Category Archives: life

Self-Check

Posted in life by

I think that I already live pretty simply. But the truth is that I live in luxury. I’m not sure what to do about it, but I do know that it means saying NO to things I could do or get. Often–every day and probably many times a day. It also means finding beauty and pleasure in things that are already around me.

Some of the costliest places of sacrifice for me has been living far away from most of my friends and relatives. My friends do amazing things like get married and have babies or suffer funerals and tragedies and I’m a million miles away. The loneliness and distance is something that never lessens even though it’s been like this for 17 years. Another sacrifice has been living in a country where I can’t speak the language well enough to communicate easily.  It’s hard, hard, hard for me, the girl whose biggest problem used to be having too many words.

Serving people cuts across the grain of my soul because I think people should spend their days thinking about how they could make my life better. I’m a princess after all. Ugh. When I see how ugly that stance is, it helps me rearrange my focus and CHOOSE to serve.

Simplifying, sacrificing, and serving are all part of the shape of Jesus’ life and what it means to be part of His Kingdom. The beauty of it is that His invitation to join Him is not about making us squirm or feel as miserable as possible. It’s part of selling everything just to buy the pearl that we treasure.

What do you love the most?  That’s where your treasure is.

A Treasure Worth Serving

Posted in life by

Serve.

In away, serve encapsulates simplify and sacrifice. This is about living with an outward view. Which calls for radically reorganizing the contours of our hearts because we are born looking inwardly and serving ourselves.  Which is what the Gospel is all about—getting new hearts and looking at our world in a different way than is natural.

There are so many ways and places to serve that it sometimes feels overwhelming. I could stay in Poland and love people who don’t know Jesus and need Him so desperately. As an English teacher, I could do the same thing anywhere in the world. I hear my cousin’s Liberia stories and I just got done reading Kisses from Katie and I know that if I’d go to Africa (or India)  (or Cambodia) and touch those children’s hair and feel their tears on my cheeks, something would break deep inside me and I could never be the same again.

We all applaud serving sick children in far-away places, and pouring out our lives on behalf of poor people in other countries. It all sounds exciting and exotic and news-worthy.

But sometimes the most important thing we can do is serve the person beside us. The brother who’s always asking favors from you. Or the neighbor who irritates you every morning.  It’s all very easy to talk about serving someone in the Far East. It feels a little different when you realize you don’t have to step outside your living room to serve.

Last January I had the huge honor of visiting at Sharon Mennonite Bible Institute the same night they were having their term banquet. Instead of asking parents and friends to come pamper them for an evening of finery, they invited neighbors up and down the roads around the school. The students cooked the food and served and played music and sang for and visited with the guests. I happened to be a guest of the administrator’s wife, so I got in on it too. I was eating delicious food in a beautifully decorated gym and the pianist was playing “Shine Jesus Shine” and I wanted to melt into a puddle of tears. Vibrant, gifted young people were working and smiling and serving their world and it was so beautiful and right it made me cry.

Yesterday: Sacrifice

Tomorrow: Self-Check

A Treasure Worth Sacrificing For

Posted in life by

Sacrifice.

Ouch. I don’t like this word.

And, like simplify, it’s a relative term. But still, what sacrifice colors your life? I’m not saying we should aim to be ascetics, but I am saying that we shouldn’t let discomfort determine our choices.

A friend recently spoke of her Sunday school teacher who was talking gravely about financial sacrifice. “Ladies, I’ve had to go a whole month without buying clothes for myself!” I want to say this as lovingly but as loudly as possible: if not buying clothes for yourself for a month is your idea of sacrifice, you have NO IDEA what sacrifice is.

If we could look into Jesus’ face when He was on the cross, and watch Him for hours like His mother did, we’d have a better idea of sacrifice. The most costly sacrifices have to do with the intangible parts of us that can’t be quantified in money or stuff.  Sacrifice could mean choosing to live far away from family members. It could mean prioritizing ministry more than career.  It could be sharing time with someone instead of money. It always means doing without something you value for the benefit of another.

When I heard about a young man who bought a swanky car because he said he didn’t know what else to do with his money, my first thought was, “Wow, he has a really small world.” I guess he doesn’t know that the missionaries his church supports have to seriously scrunch to make their grocery money reach every month. I guess he doesn’t know about Comeragh Wilderness Camp that pours itself out for delinquent boys and is strapped for money.  And about half a million other ministries that need funds.

Then I thought about my friend who was in college and was crying because she couldn’t give as much to missions as she used to, and I know she’s a lady who knows what sacrifice is and it’s clear what kingdom she’s part of.

Yesterday: Simplify

Tomorrow: Serve

A Treasure Worth Simplifying For

Posted in life, recommendations by

There are 3 emphases that I think are necessary for engaging well in God’s Kingdom. There’s another kingdom out there that vies for our allegiance, and we can tell which one we belong to by the things we love.

The next few posts will be about ways to look at what we treasure.

Simplify. We, the 20% of the world use 80% of the world’s resources. This thuds deep into me and I cringe at our mindlessness and sense of entitlement. Even so, I like my comfort and routine and ease. We all do. It’s human.  For example, please don’t think about taking away my morning coffee comfort. Don’t talk to me about 25,000 people starving every day while we Westerners go on diets to look better and fit into our clothes.

It’s possible to live with less stuff. It’s entirely possible to be gloriously happy without the latest home-deco your neighbor has. It’s possible to live well without shopping at Walmart or even thrift stores every week or getting a manicure every month. It’s possible to have a wonderful life with only three sweaters to choose from in your closet.  You can feed guests tomato soup and toasted cheese sandwiches and still have a fantastic evening together.  We don’t need all the extras we think we do. Amy Carmichael idealized living with as many things that could fit into a hobo’s handkerchief. I think she was on to something and it’s why I hated hauling a 50+ lb. suitcase from pillar to post when I was on furlough.

For a push toward simplifying, I suggest reading Jen Hatmaker’s book called “7, An Experimental Mutiny Against Excess”. It’s her account of when she simplified 7 parts of her life for 7 months as a discipline and way to assess her life. She’s crazy and disorganized and funny, and her book makes you think that if she can do that, you can cut out something in your world too.  After my aunt read the book, she decided to not go to the grocery store for one month but eat what they already had in their pantry and freezer. Bravo!

Tomorrow: Sacrifice

For the Children’s Sake

Posted in life, singleness by

At our last family holiday, we had 9 children under age 7  playing and shouting and tumbling around us like so many cuddly puppies. We did some extra things, but most of the week was about making food and taking care of children.

Which seemed right to me. And it got me started thinking.

I grew up in a culture where children were at the top of the list of priorities. After your relationship with Jesus and your spouse, your children were the most important things in your life.Everything else came after that. There were Child Training topics and seminars at church.(Does anyone still have them?)  Huge effort and funds went into the church school to make it productive and functional for the sake of the children even if they could have been sent to public schools for free.

Last fall, four of us Mennonite Americans were in a Polish language class, and the theme of one lesson was computers and technology. We were to choose one idea from a list of nine and give our opinion in Polish. Should employers block websites from their workers? What’s the best way to learn a language? And so forth. Individually, we each chose the same topic to talk about: “Should children’s internet usage be monitored?”  Even our teacher commented that we were all interested in the same topic: children and their safety. It’s who we are and what we care about.

At any gathering of my friends or relations, there is always a good chunk of time given to the children’s latest capers and stories. We laugh and laugh, constantly amazed at their ingenuity and originality. We cheer for every baby born, and keep track of when they start walking and talking. What they do is huge and significant to us. A recent testimony from a mom showed me what she treasures: “God graces me through my children.” And isn’t anyone is better for having a two-year-old in their life?

Moms and dads in my world sacrificed and skimped and served in hidden ways to make happy, educational, safe lives for their children. I sometimes think we were the exception after all the horrible stories I’ve heard of trusts betrayed and hearts missed. It makes me want to scream and throw things and shout out a million questions. But even that response stems from my deep sense of what is right and good and what I grew up with.

My (limited) perspective tells me that valuing children is the right, whole way to live. The first social structure God created was the family, and it seems impossible to improve on that design. It seems to me adopting God’s values in all of life includes loving and cherishing children. Even if it doesn’t come perfectly naturally for some of us.

So we’re part of a pro-family counter-culture where we do our best to live well and according to our design. This leaves women who live with long-term singleness and/or infertility in a kind of no-man’s land. How to live this well is something I’m exploring and asking questions about.

These are some things I think we CAN do to reflect our design and to be more whole. I’d love to see your additions and ideas in the comments! (Or, if you’re shy, by email.)

  • Fight for the marriages and families of your friends.Pray for the struggling ones. Believe in and cheer for them.
  • Teach children and teens your interests in art and creativity. Use your  hands to be involved in their lives. I maintain there’s something sacramental about our hands and what they do.
  • Ask God for marriage and children for your single friends–and yourself.
  • Teach children’s Sunday school.
  • Help equip young women with domestic skills because they will be useful skills for life wherever they go.
  • Tousle a child’s hair when you walk past them. Cuddle a baby as often as you can.

The Stuff of Discussions and Recipes

Posted in life by

I have a small complex. It’s this:

I’ve always thought men’s discussions more interesting than women’s. I don’t know why, because I do love to hear about my domestic friends’ gardens and kitchens and babies. Honestly. But generally, men have these controlled, under-stated turns of phrase that hold my attention and make me laugh.

I don’t know what to do about this complex, but I’m putting it out there because I suspect that I’m not alone in it. There are some of us who want to live as full and rich lives as possible without denying our feminine design of nurturing and supporting. We want to think in addition to make dinner.

How can a young woman become a thinking woman? A sweet friend asked me this last week, and it was fun to think/talk/discuss it for a little bit instead of compare pudding recipes. (I’m all for cooking good food but not if it becomes pride or one’s life focus.)

These are some of my ramblings about it:

A woman who reads and thinks through and discusses ideas is a wise woman. She pursues wisdom, not intellect or logical men’s discussions. All of Proverbs urges her to call out for, search for, be turned toward wisdom. It’s a direction and shape of her life, not just words that she bats around.

My friend is a mother, and I’m single, and both of us need huge amounts of wisdom–probably she needs it even more than I because she’s needing to equip her children to live their stories well out of passionate love for Jesus, and she’s supporting and walking beside her husband in his life vision. She needs lots more inside her than knowing recipes for puddings and salads.

A couple weeks ago I was teaching a girls’ class, and we explored Proverbs 31. It’s a daunting chapter for women, especially when they aren’t even 20 years old yet. But we did a fun exercise with the text. At every verse, we wrote at least one character quality that describes the action in the verse–words that describe what the woman was inside more than what she did.

We found words like thrifty, active, cheerful, prepared. It made the description of the woman seem warm, human, inviting to be with.

What if Proverbs 31 is a personification of wisdom, and not describing a super-woman? If this is true, we could say that being cheerful, active, prepared is part of being wise.

Which means that every woman regardless of her giftings and life assignment can intently look for wisdom, watch around the corner for it, be prepared to take in whatever she can learn. God knew life would be too big for us and that we’d need help outside ourselves. James wrote the wonderful words that God invites us to ask Him for wisdom for life, and He won’t scold us for asking.

Maybe there aren’t enough thinking women because there aren’t enough of us who are humble and needy enough and desperate enough to ask God to give us wisdom, when all the time He’s waiting for us to ask so He can help us and share His character with us.

A woman who is a thinker is only a researcher and analyst until she becomes a woman who is amazed at her Jesus and wants to be like Him and asks Him constantly for His advice and to share His heart with her. This has to give a beautiful shape to her life, and make her a nurturing, attractive person.

Which might or might not include making pudding from scratch.

Related post: No Bird-Brained Women

To the Women I Saw Yesterday

Posted in life, Poland by

Dear Women on the Street,

I walked past you this morning, sun shining and snow glittering. I was wearing my long down-filled coat, with the hood up, practically wrapped up in a blanket. I want to ask you why you scowled at me, raking me over with your eyes–eyes filled with what seemed to be contempt and disdain and disapproval.

I don’t get it.

Was it the tall hood that looks sort of like an astronaut? But lots of other ladies use their hoods too.

No, mine isn’t fur or even fur-lined. Was it the unfashionable tan color you disapproved of?

And I don’t wear mascara or lip-stick, but surely I wasn’t so haggard-looking that my un-painted face shocked you into scowling.

I was smiling. Was that it? The sun was shining, and I was happy thinking about the day and what I had to do before hosting my sister’s baby shower. Was it the smile that shocked you?

Would it be too much to ask for you to smile back? Yeah, I thought so.

You know, some days it gets to be Too Much. Some days I think I’ve had it with women who obsess about their hair and skin and nails and figure and I want to say CAN WE PLEASE JUST BE? Can we just relax and say I’m ok–you’re ok. You’re ok, just the way God made you, and I don’t have to prove anything, and you don’t either.

This class-consciousness, this taboo list of what you can wear or not wear because of what year it was fashionable, this caste system that has untouchables and upper-caste, I’m sick of it. Sick of the favoritism and elitism and snobbery. Sick of the capriciousness and pressure to perform. Is that why you can’t smile–you’re worn out from it?

So I opt out of it, and I’m happy to be out of the race. I probably don’t care enough about clothes and how I look, but I aim to be clean, smell nice, and dress modestly. Which is a whole other subject, and we won’t get into that here.

But please, please, please, if the sun shines and the snow is like glitter, please smile. Just try to eek out a little pleasure from the spires stretching into the sky and children on sleds.

I know it’s a sad world, and we cry when we see the news about children being shot, and our friends are ill, and our hearts are smashed into bits for reasons that no one knows. I know, I know, and it’s ok to cry.

And I know it’s different in this country, when you used to be able to curry favor from the police if you told them about an insurrectionist like me who didn’t do everything that everyone else did.

But today is today! The sun is shining! I’m walking past you and I’m not SO ugly!

I beg you, ladies, please smile back at me! It would make me so happy.

A Happy List

Posted in life, recommendations, teaching English by

What made me smile this week:

1. buying hostess gifts for my trip to the US later this month

2. a child’s sled piled with snowballs

3. the mingled smells of coffee and tangerines

4.discovering delightful blogs to subscribe to: a foodie one, and a bookish one

5. red berries on a tree, powdered with snow

6. magnanimous love sent in a huge box all the way from America

7. picking greenery and putting it around the kitchen (greenery is magic because it arranges itself!)

8. a peppermint chocolate latte with all the trimmings made by Carolyn just for me

9. a successful decorating project (travel, paper, and fonts)

10. beautiful students beaming because they could make this construction: These boots are black.

11. knowing intimacy with the Almighty never changes because of circumstances

12. a long video Skype call with a friend who says it how it is with finesse and incredible largeness of soul

13. having time to teach two girls about pentangles, and seeing their fun with it

Book Giveaway: Tea and Trouble Brewing

Posted in books, life, recommendations by

Writers live these strange double lives. They want to write honestly, but they can’t always say things exactly as they are about themselves and the people they love, because it might be uncouth, or an invasion of privacy, or Too Much Information. Then people think the writer is a paragon of perfection, and stand around waiting to tell her that they feel like they know her when they actually don’t know her, and she can’t tell them that they have really inaccurate ideas about her.

But Dorcas is an author whose writing is as authentic as it is possible to be without being inappropriate. She is as witty as but not as sarcastic as Erma Bombeck, and she is gentle, without being spineless. Dorcas is one of those special people with whom I corresponded long before I actually met her. She advised me to self-publish my book instead of waiting longer for a publisher. It was the push I needed, and I’ve never regretted it. Then when she visited here in Poland and we drank tea together with her girls at her sister-in-law’s table, I saw how gentle and wise she is in real life. Happily, we still correspond now and then, (nearly always about writing) and I always feel safe and understood with her.

Now I get to promote her newest book, Tea and Trouble Brewing.

The whimsical cover illustration looks like the proverbial tempest in a teapot. I was charmed when I opened the cover and saw the table of contents, and that the five sections each had their own tea name. Oolong. Mint. Roiboos. This is going to be tasty! And it was, of course.

The way I can tell if it’s a good book or story is if it makes me laugh or cry. This book did both to me. To you I admit that I cried when Dorcas cried when their dog died. But I laughed aloud when she apologized tearfully to the fish dangling on the end of her fishing pole.

Dorcas graciously agreed to an interview with me. So here we go:

1. How did you decide on those 5 kinds of tea for the book sections?

Actually, I don’t recall.  I went for variety, and some of my favorite flavors.  And I love the sound of “oolong.”  I considered including Kericho Gold Black Kenyan Tea but that’s not really a “kind” of tea in the same sense as green or rooibos.

Weren’t you tempted to include Lady Grey, Spiced Chai, and English Breakfast?

Well, yes.  But you know, one has to stop somewhere.

2. Do you drink coffee at all, or is it always tea?

I do drink coffee on occasion.  If I go out for breakfast, at church potlucks, now and then with my coffee-living children.  I love iced coffee on a hot day.

3. Do you write in quietness in the middle of the night, or in the hubub of your family life?

I wish very very much that I could write in the midst of noise and action.  It would make my life much easier.  So my best times are early morning, late at night, and when everyone is out of the house.  With my youngest being 13 years old, you’d think I’d be home alone all day.  Somehow that doesn’t happen very often.  And when it does, the phone rings all day.  So this is an ongoing struggle for me, to find time to think and write.

4 Your stories aren’t stuffy, but full of depth. Your life experiences and your wise responses to them have given you have a lot to offer your world, but you don’t pour it out indiscriminately.  What do you know now that you wish you’d have known when you were 21? (This is your chance to give free advice!)

If I could, I would go back and tell my 21-year-old self: Quit obsessing about everything, especially yourself.  Most people mean well.  God actually loves you.  We are all sinners, so don’t let people intimidate you.  You’re going to be fine.  You’re as cute as you’re going to get, so enjoy it.

5. What’s the best piece of writing advice that you’ve ever received?

A tossup: Elisabeth Elliot’s “Make every word do its work,” (paraphrased) which means, cut out every unnecessary word.  And “You have to write bad before you can write good,” which frees me from the paralysis of fear of beginning.  I don’t know who said it.  Oh, and Elizabeth Engstrom said that you don’t need to write with an agenda.  Who you are and what you believe will come out inadvertently, whether you write novels or essays or advertising copy.  That was freeing.

6. You  have a gifted way of describing places like the Willemette Valley or Lake Victoria with crisp, simple words that help your readers see the scene. Have you ever considered travel writing?

Ooooohhh, have I considered travel writing.  If I could come back and live another life, I’d be a travel writer.  I love seeing a new place from the inside out, and telling about it.  Going to a women’s party in Yemen and watching all those black robes get shed and those gaudily clad women come alive and party, and then writing about it, was a highlight of my writing career.

7. If time and money were no issue, where would you travel?

Australia.  An island off Puget Sound.  South Africa and Botswana.  Eastern Europe.  Ireland.  Prince Edward Island.  The Civil War battlefields.  Jamaica.  Somewhere in South America–maybe Paraguay.

8. Your dedication to Amy is beautifully worded. How many more dedications/books to your children are you aiming for? Does this look like hard work or pleasure to you?

You may note the progression of dedications: Paul.  My parents.  Matt.  Amy.  I told the children I plan to keep going and dedicate one to each of them.  That looks like both pleasure and work.  Getting Tea and Trouble Brewing published after numerous delays seemed to uncork something in my head, and now I have freely-flowing ideas for three or four more books.

Thanks, Dorcas, for sharing your world and words with us!

Now it’s your chance to win a free copy of Tea and Trouble Brewing! Leave a comment below to enter the drawing. Or if you can’t log in for a comment, email me at anitayoder-at-gmail-dot-com. The give-away is open for 7 days, and on Dec. 1 I’ll draw a number and send the book to the winner.  All the way from Poland!

To buy your own copy , go to Amazon to pay by credit card.  To pay by check, send $15 to Dorcas Smucker, 31148 Substation Drive, Harrisburg, OR 97446. . Dorcas is doing a promotion and is selling her 4 books for $40, shipping included.

Together is The Way to Be

Posted in life, Poland by

When I go to church on Sunday morning, I think I don’t have impossible expectations. But it would be nice if everyone could be there on time. And please don’t expect me to chat with you while we’re singing because I don’t like being disturbed from focusing on the song and leader.

Would it be so much to ask to have the window cracked, so I could breath? Would it really be the death of anyone to have a light breeze in the room? It’s hard for me to concentrate on the speaker while I’m breathing fumes of fried onions and bad personal hygiene. I try sucking mints and holding my hand to my nose so as to smell the (nice) (Irish) lotion I used, but I still feel nauseated and need huge self-control to keep from bolting out the door.

When we’re drinking tea together afterwards, I want to have meaningful conversations, not negativity or complaining or arguing. I like to argue, but not after church. Let’s please try to take a day off from our vices.

We work hard to clean the place every Sat. and in several hours on Sun. the floor has clouds of dirt scattered around, sugary tea is splashed down the steps, empty water cups stand around, song books and chairs are anywhere and everywhere. It would be nice if someone else would care about keeping the place clean instead of just using it and leaving.

I could stay at home on Sunday mornings and be more comfortable on most every level. I could talk to God; He could talk to me. I could sing alone. I could even listen to a sermon. There could be worship and communication and encouragement.

But there wouldn’t be community.

I’m finding that when I leave seclusion and walk into a messy, unpredictable universe full of  personalities and bodies, there are a lot of aspects that prickle, disturb, irritate me. But I would also miss out on way too many things that make my life richer.

So yesterday, I could hardly breathe during the service for the smell and the stuffy air. But there were wise words spoken, sad news shared, tears, hugs, and songs. There was care and love poured out, worship and surrender. Glints of beauty sparkled around us–beauty that I’m not willing to do without.

There’s a woman who searches me out every Sunday to kiss  me and ask how I am, because she knows that I’m not always ok, and sometimes we’ve cried together, mingled tears on cheeks. There’s another who tells me about her week, and says she has stories to tell me when we’ll meet later in the day. There are creative little people in Sunday school who chatter happily to me and draw pictures as easily as they breathe.

Community means give and take. Not liking some things, but welcoming other things. It means color and texture (did I mention smells?) and depth that is impossible to find anywhere except together. I like it that way.