Growing up

She's just 2 years old - 2 years and 5 months, actually.

I laid her down in her bed tonight, and she said, "hey mommy?" (virtually every other sentence begins with those two beautiful words). "Hey Mommy? Stay here" I have trash all over my house from my Hopi "kids" being over, and my bach aches from the work of the day, but I can't say no tonight. So I sit on the floor by her bed. She puts out her hand and says, "hold hands" and slips her soft little hand into mine.

My heart aches at the beauty of the moment. While on one hand I wonder how I'm going to manage life with a 2 year old and a newborn and not a minute for me, on the other hand, I feel the time slipping by all too quickly, and soon her soft little hand will be too busy to hold mine. I don't want the moment to end... but it will, and another beautiful moment will take it's place.

Someone once told me about raising kids that every age is the best... I thought that can't be true. But as I experience every age through Charissa and now Caleb, I discover there is something so utterly novel in each moment, in every age and phase, that in capturing it, we discover the essence of living. May these moments not pass by too quickly, and may I not be too busy to cherish them.

Our precious baby

This is an update for all of you who may not have heard yet about what's going on in our lives and the baby we're having a couple short months...

I write this mostly to ask for prayer for our baby, and for wisdom for us...

We found out about 2 months ago that our baby has something goofy going on in his development. Mainly, his stomach is growing on the wrong side of his body... it should be on the left side under his heart, and it's on the right side. In and of itself, it doesn't mean much, but there could be implications for other problems because of this... it's quite rare, and doctors say we just won't know until he's born. He is growing well, seems to be strong, but the doctors are watching him more closely, which means we are driving anywhere from 100 to 250 miles twice a week for testing and monitoring - not quite what we expected to spend our summer doing, but well worth it to make sure this little guy gets the best care he can!!!

We won't be able to have the baby where Charissa was born, since the doctors want us to be at a place affiliated with a good Children's Hospital. We're still working on specifically where and need great wisdom from the Lord on that.

We know the Lord's hand is on this baby, and His promises hold true in every situation: "For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother's womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful,I know that full well. Ps 139."

We are convinced this is no mistake or accident - God's hand has been on his development from before we knew of his presence. Thanks for all your prayers - we really feel them right now!

Faith

We know the verse, and quote it readily: "Faith is the assurance of the things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen"... That's a nice, neat, definition. But how do you practice it? How does faith make it's way into every cell of your being?

It's been a long time since I've written - I think I've been so overwhelmed by life it's hard to find a place for words sometimes. At the beginning of this year, the Lord told me that this was going to be a year of faith - of me having to come face to face with who He is, who I am, and learning to truly trust Him with my everything. I thought -"Okay, I can see where this is heading. We need a lot of guidance in the ministry right now, and so I'm sure this is where it's going to focused". And every day I find that to be true... but I guess I didn't expect it to hit my personal life this hard. Not only do I not know the future of this incredible ministry after August, but I don't know the future of this precious baby I'm carrying right now. When God asked me to trust Him with everything, He really did mean EVERYTHING.

A couple days ago, my brother asked me how things were going out here, and I realized that I had nothing firm to say about anything... the radio station, the ministry center, the ministry itself, our baby... all hangs in the balance and only God knows the future of any of it and controls the outcome. Of course, that's the case all the time, but it's so blatantly real right now - it actually feels kind of good in a strange way.

We fool ourselves into thinking we are in some kind of control... we have our schedules and calendars, our plans for tomorrow, and we know where we're going. It's all a house of cards, since no one holds the future but our God, but there is a sick sort of security in that. And then you come nose to nose with reality, and there's a calming assurance in knowing that this is how it always is, you just see it more clearly right now. This is the substance of faith, the murkiness and uncertainties, the confusions and pain, the throwing it all down and being able to say from the depths of your soul, "not mine, but YOUR will be done"

YOUR WILL BE DONE... teach me to truly trust this in every minute of my day.

Good Perspective

Woke up earlier than I wanted to this morning, with a pretty bad attitude and little bit of feeling sorry for myself. Of course, most of this was my fault for going to bed too late and carrying alot of the baggage from yesterday into today...

Then I remembered a quote that my brother in law, Doug, sent us yesterday, and it threw everything into a much better perspective for me. So here it is:

“As we have a high old time this Christmas, may we who know Christ hear the cry of the damned as they hurtle headlong into the Christ-less night without ever a chance. May we be moved with compassion as our Lord was. May we shed tears of repentance for these we have failed to bring out of darkness. Beyond the smiling scenes of Bethlehem may we see the crushing agony of Golgotha. May God give us a new vision of His will concerning the lost and our responsibility.” – Nate Saint, missionary killed by Auca Indians, six days before Christmas

Hopi Sunset

The view from our front door a couple days ago. God's beauty is astonishing!

Nostalgia

This is a fairly lengthy quote, but read it ... read it well, and let Lewis weave his words around your heart -
In speaking of this desire for our own far-off country(heaven), which we find in ourselves even now, I feel a certain shyness. I am almost committing an indecency. I am trying to rip open the inconsolable secret in each one of you--the secret which hurts so much that you take your revenge on it by calling it names like Nostalgia and Romanticism and Adolescence; the secret also which pierces with such sweetness that when, in very intimate conversation, the mention of it becomes imminent, we grow awkward and affect to laugh at ourselves; the secret we cannot hide and cannot tell, though we desire to do both. We cannot tell it because it is a desire for something that has never actually appeared in our experience. We cannot hide it because our experience is constantly suggesting it, and we betray ourselves like lovers at the mention of a name. Our commonest expedient is to call it beauty and behave as if that had settled the matter....The books or the music in which we thought the beauty was located will betray us if we trust to them; it was not in them, it only came through them, and what came through them was longing. These things--the beauty, the memory of our own past--are good images of what we really desire; but if they are mistaken for the thing itself, they turn into dumb idols, breaking the hearts of their worshippers. For they are not the thing itself; they are only the scent of a flower we have not found, the echo of a tune we have not heard, news from a country we have never yet visited. Do you think I am trying to weave a spell? Perhaps I am; but remember your fairy tales. Spells are used for breaking enchantments as well as for inducing them.
~C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory (1949)

A larger perspective

I am reading Philippians right now - has long been one of my favorite sections of Scripture, and I am understanding more clearly why. In Philippians 1:12-14, Paul explains why he doesn't complain of the circumstances he's in, in prison, chained between 2 guards - in my human perspective, I think of how restless he must have been -yearning to go out and preach the Gospel, and yet stuck in a dungeon writing letters.
Yet all he talks of is praising God, for through his situation, the Gospel is spreading, and that is all that matters to him.
that is all that matters to him? How much else matters to me that is of no consequence? The Black Friday sales coming up - the new clothes I bought last week in town - the practical aspects of the ministry and how to get different things done - decorating for Christmas - traveling to Amsterdam (or wherever random place I happen to be dreaming of...) - so many things (many good things, in fact) tickle my fancy and distract my focus, and here Paul says, "What then? Only that, whether in pretense or in truth, Christ is proclaimed; and in this I rejoice. Yes, and I will rejoice."

How? By knowing WHO HE IS. Here is how MacArthur puts it: "Paul did not ignore or make light of his imprisonment, but it was INCIDENTAL to his willing, joyous, and immeasurably privileged status as a bondservant of Jesus Christ..." - every situation we find ourselves in is secondary to our status in Jesus' kingdom... EVERY SITUATION IS SECONDARY... WOW

"His ministry and his earthly life were inseparable. His earthly life would not be completed until his ministry was completed, and when his ministry was completed, his earthly life would have no further purpose." Oh the places in our lives that would be transformed if we could let this truth truly penetrate all the nooks and crannies of our complicated "personhood"!

Oh that I would learn to "seek first the Kindgom of God" and experienc the promise "and all these things will be added to you" (Lk 12:31)