Rested and Ready

        It was perfect timing really. I couldn't have seen it coming and was still complaining just before it came. But in the midst of a job I struggled in and as the doors swung wide for me to be certified as a teacher, it came. An interview I thought would happen five months ago and I longed for job offer.
     And I can see it now, mostly, that His timing was perfect through and through. That if this had come sooner, I wouldn't have learned those hard lessons- about putting forth hard effort when I am mostly frustrated, about trusting the Lord when I am doing filing rather than saving the world. And teaching, well I would have taken it for granted. Just as I did when I taught in Asia.

Taken in Seattle last Summer. So thankful for new seasons, fresh starts and the waves of His Mercy.

      And now it is a great gift. The pleasure of teaching, laughing with those students, seeing the joy of learning creep across faces and feeling his pleasure as I teach. It is so good.
       Next year I will be teaching four year olds at a small school. It isn't glorious but it is good. I am a little terrified but so thankful. He has provided me with just what I asked for- a job working with kids, not far from home. And more than I asked for- a teacher to work with and learn from who will help me along in this new path. And more- a chance to get certified! I look back in amazement at all the doors he opened while I continued to complain. I can be pretty ungrateful and blind at times.

    But now I am oh so thankful and oh so excited. It is small really, but I see the bigness in it. The great task of teaching young ones and building up a strong foundation of His Love, His mercy, His Word. And I checking out stacks of books on parenting youngsters and the young mind. It feels like a crash course in four year olds. And I never knew I would draw so much from babysitting experience but when it is all you got...

    So here we are, once again, thankful. Perhaps one day I will learn to be thankful even when I can't see what he is doing.


Please feel free to post some advice for working with four year olds. Thanks!

In this place, I am weary yet rejoicing

It has been one of those days where I feel again that in this place, before these students, I feel His pleasure. He has given me high and lofty goals and I am trusting him with those, but in this classroom before my students from 7 or 8 different countries, it is pure joy.

   I listened to an interview done by Bethel Church recently. Two Olympic runners have started going to that church and attending the school of ministry. Can you imagine- being a professional runner. That career alone is proof that God made us all unique and different!!
 
   And Sarah Hall, who runs steeplechases, talked about how she knew that God wanted her to run. And she talked about her passion for justice, for the poor and how that felt so much more important. And yet God said, run. Run because I can do more through you running that by yourself-with just your two hands on the mission field. And it shook me a bit. Because you know I have struggled with my identity and finding it in a holy and high calling. And it has been a journey finding it in Jesus. I am still on the road and it is a long pilgrimage with new friends and unexpected showers and dusty roads that remind me where I came from but it is beautiful and new and it feels right.

   Standing before those students today, the ones that so intimidated me only a week ago, I feel His Pleasure. It is coursing through me and I feel 'light as a butterfly' and I know His Joy must be shining because I can hardly keep it in. I feel like bursting.

And it is in these moments that I am thankful for the trials that have taught me to speak through against the lies. To catch the lies at their early stages and see their destructive end. I don't catch them all and I, again, am still on this journey, but it is a bit of beauty I am finding in the broken places. It is restoration and redemption for the lies that have rocked our little boat. So we are learning and I am thankful. For in those moments, when Truth has scattered lies and I am lifted up to see His great tapestry of love and I catch just a glimpse of the beauty that he is weaving, I am transfixed. Transformed. Renewed. And then I am back to where I can only see the knotted underside of that tapestry but it is enough. Enough to press on, with tired feet, and to remember that these feet are beautiful. That me with my lack of grammar skills, can teach English and bond with students and proclaim His Love. It is more than Enough.

Little Dreams Big

I used to want to be an actor. When I was nine. And I was so angry when my parents encouraged me to maybe find something a little less outlandish. So I decided to be a missionary. Or more- God gave me a deep-rooted desire sown in my heart under a starry sky in Mexico. And oh how that desire guided me for so long. It even became my identity.

In America we ask people what they do. It is one of the first questions of small talk and it creates a suddle pressure to have a good answer. What do you do? Oh I am just finding the cure for cancer while volunteering at the local food bank and teaching Sunday school and raising the next Bill Gates.

I was always so proud of my answer. It became a large part of my identity. So much so that I contemplated very seriously breaking up with Hank due to his 'lack of a calling.' It sounds horrible and it is, but my passion for missions had consumed me to an unhealthy degree. I didn't know who I was without it.

Last year I lived my dream. It was amazing. I got to teach ESL, live in a foreign country with some of the most beautiful people I have ever met and share the Love of the Lord with some of the coolest students-become-friends ever. And yet, part of my pined away for my sweetheart. I thought life would be perfect if we could one day get married and then live the dream overseas.

It is still a deep desire and I still think it would be pretty awesome.

But why is it that I am never quite content where I am? Why is it that I always want the next stage to come on and get here?

I have a job and a husband and a house and a garden. But I hate the job most days and neglect to clean the house or water the garden. I praise God for both in the morning light but when they start to need some TLC, I offer it only begrudgingly. Sometimes I do the same with my husband. He gets the dregs left over from a day of helping people who rarely say thanks.

And i think that maybe if we could just live overseas, I would find more fulfilment in my work and have energy to clean and love and more of a burn to worship and grow.

My goodness I must have a short memory. Because I never felt like cleaning last year and would regularly procrastinate on lesson plans and when there were over 200 students to love, I often felt discouraged and empty and frustrated. I often bemoaned all the aspects of the culture I didn't agree with or couldn't even begin to understand.

No, there is no perfect place. There is no perfect phase of life.

But there are gifts for the taking today. There was a beautiful woodpecker to watch at the park and several hours just to sip too-sweet coffee and work on lesson plans at the coffee shop. There were resources to use to teach refugees the alphabet and there was rest and energy. There was a long overdue visit with my best friend and her adorable family and hours to just talk and explore other-worldly parks lit with fireflies and legends.

There were conversations with beautiful grandmothers and a beautiful mom and there was time to burrow deep into the Word for rest and healing and hope. And there is God's never-failing and never-changing character and the compassion, mercy, love, and kindness he shows me daily.

And I am going to keep dreaming big but perhaps I will keep my small dreams bigger. I will rejoice over clean laundry and the tasks that get checked on the daily list. And I will rejoice over what I can't see yet and the promise that the future will be good, hard but good, and that I do not go alone.

Just a Couple of Dreamers

This past year I heard an artist speak on how he worships God simply by creating. He doesn't feel the need to create "christian art" in order to worship God. He simply creates with the skills and passion God gave him and in doing so, in enjoying the process, he worships God. He said something like this, "God is a creator. He is creative. When I am creative I am bearing witness to who he is. I am made in his image and so when I create, I am experiencing part of who he is."

I firmly believe God is a dreamer. Afterall isn't prophecy simply a dream backed up with all the power imaginable to make it happen? And weren't some of the most incredible men and women in the Bible dreamers? Joseph, David, Daniel. Wasn't Esther willing to believe a dream that she could save her people?

So I am believing in dreams. Dreams like these: that Hank and I would remain as in love as we are today forever(Newlyweds for life!), that I will get a good job and one that I am passionate about, that my family is in His hands and we are ever being sifted and purified, that Hank will have favor in his new job, that my sister Julia will one day open a camp for the deaf, that Em would find a job working with animals that fits her to a T, that Whitney and Jered would find a camp or ministry that they can work at as a team and still maintain a strong marriage, that Hank and I will find a good church that will become as much like family as ours in Longview.

I am believing dreams and in the believing there is faith.