children of war

Amazing article by Tahrier Muon that helped me understand better and hope bigger: We, the children of war in South Sudan, reject this war

depression

My pal Karen wrote an excellent post on depression: http://tedenrice.wordpress.com/2013/11/16/its-real-guys-so-lets-talk-about-it/
Read & learn & be encouraged. Her life is a beautiful and brave and encouraging thing.

the humility of hope

Some little baby friends are growing into toddlers, and it's so encouraging!

(Not literal babies growing into toddlers, just to be clear; rather, several young friendships growing a little deeper and stronger and easier.)

Something else encouraging today (from C.J. Mahaney):

Scripture calls us to cast all our anxieties on God, because he cares for us.

'Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God so that at the proper time he may exalt you, casting all your anxieties on him, because he cares for you. (1 Peter 5:6-7, ESV)'

Casting all my cares upon the Lord is a means of humbling myself before the Lord. In reading these passages we discover that casting our cares upon the Lord falls under the command to humble ourselves. Casting our cares is an expression of humility. When I fail to cast my cares upon him, I display prideful self-sufficiency.

Self-sufficiency is one of my favorite things, so I need to hear this. My schedule is not my own. My strength and ability are not my own. I am in great need of humility. I desperately need it for my survival, flourishing, and joy.

Humility requires releasing my worry. Worry and anxiety are not honoring to Him. They are not truth-reflecting, life-giving, or fruitful. Sometimes I feel like I should worry, or else I'm not giving due concern to a situation. This is absolutely untrue. Concern and thoughtfulness are very different than worry. Concern and thoughtfulness end in trusting action, with joy. Worry and anxiety drain and paralyze. They set me up as the burden-bearer, rather than Jesus.

Lord, let me then approach the throne of grace with confidence, so that I may receive mercy and find grace to help me in my time of need. May this confident hope in the great God I serve prevail as an anchor for my soul, firm and secure. For it is good for our hearts to be strengthened by grace, continually offering to God a sacrifice of praise. And may the God of peace, who through the blood of the eternal covenant brought back from the dead our Lord Jesus, that great Shepherd of the sheep, equip me with everything good for doing his will, and may he work in me what is pleasing to him, through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory for ever and ever.

impact

12 months at World Relief Seattle in numbers: http://worldreliefseattle.org/impact/

focus

Today was my last day as an administrative assistant / volunteer coordinator at SUA - I'm returning to teaching ESL at World Relief full time through AmeriCorps (and continuing to nanny as well). The kids and staff surprised me with a box of sweet notes. The notes were sweet, but sobering as they confirmed through their words that the connections I had made with a few of the kids were still in fragile infancy and may or may not survive my transition. And yet that affirmed recent decisions.

Part of the reason that the connections were slow to deepen was my frenetic pace in the first half of 2013. I like to think I can do everything, and maybe I can, but I can't do everything well. I survived working three jobs and volunteering twenty hours a week and taking two classes all at the same time. But I didn't thrive. And I didn't love well. My time with people was rushed, my enthusiasm continuously low, my investment and openness checked by self-protective instincts. I couldn't connect with kids outside of school, I couldn't accept my students' frequent invitations to their homes, I ignored my neighbors, my money management flew out of control, my physical health declined, my time with Jesus became hurried, and I neglected my family and friends. The summer has been a season of reflection and the fall a season of change - relinquishing my grasp and narrowing my commitments so that I can focus in on being a good steward of my top priorities. It seems so obvious, but it's so hard to accept the limitations of smallness with graceful humility. I was reminded through the lack of depth in the notes, both in their knowledge of me and in my knowledge of them, that being overcommitted had pushed me to this point of having little relationally to show for a year's worth of time at SUA and that I needed to focus in to pursue what I value and what I think I'm made for, which is fewer significant relationships rather than more shallow ones.

The other reason that the connections I made were so incremental was that my position at SUA didn't center around direct engagement with the students. I didn't get to spend all day with them in the classroom, or even work logistics out directly with them and their families as our Office Coordinator does. Instead we only traded small talk and occasional chats, sincere though they might have been, when we happened to be in the same space or as I served them lunch, and most of my engagement was with volunteers and other staff. I need to work in a directly relational position. I am sure of that now. I need a job in which I can spend my days learning to know and be known by real people who are journeying through dark and scary places of life and who could use a companion along the way, and figuring out how to love them well like Jesus loves me well. (What does well mean? Sincerely, openly, humbly, diligently, relevantly, practically, committedly, securely... that's a whole nother conversation.) That's why I love teaching so much, and why I've chosen to focus on that over the next year. I have so much opportunity to connect deeply and consistently and practically and servant-heartedly with my students and I want to focus in on that incredible opportunity that makes use of my loves and my strengths. If I ever went back to working at SUA, I would want it to be as a teacher. They get to be on the front lines, and that's exactly where I want to be. I have learned some good things through my time in the logistics chain, but it's not the right long-term fit for me.

So I'm sad to leave the SUA students and staff, but not sad to leave my role there. I'm encouraged by the opportunities God has opened up for focusing in this year and I'm hopeful that he's going to use it to make me a better vessel of his love.

"Send us now into the world in peace, and grant us strength and courage to love and serve you with gladness and singleness of heart; through Christ our Lord. Amen."

hope

The kids don't love each other today. Understatement. They're saying in cold, deliberate voices "I'm going to kill you." (which is worse than screaming it)

It makes my heart fall to pieces. What do you do when they hate each other, when what God has done for them means nothing to them, when they're stubborn and irrational, when they're deliberately and spitefully cruel? What do you do when they can't see past the smog of their anger? When their sinful hearts crawl like nasty little monsters out of their mouths?



What does God do with us? Does he squeeze our jaws until apologies wheeze out as if from a dying organ? Does he turn up the radio and focus on waiting for the light to change?

I know it's not either of those options. He is neither aggressive nor passive. But I'm not sure how to mimic him. I know he is patient. I know he repeats truth to us, even when we refuse to listen. I know that even in our ugliest moments his love for us is steady. I know his heart breaks too.

So after a long conversation that got nowhere, I sit in the car, enveloped by dark rain, and pray. God, help me show you to them. We need you.



I come inside and start writing these words, and in the middle of the third paragraph, E walks in. He runs up to me and hugs me tight around my waist and says simply "Megan, I'm sorry I was mean to you, and I already apologized to her, too." And I'm weak in the knees at God's kindness, and at his reassurance that he is pursuing their hearts. I have great reason to hope.

running is a metaphor

On one night in March of 2011 I became a runner. I had picked up running before, tossed it around a bit, every time eventually fumbling it as I tried to juggle too many pieces of life that claimed higher priority. But this time was different. I had never run more than a mile before, but on a warm spring night down lazy neigborhood streets I felt like I could keep going forever. A silver parachute floated down from heaven with a gift of five miles, and when I came in the house at midnight and woke Kalie up to tell her about it, I was hooked.

17 months, 1166 miles, and 1 heart surgery later, I ran a marathon.

This long process of committing myself to excellence at something I have no natural talent at, and doing the daily work to train my body to achieve what had been a ridiculously implausible goal, has been incredible. I was weekly humbled by the Holy Spirit's gracious gift of his own strength and sanctifying discipline as I regularly faced runs that I lacked the willpower and stamina to accomplish and he trained my spirit to pursue wisdom and discipline at the cost of my own comfortable inertia. This wasn't just about running; it was about God working bigger things in my spirit and using running as a metaphor.

Thank you to those of you who encouraged me, rolled out of bed with me at 5 am during summer vacation to run before sunrise (that's you, sisters!), made sure I didn't leave the house without water (Gram), took me out for breakfast after my first 5k (331 girls), and drove two hours with handmade signs to cheer me to the finish line (Kim & Jill).

Here's me coming down the finish stretch after running 26.2 miles (getting smoked by Girl in Pink):

But it doesn't stop here! Thanksgiving 5k with the sisters, coming soon!

those other olympics

My lovely friend Leah posted this photostory of our recent camping trip to the Pacific coast and the Hoh Rainforest: http://www.ldankertson.com/roughhewn/?p=4260
Enjoy! And if you have a few extra minutes, take some time to look around her blog; the photos that come out of her camera and the thoughts that come out of her heart are just beautiful.

disconnect

On Thursday afternoon one of my former students, a tall, steady, 50-something, Nepali patriarch of a large, fun-loving clan who reminds me of my own dad, appeared unexpectedly in my office and handed me a brightly-colored invitation to his daughter's wedding on Saturday. Crazy, but how can you pass up an opportunity like that?!

The wedding today was one of the strangest cultural experiences I have ever had. Many friends and family had converged on the small home to celebrate, and the ceiling, walls, and floor of the garage, which was the main site of festivities, had been fully covered in an eclectic assortment of brightly colored bedsheets, and strung with garlands of balloons. Couches and chairs had been carried in to line the walls and the center of the floor was covered with an exuberant assortment of fake flowers in vases (including 4th of July leis, poinsettias, and everything in between), lit candles, plastic milk jugs filled with water, styrofoam bowls of food (offerings to Krishna), fancy gold vessels, and a coffee table with a package of paper napkins and several bowls of tikka (the red dyed rice mixture spread on the forehead). I arrived a few minutes after the start time on the invitation, so I was pretty nervous that I was going to disrupt something, but I should have known better. Instead I arrived to find just a handful of folks scattered in chairs outside the garage talking. Confused, I scanned the area for someone I knew, and spotted another former student, who welcomed me cheerfully and showed me into the house full of people, where I was passed off to the sister of the bride, who guided me into the bride's bedroom for a few minutes to see all of the girls dressed up in exquisite and vibrantly-embroidered saris, including the bride, who had a gorgeous red sari, very heavy makeup, and a big gold veil. I then followed the sister around for a few minutes, saying hello to some other Nepali friends and students, and the sister found me a chair outside by some unknown but friendly women and a cute baby who I chatted with to amuse myself.

Eventually the bride and groom came out to the garage and were seated in tall cloth-draped throne-chairs. I moved into the garage so I could see everything that was happening, and found one of my current students, a friendly girl about my age with good English, and planted myself next to her so she could explain things to me. The guests took turns coming forward and smearing tikka on the bride and groom's foreheads as a blessing, pouring water on the couple's feet and then sprinkling it on their own heads, and giving envelopes of money to the groom, bride, and attendants, all of which was passed onward to the attendants who stuffed the envelopes into large purses. The whole time this was happening, to protect the couple's beautiful clothing from being stained by drips of the red dye, a Mickey Mouse beach towel was spread across their laps. This went on for maybe forty-five minutes, and then they left the garage and disappeared again into the house. The gal I was sitting with left me and I planted myself awkwardly on the edge of a circle of Nepali conversation. Eventually the sister found me again and said "Come." So I came.

She took me in the house and had me join a group of people who were sitting at the table eating. The food was delish, of course, but the whole thing seemed so disorganized and scattered, with some people eating, some cooking and cleaning the kitchen, some sitting around chatting, some outside, the bride doing her thing in her bedroom, people going in and out. I chatted, made some new acquaintances, was warmly and kindly welcomed by all, and then meandered back outside. After another half hour or so the bride and groom came back out and sat on the floor with all of the paraphenalia while a very skinny older gentleman in khakis and a suit jacket perched on a folding chair, legs and bare feet crossed, pink striped scarf wrapped around his head and neck, huge glasses on his nose (and somehow his appearance was utterly charming) and spoke/hummed/sang pages and pages and pages of Nepali ceremonial who-knows-what, while the couple at various points dipped dandelions in water and sprinkled the water on each other, walked around the garage attached by a white cloth, mixed coins and string and wet flowers and a big rock into a pile on a yellow cloth and wrapped it into a bundle, and lots of other stuff that I didn't understand at all. At one point the bride's father and the groom's father gave each other new traditional hats and hugged, which was sweet, and at one part the sister blessed the bride and started sobbing, which also made more sense than anything I had seen that day, and then close to the end the groom put a necklace of green beads around the bride's neck, which I could get, but most of it was totally beyond me. I realize that at this point your eyes are probably glazed over because I have given up on explaining things coherently, but hopefully this will really give you a sense of what it was like to be there watching it in person.

But really, what made the whole thing so incomprehensibly weird was not the chanting and candles and unfamiliar rituals. It wasn't the different decorating style. It wasn't the foreign language. It wasn't even the fact that this ceremony went on for well over four hours. Instead, it was that the ceremony was not what you would ever call a ceremony in any American sense of the word. When I think of an American ceremony, I think of an organized, rehearsed, streamlined... performance. A performance at which the audience arrives early and sits quietly in nice neat attentive rows and applauds at the end. Not so here. The whole thing was so seemingly chaotic and disorganized. Guests would watch for a while, wander off, talk loudly to people on the other side of the room, go in and get some food, come back out, sit with their backs to the ceremony, perch on the couch behind the couple and pose for pictures, shout out directions to the couple, make jokes, and rearrange the decorations over the couple's heads. It was so so weird. The rituals were interrupted about a hundred times every time someone new would arrive (2 hours late, three hours late, no biggie) and the couple would go back to their thrones and cover up with the Mickey Mouse towel so that the new wellwishers could bless them and present their gifts. Furthermore, no one, even the people participating, really seemed to know what they were doing; it was like they were making it up as they went along. The flow of the ceremony kept stopping for conversations like this (granted, the conversations were in Nepali, but I am almost certain this is the stuff that was going down): "No, no, no, walk the other way around the fire." or "Hmm, I can't get this bag open. Can somebody run in the house and get me some scissors." or "Oh, we forgot to tear the yellow cloth into strips beforehand. Here, you do it, and we'll just keep going and go back to that part whenever you get them torn up." or "I think the maid of honor went inside to get some more pickle. Who wants to come sit up here at the front for a while with them until she gets back?"

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

My poor little American brain had absolutely no frame of reference for a wedding like this!

Sometimes in the course of building friendships and living life with people from different cultural communities, there are moments when I feel an electricity of connection, when I think "Wow, we may look totally different on the outside, but our hearts are completely the same." But sometimes I have experiences like today, when I drive away stunned, shaking my head, with a daunted heart, thinking "I will never, never, never understand this culture. The divide is just too big." Days like this can be discouraging.

But even today, in the midst of all of the exhausting craziness, there were reasons to be encouraged. I was so welcomed and cared for by the Nepali community present at the wedding. People kept checking in on me to make sure I was doing okay, I was offered food or drink about every ten minutes, many people made attempts at chatting with me in English, and all of their actions and words communicated complete freedom: sit if you want to sit, stand if you want to stand, eat if you want to eat, stay with us if you want to stay, if you need to leave it's okay, participate if you want to, or don't, we are glad you're here and you can just do whatever makes you feel comfortable. I felt so safe. It made me want to spend more time with this community... though I will definitely need a few months before I'm ready for another wedding.

ps- I have some sweet pictures, but I need to get permission from the family before I post them, so hopefully they'll be up here sometime soon.