Family Undefined

"A family is but an earlier heaven."

George Bernard Shaw

If it's actually possible to have something become broader and more precisely defined at the same time, then this whole construct of 'family' is that for me.  These days, in my seventh decade of life, who I am within the circle I call family is far more distinct, drilled down, focused.  And who I understand as being within that circle with me, where I draw those circles, is wider and wilder than I would have thought in younger years.

It's about blood lines yes.
But not only that.

It's about belonging together in ways you don't have to explain,
which is good because you kind of can't.

It's about a kind of hell or high water ferocity
that refuses to abandon one another even and especially in the midst of chaos.

It's about persistent, provable love.

It's about loving enough to feel all the painful realities.

About tasting salt when the other cries.

It's about being known deeply without judgement,
 and knowing deeply without judging.

And these things, this family deal, I have found in the circle of both the expected and completely unexpected of people.

Within a marriage that has weathered more than forty years.
Within a circle of progeny that expands in delightful exponentiality.

Within a faith community that becomes more cherished at every turn.
Within the company of kindred, individual souls
who've become part of an unspoken covenant
by the long-friendship default of reciprocated faithfulness.
Within a gathering of beloveds half a world away,
whose lives could not be more different,
but to whose love my heart could not be more fused.

In every arena of family there has been excruciating pain.
But unlike the disintegrated counterfeits,
true family grabs hold of the pain to reshape it
and force it to make us defiantly more inclined towards one another.
Defiantly together in the face of what tries to tear us apart.
That's family.

And I am rich in family!
God's compensation, perhaps, for how things started out.

These days it seems I move in and around these family circles fluidly,
welcomed and welcoming,
belonging and longing for,
more and more myself,
clearly defined and widening the parameters
all at the same time.

Preparation, I think, for what's to come.

Four More Days But Who's Counting?

Sneaking in another update between a delightfully unexpected day trip and a delightfully expected visit from a new friend.

The day trip will help provide more pictures to post, which is what I intended when I got started yesterday.  This time there'll be a little more focus on the girls.

Meena and Atom

 The first part of the morning I was anticipating.  Day off school, so we were going to treat the kids to a swim and picnic snack just up the road at the Hot Springs Park.  There's a children's pool for the younger ones, and I was given the happy task of watching over six of our girls while they played in the water.  You have to picture a perfectly warm day, my feet dangling in the water, sipping on fresh and pure coconut water, and watching adorable humans I love like crazy having fun in the pool.  Sigh.  The harsh life of the missionary.....but hey, it's part of the job.

My 'missionary work' station today.

Aaaaaannnnd...the jump shot fails...but they sure are cute!

Gam

It was fun to let the teenagers roam free in the park for a bit, each having 50 baht to 'go wild'.  Don't laugh.....that $2.00 equivalency goes a long way.   Caught up to them as they were finishing their mid morning feast.  Don't worry.....it's not going to ruin their appetite for lunch.

I thought we were going up the road for 15 baht bowls of noodles, but apparently a different little plan had come to mind.  Proving that it actually is possible to be spontaneous with a family of over 20, Suradet and Yupa decided to try out a new destination part way up the mountain, near to where we did the zip line that year, for the Team that might remember that queasy drive.  I won't mention any names, but one of us on board was extra sorry to have indulged a little too much earlier on.   Destination was a small village that has take advantage of the many visitors that come to see the waterfall, and also buy their coffee.  Think St. Jacobs.  It had that vibe. We saw the waterfall and stopped to have our picture taken against the outside wall of one of the oldest wooden buildings in the region.  It's a famous picture spot.  We actually had to wait about 15 minutes for our turn.

Several times during the day, at the park and in the truck for all the driving, I was asked if I was okay, or if I was tired.  I realized I'd been pretty quiet.  And I guess there were two reasons for that.  One is that I just wanted to be fully present in the each moment as it was happening; to soak up the joy and gentleness along with the free Vitamin D and February's agreeable temperatures.  I've been sort of working full out non stop for the past three weeks, pretty much 24/7.  It was lovely to just take a break today, something that wouldn't have happened in quite the same way if the kids didn't have the day off. 

The other was....well, I'm just trying not to be sad yet, but it happens.  I know Friday's coming.  And while there is so much about my rich life in Canada that I can't wait to get back to, it's always a both/and kind of deal for my heart.  

I'll add this shot of this pink papery bloom that's everywhere right now.  Can't resist getting in for the closeups on the flowers!

Time to get ready for my expected visitor.  More on that tomorrow I hope.

Five More Days

The Sunday worship service comes to a close, and I sit down with two dominating thoughts.

One.  I'm hot!  Not such a surprising statement since I am in Thailand, but actually this visit has been marked more by the cooler morning temperatures than anything else.  Approaching noon today....yup, I'm sweating.  As February inches towards March, the hot season will be upon us.  I can feel it already.

Two.  I'm done!  Well, not entirely.  There's still a few meetings to have and some estimates to get and five more ESL Bible lessons to do with the kids. Oh, and all the books we can cram into five more days!   But preaching this morning's sermon in Thai is the last of four in a series that joyfully pressed me to my capacities.  From now until Friday morning when I set out for Canada, the workload will be considerably lighter.  Feels good.

Just now then, getting up from that sweet ritual of the Sunday afternoon nap, I am realizing how much the demandingness of these past three weeks has affected my communications to everyone back home.  Feedback from many has been that, other than random Facebook updates, I've kind of dropped off the map.  I feel it too.  Sorry.  One day I might be actually good at what I do here and it won't take some much concentration!  (My brain is hurting from all the translation.)

Meanwhile, I would like to offer something of a peace offering by sharing some pictures that hopefully will fill in the gaps a little.

I'll start with hands-down my favourite creative shot from this trip.  This Eak (who Ken and I have the great honour of sponsoring) coming back from tending the goats.  Love the mood of this.  And the mountains in the background.  As an aside, a church from North Carolina who got connected with Suradet and Yupa a few years ago, have sponsored the goats we have here.  It's a way of making use of the land, teaching the kids some good husbandry skills, and turning a small profit towards the operating budget at Hot Springs.  Right now we have no less than seven kids (the goat kind) who are all only about six weeks old.  There's this free roaming time (with a fence around the larger part of the property) and it's not unusual for the kids to come read with the kids, if you see what I'm doing there.

Speaking of kids with kids, this is Boy who has been with us at Hot Springs since he was about eight I think (too lazy to go look it up in my files right now).  He has graduated from high school level vocational school, but has decided to pursue preparation for pastoral ministry.  We are thrilled, of course.  He's been back home for the past month, helping as an intern with the goats and the children, leading worship during evening and morning devotions, and doing assignments for memorization given to him by Ahjahn Suradet.  His disposition is cheerful and his heart eager.  Joel and Louanne, he does you proud.  Next month he will transfer to a Bible college in Bangkok which has a reputation for more demanding academics than the school he finished his first year at.  We are praying good things for Boy.

And while we're still chatting about the boys, I'll include a few more pictures of them.  The girls are always all over getting their picture taken, but the boys, not so much.  So, Sponsors of our young men, you are right to feel ripped off.  But here's Jabez, one of our newer children, who's smile over his supper is actually his face most of the time.  This is just one happy dude!  Dale and Mike, you help put that smile on that face, thank you.

What a line up of handsome young men.  Left to right, Mee-oo (Puala!  Take a look at the jaw line.  He's a man now!), Eak, Boy, Ju (a friend of Boy's and also interning with us before heading to Bangkok for Bible school), Philip (whom I can't talk too much about because I am just excited he's agreed to come on staff.  More later.)

And I'm out of time on this one.  That's how it goes.  I'll go ahead and post this for now and get back to more pictures and ramblings tomorrow.  

Meanwhile, thanks everyone over and over again for how you all make it happen.

And for your patience when I don't get to your emails!

Swat dee, ka!

If I Could Tell You But I Bet You Already Know: A Letter to Mom

It ambushes me over a banana leaf wrapped around my desert.

There's a piano CD playing, among many other songs you'd recognize, that old hymn that ends with the refrain, "For I know what ere befalls me Jesus doeth all things well".

Yes, He does.

I am quite suddenly wishing you were here, in this moment with me, eating a simple communal meal with mostly strangers at a Thai Presbyterian church about 10 minutes away from Hot Springs.  It's been a more formal service this Saturday morning; a special thanksgiving time of worship, complete with choir and special music and even a processional to get things started.  It's 'old church' for me.  And even though it's not my style these days, being here, especially the music, is bringing back washes of nostalgia from when I first fell in love with Jesus as a child.

Maybe it's because that's when I also decided, at the very young age of eleven, that I would go to Asia to be a missionary.  And that's when I remember you telling me your own story.  Of how you had wanted very much to be a missionary, but your childhood brain injury made the necessary education, and even the coping skills, unreachable.  And then how you had had that dream where it seemed to you that God was saying that one of your children (you were not yet married) would end up going instead.

Mom, I'm here.

I'm the only farang in this group of over 200.  I'm being greeted by the church leaders as 'the missionary from Canada' and I'm having a conversation with them in Thai.  I'm surrounded at the lunch table with beautiful, earnest believers who look very different from me but with whom I astonishingly belong.  And just now, between scoops of rice and thoroughly enjoying whatever this is in the banana leaf, I am wishing you could be here.  I think your heart would be singing.  You'd look around at all the smiling faces who love Jesus, hearing them say, as I did again this morning in the sermon, that if it wasn't for the missionaries they would never have known they had a way out of the fear and darkness of spiritism.  Mom, they are so grateful!!!

I met today two young men who are attending McGilvary College of Divinity.  

Do you know of this man?  Daniel McGilvary was one of the first missionaries to come up the river from Bangkok to establish Christian communities in Chiang Mai.  He started hospitals and schools and planted churches which planted churches which planted churches.  His heart and engagement with these people and the Buddhist way of life was clearly full of a respect and love.  He's so incarnational and real.  I'm reading his autobiography right now and feel like I've met a new friend.  Maybe you have met him, who knows? If you have and if you can, please tell him that I am in awe of the sacrifices made and have no right to be regarded in the same ranks at all.  I am fully aware I now benefit from the high regard Thais have for missionaries, likely and largely because of him.

But if you were here right now, I think you might feel, as I often do in moments like this, that all the hard things about our lives just kind of don't matter any more.  They happened, but all the sadness is being sucked out of them, and gratitude and amazement are all that's left.  Redemption in its most beautiful dress.

None of this missionary stuff happened at all the way either of us likely imagined it, certainly not the way I thought it was going to go.  It took me another forty years after my first eleven year old 'yes' to God to get here.  My story doesn't get me here until God put together the team that is Ken and I as a first step, and then waited a little longer again to put together the Thai team that is Suradet and Yupa.  It took longer still to mature us all, season us with life, both harsh and delightful, and then to introduce us, let us find out how much we love each other, and go from there to rescue some of His precious little ones.  God hasn't been stressed and rushed about any of it, it would seem.

ALL THE WAY MY SAVIOUR LEADS ME All the way my Savior leads me;   What have I to ask beside? Can I doubt His tender mercy,   Who through life has been my Guide? Heav’nly peace, divinest comfort,   Here by faith in Him to dwell! For I know, whate’er befall me,   Jesus doeth all things well, For I know, whate’er befall me,   Jesus doeth all things well.

I'm 62 and feel like I'm just getting started.

Mom thank you.

For reasons you and I both know, there's much about our family life that I prefer not to remember.  But this?  This is priceless.  What you left me in this?....Beyond my ability in any way to even come close being able to capture in words.

But I bet you know this all anyways.  I bet you do.
And maybe you can even see it happening.
And maybe you're singing right now about how Jesus does indeed do all things so very well.