Finding Faith in the Battle

Confessions of a not-so-secret nerd: I've always loved school. Fresh notebooks? An excuse to buy pens? Life was great with a book bag and studying and learning new things every day. Even now I see my friends from Grad school on Facebook heading back for PhDs, and...I know, I shouldn't admit it, but I do--I feel a twinge of jealousy! Funny I didn't have that same reaction when our counselor said we were incredibly blessed to have a child who would help us go beyond 'Parenting 101' into 'Advanced Parenting'. I was quite content being a 'good-enough-parent'...you know the kind? Nothing stupendous or miraculous, making my share of mistakes and learning as I go, but well-intentioned and full of love and always providing basic needs. No one is perfect; good enough seemed a reasonable goal. Except that I forgot one thing. Being full of love and communicating love are two different things. There's this pesky little thing in communication called the ...

I love Hebrews 12 and the imagery of a race. The stands, the runners, the perseverance. 'Cause I'm good at perseverance. I often fail to stop and smell the roses, too focused on the goal to appreciate the journey, but I do grit really well. Head down, work to be done, let's go! But, without taking a single ounce of truth out of Hebrews 12, an analogy can only go so far in explaining life. Life is too complex and messy and beautiful to be captured in one single simile. Or even one parable. Just think about how many times Jesus said, 'It's like..." Why? Because it's also like... So, back to Hebrews 12. I'm a runner. I'm throwing off the entangling sin, and I've got a race marked out just for me. I'm fixing my eyes on Jesus who ran it first; the one who can ensure I make it across the finish line without growing weary or losing heart. But you know where the analogy breaks down??? My friends and my family and my neighbors-- they're al...

In our last prayer letter, we mentioned a tree planting ceremony we had for Dad. That was back in July, I think, and now it's November, so clearly I'm not doing great with my updates! But as much as I consider myself a "thinker," not a "feeler"; as much as I 'deal with it and move on,' I have to confess this stuff with loosing a parent isn't easy. I've not found it easy to face the feelings and emotions, and have discovered what a cowardly avoid-er I actually am when it comes to unpleasant things! But this tree-planting was a great idea, given to us by great friends, Don and Jane Jones here in Nairobi. It opened a can of worms the day we did it--Ethan in particular had emotional melt-down after melt-down, and I myself was on the grumpy side (though don't let Chad know I'm admitting it!) But it did, in an inexplicable way, give us something concrete to funnel our sadness into, or to remember Dad in a way that wasn't too raw or p...

Ok, I don't let myself linger on the negative very much, because every place has it's good things and it's challenges. And what can you do about the challenges, anyway? We do love being here, and no place is perfect. But I have to admit--as I'm cleaning African-mud messes or stuck in crazy traffic, I sometimes sooth myself by "writing" crabby blogs in my head. Is that strange???? Well, this week has had some doozies, and it's been too long since I've written anything, so I'm giving in to my need to vent. So here are the top ten things, in no particular order, which send me to my knees in a semi-futile attempt to give thanks in all situations!!! Large, important buildings (say, hospitals!) that are built with no thought of parking for the people that just might come use the services. I've literally spent an hour in 'traffic' inside the parking lot. Parking attendants who don't actually "attend" to anything at all. ...

So my last musings ended on a low note. Tired. Discouraged. Overwhelmed. Real. And I want to enumerate on three things that have come out of these past few weeks for me. One I've had an inkling of over the years, and the second I've known all along but I want to make sure to publicly confess it to make sure you don't miss it. The third is a new lesson altogether. 1. Obeying God does not guarantee a life of ease. I believe this is one of Satan's masterpiece-lies to make us feel like we're wasting our time when things get hard, to make us doubt God's goodness, to  make us feel foolish for trudging through the grime of life as if there is something noble about sacrifice and obedience. But friends, it is a lie! There IS nobility in the struggle. There IS grace in the pain and the fatigue and the discouragement of obedience. Jesus himself agonized until drops of blood fell from his forehead---imagine what he might have blogged that night had he been a ...

I've written so many blog entries since April 2nd and now. Like, 15 or 20. And they were great...inspiring or funny or maybe some of both. Of course, it would have helped if I'd actually written  them outside of my head. But I promise, they really were great! Well, there was one blog I did write. It was about a month ago, and my over-active guilt complex compelled me to write something new. So I wrote what was in my heart, and it wasn't very inspiring. Or it inspired the wrong thing--I finished it, re-read it, and burst into tears. So it was relegated to the " drafts" box, and I shut down the blog for another month. But now it's the end of June, and it's been a shameful 3 months of silence. That's not right. So I'm going to post this, but it's not the end of the story. May 28th: I'm tired. I mean, really, really tired. The kind that doesn't go away with a normal 8-hr sleep, even on those nights when the rats in our attic don...

Ethan had the joy of receiving a letter in the mail--the real mail, with a stamp and everything!--a first here in Africa for him. It was written by a sweet boy at one of our churches; a boy we've never met. Ethan was thrilled to get it, and he read it aloud for us. It was very sweet. And then came the line that gives me hives every time. "What's it like to live in Africa?" Not because it's not a valid question. I understand how inconceivable and incomprehensible living in Africa might seem. Yes, I understand why the question inevitably comes. The hives are a result of just how difficult that question is to answer. How does one wrap up the experience of DIFFERENT in a concise sentence, as if the 26 letters plus punctuation could possibly be enough to bring clarity as to what it's like? How does one describe the ease with which we pat ourselves on the back and say to God and others, "We've sacrificed so much. We're so Radical. Now give us w...