Its Great having a brother-in-lawOne you can surprise...





On his Birthday...


hklio

My Tangerines...

They grow in my back yard!!! In December...

Sleeping Bags & other tricks

I like saving time...
by sleeping in sleeping bags,
brushing my teeth and rinsing out the sink.
I hate wasting time...
as in pumping gas: it plummets my mood in short order.
Or that sucky second when Facebook sucked me in again.
I hate saving time...
as in texts when I wanted voice...
or voice when I wanted touch.
I like wasting time...
by working on things of no tangible importance...
as in blogs and books and other brilliant things of imagined importance.
I like saving time...
to wasted it on things of imagined importance.

The Vision

My heart didn’t get what it wanted…that’s the short and the long of it: A collage of disappointments, the big break, a love of my own. A season of creeping bitterness unlike anything I have ever experienced wove a dampening-fog-web within me. At first I thought I could shake it off with reasoning…logically deduce my disappointment away…but there was no real reason. Where a logical reason appeared, its voiding retort flipped right up. It was unfair and not right. My conscientious bent to life, my spiritual world-view had made me choose principles above inclination, the right above the feel-good. And by contrast and comparison; I had received less then my due. Asaph had it right. “I’ve been stupid to play by the rules; what has it gotten me?” Ps.73:13. I was discouraged, offended and betrayed.
I dared not voice the volcano of emotions that churned within me...I am a spiritual leader, a counselor friend, a good-little-church-girl, according to one facebook tag. And that’s the jab. I am questioning God. More than that, I am comparing my life-plate with that of others…and it comes up short. I’m sick of thinking of those less fortunate, I am tired of looking at the ‘eternal perspective’, I am fed up with ‘dieing to self.’ My normally surrendered, your-will-be-done prayers are turning into stony- blockade silences or outburst of answer- demanding tirades.
My disaffected spirit troubled me. The lack of feelings of loyalty and affection for the God of my childhood and youth jarring me more then the reasons that had prompted those feelings to begin with. In a moment I sensed how easy it is would be to walk away from the One you have centered your life around. If feelings kept me believing, then they weren’t there so where was my belief?
What was my belief in? Maybe that was the point. With a dawning dread I was brought face to face with a picture of me; maybe, just maybe, I was serving God more for the cookies and milk than any altruistic, high principled reason. My real loyalties might lay more with a Santa- Claus-God or the unconsciously God projected by my self-centered consciousness than by any biblically faithfully revelation of God.
It was about that time that my devotions took me to the book of Job. The submersion into the Job-story was uncannily perfect, even though I expected no ‘new’ insight. The raw edge to my devastated hopes glued my heart to the solitary Job, questioning where he questioned, extolling my ‘virtues’ where he did his and wonderingly admiring his steadfast faith in the face of it all. What would normally have taken me a couple weeks I finished in a couple days! The climax of God’s whirl-wind arrival into the conversations paused my heart. Maybe this time I would find an answer to the ‘whys’ on my heart. But the disappointment was real. God’s marshaled answer was an eight-plus question session; with more statements to back up the questions! He didn’t answer Job’s questions! He didn’t clear up Job’s charges, He didn’t even explain the big picture!
I didn’t get it. I just didn’t. Whatever it was Job got it. He humbly repents for “babbling about things far beyond him”. Job 42:3 Of course, good ‘ol faithful Job would get. But I didn’t it. It just seemed like a blow off, a rudeness par-excellence! But Job’s repentance is premised by a statement: “I have heard of you but now I see you” Job 42:5. Job saw a vision of God that put Job’s questions to rest.
I walked on my frustration, because I couldn’t certainly walk it off! If that is the answer to my questioning heart, then God “I want a Vision of You!” I went back to the text and shimmered in the questions. According to the passage, God’s questioning discourse disseminates from within a whirlwind. The vision of God is a verbal palate that sets of God’s phenomenon Creative genius from the cosmic scale to the earth seasons and creaturely order, detail and sustaining power.
I’m still pondering its significance.

"It is for our own benefit to keep every gift of God fresh in our memory.

By this means faith is strengthened to claim and to receive more and more.

There is greater encouragement for us in the least blessing we ourselves receive

from God than in all the accounts we can read of the faith and experience

of others."

The Ministry of Healing, 49

Three dollars and some odd cents. I had milk in the fridge, a few cans of beans, some left over white rice and peanuts. There was less than half a tank of gas and work to do in town...seventeen miles away. I decided not to tell a soul...to bring it before the God who owns the cattle on a thousand hills.

I half wondered if it wasn't my pride speaking. I mean after all, independence has kind of been my trade mark. Not that its all bad, but I had sort of overdone it at times...the self-sufficiency turning into an obnoxious block against all kinds of what I perceived as neediness behavior, which actually was often just healthy inter-dependance. I don't exist in a vacuum; I totally need other people and I'm getting better about being open and vulnerable; but on the other hand I wanted to exercises my Sunflower-Impulse. My turning to God as First, Best and Last in my life.

He did it! I didn't breath a WORD to a human and He did!

I was given a loaf of Berry Bread...

A jucy watermelon...

Gas money in exchange for a ride...

and cash sent because of an impression...

The Lord is faithful...the Lord is faithful to little ME! My bread and water was provided and it even came back buttered!

Yoked and Harnessed

I must say it is faith-building. 

No, I mean it really is. I'm still some times such a skeptic that Godly and Great marriages can be made that God sometimes spins me around to take a second look at a few of them. And with my peers falling of the single-band wagon left and right (literally!) I'm having plenty of opportunities!

Vienna found me catching up with Rina and Cosmin!

Rina being my Weimar College roommate and once-upon-a-time fellow conspirator to a life single devotion to God. Meaning no marriage! PTL some things do change! They were on a European Vacation that throbbed with mission. It included a whole array of tracts in several languages, a youth mission in Romania and consistent other-centered love to those around them. They never seemed to meet a stranger! It was our first time together after their Evangelistic Wedding in December and as we traded stories I felt a smile creep into my inner being. The are not only yoked in marriage but boy are they harnessed into ministry together...Rina just finished her Master in Music and Cosmin is in the throes of the end of his English one! Ministry together on a small college campus has its challenges but what a duo of influence! Rina had a certain calm glow that I haven't really seen before and Cosmin surprised me with being humble and intelligent...I mean to say that his servant's heart compliments his brains...and vise versa. Did I save myself or what?
The garden's hard work was catching up with me and I was dead-tired all over Vienna that weekend but not only was it fun to hang with these guys but it was soul-filling was well. I was thrilled to hear Cosmin's testimony and their mutual focused committed to God's ways and will was truly inspiring. I'm still working on all the fascinating books English-minded Cosmin recommended!

Kamila and Eric!

I hadn't seen Kamcha in years!

We attended College of Evangelism of Canvessing together. I hadn't seen her since. It was rumored that she had married an American-boy (she is Czech) and that they were doing ministry together in Czech. It was all true! I bused myself over to a charming town a couple hours south of Prague. A laughing Kamila (PTL some things don't change ) tumbled out of a car loaded with canvassing books! I was deeply impressed. Turns out they are full-time L.E.er's in Czech. Making a living by spreading His Word! Eric turns out is laid-back fellow SAUer who had left it all for Mission-Calling without a clue of where or what. His story was amazing and I thought again how perfect he seemed for Kamila's sanguine sunshine.
As we talked and walked around the town and tried Kamila's [pasta-poppy-seed master piece. I marveled at God and His ways. Their Love-Story is principled and tender and humorous! Their current lives a true testament of unselfish love for each other and others.
No wonder that counsel says that the greatest testament to the validity of the Christian message is a Christian home! When I arrived back at the Farm the next day, someone asked me if I'd fallen in love. I laughed out loud. "Why do you say that," I asked. "Because you're glowing" was the replay. I thought about that. Being around pure, unselfish love had rubbed off a glow on me.
Faith-building. Not so much in the sense that maybe it could happen to me, though I would be lieing out right if I denied it, but more in the sense that God's power can take two different and imperfect humans and create a harmonious and happy home! And it blesses others. It did me.
Love is real...God is love.

Czech[ed] in the Garden

Celery stalks...

Row upon row of beets...

If I were to be totally frank. It's not what I had in mind when I came to Czech.

But as is often the case when God shifts the plans, it was exactly what I needed. My original impulse to go to Country Life Czech was to shimmer in the Vegetarian Restaurant Ministry for future reference.                                                                                             I arrive in Czech and 

for one or another reason I'm planted in the Organic Farm. Restaurant vs. Farm...Farm vs. Restaurant--just a tad different I'd say. But I've been on this journey long enough to once in a while remember that the Master knows what He is doing, even when I'm lost in transit. Still I couldn't help but think, as I struggled in a particular obnoxious patch of weeds, that I could have just as easily pulled weeds in the states! The thought quickly evaporated.
I'm not the least bit exaggerating when I say that the it was a sterling 20-odd days! I absolutely relished the hard work. My childhood-trained stamina competed with the forces of nature in one glad race. The sun, rain, mud, aching-muscles all of it rested my mind and strangely enough, also my body. The sleep of a working-woman is sweet!

There is something about productive physical labor frees the spirit like no other. Forget the rush of the RUSH or any other Fitness Complex. Give me a garden! I knew all this of course. But after years of academia, the absolutely vitality of it all had faded some from my imagination.
I wish with all my heart I had been dutiful to recorded all the insights and spiritual objection lessons that bloomed in between the beets and celery patches...suffice it to say that the Mighty Counselor watered my heart and strengthened my spirit in between the rows upon rows of dependant little vegetables.
The Farm was fertile ground for the Father's Business. Not only where there more than a few agnostic or spiritualistic individuals, but also more than a few seekers and babe's in Christ. Our impromptu bible-truth discussions took on a new meaning for me surrounded as we where by God's Second Book. Even as I remember the people and their stories and questions, tears come to my eyes. For it never seems that I have Done enough. Been enough. Prayed enough.
I distinctly remember one time. An especially eclectic man, he had recently began reading a children's Bible hoping its simplicity would lead to understanding. His observations and questions where keen. Not to be misunderstood as a seeker though, for he was still very much a skeptic. Near the end of my stay and after several stimulating conversation in which he listened intently and asked pointed questions. He pauses between a row next to mine and keeping his head bowed asks. "And who is Jesus to you?"
Oh the rush of inadequacy! Cursed be my failings and life-long inarticulateness. I longed to be unhampered by the limitations of language and experience to describe who EXACTLY He is and what He Means to me! I don't recall how I started or even the majority of the content. But I remember pausing in between an exposition on WHO Jesus is (I was immensely glad I'd read 'The Case for Christ") and switched to WHAT He MEANS...the experiential route. I noticed a reaction that had nothing to do with logical astuteness or a skeptic's appraisal. A heart awakened. No, not responding but awakened. I don't know where this conversation or others we had will play out in his spiritual walk... But I do know this: Jesus, His all-encompassing reality and love for me have never been as real as in that moment when I tried to share a glimpse of Him with one who never really has heard about Him-exponentially.

So what about the Vegetarian Restaurant Ministry? I believe in it more than ever and the Farm was the perfect place (reality) to shimmer in it for future reference. But that's a tale for another day.