads in a spacious vehicle and trips to beautiful vistas. Kids frolicking in the snow. Feet in the ocean.  Summer is my least favorite season, and it is always Summer here. Aside from the oppressive heat, Summer stretches on in an unchanging monotony of yellow and green and brown. No real temperature fluctuations. Little to no wind. Plenty of bugs with no winter to kill them. Not much  scope for the imagination nor hint of change on the horizon.  The antidote for lust is to flee. Close our eyes. Turn away. Set our gaze on something else, something more likely to remind us of how much we have already been given.  Employing the “snooze” on friends’ feeds is a powerful way of turn

Before we left the US, I bought some necessary and splurge items at Wegmans (arguably the best grocery store in the world) with the remainder of a gift card from some very generous friends. Looking at what I was able to track down within ten minutes blew my mind; in Phnom Penh, finding a single item often means trips to at least three different stores. Life is different here. Perhaps because things I want are so much harder to get, I find myself more appreciative of what I have. It also means I don't bother trying to find some of the things I would impulse purchase in the U.S., especially during pregnancy (do I really  want a chicken finger sub badly enough to spend an hour in traffic to make some sub-par version of it?).  Let me tell you about being a Western pregnant woman in an Asian city. In my first three pregnancies, I gained about 40 pounds each time (slightly more than the recommended ideal). But I worked out daily throughout and after pregnancy, and was able to reach my pr