Author: eternalwaitofglory

Me and Marius

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I weep every time I see Les Miserables but the part I cry harder in than any other is when Marius remembers his fallen friends. He stands and sings of empty chairs and empty tables. Empty chairs. Empty tables. I’m choking up even as I recall the song.

Too many empty chairs and empty tables. Chairs and tables where friends once sat, where we talked, laughed, dreamed, ate, played games, argued, reconciled. My friends did not die, but many have moved which is a kind of death. It is death to daily life together. Death to easy conversation. Death to a kind of friendship even though the friendship itself is not dead. Death to seeing their faces practically whenever I felt like it.

I feel like Marius these days. A little war torn…the one left and not knowing why. So, so many people come and go in our lives. When I count them, I move from fingers, then to toes, and then I run out of digits to help me. Why us? Why are we left? I know it is not because we are better, more fluent, more adjusted, more spiritual, more capable. No, no, those are not the reason we are still here.

Going back to the café is so hard. Remembering my friends. Remembering the good times. Remembering even the hard times, those times when we did not get along as well as I wanted or they wanted. Times when we disappointed each other. The times we sinned against each other. And also the times when we did it good. When we stood by each other and offered a shoulder to cry on, a heartfelt word of encouragement, a meal, forgiveness, grace. My life is full because of my friendships forged in the heat of battle.  I wouldn’t give it up even as I cry the tears of missing them.

My tears begin to dry up when Marius comes to the part where he talks of the futility of his friends’ deaths. I gulp back my choking and depart from his line of thought. While futility is a part of life, it is not part of the battle I pursue. It is not in vain that we put our lives out there for the miserables of the world. We strived to look down and that is close to God’s heart. It is not futile even if my eye does not see as much progress as I hoped. The cause is worth it. I am not giving my life for nothing.

It is the season of departures and this year they start early and go late.  So, here, now I revisit the café of friendships and cry my tears as I remember times gone by with the hope, too, of good times yet to come.

Renovating

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Nomads move around. We are nomads. I think true nomads like moving. I do not. It’s not exciting like those international home buyers shows. We’ve pondered apartments with toilets in closets, bathroom sinks in dining rooms, and grime beyond belief. I’ve moved, pregnant with two small kids, into an apartment sight unseen.

The gold used to be an unfinished apartment. We looked for the apartment shell–concrete everywhere and holes in the walls and ground for piping. Then, we put in floors, cabinets, sinks, tubs, and toilets…just how we liked and not in the closet. Times changed and that’s out of our budget now. Now, gold is an apartment with everything but a kitchen. I like to do my kitchen my way.

The worst, though, is having to renovate an apartment. Renovate sound so exciting and new. Made to order. But first, the sledgehammers come in. The dust is kicked up and grunge never seen gets revealed. People traipse in and out. People I don’t know. Renovating is messy, loud, and if we never had to do it again, I’d not be sorry.

My life is full of some ugly stuff. I’m not an unfinished apartment and I don’t like renovations on my heart either…at first. I don’t just put on Christ over a blank shell. There’s also this bad job I did on my own that needs to be ripped out.  The trying to be functional and pretty apart from Christ that needs to go. It doesn’t come out easily either.  I usually don’t even notice how ugly it is until someone walks into my life and points it out. Or, I see the job that Christ can do in someone else and then notice the grunge I’ve lived with so long.

Then comes the bashing, the knocking down, and the unsettling. Things are removed, but behold, there’s always more!  It comes down with a bang and a cloud of dust that chokes me and the people around me. Thankfully most of them see there’s a renovation going on and are excited about what’s happening even as they cough on my dust.

What is God tearing out of your life as He renovates you? How has someone come alongside you recently and shared in the joy of what God is doing?

When Boundaries Get Crossed

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Picture me standing in line for the lady’s room at a coffee shop with my daughter mentally pondering my spiritual growth.  Just a year before at the same shop I’d struggled with impatience.  Women in our host culture seem to take eons in the restroom. Eons.

Maybe its just that personal spaces are few and when privacy comes, it must be enjoyed…for awhile.  Now, look at me waiting patiently! I felt thankful to be in such a place and be able to recognize this growth. I mentally patted myself on the back.

A few minutes later, after stepping in to have our moment, an older women enters the restroom and waits about 2 seconds before she starts pounding on our doors.  Literally, pounding.  The locks rattled, the door shook.  It was a shocker!  She loudly complained of how long we are taking and asks us to get out so she can have her moment.  She continued to grumble and berate us loudly and did not cease to pound.

I know enough language to be sassy.  I can express things I wish I could not.  What proceeded to transpire still fills me with a mixture of pride and shame.  Pride at the fluency and shame at my use of my fluency.  We conversed…ok…spoke loudly…ok…argued.  I suggested she find other places to have her moment.  She asked me to show her one.  I replied I could not do that at this moment.  She continued to loudly complain and urge me to hurry up.  I offered to learn from her vast experience about how best to do that.  And it went on. It was a charged conversation.

Ten minutes later when the adrenaline dissipated in my veins, I doubled over in hysterical laughter at the absurdity of what transpired in that restroom. To have someone literally try their level best to evict you from a bathroom stall, well, it just crosses a boundary.  Apparently, it’s a boundary I did not want crossed.  Isn’t that how it is with boundaries?  We realize their importance to us when they are crossed.

I’ve heard it called “Hulking Out”, what I did.  It’s not pleasant, attractive, or in the slightest bit useful.  I had to explain and apologize to my daughter.  Actual repentance in my heart occurred later that day.  I realized just how short my fuse can be…so very short…which humbled me.  All that pride of how I learned so much patience?  Gone. Back to square one, I stood there with a truer picture of who I was and it was not who I wanted to be!  I hulked out, tried to force my right and win by argument…by power. It’s not the first time in my life that I’ve hulked out.

A crossed boundary often kicks in my survival instincts. I try on being dangerous. But that’s not the dangerous God wants for me.  His power came in His laying aside His life and rights for others…not claiming them for Himself.  He gave everything.  Am I willing to forgo survival?  To pass on using my strength which is no strength at all?  To be truly dangerous God’s way is to be the right kind of dangerous.

I think being dangerous for God’s kingdom that day would have been using my 10 minutes of language ability on my captive audience toward a much different end than protecting my right to a bathroom stall!

Thriving or Blending In

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As we struggled to get back to thriving during a relationally dry time a few years ago, I struck out with plough in hand to turn up some ground for new friendships.  International playgroup was the ground and I was going to make some friends.  Mom’s from around the world in various stages of survival or thriving gathered to talk while kids played. So many interesting people!  Surely, a friendship could be borne.

Eventually, mom’s night out came around.  I, of course, went and ended up sitting next to a woman who loved to pepper me with questions about what we did, how we did it, how we got paid, what our plans for the future were and so on.  We’re not exactly forthcoming with all that information for some good reasons so to say I was uncomfortable is an understatement.  She then proceeded to ridicule another family in the city for doing religious work.  She did not know I did the same type of work.  And, now, I did not want her to know.  I really did not want her to know.

I shut down.  Survival became my goal.  Blend in to the group.  Be just another mom living life overseas.  Don’t stick out.  Danger!  It seemed an appropriate time to visit the lady’s room.

One friend who knew our more important work, observed the whole encounter.  She observed my walls go up, my survival instincts kicking in.  Later, as the cab dropped off first one and then another and another person until my friend and I were alone in the cab, she leaned forward and told me clearly she did not hold the views of this other woman.  In fact, she respected what we did.  I breathed.  I’d found a friend.

I realized after a long while and am still reminded now that blending into the group does not lead to survival but slow death.  It seems on the surface the right thing to do.  Friends are lacking, so go make friends…but not at any cost.  Never at the cost of who I am.  That’s not survival and it doesn’t lead to thriving….it’s just the long road to a slow death.  The wrong death.

The life Christ calls me to is so much more than blending in.  In fact, it’s the opposite of blending in.  It’s being willing to stand up knowing life as I know it probably won’t survive.  As I think on it more releasing survival seems to be the first step on the path to thriving.

How to Survive: Graceful Synchronize

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Beneath the hustle and bustle of Bangkok rests a wonderful aquarium.  Fish swim serenely through beautiful blue tanks as skytrains intersect and the world shops above.  God’s creatures beneath the world’s creations.

Darkness shrouds aquariums which means I’m constantly counting heads instead of gazing into tanks and reading signs.  But, yesterday, four signs caught my eye.  “How to Survive in the Ocean” they read.  They could easily have said “How to Survive in the Hustle and Bustle of the World.”

I’ll go first…Graceful Synchronize.  I get this one.  This is the one I do more than all others.  Go with the flow, blend in, be careful, don’t offend.  Synchronize.  Don’t stand out too much.  And do so gracefully so no one notices either. That’s my method I’m learning to put aside…graceful synchronize.

Why put it aside, though?  I’m surviving right?  But that is not what God calls me to…survival.  The Lord bids me come and die.  survival at any cost is not His goal.  He bids me to come out of the masses, to reveal myself even if it makes me a target…even if it means I don’t survive.

Maybe that is the truth…the I isn’t supposed to survive, not when it’s the I ridden with selfish desires for personal comfort, glory, safety.  That’s the reason I gracefully synchronize to the pulse of the moment–for myself.  That I must die.

Graceful in Christ is the synchronization my heart truly desires.  Survival at any cost is becoming a cost too high.  I do not die, but yet I die.  I die in that I do not flourish in the unique ways God makes His creation to flourish.

To truly live is to not try so hard to survive.  How am I doing?  Well…I still try to survive a lot, but sometimes I share what the Lord puts on my heart and make myself a potential target…uncomfortable and unsafe.

Next week…”How to Survive: Be Dangerous.”

Old Chickens

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My name in Chinese sounds like “I love you” in some dialects.  Imagine me standing in an apartment helping negotiate a rental contract and introducing myself.  Picture the surprised expression on the landlords face as he replies, startled, “you love me?”  Why didn’t I change my name at that point?  I have no idea.  I’d already picked it?  I knew how to write it in characters?  I’m stubborn.

Learning a new language means becoming a child again.  It means people laughing at you for the cute ways you say things, for the mistakes you make.  People don’t understand even when you’re sure you say it right.  I become a two-year old with a temper tantrum as I try to ask for food to feed myself and no one understands me.  I use my hands and face to express what I cannot with my words.  It’s humbling.

It’s also funny.  Fast forward 11 years and you have me now.  I hate sharing that I’ve lived here 11 years when people ask me.  The admiration for my language abilities fades into the truth that after 11 years I should be more fluent!  Sometimes I muddy the truth…ok, I mislead people…ok, I repent from my lying…and share only how long I’ve lived in this city to avoid the faded admiration.

But, recently I made a pretty funny foible and it brought a smile to a sad face.  I didn’t orchestrate it, I was asked if I understood something and I shared what I thought I’d heard, “something about old chickens” I said.  No, it was something totally not about old chickens but the damage, or the benefit, had already been done.  A sad face smiled and my foolish misunderstanding brought some heavy things into a little perspective.

The “Old Chickens Incident” reminded me afresh to embrace the childlike nature of being a continual learner.  To laugh at myself, to share what I don’t understand instead of giving the fluent impression, to be weak and let God be strong.

Fluency would be awesome but He sure does show me a lot in the areas I lack fluency.

How does God used your lack of “fluency” to show you more about Himself?

Second Fiddle

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I played second fiddle for almost 8 years of my life. Through junior high and high school I fell just short of being the best.  I was almost evenly matched, but not quite.  For a few weeks in there I played first fiddle but I can probably count them on one, maybe two hands.

Our rivalry lasted 8 years and was somewhat of a legend during our time in school.  8 years of dueling in front of the same 60 people does that.  8 years of sharing first stand in the viola section.  As time went on I began to lose more often.

Can I say I lost when losing still meant 2nd place?  Yes, I lost.  I began to lose my joy in playing.  I tried almost my best and slowly gave up.  My rival seemed to have to win.  I lacked that competitive drive or maybe I just got tired of trying my best and coming up short.  Or maybe I just wasn’t as talented?

In my adult life, I prided myself on not being competitive.  I didn’t have to win like some other people.  I enjoyed the activity more than the outcome.  But, every time I got upset during competitive situations I faced more of the truth.  I am competitive.

Being second fiddle is a place of longing.  Longing to be first, to be recognized, to be better than, yet knowing the judgement has come down.  I’d been found wanting. I consoled myself that I would’ve won if I’d tried harder but he wanted it more.  Second best?  It sure feels better to say I just didn’t try.

Unique.  One of a kind.  Valuable.  So much is competition and it seems so ingrained in my soul.  To not rank, to not measure, feels wholly bizarre at times!  The body passages gain more ground these days as I think about unique.  Unique functions, unique places, unique value and purpose but altogether important to each other to work properly.  More and more, unique is becoming the lens I desire to see others and myself through.

How do you uniquely contribute to the body of Christ?  How can you encourage the uniqueness of others?

My Little Girl Dress

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Purple, pink, and yellow striped.  Shiny satin and lace and completely impractical, the kind of dress an adoring father buys without consulting the family budget.  Lavish.  When I opened it as a girl, I remember trying to hide my delight.  Trying to be not my age.  I’m sure I failed.

I loved that dress and remember the disappointment when all of a sudden my body betrayed me and I outgrew it.  I’d become to tall and not a little girl anymore.  I don’t know what happened to the dress, whether it was stored away or given away.  I wish I’d saved it knowing now what I wish I’d known then.

Dads care about clothing.  Well…good dads care about clothing.  They care that their daughters reflect who they truly are, cherished ones with a strong protector.  Every daughter should get a surprise gift sometime in their lives, a beautiful dress from their dads.  Clothing is such a tangible display of a love that cherishes.

Now I find I don’t wear clothing to reflect much, I wear it to attract much.  Attract friends, attention, praise, a coveted business class upgrade (it’s never happened).  But, I’m reminded this week that God clothes me to reflect Himself and my identity as belonging to Him.  What’s even better is I’m still me!  His covering makes me more beautiful than I could ever be on my own!

God clothes me and covers me with much more than clothes to reflect His freely bestowed and lavish grace.   There’s nothing I need to attract anymore.

What does it look like to reflect Him in my actual clothing though?  In my daily life?  In my speech and in my responses?

I’m still pondering that one!  I’m pretty sure it means beautiful so I’m excited.

The Color of Anticipation

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Orange.  Warm, wonderful, wild orange.  Bought in the dead of winter for toes hiding in thick wool socks and cozy Uggs.  Usually I stick to more conventional…ok…normal colors.  But last week upon exiting the local grocery store, orange caught my eye.

My mind rushed to mid-year break.  Soon, I’d pack my bags with summer clothes.  I’d strategize the least amount of layers I could wear to the airport without freezing for the relatively short distance to donuts, mangoes, and sun.  What would I change into during our layover?  Or, will I change upon reaching our tropical destination?  Anticipation.

Anticipation wields a double-edged blade.  On the one hand it sparks a fire in the everyday as the moment approaches.  Tick off more things on the check list.  Come to a stopping or pausing point in a routine activity.  Contemplate the needs of others in the same situation and speak into the worry, anxiety, and stress of a conference.  Anticipation can move me towards action.

On the flip side, anticipation can start the slow slide toward disengaging too early, of coasting towards the day that I know will come.  I’ll deal with that later, my heart says.  That conflict, that difference of opinion that looms large, that kind word I want to speak.

Important things get put on the back burner as I count on the awaited event radically changing my outlook on life.  Relatively minor activities gain utmost importance like should I or should I not take beach towels?  I’ll have to wash them.  I don’t have a washing machine. But, it’s nice to have more towels.  They’ll get sandy.  On and on my mind goes…anticipating the beach.

Tonight as I paint my toenails orange, I hope the warmth of that color will rouse some praise in my heart about the gift of a break from the cold and fellowship with friends.  Then, as I look at my toes in the tropics I hope orange reminds me to live not just for myself, my break, my fellowship but for whatever He anticipates for me.

What are you anticipating?  What reminds you to live for Christ in the anticipation?

Waiting for My Club

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People gathered around me.  More and more people.  They stood in a circle.  Circles are not lines and lines are not circles. I began to grow anxious and strategize.

Waiting.  I stood at the Subway sandwich counter.  The store depends on a nice, straight line.  I was next but the line was neither straight nor nice.  Those devices that corral people into single file orderliness?  Nowhere.

Does The Way consist of being willing to give up my place in line?  Do I press my claim at the expense of another?  I have kids waiting, though.  Waiting for sandwiches.  I’m waiting, trusting God to make it right, to make even this chaotic gathering orderly.  Am I willing to be wronged? To be treated unfairly?  Am I willing to accept life in a broken world when it comes at my expense?  Will I willingly wait an extra 10 minutes in line?

The artist donned her gloves and met my eyes asking for my order.  She saw me.  My heartbeat slowed.  This time I enjoyed things as they should be…or, should I say, as I think they should be.

I know.  It’s a line at Subway but lines in this country provide the crucible which reveals my true nature.  These everyday moments stare me down.  When I’m asked to lock up my purse at the grocery store but know for foreigners its more of a desire than a mandate, do I comply?  When the cashier asks me to pay for my toiletries separately or the parking attendant requests that I re-park my car nose out like a drug dealer making a quick getaway, do I grumble?  Do I even do it?

Will I throw my lot to God and submit to what seems ridiculous…and to what really is ridiculous?  Or will I do what I like to do and fight, press my rights, stake my claim?  I who have no rights?  I who follows the One who did not hold to His rights?

Ouch.  I don’t do well at this.  It feels like a freefall…a total loss of control.  And, it is but from the few times I’ve fallen from my rights, it’s been fabulously freeing.

I may be waiting longer for my sandwiches in the future.  And, I’ll need to perfect my drug dealer parking skilz too.

What is one of your crucibles?