One Treasure At A Time: Thim

She's my girl.

At least in the sense that this is the child Ken and I sponsor through the Hot Springs program offered at Highview. Her name is Thim.

I admit to shamelessly "claiming" her after our first visit there last winter. When it became clear that we were going to be able to go ahead and connect with Asia's Hope to partner with Hot Springs, and when it seemed clear that the best way to make this as personal and meaningful and effective as possible was to set up sponsorships, I claimed Thim. The rest of the team who was there got first picks too, actually. It seemed only right. We'd met them, afterall, and our hearts were mashed to pieces. Being able to choose a child to sponsor from ones who are actual flesh and blood to you means a lot.

I'm not sure why Thim caught my attention that night. Perhaps she stands out because she has uncharacteristically curly hair in a gene pool of mostly poker straight locks; all beautiful, but Thim's was caught back in two braids. I actually never saw her with it loose.

She's a very composed young lady. Seems mature for her age, and a little on the shy and quiet side. It was an interesting dynamic, being there last October, both of us trying to make our way through the relational and cultural weirdness, and all the while, both of us very aware that I was her sponsor.

There's no word for "sponsor" in Thai, so they just say the English word, only it's with an elongated last syllable. So it sounds like spon-SORE! The children are very aware that they have sponsors and that the sponsors are making it possible for them to be at Hot Springs, and go to school. Sponsors are highly honoured. Believe me. They have your pictures and they know your names. There was one morning when I sat on the girls' bunks and they brought me the picture albums you've all sent. They wanted me to tell them as much about you as I could, as they could understand.

Then Thim shyly brought me the little album I had sent. And quietly, carefully, I tried to tell her who all the people were in the picture. My family at Christmas, in front of the fireplace.

There was this weirdness for Thim and me. She didn't cling to me like the younger girls did. She didn't try to push her way in and claim her space as my special girl. She was certainly friendly and warm, and enjoyed herself at the zoo and hammed for the camera like the rest of her brothers and sisters. Still, her shyness and the "you're my sponsor" weirdness actually seemed to make for a little bit of distance. At least, that's how it felt to me.

I was glad I got to be there when Thim was honoured for her academic achievements. It was at the retreat at Wiang Pa Pao. A number of the children were acknowledged for the awards they had earned at the end of the last semester. (The retreat was held during a school break.) And Thim had come in first in her class with a very impressive grade point average. I loved being able to praise her for this. Suradet was sure to tell me, in front of her, how proud he was of her.

Next time. We're about ready to buy our tickets for next time! There's a small team heading out at the end of April, and then another solo trip for someone else in June. Our connection with Hot Springs continues, and I am so glad others want to come and meet our kids.

So next time, with Thim.... I hope we can know each other better. I hope that because I've been there before and we know each other's faces better, we can keep working on this. What a strange thing it is to love people you can barely talk to.

I have her letter on my fridge. Before I left she wrote me a letter and I have no idea what it says. But it's on my fridge.

Thim, I coming back. Soon.

The New Ordinary

Driving home in the rain tonight, I got that weird sense of how familiar and normal this stretch of road is between my Wednesday night meeting and our house. I do it every week. I barely have to think of where I'm going. It's a very ordinary part of my life.

There are all kinds of things like that. Sleeping in my bed. Watching TV with Ken. Sitting across the table for a breakfast with a friend. Working on this week's sermon. Preaching this week's sermon. Ordinary events of my life that I do in the realm of the astonishingly familiar.

It's not that I'm bored. Quite the contrary. I find my life to be full of the abundance Jesus promised. Even within the realm of what I call ordinary, there are various and sundry daily adventures that would keep me quite happily occupied for the rest of my life.

But they are known to me. Things look, feel and smell like I know them.

And it would never even occur to me to even think about this, except that for little slivers of my life, I am completely and totally taken out of the familiar and deposited into a time and space so different, so not what I know as ordinary, that it messes with me some.

So I was thinking of Thailand as I drove home in the rain, on the right side of the road, with left hand steering wheel, and English signs, past mounds of still melting snow past the University of Waterloo, after eating a mildly spiced potato and bacon soup in a restaurant that wasn't outside. I was thinking of the spicy smells and the persistent humidity, and insane traffic, and very large spiders in the bathroom, and trying to bend my mind around the Thai words, and the beautiful faces of people I miss so much who live so, so far away.

One of the "stresses" of the cross cultural experience is how out of your zone you feel when you're there. Nothing, nothing is what you expect it to be. Everything is different. Everything is not ordinary, even the ordinary things.

But I wonder if that's part of what God uses to catch my attention. With my senses on high alert my soul is open wider. While I'm there, it's open to all the new experiences and all that I need to hear and learn.

But the cool thing is, it says more open, even when I'm home...driving in the rain on the way home from my Wednesday night meeting along the ordinary way. And actually, nothing's ordinary any more.

Keep me open, Father, to all the new ordinary ways you want me to be.

Tomorrow we book the tickets for the next trip in May.

An All The Time Love

I took it easy and gentle today.

Started with some dinosaur time with two two year olds, one of which was Abby, of course, and the other was the wonderful full of life little guy Kristyn cares for during the day.

After the dinosaurs, it was snack time and we were having pears. I counted in Thai as I cut the pieces into the cups, and two little voices counted with me. And then, random snack time conversation. Our small friend said that his Gramma makes him cookies. To which I responded that his Gramma must love him a lot, and he agreed vigorously. Abby, looked at me, and then said thoughtfully to her friend, "My Gramma loves me all the time." It was a simple statement, without any tones of comparison or anything. Just something she believed to be true.

What was really great about this was that Abby was not repeating anything she'd heard anyone say, at least not to my knowledge. She's at the great age where she often says things that someone's already said to her, without always knowing what it means. But this wasn't that. This was her trying to find words to describe what she's experienced between us. "All the time" was a qualifier, and descriptor. This was how her Gramma loved her. Completely. Unconditionally. With reckless abandon. All the time.

And I do. Like crazy. That's what Grammas do.

So I move through my easy and gentle day letting that linger on my heart. It's soothing after such a stressful start to the week. It fills me where I've been drained. It's sweet and gentle and easy on my soul.

And driving home at the end of my day, I'm playing one of my CD's I haven't had on in a while. There's this fantastic winter sunset hanging across the cold sky, and it's making me cry it's so amazing. The song is "Everything's All Right", which is a song about everything not being all right but God being in the middle and being omniscient and sovereign and everything that He is that actually does make everything all right.

And in the middle of the song, somewhere between the lyrics and the melody I hear Him say it. "Ruth Anne, I love you all the time."

And He does. Like crazy, it would seem. Because that's what Father's do.

Forgetting and Overdrafts

"Of all the things I've lost, it's my mind I miss the most."

I don't know who said that first, but I quote it often. Especially in times like now where the demands of my life are pressing and relentless, and my ability to hold on to random pieces of information has turned to mush that sloshes around in my brain.

I wouldn't mind so much if it were just misplaced keys or glasses, even though that's annoying and makes me late sometimes. I wouldn't mind if it just made me look stupid, because everyone can use a dose of that from time to time. Keeps us all on an even playing field.

What I do mind is when the sloshing noise in my head, and the blank look on my face, and the mix ups on my calendar keep me from being able to let the people in my life know how much I love them.

Being forgotten is awful. It says things about you that seem very true but aren't. Things like "you're not important", "you're not special", "you're not loved". At least that's what I hear when it happens to me, and it's not very much fun. So when it's me leaving someone standing outside waiting for a coffee that's not going to happen, or losing an e-mail in the abyss that's my in box, or double booking a team breakfast, or missing a birthday....I hate that.

Puts me in overdraft, sort of. Like my bank accounts are on low. And for me right now?.....It's like all my accounts with almost everyone and anyone in my life are in the red. Events of my life have made huge withdrawals in the grand scheme of things. And even though I can rationalize that it's not really my fault and doesn't reflect on me, on days like today, it still feels rotten.

So I woke up this morning and sat up in bed and turned my hands upward. "You are God and I am not. Please be sufficient for all the true and honest needs of my friends and my people. Be for them what I cannot be today. Restore the souls of those from whom I have withdrawn too much. Help me love them with the unlimited reserves of Your love, far and away abundant, filling up and out where I am overdrawn. Help me give my mind again and again to You to do with as You see fit, to use it to love and think and serve and solve the things and people and situations You, in Your wisdom have given to me to be and do. Forgive my failings and how I can make the forgetting all about me. Grant me the peace of mind You've promised as I find perfect peace in a steadfast mind that trusts in You."

This morning I am taking the morning off. I will go play with my granddaughter and think about nothing else except Dora and the spider game and Pink Kitty.

Okay....let me read this over again. Wait. Where did I put my glasses?