Teaching Prostitution to 5th graders

I knew that title would catch your attention.  OK, I know that several of you readers are also my Facebook friends, so you might recognize today’s story and tomorrow’s.  I am building up to a really good post on Thursday, so if you are bored with rereading my stories, come back on Thursday for a new one.  Thanks Friends!

So I made a teacher mistake the other day.

When we talked about the Bible story of Joshua and the city of Jericho, I deliberately did not say the spies hid at the house of RAHAB THE PROSTITUTE because I didn’t want to explain prostitution to 5th graders. I just called her Rahab. But I forgot when we got to the story of Ruth and Boaz. I told them that Rahab the Prostitute was Boaz’s mother.

This was the following conversation:
“What’s a prostitute?”

“Um, someone who sells themselves” (as I try to move on as quickly as possible.)

“You mean like sells their hair or donates blood?”

“Not quite. Someone who takes money to sleep with someone for one night… like a husband and wife sleep together.”
Blank looks on their faces.

“Why would someone PAY MONEY for THAT?”

“Well, people pay money for all kinds of crazy things.”

Then one boy bursts out in revelation, “OHHHH Now I understand Jack the Ripper!”

Now the Bible lesson was down the toilet. I gave up.  I pulled out my computer and we started watching NASA youtube videos.  I was totally up for a distraction at that point.  Hey kids, look what happens to a wet washcloth in space!  I can’t believe I haven’t gotten any phone calls from horrified parents yet.  If they do call, I’m going to refer them to the family that taught their kid about Jack the Ripper!!  Yeesh!

I want Roots AND Wings

Today is one of those days when I literally ACHE to have my own home.  For years and years we have lived as nomads, changing rental locations every few months or years.  This is just the lifestyle of missionaries.  I joke that moving frequently keeps you clean.  When I look at pretty things in stores I resist the urge to buy by thinking about having to sell it or pack it or move it in a few months.  Yuck, suddenly “pretties” lose their attraction.

I really do love my life.  I am doing exactly what I have always wanted to do.  I am proud of us as a family for thriving in another culture.  I am fulfilled and happy in my life and I wouldn’t trade it for anything.  I have wings to fly and no weights holding me bound to this earth!

But there are days when wings don’t feel like enough.  There are times when I think I would like roots instead of wings.  When I see friends on Facebook posting pictures of their new houses, I feel jealous.  When I see others making pretty Pintrest crafts to adorn their newly remodeled kids’ bedrooms, I feel jealous.  Then I remind myself that Pintrest is a gateway drug to hoarding, and I shut off the Internet.

I feel like a 2 year old, spiritually speaking.  “I want what I have AND what you have.”  On these petulant days, I have to be deliberate in my thankfulness or I will start feeling sorry for myself.  I pull myself out of my rumination and look around for something to trigger the avalanche of thankfulness that I am sure is hovering over my head in the spirit realm.  I seize upon the parrots swooping noisily over my yard and I am thankful.  I feel the tropical breeze cooling my rental house and I am thankful that it is 75* and not -10*.  I notice the paint peeling off the side of our house and I am thankful, in a perverse way, because I don’t have the responsibility to scrape and paint that wall.  I watch my children run around our yard, and I know that we are blessed by Costa Rican standards to have such a large yard.  I look at the high wall surrounding our house.  It is topped with electrical fencing and razor wire.  I feel safe living here, and that is something else to be thankful for.

Does the bird complain about the weight of wings?  Never.  She blissfully rises into the sky without a thought of what she might be missing down below.  The bird is content with her fragile, little nest because most of the time she is soaring above the clouds instead of puttering around indoors.

I bend my thoughts to the sky.  I pull my mind out of the dirt where it is trying to suck water from the dry ground.  I stretch my soul towards the heavens and rise on the warm thermal drafts of thankfulness.  Up and up, higher and higher I fly.  I have wings, for what do I need roots?  Today I declare in faith, “I am content to fly.”

Photo credit: <a href=”http://www.flickr.com/photos/courosa/5788131697/”>courosa</a&gt; / <a href=”http://foter.com/Kids/”>Foter.com</a&gt; / <a href=”http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/”>CC BY-NC-SA</a>

The Ultimate Throw Up Story

If the title wasn’t enough of a spoiler alert for you, I caution those with weak stomaches to… not become a mother.  This is a true story.  None of the names have been changed to protect the guilty.  Nothing has been exaggerated, though time has been slowed down so that we can fully appreciate the gory details in word form.  I repeat:  this is a true story.

This last weekend I played a role that I am not very good at playing… I was a nurse for my sick husband.  I admit that I am generally very unsympathetic to his complaints because I hold the ultimate trump card- Child Birth.  Once you’ve given birth to a baby, no complaint of pain can actually compare.  And I’ve given birth 3 times.  So I sort of feel like slapping anyone who whimpers or whines about a tummy ache.  I’m not a good nurse.

But apparently he really was sick because he did not make it to the toilet the first time he projectile vomited from the bathroom door in the direction of the commode.  I had already warned him that as soon as he was finished defiling the toilet that he would be required to scrub it out too.  But that threat had yet to come to fruition.  I was very self-serving in my motivation to actually clean the bathroom myself.  I needed to go potty and I didn’t want to do my business in a vat of puke.  So I relented and began washing down the walls of the bathroom.

As I contorted and twisted to reach behind the toilet… yes it was necessary… I tried to remember the last time I had cleaned back there.  Then I remembered.  Oh and I wish I could forget the night of the great “Barf-O-Rama”.

I heard the wretching all the way from my bedroom.  I had been in a dead sleep, but suddenly I was electrified with adrenaline, on my feet and running into my children’s bedroom hollering “NOOOOOOO!”  But I was too late.  The little one had just coughed and barfed on her own pillow and mattress.  Ugh.  I hate stripping the beds in the middle of the night.  Figuring that she was probably empty, I moved Lucy into her sister’s bed so I could clean her bed.

I had just returned from the laundry room downstairs when I heard it again, that juicy, choking cough that had produced the first bed shellacking.  ”OH NO!  Not on your sister!”  I mentally gasped as I sprinted up the last few steps.  I entered the room in time to see Lucy sit up and turn toward the far side of the bed and once again yak… in her sister’s bed, down the wall and onto the floor.  I couldn’t believe it!  Two beds ruined in one night!

At this point, the odor in the house was putrid.  As I considered how many candles I could safely light, I moved Emma onto the couch in my room.  And because I didn’t know what else to do with Lucy, I stupidly put her into my own bed just while I stripped the second bed.  We now officially had no extra blankets clean.

As I was scrubbing the mattresses in the girls’ room, I heard it again… that horrible hacking cough.  This time, I thought, I’m going to get her into the bathroom or at least onto the tile floor before she throws up.  I ran at full speed into my bedroom, catapulting over the pile of dirty bedding in the hallway.  As I slid stocking foot up to my side of the bed, Lucy sat up and reached for me… still gagging.  I actually shouted, “NOOOOOOOOO!”  in the very same moment that I received a face full of projectile vomit… and it went right into my O shaped mouth!

I spun around on my heel and ran to the bathroom, but I didn’t make it.  I threw up on myself as I crossed the threshold of the shower.  Since I was now covered with two forms of puke, I decided to just turn the shower on and start cleaning myself while fully clothed.  I just couldn’t bring myself to pull a dirty t-shirt over my head.  I stood in the shower crying while Lucy sat in her puddle of vomit on my bed also crying.  My husband woke up at this point… yeah, just now… and surveyed the shock-and-awe with horror in his eyes.  ”What do you want me to do?” he meekly asked.  I didn’t even know where to begin.

So this was the last time that I had to actually stick my hand behind the toilet to clean back there.  I am thankful that those moments don’t come around very often.  If they did, I would definitely consider going on strike and demanding more money for this job.  Motherhood is not for the weak stomached nor for the heavy sleepers… that job is called Fatherhood.

How can anyone hold THIS all together?

A while ago I got an email from a friend of mine in Montana who wondered if I needed more ammo for my “Gross Mommy Stories”.   She sent me this tale of her own personal version of the Terrible Horrible No Good Very Bad Day.  Seriously, under these conditions how could any mother be expected to hold it all together.  Don’t even mention being “Christ-like”  I’m sure Christ never had to clean up so many bodily fluids in one day.  So here’s Noelle’s family scene:

Gizelle got up fairly early this morning.  Mark just let her go out and watch some TV, but didn’t change her diaper.  When I got up almost 2 hourrs later, I found her in Addie’s room, and she was starting to take off her jammies.  She was taking them off because she had just peed through everything and it must’ve felt quite uncomfortable.  I couldn’t believe the puddle of urine on Addie’s carpet! Ugh!  (she’s been on an antibiotic for 10 days, so it smells SUPER gross!)  So, I got out the vinegar, towels, etc and spent quite a while cleaning carpet.

Next I watch Addie walk right into Gizelle’s cashew’s which are nicely placed on the floor in the middle of footpath (I just vacuumed, and washed that floor last night).  Sigh.

Then I took the kids on a long walk/ride/run.  Almost 2 hrs later,  we are finally on our street, when Ezekiel announces he has to use the restroom. Super, we’re almost home, so I tell him to go on ahead and use the restroom.  I dilly-dally and talk to our neighbors, then walk on home.  When I get home he’s outside playing, but he suddenly runs inside FAST.  A few minutes I go inside and see him in his room putting on different shorts.  Didn’t think much of it, because he loves to change into his swimsuit any chance he gets.  Then I go into the bathroom and see the pile of wet shorts, underwear and a HUGE puddle in the corner of the floor! I have no clue how he had that much in his bladder!!  Of course, I had also just scrubbed the bathrooms and the floors on my hands and knees last night as well.  Why didn’t he go straight home and nicely use the restroom!  I asked him about said mess and he said “I peed UP and it did that”… hmmm?  What does THAT mean?  (Please don’t laugh at that last comment, because he doesn’t deserve any mercy yet).

Next I take a quick shower because I want to go to Garden of Readin for a book signing for Janice Thompson.  It ends at 2pm, and it’s 12:54 when I get in the shower, so time to CRUISE!  I get out, get dressed and then work on getting everyone clothed.  I tell everyone to get in the car and get seat belts on.  Then notice Gizelle has a yucky, full diaper.  So I put her on the toilet and run to get her clothes.  I’m ready to go with only a few minutes to spare.  When I go out, I see that nobody is in the car with their seatbelts on.  

Caleb’s driving the JEEP around and I tell him to stop now please.  He continues driving, so I tell him louder to “stop please!” Still ignores me, so I go tell him to go into him room.  I give him a swat for both disobedience with not getting in the car and not stopping the JEEP.  He’s already been disciplined today because he was being so unkind all day!  He stomps off and shoves his hand at the door in a huff,  Well, his height is a bit “wrong” for that screen door because when he pushed his hand hard into the door, his hand went right threw the glass!!!! He just broke our front door!  The door popped back at him since his hand went threw it and hit him on the face.  He got a little bloody nose!  So he was really crying hard (mostly scared about all the shattered glass around him)  No cuts on his hands or anything.  

In the end, I took all 4 kids with me because Mark needed to do some chain-sawing and thought it best to NOT be supervising kids while doing that.  With the way our day was going, I thought this was a VERY good idea.

So, we made it to the book signing, then I took the kids to Safeway because we still have some Starbucks cards from Easter.  I thought it’d be fun to have a little drink and get a couple sandwiches for the kids to share since nobody really had lunch yet.  We get our drinks, then grab some sandwiches from the deli.  I tell them they can choose a box of fruit snacks.  So as we’re heading that way, Caleb drops his whole hot chocolate!! What a mess! Then Zekers promptly drops his cup into the mess too!  As I bend down to get his cup, my keys fly out of my purse into the puddle as well.  UGH!  So we humbly apologize to the nice lady who comes to clean up the mess, choose some fruit snacks, the go to the check-out.  Where AGAIN Ezekiel drops his hot chocolate.  He’s always quick to say “I didn’t spill ALL of it though!” (no he has a little more he can save to spill in the car)  I told the lady at check-out that I’ll try to hurry up and get us out of the store as fast as possible!

Addie had her own money with her, so I let her buy herself a little treat at Safeway.  When we get home, she was in the new room on the new rug.  She started jumping up and down on a dance-mat-type of thing, and proceeded to spill all the powder-sugar stuff from her candy on the new rug!  It sure smelled sweet in there!  So, I got to take out my lovely vacuum and clean up all the glass in the front entry and all Addie’s powdered sugar stuff in the rug.  

Just before dinner, I asked Addie to take all the toys off the dinner table.  She kept the book she was reading in her hand and tried to lift the huge pile of toys off the table.  It landed on her foot.  I hate it that I had so little empathy for that when she didn’t decide to put her book down first!  She was crying so hard and looking at me like “don’t you CARE!?!?”  ummm… I wish you would’ve put down your book first…

This is just the list of spills and drops today- there were so many more whines, disobediences, fights, and frustrating moments that I couldn’t even begin to write down… and thankfully I’ve mostly forgotten all of them already now that everyone’s in bed, clean after baths, and sleeping peacefully and sweetly. 

It feels so hard and exhausting trying to keep up and provide a comfortable, clean environment for our kids- not to mention a peaceful and happy home as well.  Wow, do I ever need the Lord’s grace and peace daily.  He’s so good and patient with me.  I never thought I’d have to ask forgiveness so much!  

Aren’t we so much like our own children in the house of God the Father?  We make messes, break things, disobey, bicker, whine, and basically act like… children.  Yet our Father God has infinite patience and forgiveness for our childish ways.  We love you Lord and thank you for your Grace.

 Photo credit: <a href=”http://www.flickr.com/photos/rayani/2672808893/”>Rayani Melo</a> / <a href=”http://foter.com”>Foter.com</a&gt; / <a href=”http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/”>CC BY-NC-ND</a>

Photo credit: <a href=”http://www.flickr.com/photos/kubina/185188456/”>Jeff Kubina</a> / <a href=”http://foter.com”>Foter.com</a&gt; / <a href=”http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/”>CC BY-SA</a>

Photo credit: <a href=”http://www.flickr.com/photos/carowallis1/303633288/”>Caro Wallis</a> / <a href=”http://foter.com/Food/”>Foter.com</a&gt; / <a href=”http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/”>CC BY-NC-ND</a>

Losing ourselves and loving it

It is time to revive a theme:  Gross Mommy stories.  Today’s horror story comes to you directly from the bowels of Costa Rica in the lovely town of Atenas.  Missionary friends of ours live out there with their brood of kids and their dog Lucy.  I hope your breakfast has already digested.  

This morning started out normally enough: early to rise, breakfast of homemade banana bread, the juiciest of pineapples, and yogurt (keep this menu in mind as I proceed). The kids had just finished clearing their morning dishes from the table, and Brody and Ashlyn had headed out to lounge in the hammock in the backyard till school started. I was at the sink washing dishes, which so happens to be a chore I don’t mind one bit.

As I watched the two littles perform their normal kid antics, I heard Ashlyn’s voice, full of shock, yell, “What’s Lucy doing?” I looked up and out the window above the sink to see Lucy squatting to accomplish her morning duty in the backyard. What I failed to miss at first glance was what Ashlyn’s sharp little eyes had spied. “Oh mom,” she screamed, “I’m going to throw up!”

I emptied my hands and leaned forward in an attempt to get a better look at what was so horrifying about Lucy’s very normal activity. It was then that I glimpsed it, the very non-typical neon green string, that was very much NOT a normal part of this normal dog activity. Within moments, Lucy seemed to finish up, and quickly began to jaunt away from the scene of the crime. As she did so, something stretched from her backside toward the ground. As her distance from the scene increased, so did the tension in the neon green string. Now taut, something attached to this green string jumped from the ground and slapped the unsuspecting Lucy on the haunches.

Commence the dry heaves and wretches that so often proceed an all out vomit fest…from both Brody and Ashlyn. As Lucy ran, helter skelter, to escape whatever was pursuing her and slapping her as she ran, Brody and Ashlyn came rushing toward the back door threatening to evacuate their stomachs. Ashlyn made it further than Brody, who ended up losing his just-eaten breakfast on the threshold of the back door. I heard Ashlyn make it around the corner into the hallway and it was there that I heard the tell tale splatters on the tile floor.

As I rushed to assist Brody at the back door, Lucy met me as she continued her attempted escape from the neon green assailant. And then the horror, oh the horror! The duet that met me on the threshold was the thing nightmares are made of. Brody, still in the midst of projectile vomiting, with Lucy standing beside him, soiled, neon green sticky frog glued to her side, string still trailing from somewhere deep inside.

It is worth mentioning that for the last few weeks I have had Proverbs 31:25 up on my fridge, as a constant reminder to myself, “She is clothed with strength and dignity; she can laugh at the days to come” (NIV).

Touché, Lord, for in that very moment I began laughing like never before. I was laughing so hard that big ol’ tears streamed down my face. Meanwhile the retching and vomiting continued in surround sound, Brody before me and Ashlyn behind. All the while Lucy tried to make a mad dash into the house to hide under the kitchen table.

I did all I knew to do in that moment. I shut the back doors. I shut the doors. And I laughed. Oh, did I ever laugh. The situation was unbelievable. Truly, truly, truly unfathomable. Oh if only I could have kept that door shut and not faced the reality of what awaited me on the other side: the clean up and the extrication of the stretchy green frog from the backside of our dog.

My one-day-a-week house helper snapped me from my reverie of insanity, having come running in alarm at what must have sounded like nothing short of pure pandemonium. I retold the story the best I could through giggles, snorts, and dripping eyes. You should have seen Liliana’s face. I saw shock, horror, alarm, hilarity, disgust, and a whole other gamut of emotions pass over her face as I spoke Spanish words I’ve yet to use together, recto (rectum), jugette elastico (elastic toy), pegado (stuck), and vomitando (vomiting). Sweet lady she is, she half-whispered that she would help. “No,” I told her, “no, this is my job.”

I’ll save you the details of untangling the stretchy poo-covered frog from Lucy’s long fur. I’ll also save you the details of the extraction of the string from her innards (suffice it to say that stretching, poo, and being slapped in the hand, rubber-band fashion, were involved). I’ll save you the details of the vomit clean up. I’ll save you the details of the smell. Lawdy, the smell!

Horrific as it all was, this is one story to remember. Epic in portion, outlandish in details, and like no other story I’ve ever heard. Indeed, “these are the days I’ll remember” (cue the 10,000 Maniacs song)!

You can read more of their crazy, wild adventures in missions and life over seas at Jennie’s blog “Losing ourselves and loving it”.

What the heck am I doing here?

Every once in a while I go through a “What the heck am I doing here?” phase.  Other missionaries might relate to this feeling.  I look at the things that consume my time every day, and I feel like very little that I do has spiritual significance.  I sweep and mop floors, I fold laundry, I teach ordinary school subjects to fifth graders, I make dinner, I pack lunches, I pick up toys, I walk to the grocery store to buy bread… I do all the ordinary daily life tasks.  However, here it takes me twice as long to do most things with twice the effort that it would in America.  All that to say, daily life kicks my butt most of the time!

I start thinking about how easy it is to live in America, how I could do twice as much in half the time and still have time left over to minister to people.  I wonder why I’m here.  How can THIS be considered Kingdom work?  I imagined being a missionary to be more like living on a missions trip!  But it’s not.  Daily life becomes daily no matter where you live.  I DO love when teams come down on trips because I get a taste of what drew me to missions in the first place… but that’s not how I live every day.

It’s a part of my personality package to search for significance and meaning in my life.  I would be happy and fulfilled if every detail of my life had spiritual implications, but I just can’t reconcile washing the dishes for the Kingdom of God.  That doesn’t equate in my mind.  If I were the apostle Paul, I would want to spend all my time preaching and none of it making tents.  But the bills must be paid- so I teach school.  Dinner must be made- so I go grocery shopping and prepare meals.  Children must be cleaned- so I do laundry and bathe the kids and teach them to brush their teeth, etc.

I start to feel like a fake when I call myself a missionary and the next question is, “well how many people have you gotten saved?”  It’s as if my life is being weighed in a balance and I come up short.  I am worth of my calling only if X number of souls have come into the Kingdom.  When that’s not how the Kingdom works at all.  God’s Kingdom is not mathematical.  If it were, then the worker who worked all day long would receive more wages than the ones who arrived on the job in the last hour or two of the day.  But in that parable, Jesus said all the workers get paid the same regardless of how long they worked.  That’s neither fair, nor logical, nor mathematical.  If that’s not proof enough of the inefficiency of the Kingdom, then just look at the life of the missionary for more evidence.

If God were interested in the efficiency of numbers and equations then He wouldn’t ask a foreigner to go to a strange country, learn a new language, and speak to people with child-like simplicity and painful inaccuracy of pronunciation and grammar.  That just doesn’t make sense.  But He does.  This is how He works- mysteriously and sovereignly.  But I still think he could do this thing quicker and cleaner if he called and equipped locals only.  Why throw the messiness of missions into the pot?

When I am deep into my “what the heck” phase, I see all the messiness of missions.  You can’t bring cultures into close proximity without both of them being changed- and not always for the better.  Early missionaries brought sicknesses and diseases that the natives didn’t have the immunity to fight off.  Imperialism was a blight on early missions efforts- and this deadly fungus is still infecting the image of missions to this day.  Modern technology literally destroys simpler and older ways of life, often creating new problems even as it solves others.  Nothing we do is clean cut and free of the tarnish of human motivations.  Everything we touch becomes tainted, and God asks us to put our hands all over every detail of this life.  ”How could he WANT it this way?” I question.

I don’t have any answers to this question.  I muddle through my own feelings of uselessness and futility even as I long for purpose and meaning.  I long to be useful.  Yet the only thing within my power is my own obedience.  I wish missions were clean and tidy.  I wish obedience was simple and easy.  But it’s not. It’s daily.  It’s messy.  It’s complicated.  It is impossible to sound the depths of the human heart and it is impossible to write up a how-to manual for building the Kingdom of God.  It can’t be done.

Photo credits:

Kitchen sink, Photo credit: <a href=”http://www.flickr.com/photos/jeangenie/178780382/”>jeangenie</a&gt; / <a href=”http://foter.com”>Foter.com</a&gt; / <a href=”http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/”>CC BY-NC-SA</>

washing dishes in Honduras Photo credit: <a href=”http://www.flickr.com/photos/lonqueta/3532526536/”>Lon&Queta</a&gt; / <a href=”http://foter.com/People/”>Foter.com</a&gt; / <a href=”http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/”>CC BY-NC-SA</a>

I need a machete

How is it that I live in a tropical country where the number one gardening tool is a large knife called a machete… and I don’t have one.  It’s like an American not owning a lawn mower (which I don’t have either.)  I am sitting on my patio, looking at the palm tree growing in the empty lot behind my house.  It’s branches are hanging over my back wall which is rimmed with razor wire to prevent thieves from climbing over the wall.  The razor wire cuts up the palm leaves as the wind blows them back and forth.  The lower few palm branches are dead and ugly.  I would lop them off if I had a machete.

I will have to wait for the gardener to come.  Our landlord sends over a gardener.  Since it’s the dry season, we don’t see him too often because plant growth slows during this season.  The gardener is a frail little old man.  His tools include a gas-powered weed whacker and a rusty machete.  He squats down at the edge of the garden and hacks away at the weeds and leggy branches of the plants.  Then he weed-whacks then entire yard within a millimeter of the dirt.  It’s a miracle that any of the grass survives.  We have large bald spots in the center of the yard and it’s not from the random soccer game that the yard hosts once in a while.  He’s a quiet little guy, but he’s vicious with the greenery.

If I had a machete, I wouldn’t have to wait for the gardener to come and hack up my plants.  I could do the hacking selectively and precisely.  No massive slash and burn tactics would mar my garden.  Yep, I need a machete.  Plus I could always open a coconut any time I wanted to… not that I have a coconut palm handy or anything like that.  But one always wants to be prepared.

However, I AM the SUPER klutzy.  If anyone was going to cut a finger, or toe or limb with a machete, it would be me.  I am not nearly as concerned about my children getting hurt as I am about the possibility of hurting myself!  Though I am nearly 4x as old as my children, and according to basic probability calculations I should have 4x the experience as them- I am certain I have incurred WAAAAAY more injuries than they will every experience just because I am an accident waiting to happen.

So maybe I should be talking myself out of buying a machete.  Maybe I should just let the old gardener do the chopping and lopping.  Even though a machete is awefully handy down here, maybe I should stick to spades and garden clippers instead.  I don’t know if I will every really trust my skills in handling a giant blade used for all manner of whacking and chopping.  Yes, I think it’s best that I DON’T own a machete.

Photo credit: <a href=”http://www.flickr.com/photos/missmeng/5482657999/”>missmeng</a&gt; / <a href=”http://foter.com/Food/”>Foter.com</a&gt; / <a href=”http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/”>CC BY-NC-ND</a>

Just for Laughs

It’s been a heavy week in my blog world, and in my real world we are hard at work too.  Our first team of the season arrived on Thursday and Spring Break begins today for me and the kids.  Yes we are spending our spring break hosting a missions team.  Some people spend their spring break GOING on a missions trip to build something in a foreign country.  I live it.  How cool is that?  I don’t HAVE to go anywhere.

Speaking of going somewhere (and this is my lame-o segue into the fun video I want to share), last summer we sent our newly minted 16-year-old son back home to Minnesota to get his drivers’ license.  When we return for furlough in 18 months we don’t want him to be the weird missionary kid at college with no drivers’ license.  So even though it’s illegal for him to drive in Costa Rica, we let him pull the car out of the school parking lot or drive around the block every once and a while.  I thought of him, and all the other weirdo missionary kids who have to learn how to drive in third world countries when I saw this little video.  It’s funny.  This is what drivers’ ed would look like if it were taught by children.  (This video is made with real kids explaining things and then adults acting them out.)

Happy Friday!

I don’t have to like it…

Recently God and I were locked in a battle of the wills.  (Of course you know who won.)  As I squirmed under his thumb, I felt him speak to me in that Fatherly tone that he often uses with me.  He said, “You don’t have to like it, you just have to obey.”  

Now clearly I would be assured of a greater blessing if I submitted with humble faith to the thing that I didn’t understand.  But God and I were beyond the point of tender prodding and gentle leading.  I had gone through all my whining “Whys?” and settled into a defiant pout.  Now all he could do with me was to pull the “Because I said so” card, the Parental Ace.

I go through this with my own children sometimes.  They whine, “I don’t want to brush my teeth.”  You don’t have to like it, you just have to obey.  ”I don’t like peas.  I don’t want to eat them.”  You don’t have to like it, you just have to obey.  I don’t always explain my reasons to my children for the very purpose that learning to obey a parent will help them learn to obey God when he is also silent about his motives.  Sometimes children just need to trust that the grown ups know more than they do.  And sometimes I need to trust that God sees things that I don’t see.

I’m still not happy about what I know I’m supposed to be doing.  I still don’t understand it. But I have grimly set my face towards obedience, like Jonah plodding towards Ninevah with whale vomit pooling in his shoes.  I don’t have to like it.  I just have to obey.

Last night I prayed, “Lord, change my desires.  Give me your desires.”  And immediately I felt my cold heart begin to melt a bit.  This is going to take some more praying and more submitting of my desires, but I think I’m learning little by little.  I still don’t understand, but I choose to obey.

Photo credit: <a href=”http://www.flickr.com/photos/slightlyeverything/6086714262/”>slightly everything</a> / <a href=”http://foter.com”>Foter.com</a&gt; / <a href=”http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/”>CC BY</a>

Picky Eaters in the Desert

My Mother, the stoic, had an expression that she used on us when we were children.  She would say, “Beggars can’t be choosers.”  When we didn’t like the sensible, brown shoes in the hand-me-down bag, she would say that.  When we turned up our noses at leftovers for dinner, she would say that.  Somehow it didn’t make me feel any more grateful.

This week I had the opportunity to do the devotional in our morning assembly at school.  I was assigned the theme, “thankfulness.”  I started by asking the kids to raise their hands if they were picky eaters.  (My own children should have raise their hands.  I forgot to look and see if they did.)  Then I told the story about the Israelites, wandering in the wilderness, who dared to be picky.  If anyone deserved the title “beggars” it was them!

The Israelites had been delivered from slavery in Egypt.  They were set free in a blizzard of miracles from the 10 plagues to the parting of the Red Sea to the presence of God with them day and night as a pillar of cloud or fire.  They should have constantly been walking around with their mouths hanging open in amazement at all that God had done for them.  But no, they repeatedly forgot to be thankful.

So after a few months in the desert, their food ran out.  God did another miracle for them by giving them Manna, food from Heaven, every single day.  At first, they were thrilled.  The Manna tasted like flakes of honey.  It was delicious, healthy, versatile, free and abundant.  But after a while, they started to get bored with Manna.  Let me say that again, they got bored with the Miracle that happened every single day before their very eyes.  They forgot that without this miracle, they were beggars.  And beggars can’t be choosers.

That’s when the complaining began.  Once they started being ungrateful, the Manna no longer tasted sweet.  It tasted bland because their hearts were no longer joyful and full of thanks.  Their attitude affected their appetites.  They no longer hungered for the things of God.  They started looking back and hungering for the food in Egypt.  They forgot that as slaves, they would not have eaten like kings.  But they romanticized the past and complained about their present conditions.

They complained that they wanted meat.  So God got angry and decided to teach them a lesson.  He told Moses, “I’m going to give them so much meat that it will make them sick.  They will eat meat until it comes out their noses!”  God send a huge flock of quail into the camp.  They were thrilled at first!  But they quickly over stuffed themselves. Then they got sick and threw up.  The meat came out their noses just like God said it would.

I don’t know if this has ever happened to you, but once I got food poisoning from McDonalds.  I threw up for two days straight.  I haven’t eaten a chicken sandwich since!  That was enough to cure me of any McDonalds cravings for a long, long time.  The same thing happened to the Israelites.  They didn’t want meat after that.  And we heard no more grumbling about Manna for the next 40 years.  They finally accepted the fact that you can’t be a picky eater in the desert.  Better to be thankful than to pass a drumstick out your nostril.

I have my own little tribe of Israelites at home.  All of my children have been picky eaters (though the teenager has pretty much out grown that phase).  My youngest one just surprised me recently.  She went from an all noodles and cereal diet to suddenly agreeing to taste a bite of chicken.  The bribe was, she would eat a piece of chicken if I let her cut it with a knife.  So with my protecting hands over her little paws, we cut the chicken together and she held up her end of the bargain.  Then she declared, “I like it!”  I about died!  Five years of refusing to eat chicken and suddenly she likes it.  I felt like God looking down on his own picky eaters and breathing a sigh of relief.  Finally they are eating and not complaining.

Photo credit: <a href=”http://www.flickr.com/photos/carbonnyc/6144729060/”>CarbonNYC</a&gt; / <a href=”http://foter.com/Food/”>Foter.com</a&gt; / <a href=”http://www.eduteka.pl/doc/cc-by”>CC BY</a>