Support

Nope, not talking about that little number that you get every month... :)  (although it IS very important!)

Support is one of those things that makes life possible.  It makes the unthinkable doable.

I know that.  For years, I dreamed about running, even jogging, a mile... ok, there is a dream to do a 5K, too, but let's stick to little steps.  Running, however, proves difficult for, um, people who, um, well, can't run in your average elastic and cloth sports bra without it looking like they are trying to homogenize milk before it is produced.  So I have never gotten much farther than the thought of running.

The last time I was in the US, I went looking to find a sports bra with real support.  I found one.  Ok, it takes some gymnastics to get into it, but it works!  Our family gift to ourselves this year was a membership to a place where our family can workout together.  There is a little track there.  Fifteen laps around this track gets me to a mile.

I'm not there yet.

However, today, I ran two-thirds of the mile.  I run two laps and walk one right now.  When I started, I ran one lap and then walked two.  I'm getting there.

Support helps. :)

Today, my husband flew out.  I was thinking back to his first six week trip six years ago.  I was pretty alone in a new city with four young kids.  At that point, homeschooling.  It meant six weeks of no break.  I was pretty tired by the end of it.  When my husband got home, I just wanted to go out for a long walk alone.

Today, he flew out again.  Six years makes a difference in parenting.  No longer am I facing diapers, carseats, tying shoes, crying babies at night.  Now I can leave them alone with a list of chores and have a reasonable expectation that some of them are done when I get back.  They are all in school.  That helps.

But more than those things, today I have support.  I have a network of friends in church, in school, and some in our team (half are traveling, too, so not too helpful) that are there for me.  I have adults to talk to, friends for my kids to go play a day with, people who will come if the heater shuts off.

Support.  It helps.

Like always, when my husband leaves, things happen.  My oldest slipped and hit his head on concrete and has a concussion.  My daughter is sick again.  I fell and hurt my knees.  This is just the first day...

Pray for them.  I think my biggest struggle will be their memories and fears of a repeat of last year.  They show stress in different ways.  Some cry.  Some fight with others.  Some have tummy aches and headaches.  I need more patience this time.  Patience and creativity to keep them occupied, ordered, and safe.

Prayer support is important, too.

Hope

Over the last few years, we have known that we needed something to happen in order for us to go on well.  Work changes, and there are new areas to reach out into and new directions to go in.  New possibilities come with new needs.

We've grown over the years, added to our team.  Some of that has been good.  Some of it has brought more headache.  But our biggest holes remained unfilled.

Going back even before that, I have been praying for something, for a direction that I thought we should head in.  When I began to pray for this, it was comical, unthinkable, impossible.  The capacity of who we were was already stretched.  It would not work.  People would not even think about it.

There are also time that I feel strongly about people joining us or not joining us.  I have no say in the matter, but I am very aware of the discussions going on in the background when we discuss these things.  I prayed once for four years that one couple would join us.  Now they will be, not quite yet, but soon.  There are two others that I am praying for, and then another yet who I do not know, but a position that I would like to see filled.  It is something that requires patience.  God is not answering those prayers quickly.

I honestly think that God has been sifting, settling, and growing our team to prepare us for what is ahead.  I do not know what is ahead, but I know that we needed growth first.  My daughter has been crying in her bed several nights this last week because her legs hurt.  Growing pains.  Our team has been going through them, too.

But I feel the quiet, tingling excitement.  I know one prayer of mine is being answered soon, and I am confident that another will be, too.  In these people I am praying that will join us, I am praying for a few particular qualities, and these potential new people have them in abundance.

I think God is going to do great things soon.  I get excited when I see that happening.  Hidden inside me today is a grin that refuses to go away.

Facing Tomorrows

So my husband leaves soon.  It is an interesting feeling.  So much the same as a year before.  Winter is still here, packing suitcases are out, a family holiday (the one that got canceled last year) planned for when he arrives back.  Even back to spring and the inevitable push to get in shape.  Memories come trickling back. 

I'm not worried.  Not totally at peace either.  Dreading not so much what could happen (things could always happen) as much as how well we will cope.  How well will the kids cope?  How much energy will I have to deal with kids who are stressed out when I am tired, too.  Today it started with my daughter hearing about the trip in church - suddenly it dawned on her how long daddy is gone for and she buried her head in my tummy and cried.

Honestly, one of the more difficult things for me to deal with facing a trip or in the middle of one is all the well-meaning people.  "How are you doing?" asked one too many times.  "Are you worried?"  "Oh my goodness, I don't think I could face that!"  Enough already.  It is not helpful even though I know you mean well.

There are possibilities.  There always are.  I just can not think about them.  I chose to live today.  Today only.  Trust comes not in the big things, but in the quiet ability to live in today with the strength God gives for the moment.  In reality, we can't live in the "what if?".  What if this was the last day you would spend with a loved one?  How would you act?  These are questions we discuss in sociology classes, ponder when we read stories of disasters, but questions without answers. 

If we live today in the small steps with God, we are ok if we face the "what ifs".  There will be no regrets then.  Sadness, yes, but no regrets.  That is the only assurance I have right now - live today in the quiet trust and peace in all my relationships, and I can face whatever tomorrow brings - if I have lived in obedience today.  I will not carry tomorrow's burden today.  I can't.  It is that simple.

It comes back to the question of if I know what is best for me or if God does.  If I subscribe to the lie that only I know what is best for me, I will work to defend myself, to protect myself.  If I refuse that lie, I will rest.  Even the evil that is done - while still evil - is, in God's hands, what is best for me. 

Like cocky, fearful Jacob who wrestled God and was wounded - taking away from him his cocky attitude that he could outwit, out-manipulate, and outmaneuver everything in order to get where he believed God wanted him.  It was when he was wounded and limping that God changed his name from supplanter to Israel.  It was through a blessing which came with a wound.

When God allows us to be deeply wounded, perhaps we are to watch for the blessing - or perhaps the character change that changes our very name.

I am not worried.  I chose to live today.  Only today.  With no regrets.  Learning trust step by painful step.

Whose Best?

I've been thinking a lot recently.  There is a book or two that I was handed that have been helping my thinking, but I've been thinking.  I struggle to decide what to share on this blog about what I am thinking.  I know some of you who read my blog and comment and nothing would make me happier than to share what I am learning with you, as you also share your lives with me.  But a blog, is by nature public, and subject to many people reading it.  It is those who hide who cause me to pause before I write.

But another train of thought that goes through my head is transparency.  I grew up, like a few of you, as an MK, in a conservative church.  The idea of constantly being on display, especially on furlough, and even when out on the field - people are always watching... it affected us.  We were to project an image.  I still see that in some churches and people.  But over the last years, my husband and I have been mentored by some pretty great people.  The biggest thing we have been both shown and taught is transparency.  The ability or the choice to be honest and clear.  It takes away the fear of hiding.  It takes away the fear of not being accepted if we were known.  It shows sins, but gives the room for grace and forgiveness.  It completely removes the possibility of manipulation.

We've grown to love this new thing.  Being transparent.  It is something we model in our team, hoping that as we demonstrate it, that others will pick it up and show it to even others.

So part of me thinks, "Ignore those who should not be reading, and just talk."  I may.  I may not.  I may continue to edit carefully to be able to say what I am learning without setting it into its frame.  Difficult.

Anyway, let's try for today.  I'll start with a small tidbit that I learned from one of these books.  It is about dealing with rejection.  Rejection is what hit me hardest this last spring - we felt rejected by our own, intensified by our weakness after a time of intense stress.  When we should have been cared for, we were not.  Rejection is not a feeling unfamiliar to my husband or I.  In different degrees we have both felt it often as we grew up.  Circumstances, moves, trauma, misunderstandings, people's weaknesses - all these things have left us with wounds.  We struggle through those, and when trauma hits, feelings we have carried come rolling back.

I don't have this book now, but when I get it, I will write some more from it.  What I want to share right now is just one piece of it.  It was talking about our fear of rejection will cause us to reject the very love that God has for us.  Adam and Eve did this in the garden.  When they were ashamed, they hid.  They lied.  They did not trust God anymore.  The book says it so much better than I can without it here, but it talks about from that point on, we had a new inner belief.  We began to believe that "I know what is best for me".  So we attempt to protect ourselves.  Self-protection leads to all sorts of messes.

I don't know why that particular phrase hit me right then, except that we were in team meetings and team meeting are difficult for me.  I've struggled through why God allowed some of what He allowed this last year and also during the years before that.  Why He did not step in and protect me from some pain?

When I read that line about our new inner belief, I paused.  I honestly struggled with that one a little.  I saw the truth in it - undoubtedly.  But transferring that truth into the day to day was difficult.  My mind immediately popped the question, "How could what happened during the shark attack be the best for me?!"  That was painful, awful, so wrong...

But truth has a way of quietly standing in the face of opposition, and I agreed with it.  I've learned when my whole being butts up against truth full force to wait quietly and listen.  God is not in the habit of defending Himself to my angry accusations, nor is He in the habit of railroading me down with His thinking.  He sits quietly, until I have quieted myself and am ready to listen and question Him honestly.  Then He speaks.  In that quiet, still voice.

As I sat there questioning out the practicality of this truth... "well, if that is true, then what happened in those meetings was Your best?... How exactly does that work?  It hurt me."  God, I have learned, is also not one who belittles my pain.  The devil does that.  He will either blow up my pain so it fills my vision or berate me for pain and belittle it - or likely both at once.  God does not belittle His children's pain, nor does He scold us for feeling it.

I questioned God on that point late that evening.  "Tell me how that works, please.  I don't get it.  You know I was weak there already, a sore spot, and hurting place, and in the middle of our weakest point, You let them hurt us there!"  I sat quietly thinking over those meetings, those days after the trauma and all that had gone down.  There was no positive spin that could be put on them - only the very wrong actions of one or two others that caused deep pain for those already wounded.

A question for myself, "Am I willing to say that God knew what was best for me?  For all my life? Even when it led places I did not want to go?"  Not just that it was ok, that He would bring me through it, that He would bring good out of it... but that in His knowledge, it was the best.  James that says that God's will is good, acceptable, and perfect.  The first one, good,  is a little struggle to get through, ok, it is good.  The next, acceptable, harder.  But it is when you hit "perfect" and it means that nothing else would have been better... that is a tough one to swallow!

I will not say that what people did was right.  It wasn't.  But can I trust that at that moment, that this was God's best for me - not the most comfortable, not the most just, but His best... for reasons I do not know... but His best for me right then?

Hmmpf, that made me take a deep breath and gather some determination before I was willing to face that one head on... but my rational mind says, "this, too, is true."

 Then came the quiet, still voice that I have learned to listen to.  "Would you have been pushed to deal with this issue of rejection without that hurt right in the epicenter of that wound?"

You could not have got my attention more quickly.  Little chills ran down my back.  I was wounded, yes.  Right in the middle of a very tender spot.  But it was a glimpse into a wisdom deeper than mine.
 
Most of my kicking against God and most of my fighting and most of my pain lies right here - I am pretty determined to hang on to the thought that God obviously does not know what is best for me - look at all that He has allowed! - and that I need to protect myself.  And as I write this, another thought comes in my head... look at all the pain you cause while trying to protect yourself.  I wonder if I hurt myself more than people hurt me simply by my reactions and my attempts to protect.  And then, in the middle of all those attempts to keep myself safe, I ache that I feel isolated.


My thoughts went back to Jacob.  He was also a an wounded by God.  Yet with that wounding came a blessing.


I've been sitting on these thoughts this week, quietly listening to God's voice.  My heart quiet, listening to the call to trust even deeper - to trust that God has my best in mind even in the face of man's sins against me.  That even pain is what is best at times - not only that God will bring good out of it, but that there was nothing better for me than to walk the difficult road.


I would have chosen an easier one.  But I have such a limited view and still prefer comfort over growth any given day.

Going on a Date

My husband is going to travel again.  Spring is a time he often goes.  This time he will be gone a little over a month.  I was hoping it would be for less time.  I was hoping we'd have a few weeks after the end of the big meetings before he was going.

But mixing his plans in with other's schedules means that we can't always chose what we want.  I told him that at least I want to go for a date before he leaves.  Tonight we went out.  Last date before he flies again.

I'm not nervous, not really.  Just missing him before he leaves.  It will be a long time.  Trying to think of everything I need to do for him before he leaves.  Trying to make sure the house, bills, and repairs are all done before he goes.  Being busy.

But when we were talking about going on a date, our kids had some advice.  #3 and my daughter were discussing it.

"Mom, you could sit on a date."

"Yeah, we have dates.  You could sit on one and Daddy could sit on another."

Here I was thinking, "Is that what you call a double date?", but they came up with,

"It would be a little mushy, but then you would be on a date!"

We decided to go out for dinner instead.  Less mushy.

Many Tongues

Friday is our prayer meeting in the community my kids go to school in.  We are a widely diverse group, and after a year or two of struggle to get the mothers who did not speak English well into our group, we have succeeded.

Fridays now mean a prayer meeting with many different ethnic backgrounds and languages.

Some pray quietly.  Some pray all at once.  Some sing songs while another prays.  Others just hum.  Others walk the room shouting "Hallelujah!"  Still others cry every time they pray.  Others, I think, are a little uncomfortable with the tears. Some kneel.  Some stand.  Anywhere from four to ten different languages inhabit the room at one time.

It is fun.  :)

I sat there today listening to the prayer ascending from many tongues and languages - all of us praying for our kids, for each other's kids, for our teachers, for the health and safety of those out on an activity that day.  Some languages flow gently.  Others have an unusual clicking noise as they speak.  There are the guttural, the tonal, the variety.  As I listened, the age old question of what language we will speak in heaven popped into my mind.

I know what I want.

I want to sit in heaven listening to the beauty of these different languages and cultures, but completely understanding them all.

(What is the typical style of praying in your culture group?)

The Things They Say - Chose Your Language

We were in a meeting recently with at least four languages involved.  They asked people to pray and stated that they could pray in whichever language they chose.

Very clearly from the corner, I heard #3's exclamation to himself, "Good, I'll do it in gibberish!"

Cooking Adventures

I got some questions this weekend on how I learned to cook for a crowd.  For me, it is simple - I was raised that way.  Being raised in many different countries, I picked up different ideas and learned to play with food.  I was asked for a recipe, and I laughed!  I don't think I have used a recipe for a main dish in years.  Desserts, perhaps, but food? No.

I think the time I was most stumped about cooking was when I was a teen.  We were back in the US for a season, and I used to babysit.  I would often cook dinner for the kids I babysat.  One afternoon, the mom was having a frantic day.  She had some appointments and events, and then that evening she was supposed to bring a cake to a Bible study.  She asked if I would mind cooking a cake for her.

No problem.

She handed me a box, and then hurriedly grabbed her keys and walked out the door.
 
A box?!

I was absolutely bewildered.  Confused.  Totally taken off guard by a cake mix.  I had no idea what to do with it.  A foreign concept.  Turn a box into a cake?!

It took me a few minutes before I was even brave enough to read the instructions and gingerly begin.  I could have whipped two different types of cake off by memory at that point in my life, but a box confused me!

I remember that confusion now and laugh.  I have made some boxed cakes since then, but still prefer to make my own, just as I prefer to cook a meal without packaged ingredients.  It has made living in different places simpler for me - the fact that I was raised not to be used to things you buy in a package.  Home to me tastes like things I can make, not something I buy in a store.

I've love trying new dishes, new flavors from different parts of the world, and mixing them.  I love cooking now.  I am not, nor will ever be, and have no desire to attempt to be a fancy cook.  I like to cook food that fills people up, that warms bellies, that satisfies.  If you are wanting a beautifully displayed table with fancily cut vegetables, look elsewhere.  That is not me.

Got any good favorites you cook for a crowd where you are?  I'm always interested in trying new things.

Come and Gone

The last of the guests has left.  The house is returning to its original quiet.  We are still eating our way through leftovers, so no need to cook for  few days yet.  Sleeping mats are being cleaned up, sheets washed and stored back in the linen closet.  The long weekend retreat is over.

We did something that we have not been done before, and it went well.  There is a sense of quiet joy about that.  In a difficult people group, we gathered together mature believers from many places along with wives and some families.  We gathered, not for business, but simply to be together, to worship, to learn.  We started with our team's meeting for one day, and then the others arrived.

It was peaceful.  There was not one fight, not one hurt feeling, not one person trying to boast at another's expense.  It was a wonderful time.  Connections built; friendships deepened; time for new ideas to be sown.

It was a time also for me to begin to build relationships with other women like myself: married cross-culturally in this culture.  Years ago, I was one of the first, perhaps two of us existed.  Now there are more.  It is a something special to build relationships with them - these women who will face life as I face it with our different challenges, risks, and joys.

I was not in many of the meetings.  I cooked.  What was originally told to me at 15-25 people ended up to be more like 25-35 at times, but it was possible.  My oldest son had some days off school and he was able to help me.

Now they are gone.  I did today what I always do after a meeting that I help to organize and cook for - I slept.  I slept on and off most of the day and have not written off the possibility of curling up in bed again.

Sleep is also a gift.  Today, my dreams, for the first time in months, have been relaxing.  Dreams of freedom and grace.  Those are also a gift.

The Things They Say - Odds and Ends

My husband and I have been working at getting more fit.  I've been worried about getting my husband more active for several years as he has family history of too many problems like diabetes, high blood pressure and others.  His job is more sedentary, and getting fit is harder to do without focusing on it.  This year, we included the whole family with activities and exercising together.  It has been fun.

Last week we were doing our weigh ins and discussing how much we are losing and what our goals are.  We're not aiming for the moon, just for a consistent loss and getting in shape.  My husband is losing about one to two pounds a week.  My goal is one pound a week as I do not have as much to lose and am in slightly better shape than him to start with.  So far, I have only lost two pounds in a month, but... oh well.  My main goal is to get in shape and stay active.  Got to keep up with those kids of mine!  My other main goal is to one day be able to run a 5K with my son.... with as in on the same day, not as in at the same pace!  I can now run much farther than I could at the beginning of last month and without so much stress.

Well, we were weighing in and discussing our pound a week plan, and #3 piped up.  Now, #3 is the world's smallest 10 year old.  He is just petite.  (I was like him as a child - not now..)  He actually wears a smaller size than his eight year old sister.  So he was thinking about the goals and said, "Daddy, if I lose a pound a week, after a year, I will just disappear!"

On Sunday, my daughter came in the church meeting we were having doing that urgent wiggle dance that meant she needed to find a toilet.  I was puzzled as she knows where it is and is big.  She came over to me, turned her back to me and said, "Mom, mom, can you unbutton my dress?  I need to pee!"

What?  I said, "Just pull it up - you are in a dress!"  She looked puzzled until I pulled her skirt up a little to show.  Then it dawned on her.  I just thought it was funny that she didn't know.  Obviously, she doesn't wear enough skirts!