Happy NaNoWriMo! (No Judgment.)

Several years ago at a writing workshop, I heard about NaNoWriMo…National Novel Writing Month, which takes place each November.  November was already my favorite month…fall, my birthday, beards, and now writing, too!  The concept is really simple:  "300,000 writers; 30 days; 50,000 words."  

I love to write, but spilling out words onto the blank page* is a daunting task, and too often I start editing myself even before I begin to write.  I have files and files of ideas, sentences, and half stories on my computer because I wasn’t able to bring them to life…or at least, not yet.  Even if I don’t show my work to anyone, sometimes just knowing it’s “out there” is taking a big risk.  

This past summer in France, I had a written exchange with one of my English students about art.  I said I love art, but I’m not a good artist.  She responded that it’s not right for me to say that, because it’s not possible to judge art.  So in the spirit of not judging (even myself) I’ve decided to participate in this year’s NaNoWriMo…because I can, and because it doesn’t matter if anyone else thinks what I write is good.  If you want to participate, too, it’s not too late!  Go to http://nanowrimo.org/ and sign yourself up!  I’m going to cut this short, because I have to get to work…I’ve got 1,666.67 words to write today if I’m going to stay on track.

*"You better worry," says the blank white page.  

"I have nothing.  Everything depends on you."

-Gina Briefs-Elgin, 

"Happiness and the Blank Page:  Csikszentmihalyi's Flow in the Writing Classroom"

#16. I'm Not Missing Out.

Lately I've been spending a lot of time talking about France and sharing some of the exciting things that God is doing there.  

Meanwhile, God has been introducing me to a lot of other exciting opportunities, too--coffee shops in London, children's clubs in Dominican Republic, sports camps in Germany, cycling in Rwanda, Child Evangelism Fellowship in Latin America, teaching English in the Middle East and Asia, tentmaker ministries in Haiti...and as I hear about what God is doing in all of these places, I feel little pangs of...is it jealousy?  I am so grateful for the opportunity that God has given me, and I know France is the place He has called me for now.  But when I hear about all of these other opportunities, I can't help but feel like I'm missing out!  Or at least I did feel that way.

But a few days ago as I was praying for some of these other ministries (and confessing my feelings of jealousy) I realized (i.e. God showed me) that I'm NOT missing out at all!  Missing out would be not knowing these other people and places and ministries exist.  But God has given me the opportunity to participate in not just one ministry, but ALL of these ministries by praying for and supporting my fellow brothers and sisters in Christ--what an amazing privilege!

There are many places in the world I would like to go, and I may never have the opportunity to set my feet on all of their soil.  But I can experience the places, the people, and the cultures through those who are serving there; and really, that is what being part of the body of Christ is all about. 

Yes, the body has many parts, not just one part.  If the foot says, “I am not a part of the body because I am not a hand,” that does not make it any less a part of the body.  And what would you think if you heard an ear say, “I am not part of the body because I am only an ear and not an eye”?  Would that make it any less a part of the body?  Suppose the whole body were an eye—then how would you hear?  Or if your whole body were just one big ear, how could you smell anything?  But that isn't the way God has made us.  He has made many parts for our bodies and has put each part just where he wants it.  What a strange thing a body would be if it had only one part!  So he has made many parts, but still there is only one body.

-1 Corinthians 12:14-20

I know that when God calls us to do something, He will provide the resources we need, but still I've been amazed and humbled by the generous outgoing of support I have received already from so many friends, family, and even strangers!  It is an incredible privilege and responsibility to invite people to invest in God's Kingdom in this way.  I hope and pray that I can do a good job of relaying the work that God is doing in France so that they can experience it, too, firsthand.

#15. It's Just Stuff.

Last spring I began the process of packing up my classroom and apartment as I moved one step closer to leaving for France.  I actually started making my packing list for France months earlier, so as I made decisions about what would stay and what would go, I kept repeating to myself:  It’s just stuff.  If I don’t need it, if I can’t use it, I’m not going to keep it.

The problem is that I’m so sentimental.  Everything I see, touch, and smell reminds me of a person or an experience, and that makes it hard for me to let go of anything.  But it’s just stuff.  I don’t need the objects to remind me of those people and places.  So with the exception of a few items (childhood memories in a trunk; books on a shelf; one file of science supplies—just in case) I took pictures of the things I worried I might forget and boxed all of it up.  

Everything I needed for now and for France came with me to my parents’ house.  Everything else went into storage to sell.  [Yes, everything, dad…except the bed.  ;-)]

And now it’s time!  Our garage sale is this Saturday, so for the past couple of weeks I’ve been reopening the boxes I packed a few months ago and carefully trying to organize and display it in the most appealing way possible.  And still, I have to keep reminding myself, it’s just stuff.

 

But it’s cool stuff.  It’s the dishes that I carefully picked out before I moved out on my own the first time.  It’s posters and teaching manipulatives I made and used at the best job ever with the best students and coworkers ever.  It’s antique dollhouse furniture that I played with when I was little and thought I might give my own daughter someday.  

But it’s just stuff.  And if I can’t use it, I might as well give it to someone who can.  They can use it, and they can make new memories with it.  That’s what stuff is for.  To be used.

Having more stuff doesn’t make you a better person or give you a better life.  Matthew 6:19-21 says, “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moths and vermin destroy, and where thieves break in and steal.  But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moths and vermin do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal.  For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”

I want my heart to be where God has called me to be—sharing His love and hope with others who need to hear it.  And I want to be free to go wherever He wants me to go and do whatever He wants me to do, without my stuff getting in the way.  So I’ve already decided when I leave for France, I’m only taking 2 suitcases with me…good thing I’ve already made my packing list.

I want my breakfast served at eight with ham and eggs upon the plate
A well-broiled steak I’ll eat at one and dine again when day is done.
I want an ultramodern home and in each room a telephone;
Soft carpets, too, upon the floors and pretty drapes to grace the doors.
A cozy place of lovely things, like easy chairs with inner springs,
And then, I’ll get a nice T.V.--of course, I’m careful what I see.
I want my wardrobe, too, to be of neatest, finest quality,
With latest style in suit and vest; why should not Christians have the best?
But then the Master I can hear in no uncertain voice, so clear:
“I bid you come and follow Me, the lowly Man of Galilee.”
“Birds of the air have made their nest and foxes in their holes find rest,
But I can offer you no bed; no place have I to lay my head.”
In shame I hung my head and cried; how could I spurn the Crucified?
Could I forget the way He went, the sleepless nights in prayer He spent?
For forty days without a bite, alone He fasted day and night;
Despised, rejected – on He went, and did not stop till veil He rent!
A man of sorrows and of grief, no earthly friend to bring relief;
“Smitten of God,” the prophet said--mocked, beaten, bruised, His blood ran red.
If He be God, and died for me, no sacrifice too great can be
For me; a mortal man, to make; I’ll do it all for Jesus’ sake.
Yes, I will tread the path He trod, no other way will please my God,
So, henceforth, this my choice shall be, my choice for all eternity.

-William “Smiling Bill” McChesney (1936-1964), missionary to Congo 

#14. God Makes Beautiful Things Out of Dust.

Poppies!

 Every time I write the word, I have to use an exclamation point.  

Poppies!  Ever since the first time I saw them growing in a field in France, I have gained a new appreciation for this simple flower. 

<<Le petit prince, qui assistait à l'installation d'un bouton énorme, sentait bien qu'il en sortirait une apparition miraculeuse, mais la fleur n'en finissait pas de se préparer à être belle, à l'abri de sa chambre verte.  Elle choisissait avec soin ses couleurs.  Elle s'habbillait lentement, elle ajustait un à un ses pétales.  Elle ne voulait pas sortir toute fripée comme les coquelicots.  Elle ne voulait apparaître que dans le plein rayonnement de sa beauté.>>

“The little prince, who was present at the first appearance of a huge bud, felt at once that some sort of miraculous apparition must emerge from it. But the flower was not satisfied to complete the preparations for her beauty in the shelter of her green chamber. She chose her colors with the greatest care. She dressed herself slowly. She adjusted her petals one by one. She did not wish to go out into the world all rumpled, like the field poppies. It was only in the full radiance of her beauty that she wished to appear.”  
-Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince

The little prince’s flower may not have thought much of the poppies, but I think there’s something really cool about them…the way they seemingly pop out of nowhere, adding their burst of color, without caring what else is around them.

According to people who actually know things about flowers, poppy seeds can lie dormant in the ground for a very long time.  If the ground is disturbed, then the seeds can germinate, and the poppies will spring up!

The ground in Northern France and Belgium was devastated during World War I with the effects of battle after battle…the artillery damage, the gunpowder, even the fallen soldiers themselves.  The soil was so acidic that almost nothing else could grow there.  But come spring and summer, the barren battlefields were filled with poppies!  Major John McCrae even wrote a poem about them.

So to me, poppies have become a beautiful symbol of life and resilience, even if they do come out into the world a little rumpled.

But on my most recent trip to France, as I took some time to reflect on the work that God is doing in France right now, I began to think about the poppies in a new way:

What, after all, is Apollos?  And what is Paul?  Only servants, through whom you came to believe—as the Lord has assigned to each his task.  I planted the seed, Apollos watered it, but God made it grow.  So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God, who makes things grow.  The man who plants and the man who waters have one purpose, and each will be rewarded according to his own labor.  For we are God’s fellow workers; you are God’s field, God’s building.

-1 Corinthians 3:5-9

Only God can make life spring up out of dust.  Still, He calls us, the body of Christ, to participate in His great work by sowing seeds, by watering them, and by trusting Him to make them grow.  Our God is the Lord of the Harvest, and He is in the business of restoration and reconciliation.  There is no ground too hard or too dry for Him.  And sometimes it’s the ground that looks the most unhospitable that will bring the most beautiful blooms.  

"All around

Hope is springing up from this old ground

Out of chaos life is being found in You...

You make beautiful things

You make beautiful things out of the dust

You make beautiful things

You make beautiful things out of us..."

-Gungor, "Beautiful Things"

"It's from the deepest wounds

That beauty finds a place to bloom..." 

-Jason Gray, "Nothing is Wasted"

#13. We Are Made to Worship.

We are made to worship and to be dazzled and to stand in awe.  So we will either worship God or we will worship idols.  (See Psalm 145.)

I wrote this down almost two years ago, in Sunday School, I think.  I don’t really even remember the context, but I know it struck me that worship is wired into us—and that is why we all worship something.  We worship celebrities.  We worship sports teams.  We worship power, health, wealth, you name it.  We are made to worship.

Last week was our school's talent show.  It is always a joy and a privilege to watch our students display their God-given talents for His glory.  I truly believe our school is something really special—not because of anything we have done, but because of what God is doing there.

I see the elementary students and I wonder who they will become.  I see my middle schoolers and am amazed at who they have already become, and I know God isn't finished with them yet!

Although I do love my middle schoolers very much, my favorite act of the night was actually a second grader who sang Colton Dixon’s song “You Are.”  I liked the song already, but when I heard this performance, I realized I’ve been singing it wrong.  He sang it with such purity and passion; I know he understood and meant every single word.  

“If I had no voice, if I had no tongue, I would dance for you like the rising sun, and when that day comes and I see your face, I will shout your endless glorious praise!”

He is the song we sing.  All of God’s creation cries out to Him; it’s what we were made to do!  What a blessing it has been to spend the last 7 years of my life working in a place where we can fully acknowledge this, and where little second graders can literally shout the endless, glorious praise of God!  :-)  

We only have three weeks left of school, and it is getting harder and harder every day to think about leaving this special place.  But every time I think about saying, “Forget it!  I changed my mind; I’m staying!” I think about all of the people who haven’t yet heard that there is a God who made them and loves them and desires a relationship with them.  I don't want to say goodbye, but I have to move forward in obedience to God and trust Him to finish the work He has started here.

"Why should anyone hear the gospel twice before everyone has heard it once?"  -Oswald J. Smith

“It was by faith that Moses left the land of Egypt…He kept right on going because he kept his eyes on the One who is invisible.”  -Hebrews 11:27

A Pause for Reflection...

There is nothing on earth quite like the joy of a Snow Day.  Your plans are already made; you have places to be and things to do.  But then, suddenly, with one phone call or email or image on the TV screen, time stops.  Classes and events and deadlines are postponed.  God has literally given you the gift of time.  What will you do with it?  Snuggle up with a book and hot chocolate?  Turn off the alarm clock and go back to sleep?  Rush outside to sled and build snowmen and have snowball fights? 

Part of the art of celebrating the Snow Day is to convince your parents that even though the roads are too bad for you to go to school, they are safe enough for your best friend to come over to play!  Or, if you’re willing to roll the dice, you can invite your best friend to spend the night before the snow starts.  ;-)

I think there are some good lessons to be learned from the Snow Day.  First, patience.  It is truly agonizing to attend a school that starts with a “W;” just when you finally think they’re almost done with all of the “Saint” schools, then they cut to a commercial break!  (For the young folks, when I was a student, they apparently did not yet have the technology to keep the list rolling through the commercials.)

Also, Snow Days are a lesson in rest.  God commands us to keep the Sabbath to rest, to worship, and to focus on Him.  I often find myself so concerned with my day to day responsibilities that I don’t take the time to rest as I should.  But on Snow Days, when schedules are suspended, I can truly rest!

Snow Days have been a part of my life for the past 25 years, first as a student, and then as a teacher.  I’ve been blessed to have a job that NEVER required me to work on a Snow Day.  But I realized on Thursday that I might have just celebrated my last Snow Day ever!

I was sad to learn that there does not seem to be an official French term for “Snow Day.”  Even if I do encounter some days in France on which snow interferes with plans, I don’t think it will ever have the same feeling as celebrating them here.

It’s ok; I know God will have plenty of new adventures for me in France.  The Lord has taught me a lot over this past year about the importance of looking forward, rather than looking back (see Thing #7, No More Looking Back).  Still, I’m a sentimental person, and so I felt the need to reminisce for a moment.  

R.I.P. Edward…2/2/2011

"Come now, let's settle this," says the LORD.  "Though your sins are like scarlet, I will make them as white as snow.  Though they are red like crimson, I will make them as white as wool."  

-Isaiah 1:18

#12. Reconciliation is Coming…

After this I looked and there before me was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and in front of the Lamb. They were wearing white robes and were holding palm branches in their hands. And they cried out in a loud voice: “Salvation belongs to our God, who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb.”  -Revelation 7:9-10

There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.

-Galatians 3:28

Reconciliation. 

I was asked to choose a word for 2013 that in some way represents what God is teaching me during this season of my life, and this is going to be mine.

The American Heritage College Dictionary (my personal favorite!) says that to “reconcile” means “to reestablish a close relationship between.  To settle or resolve.  To bring (oneself) to accept.  To make compatible or consistent.”

So reconciliation implies that there was a relationship to begin with that was broken in some way.

Looking around at our world, anyone can tell that we desperately need reconciliation.  There is division and conflict everywhere, between students in school, between family members, between political parties, between nations, between ethnic groups…and the list goes on.  People cry out for “world peace,” but the conflicts just keep coming. 

What we need is to go back to the point before we were broken.  So when was that?  When were we not divided…by “race,” religion, class, or political party?  We have to go back…really far back.

God created us in His image, to be in a relationship with Him.  But like any healthy relationship, there was freedom…for us to choose whether we wanted that relationship or not. 

We’ve all chosen ourselves over our relationship with Him.  And once that relationship is broken, there is nothing we can do to restore it on our own.

I love this mural, not only for the story it tells in its pictures, but for the story behind it.  It’s such a great symbol of unity and reconciliation in the Uptown neighborhood.  And yet, there are still gangs in Chicago.  There are still children growing up in broken homes.  There are still thousands of people without a place to lay their heads at night.  And there is still racism.

That’s because our ultimate need, beyond reconciliation with each other, is reconciliation with God.  Until that relationship is restored, true peace between men is not possible.  We are incapable of bringing about reconciliation on our own.  It is only possible, as depicted in the last portion of this mural, through Jesus Christ, who bridged the gap between man and God (Romans 5:10).

Even though I know the brokenness in the world is a result of sin and separation from God, I still struggle to understand why He has allowed it to continue to the extent that we now see it.  As I sat at a dinner table at Cornerstone Community Outreach talking to J-- about the things he’s seen on the street and what my life might have been like if I’d grown up in the streets of Chicago rather than the suburbs of St. Louis, my heart was totally crushed.  It’s so unfair; why has God blessed me so much and allowed others to have so little?

Ultimately, I know that God’s ways are higher than mine, and I’ll never understand the full picture of His plan until I get to heaven (Isaiah 55:8-11).  But lately I’ve been thinking that I might have to accept some of the blame myself.  Because even though Jesus is the one who has done the work of reconciling us to God, we are the means by which God has chosen to spread that message. 

So from now on we regard no one from a worldly point of view. Though we once regarded Christ in this way, we do so no longer. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting men’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God. God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.  

-2 Corinthians 5:16-21

If we don’t share this good news, how will people know (Romans10:14-15)?

If we truly want to see peace and reconciliation in our world, then we have to point people to Jesus.  It’s what God commands us to do.  It's not a message for us to keep to ourselves; He means for us to share it.  So reconciliation will be my word for 2013.  I don’t presume to think I can change anyone’s life; only God can do that.  But if He wants to use me, I want to let Him.

#11. What God Starts, He Will Finish.

"I thank my God every time I remember you.  In all my prayers for all of you, I always pray with joy because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now, being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus."

-Philippians 1:3-6

Friday, for the first time since Candidate Orientation over two months ago (yikes!) our little group was able to reunite, via Skype/cell phone.  [So grateful for technology, even when it doesn’t work exactly as planned.]

I am so incredibly thankful to God for our group.  We heard it was one of the smaller ones, but I’m really grateful for that!  We were able to really get to know each other throughout the week and to ask and answer questions honestly.

I definitely feel like God put us together deliberately; I can’t imagine being there with a better group of people (which also applies to the GEM staff!).  Even though we spent less than a week together, I love them all dearly…Dennis, with his chill personality and subtle but hilarious sense of humor (“Hi, I’m Dennis, and I also have 7 children.”), Terri, the epitome of the Proverbs 31 woman, who also made me feel better about having so many questions (“Sharon, is it ok that I don’t understand anything that you just said?”), Kevin, with his ability to instantly befriend anyone, who thinks nothing of munching sweet potato chips in the president’s office, and Jazz, my fellow Francophile, who is one of the coolest, kindest people I’ve ever met (and she can hula!).

It’s not like I expected this process to be easy, but there have definitely been some unexpected challenges.  I am grateful for loving and supportive family, friends, and church bodies, but there is just something about us going through this process together that I really appreciate.  We’re all heading to different places, and we may get there at different times, but I can’t wait to see what God does with our little group.  [And also to have an “excuse” to visit Paris, Germany, and Switzerland.]  :-)

"Remember the things I have done in the past.  For I alone am God!  I am God, and there is none like me.  Only I can tell you the future before it even happens.  Everything I plan will come to pass, for I do whatever I wish."

-Isaiah 46:9-10