A Treasure Worth Sacrificing For

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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

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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

Why Pray?

Posted in recommendations, singleness by

 … I keep thinking about this thing of praying for marriage & children for myself.  I had never thought of doing it before. I have prayed about “if I get married sometime…” but not asking for it. I have a aunt, a lovely lady and never married. Her life has impacted many many people, including mine, in ways she couldn’t have if she had her own family to care for. Do I pray for a husband for her?? God doesn’t plan for all ladies to get married, does He? I am interested in the marriages of my friends! I just wondered about how you said we should pray to get married..?

A girl e-mailed this when she read my last post. I asked her permission to share her question, so now you can look over our shoulders to read part of our correspondence. My answer to her was a little wordier than I intended, but well, that sort of happens sometimes.

–Thanks for writing and bringing up some excellent questions! There are several reasons I suggested praying for marriage for friends and ourselves. I’ll try to explain them here:

  1. For emotional honesty. If we feel lonely and ‘left behind’ there’s no virtue in becoming defiant and try to convince ourselves that we can do life just fine on our own and don’t need a man. God knows how our hearts work better than we do; He already knows how we feel. We may as well be honest with ourselves about it since we’re not letting Him in on anyth
  2. Good things happen to our hearts when we come to God with an open hand.  In coming to Him in honesty, it’s not about getting what we want, but about encountering God, hearing His voice and seeing His face toward us.  THIS is the intimacy we were created for, and this is what changes our lives and GIVES us life. HE is the one our hearts are most hungry for.

Living with an open hand is part of what makes a woman beautiful. She isn’t shaking an angry, clenched fist, nor refusing what God wants to give her.  She’s accepting whatever He chooses to put in or take out of her hand. She reflects Jesus in the garden when He came to His father with honesty of what He really wanted, but still surrendered to His higher will. (Notice that His Father never scolded Him for His honesty. He won’t scold us for it either.)

Does God plan for some women to stay single? Maybe. Maybe not. Our lives absorb the consequences for our own decisions and those of others as well as circumstances outside of our control. The best thing is that God is bigger than whatever consequences we live with, and does amazing, wonderful things with wherever we find ourselves.

My understanding is that marriage is our design, but not the ultimate of life. In addition to my observations and experience, these are some of the writers who have influenced me to come to the conclusion that it’s good to ask God for marriage:

Sharon Yoder, author of To Have and To Hold

The bloggers at fast. pray. Their subtitle is: We’re asking God to move and bring about marriage for those who desire it. We’re praying for God embolden men to be leaders: in churches, homes, and relationships. We are also asking that the Holy Spirit would be working in the hearts of women to soften their hearts and transform them into the image of Christ.

I’d be glad for more feedback if you feel like writing!

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.

Back in the Swing

Posted in Poland, teaching English, travel by

Jet lag is a bear.

Coming east is much harder for me than going west. My mornings this week looked like this:

Get out of bed. Comb my hair. Go back to bed.

Get out of bed. Wash my face. Go back to bed.

Get out of bed and make coffee.

Wrap myself in my furry red blanket to drink coffee and slowly let the morning seep into my limbs.

There’s this deep, unsettled ball in my stomach that hates getting up at my inner clock’s 3:00 am. And when I walk to school, I wish for good old Irish wellies that keep the water from the toes because the snow is melting into small lakes and my boots aren’t water-proof.

But that’s all I can complain about these days, so that’s precious little hardship.

My two-month sojourn in the US  showed me how rich and good and beautiful life is at the same time that it’s yucky and hurtful and imperfect for everyone. I met lots of people.  Good people. Relatives and deep friends. They laughed and cried with me, poured love and grace on me, and sent me away feeling rich and refreshed beyond words.

Now I walk Polish streets and hear Polish conversations and teach English to Polish students. It’s another world in many ways except that people are people, and I find love and beauty and whimsy in them.

And maybe tomorrow morning won’t be quite as grim.

 

Art Giveaway

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My lovely friend Becca is giving away one of her original paintings. The first time I saw the music staff  with birds, I fell in love with this one, so if you don’t go to her art site, I stand a better chance of winning. Thanks for your consideration.

The Stuff of Discussions and Recipes

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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

No Beauty?

Posted in teaching English, words by

“Why do Christians celebrate Christmas?” This was the conversation question.

“It started when Saint Nicholas started giving gifts to children. I’m an atheist, so that’s how I think Christmas began.”

“I’m a romantic, and want to have a lovely wedding in a church someday, so I can’t be an atheist, but I think those stories in the Bible are myths like Zeus.”

I listened because this was about practicing English, but then I said that I choose to believe that the stories are true, and when you read the stories about Jesus, you can see that He was such a beautiful person, the way He talked with people and loved them.

Then the conversation went to the funny ways I use words. I say a dog is ‘handsome’ and I say Jesus is ‘beautiful.’ “You can’t do this in our language!”

We laughed, and they left after I hugged them at the door, wishing them lovely Christmases. But it’s true: Jesus is a beautiful person, even if Isaiah said there was nothing beautiful or majestic about His appearance, nothing to attract us to Him. I wish I could have heard how Jesus read Isaiah’s words about the blind seeing and the captives given liberty. I wish I could have seen Him talking with children and the broken woman accused of adultery.

I’m thinking these days of how earthy Jesus was, how dust and bad smells and conflict was part of His world, and He didn’t run away from it, or think Himself above it.

Our grime and fracturedness is nothing new to Him. It was for the broken and shattered ones that He came, and I think that’s beautiful beyond words.

A related post: My Commander in Chief



 

This Week’s Reads

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Because of always having several books on the go simultaneously, I finished 3 this week and they’re phenomenal enough to recommend them here.

The Dean’s Watch by Elisabeth Goudge is stuffy and passionate and achingly beautiful. I’d read it a long time ago, and it felt especially fitting to be re-reading it this week, since its setting is Advent. The characters are vivid and alive, even if sad and scruffy. They’re real. I’ve heard that it’s to be an allegory, but I haven’t seen through it all yet. There’s something in this quote though, that means more than the words say:

“It does not matter, Job,” said the Dean at last.  “I mean it does not matter that the clock was broken. What matters is that the clock was made.”

For years, I shied away from Henri Nouwen’s The Wounded Healer because I thought it was too deep and wordy. But when I actually opened it I found it very readable and accessible. The depth and wisdom was amazing. The thoughtfulness and careful words are to be read slowly and digested. He talks alot about loneliness and how it’s not something to run away from, but can become a source of life for others.

This is the announcement of the wounded healer: ‘The master is coming–not tomorrow, but today, not next year, but this year, not after all our misery is passed, but in the middle of it, not in another place but right here where we are standing.’

This morning over coffee, I finished The Shack, the book that took the evangelical world by storm some years back. I’d read it before, after an operation when I was in a daze of painkillers, so not everything registered very well, but my impression then was the same as this time: that its message is valuable and powerful, but the writing style was very distracting. I wanted to mark out all the fluffy adverbs. Even so, I really like the picture of the fellowship and love among the Trinity, and the way they shower love and are ‘especially fond’ of people. The story was both convicting and comforting.

Mack, if anything matters then everything matters. Because you are important, everything changes; every time you reach out and touch a heart or a life, the world changes; with every kindness and service, seen or unseen, my purposes are accomplished and nothing will ever be the same again.

I never wanted an e-reader before, but today I do. Next week I plan to go to the US for 2 months. I’m teaching a Bible school class for girls for 3 wks, and have  no room to take any books for resources. Living with one checked-in bag for 2 months means only essentials go. In theory and in practice, I like travelling light. But I hate to be book-less. I don’t know yet how my ideal will match my practice.

Related post: Heavy Books

To the Women I Saw Yesterday

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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.