Digging Deep

Once upon a time we were in Youth Ministry at a church.  A young couple that worked with us as youth leaders got pregnant and had a baby.  A few months after wards, it became apparent that something was not right with the little girl’s health.  After months of medical tests, they discovered that their baby was suffering with profound genetic defects and there was no hope for a cure.  She was given just a few months to live.  They signed a Do Not Resuscitate (DNR) medical order and took their daughter home to enjoy the last few months of her life.

We prayed like crazy during those couple of months.  We prayed for a miracle.  It did not happen.  When their smiley little baby died, we were stunned and hurt.  We all said the awkward, unhelpful things that people say when friends experience such a tragedy.  None of us knew how to help them grieve.  We were all in our early 20′s, and none of us had the wisdom nor the life experience to know how to handle this kind of sadness.  They retreated into their grief and we stood ineffectively on the sidelines wanting to do something, but doing nothing more than providing a few meals and pitiful sympathies.

At the funeral for their baby girl, the grandfather gave the eulogy for this young life taken far too soon.  I wondered how he found the strength to do it.  But he said some of the most beautiful and life impacting words that I have ever heard.  I’ve never forgotten them.  He talked about foundations.

On his morning commute through downtown, he would drive past an entire city block fenced off with barricades indicating that construction would soon take place there.  As the weeks passed, the buildings that were on the site were demolished.  Heaps of rubble were hauled off the site.  Then the digging machines were brought in.  For MONTHS they dug the hole deeper and deeper, preparing to lay the foundation for the future building.  As the hole got bigger and bigger he wondered what kind of massive building would be built there.

As the months passed and the sky scraper began to take form, the grandfather pondered these things in the light of the impending and certain death of his first granddaughter.  At the funeral he said, “When God lays a foundation, he has to dig deep.  We wonder what kind of structure he will build here.  The deeper he digs, the bigger the building will be.  In order to build something massively ‘upward’, you need to take the time to prepare the ‘downward’ part first.  The deeper God excavates our lives, we can be sure that He plans to build something very big on the surface, but he has to dig first.”

I have no idea if the family even remembers this eulogy spoken through the haze of their pain, but it has stuck with me for all these years.  I think about it when I feel like God is tearing down and digging out too much stuff in my life.  I thought about it when we let go of our life and possessions and family to move to the mission field.  I cried for the pain of the deep digging, but I wanted the results of God’s construction in my life even more than I wanted the rubble I gave up.  The bigger the blue print for the building, the deeper the hole for the foundation.

If God is digging really deep in your life, hauling out a ton of dirt and making a really big hole, then he plans to build a really big structure with your life.  We are the temple of God.  Does our foundation go deep?

When someone loves you…

Once upon a time, I found this cute list of things little kids said about Love.  I think their simplicity is so precious… and sometimes humorous.  We could benefit from some of these reminders about how to really love someone.  I want to grow old with my husband, and at the end, to feel that I have loved really well.  I don’t believe in keeping regrets.  I leave the past alone.  But taken as a whole, I want to feel that I’ve loved with all my heart and been loved in return.

When someone loves you, the way they say your name is different.  You just know that your name is safe in their mouth.  Billy age 4

Love is when a girl puts on perfume and a boy puts on shaving cologne and they go out and smell each other.  Karl- age 5

Love is when you go out to eat and give somebody most of your French Fries without making them give you any of theirs.  Chrissie- age 6

Love is what makes you smile when you’re tired.  Terri- age 4

Love is when my mommy makes coffee for my daddy and she takes a sip before giving it to him, to make sure the taste is right.  Danny- age 7

Love is when you kiss all the time.  Then when you get tired of kissing, you still want to be together and you talk more.  Emily- age 8

Love is what’s in the room with you at Christmas if you stop opening presents and listen.  Bobby- age 7

If you want to learn to love better, you should start with a friend you hate.  Nikko- age 6

Love is when you tell a guy you like his shirt, then he wears it every day.  Noelle- age 7

Love is like a little old woman and a little old man who are still friends even after they know each other so well.  Tommy- age 6

Mommy loves me more than anybody.  You don’t see anyone else kissing me to sleep at night.  Clare- age 6

Love is when Mommy gives Daddy the best piece of chicken.  Elaine- age 5

Love is when Mommy sees Daddy smelly and sweaty and still says he is handsomer than Brad Pitt.  Chris- age 7 (This one made me laugh.)

Love is when your puppy licks your face even after you left him alone all day.  Marianne- age 4

I know my older sister loves me because she gives me all her old clothes and has to go out and buy new ones.  Lauren- age 4

When you love somebody, your eyelashes go up and down and little stars come out of you.  Karen- age 6

You really shouldn’t say “I love you” unless you mean it.  But if you mean it, you should say it a lot.  People forget.  Jessica- age 8

This weekend, make a concerted, focused effort to tell someone you love them.  You might think that they should already know, but tell them anyways.  Say it first, don’t wait for them to say it to you.  And while you’re at it Guys, here’s a tip for you:  She wants hear WHY you love her too.  It makes the “I love you” special instead of generic.  Make an effort to love well.

The Spider Killer

I posted this short story on Facebook a week ago, but I wanted to share it with my non-fb friends too.  If the title didn’t act as enough of a Spoiler Alert, I should warn you, if you have heart issues related to the fear of bugs you might not want to read this.

Last night right before bed, my 11-year old Emma came rushing into my room gasping, “Spider! Spider!” as her body convulsed in a cumulative case of the heebie-jeebies.  I went into her room to kill it, but I was unprepared for the size of that monster.

“Holy Shnike!” I exclaimed.  No exaggeration, with its legs splayed out the thing was the diameter of a BAGEL.  I grabbed a can of roach spray, stood on a stool, and fired.  It fell to the ground and didn’t die!

As it scurried under the closet door I thought, “Crap! Now I have to hunt for it among the stuffed animals.  It’s going to jump out at me.”  I wildly started throwing stuffed animals out of the closet.

I found it again on the closet floor and doused it in bug spray, but the thing would not die!  Finally I grabbed a cheer-leading baton and started beating it.  Still the beast would not die! (and not because I have bad aim.) I finally knocked off a leg, and then it curled up into a slow death position.

When I flushed it down the toilet, I slammed the lid down just to punctuate my victory. That was by far the largest spider I have ever seen inside the house.  I won.

Some of you have asked where my husband was on this fateful night.  Well, he was out of the house picking up our son at Youth Group.  God was merciful to him.  He really hates spiders.  For me, spiders hold a kind of terror laced fascination, but it’s the cockroaches that make me scream.  I was raised in a family where, just for kicks, my father regularly chased my sister and I around the house with a Kleenex full of bug guts.  I have tried that on my husband and it usually ends with me collapsed in a hysterical heap of laughter, gasping for breath.  I’m giggling just thinking about it…

A Downton Abbey Super Bowl Party

**Spoiler alert for Downton Fans, I’m starting season 3 tonight… If you aren’t that far yet, you might not want to read the second to the last paragraph of this blog.**

This is a very rare Sunday blog post because, as many of you know, today is a very special day.  Today is Super Bowl Sunday, the most important day in my husband’s year.  To say that my husband is an avid sports fan would be an understatement.  I have actually caught him watching tennis on TV when there were no other sports on, and he doesn’t even PLAY tennis.  He plays softball and watches football and seems to find a sport to watch on TV for every season.  He has even taken up watching soccer since we moved to Latin America.  Everyone knows that soccer is called football outside of the United States, in contrast to American Football.  Now he enjoys them both, though American football is still the clear favorite.  Every year he participates in no less than 5 fantasy football leagues.  And Super Bowl Sunday is the High Holy Day of AMERICAN football fans.

We have been married for 18 years, happily married.  The irony is that I don’t care one iota about sports of any kind.  They do say that opposites attract, and for us, that must be true.  When we were dating I tried to go to as many of his softball games as I could.  I honestly tried to pay attention and learn the sport, but I just couldn’t manage.  I even tried PLAYING on a women’s team one summer.  I would stand in the outfield making mental lists of all the ways I could be better spending this hour than playing a sport.  I had to admit that I just don’t care about sports.  When the babies started coming to our family, it was a good excuse not to go to games anymore and I gradually bowed out of that obligation.

But we HAVE made this marriage work, because I support his need to play.  I do not just tolerate it.  I find ways to help him get that sports fix, because he’s a much happier person when he has a sports outlet in his life.  I have always told him that he can invite his guy friends over to watch games, and I’ll even make snacks for them and keep the children out of the way while the men watch a game.  I figure it’s a better option than him going to some sports bar or wings joint to watch the game.  At least I know where he is.  So in the spirit of supporting my sports addict, I help him host a Super Bowl party every year.

This year I got smart.  A friend of mine bought and iTunes subscription to Downton Abbey season 3, which we can’t get on TV here in Costa Rica (It’s blocked for some reason, international copy right laws, they say.  They don’t follow ANY other laws here, but they drag this one out when my favorite show is an issue!)  So my friend suggested that we set up a projector in another room and show the first few episodes of Downton while the Super Bowl is going on down on the big screen.  Suddenly I was excited about the Super Bowl!  Now instead of hovering around the guacamole all night long, as I previously planned, I’m going to be in all my girly-glory agonizing over whether Edith will ever get married or if Lord Grantham can accept Sybil’s marriage to the chauffeur or if Anna will manage to get Mr. Bates acquitted of murdering his wife.  Agh!  I’m excited!  It’s going to be a Jolly good time, I’m sure.

So in the spirit of my Downton Abbey Super Bowl party, a friend of mine sent me this Youtube link.  Apparently I’m not the first one to have this idea.  Here’s the Downton Abbey Super Bowl Mash-up.  Just hearing the theme music makes my heart flutter with excitement!

What?!? No Christmas?

I handed my friend Marcela the pretty little package wrapped in simple Christmas paper.  Inside was a snow globe.  As she tipped the globe, the figurine of a snowman clad in a red scarf smiled out at her through a curtain of glittery snow.

“Oooooh, I love it!  Just LOVE IT!”  She squealed with delight.  I was glad she liked the Christmas present.  We stood beside my tall Christmas tree that she had been eyeing with pleasure all evening.  “You know, when I was a child my parents were pastors.  The Christian church used to be very conservative back then.”  She commented as she fingered an ornament on the tree.  “And we never, ever decorated for Christmas because we were always concerned about what people would say.”

I must have had a confused look on my face because she expounded further on her parents’ conservative views.  Marcela’s family never had a Christmas tree.  They never mentioned the Nativity story.  And they never gave each other presents.  Apparently here in Costa Rica many Christians still view Christmas as a Catholic or pagan holiday, depending on their own prejudices.  Many families that have converted from Catholicism to Protestantism have completely rejected anything that even appears in the Catholic tradition.

While my friend talked, I remember a missionary from several years ago telling me that she collected Nativity sets.  But she always had to put them away whenever a Costa Rican family came over to her house because the Nativity was considered part of the Catholic symbolism.  My own Nativity set was sitting on a side table in plain sight.

Marcela continued her story.  She said she would always go over to her friends’ houses and lovingly admire their trees and lights, but her parent’s wouldn’t budge in their decision not to decorate.  So when she got married, she decided, “I am an adult now.  I’m going to make my own decisions, and I don’t care what people think!  I love Christmas, and I’m going to decorate.”

She and her husband married in October.  Her first major purchase was to buy a Christmas tree!  The first year they decorated together, and it was a novelty for both of them.  The second year he said, “You’re going to put that up AGAIN?” and he lost interest in helping her decorate.

This is their third year of marriage.  They are currently sharing a very tiny apartment above the church with her in-laws who are also the pastors now.  When she decorated their tiny apartment with a little tree and lights around the window, her in-laws were less than thrilled.  “Hmm,” her father-in-law sniffed, “I feel like I’m living in a department store.”

So now I understood her great joy in receiving a pretty little ornament that she probably never would have bought for herself.  Their family still does not celebrate Christmas… no gifts, no traditions, no decorations.  But my friend is doing her best to keep up her Christmas cheer.

The whole thing is so sad to me because Christmas is meant to be for everyone!  No denomination owns Christmas.  The angel who announced the birth of Jesus our Lord said, “I bring you good news of great joy that is to be for all men!”  Christmas is meant to be for everyone, because salvation is meant to be for everyone as well.  The birth of our Savior is the true reason for Christmas.

Honorary Auntie

Missionary families often say that the hardest part of our job is being far away from family.  Especially when you have a close and loving extended family, you miss them a lot.  When we were preparing to become missionaries, the “experienced ones” all told us that the other missionaries on your field become like the aunties and uncles and grandmas and grandpas for your children.  I was offended by this idea.  My kids already HAVE aunties and uncles and grandparents.  I didn’t want them forgetting their real family, and I didn’t want them replacing those roles in their hearts.  And I wasn’t really keen on the idea of someone else’s kids calling me Auntie.  I wasn’t impressed with this substitute idea of family.

But time has passed and my attitude has softened.  My kids have NOT forgotten their real family and thanks to Skype and Face Time, we can talk to them face to face whenever we want to!  They know who their real family is and they love them like no other.  But it can get kind of lonely and sad out here.  There are no relatives to babysit for you when you need a date with your spouse.  There are no proud grandparents taking pictures at your school plays or sporting events.  And don’t even get me started on all the birthday parties that my family has missed and we have missed in our turn!

So here is where the missionary family comes in handy.  We KNOW we aren’t really related, but we ACT like we are.  I have taken care of children who are not mine– overnight, while their parents were out of the country.  I have pulled loose teeth, tucked them into bed, bandaged owies, and packed school lunches for kids who are not mine.  I have driven kids to school, picked them up again and taken them to youth group.  I have watched school plays and cheered at sports games.  I’ve taken kids to the movies and McDonalds and go carts.  I’ve attended every birthday party we’ve been invited to.  I’ve earned my Auntie status in a million ways.

It in no way diminishes my love and connection to my real family, but we all need a “Jesus with skin on” so to speak.  We all need the Village to raise a child (we just hope and pray that our village isn’t full of idiots!).  And we try to be that kind of community for others that we are missing ourselves.  It’s about living in harmony with people that you don’t get to choose… just like a family.

Doing the Birthday Party Rounds!

She will be worth it…

Ashley and Sean, look at that ROCK on her hand! I think those smiles say that yes, it was worth the wait.

I’m on a theme this week.  What do you feel is “worth it”?

A friend of mine got engaged this last August while she was home.  Now that she’s back in San Jose we finally went out to lunch so I could hear the story in all it’s girly detail.

My friend is 30 years old… and a virgin.  Way back in her late teens, she made a promise to the Lord.  She said, “Lord, I give you my 20′s.  Do whatever you want with my life.  This decade is dedicated to you.”  And the Lord took her 20′s.

For 10 years she served God faithfully.  She poured her life into mentoring young girls.  She went on missions trips.  She served in her church.  She lived 100% for God.  This was by faith.

God made her no promises that someday she would meet “the one”, Mr. Right, the man of her dreams.  She had no assurance that she would not be single for life.  She had no “deal” with God.  She just walked through that decade by faith.  The only thing she held on to was the belief that “God is worth it”.

She believed that God had a plan.  She had faith that someday, it would be worth it all.  She sometimes cried at night.  She sometimes doubted that God knew the depth of her loneliness.  She sometimes doubted that there was a husband out there for her.  She sometimes “took back” her promise to God in her heart, but she still walked it out every day.   She believed that it would be worth it all.

Then, less than a year ago.  God brought a man into her life.  This man had made a promise to God too.  This man had given God his 20′s as well.  This man was 30 years old… and still a virgin.

When he proposed to my friend he said, “you are not the girl of my dreams… you are better than I could have ever dreamed!”  I am sure he will feel that waiting for her was so worth it.  It was not easy, but it was worth it.

Scratching the Itch

This week I’m going to walk you through a bit of our personal story about how my family and I ended up on the mission field.  I hope you enjoy our story and find encouragement and inspiration for your own journey.

I grew up in a Christian home.  As a matter of fact, when I was in 4th grade, my Dad was hired as the Youth Pastor at our church.  As a preacher’s kid, I was in the church every time the doors were opened.  But my favorite times, by far, were Sunday nights when missionaries would come with their tables spread with snake skins and bobbles from far away lands.  I love their costumes and slide shows.  I loved their stories and their altar calls.  I can’t tell you the number of times I have responded to the plea of “who will go?”  My little heart was like a hand waving desperately from the back of the room, “ooh-ooh pick me!  pick me!!” I couldn’t wait to grow up so I could be called by God to go somewhere- anywhere.

I had Sunday School teachers and girls’ club leaders who read aloud exciting missionary stories of miracles and dangerous escapes and prayers answered and visions and angels and spiritual show-downs in witch doctor infested jungles.  Oh the adventures!  The thrilling adventures kept me coming back for more.  I searched the library for missionary biographies.  I collected the little picture prayer cards that the missionaries left in the back of the church lobby.  I studied maps and located the countries that I was interested in.  (I was the weird girl who lined her bedroom walls with maps instead of boy band posters.)  I couldn’t get enough of the world!

Time progressed and in Junior High we started studying languages.  I chose French.  Four years later I was a true Francophile.  I was convinced that someday I would live in Paris.  I was sure of it.  My teacher said I had a pretty accent.

The years still continued to slide along evenly, yet too slowly for my tastes.  When the Berlin Wall fell, I remember standing in front of a newspaper stand near our home in a suburb of Chicago and looking with disbelief at the first photos of people embracing across the span of that horrid barrier.  I remember thinking, “I should be there!  I was born too late.  I should be there by now.”  My Europe was changing without me.  And I didn’t even have a drivers’ license yet, let alone a passport.

College came.  I fell in love with a Youth Ministries Major.  I schemed and plotted and maneuvered until he caught me.  :)  The only problem was, Josh was kind of a home-body and I had the itch to travel.  Before we got married I looked at him and made him promise something.  I said, “Promise me someday we’ll do missions.”  Of course he confessed later that he just wanted to get married, so he said Yes.  But God heard.

For 8 years we worked as youth pastors at the same church where my Dad had been youth pastor.  Life was coming full circle for me, but I longed for what was outside of my circle.  Every other year we took our youth group kids on a missions trip overseas.  This trip was the highlight of my year, and I would beg, borrow and steal to make it happen.  Once it meant I weaned my nursing baby earlier than I wanted to just so I could go on a missions trip.  I was serious about this!  In 8 years, we visited Panama, England, Thailand, and Mexico in addition to a personal trip to the Czech Republic just because I’d always wanted to go to Prague.  For me, those trips were scratching the missions itch.  For Josh, each one was a stretching exercise.  In each country he would ask himself, “Could I live here?” and each time, the answer was No.

To be continued tomorrow…

I hate you, Victoria’s Secret

A few years ago I was sitting on the couch watching T.V. when a commercial for Victoria’s Secret came on.  Normally I reach for the clicker, but since I was all alone I let the commercial play.

Big mistake.  In under 30 seconds I felt terrible about myself.  Just moments before I was completely UNself-conscious, now I felt like a fat slob.  I reached for another Oreo and wondered, “How can a 30 second commercial make me feel SO inadequate?”

The power of those airbrushed images of women with beautiful, plastic bodies was staggering!  Suddenly, what I WAS was not enough.  I was not beautiful enough.  I was not skinny enough.  I was not immune to gravity enough (which doesn’t even make sense!).  My hair was not full enough.  My eyelashes were not long enough.  My undergarments were not sexy enough.  I was inadequate in every sense of the word, in my mind.

So I fought back with the only tool I had available- I posted a snarky remark on Facebook about how much I hate Victoria’s Secret for making me feel so disgusted with myself.  I only received a few comments, but the one from my brother-in-law still sticks in my head.  He simply said, “But Josh thinks you’re pretty great.”  And that’s all I needed to hear.  I only needed to be reminded that my loyal husband was the only one I wanted to please.  And never once has he complained about my figure.

It’s true, I am not what I was when I was 16 years old.  But then neither is Josh.  One time when I was complaining about how Motherhood had changed me, my husband casually asked me, “Which kid would you like to exchange for your youthful figure?”  That brought me back to reality.  I go back to this powerful thought over and over again in my battle against the images that the world tries to convince me to strive for.  I will never look like a Victoria’s Secret model, but my husband and children are not complaining.  So I should quit being so hard on myself.  After all, there’s more to me than the image in the mirror.

Growing old together is the main goal, not hanging on to your youth.

Why I deleted my Pinterest Account

If you don’t know what Pinterest is, then you are either a man or have been living under a rock for the last 6 months.  Either is fine, it just means you won’t have much interest in my Pinterest drama (did you like my pretty little play on words?).

This morning I deleted my Pinterest account because of one thing:  pornography.  Up until this point, I had seen a few images of scantily clad women floating around the site, and I had naively assumed they were posted by misguided girls who believed that sexy and pretty were the same thing.  Oh well, I thought, I just won’t browse through the clothing category.  It occurred to me that there might be real nudity out there, but I again assumed that my filters on my computer would block that and warn me if I clicked on anything “adult”.  I was wrong.

The other day I innocently clicked on something that said nothing about clothing or lack there of and up popped what I can only assume was an image intended for homosexual pornography- because it made this heterosexual girl disgusted!  I searched around the margins of the picture for a “report” button and found none.  So I headed to the “helps” tab to find out how to report an image.  It turns out that you have to click on the picture to expand it to full screen in order to see a “report” button.

I then went to the Policy page to see what the “rules” are.  It said that though Pinterest doesn’t permit nudity, it relies on it’s users to report it when they find it.  Well, that’s a fine kettle of fish!  That’s called “not taking responsibility” in my world.  And in my world, when you rely on the goodness of human nature too much, you are destined for disappointment.  This required an email.

I quickly fired off an email to their customer service center to present my complaint and to ask if there was a better way to filter out bad things.  I got a reply back fairly quickly.  They said that they are currently understaffed and only have the time to reply to log-in problems.  They kindly (hear the sarcasm) sent me links to their policy pages that I had just read and said that maybe someday they would have enough staff to answer every email personally.  Boo-hoo, they can’t be held responsible because they are understaffed.  So my next step was clear.

I deleted my account.

The thing that I just don’t understand about pornography is how predatory it is.  Maybe it’s because I’ve never, ever felt the inclination to take my clothes off in public that I’m just not seeing the allure (again sarcasm).  I’m much more inclined towards leniency and tolerance for what you do in the privacy of your own home.  But once what you do in your home invades my home- then I get vicious.  I get angry.  Mamma Bear rises up!  Keep your private parts to yourself please!

Why would anyone want to put those kinds of pictures on a neutral website frequented mostly by women… or worse, a website for children!  If I wanted to see that kind of junk, I would go looking for it.  But since I’m not looking for it, I don’t want it shoved in my face!  It’s like what a Facebook friend of mine commented, “The wolves are out there.”  So true.

So because I want to protect my children, I have deleted my Pinterest Account.  To honor my husband who is faithful to me in mind and body, I have deleted my Pinterest Account.  And I will probably get several more books read this year without having that black hole of time suckage sitting in my desk top tabs.  Good bye Pinterest.  I probably won’t even miss you.