Category Archives: life

Simple Prayers, Simple Joys

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It’s a mystery to me, how prayer affects things. How do our words move God? Is prayer like a spiritual power source that you can turn on and off like a switch? Whatever it is, it IS effective, somehow. I see mine answered, and see others’ answered for me.

Recently a friend wrote these lines to me: I have this sixth sense that you’re struggling… but I’m not sure what is causing the struggle… I pray God fills your days with simple joys and abiding contentment.

This is a little list of the many simple joys and deep contentment that have come from her prayers:

–I was working at school, alone and lonely, going bonkers with the silence. My friend called and asked if I want to meet for iced coffee. DID I?! And we even did it the cheap way–she made it and brought it to me (ice and milk, no sugar) and sat and we drank together as long as I needed to talk. Which was considerable.

–Little fingers on four little hands, using face crayons all over my hands and arms, feet and legs. I was keeping two girls quiet during a ladies’ discussion session, and found the perfect way to occupy them. I was especially proud of my multi-colored toe nails and the long striped flag on one shin. I loved watching their busy girlishness and creativity.

–A pastel sunset and tree silhouettes mirrored in the water at  my favourite thinking spot. Crisp air, and two friends with me, sometimes talking, sometimes quiet.

–Laughter with my English students. Their giggles over mistakes, and amusement over new words that tickled their funny bone, like “loafer” and “flip-flop.”

–Sitting on the couch with my Polish teacher and feeling her touch my arm as she spoke. She didn’t know it, but her finger on my arm and shoulder helped me relax. Later, she fed me Polish pancakes with apples and cinnamon outside on the swing as evening fell softly around us.

–Bright smiles from strangers.

–An email message permeated with sarcasm, ended with an emoticon with the tongue sticking out. The cyber-space camaraderie felt priceless. Never thought I’d get anything from an emoticon, but what was that about prayer changing things?

Things I Don’t Understand

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1. How cars work.

2. Why people talk about the weather.

3. Facebook.

4. How civilized people can break their marriage vows and remarry and say God is in it.

5. Why it’s easier to understand Polish than to speak it.

6. How bright turquoises and reds and fuchsias soothe my soul.

7. Why reading Schindler’s List is harrowing me more than when I toured Auschwitz.

7. Redemption.

8.  Why general society thinks any alternative lifestyle is acceptable, but a counter-culture Christian life-style is not.

9. God’s patience with the people who carry His reputation.

What He Wants Most

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What we want most to receive is what He wants most to give. –Michael Card

Underlying and over-arching all our motives and goals, all our dreams and ideas of success is what He wants most to give us: Himself.

We want fellowship and friendship and intimacy, fearing separation, walls, dissonance. The terror of loneliness can paralyze us, making us go to any extent to avoid feeling alone, making us vow to never feel so miserable again.

We were not designed to live on solitary islands, and so we know deep down that something is wrong with the world whenever we feel isolated, something is amiss when we don’t belong.

I have been in places where I thought

 

I am

 

watching

 

this

 

from

 

another planet,

 

and

 

they

 

don’t have

 

any

 

air

 

here.

The suffocation of separation has an answer: Himself. He blows into the channels of the day, lifting and caressing, reviving and reassuring us that we are never alone, and what we fear is never reality, because we can never escape His persistent presence. Never, never, never.

I Wish…

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…full gas tanks would stay full.

…children would be smiled at and have their hair tousled as much as they deserve.

…learning Polish would be easier.

… roads wouldn’t have pot-holes.

…I’d own a private ocean cove.

…cells wouldn’t mutate to form  tumors.

…there would be answers for every question.

…Business English wouldn’t be about business.

…we could see the real battle we’re in and that it’s bigger than any person.

…I could understand poetry.

…autumn wouldn’t mean the end of summer.

…women would live knowing they are beautiful without striving.

…I could remember how short life’s imperfections are compared to eternity’s perfection.

What If I Miss My Life Calling?

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My wise writer friend Dorcas wrote an article here that is both simple and profound. All of us can go round and round, wondering if we made right decision yesterday or last month, wondering how we should make the next decision, wondering What Is God’s Will.

Today’s decisions do make a difference for tomorrow, and we need to think about consequences. That’s part of wisdom. But being finite, we will go crazy trying to do all the mental gymnastics of “What if…”  God tells us to ask Him for wisdom because He knows we could never be big enough or wise enough to figure it out alone. My goal is to live so that His peace is the umpire, calls the shots, and I can make decisions based on whether He gives peace about it.

Until heaven,  no one can plumb the depths of the question about  God’s sovereignty vs. man’s free will. Meanwhile, His peace is perfect, and His wisdom is great. And His virtues are always the right thing to choose.

Maybe what we see as the big life decisions of career and education and location are actually the small ones. The big decisions are the ones that transcend every place and relationship and job — integrity and kindness, mercy and generosity, love and joy and justice.

–Dorcas Smucker

Coconuts and Sandy Feet

Posted in Family, life, travel by

Last week a friend came to my house and for a hostess gift, gave me a bag of fruit that included a fresh coconut. Because I don’t have a hammer in the house, I took the coconut to some young friends who freed it from its tough shell. Now I have the inside (the milk is dried up) and I want to try to grate it and use it for something toothsome. I’ve never used fresh coconut, so I’m eager to try.

The coconut made me think of when I was five years old. My parents took me and my two younger siblings in a pickup loaded with stuff, and drove from VA to El Salvador. My mom was creative in finding ways to pass the time–I remember little bags of M&M’s and crayons. I haven’t retained many details of the trip, but general impressions like the smell of gas at the filling stations and packing and unpacking at the border, and people speaking a language I couldn’t understand. I would take naps on the floor on the passenger side, my body in the shape of an L, with my legs between the seat and the door, and my sister between me and the seat.

My grandparents, aunts, and uncle lived at a children’s home in El Salvador, and this is where the coconut memory comes in. I remember watching my uncle, a young teen, shinny up a coconut tree and cut off a furry brown ball with the machete hanging from his belt. Down on the ground, he sliced off the top of the coconut with his machete and let us drink the milk inside. I don’t remember how it tasted, only the event.

Maybe my love of the open road and the next horizon started when I was five.  Maybe it’s in my genes from parents and grandparents who love globetrotting. I don’t know. I remember feeling peaceful and calm and happy, squished in that pickup, though I’m sure I was cross sometimes. I think I remember crying once because I was hot and miserable.

Sometimes my itchy feet get  me into trouble because although I’m fond of comfort, I’m not satisfied with just staying and settling into endless routine. Maybe sometime I’ll grow up and be ok with dailyness, and not pine for adventure  and new vistas every day. I have sandy feet too. I’ve traveled enough that I’ve been able to revisit some places, and that has its own thrill. Like traveling with my family and happening to drive past the church in Switzerland that was the live recording studio when I was with Faith Builders Chorale five years earlier.

One of my impossible dreams to have a sail boat. I know I could never actually do the work, but it’s a fun dream.  A friend suggested that I name it “Sandy Feet” which is a brilliant idea. It means I’ll always come back.

A Curious Blogger

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The old grey donkey, Eeyore stood by himself in a thistly corner of the Forest, his front feet well apart, his head on one side, and thought about things. Sometimes he thought sadly to himself, “Why?” and sometimes he thought, “Wherefore?” and sometimes he thought, “Inasmuch as which?” and sometimes he didn’t quite know what he was thinking about.  — A. A. Milne

I’m most decidedly not an Eeyore, but blogging can carry its own kind of angst. I’ve learned to be pretty ok with what I put out here. I basically know what I can’t do, what doesn’t feel authentic, what isn’t ‘me.’ While I like to see the hit counter go up, that’s not what motivates me, because I’m not out to rope in new readers just for the sake of more eyes reading this. I don’t have the mod gushy, glossy lingo that lots of bloggers do, and I don’t care. It feels good not to have to prove anything. I don’t post pictures even though all the good bloggers do, because in this visual era, I like the challenge of trying to make words work for me.

There’s a lot of things I could write, but choose not to, because while I don’t have much (!) to hide, I value modesty, discretion, and mystery. I can keep secrets. I take joy in living a wonderful moment and savoring it in real time with real people without compulsively sharing it with the world.

I think it’s true that the blogging world has a gazillion narcissists (that’s a funny word to spell) and I don’t think that I blog just to talk to myself about myself, but neither am I looking for lots of dialogue and Q&A. I don’t ask readers for feedback, because I figure they’ll let me know if they care enough to say something. Although I really do love comments, even negative ones. Maybe someday I’ll want more interaction, but not now–even though my book needs publicity–because I don’t have the energy  to be an MC on a virtual stage.

But in describing my blog and its goals, it’s not fair or accurate to define it by what it’s NOT, and for a long time I didn’t know how to  verbalize what this blog IS. Finally, yesterday, I think I found it. It was when I was reading Mere Orthodoxy which referred me to Trevin Wax’s post about curiosity in a blogger that the penny dropped, and I said “Hey, that’s me! That’s why I blog–because I’m curious.”

I’ve seen some things, and heard a lot of stories, but I like to think that I’m not jaded, and that I still can be easily surprised, and that I won’t lose a sense of wonder about whatever’s around me. I want to keep asking why, and wherefore, and whither to.

I’m a pilgrim on a narrow road, with nothing to prove about myself, but now and then the exhort-er in me wants to say “Hey–look what I found! I wonder why–” to  other pilgrims. And I think that’s why I blog.

Warning

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Warning:

When I am an old woman, I shall wear purple

with a red hat that doesn’t go, and doesn’t suit me.

And I shall spend my pension on brandy and summer gloves

and satin candles, and say we’ve no money for butter.

I shall sit down on the pavement when I am tired

and gobble up samples in shops and press alarm bells

and run my stick along the public railings

and make up for the sobriety of my youth.

I shall go out in my slippers in the rain

and pick the flowers in other people’s gardens

and learn to spit.

You can wear terrible shirts and grow more fat

and eat three pounds of sausages at a go

or only bread and pickles for a week

and hoard pens and pencils and beer nuts and things in boxes.

But now we must have clothes that keep us dry

and pay our rent and not swear in the street

and set a good example for the children.

We must have friends to dinner and read the papers.

But maybe I ought to practice a little now?

So people who know me are not too shocked and surprised

When suddenly I am old, and start to wear purple.

–by Jenny Joseph

He Leadeth Me

Posted in Ireland, life, Poland, travel by

I’m in that twilight zone of being back in Poland, feeling at home but not home. I was home in Ireland for the last month. Now, these familiar smells and sounds flood my senses, and it’s as if I was never gone. Except that it’s all better because I was gone. I am refreshed and revived, my head feels clear, and my soul is calm. Maybe it would’ve happened here, but the break helped me see things with new eyes, and it’s good.

At home, things were incredibly, wonderfully comfortable. I fell in love again with everything–the lush scenery, (July, in Ireland, in the sunshine, is heaven–sunshine being the important qualifier there). The accents–I couldn’t believe the wonder of understanding the bus drivers and shop clerks, and always wanted to talk with them as long as they had time because it felt like such a novelty. The food–I’d only mention that I’m hungry for something, and mom would cook it. My church family–their support and love overwhelmed me. My family–especially the littles who I couldn’t fully get to know in 1 month because they are so deep and fascinating.

It’s not logical that I prefer living in a place without those aspects, but it’s reality. I guess it has something to do with being called to fill a place, and knowing without any niggling question that I belong at this place at this time. Even if there is no ocean down the road, and no shopkeepers with whom to make small talk. I am being led here for some reason, and somehow, it is good.

At my sister’s wedding 3 weeks ago, the ensemble sang an exquisite arrangement of “By His Hand.” As the words and harmonies washed over me, I felt deepest awe, mystery, and confidence: by His own hand He leadeth me…His faithful follower I will be.

It suits me to live somewhat in transit: at home but not rooted, fulfilled but not complacent. I’m led by a hand that is big and wise, by a will that is higher than mine, and I stumble and get distracted, but He keeps leading, and that is my confidence.

Yes, Gideon Yutzy is Married

Posted in Family, Ireland, life by

My blog dashboard tells me the terms people write when they come across my blog. Usually the phrases are normal and predicable, like ‘gift to receive’, or it’s an author’s name or some poetry line. This evening it cracked me up to read one search term: is gideon yutzy married.

The question deserves an answer, and besides, other readers have been wondering about it, so even if this isn’t really a newsy kind of blog, I’ll say a little bit. I’d been thinking about writing about the wedding, but didn’t know how, because it was so special and intimate that I didn’t feel like gushing or blabbing about it.

But yes, Gideon Yutzy married my sister Esther just over a week ago.

For a long time, I’ve thought that to celebrate a wedding for only one day isn’t nearly long enough. Now I’ve discovered the solution: the bride’s family must be in a more remote place like Ireland, to ensure that guests arrive before the day. The wedding was Sunday, and the first relatives came Tuesday, with more guests arriving every day after that. Our house was the hub of action to serve meals and socialize. Oh, yes, and to play volleyball in the evenings.

I soaked up the hours of seeing Esther and Gideon surrounded with their friends and relations, eating and talking and laughing. It was as it should be.

The day before the wedding, I cut blooms and buds of antique-white roses from one of mom’s gorgeous, over-flowing rose bushes, and walked down the road to cut flowering privet greenery from a lane. I played with roses and greenery in the sun for the morning and had way, way more fun than anyone else had that day. Esther’s bouquet had a few red roses added to the white ones like the bridesmaids carried. It felt idyllic and right: roses from mom’s garden, greenery from the lane. Less is more, and simple is better.

The wedding was in a lovely old church in the village. You could see the sea from it, and hear the gulls crying. The entire service was weighty with significance, beautiful and sacred, happy and holy. Afterward, I even had a little turn with the bell-pull, but I had a nephew in one arm, and couldn’t manage the rhythm very well.

That evening, our house and yard were alive with people socializing and playing and eating and discussing. I loved it. And I had a priceless conversation with my four-year old nephew about the wedding, the flowers we’d been carrying and where we’d been sitting in the church.

Me: And I saw you and you were sitting pretty close to me, weren’t you?
He: Yes, but why were you crying?
Me: Because I was happy AND sad, and so I cried. Does that ever happen to you?
He (very seriously): No, I’m just happy.