when everywhere's a race track...

Some photos from our morning, occupying time while Daddy finishes taking care of things on the computer... {James is so faithful... I am so blessed!}

For Ben, every surface is a race track.  He's had the World Circuit this trip!

Am I that portable?  Are the things I love to do always with me, or do I put them on hold?  

And if I put them on hold, how long will it be before I start to really live?  

The challenge: 

find things to do and love that are portable -

can be taken anywhere, done in any context.

Like, giving thanks?  

for when home seems a long way off...

The tears suddenly prick the back of my eyes as I say it.

"But - this side makes me feel more like we're in - " and I say the name of the country we live in.  The country we're going back to.  The one we live in reluctantly sometimes, the second-choice place.  Our first choice is out of our reach.  And despite our discontent at times, the second-choice place has gradually come to feel like home.

Tonight we're in yet another hotel room, still en route, still floating in mid-air, still transitioning.  I do remember that all of life is a transition.  We really are headed to heaven.  Just sometimes, I feel the transition more than others, like when we're sleeping in one bed after another...

I'm sprawled in pajamas on the right-hand side of this bed, the side James was sitting on just a minute ago.  I've collapsed in his spot after brushing my teeth at the end of another long shuttlebus-airplane-shuttlebus-taxi day.  I'm looking at email on his computer, so he sits down on the other side, the left-hand side, pulls my computer over and starts scrolling... Eventually he says, "Do you want that side?  This side's closer to Ruby..." Her little bed is in the corner, with her fast asleep in it right now, content.  No matter what continent we're on, as long as there is warm milk whenever she wakes, warm arms to hold her, warm kisses on her sweet face, she's content.  Am I?

I do know this world is not even my home, I'm just passing through... Am I holding on too tight to this world?  Or is this tightening in my throat, the hot tears pricking, are these the signs of "homesick" in a good way?  This "second-choice" place where God has planted us - could it be that since it's His first choice for us, He's knitting it into our hearts?

I snuggle under the covers on this right-hand side, pull the blanket up over my face.  Block out the world.  Hide, just for a minute.  "This side feels... more like home."  Admitting to myself that the road feels long.  That six months is a long time to be away from the only bed we own in the world.  And even though we only own the bed, not hardly anything else in the house, at least it's something.  

At least I know which side I sleep on.  The right.

{Sometimes I can't remember.  I have to close my eyes and picture the wall in our bedroom back there - feel the bed in my mind, see the surroundings, my bedside table, our wardrobe, my desk - before I can remember which side I sleep on.  That's when I know I've been away too long.}

Only God can do that, can knit a place to your heart and a bed to your soul in a way that makes it feel like home, even when not one single mouth in our village speaks our heart language.  We speak theirs, and their hearts connect to ours, and that's what feels like home.  That, and familiarity.  Doing the same habits over and over until they become like breathing: our verse calendar at breakfast.  Reviewing my verses in the bathroom.  Sleeping on the same side of the bed.  Making pancakes.  Walking to the shop.  Stopping by a friend's house.  Those are the things that feel like home.

Those are the things I miss.

I sniff, and crawl over to the other side of this bed, the side closer to Ruby tonight, the side not mine.  I don't mind, not really.  We're not back yet, so it doesn't really matter.  And all this transitioning does remind me that I'm still en route to our Real Home, that I'll be sleeping in different beds for the rest of my life, until I sleep my final sleep and wake up in my Savior's arms.

But when we do finally get back, back to our second-choice turned first-choice, back to the only bed we own in this world right now, I will snuggle in to sleep on the right-hand side... and it will feel good.

It will feel like home.

for when you've just plain forgotten...

The best moment of today?

We're leaving to walk to the playground after lunch, and on the pond just outside our hotel room Will, Ben and I notice two beautiful white swans.

"Mommy, look!  Wow!"  We all stand transfixed on the bridge, staring at the graceful creatures - the first time the boys have seen swans in real life.

As we continue walking down the path to the playground, Will is quiet for a couple minutes, looking around at everything.

A minute later, he gives a little happy skip and says, without preamble, "Jesus, I love all the things that you have made!"

I nearly teared up.  I do actually do that a lot, talk to Jesus out loud in front of my boys, usually pleading for patience or wisdom or help, but sometimes commenting on nature or thanking Him for something... This was the first time I've ever heard Will do that himself, and hearing Him speak to Jesus   so naturally and exuberantly, as though He were right there with us, jolted me into the presence of Jesus right then like an electric shock.

You know, He actually is here with us.  This very moment.  

I'm so grateful for my five-year-old's eyes of faith.

a minute to breathe...

{Crash-landing in Thailand after an intense 6-week Stateside sojourn... been composing post after post in my head all this time, but haven't made it onto the screen.  Hoping to have some more minutes to write some back-stories in the next few weeks!} 

Moving again...

Six checked bags, three large carryons, four personal items, two carseats and a stroller...

From my parents' door in San Francisco to the door of our hotel room in Bangkok, twenty-five hours' total travel time...

Two flights, a total of 16.5 hours in the air - two take-offs, two landings...

Five sick people, three kids with coughs, including a four-month-old...

Nothing but grace.

Grace from my sister, who stayed up late with me our last two evenings to flat-fold and Ziploc-bag absolutely everything.  (Her technique?  Sit on the Ziploc to squeeze the air out, zip shut, squidge with fingers to erase the butt-print!)

The mysterious, official-looking white-haired man with a security badge outside our terminal, who asked James if he needed help with our bags... James was opting not to pay $8 for two trolleys but was going to make several trips inside instead, and this man helped him get everything inside to our check-in counter and didn't charge him a thing!

The friendly Asian man at our check-in counter who smiled and nodded at our overweight baggage and didn't charge us a cent, and the extremely helpful girl next to him who blocked out two extra seats on our long-haul flight so I could have room next to me and James and the boys had a row of four...

The family line for security, so we didn't have to wait forever... and the understanding official who passed through my bag of medicines for the flight, even though several bottles were bigger than the limit... Grace.

The helpful flight attendants who made sure we had everything we needed, and moved us up to business class for the last half hour of our flight to Hong Kong to make sure we caught our connecting flight to Bangkok... Grace.

That all our bags made the connection, and they even pulled our stroller off early for us so we could have it during our layover in Hong Kong...

Grace, grace, grace.

Ruby Grace, who slept, nursed or smiled for nearly ALL of the entire 14.5 hour flight to Hong Kong.  What an amazing little girl.  God's Grace to us!  (She did lose it completely on the last two-hour leg from HK to Bangkok, but - seriously, nobody's that perfect)!

Will and Ben, model veteran travelers, who both slept 5 hours on the long-haul flight and spent the rest of the time quietly glued to their screens... (Ben did have a few meltdowns on that last leg, but by then we were too zombie-esque to care!)

My long-suffering, patient husband who put up with my stress-spikes and gives me grace, grace, and more grace.

The fact that there was actually a shuttle van from our hotel waiting at the Bangkok airport, even though we found out later we had mis-booked and they weren't expecting us until the next day!  Somehow there was still a driver there, and we went straight to our hotel and were able to add an extra earlier night to our booking with no hassle at all.

Such grace. 

Thank you for your prayers!  We are so thankful for a few days to recover and recuperate in the warm sunshine before heading back to Central Asia.  Pray for health and thank Him for grace!

a handful of quietness

Flying hour upon hour through the air, jumping over oceans, sleeping in borrowed beds... this is our life.  Last week we crossed from one hemisphere to the other, and have crash-landed in Sonoma, CA.  Wine country.  Rolling green hills covered with vineyards, Spanish moss green on trees, the wet smell of rain-soaked earth.  We're eating smoked-paprika fish tacos with mango salsa and my Mom's delicious assortment of Christmas cookies, watching movies, enjoying her glittering glass-bedecked Christmas tree, and trying to catch our breath and readjust to America after a 2-year absence.

I click on Ann's links and enjoy the high-speed internet on my new smart phone... this fast, digital age - this era that's leaving me behind, that I feel breathless trying to keep up with.  My "failure" tugs, nags at me... and suddenly I'm angry for feeling like a failure, because it isn't even really failure at all, because who cares if I can't communicate on Facebook, and if my phone only has the bare essentials because I can't be bothered looking up all the fancy time-wasting apps I could have?

This post of Ann's speaks to me - this is how I feel about my year 2012, too: that I didn't blog enough, memorize enough, parent gently enough... that I didn't succeed with the things I wanted to do, that I kept persisting in the sins I wanted to quit.

But guess what?  Time doesn't stop flowing just because I feel like a failure... The New Year has already rolled over, the holidays have come and gone, we are 9 days into 2013, and the days keep ticking by.  I can either flop over in defeat, or I can stop and slow, and live in each next moment.  So I haven't made any resolutions for 2013?  Or even set any large goals?

Maybe I actually am setting goals, birthing goals, I'm just not fully aware of them:

Develop a homeschool philosophy of. my. own.
Enjoy my three (three!) children.
Drink in each moment.
Begin to organize my thoughts and learn how to write better.
Bravely spend my snippets of extra time on creating music.
Memorize more Scripture in this other language, tell more stories about Jesus.

I do have goals.  They're rolling up in my heart, surging gently to the surface - I stop here, in this space, listen for a few brief moments and they're there, the next things the Lord wants me to do.

Wants to do in me.

Quiet.  The year of quietness.  I hear Him whispering it to me:

"Quiet your heart, quiet your mind.  Let this be the year of sitting quietly with Me.  Drink deeply in My presence.  Let your roots go deep, let Me blossom you."

I sense this verse waiting patient in me:

Better is a handful of quietness 

than two hands full of toil and a striving after wind. 

~Ecclesiastes 4:6

I admit, I am a striver, born and bred.  Mostly, my two hands live stretched way out in front, grasping wild, flailing fast.  And most often, when I live stretched out like that, I grasp wind - empty, formless, nothing.

I want a handful of quietness.  I want to live with my hands cupped, waiting.  I want to receive what is in each moment, not grasp after the next, or the last.  I want to live the better.

Live with me, the Year of Quietness?  

There might be quite a bit of noise swirling around us, but I want to keep a quiet heart.

how to give thanks when your heart is breaking?

I stumble out bleary-eyed from too much sleep, thankful my baby girl has slept an incredible 8 hours in a row... and the radio is squawking out more details of this nauseating, heart-breaking thing.

This thing that defies belief.

This thing that has me screaming silently at the sky, "Are You there, God?  Are you GOOD?"

How can You possibly be good if You allow 7-year-old lives to be brutally shattered by bullets?  If You allow families to be torn apart without warning, on just another a normal blue-sky day, just like the one we had yesterday?

How. can. You. be. good. if You just stand by and watch a twisted human being, made in Your image, explode sweet, creative hearts into a bloody mess?  Shred parents' hearts into a mess of bleeding grief?

How is it possible for one of Your image bearers to inflict this horror on other human beings?

I numbly chew my toast and drink tasteless tea as I battle in my spirit with You: How can I keep thanking You for Your goodness when my heart is aching?  When their hearts will never quite heal?  

I was splashing in waves with my own sweet boys yesterday...

Why do I get to keep my kids, when they had to kiss theirs goodbye?

In the shower, the sluggish thought surfaces: Today is Monday, a day for giving thanks. 

Today is always a day for giving thanks.  How do I give thanks for this?

I don't have answers.  I just don't.  I won't offer trite words that would sound hollow.  I will just say how utterly, desperately sad I am for each family plunged into this nightmare.  And I will say that I do still believe what the Words tell me, the only Words that are self-authenticatingly true:

I still believe it with my head, doggedly, that He works all things together for good, even unbelievable atrocity.  

My head believes; honestly, my heart is struggling.  I am wildly flailing with the ache of how unfair it seems.  

But. I. am. thankful.

I am thankful for life, today.  I am thankful for each moment with my sweet children.  For their soft skin, their sparkling eyes, the sound of their laughter.  I'm thankful for the sweaty grip of their hands in mine, that I get to kiss their ow-ies and put bandaids on scrapes, that I get to tuck them into bed at night and feel their wet kisses on my cheeks.

I am deeply, truly, achingly grateful.

And no, it isn't fair.

I didn't have the answer to what to write in the second half of this post until just now, walking back from the post shop where I sent a tiny Christmas package full of music, nail polish and dinosaur tattoos to a friend who also has three gorgeous children....  Children who at this very moment are alive.  Breathing.  While someone else's gorgeous children are dead.

While I walked, I couldn't breathe for the ache of it.  I was struggling for breath, walking down the street, pushing my brand-new daughter in front of me, when these words scrolled through my brain.  At first, just this phrase:

"He who did not spare His own Son..."

I nearly stopped walking.  My brain repeated that one line, over and over, fumbling around for the rest of the verse:

"He who did not spare His. own. Son...

but gave Him up for us all...

He gave up His own Son for us.  And I would question His goodness?  

"He who did not spare His own Son,

but gave Him up for us all,

how will He not also

with Him..."

We have His Son.  He gave us His only Son.  Gave Him to us, in every conceivable way.  Gave us His Son's blood, poured it streaming down a horrible cross.  Gave us the breath from His Son's lungs.

When we have lost our sons, our daughters - when He takes them away - we have His.  

He gave us His Son.

"He who did not spare His own Son, but gave Him up for us all,

how will He not also with Him 

graciously give us all things?"

~Romans 8:32

All things.  Things like... comfort.

Answers.

Hope.

Life, forever.

He promises He will graciously give us all things - with His Son.  In His Son.

When we have Christ, we have...

all things.

When I get home, I look up the reference.  Romans 8:32.  Just 4 verses after those other words I found it so hard to believe this morning: Romans 8:28, that He works all things together for good.  All things.  All things.  

Just 4 short verses separate the "all things" of our lives from the "all things" we have in Christ.

The God who did not spare His own Son, but who graciously gives us all things when He gives His Son to us, is the same God who works all things together for good.  

I can believe that, with my head, and my heart.

{With our deepest sympathy and prayers for the families of the victims of the Connecticut shooting. May the God of all comfort wrap you in His arms....}

 

why being a mother is possibly the most important job you will ever have...

Read Lisa-Jo Baker's words of wisdom on motherhood here... they were food for my sleep-deprived brain and weary soul!