Here are my holiday wishes to you. (My dog says "Arf" as well, which translated means, "I hope you enjoy your family and your days off work and the lovely weather and the turkey gravy, and if you're not going to enjoy the gravy, please send it to me.")  Apparently, dogs can say a lot of things very quickly.

I will be taking a break from blogging from now till the end of the year to enjoy this time at home in Nebraska with my family . . . all 21 of us (or is it 22?) with 2 more on the way!!! (And you thought your family was chaotic...)

I pray the Lord's promise to Moses over you for this coming year: "My Presence will go with you, and I will give you rest."

48 Hours

Eight of the last 48 hours last week I spent in a surprisingly comfortable black swivel chair in AIM’s conference room.  We were all there for one dreadful purpose: Support raising.  Or training for support raising, rather.  It was kind of like an extended version of my visit to the dentist.  I haven’t decided which one was more painful.

Too bad both were also unerringly essential.

One of the worst tortures this world has come up with is letting someone else floss your teeth.  They don’t seem to care if your gums are screaming.  They can’t feel a thing.  The other chief torment is talking about money.

Because, after all, money is not usually the very heart of the matter.  It often has something to do with what we’re loving - or not loving.  What we’re willing to let go of and how we think about others and ourselves.  But that’s only one of the things we learned.  Here’s some more:

1) Support raising is not a dirty word.  Not even in missionary circles.

2) Honesty, communication, and humility are helpful qualities to have even outside of marriage.

3) Prayer is key.  Prayer is always key.  Because God didn’t write a handbook entitled “Support Raising Do’s and Don’t’s.”  Instead, He pulls out a chair and invites us to sit down with Him and have a little chat . . . even if it takes months or years or a lifetime.

4) I’m not alone, and my 319 facebook friends are not about to simultaneously un-friend me.  My value has nothing to do with my bank statement.

5) I’m not the only one who burns simple things like pizza and popcorn.  I’m also not the only one who thinks chocolate is a vegetable.

6) We need each other.

7) I learned my lesson. (No offense, but this one’s written more for God’s benefit than yours.) I would like to state here that I have submitted to sitting under eight hours worth of teaching and a visit to the dentist, all in the same 48 hours.  Point taken.  Please don’t make me do it again!

So, what's next?  Well, instead of dentist's drills and swivel chairs, I am locking myself in my car.  For 18 hours.  Apparently, it's one of my favorite pastimes.  The good news is at the end of the 18-hour self-imprisonment, I will be in Nebraska.  Unless I get lost.  Which is a distinct possibility.  I'm taking off tomorrow (Wednesday) morning at 5:00 a.m., and hope to be home before midnight!  For those of you I am leaving, thank you for your hospitality.  Georgia isn't home, but it is beautiful.  For those of you I am coming to see . . . Woohoo!!  It's almost Christmas!!  I am looking forward to everything but the cold.

Awkward Moments

It happened Saturday night.  AIM threw a Christmas party, something a bit more towards formal but not too fancy.  I didn’t bring any dresses with me, but I had found one at Goodwill a couple weeks ago.  It was all my favorite colors, and it perfectly matched my blue scarf.  So, I put on my Goodwill dress, borrowed a pair of dress shoes from Amie, and let Sydney straighten my hair.

Then we went to the party.

The decoration committee had covered the room in black and then strung up white Christmas lights, feathers, and tree branches.  It was fascinating.  There was also a little copse of snowy trees with presents under them in the corner.

We walked in out of the cold and took it all in.  One of the first things I noticed was how nice everyone looked and how they all seemed to be wearing very neutral colors.  Black and white to be specific.  “Hm,” I thought.  “Must be a Georgia thing.”

We wound our way through the crowd and into the offices in the back where people were having their pictures taken.  That’s when a woman came by and laughingly told her friend she was wearing jeans because she didn’t have the right dress.  “They said there’s no dress code,” she explained, “just as long as it’s black and white.”

Excuse me?

You mean there was a color coordination plan?  Black and white, huh?  Oh.  So, that’s why no one’s wearing anything bright and vivid tonight.

And there I stood with my straight hair in a pair of borrowed shoes and a Goodwill dress that was all my favorite colors.

I walked back into the main room feeling almost more awkward than any other time in my life.  I hardly knew anyone there, and my small list of acquaintances were looking at me like, “Wasn’t your hair different last time I saw you?” and “What are you wearing?  Didn’t you read the memo?”  It probably was my imagination, but I certainly felt like I was being studiously avoided.  Maybe they were just avoiding my dress.

I ended up in an out-of-the-way bathroom with a motion-censored light switch.  I positioned myself in the far corner and waited to see how long it would take for the light to turn off.  A simple science project to pass the time.  Five minutes.  That’s how long it takes.  Sorry.  You’re going to have to come up with your own experiment.  It also might interest you to know that the light turns back on if you move your arm in about a quarter circle.  Blinking, however, doesn’t do anything.

All in all, it was a rather . . . disconcerting evening.  Reminds me of my sister’s song: “Have you ever been in an awkward moment? . . . Cause I have.”

Generosity and Pain

This morning I went to the dentist.  First time in something like six years.  Which, apparently, isn’t the healthiest decision when you like Recess as much as milk.  But this visit wasn’t my idea.

It was God’s.

One of His unpredicted open doors that I’m supposed to walk through no matter how much I’d rather scream and run the other way.

They were very nice at the dentist office.  Their welcome turned to downright enthusiasm when they heard I was headed for Haiti.  “Well,” said the lady who was getting my dental hygiene bag ready, “since you’re going to Haiti for awhile, I’ll throw in a little extra.”

“Oh, how nice,”I thought.

What I didn’t know was how much extra she was throwing in.  Three toothbrushes, five packs of dental floss, three tubes of toothpaste, and one little bottle of mouth wash.

I feel like I could almost start an orphanage with a stash like that.  I’ll have the shiniest teeth in all of Haiti.

I was feeling pretty good right about then.  Until the dentist came in and found two cavities.  And then led me into a second room with a map of Georgia’s football stadium on one wall and a map of Lake Lanier on the other and absolutely nothing interesting painted on the ceiling.  I know.  I stared at that ceiling for the next 45 minutes.  While the very kind doctor stuck a needle in my gums three times and bored into two of my teeth with a power drill.  (That’s what it felt like anyhow.)

I began to wonder if this is what it feels like to be tortured.  I started differentiating between the various flakes on the ceiling.  That one looked like a bunny.  That one was a dragon being ridden by a little boy.  That one was a worm who wanted to fly, so he called together all the other silk worms and asked them to spin him a parachute, and - oh, dear.  I probably shouldn’t be telling you this.

In the end, the cavities were filled.  The dentist didn’t even charge for one of them.  “It’s my contribution to the cause,” he said.  This from a man who’d never seen my teeth before and isn’t very likely to see them again!  The friend who took me to the dentist paid the remaining bill.

Did you catch that?  Everything was taken care of - half through the kindness of a friend and half by the spontaneous gift of a total stranger.  Such rich, beautifully unexpected generosity!  Such piercing, fingernails-on-chalkboard pain!  And all because I walked through the door God had opened for me.

The more often I walk through His doors, the more I find this to be true.  He is generous in ways I haven’t even begun to think of imagining.  He gives rich blessings disguised as torment.  He digs deep into the tender areas without pausing to ask why I’m flinching so much.  He refuses to honor my fearful cringing by passing over a couple little flaws.  He works through generosity and pain.  Sometimes at the exact same time.

I love knowing He’s doing all this to make me more like Him . . . even if my teeth are still killing me . . .

The End of the Driveway

I woke up the other morning with a grand plan to fill only a single half hour of the entire day.  I didn’t know what else to do.  What I was supposed to, what God was asking me to do, what I was expected to do, what I ought to do.

The dog was whining in the garage.  His name is Titus.  When he gets in trouble, they call him Titus Philemon Hebrews James.  I figured he wanted out of the garage.  Thus the whining.  So, I let him out.

And then forgot to put him back in again.

Titus Philemon Hebrews James is the sort of dog who runs away when you forget to put him back in.

Which is what I remembered when Aime came home from taking the kids to school.  The bad news is he runs away.  The good news is he always runs away to the same couple spots.  Aime hopped back in the van to find the dog.  I grabbed my coat and shoes and went outside.  Then I stopped.  There wasn’t really anything I could do.  I didn’t know Titus’s favorite places to run away to.  Besides, Aime had the van.  She’d find him a lot faster than I would.

I went back inside.

I felt a lot like I had when I woke up that morning.  Pointless.  Directionless.  Useless.

That’s when Aime called.  She was on a schedule and hadn’t found the dog.  Would I mind awfully much going for a walk to track him down?  “Oh,” I said to God.  “So, after I figure out that I can’t do anything, then You give me a job to do, huh?”

I grabbed my shoes and coat and the leash and the zapper thing for the electric collar, and stepped outside.  I was going prepared.  To go on a walk, to whistle my head off, to search for the dog I’d lost.  I had my objective and my tools and my plan.  I had something I could do.

I got as far as the end of the driveway before I found him.  Trotting back to the house, trying to wag his tail while holding it between his legs, looking rather ashamed of himself, and peering at me like he hoped I wouldn’t be angry enough to zap him.

All I had to do was stand in the driveway.

“They that wait on the Lord . . .” God keeps saying to me.  Over and over again.  “Wait on the Lord.”

So, I am waiting.  Asking Him to do His work.  To move the minds I can’t change, the prayers I can’t pray, the hearts I can’t call, the place I can’t prepare.  To let Him do what only He can do while I go out and stand at the end of the driveway.

Conversations

This past weekend, I had a three-hour conversation with God out on the dock on the lake under the sun and the sky and the wind.

We talked about George Muller and time lines and faith and work and advice and wisdom and foolishness and how pretty the geese looked when they flew over the water.  I had a lot of questions.  I didn’t get a lot of answers.  Instead, I walked away with a simple two-word invitation.

“Pray more.”

As in, minute by minute, every breath, in between the heartbeats.  “Pray without ceasing.”  Cause all this work is meaningless if God hasn’t told me to do it.  And I won’t know if He’s telling me to do it unless I ask Him.  And I won’t hear Him unless I’m listening.  And that only works for today, and tomorrow I’m going to need the same thing.  It’s a process, not a destination.

On the way back to the house, I kept praying.  I’m learning, see?  I asked God to give me the opportunities to share how He’s working in me, and mostly to keep the communication lines so close between the two of us, that no matter what He says, no matter when He says it, I’m already listening, so I know exactly what He’s asking me to do, and I jump right in and do it.  I asked for His words to speak, cause I flounder all over the place when I’m trying to speak on my own.

And then I walked into the house, and Clint asked, “What are you hearing?”

He knew I had gone out to the dock to pray, and he wanted to know what God was saying.

So, I told him.  “I’m trying to find the line between work and business plans and time lines and all that, and faith.”

And then I stopped.  I am not what you call an external processor.  I am most comfortable thinking things over without speaking a word to anyone, and then sooner or later arriving at a conclusion that I often find really hard to communicate.  “Wow,” I thought.  “I just condensed a three-hour conversation into a single sentence.”

And then I thought, “Well, of course, I did.  Didn’t I just ask God for that very thing?”

I’m finding that God is so ready to walk with us in throughout-the-day relationship.  He’s just waiting for us to join the conversation.

Weakness

Nature is good at glorifying God.  I mean, really good.  I go on walks here in Georgia all the time, and I keep seeing water that perfectly, to the last detail reflects the trees and sky and clouds above.  Tall, stately woods boasting of their Creator’s faithfulness and never-failing care.  Fragile wisps of fog walking - dancing! - on top of the lake.  Birds singing absolutely all the time.

And I think to myself, “Dude, I wish I could be that consistent.”

This whole living for the glory of God thing is harder than it sounds.

I have my good days and my bad days.  My good minutes and my bad ones.  Trying not to shake the whole house at night cause I just got off the phone with someone who knows someone else who runs a camp - a real, live camp! - in Haiti quickly succumbs to, “Time line?  I don’t know how to make a time line.  I barely managed the business plan.  Now you want me to not only know what I’m doing but when I’m going to do it?”  A profound, deeply helpful conversation is followed by a simple question that I don’t know the answer to and can’t seem to find.  Wisdom gives way to foolishness.  Peace bows to impatience.  Joy plummets into the pit of despair where they only feed you bread and water every other week.

How many details do you need, and how much faith?  How far do you look into the future, and how many minutes a day do you ask God what He wants you to do next?  What if I don’t say what I need to say in a certain, very important conversation?  What if I give people the wrong impression?  What if I don’t give them any impression at all?

These are the questions I’d rather not answer.  Questions I’d really like to drown in the lake while I lock myself in a closet and hide.

It would be so much easier that way.

But, of course, I can’t get to Haiti if I’m sitting in a closet.

So, every time I’m thinking about giving up on this whole Haiti venture and doing something I’m really good at - like opening a restaurant or scuba diving - God keeps saying, “My strength is sufficient for you, for My power is made perfect in weakness.’

“Therefore, I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me.  That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties.  For when I am weak, then I am strong.”

. . . Even if I haven’t figured out the stupid time line yet.

A Little Bit of Nothing to Do with Anything

I sat down at my computer this morning and got on my blog and thought I should share something profound.  Something deep and vivid and inspiring.  A novelty.  Nothing came to mind.

I mean, nothing profound.

Something definitely came to mind.

It’s a precious bit of . . . reading material I had forgotten about that I had occasion to pull up the other day.  A bit of material pulled from our one and only Grand Island Independent.  Who in turn pulled it from a small publication in 1947.  Who in turn pulled it from behind a brick in the cellar of a stately New Hampshire home. (This is all perfectly true, I assure you.)

The rather indelicate subject is rats.  Specifically, how to get rid of your rats.  Exactly precisely, how to write letters to your rats to get rid of them. (I am in perfect earnest.  Ask the newspaper.  I’m really not making this up.)

The following is an example of a letter written to said undesirable rodents:

(Hint: Might I suggest reading it out-loud in a proper British accent.  Think Pride and Prejudice.)

“I have bourn with you till my patience is gone. I cannot find words bad enough to express what I feel, you black devils.  Now, spirits of the bottomless pit, depart from this place with all speed! Look not back! Begone, or you are ruined!  We are preparing water to drown you; fire to roast you; cats to catch you; and clubs to maul you.  Unless you want your detested garments dyed in fire and brimstone, you satans quit here and go to Ike Nute’s! (pretty sure that’s a neighbor’s house) This is for cellar rats. Please give notice to these in the chamber. There are many of us plotting against you.”

(Personal note: If anyone would like to revive this novel form of antagonistic expression, I for one am all in favor!)

Happy first day of December.