God ripped our rug

     We used to have a rug.  It was so pretty.  It was a big, sturdy rug.  We liked it so much that we moved from house to house with it.   We got it as a joint present to each other right after being married, and when we moved from our first house in California we brought it to Arizona, and then we put it in our last house as well.  Wherever we have gone, we have joyfully carted it along.  It was a big, pretty rug... and we wouldn't dare consider living without it. 

     This was no ordinary rug.  It wasn't what was on the design that made it special.  It wasn't the warmth on your feet, or the decor it brought to the room.  As our children grew it wasn't the comfort it brought to their crawling knees or toddling toes.  No... it was much more amazing than all of that.  It was underneath the rug that made it so special.  This rug had special power to take away our problems, to eliminate our stresses, and to bandage up the hurts.  It made the past seem perfect, the present satisfying, and the future exciting.  There was one rule though... you can put whatever you want under the rug, but you cannot take anything out.  

     This system was obviously working wonderfully, and why wouldn't it?!?  I mean, who wouldn't want a magical rug that could hide anything uncomfortable or unhealthy?  Sweep it under and just move on with the day!  Talk about ideal.  Well it wasn't until we moved into Serrano Village that things started to change (how many times have I said that?!).  We realized soon after arriving that our magical rug got ripped during the move in a few different places.  We tried to put the couch over one tear and the coffee table over another... but there wasn't enough covering that would reverse the damage and replenish the "magic".  Furthermore, when we lifted up the corner to put something under it, some of what we swept underneath came out of a rip!  UGH!!  After a few months of trying to work with this broken rug, we finally realized our efforts were in vain. 

     When we began this process in the Village with hundreds of refugees, we knew it would be a little about what happened because of us and a lot about what happened inside of us.  In this episode of our journey, God ripped our rug.  He is good, so he ripped our rug.  He is loving and deeply involved in our personal, day to day lives... so He ripped our rug.  On one hand I'm experiencing God in a sweet and gentle way, letting me work through things and know Him deeper so we can go further down this road.  But on the other hand, He is showing me that He is still GOD.  He is still righteous.  He is still the judge.  He is holy and He doesn't share my heart with unhealthy habits that sacrifice integrity for comfort.  He is God, and I'm glad He ripped our rug.  See ya rug, you were never as pretty as I made you seem, and I need you far less than I ever believed...

PAUSE!!!

Surrendering is sometimes very un-fun.  Yes, un-fun.  Yesterday I was sitting on my patio while the babies were sleeping and the chorus of a song came into my head that says, "In joyous surrender, with our eyes fixed on you..." and it actually made me shake my head 'no'.  Since I'm talking to God again (we had a dark spell for about a week) I told Him that at this juncture in life I reject the notion of surrender being joyous.  Right now it just sucks.  It's raw, uncomfortable, scary and affronting.  How else to say it besides simply un-fun.

Can real surrender be joyous?  Can we hold things precious and sacred to us and open those hands as an offering to God with joy?  If you can't does that make it less of an offering?  Does it matter if it's through tears and doubt and fear?  

Often in life we take something that is unfavorable and contrast it with something favorable.  Yes it's a hard season because _________, but at least we still have __________.  Generally both of these things are physical, which is normal because the most obvious trials or blessings are things that we can see.  But what happens when you've given the tangibles away?  What happens when you have trouble filling in the positive blank when you just look around at the reality of life.  The second blank ceases to be a something and is FORCED to become a someone.  We get Him.  We are forced to receive Him more fully, lean on Him more dependently, and seek Him like He really is here. 

This season has taught me that it's okay to question and it's okay to distrust God (did she really just say that?).  He can handle it.  And He knew that I would get here.  It would be ludicrous to leave my kids with someone I heard was a really neat guy who adopted all kinds of orphans, helped people recover from deadly diseases and went to sit with the elderly to read them stories and say, "Since I've heard you are such an awesome person, here are my kids... I'll just leave you guys alone!  Do with them whatever you see fit, you don't even need to ask me.  Good or bad, I'll just adjust, because I know you are right".  That would be silly in the physical realm of life... so why is it so bad to say PAUSE! in the spiritual realm when we just aren't comfortable?

So here I stand... paused.  I'm hand in hand with my God and we are halfway across the bridge.  We aren't looking behind or ahead, just pausing and taking in the beautiful landscape around us.  To the right is everything I've given Him, and if we keep walking left it's giving Him more.  It's my kids, it's our safety, it's whatever He sees fit.  He is quietly telling me things about Himself, loving on me and not judging me, telling me stories of times past, and confirming the reality that He dwells with me all of the time.  He is telling me often that He loves me unlike a love I have known.  He is letting me walk if I want to, and sit when I need to.  He is soft and sweet, understanding and patient.  He is my God whom I will follow to the other side, when I know Him more deeply and trust Him more fully.  And He is okay with that.  He is my God. 

Oh, to be Spaghetti!!

I was once told of a word picture to describe the differences between men and women's brains. Men have waffle brains, women have spaghetti brains. Men have compartments and can function efficiently within each segment regardless of what's happening in the others (to a degree of course). Women on the other hand are completely interwoven, like noodles, and if something is happening on noodle number four it's happening on noodle 79. I've been seeing this waffle vs. spaghetti idea play out in the different cultures here... and as we live life in the Village, I realized that as always it's an 'us versus them' thing and yet again we are the odd-balls. So in this addition, we are the waffles and they are the spaghetti.

As Americans, we are masters at compartmentalizing our lives. We call it "switching gears", so in keeping our waffle analogy, this means hopping over the wall of thin bread into the next waffle square. The sqaures are anything in your life... work, family, goals/vision, parenting, friendships, church, relationship with God, finances, neighbors, etc, etc. Think about your own life and how many different squares you have, and if they are truly related to one another. I find that some of my squares can (and do) exist completely independent from the others, although that is changing rapidly!

The spaghetti-types would be everyone except us... as always :). Their lives are giant plates of noodles, the sticky kind that you can't pull apart and it looks more like a confusing clump than individual strands. Everything connects, everyone is part of this messy plate, and they don't know anything different, and I asume they have no desire to (well... maybe the youngsters being raised here, but that's another post entirely). The idea is that everything flows into everything else, and this big hot mess is the beauty of having all things in common and owning the true identity of group or community.

I submit to you that their God, gods, religions, idealogies - whatever you want to say - is the sauce. It is poured over everything, and the entire plate is saturated by it. Their faith and gods are at every turn, under all they do, and covering each move. We tend to live our spiritual lives more like a waffle topping plopped onto the middle that may or may not spill over into each square. Our work, school, finances, even relationships can be untouched by this and it can just stay in the section of church and maybe a quarter of our finances and relationships. It's an interesting concept, and it has probed me to really live like my kids and nieghbors and money and husband and church are not only connected but saturated by Jesus. Oh Jesus, fill up these squares, every single one!!!

Love the sidewalk, Hate the sidewalk

We have a love/hate thing with our sidewalk.  To most people it's just a normal sidewalk, but to us it's a long skinny barrier the divides two very different worlds. 

This is an extremely unique setting in many ways, but one way is how suddenly the world as you knew it changes over to something unfamiliar and occasionally overwhelming.  When people normally enter cultures so opposite to their own, a car ride plus a long flight (or flights) plus another long car ride usually provide some much needed time to turn one switch off and another switch on.  We have about a 2 second hump to drive across and our parallel universe switch is now forced on.  

On the south side of the sidewalk lies the America that we all know and love.  Trust me when I say, we love America.  We love that we can still eat all of our favorite foods, shop at the grocery stores we are familiar with, get anything that we want or need, order something online and it arrives a few days later, receive regular mail, drive on roads that don't make us crazy (relatively speaking), communicate clearly, worship freely, visit all of our friends and family with relative ease, see baseball games, get babysitters... on and on.  We love that we can go to the bank, the grocery store, Target and stop for food all in one afternoon.  Ya know, America!  Easy, familiar, convenient and extremely efficient.

And then there's the north side.  This world, where we spend much of our time, is completely opposite.  I wish by reading words you could imagine the feel of life here, but there's much that is lost without actually seeing it, walking it, and yes, smelling it :).  My family is visiting for Thanksgiving and when my parents pulled in to the complex my mom said very slowly, "It's like a completely different world" as the sea of children parted ways in the street to let the car pass.  My sister sat on our patio and asked question after question for almost a full hour.  It takes a lot of time to process just how different the world is on this side of the sidewalk.  

It's not a complex with refugees, it's a refugee complex.  It's literally like another country.  But instead of one culture and language, there are 15 totally different cultures and languages.  As in other countries, accomplishing the small tasks of life is ssss-lllll-oooooo-wwwww here.  To go do laundry takes a long, long time.  Many times walking to throw the clothes in turns into an invitation to have some tea or fruit in someone's home, and a 10 minute trip turns into an entire afternoon... and the laundry hasn't even been switched yet.  All of life is that way here, any task outside of this apartment needs to be multiplied by 26 to correctly estimate when that task will be complete.  Okay, maybe by 4 or 8, but you get the point. 

As culturally sensitive as I think I am, nothing spells "American" more than being yanked out of a white middle-class suburban neighborhood and dropped in the midst of a life that is slow, relational above all else, slow, all things in common, slow, neighbors = family, slow, and you always must be ready for company... and I mean always.  There's no structure, little convenience, and things like problem solving or being proactive are foreign concepts.  This, for an American, is enough to buy a one-way ticket on a slow boat to China.  Well truthfully that's only the case a small percentage of the time.  More often than not, I find myself longing to be home in the village when I'm out and about being a productive American.  I love the security, the unspoken love, the ability to feel warmth down in my heart just by looking at people smile at us, the fact that my babies are learning that people are more important than time or a checklist.  There are beautiful qualities that I'm jealous for and comforted by on the north side of the sidewalk.

We would both agree that the hardest part of our new lives is that we have to transition so quickly between worlds, that we have to constantly turn our switch on and off depending on which side of the sidewalk we are on.  We do not have the luxury of being thousands of miles away from home to detach completely from the comforts and mindset of America, we must learn to adapt and function successfully in both.  This is a tough feat.

Our story board

We're not in Kansas anymore

Well... I've been staying away... purposefully.  I guess the seemingly sudden transition from our exotic global village honeymoon to "what were we thinking??" reality took me by surprise and it's taken some weeks now to process and stand on some steady, reality-rooted ground.  It comes and goes... but at least it's in sight now!  Isn't God good to bring us to the end of ourselves so He can show us Himself?? 

This happened when I was in Kenya.  The strange bugs were "interested and amazing!", the awful pollution made me feel "so sad that all of these nationals have to breathe this :(", the food was a fun cultural experience and a neat bridge of trust to build with my new African friends, the mosquito nets were like real and exciting 3rd world living, the constant (and I mean constant) bouts of illness made me feel honored that God would esteem me worthy to experience what so many in the world face constantly, the cold showers reminded me of how on the edge I was living and I loved it!  Fast forward a few months and it aaaalllllllll changed.

The bugs were freakishly large and "interesting" was at the bottom of the list as far as adjectives I thought of when being affronted by these little devils - surely God accidentally spoke these into existence... he must have coughed or sneezed in the middle of creating other bugs and these were the result.  The pollution made me want to scream "Ever heard of a smog test???" during my morning prayer walks (yes, I know), the food.... oh the food... let's just say that God is faithful to answer prayers when you say, "Lord, if you don't keep this food down my throat I WILL throw it up all over their table and shame them to no end!".  The mosquitos defied my nets and had a love affair with my feet, the cold showers made me go stinky and HEY that meant I was fitting in better!, and the illnesses that drove me to be alone for hours and days at a time were very difficult to see God in (but He was there!!).  The sunshine, puppies and ice cream became gray skies, mangy Tijuana street dogs and Fear Factor food.

Life here has faded into reality also.  The excitement of everyone being so communal is actually a problem... they need to assimilate to America, learn the language and get jobs.  The different groups are each very set in their ways and mainly trust their own people, who do not know what it takes to make it in this country.  The friendships by nature of their culture are all very easy to establish, but very shallow in depth.  I can go on and on about the 47 mothers I've gained since being here and how none of them think my babies are ever dressed enough and might freeze to death if 2 more sweaters aren't heaped on them in 70 degree cloudy weather, how the kids decided knocking on the door is too much work and jumping our gate and opening the patio door to come in and play is much easier. 

What has been constant through these scenarios are two things:  Jesus and Jeff Jackson!  Jeff is our Pastor and I met him when he trained myself along with 7 other missionaries getting ready to go into the mission field.  He knows a lot about a lot, but cultural insight seems to be at the top of his gifts in my opinion.  I was prepped going into Kenya and could senses my emotions shift so I could decipher things really well... but in this situation I was shocked at how sudden and sad it was!  He brought us both back down to reality and reminded us that we aren't flung out here alone despite our feelings, our church body is still beside us, lifting us in prayer and loving on us, that all of our feelings are totally normal, that we are literally in the middle of the trenches completely submerged in a cross-cultural setting.  I suppose the biggest comfort is knowing we aren't alone, that in the midst of the seemingly unattainable goals we are probably here so God can accomplish great things inside of us... not because of us or through us. 

We truly are living in a global village, and all that separates us from the America you live in is a sidewalk.  And that sidewalk makes all the difference in our world.  More on that next time.  Please pray for us :)  I'm making dishes today and tomorrow to deliver to some of the families and begin more of this relationships via food thing.

Where God says Follow, He also says Swallow

Well I haven't written in awhile... mostly because I'm in a quiet, sober place right now.  More on that later... but to pave the way for more writing I thought a funny story would do me well.  Well, funny a bit... gross a lot... and anger-inducing for my special someone.  Intrigued? 

FOOD.  One of the most important extensions of friendship in cross-cultural ministry... if not the most important.  If we are invited to someones home, or happen to be walking around and they lead us ever so lightly (ha!) by the hand into their apartment and begin sharing food with us... there is just no question about it.  You eat the food, you eat it happily, and if they give you more... you eat that too.  So far I've had some funny run-in's with the delicate balance of honoring them and trusting the by receiving this gift of friendship VERSUS keeping it down and not losing it all over the plate, thus shaming them for a lifetime!  So far I have succeeded... but that almost came to an end yesterday.

It all started the first week we lived here.  I delivered some fresh baked cookies to a family (I will leave details out, heaven forbid they ever read this!).  As is customary in these cultures, I fully expected them to return my plate with another treat.  Well weeks went by and finally they came back with some of their own cookies plus an entire pot of dinner for us.  This particular dish we've had before and neither one of us desired to willfully partake inside the privacy of our own home so we just let it sit there while we ate our own yummy American food.  The next day (yesterday) I was coming home from the gym and the wife/cook sees me hauling both my sleepy kids to my door and in true community fashion, she picks up a kid and starts trailing behind me to come into the house and help.  NOW... if I thought she might just drop him at the door and consider her help over I wouldn't have panicked... but they NEVER stop at the door.  How American would that be?  They come in, pick up toys, close my open cabinets, put extra sweaters on my kids because apparently they are never warm enough.

So there I was, pretending not to find the right key to get into the house, sorting out how I could hide the dish without her knowing.  My success in this moment determined the fate of our friendship with this family and if I would shame her beyond our American comprehension.  So I rush in and take the lid off and dump the whole dish down the sink and stick the empty pot over the drain.  She walks in behind me, after about 3 seconds sees the empty pot, smiles, I smile back... pat my tummy and say "Excellent!!" in her language.  She lit up and was so happy that we ate all of her dish and thought it was amazing.  She left and the second wave of panic set in.  How on earth can I get this out of the sink?  I knew it wouldn't clear the pipes... and I made one large mess... and the topper was that I had to work in the office an hour later.  So I got around, my husband came home and I left him with two babies and a clogged sink full of food he had no desire to eat let alone sift through with nasty additions that have been sitting in the drain pipes.

Long story short, they had to snake the pipe (eeeek!!) and the water (if you can call it that) slushed out all over the tile and was quite the scene.  The second I walked in two hours later my husband said, "TAG" and walked out.  He needed some alone time.

Moral of the story?  Use the trash next time... and do it the night before.  What a mess.