Author Archives: Life is For Living book

What is Beauty? II

Posted in life, women's stuff by

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Several years ago when a friend was approaching 40, I noticed the wrinkly skin at her wrists and thought I’m glad my hands don’t look like that. But now I’m 40 and her skin has become mine. When I spot the odd discolorings that used to be clear, and sagging skin that used to be firm and smooth, I feel compelled to run out to find the bottle with the graphics that promise me the fluid that will instantly restore the effects of sun, wind, caffeine, and hormone changes. If not instantly, then at least in 7 days.

In my town, I watch a woman with a lithe figure join another fitness group. I observe a young girl with professionally-manicured nails buy a new color of nail polish. Women cluster around moisturizers on sale because today beauty is finally more affordable. Tomorrow it’ll be too late and beauty’s promise will evade them.

I cannot scorn these women, because when I give myself permission to be honest, I feel the same desperation and compulsions. I walk down the sidewalk, past hundreds of drop-dead gorgeous women and sophisticated men, and I feel their eyes stop on me, sometimes curious, sometimes disdainful. (In Eastern Europe, status quo and fashion are uber-important, and staring seemingly isn’t considered offensive.) When their eyes catch mine, I know their attention was arrested by my un-fashionable clothes and white veil, but what I really wish is that they’d think my eyes or smile is gorgeous enough to catch their eye.

Or am I the only woman who wants a stranger to admire her face?

What is Beauty?

Posted in life by

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(The next few posts are installments of an article that was first printed in the lovely Daughters of Promise Sept.-Oct. 2015 issue. You might mosey over to their site to subscribe for yourself or a friend?

“Beauty” is a theme saturated with strong emotions, our own stories, and our dreams.The words I offer here are like anything else that appears here: ruminations and ideas to take or leave as you wish.)

Where’s that eye cream my friend gave?

This was my thought, the minute I saw my eyes have crow’s feet when I smile.

When I noticed wisps of silver at my ears and temples: I’m too young for grey hair. Where can I buy some brown-tinted shampoo?

I didn’t think I had a complex about my age. I don’t notice wrinkles and grey hair on other women. But on my face? Suddenly I was aware of a complex I couldn’t even name.

It had something to do with my idea of my face, and wrinkles and grey hair didn’t fit into that. Or then it was connected to my self-image, and my body’s new developments messed with who I thought I was: not beautiful, but not aging.

What is beauty, anyhow? I started mulling.

The miles of aisles selling crèmes, toners, colors and oils seem to imply beauty is in a bottle or package. Particularly one with shiny wrapping and curlicue graphics. The bottle’s contents will surely imbed the same attractiveness on your face or hair or legs.

Age-defying. Blemish-perfecting. Clearer skin after 7 days. Glossy hair—in the color of your choice. Break- through ingredient. Regenerating technology. Nature’s micro-oil fusion. Shimmering. Instantly luminous and youthful.

Beauty is something you can hold in your hand, exchange for some money, and keep within arm’s reach every day. Or on your dresser, catch-all basket, or bag. (Beauty is also the style and color of one’s shoes. Or scarf. Or belt.)

A Gift To Receive

Posted in life by

birthday-cake-380178_1280I’ve been thinking about seasons and moments, and how life is directional like a timeline, and I hear ladies not saying how old they are, and others feel melancholy about some percentage of their life being over.

Maybe I’m naive but I’ve never understood women’s reticence about saying their age. I get the idea of life having seasons. That seems obvious.

Maybe I’m missing something but what I don’t get is reflecting on life’s passing and being sad about it. When someone moans,”Now my life is 30% over,” I want to say “How do you know? The young can die as soon as the old. You only have this moment. Please don’t sigh about whatever fraction of your life is behind and ahead of you.”

One way this plays out is in celebrating small and big moments. The brilliant leaf on the sidewalk. The sky’s reflection in a water puddle. Someone’s choice of words. An anniversary of a significant event should be acknowledged, pondered, reflected on. Every birthday deserves cheers and salutations and blessings given, but I think especially decade birthdays should have extra blessings pronounced, bigger candles and cake. Or stashes of chocolate, as the case may be.

It’s not something to moan about, being over the hill or so much nearer to the end of life. It should be something to make much of, that we’ve been given THIS HUGE GIFT of life, crammed full of 10,000 moments every day, filled with color and music and fresh air and wispy hair. What’s to be melancholy about that?

Oh yes, the greying hair. I know. I see them every morning. It’s a sign.

It’s a sign that you have seen diamonds on trees and touched baby’s skin and tasted tears.

And you’re bigger and broader and wiser than a year ago. And a day ago. And a moment ago.

What’s to be sad about that? You could be jaded. You could be comatose. Those would be something to be sad about.

But you’re ALIVE!

This is a gift not everyone has. Take it with both hands open, revel in it, breathe it in deep.

If life is a timeline, it follows that we are at a point because of other points that precede this. Maybe those who treasure life most are those who have walked through places where they learn how fragile the line is, how easily it breaks.

Maybe we can’t know what we have until it’s been threatened or removed. I have been shattered emotionally and physically and maybe that’s why moments are so important to me. After my traumatic surgery, the anesthesiologist shone her flashlight in my eye to check my brain activity because my body was convulsing. I stopped breathing twice, and I resented the nurse shaking my shoulder, telling me to breathe, because I was finally resting and it was dark and calm there.

Life is beautiful, but it’s also terrible and frightening and there are moments that want to crush you. But life is living and growing and changing and not staying the same and I’m not enough of a poet to put it into words, but I want to say it’s a gift. You don’t earn gifts or refuse them. Life wants to be taken and made much of.

So celebrate!

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Tasty Words

Posted in books, recommendations, words by

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We were a group of friends around a campfire with a silver moon and glorious crisp air around us. It was “literary night” and some of us read wild and wonderful bits and pieces–excerpts and short stories–to the others. I cheered and laughed and ate up all the deliciousness. Among others, there was Dickens and A. A. Milne and then O. Henry.

“Goody, goody, I love O. Henry,” I said under my breath.

“How do you know all those books?” my friend next to me asked.

I shrugged and said I grew up with them. But now that I think about it, except for Milne, that’s not really true. I always read voraciously, but in very protected parameters, without access to a public library. Sometimes I feel like a hoax when I talk about my favorite writers and books because somehow people think I read a lot, but in comparison to other friends, I don’t. I think I give the impression of being well-read because I’m vocal about whatever book and author I’m enthused about, while my friends read much more high-brow content much more quietly and know far more than I.

But I follow some writers I like, here and there on their blogs or talks on YouTube, and then I recognize their names when their books get on best-seller lists.  And I watch some literary reviews in some papers, which alerts me to the up-and-coming new books, and then years later I unearth them in a 2nd-hand shop. Or a friend loans me one like this recently: The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society. I can’t repeat that title very fast, but it was absolutely delightful, and I was none the worse for having waited for it several years after all the book clubs in Ireland were reading it.

And now I’m in an academic setting where most of my assignments center around reading, reading, reading, and for the first time in my life, it’s something I MUST do many hours a day, and while I love it, it’s not easy. I thought it would be like eating chocolate cake. But the Chesterton book right now is such that I can. not. understand any two consecutive sentences. And it’s the book that has a section in which I’ll be responsible to guide a discussion, so I HAVE to get it. The experience is sort of like chewing steak. Tasty, but tough. Nourishing, but work.

This is not going to put me off books. It will probably make me more excited and vocal about words and ideas. And definitely more enthused than ever about wrapping up the day with Milne or O. Henry.

Kunfuzed

Posted in Uncategorized by

Yesterday we were sitting at beautiful wedding reception, eating hors’doeuvres.

My friend asked me a simple question: So do you miss Europe?

My eyes filled suddenly: Yes. Terribly.

“What do you miss about it?”

It’s odd, because I like how relaxed and friendly Americans are and I love how easy it is to talk with them, but I miss the elegance and dignity of Europeans. I miss dropped voices in public. I miss the refined manners and propriety and sense of fashion, all of which used to frustrate me to no end.

And it doesn’t make sense, because what I like is what I don’t like.

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Roots

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america-219896_640   I landed in the US with empty hands except for three elephant suitcases. My aunt and her family took me in, giving me room and a job. Another uncle and aunt gave me a car to use for the time being. Another uncle gave me a phone to use especially for when I’m on the road alone.

Ten days later, I found myself in a borrowed car filled with gas, a borrowed GPS, and borrowed CD’s. I headed from southern OH to the Blue Ridge Mountains of VA, a 6+ hour drive. I worshipped when I saw the light emerge in the mountains and the clouds playing below the peaks. The masses of trees and wild flowers were unbelievable.

I’d promised myself a treat at a Starbucks at a travel plaza, and waited in an interminable line. When I finally got to give my order, the man behind me gestured me on and said he’d pay for my mocha frappe. I wanted to laugh and cry at the same time. I still think that all the pleasantries and wishing each other a good day, all these positive vibes wafting around in this country, all the “How are you’s” have to nudge people to pay it forward and think warmer thoughts towards strangers here more than in the post-communist country I’ve lived in the last five years.

I was on my way to the area where I lived 19 years ago. The occasion was the dispersal of my Yoder grandparent’s belongings. It was the last Yoder gathering of its kind, and I was the sole representative of my immediate family, since they weren’t able to leave Ireland and Kansas for this weekend. I don’t know why it was me who was able to be there, being the least sentimental of any of us, and not in a position to accumulate anything sizable for myself. Living from three suitcases rearranges one’s idea of Stuff in a hurry. But I had the fun of bidding on behalf of my parents and siblings, and indeed, they bid now and then via Skype!

The family auction was filled with understated, simple humor as only the Yoders can carry off. We made jokes and resurrected stories about the ancient hard-as-a-board green couch, but no one would be persuaded to bid on it. Food appeared at lunch and supper times as if by magic, the women having planned and scurried around and it looked effortless to me, but I knew better and soaked up the care and love and grace.

Several times I scanned our small army of aunts, uncles, cousins, and baby cousins, and kept thinking that our stories belong in a novel, and here we are living as if everything is normal, and the blazing sunset and blinking fireflies and the bumps and bruises and gifts of our lives are just nodded at for a second and seemingly forgotten.

But I think they should be celebrated and wondered at, and discussed and thanked God for. The stories that include interracial marriages, several foreign languages, multiple heart breaks, redemption, probation rules, health nuts, scandal, simple faith, and cancer–oh yes, and auctions–always auctions.

Sunday morning I went to the church that used to be ours 19 years ago, and saw white hair on my former teachers, and heard the same phrases that I always did in the prayers, and listened while the four-part harmony wrapped itself around me as if with warm skeins of undulating color.

While the message was going in full force, I heard a discreet little voice behind me. The little girl was born in Europe where cultured people drop their voices in public. “Mama, why is he shouting?”

Then her mom’s wise perspective: “It’s ok—it’s just the way he preaches.”

I identified with the girl because I wanted to push away the shouting too. I’m not used to the decibels in people’s normal conversations in this country, let alone a raised voice from behind the pulpit, and it might always make me cringe a little.

But I saw God revealed in people’s love for me, their generosity and looking out for others, my two dinner invitations and connecting with old pals. It was the little things that impacted me:

“Is there anything I can do for you Yoders?”  “Go over to our garage and fill up your tank with gas.”  “Would you like a cup of coffee for the road?”

Some things never change, but nothing is the same.

A Garden Tea

Posted in life, Poland, teaching English by

summer-783344_1280She’s been my student for several years, a woman older than I with a husband and grown children. She lives in the same apartment building I do, and for our last meeting, instead of having an English lesson, she invited me to her house. But first, she said, if the weather is nice, we’ll go to her in-laws to see their garden.

Sure, I said, that would be lovely.

So we met outside our building, and the sun was warm, and she took me first to a bakery down the street. The best bakery in town, she said, and she had me choose two kinds of cake. Then we walked around the block to her in-laws and before I walked through the gate, I had to stop and smell the wall of roses in front of the house.

The garden was pristine, orderly, a well-hidden opulent secret behind a fence on an ordinary street. They told me the place had been in the family for 3 generations, and their passion for the place shone in every corner. We took off our sandals to walk in the grass–it’s a carpet! the mother-in-law said with sparkling eyes.

The three of us sat in the garden to have tea and cakes, and had a glorious, easy mix of languages. The older lady brought out the elaborate cards that her daughter had made so that I could admire the hand-work, and we talked about hobbies and her family and mine and how we used to have a garden too.

Then the noises we heard above us stopped, and a wizened and spry elderly man came out of a tree with a saw in his hand. The father-in-law. He lifted his cap at me, sat a little to the side of us, and told me a couple jokes, then climbed back up into the tree. I felt that I’d just entered a story.

One of the jokes: A Polish man walked into a English dentist’s office and said he has a tooth that needs to be pulled. The dentist asked “Where?” The man said “Tu.” And the dentist pulled two of the poor man’s teeth!

A drop of cream from a piece of cake fell on the grass. Oops, I made the carpet dirty, the older woman grinned. It was incredibly easy to talk with them. Of course there was a lot behind our conversation. I’ve spent hours listening to my student tell me how she eats special diets and prays and goes on pilgrimages and learned about forgiveness and how worried she is about her family members who have cancer.

They talked between themselves for a minute, then my student said her mother-in-law is wondering how old I am. I thought we’d talked about our ages in some lesson, but she didn’t remember, so I explained that last Friday I had a birthday and now I’m 41. Both women jerked back and gasped. I don’t believe it–I said you’re not more than 25 or 26, the mother-in-law said. Which of course made me laugh and laugh and endeared them to me even more.

She hugged and hugged me good-bye and wished me all the best, and as we walked past the flowers to the gate, I held the lady’s arm and said when I’m her age, I want to be as hospitable as she is. You will be, I feel it, she said, her eyes twinkling.

I don’t know what inspires a woman to take in her daughter-in-law’s foreign language teacher and push tea and cake into her hands and show her all around the garden and love her as generously as an old friend would.   I don’t know why the elderly monkey-man came down just to say a couple genuinely funny jokes and disappear again. I don’t know how time stops but the watch keeps moving and forces me to leave so that I can make the next meeting.

I only know that I was graced with exceptional kindness yesterday, and I have a new role model.

Waiting on a Platform

Posted in life, Poland, words by

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Authors are supposed to “build their platform” and put out engaging blog posts at least every couple days so that they can confidently tell their publishers that their blog gets several thousand hits a day.

Well.

This writer once wrote a book with a message that she really cares about, and technically, she should be trying to engage more readers and sell more copies to potential readers and write engaging, pithy quotes on Facebook-able photos.

But these days, never mind a blog or Facebook. She’s doing good to answer texts on her phone as they come in, and catch up on emails about once a week. Her days and minutes are full of other kinds of words–words sprinkled between coffee and meals  and a couple private lessons and walks to the park and good-bye hugs.

There’s another good-bye nearly every day, and the occasions are filled with the dearest, most beautiful conversations and overflowing hearts, and little gifts handed both ways, and she repeatedly talks to herself where no one can hear, “This has been really lovely, but I have to go away and cry now.”

But mostly, she laughs and wonders at the rich blue of the sky and the fragrance of mock orange, and eats another chocolate.

Or loses herself in a riveting book. Or on Facebook. Didn’t someone say Facebook is the opiate of the masses?

There are moments when she wants to wail that she’s a homeless bird and a refugee and she’s going to hyperventilate and die when she lives in the US again after not having lived there for 19 years. Then when the histrionics pass, she knows that she’s not  refugee: she has a definite place to go to, no trauma to escape from (although maybe language barrier has been a kind of trauma?), she’s not leaving with only the clothes on her back, and she is actually very, very rich.

She’s leaving what was joy and security and delight, a foreign country that gave her wide experiences and deep relationships. To uproot all of that will be hard, hard, hard, but it’s not a bad hard. It’s not a tragedy. It’s the end of her current world as she knows it, but something else lies beyond the horizon, and the earth isn’t flat, and she won’t fall off the edge and splatter to pieces.

And if she does fall apart now and then, well, that’s a fairly normal occurrence for her in any place.

Hopefully, tucked away somewhere in the next chapter of her life, she’ll find words again to put on her blog, and be able to think about whether she should try to build her platform, whatever that means.

For now, she’s focusing on loving well and finishing well.

Whatever that means.

A Strong Weapon

Posted in life by

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So there’s this verse in Revelation that gives us a peek into the future and how the story will end. It says the Christians overcame the enemy, that ancient serpent, by the blood of the Lamb and the word of their testimony.

“Testimony” is a powerful word, more than we usually realize. Among other things, I think it means telling our story, and not keeping truth to ourselves.

Listening to each others’ stories–giving testimony to what God has done–can be strengthening, encouraging, and helps keep us from feeling alone in our life experiences. This can be a method of spiritual warfare, fighting shoulder to shoulder, and reminding each other to keep heart.

However.

Does listening to someone’s testimony also sometimes take you aback, just for a second? It does for me.

Not often, but now and then, I hear or read a glowing testimony and it leaves me with a little thud inside. I don’t mean to be cynical. I don’t want to be hard or skeptical. But sometimes I want to say, But what if that necessary phone call hadn’t come 5 minutes later? What if that long night of the soul hadn’t been relieved the next month? Would He still be great and faithful and a help in time of need? Is your good story the reason you love Him?

I ask this because sometimes your testimony doesn’t have a tidy, happy wrap-up where all the pieces fit and everyone is smiling and the house looks like a catalog. Mine doesn’t, anyhow. Don’t get me wrong–I love my life, and I laugh a lot, but I also weep a lot and my heart gets shattered regularly.

Because we’re on a battlefield and it’s not pretty. There are cosmic-sized wagers going on over every soul. There is a snake who is bent on killing and destroying saints, and he fights ugly.

Beyond that, God is generous and merciful and long-suffering, but He will not be bargained with. He’s not a genie for us to rub and get our pet wishes. His purposes are wondrous but unsearchable, and we very often don’t see through His infinite decisions.

So sometimes your story script has the doctor saying words you don’t want to hear..

Or your husband absconds.

Or your old Bible and journal are stolen along with your van.

Or the troubled relationship stays troubled.

You can add your own list of griefs and losses, and they are real and not just something to brush away with a pat answer.

Those stories don’t come out so quickly in a prayer and praise service when the moderator asks for testimonies. Because it feels weird to tell a story without a sweet ending. Or it hurts so much that we’re afraid we’ll bawl all over the pew.

But that grief? That loneliness?

That’s your testimony, and a powerful one that can be used to wreck the enemy. Because if it’s about how you’re talking to God about it, your story includes trust.

The people we consider giants of faith were probably sometimes silent when their friends gave sparkling accounts of how God came through for them. They were misused, misunderstood, and didn’t get what they were asking God for. But they are the witnesses in the grandstands now, cheering for us, saying “Keep going! Keep talking to Jesus–look at Him! The best part of your story is still coming!”

Think of Hannah, who was blubbering so desperately that she was mistaken as a drunk. Before she knew how her story would finish, she was beating on God’s chest, imploring, not denying her raw ache. I bet she’s in the grandstands now, saying, “Go on–tell God how much it hurts–He can take it! He has the whole world in His hands–you can TRUST Him–He’s SAFE!”

God’s blessing comes to the one who trusts, the Psalmist says, and trust means being honest with God.

Trust doesn’t insist on answers and solutions.

Trust weeps because she knows her God sees and collects her tears.

Trust says “though He kills me, I will trust.”

And “even if He doesn’t deliver us, we will not bow down.”

And “even if the fig tree doesn’t bud, I will rejoice in God.”

Trust never swaggers but croaks out, “I believe; please help my unbelief.”

Trust holds onto His promises and believes His goodness even when the agony doesn’t end and the answer doesn’t come in 5 minutes or one week.

Sometimes I think our tidy testimonies are fine and good but border on implying “God did x,y,z for me, and so now I know He’s big and trustworthy.”

I think the saints’ stories that defeated the enemy were not the chirpy, tidy, sparkling testimonies that are often in the periodicals or the Sunday morning share times. They were the stories that said, “Life stinks right now–my brother got sawed in two pieces yesterday–but I know God is still good.” (Please don’t hear me knocking beautiful, glad stories of God’s provision. The point here is that those aren’t the only stories out there, and what then?)

Trust is most visible in the dark, in the loneliness, in the scary diagnosis, in the fallout from the enemy’s attack. Trust is maybe the loudest, clearest defeat to the enemy.

It says we will go down fighting for Light and Truth and we will not swallow lies or follow the mini-gods of pleasure and ease or despair that tantalize us.

He blesses trust with His presence, the greatest gift possible.

And His presence defeats the enemy.

That’s why your testimony is worth so much.

A Fast From Buying Clothes

Posted in life, Poland by

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It started out mostly from a whim, and then from the intrigue of a challenge.

I like to be pushed, and I like the idea of minimalism and less consumerism.Could I really do this? Could I stick it out for a whole year? I decided to try.

So at the end of February 2014 I agreed with myself that I wouldn’t buy any clothes until March 1, 2015.

It was a really good experience, a good year. I learned valuable things such as:

  • contrary to what I used to think, a woman really can have too many scarves.
  • you save great amounts of time and money walking past used clothing stores.
  • you save great amounts of regret if you don’t walk inside used clothing stores.
  • life goes on even after you walk away from something you really, really want
  • there’s always next year
  • if you don’t wear a jacket more than twice a year, you can get rid of it painlessly.

Some things that helped:

  • I told a couple friends what I was doing, so they could hold me to my word
  • I liked the clothes I had (most days)

Part of what took me to this kind of action is that I’m moving out of the country this summer. After living here 5 years, I’ll need to condense my stuff into probably no more than 2 suitcases. Every piece of clothing will need to be weighed (literally) and culled according to its value and serviceability.

It’s a great discipline for someone like me who idealizes doing with less and simplifying life. I’m not interested in being shabby and thread-bare, but I despise being bothered with stacks and shelves and boxes of Stuff to Wear.

Probably it’s harder for a Mennonite to maintain a good working philosophy of buying clothes when you/I can find them so cheaply. In our Polish backwater town, there are more used clothing stores on any given block than I’ve seen in any other town, and the siren call is out there every day. It appeals to our thrill of the chase, and the victory of getting more with less.

But sometimes, for whatever reason and whatever season, it’s good to say a hearty, clarifying NO. It’s surprisingly freeing. Part of discipline, I think, means carrying out a decision that you made well before the heat of the moment. It’s empowering to walk past something you really want and to know that it didn’t get the best of you.

And now that I can buy clothes again, I’m having fun, fun, fun!

Maybe it’s because I have a hard time moderating moderation and tend toward being all-or-nothing. Maybe it’s because I treasure the privilege I have now to buy some nice things.

Two anecdotes:

  • The day before March 1 was a Saturday and I had some free time, so I asked my friend to come with me to give me advice on buying a piece of fabric for a Simple Clothing Project that I’d been dreaming about for months. I bought it (it was more expensive than I’d expected) took it home, did what the recipe said, and it was a dismal failure.  I think there’s hope for it, but for now, it’s crumpled up on the floor, waiting for its redemption. I don’t think it’s a punishment for breaking the fast a day early but maybe it’s a lesson about not rushing into things and being humble enough to do a trial run first.
  • The one time I allowed myself to go into a used clothing store (to buy scarves for a project I was doing for friends) I saw this perfect, beautiful linen/cotton white top. It was really painful to walk away from it, but I managed. It haunted me for a long time. Would I ever find one so perfect again? Months later, I went to Jerusalem and was shopping in the old city and several times I walked past a white top that caught my eye. My friends said I should just ask about the price. I did, and about 15 minutes later, left the shop, wearing the piece! In the process, I learned how to bargain, which was hysterically fun. Do I miss that first linen top? Not for a skinny minute.

To wrap up: fasting isn’t fun. I haven’t girded up my courage yet to fast from second helpings or from chocolate. A year’s clothing fast was the thing I needed to do that was hard, but not impossible.

I don’t know what you’re grappling with, but you might need a fast from whatever it is that is getting the best of you. It could be music, work, entertainment, stuff, people–anything. For some do-able season, for some honorable reason, can you say NO? The discipline will make you stronger than you realized you could be and teach you surprising things.

Who knows? You might learn to bargain with a dramatic Middle Easterner.