Sleepless in Greensboro

Just Another Statistic

2011-07-30T06:47:00.000-07:00

As I was driving through my neighborhood last night, I saw an old friend hanging out on "the block." She waved me down and I stopped to talk to her. We talked for a few moments about a mutual friend and then she asked me if I had heard about Linda. I rarely watch, read or listen to the news because it overwhelms me, so I hadn't heard. Linda was hit by a car on Lee St., blocks from my house and she had died.

Linda, one day a living breathing creation of God, the next day just another statistic among the poor. Although she may not be missed by most people, her death is very real to the poor/homeless in this area. Even if they aren't that sad that she's gone, they realize it could have easily been one of the them.

Linda was a broken woman. I could tell you the bad things that Linda did and to you it would justify my times of frustration with her. Linda was so bound up by her addiction that she did anything to serve it as her god. So many times we tried to talk to her, gave her food and prayed for her. It was like a brick wall stood between us, truth and love could not seem to penetrate. It saddened my heart every time I saw her walking. This tiny woman, sometimes wearing different colored wigs walked up and down the streets panhandling at different stoplights. She was on a mission to sacrifice whatever she needed to, even her dignity, as an act of worship to this god of hers.

On one such event it was a friend of mine who Linda waved down, asking for money. My friend said she wouldn't give her money, but could bring her some food. To this Linda replied in anger and walked off. My eight-year-old, Eliza, happened to be in the car and witnessed this event. She knew Linda because we prayed for her as a family. Eliza said, with tears in her eyes, "I wish there was no such thing as drugs!"

I wish there wasn't such a thing, too, sweetheart. There is so much brokenness in this world and it's heartbreaking. God promises His people, who are doing wicked things, in Isaiah 30, that "in returning and rest you will be saved; in quietness and trust shall be your strength." Verse 18 says, "the LORD longs to be gracious to you, and therefore He exalts Himself to show mercy to you. For the Lord is a God of justice; blessed are those who wait for Him." Linda could have experienced this quietness and strength, but she chose to run off on her "swift horse," just like the children of Israel did. Even though God offered this grace, they did not accept, but ran away from it.

I wish our world could see God's mercy and grace for ALL. Linda is not just another statistic to God. He saw her pain, her affliction, her chains. He already forgave her for all of her sins. Whether or not she believed that, I will never know. I just pray that we will seek God on how to allow His Spirit, through us, to penetrate the walls of sin, showing His love and graciousness to ALL people. Let us not just treat them as another future statistic!

I'm Baaack!!

2011-01-22T06:27:00.000-08:00

For those of you that have missed me in the blogworld, I have decided to return. I took a sabbatical, of sorts, from writing and reading blogs because I felt like I was always online. I honestly felted nudged to write many times (from God, I suppose, but I kept putting it off). I know that some of you were blessed by my honesty in my struggle with anxiety. So, for you, I want to continue blogging, as I am still walking down this path.

I left off over a year ago when I went spiraling down into a pit of anxiety. It was a scary and exhausting time. I was experiencing symptoms of about every major disease you could think of and it felt so real and devastating. Tied to it was a fear that if I died, I would be abandoning my children. Abandonment had such a strong hold on my heart. My logic, during this time, was that something terrible was wrong with me, despite what other people told me. I felt crazy and at times just wanted the Lord to take me home.

It turns out that my anxiety med. was a part of what was going on. But the biggest change came through counseling in understanding my personality, my fears and how to react to these. God felt so distant during this time, but I now know that He was right there with me the whole time.

I look back and I'm thankful for that time. I had to cling to God, even though I didn't feel Him, I HAD to believe He was there and that He loved me. It was a vulnerable time, a time of surrender and choosing to believe the truths of His Word. Psalm 18 was my favorite passage during this time, I clung to His truth that "He reached down from on high and took hold of me; He drew me out of the deep waters....He brought me out into a spacious place; He rescued me because He delighted in me." It still brings tears to my eyes to look back and remember that He DID rescue me. He DID bring me to a spacious place! All because He loves me!

Psalm 23 was so beautiful to me too. It reminded me that, "even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for You are with me; Your rod and Your staff, they comfort me. You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies...." What a beautiful picture of God's presence during our trials. He has a banquet prepared for us in the midst of our trials. It's our choice to believe it is there and eat from the banquet or to run in fear. For so long I ran and hid, I still do at times. But the Lord has shown me how bountiful His banquet is if I put my trust in Him during these hard times. My hope is that you will take part in this "banquet." That you will choose to believe in God's love for you and "taste and see that God is good," that it's His peace that passes all understanding.

Buried Treasures

2009-09-17T07:35:00.000-07:00

When I was pregnant with Jacob, I traveled with the GUPY team to the Dominican Republic. We spent time with some kids that were part of a camp. One morning we did a Bible Study on the parable of the talents in Matthew 25. A master gave 3 of his servants some talents (money). Each servant was given a different amount according to their ability and the master left for an indefinite time. The servant with the most talents invested his and gained double what he was given, so did the second servant. The third servant who had one talent went out into a field and burried his talent, afraid of the master. When the master returned the servants brought to him what they had done with his money. He was angry with the servant who buried his.

I was struck that day, not with guilt or fear of what happened to the lazy servant, but convicted by the Lord that I had buried my talent. At first I thought that what God was referring to was maybe a gift of intercession that He wanted me to embrace. So over the past few years I've thought about this many times. So, of course, I wanted to choose this path and made efforts to pursue uncovering this "talent." And, of course, the area of prayer has been my greatest struggle.

Over these past few years the Lord has been making a mess of my inner life. If you've read any of my recent posts, you know what I'm talking about. For my good and freedom from bondage the Lord has been breaking me, little by little, layer by layer. I've been going to counseling and have realized that I did not think God or anyone loved me, that I was not worthy of His love. He brought me through that dark tunnel to the other side of believing in His unfailing love for me. There has been so much freedom and growth through that experience. I'm such a different person for it.

Back to the talents. I still believed that now, with this new confidence in God's love for me that He would help to reveal this buried talent. Then, of course, pride got in the way. I was focusing so much on the action of intercessing and the fact that I failed at it most of the time and it was my job and..... This summer proved to me without a doubt that I am nothing without Christ. Here I was pursuing the wrong thing. Even though I didn't feel like I was really focused on it, pride was slowly creeping in. When I started to struggle with panic attacks, my efforts to pray and intercede for myself were continually thwarted. It was such an exhausting battle that I know I did not win. Christ was there for me, but I think the lesson for me was that I cannot do it on my own strength. I have to abide in Christ on a minute by minute basis. He is the intercessor, I can benefit from the blessing of listening and being open to being used by Him to intercess with Him.

In my counseling we've been uncovering who I am as a Highly Sensitive Person. Thanks to Jane, my counselor and Elaine Aaron, the psychologist and author who's researched this topic, I'm discovering who I was really created to be. I realize that over the years through pain from abandonment and fears of being alone, I've slowly buried myself in order to protect my heart. I've then trained myself to be what I thought the world wanted me to be, "a disservice to the world" as my friend Elaine Aaron calls it. I realized last night what the talent is that I've buried. ME!! As God created me to be. He created us all to be unique and to make up His body, the church. I've realized that I have learned to accept God unfailing love for me (praise Him!!), but I have not accepted myself or my temperment as a Highly Sensitive Person! That IS a disservice to the world and to God's kingdom. Not that I'm any better than the next person. This goes for all of us. God and I will continue to dig out my treasure, shovels in hand, and I will get blisters on my hands, a sunburn on my neck. I will get exhausted and thirsty, but oh the joy when we can finally open up that chest and see how God wants to use His treasure in His kingdom. I will toil for that!

"Take this Cup From Me"

2009-08-13T08:52:00.001-07:00

These painful words were uttered by my sweet Lord in the Garden of Gethsemane, the night of His arrest. He knew that the time was coming for His crucifixion and was praying to the Father that this "cup" of wrath be taken from Him, not His will, but His Father's will be done. I don't believe He was afraid or even dreading the pain and suffering, but rather the separation from His Father.

I, myself, cried out these words about a month ago. I was experiencing some of the darkest hours of my life. It started out that I was just dizzy all the time. Then I started to worry about the dizziness and so began my self-diagnosis. This propelled me down through a black hole of panic attacks, one right after the other. I tried and tried to battle them through prayer and scripture. I would be all right for a few minutes, then another one would hit. My whole head would tingle, my arms and legs would go numb, my ears would start ringing. Ceiling fans and passing traffic made me dizzy, my vision was sometimes blurry and any conversation that was overwhelming (welfare, injustice, addictions) would overwhelm me and send me into a panic attack. The worse thing about it was that very few people even knew most of this struggle. I felt so much shame it was hard for me to even share it with my husband. I was so afraid of rejection and my pride was sore.

So I remained in my inner turmoil, meanwhile trying to take care of my kids. I just wanted it to go away. I cried out to God, asking Him to in a sense, "take this cup" from me. But, it wasn't time. I finally went to my Dr. and we realized that I was reacting to my anxiety medication she had put me on in May. So, she had me stop that medicine cold turkey and start a new on the next day. If anyone has been on these meds. you know that you should not stop them cold turkey! My Dr. said it was going to be a hard week, but it was necessary, so I did it. Those first few days were horrible. I couldn't be around people. I wanted to hide in a dark room and never come out. I even prayed to God asking that He please take me, now. I didn't even want to go yard saling! That's when I know there's a problem!

There is one passage that carried me through those dark hours. Psalm 18. You should read it. God led me to read this passage one afternoon in the middle of one of my attacks and I just started sobbing. He loves me so much that He will part the sky and scatter my enemies when I call for help. He will scoop me up out of the dark waters because He delights in me. He will set me in a spacious place. What is a spacious place in the middle of chaos? Sounds good, doesn't it? For me it was knowing that God loved me and delighted in me no matter what. If I was committed to a Psychiatric hospital, God would still love me and delight in me the same as He loves me when I don't struggle. But I notice Him more when I do struggle. I needed Him. I realized how much I depend on myself to be in control. I felt so out of control and helpless. That brought me to my knees. And ultimately, because God is good, it all brought glory to His name. He was the only one that could have lifted me out of that pit and praise Him, He did. It wasn't immediate, but I was able to find comfort in the truth that He loved me despite my anxiety. Remember that great Psalm 23, the part that says: "God set a table before me in the presence of my enemies. My cup runneth over...." So, even though our struggles may not be solved He sets a banqet before us, He fills us to overflowing. If we just let Him enter that place with us and are willing to wait patiently for the healing that will come from it.

Ghost on the Water

2009-07-03T11:56:00.000-07:00

Several months ago Vicky and I were doing a study on Mark 6:45-52. After Jesus had fed the 5,000 with five loaves of bread and two fish, he sent the disciples across the lake while he went up the mountain side to pray. After a while Jesus was walking near the lake and saw the disciples straining at the oars because of the wind and waves. He started to walk out towards them. He almost passed by them when they saw him. They thought he was a ghost and cried out in fear. Then, he spoke to them, "Take courage! It is I. Don't be afraid." Jesus then climbed into the boat with them and the wind died down.

This passage has hit me over and over the past few months. I've always been a big "feeler." If I don't feel loved, then I don't believe I'm loved, or if I feel too much hurt, I numb it out with busyness. The Lord is definitely meeting me in this area. I have, until recently, struggled with believing that God is present if I don't feel His presence. Of course the Bible promises over and over that He is always present. So, the hard part comes in when you have to believe the truth over what you feel.

This story in Mark depicts my reaction many times to God's presence. When the storms of life rock my boat, I tend to buckle up in fear and determination to fix things. The whole truth is that the Lord is always present. We may not sense His presence, but He IS there! If we look for Him, He may appear as a ghost, but if we cry out to Him, He will enter into our situation. He may not always calm the storm or rid us of our problem, but He is present there with us. Sometimes He may calm the storm when we invite Him into it. Other times He may want to show us His presence by simply comforting us or helping us steer the boat through the choppy waters.

It always amazes me that the disciples had no idea who Jesus was, even after He had just fed 5,000 people with 5 loaves of bread and 2 fish. I often think, what was their problem that they couldn't believe the Lord could walk on the water to them, so they thought He was a ghost? But, here I am on the other side of the story. Jesus has already died to pay for my sins and has risen so that I may live in wholeness by His Spirit. Which, by the way, I have been sealed with since I accepted Christ. Meaning that the presence of God IS always near me, in fact, in me! So, who am I to criticize the disciples? I know the truth and have evidence of the miracles just as much as they did, and yet I still fail to believe. I still see my Lord as the Ghost on the water.

Thanks be to God that He is patient with us. We can ask, "Lord, help my unbelief..." and He will answer. He longs for us to call out to Him in the dark and in the light, to depend on His presence for security and guidance. He longs to ride out the storms with us and talk intimately with us on the quiet waters. Until we reach the other shore, He will be always present. Whether He's been invited into the boat or not, He's there because He loves us and He's waiting for us to call to Him. Stop trying to bail out on your own, it's extremely wearisome and lonely. Call out, even in doubt, He is listening.

Hermanos Y Hermanas

2009-07-01T12:54:00.000-07:00

We just returned from an awesome week in Mexico City. There was a team of 8 of us, which included my big 6 year-old! From the moment we stepped off the plane I felt like I was home, I often do in different cultures. There was a little bit of chaos, uncertainty where to go and what form to fill out, different smells, sounds and people. Eliza started to cry and said, "Mommy, I want to go back to America." She changed her mind soon, though.

We stayed with host families of one of the churches in Mexico City. Our family had 4 kids and their apartment was half the size of our house! I was mostly impressed with the attitude of the believers there. They were so gracious and welcoming. They are a very personable people. We learned to call one another hermana or hermano, which means sister or brother. You shake hands and lean in for a kiss on the cheek with every person that enters the room or space you are in. You hear and say things like, "Mucho gusto!" and "Dios te bendiga" or God bless you, as you are hugging.

Most of all, I loved to worship with this church. Often we would sing the same worship song, in English and Spanish. They asked Marshall and his co-leader for the trip, Kenny, to lead worship. Often when they were done, the group would shout, "Autre, autre!!" or "more, more." It was incredible to imagine God smiling down on this group of misfits, uniting together across cultural, language and economical barriers. During each service they would have a time of sharing "gratitutes" or "words of thankfulness." Every time there was mention of either us blessing them or them blessing us and many tears of emotion along with it.

We ate a lot of authentic food, walked many miles to and from places, road the crowded subways, taxis, bicycle taxis and vans (without seat belts, I might add), climbed the ancient pyramids, dressed like clowns and led 2 kids clubs and toured the national palace and old cathedral downtown.

There were no stop lights or stop signs (the only one I saw was upside-down). There were pot holes as big as our taxi on the back roads and speed bumps every couple hundred yards on the "good" roads. You can't flush your toilet paper there. The water is randomly shut off. You can't rinse off your toothbrush or mouth with the tap water or drink it! There are little tiendas or stores every few houses, so you can buy a Coke or some candy anywhere.

All of these things describe our experiences in Mexico City, but the greatest one above all was experiencing God's presence with my hermanos and hermanas in Christ. The first night there the women of the church came to pray over each of us Americans, and the same with the men. As Norma was praying over me, I started to cry. It felt so good to be prayed over, even though I had no idea what she was saying! I felt the presence of God in it. Our last service together was full of tears as we all talked about how much of an encouragement and blessing we were to one another. Now that's how God intended our churches to be, reconciled to one another across barriers and encouraging and blessing one another in the Spirit!

Prejudice Unveiled

2009-06-06T08:48:00.000-07:00

Webster defines prejudice: "preconceived judgment or opinion (2): an adverse opinion or leaning formed without just grounds or before sufficient knowledge." Several weeks ago a friend was coming over to hang out. She came through my front door asking if I could come with her outside. One of my neighbors was having car trouble and had asked her for a jump. She didn't know them, so asked if I would come with her.

We went over and introduced ourselves. I was sad to find out that these neighbors had lived there for several months and I was just now meeting them. The guys were wearing baggy pants and one guy had a "doo-rag" and some heavy gold chains. Their step-dad came out and he didn't look much older than them, in dred-locks. We started talking with them as they were using the jumper cables. We found out that both of the younger guys were in the army and were here on a respite. Almost immediately my opinion of them changed, improved. Then as we walked back down to my house, my heart was saddened. This small interaction revealed the prejudice in my heart.

Why was it that once I found out that they were in the army I was impressed? It was hard for me to admit, but I had just assumed by the way they were dressed that they were "gangsters," high school drop-outs. I never would have shared that with anyone else, because I didn't even realize I was thinking it! I was pre-judging them based on their race, clothing and where they lived.

Another time I had found a chair on the side of the road that my friend Vickie helped me load onto the top of my van. When I got home, I was trying to pull it off by myself, of course. A young man came by and asked me if I needed any help. I hesitated and then said no because I was afraid he would ask me for money after he helped me. (which has happened before). He insisted on helping me as I almost dropped the chair on my foot and helped me carry it up to the porch. I didn't make eye contact because I was expecting the question. But he very politely said, "you have a good day, ma'am." And he walked away. I was both shocked and thankful for his kindness that I yelled out, "thank you so much!" Why did I assume that he wasn't doing this out of kindness, but for gain? Because he was a young guy walking through my neighborhood? Again, prejudice unveiled.

I'm so glad that I live where I do. Living here keeps me aware of these prejudices. Over and over the Lord has shown me His deep love for all people: drug dealers, prostitutes, addicts, the homeless. As He has unveiled the ugly prejudices in my heart, I've asked Him to replace it with genuine love and compassion for all. We have no idea the pain and struggle that people have been dealt. So who are we to label and categorize people? God is not asking us to be naive and put ourselves in dangerous situations. But He is asking us to cross barriers by building relationships with our "neighbor." If we are living out of His Spirit we would be compassionate towards all people and accept them as individuals, even if/when we do get burned.

It's easy for us to say to a drug addict, "Just stop using." Or to a family on welfare, "just get a job." But we don't know their struggles or their story. Why do we look down on the poor, when we are poor ourselves. Why are our struggles more "acceptable" within the church? It could be said to us, "stop being a workaholic" or "stop making money your god" or "stop striving for significance from people or your stuff." We all have deep struggles and God accepts us all. The ground at the foot of the cross is level, sin is sin. God does not love us any more than the drug dealer just because our sin might be more acceptable or unseen by others.

Living in Glenwood is a constant reminder to me of God's grace. His grace for my judgmental heart and His grace for the lost. He longs for us to extend that grace across the barriers of prejudice. He longs for reconciliation among His people. That's what He's about! Thankfully! Pray that God would reveal prejudice in your heart. At the grocery store, at the park, at church. Believe me, it's there! Then ask Him to replace it with compassion, He longs to do that! Get to know some of the people that you are prejudice towards. You will be surprised and your heart will be changed.

Panic 101

2009-05-11T19:30:00.000-07:00

Hi, my name is Diane and I have an anxiety disorder. At least, that's what my doctor calls it and maybe it's temporary. Why does that matter anyway, though. It doesn't make me any less of a person. It sure does mess with my image, though. I find it very difficult not to wear the shame of this sickness. There's so much stigma attached to this disease that it's hard to see it as a sickness and not a failure.

I first started to experience the panic attacks after I had been going to counseling for several months. I know that opening up wounds from the past can sometimes trigger this response. I started on a medication because my counselor encouraged me to. It really did help me to clear my head enough to work through some hard issues and learn the triggers to my anxiety. One of my struggles was wondering if I didn't have enough faith in God to help me through this struggle. Did I really need to take a drug? But I truly respect my counselor and Dr., so I took their advice.

About two weeks ago my whole scalp and face started tingling almost constantly. I of course reverted to my old struggle of a closet hypochondriac and started to self-diagnose. It didn't look good from my point of view. But, of course, I'm a closet hypochondriac martyr, which means I don't go to the Dr. or tell anyone, I just "suffer" through my symptoms quietly. Yes, there you have a small glimpse into my psyche.

So, I did call my Dr. because the tingling went on for days. I did actually have a good reason too because I had bumped my head really hard a day before the tingling started. I know from Web M.D. that not all concussions knock you out, so I wanted to rule out that possibility. Well, in meeting with my Dr. she had no questions about my possible concussion, apparently not a worry. But she went straight to talking about my medication. She pointed out that I wasn't taking enough coupled with a very busy and somewhat burdensome previous 3-4 months.

Like most diseases, this one is very debilitating. I feel both exhausted and ashamed. It's a very humbling sickness. Suffering through it makes me wonder, is it because of some sin? Am I ever going to get over this? Does it ruin my reputation? Then I want to explain myself away to make myself acceptable. I want to justify somehow.

This Sunday during service I just felt the Lord saying, "let go." I've been reading in Romans 12 about offering myself as a living sacrifice, acceptable and pleasing to God. Later on in Chapter 13 Paul exhorts the Romans to "clothe yourselves with the Lord Jesus Christ and do not think about how to gratify the desires of the sinful nature." The desire of my sinful nature in this case is to beat myself up, put on my cloak of shame and my mask covering up what's really going on inside. But Paul is telling us to offer ourselves as we are, this is our spiritual act of worship. God has already assured me of my belonging with Him. So I want to shed this coat of shame and clothe myself with Christ. Surely God wants to help me do this so that He will be glorified.

No matter if I struggle with this all my life, I am accepted as I am. Because of this acceptance I can "be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer." Praise the Lord that my acceptance does not depend on me! Praise the Lord that I get to offer myself to God as I am and I don't have to have it all together to do so. This is pure freedom!

Pedestal

2009-05-11T18:27:00.000-07:00

For my whole life I've been on a pedestal of sorts. I'm a missionary kid, so there's one. Among the missionary kids I was always the "good girl," I never rebelled, so there's another. Now, I've married into the ministry, there's yet another.

What do I mean by pedestal? It simply means that people look up to me and think I have it all together, so that I have no room to mess up. I feel expectations and therefore put expectations on myself. One expectation I felt as an M.K. was that I was supposed to become a missionary. So many people were disappointed in me when, at a young age, I told them that I felt God calling me to live in the inner city. I fell off their pedestal, thankfully. In college some of my acquaintances didn't even know that I was a M.K. for my first year, I never advertised it. I hated being on that pedestal. I just wanted to be treated normal.

When Marshall and I first moved into our current neighborhood we got a lot of pats on the back from people in our church. We felt like the poster children of Glenwood. Not many people knew what a struggle it was for us. We didn't have a clue what we were doing and we felt very much alone. There was a very dark period for me when I could have skipped church altogether because my heart was NOT seeking the Lord or wanting anything to do with ministry. But, I still got pats on the back and would smile like everything was okay.

Now that Marshall is the director of outreach (or as some of the ladies from the women's shelter call him, "THE pastor") I feel the same type of "pedestal" pressure. Many times I put myself there, holding a standard for myself as a "pastor's wife." It's so bogus and damaging. We can't put people or ourselves on pedestals. Basically what we're doing is putting our hope in them. Any hope or faith not put into Christ is an idol.

Sure we can have role models, but we have to be careful not to assume that they have it all together. Instead, we need to pray for those that we might consider putting on a pedestal. We need to recognize that they will fail because they are human. We need to remember that anything good that comes from a person is from Christ. Seriously, if you have doubts that someone in ministry struggles, read more of my blog. I try to be very open about my struggles because I don't want to put myself or have someone put me on a pedestal any longer. Like my pastor says, "the ground at the foot of the cross is level." This means that we are all loved and forgiven the same, nothing we do or don't do changes this. The only person who should be on a pedestal is Christ, Himself. So, knock 'em down, friends! The pedestals, I mean.

The World According to My Kids

2009-04-24T10:49:00.000-07:00

Jacob screams when he wakes up every morning, "MOMEEE!!" This week I went in groggily and told him to hush, he didn't need to scream and he said, "Okay, sorry mommy." He proceeded to tell me he was screaming because his animals fell out of his bed, which meant he threw them out. I asked him as I do every morning, "Jacob, why do you have to scream?" This particular morning he said, "Mmmm, pee-cause (because) I miss mommy, long time." Of course my heart melted, even if it was before 7:00 AM.

At the dinner table this week, I was asking Psalter to tell her Daddy about the special visitor she had at pre-school that day. She said, "A fighter-fighter (a.k.a. fire fighter) clown named Flame came to talk about how to be safe around fires." So I probed with a question, "So what did you learn to do in a fire?" Psalter says, "Dial 9-9-1 and jump out the window." Oh, and she said the clown had a dog with him named Emporer (a.k.a. Ember). :)

Eliza was drawing a picture of a group of people with flames above their heads (the Pentecost that she learned about in Sun. School). She said to me, "I remember when we made flames in Chapel Hill out of tissue paper." And no, she was not referring to the craziness on Franklin Street after the Tar Heels won the NCAA tournament. That what she calls the chapel time during pre-school.

I've been using a lot of re-direction with Jacob when he starts a tantrum. For example, when I see there will be resistance to something I talk in my excited voice about something totally random to what we're doing. It usually helps him to snap out of his tantrum mode. So, this week he re-directed himself. I called him into his room to put him down for the night. He laid down on the floor saying, "don't want to..." I said his name sternly, "Jacob..." He got up on his hands and knees and started crawling, grumbling on the way. Then, out of the blue he started to growl as he crawled and said, "RRrrr I dinosaur! RRrrr!"

Psalter's rendition of the dog named "BINGO" song. "There was a farmer had a dog and Bingo was his name-o. E-I-N-G-O, E-I-N-G-O, E-I-N-G-O and Bingo was his name-o." It didn't matter that I tried to correct her.

Jacob's rendition of "Jesus loves me": "Jee-za loaves me, say no. For da BIble tell me so. Tittle one(t) Him be-yong, day are reghfjdfr is STRONG! Yes, Jee-za loaves meeee, Yes, Jee-za loaves meee....

Get Out of that Pit!

2009-04-20T11:26:00.000-07:00

This is the title of a Beth Moore book that caught my attention as it sat on my mom's book shelf this past week. It's now in my house, sorry mom. I read the first chapter on the way home and it struck me in a needy place. I've been struggling over the past few weeks just feeling stuck in loneliness and despair. I feel too tired to fight it and on top of that I feel shame for struggling, so I've told no one. So, welcome to the story of my pit!

In her book, Beth uses Psalm 40 as her platform: "I waited patiently for the LORD; he turned to me and heard my cry. He lifted me out of the slimy pit, out of the mud and mire; he set my feet on a rock and gave me a firm place to stand...." I know God has delivered me from my pit. But, is it possible to slip back into it? I know the enemy does not want me to live in freedom because then more people would see the truth of God's love and be set free. But then, on the other hand, God is more powerful than the evil one, so all glory goes to Him, sooo why the struggle?

Is it a lack of faith that keeps me stumbling back into the pit so easily? Last night, I was reading in a book by Rob Bell called "Velvet Elvis." He had a very interesting perspective on faith. "when it comes to faith, everybody has it...everybody is following somebody...an atheist is a person of tremendous faith. In our discussions about the things that matter most then, we aren't talking about faith or not faith. Belief or no belief. We are talking about faith in what? Belief in what? The real question isn't whether we have it or not, but what we have put it in." So there, I Do have faith, but I am not choosing to put my faith in God. I'm putting it into myself, other people, or circumstances to change. So when I'm feeling despair over someone's life, my faith is in them to change or for me to fix them. Both of these acts of faith produce hopelessness and failure. Only God can transform.

Why is it that I know Christ is my solid rock, the only person that has never changed how much he loves me and yet I choose to put my faith in the mud and mire that I get stuck in? Rob's perspective on faith really helped me to see that I need to wake up! Stop putting my faith in the things that drag me down and put my faith on the One who sets my feet on the rock. This old hymn keeps running through my head, "My faith is built on nothing less than Jesus' love and righteousness." Lord make this my cry! The little mustard seed of faith that I have in You, take it and multiply. I know you did not promise life would be easy, but you did promise to be faithful and to set my feet on solid ground. Only in this should I put my faith! Can you imagine, if we could channel all the faith that we have in ourselves, other people, our country, our families to faith in Christ---WOW, we would be a different people.

"Morning Frog"

2009-04-06T07:51:00.000-07:00

One of my friend's little girl calls fog, "frog." It makes so much sense to me, when I think about my morning self. I am NOT a morning person. I'm not really a night person either, or an afternoon person. I just like to sleep and cannot seem to get enough, ever.

I don't set my alarm in the morning. Jacob is our alarm. He hollers when he wakes up. There's no snuggling in the bed until he goes back to sleep. So this is how I wake up every morning. I hear hollering somewhere far away. Then I hear footsteps (more like elephant stomps) down the hallway as the girls wake up to Jacob's hollers. They feel the need to come and tell me that he's awake. Now, I may not always be mean and snappy, but I sure am non-responsive, irritable and "croaky." My poor children know a different person from wake-up time until about 9:00, at the earliest. I sort of croak out, "what do you want for breakfast?" Usually Eliza cannot understand me and so I have to repeat myself over and over, which ends up coming out harshly.

I do pray sometimes before my feet hit the floor. I ask the Lord to give me strength to love my children this early in the morning. But somehow from the bedroom to the kitchen my resentment comes alive. I don't want to be bothered. I want to get up when I want to get up. I'm not rested enough and it's my right to get what I think is enough sleep. So leave me alone and stop bugging me. Why can't you get your own breakfast? This is what's going on in my head and unfortunately in my heart. Then I get a sweet hug and kiss and "morning, mommy." Jacob says, "Hi, mommy, mommeeee!" I'm able to muster a hug and kiss back, but that's about all I can give.

So what needs to change? I know some would say, "go to bed earlier." Although that's great advice, I feel the same whether I get 6 hours or 9 hours. It's something of my flesh that needs to die, but I find it so hard to battle the flesh in the morning. I try to yield to the Holy Spirit, but that takes my effort, which is hard for me to muster up. So, to those of you who also suffer from "morning froggyness", I remember Jesus words, "if anyone should come after me, she must deny herself daily (or first thing in the morning), then take up her cross (first thing in the morning) and follow me! Denying myself in the morning would mean, give up my rights to what I want to do, which is sleep. It means to put the needs of my children before my own. It means responding to them in love. I can only do this by "taking up my cross" which is to remember that "I have been crucified with Christ and it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me." After I have made the effort to deny my "rights" and to remember that Christ is doing this through me, then I can react "in Christ." Only then can I love my children and care for them through my "morning frog." I pray that we can do this together.

So long, old "friend"

2009-03-26T20:46:00.000-07:00

She's always been there for me. I've known her for years. She's been there to comfort me whenever I was confused, lonely or messed up. She sat with me for hours and gave me guidance whenever I didn't know what to do next. She's been my "go-to" friend for so many years, an old faithful.

About two years ago I realized that our relationship was actually not healthy for me. In fact, I saw how harmful it was. It was a co-dependent relationship. Even though I "felt" like I was in control when I went to her with my problems, I realized that she was controlling me. She was giving me false guidance and keeping me from living a confident life in the spirit. I saw her for who she really was, her name is FEAR.

We'd been "friends" for so long that I felt more comfortable with her than I did with the TRUTH. She is also called Worry or Anxiety. When the Lord showed me how much control I had given her, He's been helping me restore my mind. It's been a minute by minute battle some days... Just choosing to believe the Truth of the gospel, rather than what I feel.

It's been hard to say good-bye to Fear, especially when life feels overwhelming. She's tried very hard to regain the ground God has redeemed and now controls. But I remind her that she is my "flesh" which has been crucified with Christ, and it is no longer my flesh who lives, but Christ who lives in me. An the life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loves me and died to give Himself up for me. So, I'm going with Him. Yeah, I may be yielding control to Him, but he brings life and freedom, while Fear brings only death!

Ma Patrie....a poem by a fellow MK (Missionary Kid)

2009-03-09T19:10:00.000-07:00

Ma Patrie

I dreamt one night
And found myself
In my father’s land
The harmattan winds blew
And red dust
Caked my skin
I looked out on a farmer’s field
And there I found my heart
Planted deep within the soil
Once and for all
I need it back
So I bent to pull it out
The roots were strong
And grew so deep
How could this be?
Nothing grows in this harsh land
But there it was
my stubborn heart
So I began to dig
One by one I found each root
And traced them through the ground
Each one led me towards
a different source
Each root so unique
from the others
Some weak,
Some long,
Some shallow,
Finally I found one…
strong and deep
I dug and dug for hours
The harsh sun burned within my soul
I lay there weak and parched
One last tug and there it was
The path that led me
To your heart
And grew in
Africa

-Dee Kennedy

I couldn't have said it better than this. My childhood friend, Dee really captured me with this poem. My heart is still there, and Africa remains deeply rooted in me. I try and try to make sense of it all, but it doesn't and maybe that's a gift. My home, my Africa.

The Hated Question

2009-02-25T13:02:00.000-08:00

"Are you expecting?" asked an acquaintance in the middle of chaos. I had all three kids with me at a Church's consignment sale, holding Jacob on my hip, when she asked me this. I hadn't seen her in probably 5 months and the way I was standing, I could see why she may have thought this. Maybe she saw me wonderfully handle the stressful situation with three children and thought I'd do awesome and would want to add another.

Some of you may hate her for me, and I appreciate that, but the truth is....it didn't even bother me. I laughed and said, "No, do I look it?" She was so embarrassed and I felt a little awkward like, "what do I say next? So...are you expecting?" So I just focused on the task at hand (keeping track of my children). Anyways, I cannot hate her for this because I did the exact same thing to a friend a year ago. I hated myself and still do for that one, so I can't hold anything against this lady.

The beauty of it, though, is that it DID NOT bother me. This is HUGE for me. I've struggled my whole life with image issues because of a boy that called me fat in the 5th grade. I actually almost became an anorexic in the 6th grade and have continued to struggle. Some of you know what I'm talking about. Whenever I talk about this struggle people are so quick to say, "Oh, but you look great..." Not that I don't appreciate those comments, but the truth was, I didn't believe them. My belief was set on a lie that I heard a long time ago and my identity was then built on that lie. Whether I was a size six or a size 12, I was never content with who I was.

I've been on a serious journey over the past year. Last year I blogged about my body, God's praise. If you have time to read it you can see where the journey began. Not to say that I don't struggle anymore, but it's very different. The difference has been a mind change. I no longer linger on the lies when they resurface. I pray out loud claiming that those are lies and I don't believe them anymore.

The Lord has also pointed out to me that comparing myself to others is very harmful. Sometimes we'll think better of ourselves if we find "fault" in someone else or we feel bad about ourselves and want to be like someone else. Either one of those is bondage and cycles us into self-pity and self-hatred. That is not where God longs for us to be. He longs for us to love our bodies (His temple Romans 12). That is, loving our bodies as He loves them and created them and breathed life into them.

This has not happened overnight, my friends. It's taken much prayer, tears and yielding of my "rights" to compare or be envious. It's also changed the way I think about exercise. I actually don't loathe it now. It is a drag sometimes, to be completely honest, but I've been trying to see it as a form of worship. In a sense it is because I'm taking care of the temple God has blessed me with.

I give all glory to the Lord for bringing me through this valley of a struggle. He's pulled me up the mountainside many-a-steps. But I want to thank my friend, Sharon for asking me "the question" because I can say I finally passed the test!

Mommy Moments

2009-02-18T06:32:00.000-08:00

Nothing could be finer than to live in Carolina! Where in the same week the kids are out of school because of snow and then that same week, on Saturday they're playing in the sprinkler. Girls in bathing suits, Jacob in the nude or as he calls it, "maked."

Jacob has not been feeling well for 4 days. All he's been saying is, "Momma, up!" over and over and over. I decided yesterday and told him that I was not answering to "Momma" anymore, my new name is "Awesome." So he's been saying "Allsome, Mommy!" It's so wonderful to be called that. I know, I'm brainwashing him, but whatever.

One of his "sickie" days we were home alone and I decided I would start working on tagging some clothes for a consignment sale. I was in the girls room with the attic stairs down because I kept going up and down with stuff. Jacob was actually playing and came into the room to be with me. I was busy tagging things when I realized it was all of a sudden quiet, I thought he'd just left the room, but then I also heard some heavy breathing like he was concentrating hard on something. To my horror, I looked around the room and didn't see him, so I very slowly looked up towards the 12 foot ceiling to find my 2 year old at the TOP of the attic ladder, about to climb into the attic!!! Whoever was praying for me at that moment, thank you, because I did not react normal. I didn't freak out and scream, "NO, NO, DANGER!!!" That would have made him fall for sure. Instead, I calmly climbed the ladder, 4 steps at a time and scooped him up, saying, "Oh, Jacob." When my feet hit the floor, that's when my whole body started to tremble and I said, "No, No, etc., etc." He just cried and said, "Oh, tatti (sorry), Mommy!"

Eliza has started dancing with our Glenwood Dance Team. She loves it. Yesterday I was asking her about it and she told me that God loved to watch them dance. I agreed, yes, you are praising Him when you dance. She said, "Yeah, God is sitting up on His throne watching His little princesses dance." My heart melted at that picture because it's so true. I just hope that all the other little girls who don't have good fathers involved in their lives like Eliza does, can see God the Father as one who looks down in love on His little princesses.

We have big cable for basketball months and so one afternoon I was pooped and turned on HGTV for a few minutes. The kids came swarming in because they heard the TV come on. Psalter was the last to come in and she said, "Oh...is it cooking or fixing?" I had a good chuckle about that one. They sat and watched Design on a Dime with me for at least 30 minutes! That's all for now, Ta-Ta!

One Man'sTrash is Another Man's Treasure!

2009-01-14T11:14:00.000-08:00

I wanted to post some pictures of some of my treasures. This bureau was given to us as a left-over from a yard sale.
I sanded it down and painted it for about $12. Everything on top of the bureau came from a yard sale, except for the beautiful red tray from Bolivia! This bureau houses the kid's art supplies and puzzles. Since we live in a 100 year-old house without closets, this find is a God-send!

This table I found on the side of the road. It used to be a kitchen table, which I
cut down to fit in the girl's room in the corner. I had to re-brace the legs onto the table and then the table onto the wall. This table functions as the girls Barbie house, so that they don't have to put everything away every time they play with Barbies. So, this was free!

This treasure I bought at a yard sale this summer. It cost me $25. All it needed were some new knobs (which I got at Habitat Re-Store for $1 apiece!),and the bottom of the bottom drawer was missing, so I had to cut out a new bottom for it. Oh, and it was in desperate need of painting, so I sanded it down and painted it. It cost me about $35 in the end.

This desk was my biggest piece of work. I found it on the side of the road across from a park we frequent. I stuffed it in my car, broken drawers and all. I had to build a support for one of the legs, rip off the back and put new backing on, cut the warped drawers down and then brace them back together with glue and corner brackets. It's no Pier One desk, but I'm proud of it. Obviously I had to paint it (with paint I already had) and buy some knobs. So, for about $10 I now have a desk to set my computer and magazines on, as well as store all my card making supplies and more! So, yeah for recycling throw-aways and yard sales! If you see something with potential on the side of the road, see if it's in decent shape or can be fixed for cheap, then pick it up or call me!:) There so much out there, we don't have to spend lots and lots of money on new furniture. Sometimes it just takes patience and keeping your eyes peeled. All of these items, I feel, were a gift from the Lord. I even prayed for some of them. So have fun looking for treasures, if you need some help fixin' it up, just ask!

My Friend Vicky

2009-01-12T10:14:00.000-08:00

The very first time I met Vicky was outside our house and she was yelling at Marshall. He wouldn't give her a ride, but she wouldn't let him explain why and that I might be able to. She just lost it. I remember thinking as she stormed off without even giving me a chance to help her, "Phew, what a case!" That was our first impression of one another.

I remember after that seeing her out there, getting in and out of cars, sitting on the corner or walking the block. Some time later she stopped at a yard sale I was having. She liked a pocket book of mine, which I let her have. She asked me for a drink and so I gave her one. That's when our relationship began. She had heard on the street that if she was hungry she could come to our house and we would feed her, so that's what she started doing.

About 3 years ago she was done with the streets. She came to our church and camped out all day, waiting for a rehab to open. I remember Marshall calling me to ask if she could spend the night with us, so that she wouldn't have to walk the streets that night. At first my heart was resistant, this was inconvenient. But of course I said, "Sure." As we hung out that night, my heart grew for Vicky. She shared some of her story, I cried. We drank hot chocolate and watched a movie together. A few days later she got into the rehab and was doing well for months.

Then she went back to her old ways, she almost couldn't handle all the love. That really hurt and depressed me. My heart was hard towards her for a while, but she didn't even come by because she was so ashamed. She was in and out of jail and then got off the streets again for several months and then went back to it. At this point, my heart couldn't take it because I was diving through my own pain with a counselor, trying to find my own healing.

She always came back to our house. She would stop by for a cup of coffee or a hot meal. We would chat and then I'd pray for her. Then we would go back to our own lives. One week I remember she came by almost every day and asked for something. I remember feeling used and I was tired of her stopping by. But one afternoon I heard the knock. I almost didn't answer, but I asked the Lord to give me the grace to love her. When I opened the door, she said, "You've been so generous and loving towards me, I just wanted to give you something in return to say thanks." and she handed me a bag of blueberries she had picked. She turned around to leave and I asked her if she needed anything and she said, "No, I just wanted to bless you like you've done for me so many times." I choked out a thank you through my tears, she left and I stood holding the blueberries, asking God to forgive me for my hardened heart.

Now Vicky is in an apartment under a special program to get the chronically homeless off the streets. Over the past six months our relationship has changed tremendously. The Lord has truly loved her through me both during frustrating times and easy times. The more time I spend with her, the more I grow to love her. She used to be my "project," I wanted to save her from the streets. Through much failure in that I've realized I can't save her, but I can love her with the perfect, unconditional love of Christ. I can do that best by spending time with her.

Now we are doing a Bible Study together once a week, which always ends in tears. She calls me when I'm sick or the kids are sick to check in on us. Now I call her to see how she's doing with her daily struggles. It's a relationship, a friendship, it's community. God created us to be in communion with one another and to love each other. We laugh and joke, we cry and pray together. Yes, it takes some sacrifice, but really, I end up feeling more blessed by calling her a friend.

And you know, through the years, I've realized I'm no different than she is. Her sin may have more physical consequences, but I realize that our spiritual consequences are the same. I fall back into my "old person" on a daily basis. I find that if I don't "nip" it right away, then I'm back to my old patterns of dealing with life. She numbs out her pain and anger with drugs, I numb out with any number of things: cleaning, busyness, TV, food, exercise, shopping, relationships. All of it brings death if we're not allowing God to take up residence in our pain.

So, there you have it, my life has been changed by this friend. No matter what she does, I still love her and will always. I came across this quote in a book Becoming the Answer to Our Prayers that sums up my relationship with Vicky: " The way of Jesus is not a proposal for how to take over the nation (or person) and make it Christian. It is, rather, a lesson in learning not to take over-to be a community where we find a new way of life by giving ourselves for others."

Sweet Psalter!

2009-01-07T18:51:00.000-08:00

Psalter is four years old, the blessed middle child. She goes wherever the wind blows her, our free spirited child. If she's comfortable with you, she will talk your ear off, not making much sense sometimes. She loves to be with people. She has a fabulous sense of fashion, tights and skirts or dresses are her preference. Early on I struggled with letting her wear non-matching outfits, but I've realized how much of it is personality. So now we've been taking pictures of some of her outrageous outfits.

Most importantly, lately I've realized I have a short time with her before she goes to school and doesn't have time for me any more. I've been taking advantage of little brother's naptime to play endless games of Candy Land and Chutes & Ladders or doing puzzles. Just me and Psalter. Yesterday was a real sweet time of that. We were playing Candy Land, which I'm actually starting to enjoy, and she left the room. She came back with some of her Littlest Pets to play with us. So all of us took turns and of course Psalter won!
I read this quote off the side of my Real Simple magazine: "Life comes in clusters, clusters of solitude then a cluster when there is hardly time to breathe."-May Sarton. I feel like I'm living the breathless cluster with 3 young children, but I want to treasure up in my heart this special time. It will go so fast and then I will feel like I have too much solitude.

The Beauty of Inconvenience

2009-01-02T13:15:00.000-08:00

We don't really know what inconvenience is nowadays. We can pay our bills and buy our groceries or presents by the click of a button. We can reach anyone at any time. We can carry all of our music and even movies on a little rectangle box and take it anywhere we go! There are drive-thru drugstores, Starbucks and fast food restaurants! We strive to live the life of convenience. Imagine how even our grandparents experienced things so differently from us.

I experienced some inconveniences for part of my growing up in Africa, like no electricity, phone or running water. The one thing that has always felt the most inconvenient no matter what age or where I am is poverty. It's never a comfortable matter because there's so much guilt, pity and selfishness that comes to the surface when I'm faced with it. Growing up around some of the poorest of the world felt like both a gift and a curse. A gift to my spiritual maturity and a curse to my worldly desires or materialism. My response for many years was to harden my heart or simply "numb out." It was too painful or overwhelming to care.

By God's providence I married a man who cares about poverty. As I've followed him in God's calling us to our current neighborhood, I've seen God's plan and heart unfolding in me. For years living here has been a constant struggle and inconvenience. The inconvenience of not feeling safe, having naps and mealtimes interrupted with visitors asking for help, kids coming over and staying for hours, watching drug deals and prostitution happen right outside my window caused me to want to shut it all out. I closed off my heart and my windows. I numbed myself to the pain.

Well, now God has opened the floodgates of emotion through healing my heart. But even after that, poverty is still a struggle, an inconvenience. But I see the beauty in the inconvenience now. Most of the time my flesh shows up immediately with excuses as to why I can't help or take time to notice a victim of poverty, an inconvenience. This is when I recognize my need for God and I have to cry out for help. It's about God living out in me, it's TOTAL dependence on Him to love and care for those He puts in my path. The more I understand God's love for me and His love for the poor, the more I can't ignore the inconvenient.

I really saw this happen on Christmas Eve. My family was participating in the evening service at our church. We all dressed up to go. Every Wednesday night our church hosts a dinner for the homeless, so on this particular Wed. bagged dinners were being handed out after the service, so that the sanctuary could remain set up for a service. Well, a lot of the folks that come to the dinner started to show up in between the two services, some to worship and some to get their dinner. I remember feeling like I just wanted to run out of there. I didn't want to talk to or even look at any of the folks who had come for the dinner. I just wanted to go back to the house with our decorated, lit up tree with all the presents underneath. I wanted to have a guiltless Christmas with our kids. I did not want to encounter poverty. I did not want to feel sad or guilty!

After I checked my selfishness, the Lord was able to speak in love to me. I know that He does not press guilt, only conviction. He wants to bless us and for us to bless our children. So I know that it wasn't wrong to want to have a fun Christmas with our children. It was a matter of my heart, not letting God enter into that celebration with me. He wants to bless others through us. I guess I was worried that God would ask me to invite all the homeless to my house for Christmas. Maybe someday He will ask that of me, but I know that He just longs for me to show the poor His love by loving them. I ignored it that night because it was both inconvenient and uncomfortable. But the next day God opened my heart to inviting someone over who was lonely and God really blessed that time and was able to love her through our family.

He longs to mold each of us through matters of inconvenience. Whether it's giving up something we hold onto tightly, living simply or caring for the poor or the lonely. Each of these things feel inconvenient, but are tools to mature us in Christ by calling out our yuckyness and giving us the option to choose His love for us and others.

Get in Shape, Girl!!!

2008-12-09T16:38:00.000-08:00

Do you all remember that commercial for the ribbon exercise kit? Please tell me someone had that exercise video...take me back to the 80's!

So I was talking with some friends about exercising. We were basically bashing exercise because it takes so long to get into shape, like weeks. But then, unfortunately, it takes one or two times off to get out of shape. This is the main reason why I find myself loathing exercise. So I get on the bitter bus and talk about how hard it is and come up with excuses why I don't.

A light bulb came on today as I was thinking about this. I realized, huh, my relationship with God is a lot like my relationship with exercising. I need Him to keep healthy, but I don't just need Him in doses, I need to spend time with Him regularly. That's the only way I can "stay in shape" spiritually.

For so many years I've lived my spiritual life in a "if only..." syndrome. I thought, if only I could get to that certain point when I would be so spiritual I wouldn't really need God or life would just be easier. Just like my "if only I could get to that certain size, then I could stop exercising" syndrome. Well, friends, the deeper I get in my relationship with God the more I realize my need for Him. Just like, the older my body gets, the more attention I have to give to it!

I'm realizing that these two things require a lifestyle change. I don't want my motivation for exercising to be that I fit into those pre-third-baby pants. I want to take care of the vessel that God blessed me with, to honor Him. And I don't want my spiritual life to be a chore either. I long for a deeper sense of who I am as God's child, what does that mean? I want to desire spending time with Him. I think if I truly believed in how much He loves me, I would spend time with Him and wouldn't be able to get enough of Him. No one in this world loves me and understands me as much as He does, so why don't I give Him the time of day?

When I talk about "spiritual exercise" I simply mean spending time with Him. It means exercising the truths and promises of God in order to rid our minds of the lies we live under. This will leave room for relationship with Him. That is what we need and it is what He longs for, that's why He created us. We would be so much healthier if we truly grasped this concept and put it into action. Lord, please help me to change my lifestyle to include spending time taking care of my spirit, as well as my physical body. Thank you that you long to spend time with me. Help me to believe that!

Something About Mary...

2008-12-07T18:04:00.000-08:00

I have been thinking about writing this post since last March. I was on a Women's Retreat with my church. The speaker talked about the Samaritan woman at the well who met Jesus. The speaker shared her own story which turned out to be a traumatic childhood shadowed with abuse, followed by an abusive marriage. Her testimony was incredible, as well as many others that were shared that weekend. It was so great to see the freedom and hope they've found in Christ through their broken and shaded past.

Even after hearing testimony of God's transforming these lives, I couldn't help but feel like my testimony was drab. I was born into this world with a conscience the size of Texas. I remember agonizing over things that I thought I had done wrong, when I was little. I would not have even gotten in trouble for them. I barely got any spankings. I was always the goody-goody. I was the teacher's pet and probably a dorm parents dream. I heard about God all day, every day for most of my life.

I was the same all the way through high school, even. I never partied, I've never been drunk, never used drugs, only smoked a cigarillo one time (I even felt guilty about that!). I went to a club one time--that was enough for me. I waited until I was 21 to have any alcohol and I remained a virgin until I was married. I'm not saying all of this to boast, except of course in Christ. He's the only reason that I was able to be this way because I did submit to Him early in life. I was fortunate to never have been abused or have any major traumatic experiences either.

I am in no way complaining about my good life. But I do remember early on wondering what was so special about my testimony. No one cries when I share it because it's not dramatic. I'm not dramatic...

So at this retreat I'm feeling self conscious, like I have nothing to bring to the discussion. But the Lord gently reminded me of sweet Mary, mother of Jesus. She seemed rather plain and boring. She was a virgin, as well. I imagine that she never really "rocked the boat," whatever that would mean for those times. But God chose her to carry and birth the Savior of the World, the One I believe in. She wasn't "plain old Mary" after that! God used her sweet life to show His love to this whole world. She was open to it and believed in God's purpose for her life.

When I think about her life I am so encouraged. Everyone should be. God worked through "good" Mary and He also worked through prostitutes and sleazy tax collectors. No matter what your testimony is, God has a purpose for you and can use your testimony to attest to His faithfulness and love in your life. He does not want us to be so ashamed of our past that we don't want to share our testimony, but He also doesn't want us to be embarrassed by our lack of story. We all have a story and His fingerprints are all over it. And...our testimony is on-going, it didn't end when we received Christ into our lives, it started there.

Am I the Biggest Loser?

2008-11-25T19:00:00.000-08:00

Okay, so I just had to remind myself that I was just watching this show...on TV. I really don't even know these people, so I have no reason for being mad at Vicky for voting off Amy. I'm mainly mad at Vicky because she's a bully. She voted Amy off just for revenge. She's been mean to the other team and mean to Amy for voting her husband off a couple of weeks ago. I mean, I understand her being mad, but, it's a game, it was the smartest move Amy made. Amy should have voted Vicky off last week when she had the chance. What was she thinking? She was trying to patch things up, but she should of known she was never "safe" with Vicky.

Okay, get over it, Diane. It's just a T.V. show. I really hope Vicky doesn't make it to the finale, I may not be able to watch. Tonight I couldn't help but sob at Amy's homecoming. She's lost over 60 pounds and was able to shop in her favorite boutique in her hometown. Then she went to meet her family and friends. Her dad literally sobbed for joy when he was hugging her. Throughout the show he's sent video messages and each time he's been so supportive and in love with his wife and daughter who were both on the ranch together. Winner dad!! Every time he talks on the show, I sob. So, I love this show because it changes people's lives. Bye, bye Vicky...I hope.

This morning I blew it....again!

2008-11-21T10:12:00.000-08:00

This morning started out perfect. The 6:30 phone call said that schools were delayed for 2 hours because of the light dusting of snow. It was so pretty outside, Marshall made cinnamon rolls, we played outside and drank hot cocoa with pink marshmallows. But then it was time to go to school. I had given the 20 minute warning (to whom, I have no idea). What kids under five have a clue how long 20 minutes is? I don't even have a clue.

Well, I'm getting things done, the kids are playing and then I notice, it's time, right now, to start getting out the door! Of course Eliza didn't have shoes on, then she couldn't find her other shoe or the purple socks she wanted to wear. I still was in my PJs and no bra. Then Eliza's shoes felt uncomfortable, but instead of being compassionate and helping her with that I made the comment that she had plenty of nice shoes in the closet that she never wears and so she can put one of those on, "I don't care!!!" Of course she lost it, back when she couldn't find her other shoe. The whole time I'm telling her to stop, she's getting herself all upset for nothing.
(oops)

We finally get to the door and she says she's hungry. I tell her she should have told me this 20 minutes ago. Again,... really? Should I expect a five year old to be able to do this? Meanwhile Jacob is out in the yard stuck in the fence. I'm so angry with Eliza that I yell at her to, "Go to the car, I'll get you something to eat, Arghhh, (slamming of doors and stomping of feet), what is your problem?!!!" I know you all are thinking, "what is YOUR problem?" We finally make it to the car and we're not even late, I'm just impatient and unloving at this point, blaming her for making us late when she can't fit her big backpack through the seats to sit in the back. She and Psalter are fighting over who's going to sit in the back. Meanwhile Jacob is chasing blowing leaves down the sidewalk.

Needless to say, I recognized I was having a meltdown. I had just given up back when Eliza couldn't find her other shoe. I had entered into the chaos, so focused on myself that I pushed disappointment and guilt onto my highly sensitive child. I hated myself as I was saying and thinking these things. I knew I'd have to stash away for another future counseling appointment for my sweet, eager-to-please little five-year-old. What a psycho mom I was. Happy and fun with the hot cocoa and pink marshmallows, then I turned into a monster.

I did, thank goodness, remember God's grace. I asked my children for forgiveness and then prayed out loud asking God for His forgiveness. It was a very quiet car at that moment. As Eliza left the car, I hugged her saying, "mommy is not perfect, I really messed up this morning yelling at you and I'm so sorry, will you forgive me?" My sweet child said the most precious 4 words, "I forgive you, Mommy." I'm so glad that the Lord can use our junk to show us and our kids how deep His love and grace goes. I know that I'll mess up again, but God's grace is sufficient enough to cover that too, and He'll use it for good somehow!

My Little Delight....

2008-10-15T15:35:00.000-07:00

He's about 2+ feet tall, 30 pounds and walks like a penguin. He thrives on bugging his sisters, especially Psalter. He gets a gleam in his eye as he watches her building a tower or doing a puzzle. Yes, he destroys them unless I'm there to intervene. If I tell him, "no!!" his lower lip pouts and he says, "oh."

He also loves to pull full glasses of juice off of the kitchen table and pour them on the floor saying, "uh-oh, wook, mommy, wet!" One day he dumped a tupperware full of fuse beads all over the kitchen floor, three different times. They haven't come out since then!

He loves to sample lots of different textures and liquids. The other day I found him with a glue stick in his mouth. When asked if he ate it or not he said, "Yahsh. Mmm nose." Sure enough he was sticky all over. He thinks he has a wax deficiency because he eats crayons and candles all the time. He also used to think markers were for eating. I found many with the tops bitten off.

His favorite favorite foods are "nunnets, nonuts and cookies" which are nuggets, donuts and oreos,as if you couldn't tell by his Michelin Man body-type. He loves "kucks, bus, car-cars, bike, and nung-nung-nung-nung-nungs" (trucks, cars, bikes, bulldozers, and motorcycles). Cows are "boos", sheep are "baas", lambs are "may-may", lions are "RRRRR" and the moon is "moont", spoon is "poont" airplane is "bear-pane" Cinderella is "lalella".

If you can't tell, I'm smitten with my sweet son. He loves to give hugs and kisses, even to perfect strangers. Though I may have to sweep my floor 3 times a day because of him and watch him every second to make sure he's not climbing on the table or eating glue, he's such a joy.

When I sing and put him to bed I secretly hope that he would stay like this forever. The little dimple in his chin, the crater in his cheek and the gleam in his eye make me smile all day. I wish the that I could bottle up and sell his passion and enthusiasm over simple every day things like the "moont". Sweet Jacob, I'm so happy that you are my son!

Thank you for changing my name!

2008-10-12T18:21:00.000-07:00

I'm not referring to my most common name, "mama" or "mommy," which I hear hundreds of times a day. I'm referring to the new name that I believe God gave me a year ago and has been working it out in me since then.

Back in the Old Testament days names were considered someone's identity. For example, Jacob, the twin of Esau was born to Isaac and Rachel grabbing on to his brother's foot. His name actually means, "grabber." As he grew up he was rather deceitful by stealing his older brother's birth rite and blessing. But God had a special plan for Jacob. He actually wrestled with Jacob one night. Jacob put up a pretty good fight too. That's when God gave him the name, Israel, which means "He wrestled with God and overcame." So his name was no longer "grabber" or "deceiver," but one of a calling. He had a new identity. Ten of his sons and two of his grandsons later made up the twelve tribes of Israel. Wow!! The fact that God would use a "deceiver" to father this great nation is a comfort indeed. Also, the fact that God still used Jacob even after he wrestled with God amazes me. You mean we're allowed to do that?

This has been such a powerful story for Marshall and I. That's why we named our son Jacob. It makes God seem more personal and not just the "Big Man Upstairs" that only uses perfect people to do His will. It's exactly the opposite. He uses broken, messed up people like us who are willing to be broken and give up control, so that He may live out His will through us. I don't know about you, but that sounds like good news to me.

We all have names that have been attached to us. Maybe it's "loser" or "worthless," "fat," "ugly," whatever they are Satan uses them to make us believe that we are those things. I have lived with many names. The one that has bridged most of them and has been Satan's biggest target is fear. Fear of abandonment, fear of rejection, fear of failure, fear of disappointing, fear of ..... You name it, I had it. So, fear was the identity I operated under. Many circumstances would confirm that this was indeed my identity. Whether it was that I was rejected by a friend or I failed at something, I lived under it.

After going through some counseling last year, I started to work out some of these issues in different forms. Around that same time Marshall and I attended an Urban Project conference for IV staff. We had an incredible speaker during that week. One night during a service she had us cup our hands in front of us with the different things that we hold onto. God pierced my heart through her as she identified fear as one of those things. I knew that was for me. It was the heavy blanket that has suffocated me through life. It was the constant clashing cymbals inside my head and heart. After we identified them, then we released those things in order to take on the truth that God was calling us to.

That night I felt like an operation took place between me and the Lord. I realized that I had been living my life based on fear. I wanted a change, so I took the plunge and wrestled with God, just like Jacob did. Exhausted and humbled, I gave Him my fear and He gave me the new name, "Fearless!" I sound like a warrior princess, but in all honesty, I feel like one too.

By letting go of that stronghold of fear and choosing to believe God's truth about me, I have been able to experience His love for me! This has changed my life. I walk much lighter, breathe much easier and I can actually hear the quiet. The scripture that says, "My yoke is easy, my burden is light," can I just say an "Amen!!!" I finally understand what that means. There is so much freedom when we take on the yoke of Christ. It feels so light to carry God's "burden" of truth, grace, forgiveness, love, and peace. Now this didn't just happen over night. In fact that night I was overwhelmed with fear about something and had to believe in the truth that God has changed my name. Believing this continually is what has brought the freedom. That's what walking in truth is all about.

Check in another time to hear more about the warrior princess, "Fearless!"

Something about Mary...

2008-10-08T18:10:00.000-07:00

Today I was more of a Mary than a Martha. Now, that's unusual because normally I'm a Martha full force. When I say this, I'm referring to the sisters that are mentioned in the Gospels. Martha is the one who is rushing about cooking and cleaning upon Jesus' arrival and Mary is just sitting at His feet listening to Him and asking questions. Martha gets frustrated with Mary and asks Jesus to tell Mary to help her. Jesus responds, "What Mary has chosen is better."

So, today, for part of it, I have chosen to sit at His feet. There's even a pink ring around my toilet, coffee stains on the bathroom sink, laundry on the couch, dirty dishes in the sink and toys laying around. Those who know me well know that those are hard things for me to leave undone! But I did, to play games with the girls, to tutor Brianna, to spend time at my Lord's feet and to blog.

And surprise, surprise, the Lord met me during my time of quiet. I had to quiet my mind from obsessing over the laundry basket sitting next to me and the pink toilet in the next room, but I asked the Lord to bless the time and my effort. It's amazing what you can hear when you sit down to listen. I heard truth about His extravagant love for me. I heard Him say He will never let go through the calm and through the storm. I even learned some incredible truths from the book of Leviticus.

So, I guess Mary did chose right. Oh Lord, help me to be more like Mary in this Martha world!

The Woman at the Well

2008-09-07T19:34:00.000-07:00

I went to our women's retreat this past spring and the theme was "The Woman at the Well." One of my friends wrote about her preparation for this retreat by reading the passage and meditating on it. Something that she got from this time painted a clearer picture for me. I wanted to share it with you.

The story comes from the book of John, Chapter 4:1-26. Jesus was traveling through Samaria and stopped at a well. First of all, for Jesus, a Jew, to be traveling through Samaria was a big deal. The Jews hated the Samaritans because they were essentially "half breeds." Jesus was not only passing through, but stopped at the well and talked to a Samaritan woman there. He asked her for a drink of water. Her response, "You are a Jew and I am a Samaritan woman. How can you ask me for a drink?" Then Jesus answered, "If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water."

Jesus already knew about this adulterous woman's past, but He wanted to build a relationship with this woman to establish trust, and THEN reveal who He was. Instead of starting off with how He could save her, He asks something of her. He knew how important water was for her to live. They both knew that she needed water on a regular basis to be healthy. That is why Christ used water as an analogy to describe His "living water" which is salvation and life by His Spirit.

Could He be asking us for us to give Him the "water" that we drink to try and sustain life, even our spiritual lives? What are those things, you ask? Whatever we do to survive, to make life work, whether we know God or not. Some things work for a time, but then fail us, so we find something else. You're familiar with this, I'm sure! This was the story with the Samaritan woman. She was an adulterer, and had 5 husbands. It was not working for her, it was not giving her life. I believe the Lord was asking her for those broken relationships, saying, "Give me those things that you try to satisfy your thirst and I will give you what you're REALLY looking for-life, freedom!"

It's amazing, even though I've been a Christian for a long time, I still miss this all the time. Although we only need to receive this "living water" one time, we often need to go back to the well in order for us to hear Jesus asking us for a drink. This reminds us that we already have the "living water," so we don't have to stay stuck in the old ways of quenching our thirst which we just do out of habit. So, I'm asking God, "take me back to the well!"

I'm Baaack!!

2008-09-02T18:42:00.001-07:00

I know I've been disappointing so many in my fan club with my lack of blogs this summer. I blog in my head all the time, because I can do that without interruption. So, eventually I will get all my thoughts written out.

Between G.U.P.Y., traveling to Mexico for a week, family vacations to the beach, having the kids home all day every day, grumpy baby stages, getting one ready for kindergarten, the other two for pre-school, our fridge dying on us, then our replacement fridge having issues, having my phone and some money stolen, dealing with our invisible backyard fence builder and having to get an emergency appendectomy, we've had a pretty good summer. Those are also the reasons I have not had the energy nor time to devote to my blog or others, for that matter (so sorry, friends).

It has been a summer full of different circumstances, some good, some bad. Either way, the underlining truth that has kept my perspective hopeful and my heart content is the fact that God loooves me. I mean, He really and trully loves me, Diane Shady Benbow! (He loves you, too, but that's for you to discover--how much!!!) This truth has transformed my life this summer and continues to do so. It feels like our family is being hit with a lot of challenges and changes, all at once. I have questioned God and His timing, but ultimately, I am assured that if He loooves me and He's the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords, then I don't have a THING to worry about. Satan can mess with us all he wants, but he can never take God's love from us! That, in itself, is reason to keep on keeping on. I will write soon, I promise.

I'm Changing my Name!

2008-06-13T19:26:00.000-07:00

For the past week or so I've heard, "Mama" thousands of times. Not in a happy voice, but a whiny voice with arms lifted up. Another word that's been uttered too many times is "Bupa," which translates to "up." I don't know what happened to my sweet, laid-back little boy. We went to the beach two weeks ago and someone switched him out with this whiny, needy, temper tantrum throwing, mama name-calling little guy.

One night last week when all the kids were down, except Jacob, who was still screaming in his bed, I just gave up. I felt so out of control and overwhelmed. I felt a gentle tug from my Father to spend some time with Him, which I did. The scripture that came to my mind for this experience was from James 1. Sometimes I want to rip this page out of my Bible or clock the next "James" that comes my way. But, really, I need to be reminded of this scripture all the time. "Consider it pure joy whenever you face trials of many kinds."

Who WANTS to face trials??? Of course we don't want to, necessarily, but that's the point. It's in our weakest moments that we cry out for help and God is waiting to use the experience for our benefit. He uses it to help us persevere through His strength, which builds character and character builds maturity. I definitely want to grow in maturity in Christ, so if that means "suffering," then bring it on! That's what Paul says, "when I am weak, then You are strong (in me)." This means that when I am at a loss and I look to Christ for help and allow His strength to work through me, then WOW!

"I can do all things THROUGH CHRIST who strengthens me..." Philippians 4:13. The key point being "through Christ" and not "all things," because if we are doing things through Christ, then we would be doing all the right things. So, I can deal with hearing, "Mama!!!" 1,000 times a day and love my little "monster" through Christ's strength, and His alone. After my change of heart, I've decided not to change my name, I actually now enjoy it.

Wounded Soldiers

2008-06-10T13:25:00.000-07:00

I clean a Barber Shop once a week. I know the thought of being around hair grosses some people out, but what I experienced Monday morning before 7:00 AM was much worse than hair! I usually empty the trash cans first. I was in the kitchen emptying the big can when I saw it....staring at me with one of it's beady eyes, body limp. I positioned the big can in front of poor Mickey, so I would not have to feel guilty about his demise all morning.

As I took the trash outside, I lifted the lid of the big can and a very large "indestructible" gawked at me with his antennae and then scurried under some paper and bottles, out of sight. Thank goodness. I returned to the kitchen to find yet another very large roach scurry across the floor. What in the world???? Do I get paid enough to encounter such critters?

That was not the end of it! Later, I was vacuuming and I saw friend #3 and he didn't scurry away, but challenged me to a fight. Out of pure panic that he just might attack, I whacked him with the end of the vacuum. Not once, not twice, but three times, until I saw some proof that he was dead.

I couldn't clean him up then, I would need a whole roll of paper towels and time to prepare myself (BTW, did I ever tell you that I grew up in Africa? land of poisonous snakes, scorpions, lizards, giant spiders and evil monkeys? Yeah, and I'm afraid of a roach...). Later I came back with the wad of paper towels to find a trail of guts, but no roach. THAT, my friends, is why I'm scared of roaches, they're indestructible. I saw him hobble across the floor on his good side. I saluted him and let him go. Kudos to Mr. Roach for surviving the crazy whacking giant. I hope you died in peace, wherever that was.

"Mommy, I had a bad dream..."

2008-05-20T18:10:00.000-07:00

Eliza woke me up at 4:30 to tell me this. She said that she dreamed that Psalter was using the potty and flushed the toilet. Psalter flushed down the toilet as well. Eliza cried and cried. I had heard her moaning and was about to go check on her, but was too tired to move, that's when she came in. She told me that after she woke up from her dream she walked over to Psalter's bed to touch her and make sure she was there. Eliza said, "I love my sister, I was scared something happened to her..."

Isn't that just so precious? Not the dream, but the fact that she went to make sure that Psalter was there. It's so comforting to see that even though they bicker and fuss often, they really do love each other. I'm so glad that they will always have a friend and a playmate in each other. Now I can use this nightmare as proof when they ARE fussin' at each other, that they are sisters that love and care for one another.

My Friend LeeDee

2008-05-18T10:40:00.000-07:00

Eliza asked me the other night to tell her the story about LeeDee again. This thrilled me because I had told her about LeeDee to teach her about true thankfulness. When we lived in the "bush" of Burkina Faso, we lived a mile up on a hill from the village of Ouarokoye (water-coy).

Mom is an RN, so she had a back door clinic. People walked for miles to get medicine and have their wounds treated. LeeDee was one of these. She actually is slightly crippled. In their culture, she is considered almost worthless because she cannot do all of the work that women there do. She was able to marry and have a few children, but she was really mistreated by her husband and others because of her crippled legs. She became a Christian, so the church people really started to support her, almost as a widow status.

She would often get ulcers on her legs and feet, from using her crutches to walk and poor hygiene. She would walk the mile up our hill, over the rugged rock driveway, sometimes shoeless, to get these ulcers treated. Sometimes she had a baby on her back. She always came up with a smile, greeting us in the Lord.

We would save our tin cans and give these to her each time she came up. I wish you could experience her joy over this. She would start singing/spitting through her buck teeth smile and dance. She would say, "Don Beni budica" over and over which means, "thank you to God." One time we gave her a brand new shiny metal bucket. She about fainted with excitement and joy.

What a precious gift LeeDee was and still is to me. When I covet something someone else has, I remember her joy over some tin cans and a metal bucket. It keeps "stuff" in perspective for me. I really don't need anything! Most of the world lives without 99% of what is in my house, so I can sure live without the "thing" I think I HAVE to have. Thanks, LeeDee!

"Poop Happens"

2008-05-14T06:39:00.000-07:00

That's the only way to describe this morning. Marshall is gone for the week, so I'm single-mommin' it for awhile. I was already tired from Jacob and Eliza waking up several times last night and for good at 6:00 this morning. So, I was a little grumpy already.

I got everyone dressed and ready for school, was ready to walk out the door on time, no less. Psalter has been potty training herself, which is awesome. She pooped on the big potty and some of it was left over at the top of the bowl--left some tracks. It smelled the whole house, but I wasn't going to stand there and wait for the tank to fill up for the fourth time.

I was calling them to come to the door, Jacob's shirt was all wet. Where did he get that from? Maybe he's just really drooling from his teething. I didn't have time to change him. We continue to the car, fighting about headbands, not enough time for braids and we forgot my backpack, etc. I get Jacob in his seat and grab his arms to buckle his harness. His sleeve is soaked, I grab his hand and take a look, "NO, it can't be..." Yes, it was, it was poop. All over his hand and some on his face. No joke! He was sampling some of Psalter's poop. I can just visualize him sloshing around in the toilet and squealing with delight as he squeezed the poop through his hands. I guess some day I'll really laugh about this. Marshall sure did when I called him to tell him.... He was just glad he wasn't here to clean it up. :) So that was the start to my day, how 'bout yours?

Who's Your Fav?

2008-05-13T18:16:00.000-07:00

Marshall was asked recently, "Which of your kids is your favorite?" Marshall responded wisely, "All of them are my favorite." He went on to explain why when the person kept insisting that one of them HAD to be his favorite. I've been thinking about this a lot lately. I used to be so afraid that one or all of my children would grow up feeling that I favor one of them over another.

So I asked God for help and He has really opened my eyes to the beauty of each of my children. In doing this, I've seen how they are created in His image with different attributes of His. Eliza displays the more serious, deep side of God. She has this spiritual depth and wisdom that is amazing! She is very conscientious and a serious rule-follower. She is a compassionate, tender-hearted little girl. I see God's attributes of compassion and justice through Eliza.

Psalter is very different. She is a free-spirited little girl, fun to be around, a social butterfly. She never stops talking and includes everybody. She will bend the rules, not maliciously, she's just not very conscientious. She has a way with people wherever she is, in the emergency room, at the Dr.'s office, in a classroom, in a store, people are just drawn to her. I see the fun side of God here. He longs for us to live life freely, which we can only do through a relationship with Christ. This is a side of God that a lot of people don't see. Psalter is a great example of it!

Then there's Jacob. What a delightful little guy. He's so happy. I love to watch him notice something. Pointing, taking a big gasp and eyes wide, then some sort of vocal exclamation. His excitement about life rubs off. He also has a certain charm with people. I think that God wants us to see life through a baby's eyes. Why else would He mention that we need to have faith like a child? He wants us to see the beauty and newness to life. He promises that His mercies are new every morning. Would we see them without "child-like" eyes?

The best thing I've learned from all of this is that each of my children is my favorite because each of them is so unique from the others. This has got to be how God sees us, too. We were created in His image, yet each of us different from one another. And...even better...I am His favorite and so are you! It feels good to be someone's favorite, doesn't it? Especially the God of the universe!

My Body is God's Praise!

2008-04-28T12:18:00.000-07:00

This is for all the struggling sisters out there. I think that 99.9% of all women struggle with body image. This has been a struggle for me all of my life, whether I’ve been a size 12 or a size 6, I’ve never been content with myself. It started because of some teasing I endured during the awkward, chubby, body-developing years of 4th-7th grade and have continued to haunt me 20 years later.

Well, let me share some new insights the Spirit has given me over the last months. First of all, let me enlighten you with the fact that we were all created in the image of God. After each day that God spoke something into existence during the Creation Story, documented in the book of Genesis, God said, “It is GOOD!” When he created Adam and Eve, He did not speak them into existence, but rather formed them from the dust of the earth. This indicates His careful and thoughtful formation, His personal relationship with man. Then He breathed His “breath of life” into man. How extraordinary is that? Each of us encompasses a part of God’s personality within our DNA. We all were created uniquely, yet in His image. How big and incredible is our God if He encompasses all the personality traits of the Myers-Briggs and beyond. It’s too big for my mind to fathom.

So, He knows that His creation is GOOD. Psalm 139 talks about how God knew us before we were born, He “knit us together in our mother’s womb.” If He is satisfied with His creation and spent time and thought forming us, what does it say to Him when our hearts are discontent with ourselves? I Corinthians 6:19 informs the believer, “Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; you were bought at a price. Therefore, honor God with your body.” What does it mean to “honor” God with our body? It surely doesn't mean compare ourselves to others and wish we were different. It can’t mean to focus on what we think are imperfections. It doesn't mean to obsess over eating for comfort or not eating, exercising obsessively or laziness or giving up altogether. I think honoring God means taking care of our bodies through healthy amounts of exercise, food, rest, along with treating it with respect. If we are doing these things to honor God and not seeking or obsessing over acceptance from others, only then will we be content with the gift He’s given us...our bodies.

Romans 12:1 takes this a step further by exhorting us to, “…in view of God’s mercy, offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God-this is your spiritual act of worship.” The only thing we have to DO here is offer our bodies. Our bodies, themselves, are already holy and pleasing to God because they are His creation. All He wants is for us to offer all that we have to Him, including our physical bodies and this is a spiritual act of worship. Remember the verse that says that even the rocks and trees cry out in worship to the LORD? Well, our bodies cry out in worship to our God, whether we do or not because our body is part of His creation. So, wouldn't it be incredible if our whole being was united in that worship? If our spirit, soul and body were yielded wholly to the Spirit of God, we would love ourselves, body and all.

What does this look like practically? Instead of obsessing over the "last" ten pounds, maybe a life change is what I need. Eating healthier, exercising regularly and praising God for how He has made me. Being a fan of "The Biggest Loser" you really learn how important it is to go one day at a time and maintain the life-changing habits from day to day. [So throw out the "lose 10 pounds in three days!" articles and books. It's a lifelong commitment, sister!] As I'm eating, I ask myself: am I obsessing over the calories and fat grams or feeling guilty for treating myself? Am I thinking about food all the time? Or, am I simply eating because my body needs it? Same with exercise, am I doing it because I'm obsessed over losing those ten pounds or burning off the calories for that piece of cake I just ate or am I just doing it to be healthy? I hope and pray that one day I will get to the place where I eat simply because my body needs nourishment and I exercise to keep my temple healthy. More than that, I hope that even if I remain the same, I will learn to be content with myself and love the body I'm in. THAT, is honoring my body and THAT is my spiritual act of worship!

My Time = Your Time

2008-04-12T06:57:00.000-07:00

Dear God, I am so grateful that I have finally learned the simple truth: You just want to spend time with me. I don’t necessarily have to open my Bible to do this. I don’t have to have a quiet space and a certain amount of time. You just want me to realize that You are a part of my everyday life. You are there when I road-rage, You are there when I get impatient with my children, You are there when I pray for someone hurting or in need, You are there when I serve my family. I don’t often acknowledge Your presence in the “every day” part of life. You long to be known and experienced in those “every day” moments.

I used to be held in bondage by my fears of failing in my Quiet Times. I was in bondage to high expectations from myself and others. My Quiet Times were riddled with shame, guilt, or a new self-infused vigor to “do better.” Maybe if I get up earlier. If only I had one more hour in the day. If only the kids would shut-up and leave me alone… Maybe if I had someone to be accountable to…. All of these things came up empty as I continued to fail miserably!

Then I realized, wait…I don’t even pray. If I do have my Quiet Time, I go about my day forgetting what I learned and yet I have a sense of self-righteous satisfaction that “I” did it! It was just another thing to mark off my check list for the day, along with making my bed. Those times I spent with You did nothing to transform my heart or my mind.

But now, for some reason, the light bulb's been turned on. Paul’s command to pray without ceasing has new meaning. You want me to acknowledge Your constant presence in my life. You want me to talk to You throughout the day (not just that 20 minutes I sometimes set aside in the morning). You are my best friend, always at my side, whether I'm wiping a counter or a poopy bottom. You want to hear everything I’m thinking, even though You already know it. Just like I heartache over my parents missing so much of my “every day” life, You long for me to notice You and experience Your life! Oh, forgive me, sweet Father. Thank You for always being there, for holding me during those fearful and lonely hours. I’m sorry that it has taken me this long to recognize Your constant presence and desire for me.

Joy Found in Suffering...

2008-03-29T18:23:00.000-07:00

We all go through suffering of some type. Mine started when I was six. Being sent to Boarding School, away from my parent's caused me a lot of heartache. I didn't realize this until recent years. I went from feeling numb most of my life, to feeling anger and then bitterness towards God and then my parents. Trudging through this with my counselor has brought me to acknowledge my pain as significant and allow God to bring healing, and give me the humility to forgive and the power to love.

My parents and I are starting our relationships on a new level, starting now. I want us to make the most of the time we have left. As I visited them with the kids this last week, I was saddened by how much older they seemed to me. But I'm holding on to the hope that the Lord will allow us to make up for "lost time."

We had some good talks each night I was there. On the last night, I asked them to tell me how they felt when they sent me to Boarding School. The tears started on both sides of the room as they responded. They shared about how it was so hard for them, they had to make some huge sacrifices for the gospel to advance. I know they felt like they were making the best decision for me. It was the best and only option they had at the time.

Then Dad shared about the current state of Burkina Faso, where they served for 30 years! He told me that the gospel is spreading so rapidly there, enough for missionaries to pull out because they are no longer needed. Unreached people groups are being reached, by other Africans! Pastors are being taught in seminaries, by their fellow Africans! Churches are being started and led by the National church. Dad was so excited as he shared all of this. And then he said, "so, Diane, the sacrifice you made to go away from home, so that we could do the work here, was NOT in vain! Take joy in that!" And I do. I would do it all over again, knowing how much God used Mom and Dad's ministry to advance His kingdom. I got to play a part in that! I don't feel bitterness anymore, not even regrets. The Lord's healing balm is so gentle and yet so powerful. Praise God!

All For Love

2008-03-29T18:00:00.000-07:00

This is the season...It's March...It's March Madness...It's basketball season...It's Carolina's basketball season...It's my sweetheart's favorite and most intense season, therefore it's mine too. I married into it, adopted into the Carolina fan club.

As I watch the "Elite Eight" game against Louisville, my stomach's in knots and I feel the intensity already. I started out watching basketball and NASCAR with Marshall, just to understand him better and therefore love him well. Now I feel like I'm adopting the passion as my own.

In light of that, this has been my most recent reading material. These were the two books I read as insomnia hit me at 4:30 this morning. I don't count these two books as equal, by the way!

Monkeys are Evil!

2008-03-23T11:42:00.000-07:00

You know the saying, "Monkey hear no evil, see no evil, do no evil?" Well, I think monkeys ARE evil. Before any animal activists get on my case, hear my personal interactions with monkeys. Of all my monkey interactions, none have left me with warm fuzzies!

Baboons are the scariest. First of all, they are mean looking creatures, tall and very aggressive. One of the older MKs bought a baboon from somewhere and thought it would be a good idea to drug it, force it into a cage and chain the cage to the top of a van full of kids for the 6 hour trip down to school. It pooped all over the roof, but it did get us through the border stops quite quickly. When we got to school, the baboon was chained to a tree next to the guy's dorm. He paced back and forth and kinda grunted at us. They ended up having to shoot him because he bit someone or had some disease.

Okay, so the real trauma for me started with a dorm pet. A chimpanzee named "Lulu." She was caged outside the dorm, but the middle schoolers would get her out and let her climb on them and take her all over campus. Sometimes they would bring her in the dorm. All of us little kids would call out, "Lulu down the hall!" You could hear kids jumping under beds and into closets. Then the bravest would peek out and check when she was gone, so that we could come out of hiding.

I had a fear of Lulu from the beginning, but it escalated one year on my birthday. I came into the dorm, standing in the doorway without realizing Lulu was in the dorm. Like a slo-mo movie I saw Lulu across the living room, she turned towards me and started galloping on her front knuckles and back feet, lips tightened to show All of her teeth. She ran straight for me and I was so paralyzed, I just stood there. Of course she grabbed onto my leg and took a bite. I started screaming, shaking my leg, trying to get her off. She leaned back her head and started screeching like Chimps do. Need I go on? Now you see why monkeys are evil? I was only 7 or 8, had turned it just that day!

During vacations, when we lived in the city, we stayed on a mission station that was surrounded by walls on every side. In one corner of the station one of the missionaries was raising rabbits, which we loved to play with. The only problem was that there was a little green monkey leashed to a zip line that went from his tree all the the way across to the wall. We would wait until he was up in his tree and try to run under him to the back. He would fly out of the tree and grab us by the hair, biting whatever he could get. Then when we made it to the other side, hearts beating wildly and screaming, we would look back to find him taunting us. He would jump up and down, eyes wide, mouth wide, showing all of his teeth. He was about the size of a house cat, but we were terrified of him.

A mile down from our boarding school was a zoo. We could hear the monkeys and lions if the wind blew right down the valley. Sometimes we would visit the zoo. The monkeys were chained to the trees, not caged. When you walked by, even at a distance, you would often hear a "ping" or feel a "wump" as a mango seed or rock hit. There was one huge chimp who was very laid back. If fact people had taught him some vulgar sign language, which he showed off to everyone. He also was taught to smoke. He would walk around with a cigarette in his mouth and if someone lit it, he would smoke, no lie! So he was the only monkey that came close to redeeming the whole kingdom of monkeys for me. Sorry, monkey-lovers, but from personal experience, monkeys are evil!

Dorm Life: part 2

2008-03-23T11:21:00.001-07:00

We had a laundry room where everyone had their own cubby. There was one African man who's job was to do laundry every day, all day. This was with an old fashioned wringer washer and hanging everything on the line. When it was dry, he'd bring it in, fold it in stacks and then someone's dorm job was to put the clothes in the right box. Oh, and we had to sew name tags on EVERY piece of clothing before coming to school. BTW, my mom made us sew on our own name tags.

To make our dorm function, we all had dorm jobs. These would be switched up every two weeks or so. Some of the jobs included putting the clothes in the cubbies, distributing sheets to everyone on sheet day, watering the plants, feeding any animals, etc. My least favorite was taking care of this weird kind of cat. I don't remember what it was called, but it was real slow and slinky and lived in a cage in our dorm. I had to open his cage, take out his litter box, rake out the poop,throw it away and then put the box back in. You may think that's not a big deal, but that cat was weird, it hissed at me. So I would dread doing my dorm job!

We had a Rec room on the lower floor of our dorm. The rafters were exposed and so our dorm father hooked up a thick rope that we could swing on. We also had a balance beam and lots of mats, so we often tried to do gymnastics. There was a ping pong table and a Fooze-ball table. We played all sorts of games down there. We even climbed the rafters sometimes-that was a big "no, no."

We had a TV in our dorm living room, but we couldn't watch it hardly ever. Sometimes we would watch "Happy Days" and John Wayne westerns translated into French. It was quite comical, actually. On Sunday afternoons when I was real young, we would watch a Western. When I got older and VHS was invented we could watch an ICA-approved movie. Some of my personal favs: Savannah Smiles, The Apple Dumpling Gang, Pete's Dragon, Sound of Music, Annie and Mary Poppins.

We had one piano in the living area, as well. My mom made me take lessons. I hated it! Not because I didn't like playing the piano, I actually caught on pretty well. But I HATED practicing because not only could our dorm hear every note, but you could hear it almost all the way down to the Dining Hall. My dorm mom made everyone come to the piano recital that I had to play in. I looked out to see all the bored faces of my peers and especially the older boys I had crushes on---horrific! I wanted to crawl inside the piano and not come out. My piece was so basic, fortunately it was short, so I rushed through it.

Every day we were expected to make our beds and clean our rooms. Our rooms were graded. If we failed, then we would be grounded until it was cleaned up and checked out by a dorm parent. I never failed, but sometimes I got a lower grade because of my room mates. This is why I don't make my children make their beds and it took me years in college and after to be able to make myself make my bed. I usually make it everyday now, for me, not a grade.

Speaking of roommates, I've had hundreds. At the end of each trimester we would pack up everything in our room into footlockers and suitcases. We would pack a suitcase for vacation. We would store what we were leaving behind in the attic. We would usually switch rooms and roommates each trimester. Sometimes that was not very good for friendships. For girls, anyway. It was always a drama fest the last few weeks of school.

Some Recent Family Pics

2008-03-20T12:09:00.000-07:00

My sweet Psalter.
Need I say more? BFF! I did not pick out Psalter's outfit, BTW! I pick my battles with the three-year-old.
Life doesn't get much better than this!
...or this!
And, no, I did NOT pick out this outfit!

Dorm Life

2008-03-19T13:12:00.000-07:00

Most of the dorms had two hallways (only 2 did not). In the elementary dorms there was a boy's hall and a girl's hall, across from each other with a living area in between. Each of the dorms started with "B"s. Mine were Bethel and Bethlehem. There was also Baraka, Berea, Brotheren and I forget the others.

The hallways in our dorms had a zig-zag pattern of curtains from top to bottom. You could lay on the floor in your hall and see the boy's feet as they went from room to room. We used to wrap these curtains around us, if we were indecent, but wanted to get someone's attention that was out in the living area. Several girls were merciless and would yank the curtain away from any girl that was doing this, exposing them to the world. Speaking of indecent, my earliest memory of this was when I was six. I had just gotten the "Wonder Woman Underoos." We had gotten our shipment from the States and these were my treasured items. I was so proud of them and was showing off to friends. I walked out into the living room and sat down to talk with my dorm mom, not realizing I was just in my underwear. Some boys came out of their hallway and...of course, they made fun of me.

In the elementary dorms each room had a curtain in the doorway. These became nice swings for us. We could also talk to each other or throw notes across or down the hall during long weekend noon-rests. The curtain in the bathroom became more than a swing for us, however. Since all of the floors were a polished smooth cement, the bathroom floor made a good slide. We would lather up the floor with shampoo and water or baby powder, hold onto the curtain and stand back as far as we could in the hall and then run and let go, BAM!! Of course we would get into trouble, if we were caught in the act or if someone ended up hurt.

The floors were also a great surface for playing with fire. No joke! We would pour perfume on the floor, or write a message with it and then light the match. It was amazing to see how high and long the fire would go. There was only one time this became catastrophic. We did it too close to a desk and it caught on fire. We all went running to the bathroom with our little bathroom cups to fill them with water and douse the fire. Fortunately we got it out without too much damage. I don't even think we had to report it.

We had speakers down the hallway, which the dorm parents could make an announcement through, or, my personal favorite (not really) they would play music to wake us up in the mornings. The song they always played was from the "Bull Frogs and Butterflies" album called, "Good Morning." It's an obnoxiously happy song that my kids actually love to listen to, now.

We had a chimes that the dorm parents would use to give us messages. Each tune meant something different. For example, we had one for dorm meeting, dorm devotions, noon rest starting, etc. It sounds like I lived the life of a villager, sending messages via a musical instrument.

I've Been Tagged!

2008-03-14T19:35:00.001-07:00

I've been tagged by my friend Melissa to share 7 strange things about me. So here goes....

1. I love peanut butter and syrup on my waffles and pancakes.

2. I freeze my Kraft caramels so that they're hard and chewy. I also freeze my chocolate, so that it takes longer to melt.

3. My dream job would be to work on the "Clean Sweep" show from TLC.

4. I'm borderline OCD when it comes to cleaning, that's why I get paid the big bucks!!

5. Shoes are a weakness for me. I don't buy many, I just drool.

6. The celebrities I would like to meet and shop with afterwards are Stacy London and Clinton Kelly from TLC's "What Not to Wear."

7. When I'm in the Grocery Store section at the Children's Museum I spend the whole time rearranging the shelves and baskets to put things back where they're SUPPOSED to go! The scary thing is that Eliza does the same thing--without my asking.

I now tag Marshall, Suzanne, and Jenny

I Don't Want to See the Inside of Our Dr.'s Office Again!!!

2008-03-11T11:43:00.000-07:00

At least not for a while. This past month, I feel like our family could have been the sole providers for the office. Thank goodness for a smart husband that set up a flex plan for this stuff. We've probably drained it by now, just within the last month!

First there were some routine checkups, my high blood pressure scare checkup, then there was the emergency room visit to stitch up Psalter's head injury, followed by the visit to our doctor the following week to remove the stitches. While we were at that appointment the Dr. noticed Eliza was looking rough (she'd had a high fever for a few days), so she did a strep test and sent us home with no conclusions. We ended up back there the following Tues. because Eliza's temp was still there. After many pokes, swabs, long waits, questions about whether or not she would need a shot and could we go home now and an x-ray to rule out pneumonia, the conclusion: she had a double ear infection.

At that visit, I had been coughing and feeling miserable for a few days. I did not say anything, just wanting to wait it out. By Thursday, I was hacking up and blowing out green stuff. Nice, I know. I called the office, did I need to come in? Yes....

I got to go with just Jacob this time. I got to see my Dr. She determined it was viral, sent me home with nose drops and a prescription for an antibiotic if the back of my mouth drainage started to taste bitter. Nice, again. Too bad I don't have a picture.

A few days later, Saturday, I wake up with a sore jaw. I look in the bathroom mirror and I'm horrified by my enlarged cheek and jawbone. It looked like a Brooke Shield's wanna-be botox injection gone bad! On one side. So I called the Dr. on call. So happened it was my Dr. and she would be in the walk-in clinic that day. I went. Tired of frequenting the place. I get taken into my room and when my Dr. stepped in, she took a step back, gasping and said, "Oh my!" Not the most comforting thing to hear your Dr. say. Turns out I had a stone in my parotid gland, those are the salivary glands. Really??? They can do that? She prescribed me a strong antibiotic, told me to eat a lot of sour foods to work the stone out and sent me on my way.

Several hundred co-pay dollars later, we are all healthy and taken care of. I'm thankful that I live in a country with quality healthcare and medication. I'm also thankful that we can afford insurance and the needed medications. I'm very thankful that we are healthy individuals that sometimes get sick and not the other way around! But I still would rather not see the inside of our Dr.'s office for a long, long while.

What is I.C.A.?

2008-03-11T11:42:00.000-07:00

I.C.A. stands for International Christian Academy. Thanks for all the efforts in guessing what it stood for. It was a boarding school for missionary kids and was started by Russ and Ruth Ragsdale back in the 60s. It’s located in a small valley, east of the town of Bouake (bwa-kay), Cote d’Ivoire, West Africa.

The campus is a little over a kilometer around. The front part of the campus consisted of staff housing, the classrooms, library and offices. In the middle were several dormitories, the dining hall, clinic, and park/recreation area. South of the campus held the chapel, more dorms and more recreational areas. There were eight dorms, four elementary-junior high dorms, 2 high school girl’s and 2 high school boy’s dorms. We had two soccer fields, one at the north end and one on the south, three basketball courts, a racquetball court, a petite-porteau court (outdoor soccer on a court), one play ground with swings, merry-go-round, sandbox, see-saws, etc. and a commissary (campus store).

The south end of campus is closed in by a marigo or swamp. Because of the swamp, we had plenty of snakes, bugs and frogs on campus. Cote d’Ivoire is a very lush country. It is very tropical, even inland. Many types of plantations fuel its economy: bananas, cocoa, and coffee just to name a few. Our campus had plenty of mango, orange, tangerine and guava trees. There were several palm trees plentiful with coconuts and even a tree that produced prickly pears.

We had electricity and running water. Our buildings were built out of cement. We did not have air conditioning, but each classroom and dorm room was equipped with a ceiling fan.

So, this was part of my life, twelve years, in fact. I started going to I.C.A. when I was six years old. It holds a lot of fond memories, along with some hard ones. I made some wonderful friends, met with some incredible mentors and learned so much. What makes my heart grieve is that it will never look the same. I doubt that I will get to go back because it is not functioning as a school anymore, but rather a barracks for the French army. The French have been there since the country’s civil war began in 2002. My parents were working on the campus at the time and they had to evacuate with a whole school of children and staff. They left everything there, but a carry-on suitcase. They had to leave a lot of memories behind. Years later my dad was able to go back and get what was left of their stuff. It’s helping me to write about it, so thank you to those who read because you are getting to know a piece of me that is grieving the loss of this place that means so much to me.

Garden of Eden

2008-02-11T12:23:00.000-08:00

From as early as I could remember we would go camping every year for a week or two in April. This was between the hot dry season and the coming rainy season. Since we were at Boarding School for 9 months out of the year in the Ivory Coast, we were on a trimester system. So we had a short 3 week vacation around Easter. It became a tradition for a lot of the Burkina missionaries to come from all over the country to this one place to go camping. This was the "Garden of Eden."

Burkina is a savanna landscape, that means means it's relatively bare with random assortments of bushes, trees and tall grass. There are a few areas, however, where rivers flow through the country and are surrounded by a lush, green landscape. The Ganguette River was such a place, the most beautiful. The river flows from what we called the "source." The source was a shallow area which the water bubbled up from the bottom, through the rocks and sand. It was covered with brush and trees, you couldn't stand up under here. My dad spent hours snorkeling here, looking for precious stones.

The water flowed downstream from there in a heavy current, but pooled in several different areas. We named each pool, one was the Protestant pool, the other was the Nun's pool. The Nun's pool was where we spent most of our time. There was more bank to work with. We would jump off the side or swing in on a vine. One of the dads tied a rope to the big tree hanging over and we would swing from the bank and drop in the middle.

The water was completely clear. You could see every rock at the bottom of the river. It was really an incredible place. Sometimes we would work our way upstream, which was very taxing, then we would just lay back and float back down. In fact we made a whole day's event out of it. We would get on some big innertubes and start at the nuns pool and float downriver for about an hour or so to the bridge, which is where the rest of the crew would meet us with lunch. Then we would sun there for a couple of hours and then drive back into our campsite.

Now camping in Africa is so different from here. We had the macdaddy tents with the screened in porch area, bunk bed cots, a port-a-potty. Some missionaries would dig a hole for an outhouse. That's the part I didn't like. Mom had a whole cabinet just for camping dishes and appliances. Every few days someone would ride into town to get big blocks of ice for our coolers. We took baths and washed our clothes in the river. We mainly wore bathing suits all day.

The only thing we had to worry about were snakes and hippos. I used to be a little freaked about that. The hippos would come out at night, you could hear them thrashing around on the river banks. Some of the older kids would be daring, or maybe it was stupid, and they would go swimming at night. The called it "hippo swimming" or something like that. Random Fact: Did you know that one hippo molar is the size of a saucer? My biggest fear, however, was and still is to this day, seaweed. My mom says that when I was really young she had me on a tube to float down river and I got stuck by myself in a blob of seaweed. That explains itself.

So, I used to think that the Bible was mistaken and God did not forbid anyone from entering the Garden of Eden. Because, to me, this was a pretty perfect place--aside from the grubs, snakes, seaweed and hippos. To little me, it was THE Garden!

What is Burkina Faso?

2008-02-05T12:39:00.000-08:00

Well, you can read more factual info. about Burkina Faso online or you can read what I have to say about it and my personal experience (or both). Burkina is a land-locked country with very few resources, therefore making it the 27th poorest country in the world. The average income per year is $1200. Can you imagine? The unemployment rate is so high that there is a lot of emigration to neighboring countries like Ghana and the Ivory Coast to work on the plantations there.

I lived there for the first 6 years of my life among the Bwa people of the Red Bobo tribe. I lived with my family in a village, Ouarokoye (water-koy) on top of a hill. We lived in a cement house with a kitchen and bathroom. But, our water came from a well down the hill, which had to be pumped up the hill each day to fill our cisterns. We had "running" water because it would then be pumped from the cistern to the barrels above the house.

When I was real young, I remember taking sponge baths because we didn't have a water heater, so mom would heat water on our kerosene stove and put it in big tubs. We also had a kerosene fridge, which my mom labored over for hours, refilling the tank and making sure the pilot was lit. We had all of these appliances because we did not have running electricity. Dad would run the generator a couple of hours a night for supper and family time of reading and games, etc. We would also run the wringer washer (anyone seen one of those bad boys?) a couple of times a week for laundry and then hang up all of the clothes. It was a whole day process, wringing from the washer to the first rinse, then ring again for the second rinse, then wring again to hang up. Just writing about it now makes me very thankful for my modern day appliances that make it so much less time consuming.

My days consisted of playing with African friends, rounding up our chickens, helping my mom cook and bake, playing in the dirt and on our little playground. We went on a lot of walks, mostly to pick fruit called, "nya" or "zaba." I remember afternoons, we would take a rest during the hottest part of the day, then we would get up and mom would make popcorn (in a pan) and pop open a couple of cold cokes. This was always such a treat.

Since my mom is a nurse, people would walk for miles to come and be treated or get medicine. She could basically act as a doctor and prescribe and sell medications at an affordable cost to the patients. I saw some gross things. I helped her count out medications, mostly anti-malaria and put them into little bags. Mom would also teach the women basic hygiene for themselves and their babies and try to vaccinate as many as she could.

Dad was there to translate the Bible into the Bwamu language. It took them at least 3 or more years just to learn the language and develop an alphabet. It was a painstaking process that he worked on for years. He did a lot of traveling on his moped into the "bush" to little villages that had not heard the gospel. They would do evangelisms there and then move onto another village. Sometimes he was welcomed, sometimes not. He always had to get permission from the village chief. Churches would start, but they needed a pastor. Most of the people are uneducated, so who would teach? A Bible School was started to train up pastors among their own tribes. It was so neat to see that process.

So...Burkina is many things. I've just barely scratched the surface. It was a famine-raged and war-torn country in the 80's. I remember several coup d'etats. My dad experienced 17 or so during his lifetime as a missionary in West Africa. But that didn't change the people. Most of the people are the sweetest, most generous that you would ever meet. It's a place where you can focus on what really matters--relationships! I love that I got to experience Burkina Faso. Thanks for learning a little bit about me.

Am I LOST? Or are they LOST?

2008-02-04T11:33:00.000-08:00

Yep, I've dedicated hours and hours of my free time to catching up on the past three seasons of LOST. I'm convinced that the title is meant for all the viewers and not the actual storyline. Now that I'm caught up and I've seen the season premiere, I'm more confused than ever. I'm not a LOST junkie, although I am very committed to the show and will defend it at all costs. But I don't join chat rooms or read the LOST magazine to figure everything out. Just when I think, they can't possibly twist it any more, they manage to.

I'm not so sure I like the recent "flash forwards" (who knows, some of the older ones that we thought were flashbacks, are they really?) And maybe they really aren't "flash forwards" because they could do that to us, too. It's like they're controlling us, they're dangling the fresh bacon in front of us like we're salivating, starving dogs. And, we will gobble it up, whether it's really bacon or not because we ARE LOST! Arghh...I didn't think I was that easy.

Same Kind of Different as Me!

2008-02-04T08:24:00.000-08:00

I borrowed this title from a wonderful book that our church body is reading. It's about the relationship that develops between a black homeless man that grew up on the sharecropping plantations of Louisiana and a rich white art dealer. It's an incredible book that I would recommend to everyone to read. The book helped to open up my eyes to lots of different issues and harsh realities that I've hardened my heart to. Since I've been going to counseling and dealing with my emotions and feelings, my heart has been softened. Sometimes it's too much to handle.

A friend and I were having breakfast several weeks ago and were talking about the problem of homelessness, especially in the cold weather. The unsolved problems seemed too heavy for a breakfast conversation. We both felt hopeless. But as I left I started to think about what God has been teaching me over the last several months. Number one, nothing is hopeless when we allow God to be in control and we trust Him with our hearts and passions. Also, it is so important to do SOMETHING about the pain we feel for those that are suffering. Whether it's prayer for the earthquake victims across the world, volunteering at a pregnancy care center, supporting a child through Compassion International or serving at Urban Ministries and Salvation Army. I see through the gospels how Jesus had compassion on the poor and suffering. He brought healing, but it was always through relationship. Even the sick woman who just touched His robe when He passed by and was healed, He also filled her need for His acknowledgment by publicly forgiving her sins.

So, even though the Evil One wants to derail us from doing or caring for anyone with a lot of issues or under a lot of oppression, we don't have to fall into his snare of hopelessness and defeat. I'm seeing how much time and effort it takes to build relationships with people that are different from me. Although their situations are not changing, their hearts can be changed by my relationship with them. Because I am the daughter of the King and therefore, through me, they are seeing God's love and freedom for them. Even though it "feels" like I'm not doing much because I'm not changing someone's circumstances, I am showing them compassion, their true need.

My friend Vicky has helped me see the grand picture. She's been an addict for years and has been rejected by her family. It seems hopeless, but a measure of success for her is seeing that she is unconditionally loved and beginning to believe and trust in that. Hmmm....I'm not so different than her. I see my lack of unbelief in that area. Although I don't use drugs to numb my pain and rejection, I fall to other more hidden means to numb my pain. The more time I spend with her, the more I realize that I need and have God's love and forgiveness as much as her. Even though building a relationship with her is not changing the face of homelessness in Greensboro, it is one drop in the bucket. If every believer had one friend like Vicky, think of the impact that would make! Just a thought....

Did I Just Eat Lunch With a Local Celebrity???

2008-01-15T12:38:00.000-08:00

Yes, I did. I just had lunch in the McDonald's playground with Eric Chilton, the head meteorologist for our local CBS station. I thought he looked familiar, but then again, I don't watch the news much, so....

As I embarassingly stared at him, trying to remember where I knew him from, he started the conversation with, "You've got your hands full." Nodding in agreement as I had to keep running out to the dining room to get various items, straws, ketchup, an extra cup, I was too distracted to think of any conversation starters. Then he commented on our new Carolina tee-shirts Eliza and I were wearing and so we talked about Saturdays game.

I met his twin boys and we talked about having multiple children and how boys and girls are different. We talked about their pre-schools. Then he proceeded to talk with me some about his personal life, and it didn't feel weird. He was very nice. I wonder if he was glad that I didn't recognize him or if his pride was withered that I didn't refer to him as "that weather guy on TV." Maybe he just wanted to be a normal guy eating at McDonald's with his 5 year old boys.

So, Eric Chilton, nice to meet you, my name is Diane. Thanks for being a down to earth person, maybe I'll watch your weather reports instead of the competitors.

Husband of the Year

2008-01-15T08:07:00.000-08:00

Three posts in one day? Yeah, I know, I function in bulk. I buy in bulk if it's cheaper, read the 98 blogs in my google reader and publish 3 posts in one day. But I have to write this one to honor my sweet husband. I hope that each of my friends can name their husband as "Husband of the Year" too.

He just started a new job, which is overwhelming and exhausting. Yet, he still gets up with the crying babies (yes, that's plural). Even though his introverted-self comes home exhausted from lots of meetings, he musters up the energy to do puzzle races and read books, change stinky diapers and ask me how my day was.

We've been through a lot of crisis together over the past several years and he has pushed us, as a couple, towards the Lord in healing and renewal. We actually feel like newly weds, in a much deeper way.

Thank you, sweetheart for your patience, perseverance, and your love. Each night I put Jacob to bed I pray that he grows up with a heart like his father's.

I love you and I'm proud to be your wife!!!

Incessant Knocking

2008-01-15T07:42:00.000-08:00

As I got Jacob up from his nap and set him in front of Elmo so that I could shower, I heard the knocking. I knew it wasn't at our house, so I figured it was across the street. We hear the knocking, usually several times a night and early morning. It's a $5 a night hotel, catch my drift? It's across the street from our bedroom window, so we often wake up from the car doors slamming and then the loud knocking and sometimes shouting.

Well, it's mid-morning and the knocking went on for at least 10 minutes. I peeked out my blinds, the nosy neighbor. I saw two white men on the porch, then I saw the big white letters P-O-L-I-C-E and the bulk at the waist. I felt like I was watching Law and Order. I saw one of the guys go around through the back. The front door was wide open now, so I could see him draw his gun as he walked down the hallway to the first door.

Then I closed my blinds and continued about my morning getting dressed and brushing my hair, playing with Jacob, writing this post. What struck me is that we're living in the middle of this, but our children don't know it. Their life is safe and loving. Those that are being hunted and some of the children we minister to experience this every day. A lot of them do not close their blinds to a peaceful loving home. Their life is chaos. The dealers and users the police are looking for probably grew up in a home like that. Breaking it down to that level gives me compassion and love for the dealers and users. I am reminded by the Lord that they were knit together, by God, in their mother's womb. He loves them just as much as He loves me, a do-gooder. He came and died for them, too. They deserve His love just as much as I do.

Now the incessant knocking is not as much of an annoyance, but rather a reminder. A reminder of God's love for what we would call, the "least of these." But in His eyes they are not, they are potential heirs in His glorious kingdom!

More Wisdom From a Four-Year-Old

2008-01-15T07:10:00.000-08:00

I went to pick up Eliza from Sunday school this past week. As I walked into the room one of the teachers said, "Eliza said the most precious, insightful thing today." I braced myself for the tears. They were talking about Zacheus and how he climbed the tree to see Jesus and Jesus approached him to tell him that he was coming to Zacheus's house to eat. The teachers asked the children what they would do to prepare for Jesus coming to their house. Some answered they would clean up, others that they would make some food. Then my sweet, sweet child quietly raised her hand and said, "I would fall on my knees."

I don't think I need to say anything else!

"...In Sickness and in Health..."

2008-01-07T20:15:00.000-08:00

Six loads of laundry, baths in the middle of the night, four moppings, a pack of clorox wipes, a roll of paper towels and many tears later, I decided that parents should have to make vows before their midwives or doctor as soon as that little one is pushed out. How else could you be prepared for the "sickness" part of the vows. In the most glorious moment of your life, as you hold that slimy, warm, sweet newborn baby to your chest, you're not thinking down the road several months or several years later when you'll kill your back bending down to clean up throw-up all over the house. But maybe stating some sort of vows like you do in your wedding would at least prepare you that it's for sure coming!! It's not like I won't take care of my kids when their sick, but just a clue of what it could be like and the knowledge that my life is changing forever would have been nice to have known!

The point is that we would promise to love them in sickness and in health. Even as hard and sometimes as aggravating and gross as it sometimes, I love each them even more than the first moment I saw them. I rejoice in the fact that I can clean up their throw-up because they are a precious gift to me and I'm very blessed to be able to do so.

An Answer to My Very Own Question...

2008-01-07T19:36:00.000-08:00

In my last blog I wrote about a terrible day we had several weeks ago. At the end I stated this, "So, obviously, I cannot get away from these sad moments, many of them live around me. Therefore, if I can't escape them or ignore them, what DO I do with them?" As Marshall and I reflected on that day we talked about a line from my favorite Christmas song, "Fall on your knees..." In our sadness about the life situations of our neighbors and their families, Marshall highlighted this phrase of the song, "...the thrill of hope, a weary world rejoices, for yonder breaks a new and glorious morn'..." The Israelites were an oppressed people, so the coming of a Messiah which was promised to them through the prophets hundreds of years before was a glorious and long-awaited event. And of course, just like God always does on His terms rather than ours (because He knows best), Christ did not come like they had imagined. I'm sure they thought he would come in a kingly fashion to swoop in and rescue his people through battle. Instead he came through a virgin, in a stinky, uncomfortable, cold stable. He came as a baby. The key in all of this and answer to my question of what do I do with all the sadness I encounter and see out my window every day, is simply love.

All of this He did out of unexplainable, unconditional, unmeasurable, perfect love. The fact that Christ was born into poverty shows God love for the poor and His purpose to use them for His honor and glory. Only His love, only His love, only His love overcomes all hopelessness. So, what do I do with the despair I feel when I see my friends walking and dealing the streets? Now when I start to feel despair or hopelessness, I fall on my knees if I can and I start to sing this song, "the thrill of hope, a weary world rejoices..." and I envision all the people of Glenwood raising their hands in freedom and praise to my glorious Savior who came out of love to bring hope into this weary world. He is still bringing hope to my weary neighborhood by putting us here to love them, through His love. THAT is the thrill of hope and THAT is my calling.

A Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day...

2007-12-28T19:18:00.000-08:00

That was our day last Friday. We had experienced a week of reverting back to the first nine months of Jacob's life, waking up every few hours--coughing, nightmares, dog throwing up, you name it, it woke us up.

Because we were having a hard week with no sleep and, therefore, grumpy mommy, I planned a "Happy Birthday" party for Jesus and invited some of the girl's closest friends. It was to be on Friday morning. We were leaving town the next day and were worried about our dog health not improving all week. So I woke up with the dread of our indecision, "do we put him to sleep?" Eliza woke up at 5:30, BTW, that morning out of excitement for her party. So all the friends started coming over and they were playing, Marshall was on the phone with his mom and the vet talking about Joe. The party was about to start, I was going to read the Christmas story. Marshall pulled me into our bedroom and told me that he felt we should put Joe to sleep. The reality hit and I started to sob. I asked a friend to read the story while I cried and said goodbye to Joe. We pulled the girls out of the story circle so that they could say goodbye. They were fine with it, then.

After everyone left, Eliza started bawling about Joe. We had to talk about death and the fact that he wasn't ever coming back. While this was happening Marshall was taking some Christmas presents we had gotten for a single mother of three kids. The mother was supposed to meet him at her beat up apartment in the projects. She wasn't there, but there was a house full of people and the children upstairs, some yelling. He couldn't get ahold of the mom on the phone. So that was depressing. Not that we wanted gratitude or acknowledgment even. We just wanted a chance to reach her and build some trust, but it felt so hopeless, like she was embarrassed and saw it as a "handout."

Meanwhile, Eliza was still upset, a knock at the door. It was one of our homeless friends just wanting someone to love on her. She had been clean and living with her family for several months and then a series of events led her to be thrown out and rejected by her family, yet once again. So now she on the streets again, doing only what she knows to survive. The sadness overwhelmed me.

If you've read the book about Alexander's terrible, horrible, etc. day you would know that after each terrible thing he mentions, like gum in his hair, he ends with, "I think I'll move to Australia." Well, I was thinking about it last Friday. But at the end of the book he shares some of his mom's wisdom which is that bad days happen, even in Australia. So, obviously, I cannot get away from these sad moments, many of them live around me. Therefore, if I can't escape them or ignore them, what DO I do with them?

I'm Dreaming of a Red Christmas...

2007-12-28T18:38:00.000-08:00

You know the song, "I'm dreaming of a white Christmas...." Well, in Africa we used to sing about a "red" Christmas and sometimes black. I know you're dying to know why. Well, around Christmas time it's the dry season in West Africa. So that means Harmattan winds from the desert in the north blow through where I lived. Our dirt is latterite red dirt and rocks, hence the meaning to the song, "I'm dreaming of a red Christmas..." Some days we would sing "black" because the Africans would also burn their fields during the dry season to prepare them for the planting. So along with the dusty red winds we would be blasted with black snowfall.

Now, we had an artificial tree that we would decorate, just like we would here. We would turn the lights on for a few hours at night. The tree actually spooked the Africans a little bit. They thought it was our fetish (something inhabited with spirits that we would offer sacrifices to). After Christmas was over we would take the decorations and lights off, then take the tree outside and hose it off. Red water would run off it.

The Africans celebrate Christmas very differently. For one, it's not about shopping for gifts, they don't have malls. They don't believe in Santa, obviously. It's not even a national holiday because only the Christians celebrate Christmas. The churches make a huge deal about it. They design and order a certain material that they get their outfits made out of, so they all match. It's quite cute. They get together on Christmas Eve, do plays about the Christmas story, sing and dance till day break. Then on Christmas day they have another service while some of the women prepare a huge dinner and they all eat together. (One year we were observers of the dinner being chased down and then we heard it being "prepared"--not pleasant!)

In the city some of the store merchants and restaurants try to create the holiday cheer for the tourists by putting up tacky garland and lights or painting Santas or snowmen on their store windows. That's always funny when it's 95-100 degrees outside. The really funny thing is that they leave the decorations up until about March.

So, that's Christmas in Africa for you....

You Know You're a Mother When...

2007-12-16T17:46:00.000-08:00

--you can't remember the last time you took a shower...or changed your underwear.

--you can't even finish a sentence because you're either so used to being interrupted or you've forgotten a simple word.

--you become a maid, waitress, nurse, teacher,friend and a superhero.

--you can carry on a deep conversation with a friend while five or six kids are running around you.

--a vacation is more work than restful.

--a trip to the grocery store that should only take an hour takes you 3 hours!

--your dreams include Dora or the mean stepmother in Cinderella.

--8:00 pm feels too late to be out.

--you wipe snotty noses with your sleeve.

--you wipe up spilled milk or juice with your elbow or knee, then you continue to wear those clothes for the rest of the day! (Emily!!)

--you wear the shirt that was the spitting target for the baby that didn't want peas.

--you say things like, "stop licking the counter" (at Chick Fil-a!) or "don't eat that" (someone's leftover french fry on the floor at Mickey D's).

--you speak to everyone slowly and with pitch and emphasis, then realizing they aren't children...you get embarassed.

--you're so used to multi-tasking, you throw a dirty diaper in the fridge and place a half-finished sippy cup in the trash can.

--you never eat sitting down.

--you feel like you are a broken record, "use your words instead of screaming" "stop provoking your sister" "leave each other alone" "I don't know what that means" "blah...blah..blah."

--poop in the bathtub doesn't phase you.

--you want to bang your head against the wall sometimes or kick a toy or throw the phone. (throwing the phone against the pillows on your bed is most effective because then nothing hurts or gets broken, but tension is still released).

--you find yourself apologizing to your children at least once or twice a day, sometimes more.

--you find yourself more moody than ever in your life.

--the phrase from a hymn, "...every hour, I need Thee..." becomes a harsh, but sweet reality.

--you cannot imagine life without your children because they bring you so much joy.

Why? Do We Get Flu Shots???

2007-12-16T17:15:00.000-08:00

This week I had to take all three kids to get their second round of flu shots. Two days later Psalter is sick with a fever. I honestly don't remember the last time Psalter got sick, she never catches anything, so I'm convinced it's because of the shot. Getting them was an ordeal in itself...

I was telling the girls our agenda for the day. One of the errands involved the Dr.'s office. My too smart 4-year-old asked, "are we going to get shots?" How did she know? I couldn't lie, so I told her that we were. Well, bad mistake, I should have diverted her attention because then they both started wailing. We had about an hour before we could leave, so I endured my punishment for that next hour and the trip to the Dr.'s office. I almost decided not to go. I called the office to ask for the side affects of the shot. The lady that answered was grumpy with me and even said, "Well, they just got one, right, so they're the same." Arghh, I was glad she couldn't see me sticking out my tongue at the phone.

We got to the office and the usual friendly receptionists, who love it when we come in were busy and the only one open was the one I must have talked to on the phone earlier. No smile, no "may I help you?," just an expectant look. She asked for my birthday, I told her. tAP..TAP...TAP... She asked who I was here to see and I said I wasn't here to see anyone, my kids needed shots. She got grumpy with me because apparently I was supposed to give her my children's birthdays and not mine.
Arghh, again! Meanwhile my children were getting antsy because they realized that it was really happening. We finally got to the waiting room and waited...and waited...read some books...went to the bathroom...smiled at other patients...

We finally got taken back to a small room with just a shot chair in it. My girls started screaming, then they each got their shot, with me holding them-tight. And just like that it was over. Thank God!!! I had to get out of that room, it was closing in on me. Fortunately we had no more run-ins with "grumpy pants" and we actually saw some of the ladies that are always glad to see us. Some sweat nurses gave the girls a coupon for free ice cream. And what did I get out of it?? Besides the old gentlemen (God bless him) who told me in the waiting room that I was a remarkable woman (as I dragged my two screaming girls behind me to the shot room), I've got a sick child. Go figure...I THOUGHT we got them the shots to keep them from getting sick.

My Secret Obsession...

2007-12-12T18:12:00.000-08:00

The other day I walked into the girls room and all of Eliza's clothes were on the floor, out of her dresser drawer in neat piles. Exasperated I asked WHAT she was doing. Her response, "Mommy, my drawer was so messy, I couldn't find anything, so I'm organizing it!" Ahhhhhh....like mother like daughter.

So it's not so secret, but if you walked into my house you wouldn't notice my obsession, because my house is definately lived in. You would step on a few sippy cups, crunch a few cheerios or trip over our big plastic horse, need I say more? When the seed was sown, I was able to keep my obsession a secret, here's how:

In the elementary dorms at my boarding school we had a certain routine on Saturday mornings we had to follow before we were free to go outside and play. We had to fold all of our clothes, clean out and organize our cubbies, line up our shoes, dust our dressers, change our sheets, sweep our bedroom and do a chore for dorm upkeep. We had to have all of this finished, with our roomate and had to get "checked out" by a dorm parent. So, I loved this... I had to do it, but I would stay up late, hoping I wouldn't get caught out of my bed, and I would fold my clothes or organize my cubbie. I could disguise my obsession by the mere fact that all of us were in a race to get checked out first. To the despair of the middle schoolers in our dorm, we would wake up at the butt crack of dawn and start cleaning. They hated us for this and sometimes made us lock ourselves in the bathroom stalls if we were being too noisy. (wow, that sounds disturbing as I write this...).

So, my secret is out. If I had the time and energy (or a closet the size of Oprah Winfrey's dressing room closet...) and knew that it wouldn't be rearranged five minutes later, I would do this to every drawer and closet in our house. Sometimes the mess and clutter drives me crazy, but most of the time I'm too busy and too blessed by those who make the mess to care.

**my dream job: to work with TLC's "Clean Sweep" crew!

Oh, How I Love Glenwood!

2007-12-11T17:55:00.000-08:00

Recently my eyes and heart have be opened anew to my neighborhood with both its needs and its beauty. There are some things that I've noticed recently that have made me smile:

--watching a family play a game on a big mattress on their front porch. The mattress is still there, BTW.

--through my kitchen window, pausing to watch a young man across the street, in a big bulky coat, start to lift a pole with a cinder block on each end. He did a few curls, some squats, put down the contraption and punched the air like he was kick-boxing. Then as quick as he started he walked down the street, blending in with all the other young men walking the street.

--driving home today I saw a man sitting in his "breakfast nook", sipping a drink and reading the paper. Only, his breakfast nook is completely outside, in his front yard.

--seeing our neighbor, Ben pulling his cart around collecting things to recycle. He just makes me smile, especially when he opens his mouth and speaks in his high pitch squeaky voice and nothing makes sense or he reminds me to tell Marshall to push the cans to the road for trash pickup.

--seeing people hang out on their porches, neighbors stopping by to chat. We've lost some of that precious connecting in the middle class world!

--feeling the bass rattle and shake our windows as the cars pull up to our stop signs.

--our friend Ron makes our cars look so shiny using only one bucket of water!

--pausing at our fence to talk or pray with Susan, Ivy, Kim, Bo and some others. Knowing when they've walked away that they've sensed the moving of the Spirit.

There are plenty of things that happen here that both frighten and frustrate me, but why focus on those? I love my neighborhood, it's my home.

Favorite Foods from My Boarding School's Dining Hall

2007-12-10T19:10:00.000-08:00

I want to take a moment to thank Miss Marlene and her staff for all their hard, hard work in making our food three times a day. I know we were not an easy crowd to please and I'm sorry for my whining and complaining!! Now I know why you were grumpy all the time. You were teeny-tiny, so probably didn't feel authoritative enough to tell us to "bug off" when we were being immature, ungrateful little bugers. Little Miss Marlene, this is a tribute to you and all your service, despite the grumpy pants:

Pizza Loaf--my absolute favorite. Homemade bread wrapped around spaghetti sauce, meat and cheese. No one has been able to master this like our dining hall!

Meat and Cheese rolls, with hot tomato sauce--I know, sounds interesting, but they look like cinnamon rolls with meat or cheese in them and then smothered in tomato soup...hmmm

Croutons--I have never ever ever had better croutons than these homemade from French baguettes croutons, so crunchy, with just the right amount of seasonings-perfect! I would eat a whole bowl of them some nights when I was on the salad bar diet.

French dressing--this homemade dressing has ruined me for life. It was the perfect combo of thickness and flavor. I used it, along with peanut butter, to cover food I did not particularly like and was forced to eat. I have never met it's match.

Baked oatmeal--I don't know quite how you did it, but it tasted good to me. I would eat my friends' because she didn't like it and we weren't allowed to scrape any food, so...

Granola--are you sensing a theme? I love carbs and french dressing... this homemade granola was awesome. I would go back for seconds. Again, I have not found anything quite like it here.

There may be more, but most of what I'm remembering after these mentioned items, I still cringe over, so I think that I will stop for now. Thank you Miss Marlene and the wonderful staff, especially the guys that spoke Bwamu with me. I remember coming in the afternoons and helping you roll out the bread dough, put ingredients into the big mixer, helping you wash dishes and put stuff away in the walk in freezer. I had some fun afternoons helping out, before I became too cool.

Schawarmas?

2007-12-10T17:52:00.000-08:00

My heart swelled with excitement as I saw this word on the sign for Jack's Corner, along with "hommus," "chicken gyro," and "farafel." But I hadn't seen or thought about the word "schawarma" in a looong time. Back in Africa, at my boarding school (called ICA) our dorms would go on dorm outings once a trimester. We would load onto the school bus and ride into town to a nicer pool than we would usually go to on Saturdays.

We would bake in the sun for 3-4 hours while we slathered baby oil on our bodies and lemon juice or peroxide (not recommended) on our hair. Sometimes we would order a coke by the pool and the waiter would bring it with a wedge of lemon and a serving of peanuts. Some of you are saying, "That's the life!" Well, it gets better. At noon we would pile into the bus and drive to a restaurant or sometimes we would just walk out to the street and buy street-food. Some of these items included questionable cuts of meat fried and on sticks, fried plantains, fried sweet potatoes, roasted corn on the cob, bags of sugared peanuts or donuts. But one of our favorite places was the "Schawarma Shop." This was the name we gave it. You would walk up to a huge rotisserie of some kind of meat and they would cut off of it with a huge machete, place it in the wrap with sauteed onions and such. Yum! Yum! Yum! and with a cold bottle of Pepsi (Coke tasted better in Burkina Faso, but Pepsi tasted better in Cote d'Ivoire--don't ask me why...the only explanation for us was that the Coke factory in Burkina also made beer and they may not have thoroughly cleaned the vats?...hmmm...makes me wonder how thoroughly they cleaned the empty bottles we had to return to get more Coke...I'm still alive, I guess that's what counts!)

After lunch we would go back to the pool to bake ourselves some more. We would take naps by the pool, play Marco Polo and Keep Away, make up water ballet routines, have diving board competitions and sometimes we would even skate on the open cement floors near the hotel. And yes, I mean the big bad metal-wheeled-fit-over-your-shoe skates. Because we were so cool!!

So these are the memories that one word brought to my mind. May you never read this word the same way again. May you always think of me in Africa, in the hot, hot sun eating a schawarma and lovin' life!

Sweet Home, Burkina Faso...

2007-11-30T12:52:00.000-08:00

I'm singing, "Sweet home, Alabama...." as I write this. Last Sunday night I experienced the joy of watching my home, Burkina Faso, West Africa featured on "The Amazing Race." I don't know if any of you caught it, if not you could watch it online, I think. My parents served as missionaries there for 30 years, I lived there 18 years of my life, interspersed with a couple of furloughs and boarding school in Cote d'Ivoire. That's over half of my life. When I think about it, that's pretty significant in recognizing who I am as a result of living there. Watching it's effect on the contestants struck home the reality that it is a heart-grabbing place. It was interesting that the girl that "got it" was a Goth (I know that sounds so un-PC of me).

She and the other contestants had to go to a goat market, load up a bicycle with the goat, a chicken, several large jugs of water, some plants and other stuff. Then they had to ride the bicycle, past piles of garbage, through the open market (butchered meat hanging and raw fish laying out on tables, covered in flies--imagine!--no Harris Teeter experience here) and call out the name of the person they were to deliver the stuff to. Then they would get their next clue. She was really moved by the poverty, but yet the happiness or contentedness and generosity of the people. It literally brought her to tears.

Needless to say, it did me too. To see the familiar scene, I could even smell the raw, exposed meats, the piles of garbage, the local spices, the Arabic tea brewing and hear the chickens and goats in protest as they were being bought and loaded up. The memories are so vivid, but so unlike anything here. I could almost hear the children hollering, "Too-baa-boo," which means "white person," as they chased the contestants both out of excitement and curiosity. Oh, Burkina, I sure miss you and the joy mixed with sadness that you brought to my soul.

I Can't Do it Today!

2007-11-30T10:48:00.000-08:00

I can't be a supermom today. I was done before my feet hit the floor. I'm tired and I don't know why. I'm still in my PJs, it's 2:00 pm. My top is inside out, with a hole in the armpit and spit up all down the side...dried. My son did not take a nap this morning and remained grumpy, his "lambie" smelled like sour milk, so I had to wash it. The internet is slow. I found out that Clinton Kelly is gay. My hair looks like Whoopie Goldberg because I slept on it wet without combing it. I have dark circles under my eyes (because they aren't covered in makeup!). My stomach feels weird, maybe because I've had 4 cups of coffee to "wake up." My socks have many colored spots from play dough crumbs as I've walked through my newly mopped kitchen where Eliza was making a "snack" for us all. Psalter leaked through her diaper...onto her Snow White dress and the kitchen chair (which is also decorated with many colors of play dough mashed into the fabric--nice!). Jacob gagged on "real" food and spit up chunks of oranges, chicken and formula because Eliza kept shoving more food into his mouth when I wasn't looking. So I had to change his clothes, which is no easy task. I tried to have a "quiet time" with God, but after the umpteenth interruption I gave up. Psalter wanted to play "Little One" and Eliza wanted to play "Snack time" and Jacob just wanted me to hold him. All I wanted to do was find a port key to a remote cottage, with clean PJs, a cup of fresh, good coffee and gaze into a fireplace...or curl up on my couch and watch TLC for the day. Instead, I have three little people that want me and rely on me and I have laundry to fold and put away, a body to dress, phone calls to make, a dinner to concoct.

Although I haven't felt like being a mom today, I still was able to swallow my selfishness and "funk" enough to enjoy some precious reading time with all three, as they fought to sit in my lap...do some dancing to cheer everyone up, participate in the "snack time" that Eliza put together, enjoy watching her clean it all up without being asked, and now enjoy a long silence from Jacob as he sleeps and the girls as they watch Nick Jr. (Thank you, Lord, for the 3 months of cable we get during basketball season, it's like magic--they don't fight over what to watch!) Just goes to show, I really can't be supermom any day! Days like today show me that I cannot do it alone. Lord, show me how to live out of Your strength and life, because I'm done doing it alone.

Ode to the Last 10 LBs!

2007-11-26T13:19:00.000-08:00

I'm running out of excuses as to why you are still hanging around (no pun intended). Most days I hate you and I obsess over you in one way or another: As I try to wear my 'pre-third baby clothes' I end up changing 3 or 4 times. I'm too stubborn to buy new clothes that fit, so I wear the same ones. I think about not eating or exercising myself to death so that you will go away, then I just end up 'closet eating' and being too tired to exercise at all. I keep waiting for you to just "go away," but you won't.

If I'm completely honest, you've been around for the last 20 years because I've always wanted to lose just 10 more pounds and then I'd be happy. So I hope that you are happy with yourself and how many hours I've agonized over you and hated you. I'm sure I had you smiling at Old Navy last week as I tried on 10 pairs of different sized and different cut jeans. You put me in a rotten mood when none of them fit right. And the poor fitting room guy that caught my glares when he asked if those "worked for me" as I'm handing him an armful. (Sorry, Old Navy fitting room guy!)

Your days of victory will be over soon. I hate to tell you, but I'm learning to be content with you. You may stick around forever and may even invite some friends to hang with you. You know, I'm realizing that I have wasted so much time worrying over you. You've even caused friction for me in friendships because of comparisons or jealousy. Even though I've always seen you as a "thorn in my side" God is showing me that you are a gift. Most recently, you are the result of my beautiful son, Jacob. The stretched out stomach and widened hips are a blessing because of what they have brought me-three healthy children. You've also been a gift because you've shown me what I'm trying to find contentment in and that it's empty...I've never found it.

I'm still going to try to get rid of you, I will NOT let myself go. My new attitude, however, is compelling me to accept myself for who I am, right now and not focus on what I want to be (I will never get there and will waste my time trying). God has made me a beautiful creation and because of that I want to honor Him by taking care of myself. But that doesn't mean that I will necessarily lose you and I'm going to be okay with that! On a side note: thank you, J-Lo, for making hips and curves popular. I don't have the nerve or money to insure my butt for $1 million, but your confidence makes the rest of us feel like we can appreciate the curviness that we have and see it as beautiful.

Compassion Dilema

2007-11-13T13:43:00.000-08:00

"Excuse me, ma'am..." I heard as I was feeding Jacob his bottle at the Barnes and Noble in the Friendly Center (a nice outdoor mall area). I had seen this young girl out of the corner of my eye come and sit down at a table across the aisle from the man at the table next to me. I had assumed she knew the man and was waiting politely for him to get off the phone and acknowledge her. When he didn't even pause in his conversation or so much as glance her way, that caught my attention. So I focused in on her. Right then I saw why he was conveniently ignoring her. She was wearing a baggy gray hoodie pulled tight around her face, sleeves bunched in her hands like she was cold. Her clothes were dirty and dirt was smeared on her face. After the few moments it took for me to get over my shock of seeing someone like her at Barnes and Noble, I acknowledged her with my, "Hi!" She began to talk about how she and her brother were staying in a truck and they hadn't eaten in a few days and could I spare some change or buy them some food. Still stunned, I asked her if McDonald's was okay and she said it was. So I told her it would take a few minutes to pack up my baby. She told me to take my time and that she would be outside. Then she disappeared. I noticed an older man a few tables away eavesdropping on the conversation. I wondered what he was thinking. I wondered what the young man that ignored her was thinking, maybe, "Phew!" and glad it was me and not him dealing with her issues. Who knows.

My initial feeling was a sinking stomach. I had been debating going shopping with my gift certificates I got for my birthday or going for a walk because it was my free morning with just Jacob. I only had 45 more minutes of free time and now I had offered to buy some food at MickeyDee's. I knew that I couldn't just do that without hearing their story, asking them questions, praying for them. That's what they needed more than the empty, unhealthy calories I was about to fill their stomachs with. So the battle raged within me, compassion versus being inconvenienced or more like selfishness. I was used to dealing with this in my neighborhood, but I didn't expect to have to deal with it here. In fact I come here sometimes just to escape my conscience, drink a cup of expensive coffee and read up on celebrity news.

So, as I dragged my feet outside, I prayed that the Lord would change my whiny heart and give me compassion. I didn't want to give them food out of mere obligation or guilt, I wanted to share the gospel with them too.

I didn't see her on the curb or the bench outside like I expected. In fact, I walked to my car and looked around for a beat up truck...still didn't see her. I climbed in my car and waited for her to approach or call out across the parking lot. I drove around looking for her and couldn't find her. A mixture of relief, guilt and sadness filled me. I really did want to help her and talk with her. Did I not look hard enough? Had she been asked to leave because she didn't look like the norm for B & N? I ran an errand across town thinking about all of my emotions. The Lord assured me of His love for me and His love for this girl. He was big enough to take care of her, so I prayed for her. He gently reminded me that whenever I love and care for the "least of these" I'm caring for Him. "I tried, Lord." But then He reminded me that it's my heart motivation that He cares about, not my actions.

So, Lord, forgive me for my selfishness. Grant me the ability to give up my precious free time to share Your compassion with those who desperately need it! May I understand Your love for me to the point where it COMPELS me to share the gospel with everyone I meet whether through word, action or both. Help me to believe that it's this love that can overcome fear, selfishness and a hardened heart. Thank you for Your AMAZING love!!!

Look at Me! Look at Me!

2007-11-11T13:34:00.000-08:00

Last week I took the kids to Chick Fil-A for lunch and they were playing in the play area afterwards. It was the day that school was out, so lots of bigger kids were there terrorizing my small, timid children. So I was already annoyed by that, Psalter had been told to go away and I had to go up and pull her foot out of the netting at the very top level, meanwhile she's screaming her head off and the child that told her to go away was screaming thinking she was going to get into trouble and it was her fault. I think some of you get the picture.

I was ready to leave, but Eliza was having fun climbing, probably on all the areas she wasn't supposed to climb-oh well. This other bigger girl (second/third grade maybe) was balancing on the top of the opening structure right around where I was keeping track of Jacob. She kept saying, "Look at me! Look what I can do! Look at me!...." I ignored her at first hoping she would stop talking to me. Then when I realized she wouldn't I acknowledged her, "yes, you are balancing, good job!" I wanted to say, "Don't fall on one of my kids and stop asking me to look at you!" I know, I sound terrible, don't I? I was just so annoyed by her constant badgering for attention. I even had a "Phew" moment thinking, "I'm so glad my children aren't that needy for attention! Blah...blah...blah..."

Then the Spirit struck me, "That's you and pretty much everyone you know, including your children!" I realized that we all do the annoying, "Look at me, look at me!!" This girl could have come from a perfectly healthy home, just like my kids. But we all have the same longing, "look at me, notice me." It just plays out differently for all of us. For me it's, "notice me", not that I dress outlandishly or act obnoxious for attention. I mostly want to be noticed that I fit in, I'm acceptable. I'm more quiet about it and try to cover up the fact that I have this longing by appearing that I have it all together.

All of our insecurities that we obsess over: being in style, being in shape, having the nicest house or car, our kids dressing a certain way, etc. all of these come from the deep longing of simply wanting to be accepted. Our deepest longing is to be accepted for who we REALLY are. Some of us, me included, don't know who we REALLY are because we've assimilated into people we are not just to be accepted or prove ourselves worthy of acceptance. God has been working this out in me and helping me to see who I truly am and giving me the ability to accept myself as "Fearfully and wonderfully made." (Psalm 139) I still, however, cry out like this little girl. "I'm sorry, BTW, little girl for getting annoyed with you because you have really depicted my heart and my true longings. I will not easily forget you."

Wisdom From a Four-Year-Old

2007-11-11T13:16:00.000-08:00

The other day as I was having a quiet time, Eliza asked me to do something with her. Used to being interrupted, I said, "Not right now, I'm spending time with Jesus. When I'm finished talking with Jesus then we can play." Her response was, "I pray sometimes too, Mommy." I said, "Really, when do you do that?" Thinking she was talking about prayer time before bed or at the dinner table. But she answered, "Well, I just close my eyes and bow my head and pray to God alone in my room." I said, "What do you pray about?" "I just sit quiet and pray, Mommy." "I know, but what do you talk to God about when you pray?" "Nothing, Mommy, I just sit quiet and listen to God."

My eyes welled up with tears as I thought about what I could stand to learn from my 4-year-old! To sit and quiet my spirit enough to listen to my God. Isn't that what prayer is intended to be? Less talking from me and more listening to God. Oh, God, may my prayer life be more childlike: simple, expectant, full of faith and innocence.

Cute Things My Kids Say: Part 2

2007-11-06T06:15:00.000-08:00

One day some neighborhood girls were knocking on Dayna's (our housemate who rents the basement apartment)door. I hollered at 'em (in the 'hood' this means that I leaned out my window to talk to them). Eliza was standing behind me and asked, "Mommy, why are they a different color and still our friends?" So it gave me a chance to explain God's love for all people of the world no matter what race, socio-economic status, culture, He loves us all the same. And He calls us to love ALL just like He does. Her response, "Yeah, just like 'be ye kind one to another...'" (BTW, I didn't teach her that verse, her preschool beat me to it).

The night of the time change I was alone with the 3 kids and we had eaten dinner and it was only 5:30. What do we do for 2 more hours???? So we went to Chick Fil-A for ice cream to kill some time. For two days I had been working each day, so I hadn't worn makeup or worn anything other than beat up stretch pants and my bright red crocs (which I love). As we walked into Chick Fil-A I was waiting for Stacy and Clinton to jump out from behind the counter and hand me a Bank of America card with $5000 if I turned over my wardrobe (can you tell what my favorite TV show is?). The only redeeming quality and reason I MIGHT be acceptable here was because of my NorthFace fleece and red crocs. As we were leaving Psalter said, "Mommy, you look so pretty tonight. I like your shirt." I laughed silently and told her 'thank you.' Then Eliza piped up, "Mommy, when are you going to put on some makeup. Maybe you could wear some jewelry and a head band instead of a ponytail. Because you've been wearing a pony tail lots of days and you kinda look like Jenny from Oliver & Company."

Yesterday in the kitchen Eliza said, "Mommy, you're the best mommy!" I said, "Eliza, you're the best 4 year-old!" She responded, "No, mommy, I'm not, lots of times I'm bad." I asked why she thought that. "Because sometimes I take Psalter's toys when she just got them for her birthday...." She named a few more things that didn't make a lot of sense. I felt this was the perfect opportunity for a lesson on grace, so I took it. I explained how Jesus died for all of our "bad" stuff and so we can still be the "best" because Jesus is living in our hearts and through us. Eliza responded, "Mommy, that's just shocking!!"

I don't have much more from Psalter because it's been a lot of whining lately (welcome to the 3s!!!).

Overworked, Underpayed, and Usually Unappreciated, Yet I Love My Job...

2007-11-03T19:20:00.000-07:00

Lately I've been really striving to "stop and smell the roses" so-to-speak. I've realized that it's not so important to have the floor vacuumed, the dishes and laundry done or the toys picked up. It's more important to have puzzle races, play "Little One," color, tell stories, play peek-a-boo and give my children juice or a snack when they ask, not "...in a minute." No wonder they don't always do what I ask right away. I hear myself saying "...in a minute..." too often.

A few weeks ago a friend sent out an e-mail which contained a poem that was written by a young cancer patient. She was encouraging us all to stop and listen to the music, not dance our life or time away. It struck a chord with me. (no pun intended). Having some good friends who are struggling with cancer made it sink in even more. They suffer so much, yet they seize every moment of life and find the joy in it, no matter how simple or hard it is.

We decided last month that I should cut back on some work hours, so that I could spend more time with the kids. Can I tell you how much I'm enjoying it? Psalter benefits the most from it right now since Eliza is in pre-school 4 mornings a week. This past Wed. when Jacob was napping I experienced the sweetest moment with Psalter. We were playing Cinderella, I was Anastasia and I was taking a nap on her bed. I asked Psalter if she was going to tuck me in and she said "No." She went on her way and I lay there quiet. Then I saw her coming out of the corner of my eye. She knelt down, rubbed my head and started singing, "Jesus loves me, thisino....they are weak, but He is prong..." Then she leaned over and kissed me on my cheek (which was hiding a smile) and said, "I love you so much, Little One!" I wanted to cry, the emotion that welled up was so intense. I was so content to be who I was, where I was, right then. Those moments are the ones that make it all worth it. I wouldn't have "had the time" to experience it if I had let the other worries and duties get in the way. So, stop dancing through life--it WILL go on, stop and listen to the music. May you find peace and rest in the stopping and the listening.

Thank You, Lady in the Little Black Car!

2007-11-03T18:31:00.001-07:00

As you turned around the same moment I realized what I had done, I was sure you were cussing me out with a big, "F*** you!" As every emotion surged through me, as well as my own few choice words, I saw the big dollar signs, the grumpy officer, grumpy you and rightly-so frustrated husband. I was already late to pick up my oldest from a Halloween party and therefore late for another birthday party we were going to after that. I could see the disappointments everywhere.

But...you drove off. Then I realized you had been saying, "I'm F-I-N-E!" (Good thing I don't have to rely on my lip reading skills very often, huh?) Either you are not so attached to your worldly possessions or you were running late too, or maybe you knew that there was most likely no damage and didn't want to make it a big deal. Bless you, though, you did not even get out of your car to look and see IF there was damage. My big ol' mini van could have eaten your cute little car for breakfast, there was bound to be a scratch from the bump.

Anyways...thank you. And...sorry for my initial judgment and my stupidity. Hope I don't run into you again!

Back to Life, Back to Reality....

2007-10-26T13:49:00.000-07:00

That's the only phrase I can recall from that song. But it speaks loudly to what I've been experiencing these last few days. Marshall and I were able to attend a conference in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, ALONE. No kids, just us. That meant, sleeping through the night, exercising when we wanted to, at the same time even, getting just myself ready and out the door (I even wore eyeshadow, something that never happens here!), eating out with colleagues and having adult conversations all day long. It was such a refreshing time, though full of learning and interacting, it was different.

I really did miss the kids while we were away. I would show my new friends pictures and tell them stories, when they asked for them. We were so excited when we got home and Marshall's dad was going to bring them to us. He was minutes later than we had talked about, so I started to pace the floor and look out windows, ready to see, to touch, to kiss my babies. Then they came. It was a joyful reunion, excitement, smiles, hugs, "I missed my mommy!" comments over and over.

Then, also with them came reality. We didn't set up an ease in schedule where we could get back one child at a time until we got used to them again. I found myself floundering a little--"What do I do?" I had gotten so used to being on my own, I had to rethink some things for a couple of days. Along with the reality came some frustrations and disappointments...being late for preschool because I had to get four people ready and I had slept in (my response--throwing a shoe and breaking one of my window blinds, cursing the red lights and slow drivers on the way, shaming myself and my children for making us late); I forgot Eliza's lunch on lunch bunch day (I didn't even make one), I found out that I had signed up for a Fall Party in each class, no one could come to Psalter's original birthday party so I had to change everything, the dryer duct kept falling off turning our back room into a sauna, the house was a total disaster all week....

So, as I sped up again and filled my time with busy work, I continued to feel overwhelmed and out of control. Finally, by the end of the week I started to see again. I started to see my neighbors and talk with them, I started to spend time with each of my children individually and I chose time with the Lord over busywork or talking with friends. I realized that what I experienced in the previous paragraph was not reality, but me living out of my flesh (my fears, disappointments and my shame). The true reality is that Christ lives in me. Since He is alive, I can do all these things through Him. Praise the Lord that He is sovereign and gives me a gazillion chances to choose Him over my flesh. So today as I went to two different stores, with three kids, in the rain to look for flower girl shoes, I praised the Lord for the rain and for my three precious children that stomped through the puddles and made many people smile, including me.

EEEEk!!!!

2007-10-13T20:48:00.000-07:00

I saw it! It was little and black. It scurried across the floor in the blink of an eye. I was sitting on the couch in the living room when I saw it. My heart started pounding, "did I really see it? Was it just my imagination, just the lighting?" I would hear a sound..."was that a squeak?" I ran to the back of the house to find a trap, the whole time watching my back. Like it's going to jump out at me and take revenge for his cousin Rufus or his aunt Rosie. (Don't ask me where I got the names, they just sounded like mice names).

As I rummaged through several boxes I started to laugh at myself. I'm afraid of something smaller than the palm of my hand. Or am I afraid of what it represents? I remember the episode of Friends (underline) when Ross goes to his girlfriend's apartment, which is completely nasty. Food everywhere, stuff everywhere, no where to make-out. I'm thinking, "Is my house like that? Dirty enough for a mouse. I know there are cherios stuck on the floor and some crumbs under the table but..." Phew, I find the trap, stick some peanut butter on it. I make it snap. My heart saddens for the poor creature that chose my house this night. I start to think about all the sweet mouse movies like Stuart Little (underline) and The Rescuers (underline-pitiful, I know). Those were sweet mice that did a lot of good.

Oh well, my mercy runs short when it comes to finding droppings in my pantry and sticky urine on my silverware (I'm not joking). Sorry little mouse. You are a marvelous creation of the Father, but not fit for my house. I wish you had stayed outside and I hope you stop taunting me with little squeaks and moans from behind the stove. I will wait for the SNAP!, I will squirm and feel sad for a moment, then I will get Marshall to take you outside to join the "others."

This Potty Train is NOT Moving!

2007-10-11T13:35:00.000-07:00

Yes, that's right. I have an almost 3 year old (in two weeks)who is not AT ALL interested in potty training. In fact a couple of months ago she WAS interested in wearing panties. She had been starting to dress herself and show more independence in other ways too, just like her older sister had when she was ready. So...I started to get excited and said, "Well, if you want to wear panties, you have to go pee-pee in the potty." Pretty self explanatory, you'd think. We even went to the potty to practice. She sat down and got up exclaiming, "I did it, I went potty." Well, hopeful thinking as I looked in to find it dry as a bone, nothing, nada, zilch.

So we proceeded through our day in panties. Several times I walked through puddles on the floor and carpet. Each time I'd check her panties, yes they were wet, so we changed them and talked about how she needed to run, run, run to sit on the potty when she started feeling them get wet. "Okay, mommy!" she would say. And then it would happen again. After the sixth pair of underwear and making her help me clean up the messes and showing her how to sit on the potty, I said, "Okay, Psalter, let's not wear panties and when you start to feel wet down your legs, run to the potty." I had heard that this worked for some moms, so I decided to try it. Well, needless to say, I walked into the living room a while later, to a very familiar stench (only this time it was not enclosed in a diaper). I found the two culprits, on the carpet--NICE--. Several toys were mashed inside. Yeah, those got thrown away. And yes, that was it for potty training. I found the wipes and a diaper and I covered that naked bottom.

Now that she is in a preschool class, I had hopes that some of her younger classmates (who are already potty trained) would rub off on her. But no such luck, yet. I asked her a few weeks ago when she wanted to be a big girl and use the potty. She responded, "Mommy I am a big girl!" "Yes, Psalter, you are, but grown up girls learn to use the potty." She said, "Mommy, I want to be a grown up and still wear a diaper!" I felt like retorting, "Well in a few years you'll have to hire someone to wipe you and change you because at 5 years old, I'm done!!" I'm not really stressed about it. In fact, it's more stressful potty training. I sort of dread the big grocery stores where you're in the middle, with a full cart of merchandise and three kids and one of them says, "Mommy, I've got to go potty." And they mean, NOW! So, I don't mind keeping her in diapers for now, it's pointless to teach her before she's ready. Besides, I don't know that I want my little girl to grow up quite yet.

Things I'm Realizing I Like About Myself...because it's me!

2007-10-08T12:23:00.000-07:00

I'm always late--at least by 5-10 min., if not more. It doesn't matter how early I start out. I'm still on "African time!"

I cry (more like sob) while watching things like: The Biggest Loser, ABC's Home-Makeover show, Rudy and Baraka Boys (must watch!). Oh, and also, those commercials for "help this child for only 20 cents a day..."

Most of my wardrobe is from yard sales, hand-me-downs, thrift stores or clearance racks.

I put the music on, when it's just me and the kids and we dance like crazy. (I don't know if I should be offended that they laugh at me).

I love deep theological discussions.

I'm naive enough to run (at night) after one of the neighborhood prostitutes to make sure she knows that Jesus loves her and she can come over anytime to talk.

I'm more comfortable serving others than being served.

I know when a waiter or waitress is "in the weeds." I love to encourage them and leave them a nice tip.

I love to travel--especially by air. I love airports, watching people and eavesdropping on their conversations or striking up one with the person beside me, but usually eavesdropping.

I love to make things like mosaics and cards.

My love language is time.

I get embarrassed for people, even in movies. I cringe in pain for people like Michael Scott from "The Office" or movies like "Kiss the Girl" when Drew Barrymore makes a fool out of herself in many situations. Sometimes I've had to leave the room because I can't take it anymore.

I love going to or watching Carolina football and basketball games and NASCAR races with my husband. I even watch the games or races on TV when he is out of town.

I'd rather talk to people face to face than over the phone or e-mail.

I'm invigorated with a run or walk outdoors.

I enjoy simple things in life: an orange moon, a star sprinkled sky, the calm before the storm, then the storm, walking barefoot through squishy mud or a creek, the wind in the trees, the fresh scent of spring flowers.

I love to roll down a grassy hill, holding my children, listening to them and myself giggle with glee all the way to the bottom. Then hearing, "Let's do that again!"

And lastly, not that this is all, but for now: I'm so thankful that my heart is (usually) open for God's continuous work, shaping me, refining me and allowing Him to love my family and friends through me.

***I still haven't figured out how to underline things on this site, so excuse all the errors. I'm technologically slow. :)

Somebody Slap Me...Please!!!

2007-10-04T12:26:00.000-07:00

So this last week or so with my kids has been great. I've been submitting to the Lord, dealing pretty well with my daily junk and being nice to my kids. Actually, I've really been enjoying them. Especially Jacob because he's still a mystery and exploring everything. I've been quite smitten with him, really, maybe because he's probably the last one.

So back to the slapping part. Yeah, someone needs to because I've been thinking the last few days..."I think I could have another...I think I might want one more..." AM I CRAZY? AM I KIDDING MYSELF??? So someone talk some sense into me. The last time I felt this way I was already pregnant....

Cute Things Kids Say...

2007-10-02T14:56:00.000-07:00

After we dropped off Vicky, one of our neighborhood friends, at the shelter to eat Eliza asked: Mommy, why do we have to drive people places? Me: because some people don't have a car and can't walk that far. Eliza: why doesn't Vicky have a car?
Me: Some people don't have enough money to have a car. Eliza: Well, mommy, we have two cars, we could give one of ours to Vicky!
(oh the lessons we could learn from such sweet innocence!)

Psalter: "Pwinkle, Pwinkle wittle star..." "Mommy, I want a special pweat." (treat)

Psalter dropped something under her chair and screamed, "Argh, get it, mommy!!!" Eliza's response: "you have two legs, you pick it up." (where did she hear that?????)

Eliza while pretending to talk on the phone: "Hey Girl! Oh my gosh, you have got to be kidding. you cannot be so serious!! Oh my gosh!!"

Eliza: "Daddy, we have tongue bugs." Telling Marshall about taste buds.

Mommy: "When you learn how to spell you'll know what we're talking about."
Eliza: "Will the spell get broken later?"

"I have a bottom, but Jacob has a tail." Psalter to her Sunday school teacher.

Eliza: Jesus died for the cross for our sins. "Well, if that's what you say, I trust you God."

Eliza: Jesus asked us to have a sleepover in heaven with Him.

Psalter: A B C D E F G H I Jacob (singing)

Eliza: (sigh) I give up.

Eliza: I don't want to see your tummy, daddy. Marshall: why not? Eliza: because it's furry.

Psalter to a friend that came to visit: "my daddy and Jacob have peanuts!" "Do you have peanuts?" (BTW, he was a guy!)

Psalter reading her Bible: Jesus complained A LOT!! Diane: don't you mean the Jews?
Psalter: no, I mean Gropey. Diane: Who's Gropey? Psalter: One of Jesus' siples! (disciples)

Life is Worship

2007-10-02T12:14:00.000-07:00

This is the inscription I read on the back window of a car as it merged onto I-85 near Durham the other night. I was driving back from visiting my mother-in-law and all was quiet in the car-so far, so good. I was listening to worship music and enjoying the dark night sky with the sprinkle of starlight...and the occasional deer (on the side of the road--fortunately for them and for me!).

After I read the sign I began to think about it--is my life worship? If I could look down and take a fragment of my day and watch it, would it look like worship? My first thought was from the "Accuser" (of course). "No, your life would not look like worship, but it would look disjointed, chaotic, anxious." That was a pretty accurate synopsis, at least for what my life has felt like lately. My responses to life, especially to my children, are often in anger, impatience, resentment, you name it. I hear myself trying to shame them into obedience, screaming at them, "Stop screaming and be quiet!!" That probably makes A LOT of sense to 3 and 4 year olds.

I was contemplating all of this and feeling like a huge failure because my life is not worshipful--to God anyway. Then the Lord spoke gently to me, "Diane, worship is not an act, but a state of your being." Meaning, I don't have to achieve or even give the act of worship, it is simply lived out by how I choose to live. Now I could choose to worship my flesh (which is the picture that I saw at the beginning), or I could worship God with my life by choosing to surrender to His control and by believing that what He says about me is true. As Romans 12:1 says, "Offer yourselves as living sacrifices (just as you are), holy and pleasing to God (I used to think this meant I had to attain holiness BEFORE I could worship---that's a hopeless thought, but I believe He's saying that offering yourself, as you are, IS holy and pleasing to God because it's recognizing Christ in us and living out of His holiness. That's what He wants from us, giving Him complete reign so that He can live out of us)...THAT is your spiritual act of worship."

So, yes, my life is worship, whether its worship of God as I surrender to His love and sovereignty in my life, or it's worship to my flesh, which only brings disaster and the need for God's grace and mercy. Godly worship, essentially, is a continuous broken heart before God--THAT is my spiritual act of worship--acknowledging the need for Him as my LORD!

Little Bunny Foo-Foo

2007-09-26T13:26:00.000-07:00

I've recently seen the different personalities of my 3 and 4 year olds come out. A few weeks ago the girls were doing a great job of playing together-a few fights, but no major drama. As I was probably cleaning something up, I heard a rhythmic rocking sound. Knowing that we don't have a rocking horse I went into the room to investigate. There was lots of laughing involved too. I walked in on them jumping on one of their beds. These beds are not spring beds, but "cheapo plywood on the bottom and that's it beds." So I told them to stop and went about my business. Not five minutes later I hear the sound again. Angry this time, I went in there and told them to stop and if they didn't they would get a spanking.

Thinking that would resolve it, because it usually does, I left again. 2 minutes later I heard the same sound... So I RAN in there this time, seething. (I fear what my face must have looked like). My four year old, Eliza said, "I'm sorry, mommy, I'm sorry mommy..." I said, "Sorry is too late," and I grabbed her and swatted her on the bum. She said, "That didn't hurt." I set her on her bed and grabbed the three year old, Psalter, nailing her (I knew this by her wail)on the back of her leg. Then I went back to Eliza and spanked her again--this time she cried.

So angry, I had to leave the room and I told them they had to sit on their beds in "time out" too. They were both wailing for a while. When they finally stopped I went in to talk with them. I asked the Eliza, "why did I have to spank you?" She wailed out, "I said I was sorry." Then I asked the Psalter the same question and she responded with a shrug and "I don't know." So I explained to them that I spanked them because they disobeyed me THREE times when I asked them to stop jumping on their bed. After my reasoning, Eliza is still distraught from being called out and punished, Psalter looks up at me, with a glint in her eye and matter-of-factly tells me, "Mommy, I was being little bunny foo-foo." Like, there's nothing wrong with that and what's the big deal, mommy.

I had to hide my face in my shirt as I laughed. Eliza was so distraught over getting in trouble, our rules-keeper and my free-spirited child was only upset because the spanking hurt, she did not know why she got a spanking or time out, that was just an inconvenience. In her mind, playing little bunny foo-foo on her bed made perfect sense.

Oh what a joy to have 2 such different and beautiful personalities! Oh Lord, give us the strength and wisdom to discipline and train up each one according to what would be emotionally and spiritually healthy for them.

3 o'clock baby

2007-09-21T19:44:00.000-07:00

I'm going to start calling my 8 month old, "3 o'clock baby." For the past couple of weeks he's been waking up at 10:30, 3:00 and 6:00. Yes, he's my third and you'd think I'd have it figured out by now. I know people who's 3 month old FIRSTBORNs are sleeping through the night. But is my THIRDBORN? No chance. A month or so ago I asked the Lord what else He wanted from me, feeling like He was punishing me for something I was with-holding. But in a small gentle voice I heard Him ask me, "Why do you think I'm doing this to you?"

Well, I don't know...I guess I don't believe that God is punishing me, this is just a part of life. But I'm so ready for at least a 6 hour block of sleep. This is the point of parenthood that I'm throwing out all the books on baby's sleep. "Babywise", yeah dream on. Letting him cry it out is like torture because he literally screams like he's being tortured, it wakes up both of his sisters, so now I have three screaming children. Yeah, tried it, didn't work, not the answer. So, I just do the best I can, I get up, nurse him and go back to bed. Oh and sometimes I punch things because I'm so frustrated, like last night I was so angry I punched the leather chair in his room. At least it's padded...

Afterwards, as I felt my hand throb, I started to think about how this time really won't last. I won't be able to hold him like this much longer. And in 16 years he's probably not going to want me around as much. So why not be his superstar for right now. I'm his celebrity, the one he wants to see all the time, the one he's looking for. Not much longer, so enjoy the time now. I'll eventually get a full night's sleep, right now it's a delight to serve him, even if it's at 3 o'clock in the morning.

Susan

2007-09-18T14:06:00.000-07:00

Susan, when I saw you walking the streets again this morning, my heart broke for you. Why do you run? The Savior is right there, waiting, ready for you to come to Him, ready to save you from yourself and this cruel world. He loves you so much, He pursues you, but you ignore His gentle voice.

And why wouldn't you, no one's left you any reason to listen and trust. You've been used, abused, rejected and judged for so long. Why would you believe what He says about you is true: that He knit you together in your mother's womb...He knows how many hairs are on your head...He saw your innocence taken from you and wept for you...He saw when you took your first "hit" of drugs and He saw when you first sold yourself for money, drugs or just a place to lay your head and yet He did not pick up a stone.

He's forgiven you already because He loves you, He wants to call you His own. He created you to love Him and glorify Him. He longs to peel off that ugly cloak of shame and clothe you with His beauty, His glory and His love. He's already forgiven you, Susan. You've come so close to believing that for yourself, but then you turn in fear and run. You run back to the life you know, it's comfortable to you because you've lived it so vividly. Why chance being vulnerable and broken, that's what got you to where you are today. But the truth remains...He's calling you. Whether that's through me or in another way, He will keep calling.

You are God's gift to me because you allow me to take my selfish eyes off myself and soften my heart towards God's incredible creation--people. You also provide me a physical picture of my spiritual life. I'm often running from God's gentle voice, running back to the things that are comfortable, of my flesh. I'm often hiding beneath a heavy cloak of shame, when I'm not choosing to believe what God says about me. The evil one wants to devour our hope and leave us in a pit of despair. But it's time to fight back. I'll fight with you, Susan, I love you.

Uncontrollable Laughter: a tribute to my friend Joy

2007-09-17T12:32:00.000-07:00

My parents came to visit this weekend. One night we sat around (like we usually do) and reminisced about some missionaries and their families. I took a walk down memory lane that night as I remembered my best friend from boarding school, Joy. We don't talk anymore, not by my choice, but I couldn't help but remember and smile about the times that we used to laugh.

Have you ever laughed so hard that you cried and/or peed your pants? Have you ever been in a serious situation, where you were supposed to be quiet, but you broke out in uncontrollable laughter--the seriousness of the situation made you laugh harder? That was Joy and I. We would be in church, Sunday School, Class or a dorm meeting and these kicks of uncontrollable laughter would take hold. We would just look at each other, know what the other was thinking and burst into laughter.

I remember one such occasion at lunch in our dining hall. We ate lunch as a whole school, family style. Joy and I got into one of those laughing moods and couldn't stop. Someone asked me to pass them the peas and for some reason that was hilarious to me and I spewed my mouthful of food all in front of me, which made us laugh harder. Another time, Joy was attacked by a very small monkey (BTW, monkeys are not cute, they are evil!)as it jumped from a tree limb onto her head and started to bite her ear, in which it proceeded to bite off her earing and store it in his cheek--what in the world? As I observed, I couldn't believe what was happening, but also couldn't stop laughing long enough to call for help.

I miss those moments of uncontrollable laughter. It always felt so good, so freeing! I rarely laugh like that now, maybe it's because life is not as care free as it used to be-I have to act like an adult now. Or maybe it's because I haven't clicked with anyone like I did with Joy. Who knows, but I miss you Joy. I hope that one day we can laugh like this together again...

Where is my "Africa"?

2007-09-16T11:11:00.000-07:00

This past Wed. Marshall and I packed up the kids and drove up to Asheville to attend one of my best friend's "commissioning" service. She and her husband are going on the mission field under the Southern Baptist convention, so their commissioning took place at a humongo church. As we walked into the service, I had some mixed emotions. I mostly felt familiarity because I grew up going to these--usually dreading them because I didn't like to stand out, I was then treated differently once everyone knew I was a missionary kid. (Besides the fact that my parents sometimes made us wear terrible "angel" dresses, as we called them. They were like big mu-mus made out of African cloth and then sometimes we had to sing African songs,in front of the church--talk about a popularity-killer).
As the service went on, all 48 missionaries had a chance to share where they had started on this journey and where they were being sent. As they shared, interspersed with lines from a worship song, my heart started to come alive again. I started to feel things that I had forgotten, love for other cultures, the people of the world that are so interesting and important. My heart started to break again for the oppressed, the poor in devastating situations who don't know Christ. As my heart softened, I began to remember some of my experiences in Africa. I knew some about what these missionaries were about to face because I've experienced a different culture. I've seen extreme poverty, grew up seeing it as the norm. We were rich when we lived in Africa. And then we came to the U.S.
Although we are still rich, I don't always see it like that any more. The longer I've lived in America, the more desensitized I've become to materialism. I used to not care what was in my wardrobe, what kind of car or job I had, I was content to have little. The longer I'm here, I care too much. I find myself coveting lots of different things, thinking, "if only I had 'this' or 'that' I would be content." Sometimes I get "this" or "that" and then I'm still waiting to feel the contentment. Even worse, I start to feel like I deserve those things! Living in the inner city has helped me keep a lot of this in perspective, as we see poverty on a daily basis. But even then, I can drive across town to pick up my kids from preschool (the comfortable side of town) or go clean the million dollar palace and my struggle starts all over again.
I was thinking about this during the missions conference as the speaker was talking about giving ourselves as a living sacrifice (which he equated to a broken heart before God). He talked about when we offer that up, God is able to open our hearts to caring for the lost of the world and once He does that, there will be an inexplicable joy in our hearts. As I soaked it all in, the familiar surroundings (a missions service), the talk and the fact that I was in the presence of missionaries, my heart felt warm, comfortable, alive.
So...what do I mean by "Where is my 'Africa'?" Where is the part of me that I shutdown so many times because it doesn't fit in this culture of consumerism, it's unpopular, it's forgotten. It involves needs instead of wants. It's not a slave to the clock or money. It's taking the time to enjoy others and family. It's living simply, being blessed by all that we receive. It's giving generously to those in need. It's living, ready for the opportunity to care for others. That is the gift that Africa gave to me. This is the part of me that I want to continue to come alive and remember. I want my "Africa" to become home again!

Where's the Joy in the Mess?

2007-09-09T14:31:00.000-07:00

Ironically, after my last post, I really struggled with the mess in my house. Isn't it amazing/frustrating how when God enlightens us with something, the accuser brings on the struggle full force. Well, this week I did nothing short of curse under my breath as I picked up Barbie shoes, wet diapers, the same shoes a hundred times, etc. I even cleaned my house the other day, yelling at my children to stop crying about the loud vacuum...mopped the floor in the kitchen that had black splotches all over (what was that?). And then, not ten minutes later, I walk into the kitchen to see a puddle of orange juice all over the table, chair and floor. After cursing under my breath while I cleaned up the mess I scolded my children and probably stored away another therapy session for them as adolescents. I had to cool off by taking a shower. I had pretty much had it.

In the shower, the place God seems to be able to speak to me the most, I felt a tug at my heart. I felt the Lord drawing me back to Himself. I realized that I spend so much time and energy cleaning up my house, when I really just do it to ignore the mess inside. I was hardening my heart towards my children, blaming my lack of control on the mess they make, rather than realizing that my lack of control was coming from ignoring the mess in my heart.

So, you'd think that this insight would have moved me to make a change of some sort, or rather spend more time in prayer (which I didn't make time for). The next day I woke up in more of a funk than ever. It was the worst day I've had in awhile. Fortunately the day after was Sunday, which is today. During the sermon our pastor was talking on prayer and having us walk through the steps of the Lord's prayer. The very beginning is acknowledging God's holiness/praise to Him. As I tried to focus and quiet my heart to praise Him for who He is, not just what He's done, the Holy Spirit gently spoke to me. I realized that God doesn't need me to praise Him--He is so Holy and worthy of praise the mountains and rocks cry out to Him. No, God doesn't need me to praise Him, I need me to praise Him. Praising God takes my eyes off myself (my selfish wants, my sin, my pride). So, hence, the answer to my title, "Where's the Joy in this Mess?" it's in praising God. He is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness--all the fruits I want to bear to my family and then others. So, praising Him means taking my eyes off of me and my mess, (which ultimately comes from a lack of abiding in Him), and focusing on Him.

***Okay, so patience would be good here as I hear my almost three year old scream in the highest pitch, EVER!!! BTW, it turned out that her sister was holding the door to the TV cabinet-???? Who knows!!

So, my hope and prayer is that the Lord would teach me to praise Him in the mundane: changing a diaper, cooking a meal, cleaning, laundry, driving kids to school. I pray that He will grant me the humility to praise Him in the hard things: struggles with my flesh, conflicts with others, disciplining my children, loneliness and disappointments! That I would learn to praise God in all things, even in the mess... Thanks for letting me process!

Why Won't the Mess Just Go Away?

2007-09-05T14:14:00.000-07:00

In a perfect world, I would be able to get out of bed in the morning and walk across my bedroom, through the foyer and to the bathroom without spraining my ankle on the 10 pairs of shoes or the Little People scattered around.

In a perfect world, I would be able to walk barefoot through the kitchen without stepping on a bead or walking through a sticky patch from yesterday's juice spill or a mushy crust of bread and be able to make my coffee without hearing the crash of 100 toys being dumped out of box a couple of rooms away.

In a perfect world, my children would pick up after themselves before they got out a new toy. They would sweep up the crumbs under their chairs from their breakfast lunch and dinner. They would pick up their dirty clothes and soggy diapers that they remove each morning, so that I wouldn't have to step on them throughout the day. They would scrub down the chairs and door frames that have a layers of yogurt, ketchup and peanut butter.

But praise the Lord that I don't live in a perfect world. Because in a perfect world I would not need to experience the unfailing love of God. In a perfect world I would not need to grow in humility and patience. In a perfect world I would not need to ask God for the grace to love my children each moment of every day like I do in my imperfect world.

Finally joining the century!!

2007-09-05T13:25:00.000-07:00

Many of you will be shocked that I'm actually setting up a blog. Yes, I can be technically savvy if I want to be! I don't know why I've been so against blogging, maybe because I felt like it was impersonal or maybe because I felt like I was missing out on important things because I knew I wouldn't have or take the time to read other people's blogs.

I have humbled myself greatly, especially for my husband's sake. I know that he is gifted in writing and really blesses others through his blog. I have also enjoyed and sympathized with some of my friends as they have processed their thoughts by writing on their blogs.

So "goodbye" pride and "hello" world... And so ends my first blog.