Belly Laughing

      

"One Joy shatters a hundred griefs." -Chinese proverb 

       

We just got back from five days in Colorado Springs, CO.  Cross Cultural Orientation 2013.  From morning until late afternoon we sat and discussed almost every topic in the closed white binders on our tables.  Taking notes and sharing our hopes and fears. Carefully going through how to file taxes overseas, passports, visas, culture shock, re-entry, and a host of other topics.  The black letters neatly typed explaining each topic in detail as six YL International staff gently explained the differences and personal stories surrounding them.  Seventeen sets of eyes reading and scanning the room and speakers.  Seventeen of us trying to figure out what the next year will look like in Basque Country, Scotland, Hong Kong, Singapore and beyond.  As the days leaned into evenings we all began to realize our next year will not be neat and tidy like the carefully typed binder.  It will be filled in with messy scribbles, side notes and smears of ink. The evidence of the steps of faith that stretch out and often fail to reach.  The common theme being that it will be hard.  It will be really hard at times.  But that it will be really good too.  Rarely is there much in life that is wonderful without the cost of pain involved.  And Jesus was very clear that if we are to live a life that seeks Him we will not always feel good, not always feel comfortable.  That in order to live for Him we must die to our self, our wants, our agenda, sometimes even our dreams.  His ways are so much better anyway, but there is a lot of me that can get in the way. 

After dinner each evening we would all pile into a suite at the Hotel. We would share about the country we were heading to, play games, and eat chocolate. Late into the night when I crept back into our room I would look at my cheeks, red from laughing so hard. I would suck in my stomach and feel the pinch from the belly laughing ease for a moment. I would wash off the smudged mascara and climb into bed feeling very much alive and not nearly as afraid. Staring in the dark I began to think about how we all get pretty good at walking through pain. We don't really have a choice.  We all pass the lessons of heart ache and loss. We might stumble along, but we get through them. And this year has been wrapped up in a lot of those things. But the laughter in life is a choice to be made.  That night I could not remember the last time I laughed until sides ached and face puffed up. I had laughed. I had laughed at Levi's antics and the way Ian formed new phrases. I chuckled at Jeff's candid remarks and grinned with pride when Luke expressed his thoughts before bed. But I had not belly laughed in a long, long time.

 Joy as our strength. Growing up mom always closed her prayers with that simple request, and she still lives it.  I know how I will close my prayers this year. That God will allow us to belly laugh as much as we struggle. That Luke, Levi, and Ian will learn to laugh a messy, loud laugh as they walk out the difficult things with us. It is hard to be afraid when your laughing. And I am pretty sure hearts of friends and family knit together tighter when we are willing to laugh as we stretch forward in life. I am so grateful for the hearts I got to see in Colorado, for the friends made, the lessons received, and especially the belly laughs.

"She is clothed with strength and dignity;

she can laugh at the days to come."

Proverbs 31:25

Shirley

"He will cover you with His feathers, and under his wings you will find refuge;  

His faithfulness will be your shield and rampart."

 Psalm 91:4 NIV

 "When you are covered by His wings, 

it can get pretty dark."  

-Corrie Ten Boom

I ate our neighbor, Shirley's cookies before I ever met her.  2003 with Luke only 10 months old and a ramshackle house we would call home.  It was a mess inside and out but we could afford it and Jeff could repair it.  It took months and one time while we were walking through and dreaming of the home it would be she left a carefully wrapped plate of cookies on the roof of my car with a note that said, "I am so happy to have new neighbors, welcome home!  Love, Shirley"  

That seems so long ago now.  The first tentative steps in a relationship.  Decades separating us.  Her lawn filled with flowers and lush green grass.  Always quiet without a fallen leaf  in the fall and not a blade of grass taller than a toe in the summer.  I would walk over if I saw her out, Luke on my hip and then later him tottering forward through the bare spots in our yard, leaves clinging to his pants he went.  Shirley would always pause from her work to talk about children, flowers, and God.  

Two years passed with her laughing at Luke running through the sprinkler and chasing the cat.  And then Levi came.  Colic and red faced crying as I tried to look less flustered than I felt.  That is when we began to really talk.  She would tell me to enjoy the moments of flustered days.  The child holding my leg and the baby crying in my arms.  I remember so clearly her saying one day I would wish for noise and need and mess.  That one day it would be too quiet and the lawn would look too nice and tidy.

Three years passed and the boys would ask to go see Ms. Shirley now.  We built snowmen in her yard,  sledded down her hill, and picked flowers in Spring.  We would sit on her couch and bin of old toys would be brought out and words would flow.  That is the season I learned that the year  before we moved in she had lost her mom, dad, husband, and a son.  All in one year, loss after loss.  After the last funeral she started praying for her fears to subside, her hands to help others, and neighbors in the vacant run down house next door.  And through misty eyes she would exclaim, and He answered my prayers.

Two weeks ago I knocked on a different wooden door with stomach knotted.  Not knowing what to expect after the news from her son that two strokes had taken much of Shirley's strength and that recovery was unknown.  She lay still, eyes open and unable to move even a finger.  I listened close as she tried to form her lips to ask about her flowers and my children.  I spoke with rushed words covering my shock, trying to reconcile the woman before me with the one I last saw.  She asked if the cherry blossoms had bloomed and I answered no.  Thankful for the late March snow and telling her that we would be praying that she would come home in time to see them bloom.  

Last night I creaked open the wooden door again, my throat tight.  The florescent light streaming in across her face from the hallway.  I held a jar of cherry blossoms cut an hour earlier.  I couldn't tell her it had blossomed without her home.  Her eyes first focused on my face and then the jar of pale pink blossoms she cried.  Mouth twisted and bent tears streamed down her face.  We spoke slowly in the darkness of the room.  I asked if she was scared.  Her answer silenced me.  "I was really really scared at first.  I don't want to be here, I want to be home.  But I am trusting Him now.  I am in His hands.  And if my life is in His hands I want what He wants. I want what He wills."  She said this with tears still streaming down her face and longing to be whole.  And I cried with her and prayed with her.  The drive home asking God to have that same heart in me.  One that accepts not just the easy from His hands but the hard.  The one that knows He is a good father who protects even when we still feel pain.  

Today as the sun set and the boys yelled wild I ran from my backyard to hers and took picture to post on her walls.  I laid under the trees and stood on the hill high above them and wondered if she planted them with her husband before I was born.  Wondered what she thought of as she sat Spring after Spring under their branches.  Wondered if they reminded her of life each season instead of loved ones taken. And prayed that God would be gentle and that she would feel His love each moment. Realizing slowly that as I sat there that she is more certain now of God's hand in her life now than any other season.  And that even in this darkness His light will shine through her and produce something beautiful.  

Freedom and challenge

"This is what the past is for!  Every experience God gives us, every person he puts in our lives is the perfect preparation for the future that only He can see."

-Corrie Ten Boon, The Hiding Place

Three weeks have passed so quickly.  Twenty one days.  Countless loads of laundry, meals made, dishes washed.  Shoes and coats gathered again and again as the weather warmed and cooled.  Conversation and prayer over finances, ministry, loved ones, and Basque Country.  Time lines changing to fit a future we are so sure of and yet still feel so far from.

Three weeks ago, we paused fundraising efforts for a time of prayer.  To hear from Him about direction and timelines and ready to lay it all down if asked.  And then, in the middle of not fundraising, a very very large matching pledge was given, and the direction was renewed and clarified.  We are currently at 50% raised to be released to start up Young Life in Basque Country, Spain.  A whole 20% closer than where we were three weeks ago.  We had hoped and planned to transition this summer. Packing up, renting our house, and selling the rest of our belongings just in time to start the boys fresh this Fall to begin their first year of school in Basque.  

We are now readjusting to leave by January, 2014.  Six months difference.  Middle of the year moving and schooling options varying.  It is not what we would have chosen but it is good.  It is good because when we leave is one of the only things completely out of our hands.  There is so much we can choose, change, and hurry through.  Leaving is not one of them.  So to have it change is incredibly challenging and freeing at the same time.  Challenging, because we are readjusting expectations, time lines, and schooling.  Freeing because it is a beautiful reminder that we are not calling the shots.  And we are not orchestrating this on our own.

We are half way there.  We want to live out the rest of the 50% well.  With joy and expectation.  Enjoying every moment of family, friendship, and ministry here and now.  And trusting that ultimately it is God who sets the time lines and not us.

Thank you for walking this out with us.  In prayer and encouragement.  We can't wait to share the next steps with you...

Looking up

"He who can no longer pause to WONDER

 and stand rapt in 

AWE, 

is as good as dead, his eyes are closed."

-Albert Einstein

While visiting dear friends over the summer they introduced us to the murmuration of starlings.  Starlings flock together in the evening to roost.  Before they roost they put on amazing displays in the air, each reacting to the others movements.  The individual movement of each bird colliding with hundreds of others to create  this artwork above.  We stood on the pier heads tilted up to the sky as they gathered and moved across the water.  It was as if they were all tied together in movement, one would tilt up and the whole flock swung up with it. A dip down and the entire mass flowed down almost touching the sea.  And then, all at once they swooped under the bridge for the night.  I had never seen anything like it. Until that evening I could not have even told you what a Starling looked like.

My dad is home.  His last stay in ICU another realization that we are in a new stage with this.  We were  prepped for the sudden taking, instead of the gradual.  And now decisions are to be made.  There are machines that can pump his blood and new therapies, medicines, and doctors.  Decisions that will limits his life but possibly prolong it.  And I listen to his response, face exuding peace.   "I would rather just live each day trusting God, and not spend it hooked up to a machine."  Fullest of life is what he wants. That and to trust God for the number of his days, not man or machine.  For the quality of the days to outweigh the quantity.  And as he said this I began to see that this last month I was trying to figure it all out.  Constantly peering through the fog, stumbling on the path with fear and doubt.  Thinking it was all up to us, all about us.  But there is such a bigger picture than the path in front of us.  I forgot the views to be had when not focused only on my feet and where they were going.  And I look up and see that what He has for us is so much bigger than where the path leads or how long it lasts.  In the looking up I understand why it so was exhausting to only squint nervously forward. So, we will not go from here looking at our feet shuffling forward into the unknown but  looking up to see the God who knit us together with a love and purpose too amazing to fathom.  This knowledge driving out the fear and doubt like nails.  We are standing, heads tilted up and eyes wide open to how big God is.

Driving home the other night I saw a small group of starlings.  No more than twenty, all on the ground, heads down looking for food.  We whistled loud and in that instant they lifted and swooped together in form.  Dipping and gliding past the treeline and into the sunset.
  If you have never seen a murmuration of  Starlings here is a two minute video of one.  It will help you understand the beauty of looking up and knowing we are a small part of the bigger whole:
Murmuration Video  

Isn't that amazing?  Imagine paddling, eyes fixed forward, pushing through the water with  land in sight and then glancing up to see that!  Praying that you will stop squinting ahead to figure out what is next and look up to the sky for a moment.  Look up to the One who gave you that moment and thank Him.  That you will quit bracing for storms ahead and look instead to the One who commands the wind and sea.  And that your heart will not be seized with fear but instead overflow with gratitude for the life given, 

and the life lived in Him.

"You hem me in - behind and before; 

you have laid your hand upon me.  

Such knowledge is too wonderful for me, 

too lofty for me to attain."

Psalm 139:5&6

The Comfort

"Oh the comfort, the inexpressible comfort of feeling safe with a person, having neither to weigh thoughts nor measure words, but pouring them all right out, just as they are."

-Dinah Maria Mulock

Ian loves his ball blanket.  That is what he calls it; his blue ball blanket.  The one I got on clearance at Target and will never find a replacement for.  As he falls asleep his chubby hands search for the corner.  Not the one with my quick fix gluing.  He still has not let me forget how I put glue on the unraveling corner and forever changed the feel of it.  He finds the one that is smooth and pointed and rubs it on his eyes, nose, and cheek and drifts to sleep.  There are moments when he has been hurt that my yell of  "Everybody stop and help me find Ian's ball blankie" gets Luke and Levi moving faster than if I had yelled "ice cream for dinner".  They know that the ball blankie comforts where even ice packs and kisses cannot.

I am not good at talking about the hard parts of life.  I was made, like Levi, for belly laughing and silliness.  I would rather explore the woods for moss and ferns and play legos and nerf sword-fight than wear the heavy cloak of grief.  

I had a friend stop by today, and words poured out onto the driveway between us.   Clunky words describing how much I hated congestive heart failure, how much I hated my weakness, hated my tears, the struggle to trust when I know HE IS GOOD.  I used the word hate, a word the boys are not allowed to use.  But it poured out of me between the "I am sorry" and the "I am not always like this..."  But today I am .  Today I am not wanting my dad in the hospital again, not wanting broken relationships, not wanting all the unknowns that are testing my faith and joy.  So I choke out the fears with family and friends.  I share them in the hospital room, while standing in the driveway, and twisting a napkin on a couch beside Jeff.  How will we leave with it all like this.  Jeff and I pray and talk and talk and pray.  Friends call and stop by and nudge me out of hiding.  And they are safe.  Safe to let the guard down and let them stand with me in faith when I am ready to sit the bench for a day.  

Luke and Levi saw me crying during worship at church.  They know that Papa will come home from the hospital again this time.  We get more time.  More laughs and more tears.  And Luke whispered to me that he knows even when Papa doesn't come home we will get to have him forever because of heaven.  Levi adds that next time he goes into the hospital we should sneak in a black marker and write P after all the ICU signs.  "Get it?!?"  he giggles, "everyone will read ICUP"...How sweet it is to have them understand the crying and the laughter that comes with loving.

The biggest blessings and the most painful parts in life are tied up in relationships.  The most vulnerable and most secure.  I am thanking God today for the relationships He has brought into my life.  The ones I don't deserve.  The ones that are a comfort and safe place.  I don't have a blue ball blankie, but I am pretty sure I know the feeling it brings Ian.  I know the balm of family and friendship in hard seasons.  What it is like to have them hug you without words.  I pray that there is someone you can cry with and not just belly laugh with.  Who can stand with you in the pain and not just in the joy.  This week I pray that you are able to see and thank Him for the painful blessing of relationship.

"Be completely  humble and gentle; be patient, 

bearing with one another in love."

Ephesians 4:2

"Jesus replied, "love the Lord your God with all your heart  with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment.

And the second is like it:

Love your neighbor as yourself."

Matthew 22:37-39

Provision

This picture makes me smile.  Levi was at a friend's pool party this summer.  The friend happened to be a girl, and she was in the middle of opening up very girl-like presents.  All of this is very new to my boys, girls presents at a girl's party.  Luke was nervously waiting for the presents to be over and to get on with the cannonballs.  Levi, however, had this look on his face the entire time. 

 Sheer wonder at something he is admittedly clueless about...

 My dad asked a week and a half ago what would it take to have Jeff get a full paycheck again.  Jeff answered $12,000.  We had just found out donors had given above and beyond the normal amount this month to get us to 50% pay for Feb and some additional had been pledged for March.  If  love could write a check it would have been given the moment my dad heard the amount.  My dad's heart may be physically ailing right now but it is ferocious in it's faith and love.  He said he would pray and he did.  Others did too.  Three days later we answered a knock on the door after dinner.  It was not a high school kid  but someone grinning holding a check.  A check for $12,000.  And we stood looking like Levi above realizing we are indeed provided for.  This was not a person who had seen a club or campaigners.  They had never been to a Culpeper, YL Banquet but they felt led to give an incredibly large amount out of love.

We continue to walk out the day to day of YL, Culpeper here while trying to stay faithful to what He is calling us to next.  We continue to be full of faith that God is able to provide for Basque while knowing finances may be the door He chooses to close to redirect us.  We wait in hope, sometimes feeble faith, and an amazing amount of love and support.  Thank you for praying for us, standing with us, and letting us live out these steps of faith in a very messy way.  

"Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding."

Proverbs 3:5

Open Hands

"I have held many things in my hands, and have lost them all;

but whatever I have placed in God's hands, that I still possess."

-Martin Luther

  

He has a plan for us, and He is good.  I write this in my journal with the words He and good traced again and again until they become bolder than the others.  If I had more composure this would all look a lot better, believe me, I know.  In the end, I hope that I will be more humble and deeply rooted in the knowledge of His love.  Poise is overrated anyway.  Short lived.  And a horrible teacher.

Math still gives me heartburn and sweaty palms.  Yesterday I had the experience of a sweet, young Toys-R-Us worker breaking down the receipt line by line to explain why the total was higher than I thought it would be.  Flustered she looked for her mistake only for us to both realize it was mine.  In my head I had added up buy one get one free instead of buy one get one 50% off.  Yes I had seen the sale tags everywhere and managed to confuse even my ten year old son who is very good at math that my total was the correct one.  Luke paid the new total and gave me a quick lesson on what 50% off really is...

We are at a place of math not adding up.  I feel like we are looking at the receipt and trying to figure out who messed up, but no one did.  We are just inching towards 33% raised for us to go help Young Life get started in Basque, Spain.   Jeff will switch to 50% salary for Young Life Culpeper next month.  The plan was to go until July with full salary.  He is still doing Young Life while substitute teaching and coaching to make ends meet.  Our current time line has us leaving in July.  Needless to say heartburn and sweaty palms are wanting to be my constant companions.

    Last week I read about Gideon defeating the Midians with only three hundred men when he could have taken thirty two thousand into battle armies "thick as locusts".  This week I read about Jesus feeding a crowd of five thousand with only five small barley loaves and two small fish.  His math does not look right.  The numbers don't add up.  Gideon was in the weakest of all the clans, his number of men were then cut to less than one percent.  But things don't have to add up correctly for Him to be able to use them.  And they won.  

A large hungry crowd and a boy's small offering.  Hands cupped open with enough food to feed only himself, instead feeds five thousand.   God's glory was shown in both.   So here I am clutching the little we have done here and the little we have raised to go.  I have to trust that holding open my hands, the offering of these small things will bring Him glory.  And that it is in our willingness to obey and give that He is also glorified.  Gideon was fearful, needing God's reassurance often.  The disciples questioned the math in the feeding of the crowd with so little.  But all were willing to see what He could do with the little they were able to give.

We would love to keep moving forward in Young Life International.  We know that our time here is coming to an end.  We aren't ending this part of the race burned out or fearful of how it will continue.  Incredible leadership and volunteers are in place to carry on what God is doing here.  It is just feels like it is ending before the other is ready to begin.  That we are trying to do something that seems impossible with the little we have.  So I will not even try to show you poised composure but ask instead that you pray.  Pray that God is glorified through this and not man.  That His will would be completed in us and through us despite our lacking.  And we will pray that you will experience God's math with us.  That you will see  Him do amazing things with your small offerings this week.

"Here is a boy with five small barley loaves 

and two small fish, 

but how far will they go among so many?"

John 6:9