Today’s Thanks

Posted in life, My Book, Poland by

We talked long as we ate black currents from her bushes, my friend and I, soaking up the sun.

She told me of her friend: “She was older when she married, and their marriage is ok, but she’s not happy. She doesn’t like to be with my children, and she never comes to visit us. She wanted to have children, so maybe it hurts too much to be around them. She loves to give gifts, but says she hates to receive them. I don’t know how I can help her. She’s so alone, and has always been. What do I have that can help her? What’s the best way I can show her I love her–make her donuts every week? What do you think I should do? I wish you could talk with her. I wish she could read your book.”

I wanted to weep because I could be that lady except for God’s scandalous grace and my choices.

I said, “I’d love to talk with her–someday when I learn Polish better. But the thing she needs most is to give thanks now. You and I both know that both of us have a wonderful life, but there are still things we cry about. We’ll always have imperfections to deal with no matter where we live or who we’re married to or what dream has come true.

The one thing God asks is that we thank Him. Just this last Saturday, He told me very clearly You must thank me for this season of aloneness, these responsibilities, this experience. It doesn’t mean that I’m always dancing and laughing. I can be honest with God. David often did that. But always the rant must end in trust, rest, and thanks, even if we have to take ourselves by the scruff of the neck to say it.”

It’s good for me to hear myself say these things, otherwise sometimes I’d forget them.

Last night a friend and her son dropped in at school just to see if I was ok, or if I was too lonely. I’d have talked longer with her but another friend was coming to my house, who ended up staying til midnight. Life is very good. A long bike ride, eating berries in the sun, watching children play in water, drinking tea, a rich, absorbing book, a non-English-speaking friend who gave me a ride and was most gracious with my stumbling Polish.

My Thanks Journal is still the best discipline in my life. Tonight the list will be long.

To My Long-Ago Friend

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Dear Shasta,

Happy birthday! You’re one of the rare friends who was born in the same month I was. I can’t keep track of most of my friends’ and relatives’ birthdays, but somehow I can always remember yours. I wonder how you’re being celebrated today. I wonder if you, like me, denied at first that you’re in your late thirties?! I wonder if your life is full and beautiful,
and if you feel weary or excited about living another year.

I wonder where you are, what you’re doing. It’s been 20 years, you know, since those last letters. We lived in separate states and somehow drifted apart after being best friends. But I still miss you and wonder where you are.

I wonder if you became a hotel manager, and if that got you onto cruise ships like you wanted. I wonder if you went on to study other languages after you aced Spanish in high school. I wonder if you married the young man you last told me about. I wonder if you still play on a volleyball team.

The first time I met you was when you were enrolling at the school where my dad was teaching. My family had just moved to Michigan. You and I were both new to the school, we were both the same age, and we became instant friends. You told me your dad wasn’t there that evening and I asked if he was at a meeting. In my world, if the dad wasn’t with the family, he was at a meeting. But you said your parents divorced, and you didn’t know where your dad was. I didn’t care; I had no prejudice or emotion, I just knew that you and I were friends.

Remember the fun, carbon copies we laboriously filled out in our spare time in school, playing we were secretaries taking phone orders? We felt so grown up, and you were completely accepting of my naive, country-bumpkin ways. You were opinionated but always soft-spoken, graceful and elegant with your long blond hair. I was perfectly comfortable with you, but still always felt a little in awe of you. Probably because you came from such a different world from mine, I thought you knew so much more than I.

When my family left Michigan, we exchanged photos, and you wrote on mine: “Thanks for being the kind of friend I could tell things to. I hope we always stay this way.” We were twelve, and what do twelve year olds know about how life changes? Nothing. But what makes me sad is that there was a kinship that was real and I think we could find it again.

But I don’t know where you are. You must be like me in that you don’t seem to have a Facebook account. And because of confidentiality issues, I don’t want to expose your surname or your mom and sister’s names on this world-wide invasive web. We’re both pretty much grown up by now and I’d be so happy if we could find each other and share our stories.

It would probably be my best birthday gift ever.

love to you, my long-ago friend,
Anita

PS–If anyone out there knows where Shasta is, please let me know!

If There Were No Changes

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Three years ago this month, my doctor nervously pulled her curls as she called the hospital to order emergency x-rays for “A woman with palpable abdominal masses.”

I haven’t been the same since.

The x-rays were inconclusive that day, so I waited another week for an ultrasound appointment. In that week, I pretty much shut down. I did manual work on auto-pilot and slept alot. You hear ‘abdominal masses’ and you don’t know how to respond. Except to pray and sleep.

The diagnosis: multiple large fibroid tumors (benign growths attached to the uterus). Many women have them, but I had roughly twice the amount that is ‘normal.’ I was ushered into the foreign system of appointments, waiting rooms, poking and prodding and tests and questions that I couldn’t/didn’t want to answer.

I blogged about those days back then when I was more in the middle of it. Looking back at it now, I’m glad for some perspective. Not that I can see all the ins and outs of it now, but probably the most apparent thing to me is the changes it made in me. And although I’d never have asked for these yucky things to happen, I am, in a humbled, awed way, thankful for the experience.

I have more sympathy for people in physical pain than I used to. I hope I’m more patient and understanding than I used to be. I know that I am more confident in God’s care. I think I enjoy mornings more than I used to, revel in simple things more. Pain can change you. I think one reason is because when you don’t hurt anymore, everything in the world is 500% better.

It feels like I’ve had a look at how it is to be seriously ill without having to actually BE really ill. So I was in the hospital for 2 nights (and it was really awful), on pain medication for half a year and I still am limited in some physical activity. It’s a lot less than many people have to live with.

It still catches me off-guard when people ask, “So how are you physically?” because I don’t like to dwell on it even though it was–and still is–a big part of my life. And I hesitate blogging about it because it’s like so much navel-gazing. I want to get on with life, and not think about yucky things.

But I do think that sharing our stories is part of walking with each other in this life trip and not going it alone. And anniversaries are points along the way that give a good opportunity to take stock and regroup. I need to hear people’s stories–both the sad and the glad ones. I learn from their responses to their own stories, I take heart or make decisions because of how someone is living their story, and I can’t do that if we all keep our stories to ourselves.

This is part of my story. There are sad AND glad parts, but mostly glad. Because I believe that if there were no changes, there would be no butterflies.

Jesus Said It Works That Way

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Today I finished Larry Crabb’s Connecting after several months of taking small bites of it in order to digest it slowly. The last chapters are the most exciting and practical, but the first chapters are necessary to create the framework to understand what comes later.

His premise is that too often Christians with problems are given into the care of ‘professionals’ who can ‘counsel’ them and have the problem taken care of outside the church. But God actually calls the church to care for each other. Crabb says that living and speaking Gospel–not trained psychologists’ formulas–has the power to change lives. I know he’s right. Below are some excerpts from the last chapter. Try to stick with it even if it looks long!

When we can’t handle truth, [tragedy, difficulty, sin] when what is most terribly true is too disturbing to face, we run to facts surrounding the truth and hide behind them. It gives us something to do, something to think about that we can manage…There is of course some functional value in this tendency.

However, when we shift battles from responding to physical disease or circumstantial difficulties to fight for someone’s soul, things are exactly reversed.

Suppose instead we allow ourselves to be devastated by the truth, to be overwhelmed with the sadness and pain it creates. We will soon sense our inadequacy to change what needs to be changed, we will face the truth that a troubled, hardened, foolish heart needs to be impacted and that only the Spirit of God can make that happen.

At that point we will have only two choices: Yield to despair or find God. If we begin looking for God, we will then enter a whole new battle. We will be thrown onto God, we will long to see His face, we will wrestle with our fears and doubts in His presence, we will seek Him with all our hearts.

Because He promised to let us find Him when we seek him with a stronger passion than we seek anything else (such as solutions or relief), we will find Him. We will find Him in His word. After a long fall through darkness, we will land on the truth of his eternal, almighty, and loving character, and we will believe He is always up to something good. And we will find Him within us in the form of holy urges and good appetites and wise inclinations that reflect the character of Christ.

In more familiar language, the energy of Christ is released most fully when we most completely come to an end of ourselves…

…But without Christ’s energy flowing through us, we are not adequate to restore a soul to godly functioning.

The route to power [heart-deep change, healing] lies in embracing disturbing truth and moving beneath it to discover the exhilarating truth of God.

Nothing matters more than releasing the energy of Christ as we speak with people we love, especially when those people are in the midst of trouble.

Facing the truth of what is going on in people’s lives, no matter how ugly or sad, is a necessary path to discovering what is deepest within us. That truth then prompts us to nourish the life we find, to sanctify ourselves for the sake of others. (John 17:19) And then we’re freed to speak genuinely rather than skillfully…

Crabb is a visionary, but he is realistic. I know it’s possible to have a church community where people care for each other with the motivation that comes from having known the Redeemer. Where nothing is too bad or ugly or sad to talk gently about with another fellow pilgrim. Where we fight for each other’s souls instead of only toying with peripheral matters.

I have seen glimpses of this where I come from and where I am, and it gives me great hope. Because God’s love is the most powerful force in the world, and we can change our world by loving well. Our love and care for each other–not tidy formulas and answers– change our own lives, plus it says more to others than we can verbalize. A long time ago, Jesus said it would work this way. And He was right.

Initialisms

Posted in Poland, teaching English, words by

If you’re a teacher, you plan a lesson, and you think it should work, but you never really know if it will fly until it flies. There are no guarantees. At least, I haven’t found them.

But yesterday’s lesson on initialisms was a smashing success with my teen girls. I wrote initialisms like LOL, FHI, TMI, IMHO on the board, asked if they’ve seen it and where, and explained how we use it. We also discussed terms like “ego surfing” and the “five-second rule” and then keyboard pictures of frowns, smiles, and hearts.

These girls are at school all day, and they come here because their parents want them to learn English so I hate to do anything that looks like school work with books because they really don’t want to do it and then it’s no fun for any of us and we leave feeling like we endured something. (An English teacher should be able to do better than that run-on sentence but there you are.) Fun has to be a component of the lesson, because if it’s a miserable time, they won’t learn anything except that studying English is hard and boring.

I wanted to cheer when the girls asked for paper to write what the initialisms mean. They NEVER ask to write. They would rather talk all the time, and they do well at that, but write? Never. So we wrote on our papers and laughed about using LOL as a spoken word vs. written and I explained what XXOO means when your mom writes it on a note. Then we took turns answering questions like:

What shortcuts do you use in your own language?
Do you think initialisms should be included in dictionaries?
Have you heard of the five-second rule before? Do you agree with it?
Do you think older people are confused by initialisms?

I don’t think new dictionaries should include initialisms as words. I think electronic, condensed messages don’t use words as they’re meant to be used. But it’s a great way to have an English class for teens!

Out the Door

Posted in Family, life, Poland, travel by

Summer is nearly here, and already my teen students are leaving. Last week I said good-bye to two of them. One is heading for London for a month’s visit and then medical school. The other has a ticket to Rhodes to work at a hotel for the summer. Both model students, I am so proud of them. I tried to pour as much English into them as possible in the few months we had together, and of course I wonder if I I gave them enough.

Two other students are leaving next week for an extensive trip through Europe, and their functional language in each country will be English. There’s so much they need to know yet. At the hotels, will they be able to say, “The hairdryer/toilet/window doesn’t work. The towels are wet/dirty.”? Actually, I think Europeans are generally much better at communicating in a second language than most Americans, so they’ll be ok.

I am not their mom, only their English teacher and friend. But the good-byes make me feel melancholy and make me want to pour all good wishes into them. I remember the lines from Evangeline Paterson that my mom has read to me and written on cards when I left for extended times. The lines made me cry, and they let me feel that I live under a blessing:

On this doorstep I stand year after year
and watch your leaving and think:
May you not skin your knees.
May you not catch your fingers in car doors.
May your heart not break.
May tide and weather wait for your coming
and may you grow strong
to break all webs of my weaving.

What’s Right

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My cyber-space friend, Elisabeth, whom I’ve never met but have corresponded with now and then, posted here in her blog yesterday. It was a heads-up about an article she’d written for Boundless, Focus on the Family’s resource for singles.

Both her blog post and article are well-thought-out and life-giving to both women and men. Women can get into a habit of bashing and belittling men, so it’s refreshing and heartening to hear a shout-out for strong, Godly men who, as Elisabeth says:
~affirm a woman’s worth,
~display God’s faithfulness and unselfishness, and
~lead by example, and expand rather than suppress who we are.

The article made me realize how rich I am with the strong, Godly men in my life. With very few exceptions, the men in my world have made me a better person, humored, encouraged and looked after me. I am newly thankful.

Calpurnia’s Wise Words

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One of the best things about (good) stories is that they tell you things without telling you.

Last night I was reading to my friend from To Kill a Mockingbird. She knows the story well enough to finish most of the sentences for me, but reading aloud or being read to is a perfect way to unwind at the end of a long day.

In the story last night, Calpurnia had taken Jem and Scout to her church and were debriefing:

That Calpurnia led a modest double life never dawned on me. The idea that she had a separate existence outside our household was a novel one, to say nothing of her having command of two languages.

“Cal,” I asked, “why do you talk nigger-talk to the –to your folks when you know it’s not right?”

“Well, in the first place, I’m black–”

“That doesn’t mean you hafta talk that way when you know better,” said Jem.

Calpurnia tilted her hat and scratched her head, then pressed her hat down carefully over her ears. “It’s right hard to say,” she said. “Suppose you and Scout talked colored-folks’ talk at home it’d be out of place, wouldn’t it? Now what if I talked white-folks’ talk at church, and with my neighbors? They’d think I was puttin’ on airs to beat Moses.”

“But Cal, you know better,” I said.

“It’s not necessary to tell all you know. It’s not ladylike–in the second place, folks don’t like to have somebody around knowin’ more than they do. It aggravates ’em. You’re not going to change any of them by talkin’ right, they’ve got to want to learn themselves, and when they don’t want to learn there’s nothing you can do but keep your mouth shut or talk their language.”

Quotes I Collected Today

Posted in life, words by

Ann Voskamp:I don’t believe in the resurrection of Christ when I live like all the painful things are all the final things.

David Wilkerson: All true passion is born out of anguish.

God: I take no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but rather that the wicked turn from his way and live. (Ezekiel 33:11)
Do not rejoice when your enemy falls and do not let your heart be glad when he stumbles;
Or the LORD will see it and be displeased, and turn His anger away from him. (Proverbs 24:17,18)

His Perpetual Kaleidoscope

Posted in life, Poland, travel by

For two consecutive nights, I watched the sun set in glory, in an alive pink that would be impossible to recapture on paper or canvas. Saturday night I saw it from a hill in Kaziemierz Dolny, a charming artsy town in Central Poland. The next night, we were driving home in the long dusk and watched the sunset from the car.

The spectacular, unrivaled brightness and color and drama reminded me of what Jerry Root said. I posted about it last year here.

“We could have lived on a dark planet. And been told that there would be one sunset. And we’d have lined every west coast of every continent and every island on the planet. And as we saw the glory of that event and tears came to our eyes, we’d have written about it in our journals and regaled our progeny with the glory of that event.

But what must God be like, that He has made our planet a perpetual kaleidoscope of sunrises and sunsets?!”

I imagine myself in a crowd lining a west coast and willing my memory to record every change of light and cloud, every blending and separating of colors as the golden fuschia sun, like a massive coin, dropped steadily toward the horizon. To have watched the sun set only one time would be to witness the most amazing phenomena ever.

What is God like, to give us a sunset every day?