Christianity

The Thief in the Night

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Dark places breed fear. Just ask my child who wakes in the night calling for me. Or, listen to my problems multiply in the dim light of evening. Troubles loom and monsters lurk in dark places.

I listened to my child tell of jaunts to the bathroom postponed until dawn, lamps switched on, and books read in the middle of the night. Being a fearful child myself, I relate. A bump in the day and a bump in the night? Totally different.

I talk myself out of fear with the lamp. “How silly!” I say to myself when I think of that thief that climbed into a third floor apartment. I turn on the lamp. Fear never feels silly. Totally justifiable. Proud in its awareness of dangers to be avoided. Telling someone to simply not be afraid falls short…far short.

Sunlight dawning in my soul says if the thief comes, he cannot take anything God does not allow for His purpose. Because, you see, the thief can and does come. The thief is real. Fear exists because evil exists.

Freedom comes as I acknowledge that the dark is dark but that the light overcomes the dark…and the light resides with me always.

How do you deal with fear?

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Climbing Past Restlessness

~ eternalwaitofglory ~ 3 Comments

Every so often I travel alone.  I pack my bag with only my things.  Anticipation takes over greater parts of the days leading to my departure.  The expectation of caring only for myself looms on the horizon.  No one to dress but myself.  No one to feed but myself.  No time to eat but when I hunger.  Before the horizon zooms into reality I stock the fridge and imagine what might bring my husband some comfort for the task of all three children, all day, all alone.

Then, I journey.  Traveling alone means stretches of silence interspersed with bursts of speech…to the check-in agent, to passport control, to buy food, to the one who sits beside me.  But more silence accompanies me than usual on journeys alone.  More silence than children talking over each other talking to me.  More than the constant communication that makes home life run, soothes hurt feelings, or delves into deep issues of the heart.

I welcome silence…for a time.  I open books, ponder deep thoughts, fill pages in journals, watch movies.  Then I approach the seeming end of my thoughts or stack of books and my heart grows restless.  Like a mountain to be tackled with the promise of rest on the opposite side, I climb increasingly anxious to summit.

Activity fills most of my days.  Preparing food, giving direction, teaching, answering, asking.  The abrupt halt throws me forward like a passenger into a taut seatbelt.  Responsibilities pause yet I keep moving.  I require longer to slow down.  The mounting rise of restlessness washes over me.  I now know to wait and be still.  God has more for me than restlessness.

Given long enough I overcome the peak and enter the meadow of rest.  True rest.  Allowing inactivity and not labeling it “lazy” or “selfish.”  I see life marching on without my voice when I call home.  I know He values my voice but the knowledge that God does not need me frees me somehow.

I observe more of nature and life around me.  New, quiet thoughts come to me.  I feel lighter.  He upholds all, maintains all, sustains all.  I sustain small pockets of valuable life as He permits and because He sustains me, but He sustains all.

Rest acknowledges God is God.  I am not.  True rest puts me in my place and God in His.  He is Father, I am child again.

What do you learn about God when you rest?  What do you learn about yourself?

Why Do I Blog?

~ eternalwaitofglory ~ 2 Comments

I write because choosing just the right word to describe my daily life in light of God’s grace energizes me.  I understand who I am and my life more deeply when I put words to it.  I crystallize those feelings, that insight, these experiences with words.  I digest God’s truth from the Bible when I write.

My journal pages fill up with private concerns.  Newsletters serve a different purpose.  Occasionally I receive a grade on a paper.  I longed for an outlet for the thoughts that rattled in my head.

I write on a blog because I write when I blog and a few people told me they wanted to hear my voice.

Why do you write?

Teaching My Boy to Read

~ eternalwaitofglory ~ 2 Comments

I’m teaching my boy to read these days.  Reading is a passion of mine.  If I was not so responsible I’d be up late with the light on to finish a book.  Who am I kidding? I’m not very responsible.

Luxury these days would be reading as long as I wanted rather than only as long as I could manage to put off other things.  I dream of the day when I will be the one at the pool with a book instead of the one with the bag of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.

But my boy, he seems oblivious to reading. He’s compliant so he sits and participates in the lessons and he’s learning.  He’s also the one who told me quite clearly from the beginning that “some people read and some people build things.  I am the kind that builds things.” He thought that would get me off his back.  It did not though I’m pretty sure he will pursue a Bachelor of Science degree if he goes to college.

So, I sit five mornings a week and wait patiently for him to remember the sounds, figure out ways to help him blend sounds together, offer encouragement and correction, flash through cards.  It’s exhausting!  He even tells me to back off and not say “good!” after every successfully sounded out word.  Fair enough.  A guy’s got to maintain his dignity. I get it.

Recently, I noticed my son looking at some words and then trying to sound them out in his spare time. Up until that point, he’d been content to just see a jumble of words and let it be. Why try when Legos beckoned? Now, he looks, he assumes meaning can be found and he tries to unlock the code. I smile. It’s clicking. I’ve been waiting for it to click all year.

Perseverance.  That’s what it is my son does with such constancy in his learning that speaks to my spiritual life. Persevere. Keep sounding out what needs sounding out.  Keep reading the next word on the page even if I read it poorly and someone corrects me.  Even if I read it well and someone says “good!” in a way that makes me feel like a child.  Keep going until something about God, grace, and life clicks. Celebrate.  Then, move on to the next word and keep going.

Persevere.

Me and Marius

~ eternalwaitofglory ~ 5 Comments

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.”