It's been a week of the normal weirdness of family and church life...one evening I joined my mother at about 10pm to visit a family whose wife/mother had just passed away...the next day was singing at a funeral...and the next day singing at a wedding. Now we're getting ready for a party to which two churches and others in the community have been invited, so I've made five pans of bars in the last 36 hours and we've all done as much yardwork as can be fit in during daylight hours. (Thankfully, none of us are freaking out much yet. It's only Wednesday, and the party's Sunday...)
Oh for the life of a church worker, ne. :)
The week has been a strange mixture of grief and joy, with the wedding and the funeral. Loneliness and a lot of people. New spiritual life and new physical life, as one left to join her Maker in heaven and two others left their individual lives to become one.
Last Saturday, God gave me my first white chocolate mocha since Japan and also my first real "quiet time" that felt halfways "normal"...it was something that felt so good I was flying high for most of the rest of the day...and not just from two shots of espresso. :) Anyway, during the time I found myself devouring Psalms, realizing that while I read Psalms almost everyday in Japan, I haven't really looked at them at all since coming back to America. I read quickly, hungrily, until my eyes caught this verse:
"Send forth your light and your truth, let them guide me;
let them bring me to your holy mountain,
to the place where you dwell."
(Psalm 43:3)
I've been searching for the correct words to pray for guidance for the future...and here they are! I love how the Psalmist's end place is God's dwelling...not just heaven, but His presence, His place of worship and praise. This is where I want to go...not necessarily Japan or America, married or unmarried, with family or far away, in a church or outside of a church. I don't like having so many choices that seem like boundaries. :) But God's light and truth directing my steps into His presence and praise...that is what I seek.
How that translates into funerals, weddings, cleaning rocks in the yard, baking bars, and taking care of screaming children...I don't really know. What that means for past and future relationships...I have no idea. But as Moses was told, "This will be the sign to you that it is I who have sent you: when you have brought the people out of Egypt, you will worship God on this mountain"...as Moses was given a sign for the future, after he had acted in obedience...I'm also trying to hope steadfastly in and pray diligently for a mountain...God's mountain. His presence and dwelling place in my life more and more.
Sigh. These words sound so beautiful and good compared to my life. :) But hopefully it's an encouragement to others as it has been to me...
Tuesday, June 23, 2009
Thursday, June 11, 2009
A Milestone
A good new/old worship song that I have heard...the first Christian song that has felt like worship since coming back...so celebrating the milestone. :)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Te0hy2YcLgg
God, my God, I cry out
Your beloved needs You now
God, be near calm my fear and take my doubt
Your kindness is what pulls me up, Your love is all that draws me in
I will lift my eyes to the Maker
of the mountains I can't climb
I will lift my eyes to the Calmer
of the oceans raging wild
I will lift my eyes to the Healer
of the hurt I hold inside
I will lift my eyes, lift my eyes to You
God, my God, let mercy sing
her melody over me
and God, right here all I bring
is all of me
Your kindness is what pulls me up, Your love is all that draws me in
'Cause You are and You were and You will be forever
the Lover I need to save me
'Cause You fashioned the earth and You hold it together, God
so hold me now
- sung by Bebo Norman
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Te0hy2YcLgg
God, my God, I cry out
Your beloved needs You now
God, be near calm my fear and take my doubt
Your kindness is what pulls me up, Your love is all that draws me in
I will lift my eyes to the Maker
of the mountains I can't climb
I will lift my eyes to the Calmer
of the oceans raging wild
I will lift my eyes to the Healer
of the hurt I hold inside
I will lift my eyes, lift my eyes to You
God, my God, let mercy sing
her melody over me
and God, right here all I bring
is all of me
Your kindness is what pulls me up, Your love is all that draws me in
'Cause You are and You were and You will be forever
the Lover I need to save me
'Cause You fashioned the earth and You hold it together, God
so hold me now
- sung by Bebo Norman
Lessons from the kids
Because of my work with the daycare and my church's VBS program this week, I feel like my life is filled with kids. I've worked the last couple of mornings, so I wake up and bike to church to take care of children, and then VBS is at night, so three hours after I get home I find myself heading back to church again for the evening round of kids.
I'm not bad with kids. Really...even my VBS kids who have only known me a week still always turn to us teachers at the end of the evening and point to me and say, "I want to sit next to you!" The other teachers, mostly moms, chuckle at my popularity, but I sigh with my smile because I have always been the popular one and never been the actual safe, disciplinary teacher who commands respect and obedience.
This summer, however, I think God is rubbing the idea of obedience in my face. One of the reasons I decided to work with kids for the summer is because I knew that I wanted to be a better person than I was in Japan...that sounds silly. Not better, but older. More mature. More able to be responsible for others and to lead. I want to have a clearer definition of what is right and wrong and be able to communicate that without always just going with the flow of what feels right. Call it exercising a different part of my personality...anyway, this is what I've been wanting to learn.
I guess God has honored that desire to learn, because where better to learn about boundaries, respect, and obedience than with kids?! The first lesson I have learned is that boundaries are set before the problem occurs--not after someone gets hit in the eye with a stick or hit in the head with a ball. I don't tell the kids to walk nicely after someone gets a sprained ankle...I tell them beforehand, so they won't sprain their ankles. Or at least, I try. :)
But what caught me today was it really is all about listening. Obedience starts with listening. If the kids don't hear about the boundaries or rules being set, they don't know to follow them, and the injuries still happen.
It all makes me think about deeper things...like God and me, and how little I like obedience, and how little I even try to hear God's voice...Not that I have to sit and listen hard, because I know God has made me differently from that...but we all have our forms of listening and learning and aiming to be obedient.
Sigh. It's still coming out confusedly. Ok, so I'm learning about boundaries, but not about communication so much. :)
On a completely different note, tomorrow a person from my Japanese life is coming to visit my American life. I'd be lying if I wasn't nervous...The lessons make me feel like a different person...much harder...I say, "No! Don't do that!" an awful lot more now than I ever did in Japan...
I'm not bad with kids. Really...even my VBS kids who have only known me a week still always turn to us teachers at the end of the evening and point to me and say, "I want to sit next to you!" The other teachers, mostly moms, chuckle at my popularity, but I sigh with my smile because I have always been the popular one and never been the actual safe, disciplinary teacher who commands respect and obedience.
This summer, however, I think God is rubbing the idea of obedience in my face. One of the reasons I decided to work with kids for the summer is because I knew that I wanted to be a better person than I was in Japan...that sounds silly. Not better, but older. More mature. More able to be responsible for others and to lead. I want to have a clearer definition of what is right and wrong and be able to communicate that without always just going with the flow of what feels right. Call it exercising a different part of my personality...anyway, this is what I've been wanting to learn.
I guess God has honored that desire to learn, because where better to learn about boundaries, respect, and obedience than with kids?! The first lesson I have learned is that boundaries are set before the problem occurs--not after someone gets hit in the eye with a stick or hit in the head with a ball. I don't tell the kids to walk nicely after someone gets a sprained ankle...I tell them beforehand, so they won't sprain their ankles. Or at least, I try. :)
But what caught me today was it really is all about listening. Obedience starts with listening. If the kids don't hear about the boundaries or rules being set, they don't know to follow them, and the injuries still happen.
It all makes me think about deeper things...like God and me, and how little I like obedience, and how little I even try to hear God's voice...Not that I have to sit and listen hard, because I know God has made me differently from that...but we all have our forms of listening and learning and aiming to be obedient.
Sigh. It's still coming out confusedly. Ok, so I'm learning about boundaries, but not about communication so much. :)
On a completely different note, tomorrow a person from my Japanese life is coming to visit my American life. I'd be lying if I wasn't nervous...The lessons make me feel like a different person...much harder...I say, "No! Don't do that!" an awful lot more now than I ever did in Japan...
Friday, June 5, 2009
Random analyzing
So, the last few weeks have held new opportunities in old situations, old opportunities in new situations, and the meeting of new and old friends, relatives, and others...I don't even know if that makes sense, but I'm not able to go into it all more specifically yet. It has been a busy several weeks!
My grandparents ended up staying with us for a week and left yesterday morning, and I have spent practically all of the time since they've left either lying in a stuffed armchair, on the couch, or on the floor. :( Blah for fevers and stuffed noses and sore throats and the like! However, it feels strangely good to just...rest. Everyone has always said to me, "Oh, it's good that you can come home and rest now." But rest has always seemed elusive to me...until yesterday, when not having the strength to do to much of anything and having a headache that kept me from thinking of much of anything was actually very restful. :)
It seems more and more lately that I find myself drifting off of topics in the present to topics in the future...wondering where God is calling me to be, what He's calling me to be doing... I'll be having a perfectly normal conversation when suddenly I'll start self-analyzing, wondering if I'm saying what I'm saying because I'm motivated by this or that...
Anyway, some of this self-analyzing has happened, like normal for me, through someone else's storyline...
So, since coming home, my brother has introduced me to the tv series "Chuck," and often we'll watch an episode at night before going to bed, or something like that. When we were younger, we used to watch episodes of Kim Possible when we got home from work together at midnight, and now it seems like we've slipped back into the same pattern. Anyway, Chuck is wonderful, because the main character is an average computer-nerd guy working with average working-class people who somehow ends up with a bunch of government secrets downloaded into his brain. Once the government learns about him, he has two government agents--a lady and man, Sarah and Casey--who come to watch over him, keep him safe, and use the information he has to help them foil criminals, people taking over the government, etc. Chuck actually really reminds me of my brother, because he's nice and funny and not one to take so much initiative on his own. However, that care and compassion is what gives him the ability to be a hero and save people's lives when he is called upon to do so.
The parallels that I see for me have more to do with Sarah, the lady agent sent to protect Chuck. Sarah is an agent through and through, and on the tv series she gets to beat up almost everyone (that definitely doesn't parallel my life!), but she also has a high streak of loyalty and mercy in her. She does her job because she's good at it, and it's what she's been trained to do, but her dealings with Chuck make her question if there is more to life than her job and ask herself what she really wants out of life. Because she is Chuck's protector, she can't allow herself to get romantically entangled with him, but through the story she finds staying separate from him more and more difficult...in the final episode (from last season), she opens her mouth finally to tell Chuck that she wants to be with him, but she gets cut off by a man telling her there is a problem with the operation, and without a second thought she runs out the door, leaving Chuck behind. The story doesn't end there, obviously, but I was struck by how through the whole storyline, she has struggled with making a decision between a "normal life" and life with a mission...and in the end, it's not even her decision. She just leaves...
I feel like I'm just speaking in parables here almost. :) There is so much that I want to write more plainly than this, but it all seems to be tumbling around deep inside me...so much so that I can't get out words yet, and only stealing someone else's storyline enables me to have some words. :)
My grandparents ended up staying with us for a week and left yesterday morning, and I have spent practically all of the time since they've left either lying in a stuffed armchair, on the couch, or on the floor. :( Blah for fevers and stuffed noses and sore throats and the like! However, it feels strangely good to just...rest. Everyone has always said to me, "Oh, it's good that you can come home and rest now." But rest has always seemed elusive to me...until yesterday, when not having the strength to do to much of anything and having a headache that kept me from thinking of much of anything was actually very restful. :)
It seems more and more lately that I find myself drifting off of topics in the present to topics in the future...wondering where God is calling me to be, what He's calling me to be doing... I'll be having a perfectly normal conversation when suddenly I'll start self-analyzing, wondering if I'm saying what I'm saying because I'm motivated by this or that...
Anyway, some of this self-analyzing has happened, like normal for me, through someone else's storyline...
So, since coming home, my brother has introduced me to the tv series "Chuck," and often we'll watch an episode at night before going to bed, or something like that. When we were younger, we used to watch episodes of Kim Possible when we got home from work together at midnight, and now it seems like we've slipped back into the same pattern. Anyway, Chuck is wonderful, because the main character is an average computer-nerd guy working with average working-class people who somehow ends up with a bunch of government secrets downloaded into his brain. Once the government learns about him, he has two government agents--a lady and man, Sarah and Casey--who come to watch over him, keep him safe, and use the information he has to help them foil criminals, people taking over the government, etc. Chuck actually really reminds me of my brother, because he's nice and funny and not one to take so much initiative on his own. However, that care and compassion is what gives him the ability to be a hero and save people's lives when he is called upon to do so.
The parallels that I see for me have more to do with Sarah, the lady agent sent to protect Chuck. Sarah is an agent through and through, and on the tv series she gets to beat up almost everyone (that definitely doesn't parallel my life!), but she also has a high streak of loyalty and mercy in her. She does her job because she's good at it, and it's what she's been trained to do, but her dealings with Chuck make her question if there is more to life than her job and ask herself what she really wants out of life. Because she is Chuck's protector, she can't allow herself to get romantically entangled with him, but through the story she finds staying separate from him more and more difficult...in the final episode (from last season), she opens her mouth finally to tell Chuck that she wants to be with him, but she gets cut off by a man telling her there is a problem with the operation, and without a second thought she runs out the door, leaving Chuck behind. The story doesn't end there, obviously, but I was struck by how through the whole storyline, she has struggled with making a decision between a "normal life" and life with a mission...and in the end, it's not even her decision. She just leaves...
I feel like I'm just speaking in parables here almost. :) There is so much that I want to write more plainly than this, but it all seems to be tumbling around deep inside me...so much so that I can't get out words yet, and only stealing someone else's storyline enables me to have some words. :)
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