for when God calls your bluff

I have a confession to make.

I usually write and re-write each post several times, trying to get them word-perfect, thinking through everything to the enth degree to make sure I sound really profound...

I hardly ever write unscripted, directly onto the screen, like I'm doing now.  Part of my reason for writing and editing posts ahead is our usually frustratingly slow Internet (which seems to have picked up this afternoon).  But mostly I do it because I like to look perfect.

I like looking perfect.  I like to have my act together, do life fast and efficiently, never drop any balls.

Well, God called my bluff.  

Here's a grainy PhotoBooth picture of my two feet, currently stretched out on our veranda couch, and my latest acquisition: kasteli, in Russian.  

And here are a few thoughts on my two days so far - out of thirty - which I will spend on crutches...

Top Ten Things My Broken Foot Has Taught Me (so far):

#1 - Using crutches really hurts your armpits.

#2 - Not being able to do things fast - or at all - is driving this efficiency-craving person crazy.

#3 - Sara Groves' latest album, Invisible Empires (which I listened to in the car yesterday on my 2.5 hour journey - each way - to and from the city to get my foot x-rayed and casted) has taken on a new and deeper meaning.

Especially this song... (shown here live)...

and this one... her video had me grinning wide...

"promise, that just when love grows cold, you'll make it precious again..."

#4 - The book I started reading today and can't put down, Behind The Beautiful Forevers: life, death and hope in a Mumbai undercity (Katherine Boo), has put my entire life into perspective in a way I could not have absorbed before Friday.  If I am feeling inconvenienced and frustrated by a tiny crack in a toe-bone, how do I have a right to complain when so much of the world lives in poverty and agony and mark their good days by whether or not they had to eat rats for supper?

I have so. much.

I am so. blessed.

#5 - Being forced to slow down is good for me.  (You'll notice this is almost a repeat of #2, except here? It's positive.  See?  I'm learning already.)

#6 - Being required to rest shows me how bad I am at it.  This is not a good thing.  Which makes me thankful for the chance to learn how to do it better.

#7 - Having to depend on others for the simplest things (like toilet paper to blow my nose) is both humbling and life-giving.  The truth is, I am dependent, whether I like to admit it or not.  Hobbling around on one leg requires me to acknowledge that truth.  Which said acknowledgement is healthy for my soul.

#8 - Realizing I have the best husband in the world is making me fall in love with him all over again.  (As I type this, he's humming in the kitchen while making dinner.)

#9 - Depending on other people makes me depend on Jesus more. (see #7...is there a theme here?)

#10 - Breaking my foot earned me 8 hours in a car by myself (well, if you don't count my wonderful local taxi driver, who patiently ferried me all over the hot city from place to place).  It was a unexpected but oddly satisfying break from the routines of home, a chance to reconnect with God through music, and through meeting brand-new and surprisingly helpful and compassionate images of Himself.  I'm not saying I'll go out and break another bone just to have time to myself (ok, the thought has crossed my mind) - but every cloud does have a silver lining!

Extra Credit: #11 - Crutches can be used for all kinds of things, including machine guns and electric guitars.  

So... there you have it.  God called my bluff, and I'm now asking Him for the grace and patience to make it through another 28 days of hobbling, being needy and dependent, and asking for help.  

Pray with me?


With love,

Carolyn-on-crutches

of awareness and stray dogs {May Lessons in Listening}

{For 2014, I'm focusing on the one word "listen" - read more of my monthly musings here!} 

The heart of good listening is being aware.

In a conversation, a good listener is aware not only of the words the other person is saying but of their tone, their silences, their body language, and as much of their history and context as the listener knows.  All these elements together give the listener a more complete snapshot of the emotional, psychological and mental state of the person to whom he or she is listening.

Taking all this into consideration, the good listener is able, for a moment or two, to step into the other person’s reality and see through their eyes.  From that insider’s perspective, the love, care and empathy they offer is truly genuine, and any advice or counsel truly useful.

But in my journey towards deepening as a  Listener, I’m discovering that this awareness nurtured by a habit of intentional listening is gradually enabling me to become aware of much more than words and conversations.

I’m growing a kind of sixth sense, noticing and absorbing things which I would have previously overlooked.  Situations I might have thought “chance happenings” before are taking on new and deeper meaning.  (Can you tell where I’m going with this?)  

As my regular readers are aware, we recently rescued a stray dog, and he is quickly becoming “our” dog.  

(The “our” is in quotes because he’s only been with us a week, and I’m still holding my breath: will he sicken with a mysterious doggy illness and die?  Will a former owner turn up at our gates and demand his polite, gentle, well-mannered pup back?  I could never have predicted the storyline so far; I don’t dare try to predict the future…)

While I’m not sure I’m ready to say God sent him to us, I’ve definitely had moments this week where my as-of-January-2014-newly-pricked-up “listening antennae” have zinged slightly, and I’ve caught glimpses of what God might be doing?

Taking me out of my comfort zone.  I love my comfort zone.  Some of you probably think I must be outside my comfort zone all the time: living as we do in post-Soviet Central Asia, taking holidays in exotic-sounding countries, and spending half our “home” leave in a country I’ve lovingly adopted but which isn’t my passport country.  

All of that might sound pretty un-comfortable, but the truth is I actually thrive on it.  I really was made to live the life I’m living; it fits me like a glove. And the human penchant for familiarity and routine flows strongly through my veins, so I’ve actually become comfortable here, in this language I’ve been speaking for 10 years, in our third year in this house we’ve wrapped around us, in this neighborhood, in the role of wife and mother.  And - I like being comfortable.  

I do not like having my comfortable routine invaded unexpectedly and uninvitedly.  Which is exactly what has happened.

I think God might doing other things, too, with the arrival of this little dog, such as…

Thrusting upon our family a chance for our eldest son in particular to learn compassion and responsibility…

Opening a door for all three of our kids to learn how to care for something smaller and more helpless than themselves…

Providing a living parable for our neighborhood - in particular one little neighbor boy who spends part of every day at our house - to see Christian charity (in the best and oldest sense of that word) in action…

And also, I suppose, granting that little dog a chance to become the best version of himself instead of the worst, to learn how to develop mutually satisfying relationships with human beings…

(Not that I really care that much at the moment, to be perfectly honest, with everything else on my plate, about the development of the potential worth within a stray dog, but maybe - probably? - he’ll surprise me…) 

Learning to listen is like pricking up the ears of your soul (see? I’m using doggy analogies now) or swiveling your spiritual antennae to catch new sound waves of meaning in the ordinary things that happen every day….

Like hearing a redemptive analogy in the rescue of a scrawny stray.  

P.S.  For those of you wondering if we've named him, the kids have christened him “Wags”, after Wags-the-Dog from the Wiggles (ugh).  But I've found my own name for him, a word from my second language, a word I want to use every time I tell his story to a visitor…

I’m calling him “Shepket”.  Mercy.  

(Yeah, I know, it’s melodramatic - I can’t help it.  But hey, look - it shortens to “Shep”, the classic American dog name… and now you can laugh.)

of Sparkly Green Earrings, and grace for recovering perfectionists

Photo credit: William Broughton, age 6

I hate nits.  

I’ve had them one time, and that was one time too many.  

So, just now, I shuddered appreciatively and indulged in an empathetic skin-crawl while reading the chapter called “Nitpicking” in Melanie Shankle’s honest, hilarious book on motherhood, Sparkly Green Earrings.  

Yesterday at nap time I raced through the first 10 chapters, foregoing my doze to gobble up just one more - and then one more - hilarious anecdote about sleep deprivation, potty training, and projectile vomiting.

But in Chapter 17, I found the gem of the book, for me.  The nugget of truth worth the price of the book.  The pearl of wisdom which made me stop in my tracks, switch off my Kindle, lay it on the bedside table, close my eyes, snuggle deep under my blanket, and pray, 

Lord, this is me.  This is SO me.  Help!

Here’s how Melanie ends Chapter 17:

“I think I’d been living under the illusion that I could give Caroline a perfect childhood.  But perfect doesn’t exist in our world. (Oh, how I wish it did!) 

“I can give her love, I can give her laughter, I can instill values and morals in her, I can teach her about Jesus and how he loves her more than she knows, and I can hopefully give her more good memories than bad.

“And I can pick the nits out of her hair, one little larva at a time.

“But I can’t give her perfection, because I’m fresh out. 

“That’s where the grace of God enters, and I exit quietly through the back door, allowing him to fill in the gaps.”

-Melanie Shankle, Sparkly Green Earrings (emphasis mine)

That’s Melanie.  Straight up.  No beating around the bush.  Gut level.  

“I can’t give her perfection, because I’m fresh out.” 

Wham.

Reading those words felt like a punch in the stomach, and also at the same time like a burden lifting off.  

Yes.  That is totally true of me, I thought.  Bravely, I might add.  (For a recovering perfectionist, that’s a big admission.) 

I am fresh out of perfection, much as I try desperately to pretend otherwise every. single. day.  

Whew!  Who needs to try anymore?  I’m done.  I’m done pretending to be perfect, because everyone - including me - knows it’s a big sham.  

And then that beautiful image, the one that had me crawling under my blanket with my eyes closed to savor the comfort:

“That’s where the grace of God enters and I exit quietly through the back door, allowing him to fill in the gaps.”

Yes.  

YES.  

The relief of that picture, an invitation to let go of my striving to be the perfect mother, and just quietly slip out the back door. 

The delightful, dependable ability of God to fill in all the gaps - everything I’ve left undone, all my mistakes, all the things I agonize over not being able to give my children.  

So thank you, Melanie, for putting it all out there, and for expressing truths we all feel but sometimes can’t quite wrap words around.  

And Lord…

Please give me grace, every day, to accept the reality of my limitations.  Help me learn how to rejoice in them, even though right now they make me cringe!

Free me from pride and the desperate need to measure up, so I can live joyfully in your strength, not mine.  

And please fill in all the gaps for my kids, so they learn how to rely on you, too.  

Second lessons in listening... {One Word: listen}

{This year I'm posting once a month on my One Word for 2014: listen.  To read January's post in this series, click here.}

So… this whole One Word: listen thing for 2014?  Well, January started off with a bang.  

February?  Um… not so much.

Want the truth?  Ok.  Here it is.  That still, small Voice I was so attuned to at the beginning of 2014?  I’m embarrassed to say, I effectively turned off my ears for the last half of January.  

I clutched and finagled little pockets of time for myself, obsessed over blog schedules no one cares about but me, compared myself incessantly to all and sundry, and dissolved into petulant tears because the whole world was unsupportive of “my” art.  I whined incessantly about not having time for myself, and resented the demands of my roles as mother and homemaker.  

In a nutshell, I succumbed to my old demons of control and insecurity.  It’s been ugly.  

Have I been listening?  Not much.  

Should I have been listening?  

Um… definitely.  

Because when I started listening again (sometime around the end of last week), I started hearing again.  

This week, thanks to some quiet, calm direction from the ever-pragmatic and focused Kat Lee, I finally managed to a) go to bed a little earlier, b) get up a little earlier, and c) quiet my thoughts enough in the mornings so my heart could tune back in to that all-wise, still, small Voice.  

And finally I heard what He’s been trying to say to me for a while…

Let.   It.   Go.    Let go of your needs, your agenda, your desires.  Give them to Me, and I’ll take care of you.  Trust Me to further your art and your dreams, and you focus on looking after the people I’ve given you to love.

(Ok, if I’m completely honest, I have to admit that I heard Someone whispering that in the inner depths of my soul, but because of my self-centeredness it sounded like someone speaking on the other side of a glass window, muffled and burbly, and all I had to do was turn my face away so I “couldn't” understand what He was saying…)

So, here’s what February's teaching me:

Lesson #1: 

When I’m consumed with myself, I can’t hear anything properly.

As long as my thoughts are filled with my agenda, my goals, my dreams, my needs, there’s no space for anyone else to say anything, especially God.  The needs of my family become a burden, and I stop serving out of love and start doing it out of duty, which quickly fills me with resentment.  

The challenge for me is to open my hands, let go of my own needs and wants, and re-surrender to God’s plan for my day.

And what I’m discovering is, once I finally lay my agenda on the altar and tune in to God’s Voice, He meets my needs!  He shows me little pockets of time to make art, or He frees me to just take a nap and stop pushing myself so hard, or He helps me be content with the art I’ve already made and dissolves the pressure I put on myself to constantly make something new.

Lesson #2:

Complaining clogs my ears.  Thanking re-opens them.  

Focusing on all the things I’m not happy about is like turning down the volume on God’s voice so I can’t hear Him or sense He’s with me.  Thanking Him for the gifts He’s giving in that moment suddenly re-opens my ears and swivels up the volume, and His voice becomes audible in my heart again.   

I’ve realized that complaining is just general flailing in the direction of the Universe, or at anyone who happens to be listening (usually my patient husband).  Thanking implies you have Someone to thank, so you’re talking to Someone, so there’s actually Someone there, and maybe that Someone has something to say back to you… 

One of the best quotes I’ve heard (I wish my fragmented Mommy brain could remember the source):

“If you are complaining, it means you are believing one of two lies: Either God is not good, or God is not loving.”   

The act of giving thanks immediately turns my eyes away from myself to God’s Presence in that moment.  And right away, I feel more peaceful.  

What keeps you from hearing God’s voice throughout your day?

In what small (or big!) ways is God already using your word for 2014 to change and grow you?

on the dangers of comparing... [for all those brand-new homeschool moms out there]

I read this post, the day after the day we started “real” homeschooling for the first time.  The artist in me began to ache as I scrolled down through her gorgeous images of perfect green apples, beautiful bunting, full-size world globes, “Nooks” for Science, Reading, Nature, elegant art supplies… I felt ridiculously envious, and like applauding at the same time.  Maybe by the time my eldest graduates from homeschool, my schoolroom will look like that… I caught myself thinking.  If I even have a schoolroom…

In my dreams, maybe.  But in my reality?

I look up from my computer.  I look around, take stock.  Sigh.  At this present moment, we are squatters in a small guest apartment, in a different foreign country to the one our house is in, away from our [borrowed] house in our [borrowed] country, for the third trip this summer.  It's the beginning of September, and as I was preparing for this (hopefully last) trip, I decided I can't put off starting off any longer.  After months of philosophizing, curriculum shopping, ordering books, having my sweet Mom send them thousands of miles and then trying to find time to read them, I still don’t feel ready.  But I'll have to be.  If it's even just to have stuff for them to do every day, we have to start this thing.  

I pack bags of homeschool books into the back of the car, along with a box of teabags, a canister of sugar and a half-finished carton of milk in the cooler bag.  I want to be sure I have the makings of a good cup of tea upon arrival - I’m sure I’ll need one.  

Six hours of driving plus a border crossing later, we arrive at this apartment which is God's gift to us for this trip [our second unwanted visa run in the space of two months].  Reasonably priced, owned by foreigners, meant to be a blessing, the apartment just fits our family (with all three kids in the bedroom and James and I on futons in the living room).  The building is enclosed in a gated compound, and there is a simple playground right outside the front door.  True, all the equipment is sitting on plain dirt - like most of the parks in this part of the world, if there is any grass it’s for looking at, not playing on - so my 11-month-old bottom-shuffler scoots around on a continuously filthy bottom, but I’m thankful I can send the boys outside every day for "Outside Time" without needing supervision.  

I have my cup of tea, allow a day or so to settle in, organize a tentative schedule, stick it on the mirror by the front door.  I ask my gracious husband (valiantly persevering with his work while surrounded by bickering kids) if he can have “Daddy/Ruby time” while I do school work with the boys for half an hour in the mornings.  I pray fervently.  Wrack my brain for things Ben can do while I work with Will.  

[Ok, did you click on that link yet?  Here it is again.  Go click on it.  Now, keep those beautiful photos in your mind while reading the following:]

For Will (almost 6), I have (drumroll please): the Student/Teacher books for MathUSee Alpha, a copy of Teach Your Child To Read in 100 Easy Lessons, a wipe-off whiteboard and a black dry-erase marker.  That’s it.  

For Ben (almost 4), I have a dry-erase Numbers workbook, a fat Alphabet workbook, and a new pack of crayons.  That’s it.  

No frills, no extras - barely the basics. 

We sit at the tiny rectangular table, me on one side, a boy on each end.  I pull out MathUSee and we attempt "Lesson 1: Place Value".  Will catches on quickly despite my stumbling along in the teacher's manual.  Ben gets frustrated, doesn’t want to do his workbooks, doesn’t want to do anything.  He perks up when we put "Decimal Street" on the floor and get out the manipulatives, start building 3-digit numbers.  That lasts about 2 minutes.  When he’s tired of it, I try to engage him with his new number workbook, hoping the novelty will last long enough for me to finish the lesson with Will.  It doesn’t.  He can’t figure out the directions, can’t work page by page, gets frustrated and gives up if his first tracing of a number doesn’t cover the lines exactly…

The second day is better, with Ben enjoying his workbooks a little more and both of them enjoying the number game at the end of Lesson 1…. 

And then, during a tea break on Day 2, I click on that beautiful post.  And I almost feel like giving up.  It takes me two read-throughs (with a session of serious dish-washing-thinking in between), before I catch what her post is really about.  

It’s about GRACE. 

It’s not about the apples, the globes, the books, the trappings, the paraphernalia.  Homeschool - learning at home, wherever home is - is about my. kids. learning.  

And there is grace.

Ann says it right there, halfway down:

“That’s the bottom line: Your sins aren’t enough and your strengths aren’t enough. You are not enough — for this parenting gig, this marriage relationship, this homeschooling year, this work project. 

Write it on the wall, ink it on some skin, because Christ wrote it with His blood: 

Grace is the only thing that is ever enough.”

That is the truth.  And I take a deep breath, and let it sink right in. 

I am not enough, and this life of sojourning may be challenging, but He is always enough.  He can meet every challenge.

The Holy Spirit takes this prime opportunity to replay a few scenes in my brain: 

The way Will’s face lit up when he registered how to read a 3-digit number for the first time.  

Ben’s big happy eyes when he looked up at me after successfully followed the zigzag maze to get the zebra to the zoo.  

The way they both fought over who could pick the units, tens, and hundreds cards in our number game.  

Will’s dawning realization that he. is. Really. Reading!  even after just 25 lessons in his book… 

I am teaching.  I’m actually doing it!  They are learning.  They really are!  And having fun at the same time.  Who cares where we are, or what trappings we don’t have?  Isn’t learning what homeschooling is all about?

Yes.  It is.  Much as my beauty-loving soul would thrill to a spacious schoolroom with lacquered oak furniture, wall-to-wall bookshelves, organizers galore, and fresh bouquets of school supplies, I’m realizing it isn’t where they learn, or what they use to learn, but that they learn that’s important. 

And with Christ in me, and Christ as our Home and our Constant, wherever we go, by God’s grace, they will.  

a quiet heart is a humble heart {how to keep a quiet heart: Part 2}

Lately, I’ve been exploring how to keep a quiet heart.  

I’ve been trying to protect pockets of quiet in my day.  Early mornings.  Naptime.  An hour in the evening.  Strategically trying to use those pockets of quiet to connect with Jesus, instead of scrambling to get one more post online or finish downloading the latest episode of Survivor.  

I’ve been practicing awareness of the presence of Jesus, trying to stay mindful of the fact that He really is with me every moment.  I’ve been trying to weigh down the moment with being all here, instead of letting my mind flee ahead into my to-do lists or stacked-up agendas.

It’s really hard.  It takes a discipline I don’t have yet to consistently choose Jesus and quietness over scramble and flurry.  A lot of days, I don’t succeed.  (And I’m noticing those are the days I feel scattered, frustrated and discouraged by bedtime.)

This afternoon, I’m teetering on the edge of resentment that my precocious five-year-old couldn’t doze just a little longer so I could have some uninterrupted writing time.  He woke up at the slightest rustle of noise, right as I was lighting a candle and sinking down into my writing chair, to come and ask me the inevitable, pleading question: “Will you play with me?” 

I had just sat down to write this post.  I wanted to explore this quote I found a while ago by Andrew Murray:

“Humility is perfect quietness of heart.  It is to expect nothing, to wonder at nothing that is done to me, to feel nothing done against me.  It is to be at rest when nobody praises me, and when I am blamed or despised.  It is to have a blessed home in the Lord, where I can go in and shut the door, and kneel to my Father in secret, and am at peace as in a sea of deep calmness, when all around and above is trouble.” 

-Andrew Murray, Humility

Humility means to expect nothing.

When I start expecting things to go my way, my quietness of heart is ruffled.  Inevitably, my demands aren’t met.  My expectations are shattered.  It’s actually unrealistic and selfish to demand that I have my cake and eat it too: that I should get to rest on my bed for half an hour, and then have some uninterrupted time to write as well.  

Murray defines “humility” as “perfect quietness of heart.”  Does that mean that perfect quietness of heart requires humility?  

Could I reverse that definition to discover a humble heart is one of the roads to a quiet heart?

It’s Sunday, which means Daddy is home and theoretically available.  Feeling slightly guilty (for sending my interruption on to my husband), and also slightly justified (since Daddy wants to spend more time with the boys on the weekends anyway), I send Will out to the veranda where Daddy is relaxing,...

A little uneasy, but doggedly determined to hang on to my expectations for the afternoon, I make myself a cup of tea and sit back down at the computer to keep writing.  I pick up this little book of Andrew Murray’s again, its pages chock-full of sentences that cut straight past all my fluffed-up reasons and excuses.  Like this one, which my eyes fall on:

“Pride must die in you, 

or nothing of heaven can live in you.”   

Andrew Murray, Humility

Bam.

I can hear Will resignedly playing with Ruby out on the veranda.  My hubby is goodnaturedly downloading another game for Will’s Leappad, and Will has momentarily let go of his desire to play with me...  

Suddenly, it hits me.  It’s my loss.  I lose, by not accepting his invitation to play.  I lose time with him that I can never get back again.  These words I’m so committed to writing down can be written another day, and if they’re no longer in my mind maybe they weren’t worth writing anyway.  

Regardless, writing down words cannot be more important than time with my son.

It’s my arrogance that thinks my agenda for the afternoon is more important, more valuable, more worthwhile than God’s agenda for me: which includes time with my son.

Without another word, I quietly click Save and close my computer.  I make my husband a cup of tea like mine and carry both mugs out to the veranda with a tin of snacks and a pack of UNO cards.  I sit down on the floor with Will and Ruby, and I spread out the UNO cards.  

Will’s face lights up.

My heart’s a little humbler.  And a little quieter.  It feels good.