auntie & uncy

There's is a new baby in my family and I've never had a baby as family so naturally it's all I can be excited about in this long lasting moment of leaving Portland. I'm sitting on my floor that is empty of anything that would make our place comfortable, and cluttered with all things that make it look like we still have a long way to go until we are done packing.
Things are going so well with leaving. Why am I always so surprised and relatively ungrateful for when all things seem to go together so well? I guess if I had a profound answer to that question than this would be a blog worth reading.

The other night I was hanging out with Beall and Joy. I had borrowed a kitten for the night who belongs to my student Becky. If we weren't moving I would go to great lengths to keep him. He is orange and striped and I would even cut a hole in our garage door for him to go in and out if that was necessary. Becky let me name him and so I decided on something South African so she would remember what I had taught her about injustice. I named him Nelson Mandela. Mandela was falling asleep standing up. It was so funny that we were laughing very hard and there was a general happiness about having the heater on and the record player going that we were surprised when we noticed Beall's laughter had turned into crying. It struck me that there is quite a fine line between laughing very hard and crying. The emotional release of both is significant. For Beall, she was caught in a moment of realizing the immense beauty of our friendships and could see that soon they would be changing for a long time.
Consider the last time you cried hard. I know mine and I was alone so I didn't have to worry about the redness, puffyness, gaspingness, etc. and it was an important time for me of mourning the fact that I was leaving students who had come to depend on me. I supposed I had come to depend on them as well, why else would I be so sad?
I love hard laughter. Consider the last time you laughed so hard you had your specific hard laughing side effects (watery eyes, pain in your side, snorting, etc.) The collective value of moments like that with people you are close to is one of the good gifts coming down from our Father of heavenly lights.

Deciding if I should Share with you

I created this not so original blog on a whim. Well I've thought about doing it before when I have admired others for doing it, like Justin Zoradi and Beth Wilson and Jan Carson and Kevin Saiki. But today I did it. And I put past thoughts up and now I'm considering the possibility of actually telling others to take a peek. I know I shouldn't worry so much about what people think of me, but get real, I do, I just do. And so I don't like people to read what I write unless I am very secure in knowing that that person will tell me it's good, like maybe my husband or Beall or maybe George.

So I guess people write on Blogs assuming that people want to read their thoughts on a particular thing, like maybe HIV/AIDS would be appropriate for my blog or teaching kids who mostly don't like me or at least act that way. So...what should my first official post be??

How about worry. I have some things I could worry about in my position. Like, how about a mortgage. That's common right? We are leaving our home and won't have a job that gives us money to pay our mortgage so we have to rent it out. We've had 2 people show interest in our lovely home. We've even said, "hey, use our stylish and comfortable furniture, we don't mind". But nothing.

The clock is ticking until Dec. 2nd when we want to shut our car doors and pull out of our common driveway one more time. What a great life moment that will be, I'll most likely cry and also think about what song I want playing in the backround to help me remember the moment for a long time from then. It would be so fantastic and it feels very necessary to have our place rented by then, but so many things have to go right for that to occur.

Doesn't Jesus address this? (rhetorical question) Something about clothing the lillies that are out in the elements and taking care of little birds...so if he cares about the lillies and the birds doesn't He care even so much more for what I need? So I guess I'll find out what I believe about what Jesus thinks about me in these next few weeks. I believe, Lord help my unbelief.

Those who find themselves utterly empty will be blessed because only then will there be enough space for my kingdom to be given.

Those who realize they have lost everything and acknowledge their deep loss fully will be blessed because then is the time that there is room in their hearts for my comfort.

Those who know who they are and don't have to prove their power are blessed because they will be given everything I have made.

Those who intensely desire for their goodness to be wrapped up in their love for Christ are blessed because when that happens they will be given all they want in Me.

Those who have hearts full of mercy for others and a desire to take care of them will be blessed because then, from me, they will receive the purest of care.

Thinking More About Africa

8/8/2007

Now I’m thinking more about Africa, South Africa to be exact, myself being there to be even more specific. I’m waiting to leave. Not the kind of waiting I have been doing lately, like as in wondering if I should go, or if we should turn in an application or if we should buy a ticket or if we should even go, the actual physical waiting. I’m in the waiting room. I am on the precipice of my first visit to a new land, which might sometime be my home. I’m waiting for my plane to take off.

I watched the clouds roll into the San Francisco Bay today in a new way. They were like avalanche clouds pouring down in slow motion wiping out trees as they went. They were like an army of worked up soldiers descending upon their enemies. Then I saw a man who had been thrown from his car and was lying in his own blood in the middle of a freeway. That was strange and gross to see. I’m alive and well which at any moment could cease to be the case. And now I am waiting. I had stronger feelings about the stranger lying in the street dying than I did about this trip I am about to leave for. I haven’t been feeling much about it, not much expectation, not much worry. Am I scared? I won’t even consider it to be honest. I’ve been planning this trip for quite some time, or someone has anyway.

It’s kind of like starting a new school. I don’t know if I will fit in there. There is life going rough and well and dark and light and on and on. There is renewing and regenerating life that has nothing to do with me. I might go there, but I will be an outsider and in a new and strange way. I hope that I will have the wisdom to be humbled immensely by the situations I find myself in. I hope I have the frame of mind to ask good questions and I hope from the very depths that I have the courage to do what is good, even if that means being very, very lost.

Friday, Saturday,


Someday…

Thinking About Africa

May 2007

The feeling has been strong lately, the stress and worry that doesn’t normally plague me. I don’t know what to do with strong feelings, I’m a thinker and I like order in my mind and a sound ability to articulate my position.

Africa has always been symbolically on my horizon, it feels like forever anyways. I’ve always been wanting to go and always been pushing it back, further back and pulling in practicality and leaning on money and doing everything but listening. I’ve always been skeptical of talking about God calling me somewhere. I feel called to be a certain kind of person, not to do a certain kind of thing and live in a certain kind of place. But I heard him say recently that I wasn’t listening for it. I heard a slight voice say I was leaning on my own reason to make sense of what my heart desired in a deep place that felt intimate to share with just anyone. I keep wanting my motives to be right and pure and perfectly thought out and authentic and original and anything but ordinary…sound familiar? I keep knowing that it is about my heart, but forgetting that my heart transforms, I do not transform it. I think much too highly of my mind and it’s ability to form a reason for anything that will push me towards action.

And so I have been moving heavily and clumsily through my days, reaching out to my students half heartedly and from a tired place where I lost a tight grasp on my meaning. The idea of going to Africa has been getting more and more blurry because I haven’t been listening, I’ve been only fretting and trying to make sense and make motive. The Spirit of Jesus Christ lives in me to make me move and know why I did. I don’t have to try and produce pure motives, I need to listen for them.

I cannot wait lazily for God to affect change in my life and in so doing become a consumer even in rating which forms of religious expression fit my liking. There is a restoring and renewing wave moving that I want to be part of as a minister of the Gospel, not because I spent ample time waiting for my motives to be pure enough, but because I trusted that it truly wasn’t about me and it is okay to go out and expect to be transformed in my going.