An Organized Smoothie is a Thing of Beauty

Are you an organizer?  I am.  When I’m feeling depressed in the United States, I go to Target and buy a bunch of cute plastic organizing trays and drawers.  Then I feel better.  As far as I’m concerned, there is no such thing as too many organizational receptacles.

 

I hate clutter, but I force myself to live with a certain degree of it so that I am a tolerable person to live with.  After all, nobody really LIKES Martha Stewart, do they?  A house MUST be lived in.  It’s not a museum.  Having a family means that clutter must be tolerated to a certain degree.  But it’s not in my nature to abide with clutter for very long.

 

When I receive bad news, whether it be the ordinary garden variety inconvenience or actual tragedy, my first instinct is to clean.  It’s like my mind and body separate into two functions.  My mind starts processing the details of what I’ve just heard, and my body goes into “fix-it” cleaning mode.  I automatically walk to the living room.  I brush crumbs off the couch, plump the pillows and fold the blankets.  Then I move to the kitchen.  I wash the dishes, wipe off the counters and sweep the floor.  If life still has not returned to normal by this point, I make my way to the laundry room.  I rotate the loads of clothing into their next machine cycle, organize a shelf of cleaning products, carry the basket of clean clothes to my bedroom and proceed to folding.

 

This coping mechanism even kicks in when I am away from home.  I have found myself in hospital waiting rooms or doctor’s offices organizing the magazines either by date or by theme depending on how many tables are in the room.  Women’s magazines go on one table, men’s on another table, and children’s on the third table.  I can’t bear to sit still with nothing to do.  It’s my crazy way of trying to fix my world and make everything “all better” again.

 

You can imagine, though, how this drive to clean and organize could potentially leave me in an insane asylum if I let it run rampant through this third world country that I live in.  Let me give you an example.  Fruit smoothies are all the rage here in Costa Rica right now.  Smoothie places are popping up on every corner, making them nearly as ubiquitous as dentist offices here.  It’s a trend that I am totally loving!  I am doing my best to keep the smoothie shop down the street from my house in business.  But seriously, that place is totally unorganized.

 

As I wait an agonizingly long time for my order of smoothies to be prepared, I watch the system of chaos behind the counter.  All of the ingredients are spread around the shop in various locations.  In order to make ONE smoothie… and there is only one blender in the store so they MUST be made one at a time… the girl has to walk to the freezer and remove a bucket of pre-cleaned frozen fruit.  Then she walks to the back room somewhere and returns with the blender tumbler filled with ice.  Then she walks to the sink and adds a bit of water.  Then she walks to another counter for a scoop of sugar.  She finally blends all the ingredients and pours the smoothie into a plastic cup.  Her final two steps occur at the same counter where she tops the cup in a machine that makes a cellophane seal on the lid and types in the total at the cash register.  Then this entire circuit must be reproduced for the next 3 smoothies that I have ordered.

 

It drives me insane watching the inefficiency of it all.  I am just itching to go back there and rearrange the workspace so that all the ingredients are within arm’s reach.  Once upon a time, I worked as a barista in a coffee shop.  I could make 6 different drinks simultaneously all the while maintaining an entertaining stream of small talk with the customers waiting in line.  This one-by-one amateur operation about drives me bonkers!  But the delicious end result seems to be worth the disorganization I must endure to enjoy it, because I keep coming back for more smoothies.  It’s “Vale la Pena!” as we say in Spanish- worth the effort.

I was here

I think the desire to leave your mark on the world is deeply carved into the human DNA.  How many bathroom stalls have you been in where some adolescent has NOT carved his name into the wall?  “John was here” or “Jane was here,” depending on which room you find yourself in.  I think that this is one reason why social media is so popular.  People are projecting into the void, “I am here!”  And I believe that at the core of every mid-life crisis is the doubt that you are NOT leaving your mark on the world- the fear that you are failing in your most human task.  When I am gone, will anyone know that I was here?  Will it matter that I WAS here?

There is a song by Coldplay that I really like.  It’s called “MyloXyloto”.  I don’t really know what that means, as a matter of fact, I don’t know what most of the song means but I like it.  For example, the chorus says, “You use your heart as a weapon, and it hurts like heaven.”  Well, I can’t really comprehend that, but the beat is bouncy and makes me want to dance with wild abandon.  And there are other lyrics that catch me and cut me deeply.  I like this song.

When the lead singer croons, “Do you ever get the feeling that you’re missing the mark?  So close, so close” I get that.  And then he leans into the rhythm, “On the concrete canvas I’ll be coming apart, on the concrete canvas I’ll go making my mark, Oooh with a spray can soul, with a spray can soul.”  Yes, I know this feeling.  Even though this does not make me want to take up graffiti art, I really do understand the basic need expressed here.  “I was here!” the artist is telling the world.

I evaluate my life often to be certain that I am leaving the mark that I want to leave.  The interpretation of that mark is out of my control, but where and what kind of mark I leave is entirely within my control.  I will not leave my mark on a wall (unless someone hangs up one of my paintings), but I try to leave my mark on your heart.

It is indeed possible to leave your mark on a human canvas.  My daughter came home from school the other day with her hands and arms graffitied by a friend with a yellow glow-in-the-dark marker.  Sophia left her mark on Emma.  Sophia was here.

Then I think about what God says about leaving marks on people.  He’s not opposed to it.  He says, I will carve your name on my hands and you will be mine.  If I am carved on God’s hands, then I know he will never, ever forget me.  This world may forget me if I fail to make an indelible mark on it, but God can never forget me.  My name is tattooed on his hands.  April IS here.

Photo credit: <a href=”http://www.flickr.com/photos/chriszerbes/7976579366/”>chris zerbes</a> / <a href=”http://foter.com/People/”>Foter.com</a&gt; / <a href=”http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/”>CC BY-NC-ND</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>

Why was there Myrrh at the Crucifixion of Jesus?

This is just for your intellectual stimulation.  Sometimes I ask myself questions which require that I go searching for an answer.  This is one of those times where my questions lead me down a very scenic rabbit trail. 

On Saturday night I read through the story of the Crucifixion of Jesus in preparation for celebrating Easter.  It’s a story I’ve read a bazzillion times.  But this time, one detail caught me attention.  I noticed that in Mark’s Gospel account of the crucifixion, Jesus is offered wine mixed with myrrh before he is crucified.  I also remembered that myrrh was one of the gifts that the wise men brought to Jesus as a baby.   So I decided to research its uses and history.  Of course I went to Wikepedia first.

Myrrh is an aromatic resin.  It is collected from a certain family of spiny trees, one of which is native to the Mediterranean.  The red-ish colored resin is what the tree bleeds when it is cut deep into the sapwood.  A tree must be wounded to collect the resin, the myrrh.

Jesus was also wounded and bled.

Myrrh is bitter.  It is used to stimulate blood flow.  But it also has numbing properties and is used for reducing pain.  It can be mixed with wine and drunk as a mild pain-killer.  It would have been an act of mercy to give Jesus something to numb the pain of his horribly bloody death.

However, he refused the wine mixed with myrrh.

Myrrh is also one of the ingredients used in ancient Egypt to embalm a body for burial.  It was a burial spice.  Jesus was not embalmed, but he was wrapped with spices.  In addition, the women among his followers prepared more spices to add to his burial.

Myrrh is a spice associated with death.  A strange gift to give a new born baby, unless he was born to die.

In modern religious services, myrrh is the incense used in every liturgical ceremony of the Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox, Roman Catholic, and Anglican/Episcopalian Churches.

So this made me even more curious and I asked, What is Frankincense?  Remember that the wise men brought baby Jesus the gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh.

Frankincense is also an aromatic resin produced by slashing the bark of the tree and bleeding it.  The resin that bleeds out is allowed to dry before it’s collected.  The dry resin is called “tears”.  Do you think that Father God shed tears for the death of his only Son?

Frankincense trees can grow in very inhospitable climates and soils.   But the most valuable resins come from trees which grow directly out of a rock.  Precious life springs from a lifeless rock.  That’s the kind of thing that God loves to do, surprise us with life where there was nothing but barrenness before.

Symbolically speaking, Frankincense represents the Divine.  It is a fragrance for the worship of God used in multiple ceremonies in the Jewish temple rituals.

Not only is it valued for its religious uses, but Frankincense is also edible.   It is used medicinally to promote healing.  Some would have considered this a very practical gift to give a family with a new baby since it can be used medicinally, but the Jews would have recognized it as a religious symbol of worship to God.  To offer a baby a fragrance normally offered to God would be very significant if the child were the Son of God.

(My source is Wikipedia for the majority of this except I already knew about the Biblical references and the thoughtful commentary and assumptions are mine.)

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!

This is a Test, it is only a test…

Good Wednesday Morn’ to Everyone,

I am going to do a little experiment with my blog.  For the next few weeks I am only going to post on the 3 days of the week that I usually get the most traffic:  Mondays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays.  We’ll see how it goes.  So don’t be alarmed, dear blog reading friends, if you stop by and there’s nothing new.  Just come back tomorrow.  So hasta mañana, we’ll see you tomorrow.

~April

P.S. If you think this is a rotten idea, just say so.  I’m open to feedback.

“Frienemies”

“My companion attacks his friends; he violates his covenant.  His speech is smooth as butter, yet war is in his heart; his words are more soothing than oil, yet they are drawn swords.” Psalm 55:20-21

We tend to think that Frienemies- Enemies disguised as friends- are a new thing come with the arrival of Facebook and text messaging.  But the problem of friends who stab you in the back is as old as dust!  Jesus had his Judas.  David had his Saul.  Moses had his Aaron and Miriam… family.

We expect attacks to come from our known enemies.  But when an attack comes from the person at your side, it’s bitter.  When someone who is supposed to be your ally, your family, your team member attacks you, it’s shocking.  You just don’t expect a blind-side.

The betrayal is even harder to accept when it comes from someone whom you have loved, someone who has been the recipient of the kindness of your heart.  When someone accepts your kindness with a smile and then spits in your face, it’s awful.   It makes you heart-sick.

Rather than jumping right up to defend yourself, pause for a moment.  Remind yourself that when a person complains or accuses another it is usually a smoke screen to hid that they are struggling with that very same thing in their own heart.  If they accuse you of rejecting them, it’s because they fear being rejected.  If they accuse you of hypocrisy, it’s usually they who are the hypocrites.  If they complain that you are intolerant, it is their own rigid beliefs they are trying to conceal.  It’s not you.  It’s them.  You are just the easiest target or the nearest warm body to take a stab at.

Once you realize that you probably are not the real target of this attack, it’s easier to let go of your right to defend yourself.  As a Christian, we are not supposed to seek our own revenge.  We are supposed to let God fight our battles.  Sometimes we see God vindicating us, and sometimes we don’t actually get to see it.  But if we give our hurt heart to God, He will be our hero.  He will fight for us.  And in time, that stab wound in your back will begin to heal.  Rise above the pain and walk on the high road.

When the Heat is On

I take no credit for this.  I found it on Facebook.  I wanted to share this with the hopes that certain people I know, who are going through trials, would pause and think about their response to the Heat.

A young woman went to her grandmother and told her about her life and how things were so hard for her. She did not know how she was going to make it and wanted to give up. She was tired of fighting and struggling. It seemed as one problem was solved a new one arose.

Her grandmother took her to the kitchen. She filled three pots with water. In the first, she placed carrots, in the second she placed eggs and the last she placed ground coffee beans. She let them sit and boil without saying a word.

In about twenty minutes she turned off the burners. She fished the carrots out and placed them in a bowl. She pulled the eggs out and placed them in a bowl. Then she ladled the coffee out and placed it in a bowl. Turning to her granddaughter, she asked, “Tell me what do you see?”

“Carrots, eggs, and coffee,” she replied.

She brought her closer and asked her to feel the carrots. She did and noted that they got soft.She then asked her to take an egg and break it.

After pulling off the shell, she observed the hard-boiled egg.

Finally, she asked her to sip the coffee. The granddaughter smiled, as she tasted its rich aroma. The granddaughter then asked. “What’s the point,grandmother?”

Her grandmother explained that each of these objects had faced the same adversity–boiling water–but each reacted differently.

The carrot went in strong, hard and unrelenting. However after being subjected to the boiling water, it softened and became weak. The egg had been fragile. Its thin outer shell had protected its liquid interior. But, after sitting through the boiling water, its inside became hardened.

The ground coffee beans were unique, however. After they were in the boiling water they had changed the water.

“Which are you?” she asked her granddaughter.

“When adversity knocks on your door, how do you respond? Are you a carrot, an egg, or a coffee bean?”

Think of this: Which am I?

Am I the carrot that seems strong, but with pain and adversity, do I wilt and become soft and lose my strength?

Am I the egg that starts with a malleable heart, but changes with the heat? Did I have a fluid spirit, but after a death, a breakup, a financial hardship or some other trial, have I become hardened and stiff?

Does my shell look the same, but on the inside am I bitter and tough with a stiff spirit and a hardened heart?

Or am I like the coffee bean? The bean actually changes the hot water, the very circumstance that brings the pain. When the water gets hot, it releases the fragrance and flavor. If you are like the bean, when things are at their worst, you get better and change the situation around you.

When the hours are the darkest and trials are their greatest do you elevate to another level?

—AUTHOR UNKNOWN

Travel covers a multitude of sins

“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it solely on these accounts.  Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one corner of the earth all one’s lifetime.”  said Mark Twain.

Based on this statement I might develop a sudden prejudice against Italians just so I can justify a trip to Florence, Italy.  Yeah, that’s it.  I need to go purge myself of my “Italophobia”.

I am originally from Iowa.  But before you jump to conclusions, you should know that I never even SAW a real live cow until we drove from Des Moines to Minneapolis, Minnesota.  I was 6-years old then.

I’m a city girl.  But I am related to people from small towns.  They don’t come up to the Cities very often, and when they do, some of them are “packing heat” the whole time.  (In my wedding pictures, my grandparents were both armed.)  And I would be too if I stayed in the Super 8 Motel on the edge of town.  Apparently they don’t want to go too far into the city in case God rains down fire and brimstone in Sodom and Gomorrah fashion.  They are scared of the city.

But the interesting thing is that several years ago my grandpa asked my dad for a computer.  My dad asked why he wanted it.  He said, “I want to be able to check the weather in Australia.”  Is he ever going to go to Australia?  Not unless they relocate it to the next county over.  He just wants to know.  Go figure.  Maybe if he could have nurtured that spark of natural curiosity when he was younger, he might have one day visited Australia and experienced the weather for himself.  But as it stands, traveling beyond his little world, at this age, is almost too much to handle.

On the other hand, my world spans the globe.  I have friends in nearly every continent.  And yet, sometimes that makes this world feel just as small as my grandpa’s town.  The words that are used to describe the missionary lifestyle are the ones you see in travel magazines: Ex-Pats, International Community, Global Nomads.  That’s my favorite one, Global Nomad.  I like it because I DO feel like a Nomad.  We pick up and move somewhere else every couple of years, sometimes more frequently.  When we are in one place too long, we get the itch to travel somewhere else.  When we are in one place, we long for another.

I feel like it’s just a physical reflection of the spiritual reality that we really are just sojourners here on this planet.  We feel a deep seated longing for our spiritual home, Heaven.  We don’t settle down here.  We don’t get too attached to this old life.  THIS is Temporary.  THEN is Forever.  In the mean time, I hope to cultivate broad, wholesome, and charitable views of men and things by all my global wanderings.

Those who despise grace…

Friday is the day for our weekly spelling test in my 5th grade class.  When the test is over, the kids exchange papers and we grade them together as a class.  Those kids are so hard on each other.  Every week someone complains that their friend’s “O”s look like “C”s or their “A”s look like “U”s.  They demand that every “T” be crossed and every “I” be dotted.  I’m sure some of them have a future in some government office.

I am constantly trying to teach them about grace.  My 5th graders are hard on each other and don’t give each other much grace because they don’t recognize their own need for grace.  They have very short and selective memories.  They remind me a lot of some Christians.

When Christians are hard on each other, demanding perfection of each other, it is because they do not see their own need for grace.  Pride has blinded them to their own faults, and they undervalue God’s power to forgive.

Jesus talked about this.  He said, “He who has been forgiven of much, loves much.”  The woman weeping at his feet was a prostitute.  The host, who forgot to give him water to wash his dusty feet when he arrived at the house, was a Religious Leader.  Who loved Jesus more?  The one who had been forgiven of more sins.

Those who do not recognize their own need for grace will always be hard on the people around them, like my 5th graders who are tyrants with a correcting pen.  Once a person sees their own trashiness, smells their own filth, and understands all that God has had to put up with in cleaning them up, then that person is tender and sensitive to the cleaning up process in his neighbor.  He says, “There but by the Grace of God would I go.”  If it were not for God’s Grace towards me, you and I would be in identical straits.

Has Pride blinded you to your own need for grace?  Are you hard on people?  Ask God for the brokenness that comes with understanding your own pathetic state before a pure and holy God.  Tenderness comes through brokenness.  Compassion is born of humility.