waiting

            I opened my door to find a four year old boy raising his hand to knock.

            “What do you need, J—?”

            “I wa a cooie,” he replied, leaving out a few consonants.

            “A cookie?  No, I can’t give you one, sweetie.  Did your mom come today?”

            “No,” he said and glanced at the ground.

I sighed and changed the subject.

            He’s been waiting for his mom to come for longer than any four year old boy should have to wait.  He wants a good thing—what could be better than a young boy seeing his loving mother?—but right now it’s being denied him.  He doesn’t know why.  I don’t know why.  It’s so hard to watch him wait.

            I, too, am waiting for things.  I have desires tucked deep inside my heart, good ones that I remember daily and don’t see fulfilled.  I don’t know why.  Others around me don’t know why.  It’s so hard to wait.

Neither of us knows how long.  Will his mother come this week?  Will I get what I want this month?  This week passes.  This month passes.  And nothing.  And we wonder why.

But as I review my ponderings, I’ve found them to be a source of deeper discontentment.  If I only peppers my thoughts.  My future becomes solely dependent upon my actions; I am the master of my fate.  But as I change things, set up the chain of events correctly on my end and what I want still doesn’t come around, I’m left in despair.  I come to the realization that I can’t make myself happy.  And if I can’t make myself happy, what then?

I’m forced to learn contentment or wallow in misery.  I can’t control my circumstances, but I can control my reactions.

Years ago, I heard someone say, “The point of our trials is not for us to understand why, but rather for us to be made more like Christ.”  All the time I ask why, I’m looking for the answers in the wrong places.  My “why” is not searching for the purpose, but the problem.  My question assumes a flaw, not a function.  And that tiny speck of perspective, it multiplies and grows until it is all I can see.  God’s goodness disappears as I close my eyes to convince myself that there is only darkness.  Sure, there’s only darkness, because that’s all I’ve chosen to see.

When I finally tire of my created darkness, I peek out onto the world.  Light.  The first sign of God’s goodness.  My trials have a purpose: my joy.  What could be better than being like Christ, the incarnation of God himself?

Although I now see the light, I don’t see the future clearly.  That’s why I turn my head over my shoulder.  I know what I’ve been through.  I have stories of God’s faithfulness.  And if I’m too tired to recount them, others have stories too.  The centuries are bursting with them.  So I listen to them over and over again.  I whisper them to myself as I fall asleep.  I draw them in my notebook.  If my God is the definition of faithfulness and I have overflowing proof of the fact, I can find no reason to declare him guilty.  I cannot rationally review the evidence, the fingerprints and the proof that declare my God faithful and me unfaithful, and slam my mallet and yell, “Guilty!  God you are guilty of unfaithfulness.  Maybe you haven’t been unfaithful yet, but you will be.  I just know it.  Lock him up.”  To do so is to attempt to trap God, force him to bribe me to let him go.  When I sew the evidence into my day, scribble it on the moments with permanent marker, I get caught in my own trap and my fraud can’t help but whither.

I’m still waiting.  Little J— is still waiting.  Who knows how long we’ll wait?  We may spend the rest of our lives waiting.  But if we wait with a purpose in view instead of a problem, we will find the pain of waiting grow paler as we reap the product of waiting with a purpose: joy as the purpose is fulfilled and we are made more like Christ.

(No, I don't believe in motivational photos.  I'm just tired of my link thumbnail being jalapeno peppers.)

Sojourning in the land of "I don't know"

Last winter, I made the decision to not attend nursing school, but that left me with the question, “What now?”  The answer was simple, but one that was a little hard to swallow: “I don’t know.”  Having two parents who are renowned for their skill in planning and having always prided myself on having purpose and direction, “I don’t know” was a bit of a scary move.  Was it okay to not know?

After grappling with that question, I concluded that, yes, it is okay to not know.  It’s human and it’s humble.  I am not God.  I simply do not know sometimes and if I believe I do, I’m only playing a cruel joke on myself.  I discovered that “I don’t know” is actually the land in which I had been living all along, I just had never admitted it, instead choosing to speak the language of pride when  the country I was inhabiting spoke the language of humility.

Accepting this position of bewilderment can be a mature act.  The way in which I walk forward changes from a confident swagger that results in many stumbles to a humble following that sometimes requires me to run, sometimes walk, more often than not, crawl, and always stick my feet forward hoping with assurance that the ground will rise up to meet the soles of my feet even though I can’t see it.

But only recently have I found out that “I don’t know” is never supposed to be a place of residence.  I thought that maybe I could stay put in “I don’t know” and eventually find my way, but that’s not what God intends.  God hasn’t left me clueless in this world, but rather, “[His] word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path.”  (Psalm 119:105)  Sometimes, I can see just my feet and the ground underneath, and other times the light reaches just a little farther ahead of where I’m treading.  I may not be able to see far into the future, or even into the future at all, but that does not mean that I should stop walking intentionally forward, because God has illuminated the part of the path I need to see.

“I don’t know” is a sojourn, a dose of humility to help us on our way to following God with our whole heart and the time comes round when God calls us to move on and arrive somewhere.

When I think of this “new” concept, I think of Abram.  God called him to “I don’t know.”  Literally.

He said, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father's house to the land that I will show you.”  (Genesis 12:1)

Abram had no clue where he was going.  His life was suddenly a big “I don’t know.”  But he didn’t plop down his tent and say, “Sorry, God, until you show me the final destination, we’re not going anywhere.”  Instead, he followed, camping at one place, then another.  Sometimes, it was time to rest for a while, but no camp sight was ever his home.

I may live in a constant state of not knowing what will happen, but that doesn’t mean I need to stay there forever.  After a time, I need to pick up my bags and start walking.  My new destination may be another city in the land of “I don’t’ know,” but I’m called to keep moving.  Because, if I don’t, if I stay put at a camp sight, I run the risk of “doing” a decision without ever responsibly making it.  And that is simply not what God has asked me to do.  I am responsible for my time and my actions, and therefore, I need to take them by the horns.  That is, I need to prayerfully, obediently, confidently, and faithfully live my life in full accordance with God’s Word.

With all that said, I’m sure you’ve guessed by now that I have a few decisions that I need to make in my life right now.  And I don’t yet know what they will be.  I just know that I need to make them.  Form them, labor over them.  And in this time of evaluating and planning, I would appreciate any prayers, because I recognize that ultimately, I’m not forging a new path.  Rather, I’m discovering one that’s been laid out for me by a living, loving God, and I and those around me need wisdom, discernment, and obedience to recognize God’s voice, listen to it, and obey it.

It’s time for me to move ahead in the land of “I don’t know.”

The simplest command: stay.

            The urgent desire to leave came suddenly, like a breeze stirring a peaceful room.  I was surrounded by all of the school’s teacher, who were animatedly discussing some point or other that had nothing to do with me, and in my boredom I had let my mind wander.  The thing that slipped up to the surface without even a thought was one word: leave.  I had half a mind to bolt out of the room and just keep running; to run until I had escaped the fence that encloses me daily, run until I had seen a fresh face, run until I had left behind the various projects and problems that nibble away all of my minutes, run until I had abandoned the schedule that rules my never-changing life.

            But, in accordance to my goody-two-shoes complex, I didn’t.  Instead, I jiggled my foot impatiently and imagined the gratifying feeling of running past all boundaries, going somewhere new, seeing something novel.  I started to count the weeks that had passed since I had left my schedule, and then I stopped.  I didn’t want to know how long or short it had been.  Either way it was depressing because nothing would happen today to reset the tally.

            As the meeting ended, I watched as all the other teachers passed through the gate.  And then the last one wrapped the chain around the posts and clicked the bolt.  Their cars left the parking lot one by one, free to follow whichever winding, dusty road their heart chose.  I turned and followed the path that I walk twenty times a day.

            I slipped into my room and locked the door.  More walls and locks within fences and closed gates.  I sighed and picked up my Bible, ruffled through the pages until I found Philippians, and read the whole book.

            “Only that in every way…Christ is proclaimed.”

            “Do all things without grumbling or questioning…”

            “Finally, my brothers, rejoice in the Lord.”

“Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.”

“…I have learned in whatever situation I am to be content…I can do all things through him who strengthens me.”

            “I can do all things through him who strengthens me…”  Familiar words, rolled and crinkled like a wad of old Benjamins.  But just as a bunch of Benjamins tucked in a wallet have the appearance of wealth, but carry no intrinsic value, so these words appear valiant, but do not make me strong.

            I pulled the words out, not with flash and fanfare, but more like a homeless person scrounging their pockets for change to pay for the $1 burger.  For the words to do me any good, I had to exchange them, hoping in faith that the promise they held would be made good.

            As I read the words and believed, I wasn’t using this promise to buy an impressive story of God’s faithfulness; all I wanted was strength for today to follow the simplest of commands: stay.  I had always imagined that the power of the promise came with the complexity of the request.  This promise would shine most brilliantly when I asked God to help me do the utterly impossible, when I asked him to move a mountain into the sea.

            But today, I’m using the promise to ask God to keep the mountain rooted to its foundations.  Today, the command is: stay.  Tomorrow, the command will probably be: stay.  And the day after and the day after, until who knows when.  It’s the simplest command; it doesn’t require me to learn a new skill, go somewhere new, or meet new people.  It doesn’t present me with the unknown.  It presents me with the familiar, old, and mundane.

But the simplest command requires the hardest work.  As I remain immobile, it requests my patience, my faithfulness, my endurance, my faith, my hope, my joy.  The simplest command requires me to literally do nothing, but rather to become something.

How to enchilar yourself in honor of Mexican Independence Day

Tomorrow is September 16, otherwise known as Mexican Independence Day.  Yeah, you got that right, it’s not el cinco de mayo, like we all thought.  El cinco de mayo is actually the anniversary of the battle of Puebla and nobody celebrates it.  Like, nobody at all.  Tomorrow is the big party and in honor of el dieciseis de septiembre, I thought I’d take some time to teach you all how to make one version of classic Mexican chile.

            This is a recipe that my friend Juanis taught me without ever teaching me.  I just know how to do it after seeing her do it so many times as I sat in the baby home kitchen with her, talking away.  She is a wonderful friend and a delight to be around.  I have spent so many times laughing with her and just passing time.

            So, here’s how you make it.  Take four jalapeños and sit them on top of your stove burner with the heat on medium low and let them cook, turning them over until they’re nice and burnt on the outside.  (Note: it actually should be about 6 or 8 jalapeños, but this way it’ll be less spicy.)

Meanwhile, dice up two Roma tomatoes and cut a white onion into thin half-circle slivers (Note: they’d also use less onion too, but this, again, will make it less spicy.  Few Americans appreciate spice like the Mexicans do!).  Stick them in a pan and salt generously.

When the jalapeños are done cooking and look like this, tear off the stems and peels and stick them into a bowl and start mashing them with the bottom of a glass or ceramic cup.  

If you’re not in for too much spice, you can also pause to take out some of the seeds.  But you shouldn’t.  Come on, be adventurous, your life could use a little spice.

Once finished, add them to your onions and tomatoes, pause and admire how one of Mexico’s most popular foods has all the colors of the Mexican flag, pour in just a little bit of oil and let cook for about 15 minutes.

For an extra splash of fun, add in some cubes of menonite cheese.

Now, stick it on top of your favorite Mexican dish (or really any food, for that matter) and eat and be happy.

Oh, and don't forget to eat so much chile that you enchilar yourself.  Enchilarse is a Spanish verb that means to eat so much chile that your mouth is on fire.

Boxes and crosses

            I woke up. Uggggggghhh.  My head. My throat.  All of me.  I considered rolling over and sleeping some more, but there was work to be done.  Always work.  And so I marched dutifully into my day.

I took some cold medicine.  Maybe then I’d feel better.

I got some work done.  At least I felt productive.

I did some unexpected, hard work.  Hey, I didn’t complain.  Go me.  Renee has an agenda, and she’s going to get it done.  I kept on going.

            Moving onto my next task, I dropped a bag of stuff off with a friend.  But she didn’t let me move straight on to the following chore.  She stopped me and we talked.  And thank goodness.  It’s like she knew.  She saw me marching out to battle, but noticed I was battling the wrong things and had grabbed the wrong weapons.  My enemies: time and tasks.  My weapons:                .  That’s right.  Nothing.  I had no weapons.

            “Renee,” she said to me.  “If we watch the children, but we don’t have Christ, our work is nothing.  More than anything, more than everything, we need to receive the love of Christ and give the love of Christ.  Daily.  Without it, our work is nothing.”

            In my mind I perused my day.  Christ?  Nope, hadn’t been there.  I forgot to invite him.

I woke up sick, I took medicine.

I had work to do, Renee did it alone.

Unexpected jobs?  I bucked up and dealt with them.

I had reduced my work to a list of defined tasks that I thought I, in my puny power, could accomplish.  And from my human perspective, I did them.

            But my friend challenged me.  Was my work really a list of finite jobs and chores that I could box up and then check off?  Or am I called every day to take up an awkward, bulky cross and follow Christ?

            How many times do I see the cross Jesus asks me to carry and say, “I can take that, I’m strong enough.  But first, let me simplify.  We’ll rearrange the cross and reduce it to a box, because that’s easier to carry.”  But in chopping off the limbs of the cross and bundling them up, I’ve missed the point.  Christ not only took on the weight of my sin, he carried the shape too.  He absorbed the wrath of God and he addresses my heart.  It would have been easier, I’m sure, for him to just have been my propitiation.  But he’s more; he’s my sanctification.  He’s sent his Spirit to abide in and work through me.

            And so the cross that Jesus asks me to carry is a cross that requires loving the children, not merely watching them.  Such a cross includes cheerfulness, not simply dutiful doing.  Such a cross calls for submitting my circumstances to God, not taking some cold medicine.  Such a cross insists upon Christ’s presence every moment of the day.

            Humanly speaking, yesterday I seemed to be winning my battle.  I was slashing and slaying tasks left and right, charging ahead dauntlessly though wounded and ragged.  But I doubt that’s the way God saw my day.  I’m sure a looked like a child with a feather for a sword and a piece of paper as a shield, charging into a dandelion field “slaying” my foes and watching the white tops fall to the ground in satisfaction.
            And to this naïve warrior, my friend came, calling sweetly, “Renee, look to Christ.  He blesses your work, he gives it meaning.  He bestows wisdom and power for the complicated range of emotions for which he asks you to care.  He gives rest to the weary and the sick.  Come, abide in him.”

            I walked away from that encounter humbled.  My checked off to do list was now rubbish, because it was no longer the enemy.  My new enemy, my attitude, was a little more shadowy, and a lot less defined.

But my new weapons, they are so much better.  In one hand, I grasp the Word of God, and in the other, I hold his hand.

Plans

The plan was so simple: read facebook statuses for a few minutes and then head to bed early to catch up on my growing sleep deficit.  As I sat down to accomplish my plan, a flash of lighting darted in my window followed by a boom of thunder that shook my kitchen walls.  Ahhhhh, a storm.  I stood up and went to my kitchen door to enjoy the storm that surrounded the ranch from every side.  And as I watched, it came closer until the rain began to parade noisily on my tin roof.  I sighed and listened to the cannoning thunder.  As I listened, a different thud made its way to my ears.  Someone was knocking on my door that connects to the girls’ dorm.

            Not excited in the least about this development, I went to see what was up.  I opened the door to find two girls about eleven or ten years old wrapped in their blankets and looking at me with scared eyes.

            “We can’t sleep, Renee.  The lights keep on flickering on and off and the thunder is so loud and scary.”

            My plan for an early bedtime had not foreseen this, but I thought I might be able to salvage the situation.

            “Aw, I’m sorry.  You know what, though?  I love thunder storms because God is showing his power and if God’s on my side and that’s how powerful he is, I know I don’t have to be afraid.  He’ll protect me.”

            They blinked back at me, completely unappeased with my half-hearted attempt to comfort them and something in my heart whispered that this wasn’t a time to dismiss their fears and send them back to bed.  This meant that my early bedtime plan was now on life support.  My only hope was that the storm would pass quickly.

            I let them in my room and we sat on my floor and began to talk.  They explained to me all the things they were afraid of; the figures they saw in dark corners, the tales that haunted their sleep, the imaginings that kept them awake at night.  And they asked.  They asked why I wasn’t afraid, they asked if the things they feared were real, and what they could do when they were afraid.

            And as the storm outside slowly quieted, I told them.  I told them that I was afraid sometimes, I told them that the things they feared were real sometimes, but that we have a shelter in the storm always, a God to whom even the darkness is not dark.  We talked about the devil, his limited power, and his desire to make us fear him instead of God.  But I got to tell them with confidence that my God is greater than this devil who tries to make us tremble in fear.  My God wants us to tremble in awe and worship at his great love that envelops us when he could and should smite us.

            As I told them about my God, they asked more questions.  How was I patient with them?  How could they learn to be patient with others?  How come I didn’t seem to get very angry, but when they promised themselves they would curb their temper, they couldn’t?

            We sat in my room, talking as it grew later.  And when the storm had finally abated and when all of our eyelids began slipping down our eyes, we sank into our beds.

Right before I fell asleep, I looked at the time.  Definitely much later than I had planned to go to bed.

But when I thought about it, I realized I had just gained something better than a few hours of sleep.  I just had the chance to talk to two of the girls personally about my great God.  And this time, unlike so many others, I wasn’t the one starting the conversation, they were.  They wanted to know more about this God.  They wanted to know how he touches their lives.  And if my plans have to be derailed for that to happen, it’s more than okay with me.

"Even the darkness is not dark to you;

the night is as bright as day,

for darkness is as light with you."

-Psalm 139:12

on self-pity and showers

When I woke up this morning, I swear something was staring me down.  Gorged as all get out and terribly lethargic, self-pity’s tear drop eyes steadily gazed at me.  I squirmed in my bed and I could just feel it.  Yup, today was going to be a battle.  Like any good soldier, I drilled in preparation, reading the Bible and praying, but my heart wasn’t engaged.  The enemy was staring me down from his dark corner in my heart and my soul trembled.

Why such a heaping dose of self-pity?  No reason, no reason at all.  It was just sprinkled in my day like sugar in coffee.

As if my life were a crossword puzzle, I peered around, looking backwards, sideways, diagonal, upside down, searching for all those little “mistakes,” the things that ticked me off.  Once found, I circled them with bright red complaining.  To my trained eye, the day was beginning to look as red as a traffic light.  And self-pity, sitting in his corner, smiled.

I’m a professional pity-partier, and as such, I know better than to voice my woes.  If you voice them, one of two things can happen: an optimist will come and point out all the little rainbows and daisies and hearts and completely ignore your incredibly legitimate sorrows, or a better pity-partier will come and steal the show.  Either way, your pity party is ruined.  So I let my gloomy thoughts chase their tales in my head and self-pity take a light snooze as I did the work for him.

In the afternoon, my pity party reached a high-point as I extolled my virtues and pondered why my greatness wasn’t more widely recognized.  In fact, I even began planning this blog post as a sarcastic piece on that very subject that I could either try to redeem at the end with some sort of something about how Jesus is better, or I could entirely give up and let the piece stand as a full fledged pity party (the latter being the preferred option).

Then, the most amazing thing happened.

I took a shower.

Yes, you read that right.  I took a shower.  It was a profound theological moment as I realized my self-centeredness and Christ’s cleansing work on the cross that has the power to wash away my self-pity.

No, just kidding.  It was simply a shower.  It wasn’t even a nice long shower, it was a military shower.  But by the time it was over, I didn’t want to complain any more.  I sat down to right this blog post, and all the perfectly witty quips about my self-pity fled.

As I’ve been writing this, I’ve been trying to understand why my self-pity disappeared.  I can’t say that it was shame over revealing my sin; my family knows that I have no problem doing that.  It definitely wasn’t an epiphany.  I think it was gratefulness.

I couldn’t find anything wrong with my shower.  It was perfectly refreshing.  The only “complaint” I can think of was that it was making me take a break from my hard core pity partying, but even that was perfectly refreshing.  Once I found that thing that made me truly thankful, I didn’t want to ruin that beautiful feeling of thankfulness with a pity party.  I just wanted to revel in it.

God, in his kindness, sent me that shower.  I wasn’t looking to be delighted; I was grasping for shadows of discontentment, yet God chose to delight me anyway.  How perfectly loving he is.

In their unexaggerated forms, all of those less-than-perfect things are still present in my life, but I don’t want to focus on them.  I want to spend my time rejoicing in the only perfect thing, my God, and treasuring every gift he sends.