Another Lapse in Communication

I am not quite delusional enough to believe that there are mass amounts of people who check my blog on a daily basis only to meet grave disappointment when they find out I haven’t posted in over a week… but I do hope there are one or two people whose happiness is directly linked to whether or not I have something to say to the entire internet world. To those people I apologize for disappointing them… life has been busy… and I’ve been all over the place… but I’m getting ahead of myself.

This weekend was the TrueCity Conference which meant that I spent most of last week at Philpott getting ready. The week was a constant flow of busy-ness but it wasn’t stressful which I appreciated. The weekend was similar although I had a killer headache Friday night and felt nauseous part of Saturday. I made my M.C. Debut Saturday afternoon with conference announcements and had quite a great time with them. I think some people appreciated them at least… although not nearly as many people laughed as I had hoped… sometimes I think people who don’t know me just think I’m crazy. People who know me thought they were good so I’m glad I was at least able to entertain them.

I was exhausted by the end of the conference but I hadn’t planned a KidzChurch lesson or a children’s story for Sunday so there was no rest for the weary. A bunch of us went to a friends’ house for dinner and I sat in the corner in a fairly catatonic state making everyone uncomfortable until Eric was finished eating and we could start planning KidzChurch. We came up with something that actually ended up working out kind of nicely. We also had 10 kids in KidzChurch yesterday which may be a new record! I am learning to really appreciate Eric… in the last couple of weeks I think he has moved up significantly on my list of favourite people of life.

My ‘feeling better-ness’ that started with the 2 Wakil reunion has continued somewhat and I have very much enjoyed having Monkey in my home again. He makes an excellent chair and yesterday I sat against him with the sun streaming in the window and did my devotions. It was lovely.

Oh yes, devotions… So, I’ve been really frustrated with God lately because He takes us to this point of weakness and vulnerability before He works. It is in the space where we have nothing to offer, nothing that we can bring to the situation that He shows up. This is simultaneously the most irritating the the most freeing thing I have ever experienced. These last 4-6 weeks I have been really aware of the big things that God is doing in our community. He is hugely growing in the lives of our kids in really interesting ways. He is answering prayers that, frankly, I had forgotten I was supposed to be praying about. I have had to come face to face with His goodness and His love for the people around me and I have remembered that it is so much more about God than it is about me. I am learning, again, to be okay with my brokenness and my weakness. I’ve been trying to practice coming to God with the little that I have, being aware that anything I can bring already belongs to Him. I’ve been praying that as I come to Him, He will take my offering and my efforts and transform them, redeem them, make them into something beautiful. It’s hard to remember, but I think I see it changing me and that is encouraging. But for now… I have work to do.

Blast from the Past

There is nothing better in this world then good friends.  I am so thankful that God uses other people to love on us.  I have spent most of the afternoon reflecting on this because I spent the better part of the last 24 hours with some really great friends.  Sanda had a sleepover reunion for the 2 Wakil girls from the last two years.  I got to re-unite with all the girls I lived with in teacher’s college who were monumental in encouraging me to follow God’s call away from teaching and into this often big and scary world of ministry.  I also got to spend some time with Monkey.  Monkey was a house mascot, of sorts.  Christine and I found him at a bus shelter one day and brought him home.  We disinfected him and proudly displayed him in our front window.  He stayed at 2 Wakil even after Christine and I moved on.  The girls decided that it was now time for him to move to Hamilton.  He is currently sitting upstairs on Danielle’s bed, waiting to welcome her home on Monday. I have truly been all over the place in the last couple of months.  I was re-reading my journal this afternoon.  Something that I really should do more often (like before I attempt to make any sort of imporant decision) and it was troubling to see how far back these feelings of ‘ickiness’ go.  After spending time with the girls, however, I feel more ministered to than I have in months.  I feel better loved and more encouraged than I have in a long time.  This afternoon as I was reflecting I really felt like God was holding me in His arms the way a parent would hold a baby… rocking them to sleep, stroking their face, whispering messages of love over them.  It was pretty powerful. 

Sometimes I feel so overwhelmed by God’s love but not necessarily in a good way.  I look at it and realize that I can never offer anything of worth.  I feel ashamed that I am not measuring up.  I know that these are all lies that come from Satan as he tries to take my attention off of God’s amazing grace.  Today as I was feeling like God was holding me I had an interesting realization.  See, parents love their children differently than their children love them.  In fact the love that children can offer to their parents looks nothing like the love that parents offer their children.  Yet  parents accept it as love.  I believe that God has committed to me the way a parent commits to a child.  My love will never look the way His does but for some reason He has called it enough.  I have hope again for the first time in awhile and that is worth praising God for. 

And we wonder why our kids are messed up…

It’s interesting to me that we sit around and wonder where our kids got the idea that it’s okay to solve problems with violence when there are things like this going on in the world…

In our neighbourhood we are still dealing with the backlash from the fight between two of our girls that happened almost a month ago because other kids have tried to get involved. The original incident is over and the two kids involved aren’t even angry with each other anymore but other people feel like they need to get involved and continue the fight which makes me SO angry. Then I look around and realize that the world isn’t really offering a lot of hopeful alternatives.  And that doesn’t really do much to help my angry feelings either!

Always Questions, Never Answers

I’ve been doing some thinking lately about what it means to live ‘in the gap’.  I’m reading a book about incarnational living and it’s really challenging many of my ideas and plans.  Frankly, I’m not sure I can do it.  I’m getting scared.  As I read (or hear) stories about how incarnational living led people into situations of danger or violence I start to ask some serious questions about my desire to relocate.  Wouldn’t it be easier to live in a “Leave it to Beaver-like” subdivision where everyone has things all together?  I know this isn’t an option, for God is calling me to the abandoned places.  I am thankful for that call and for the community of people He is rising up to join me in that.  I know that to walk away from His call would mean death to my spirit and my soul.  So, I must follow… even though I am terrified of what I may find along the way.Something else I realized this morning is that in order to live ‘in the gap’ you need to know what it is your are bridging.  For us, we need to build an understanding of our ‘host culture’, which we likely cannot fully do until we have submersed ourselves in it.  (Which is also scary, since from what I’ve seen from the outside, I’m not sure I want to submerge).  The other thing we need to understand is what the culture of the Kingdom of God looks like.  If we are to live faithfully in that place between the two then we should at least know what it is we’re striving for… what it is God has in store.  There is a third culture, however, which I hadn’t been thinking about before.  Each of us brings our own culture into the neighbourhood.  It would be naive and unfair for us to assume that we completely line up with the culture of God’s Kingdom.  No, we too bring brokenness and sin into this mix… which just serves to make things even more complicated!

As I was reflecting on this I started thinking about when Jesus sent out the disciples.  In Mark 6 He calls them to Himself and begins to send them out two by two (I love that).  His instructions are “Take nothing for the journey except a staff – no bread, no bag, no money in your belts.  Wear sandals but not an extra shirt.  Whenever you enter a house, stay there until you leave that town.  And if any place will not welcome you or listen to you, shake the dust off your feet when you leave, as a testimony against them.”  I wonder how that relates to our plans to move ‘downtown’ in May.  What is the staff in our life that we can bring?  What are the bread, bag and money that we are to leave behind?  I have a choice to live in these places, which is a choice that most of the residents do not have.  That choice gives me power that I’m not sure what to do with.  I wonder if that power is part of what we are supposed to leave behind.  I think Jesus calls us to go out without our safety nets so that we are forced to rely on the hospitality of the host.  For it’s only through relying on them that we can actually learn the culture.  It’s not like we are moving to a garbage dump in Manilla or anything but I am starting to think there may be more similarities than I realized in moving into an unknown subculture.  It will do us no good to assume that since we are still in Hamilton we will have nothing to learn… and we can only really learn the culture from our neighbours.  If that’s not terrifying, I’m not sure what is.