The Holiness of the Last Place I Want to Be

It's the third day of March, in the morning, and I keep bumping into God. You'd think it would be classed as a "bad day", and it is, but it's not. You'd think this would be the last place I'd want to be, and it is, but it's not.

I am sitting in a hospital room beside the bed of a very sick little girl who is probably the one person in my life that hurts me most to see suffer in any way. I have just sent off to a place of badly needed rest, her mother, my daughter who is 24 weeks pregnant with my grandson, and who is probably the person in my life I least want to see stressed. I miss my husband, in another city, who is the last person in my life I want to be away from. And also in another city, another drama, not this one, but affecting us all, unfolds without me, mercifully, frustratingly. Away from friends I badly need. And I badly need a shower.

And yet, or maybe because of it, I keep bumping into Something, Someone bigger than me, bigger than this day.

God is gentle in the hands and face of a nurse who explains things carefully and warms up the stethoscope before listening to Abby's chest.

God is lavish in the provision of a first class hotel room, courtesy of Ronald McDonald House who was full this night (for just one night, but oh it had been such a long, brutal day).

God is loving in the voices of Staff and Elders, and others, who willingly release me to care for my family, even though it adds work and stress to them.

God is nourishing in the gifts of snacks - including Skittles for me and chocolate cookies for Kristyn - from friends who packed a life saving bag of goodies. And nourishing in another way with the many e-mails and offers to help that so many have promised.

God is hilarious in the grape that got away, and rolled under the curtain beside the big boot of the Amish father visiting his little girl in the next bed, while we waited with a mixture of dismay and glee to see if he would stomp on it.

God is well organized (in a wonderfully omniscient sort of way) in having the next four sermons already assigned to other teachers at Highview.

God is precise and intimate in providing a VHS copy of the Aristocats - Abby's favourite right now (because of the kitties, of course) and her own special TV on which to watch them.

And God is tender, so tender, in His whispers over my shoulder as I lean over the railing, gazing into the face of an at-last-asleep, excruciatingly beautiful little girl with the oxygen tube, and the chest tube and the IV tube, and all the wonderful, awful wires and hissing and beeping things.....

.....Aching for a chance to trade places with her.

And I swear I hear Him say, "As much as you love her, and would be willing in a heartbeat to take her place, I love her more....and I did. For her. And for you."

Here in this room,
The last place I want to be,
Turns out to be a very good place
A very holy place
For my soul to bump into God.

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?

Loving Beyond Myself

It's been a day full of doing and being. I'm tired. Probably there were too many meetings. But here at the end of it, I'm resting in a easy sense of loving what I do, and loving and respecting who I get to do it with.

Closer to the end of the day (at one of the meetings :), I sat around a table talked with our team about what it means to live in community. We agreed, it's not always fun or nice or easy. Sometimes human beings can cause each other so much pain. But when it's all done and unpacked and put down on the table, the bottom line is still the bottom line. We need each other.

I know for sure I need the people who sat around that table, and the ones who sat at the table in the meeting that started my day, and the ones who sat in my office in the middle of the day, and who I drove home later, and who was waiting for me at home to watch the next episode of Bones with me. I need them. All of them.

You know, it always bugs me that when I do those tests I come up way heavier on the "Task" side of the chart than the "People" side. Because, really, it's all about the people. All of it. It's about friends and coworkers and family members and those you're in conflict with and those who don't agree with what you're doing or understand why. It's about the lunches and the e-mails and the coffee conversations. It's about the teams and building them. It's about the ones who haven't found out who they are yet, and you get to discover it together with them. It's about broken people who speak into my own brokenness. It's about little people who call me Gramma and own my heart. And smart people who teach me stuff. And the thoughtful people who don't park in "my" spot and help me wipe off the snow from my car. And the creative people who think of the coolest messages to send in a gift. And life long loyal friends who share their french fries and their souls with me, and aren't afraid to stay walking beside me even when it means some of the crap of my life gets on them.

Lately I've been meditating a lot on forgiveness and redemption and reconciliation and love. I've had significant opportunities to face these issues head on in ways and degrees I never dreamed I'd be forced to contend with. And it seems to me, as I read about Jesus and who he was and how he interfaced with everyone....that if I'm calling myself a follower of Christ, I'm not allowed to hate ANYBODY! Quite the contrary, I'm called to love. To respond, not out of my own agenda or opinion or inclination, but out of something beyond myself. It has to be beyond me, because this thing called community is wonderful and wild and way beyond my own ability to engage in it properly. It's way beyond me to love well.

So I call on God to give me what I need to do it. To sit around tables and in offices and in cars and love beyond myself. To hear news and respond to the confusion of others hearing the news with patience and grace. To sit with someone who's taken away some of the most precious treasures of my life, and love that person. To lead and learn and teach and follow with my community, toward all God's calling us to be, together.

Together we can.

The Mattresses Have Arrived!

Something big happened this week.



It's hard to explain, really why it seems like such a big deal to me. I mean, they're just mattresses. They arrived at Hot Springs, and Tutu has sent me the pictures, and I'm beside myself with joy. We celebrated it at church this morning. Showed the pictures to everyone. We're all in this, after all. The mattresses were purchased with the money we raised at the Christmas Bazaar last November.

But...it IS a big deal. How can I explain? Maybe the best way is to include here an excerpt from my journal last year at this time. It was my first trip to Thailand, and my very first introduction to the children who now own such a big piece of my heart.

This is rather lengthy, so if you just come in for a quick check of the blog, you'll want to come back another time. OR, you might have seen this before. I've printed this off and included it in various ways over this past year. So if that's the case, you can skip down to where I come back with the pictures of the mattresses again :).




Tuesday, January 29, 2008

The Painting Project

It’s a long hot day of colour.
Two colours, to be precise; one pail of cream, one pail of butterscotch. It was something of a spontaneous project suggested to us the day before; to paint the two rooms of the main hall in preparation for the dedication of the new nursery building. Apparently Dave A. has received word that the Japanese ambassador to
Thailand is coming. He will bring about 100 of his countrymen and colleagues for the ceremony that will officially open the nursery some Japanese businessmen across the street from the orphanage have sponsored. Suddenly, this painting project moves up in the priority list, in honour of these special guests to the orphanage. Dave asks if we’d be willing.

Most of us didn’t bring clothes for painting, but by now, who cares? If it serves the kids, then we’re on it.

We really push ourselves today. Physically, it’s taxing to work that hard and that long in this heat. By the end of it, my arms feel like they might fall off if I’m not careful. I notice that it takes two hands to lift my water bottle to my mouth. Even so, it’s a satisfying exhaustion. The place has been transformed in a matter of hours by 7 willing hearts working alongside our new Thai friends. Feels good.

Except I am disappointed when Sherrod tells us we will go straight from here to visit the Hot Springs orphan home. Right now? Without going home to shower and change? How can I possibly engage in this strategic visit looking and feeling like this? I feel so rude showing up to meet with Suradet and his wife, all sweaty and paint covered and sloppy.

The Hot Springs Visit

As we’re driving the rough and winding roads out to Hot Springs, I am thinking hard. The significance of this particular event, and its connection to the entire Asian component of Regions Beyond at Highview, may well be the most important reason we’re here. The Hot Springs orphan home is led by Pastor Suradet and his wife, Yupa. He is from the Karen tribe and she is Thai. (This is significant, as the hill tribe people are regarded as an inferior ethnic group by the Thai. For him to lead a church of most Thai people is, to him an affirmation of God’s call to this ministry. Socially speaking, he shouldn’t be accepted in a leadership role. As a female senior pastor, I instantly relate to my pastor friend in this.) They serve and shepherd a small local congregation about an hour’s drive from Chiang Mai, up in the hills.

They have two young children of their own, and have, in addition brought 11 more to live with them, so Dave tells me. An act of compassion, inspired by what Tutu and Asia’s Hope is doing at Doi Saket. Without any promise of sponsorship, these children have been taken in.

In an e-mail sent about 10 days before we left, Dave described the Hot Springs situation and asked that Highview consider whether or not this might be an opportunity to respond through a partnership with Suradet.

I am favourably leaning toward the idea from the start. Before I left I sent the e-mail on to the Elders, asked them and a few others to pray, and told Dave I’d like to meet this family when I’m there.

So now, I here am, sweaty and limp and covered in paint, physically and mentally fatigued, riding in a car up a harrowing drive dodging dogs and water buffalo, to gather important data that I will bring back to Highview. I am not bringing my best game to this. I wonder how I will be able to form intelligent questions, and work it all through an interpreter. I’m concerned about how I’ll be able to take notes for my report. None of this will matter later, but in the car I don’t know that.

As we step out into the dusk I breathe a prayer for sufficiency. Cover me, Lord. It’s all You in this moment. I have nothing to bring to this. Let me see You here. Guide my heart.

I am first impressed with the structure of the building. Built in 2005 through sponsorship of the Korean Methodist Church, there is a traditional Thai beauty and characteristic steep staircases, combined with crisp lines and Methodist simplicity.

But I’m not looking long at the building. Our arrival has been quickly noticed and we are greeted en mass by the children, with that odd mixture of respectful wai and familiar hug. This is only our second time meeting them. These children had attended our program the night before back at the Doi Saket orphanage, and afterwards, when I spoke directly to Suradet, they stood beside him and shyly giggled because of the camera. They are not so shy this time.

Tutu is here to translate, but I am amazed at how little I need her by now, with the children at least. The little ones don’t care that they can’t understand me, they just carry on the conversation regardless. The older ones simply love it that I’m speaking English to them. If it looks like I’m expecting an answer they just smile and say, in English… “My name is…..”and then something completely unrepeatable, which I try to repeat. They are very patient, but my efforts most often elicit a giggling attempt to correct my pronunciation.

We are pulled by eager little arms in to see their place.

Dave had told us that Suradet had set up space for these children in the basement of the church. I guess I thought he meant the Sunday School rooms. I guess I thought he meant there would be beds. I guess I thought there would be windows. I guess I thought he meant there might be an actual floor.

Instead, two concrete rooms, one measuring approximately 8 x 10 and the other measuring approximately 8 x 14, provide the bedrooms of the 4 boys and 9 girls respectively. Their mats are rolled up and what little personal possessions they have are stacked neatly beside. Their clothes….just that for 6 girls?….are hung in one corner on a bamboo stick attached to the wall by a leather strap.

That’s it. Oh, and the room where you make the food. Not a kitchen. Don’t think kitchen. It’s a hard packed dirt floor with a table and some baskets of vegetables I don’t recognize. A small electric fridge sits awkwardly in another general all purpose room adjoining.

There is no furniture. No beds, no chairs. There are no toys. Not that I can see. Except, I do notice the colourful cloth bags with the Teddy Bears inside them hanging from nails above their folded mats. And an anime colouring book. It’s night, so the florescent lights buzz annoyingly.

This is where these children live.

Beautiful Narisara (Thim), with her uncharacteristic curls brought into submission in those amazing braids. Sweet Pakamat (Sai), whose enchanting smile is missing teeth in the front. Laughing Yingjareun (Fruk), who looks way younger than seven.

All of them. These real human children with faces and pretty little hands pressed together in the wai, and skinny little arms wrapped around my waist….they live here! It repeats itself in my head like a crazy, manic, whispered scream.

And the really awful thing about it is, this, this is better than where they came from.

Here they have adults to care for them. Here they have food. Here they are taken to school rather than forced to work. Here they are taught songs and hymns and spiritual songs and to say please and thank you and to share. Here, someone tells them they are valued.

It hits me like a wrecking ball. I fight to keep my composure. I feel sick to my stomach from it. They live here. Thirteen of God’s sweet children. They live here.

I ask if we can see the church upstairs. Perhaps it’s a defence mechanism, a way of giving myself and the team a chance to get out of the unbelievable, up to where we can breathe. We climb the steep stair case and are welcomed into a simple but clean sanctuary, with a smooth ceramic floor, a small elevated platform with a pulpit, and folding chairs.

The children sing for us. Strong and joyful praise. I’m losing it again. I’m asked if I’d like to say a few words. I don’t know if I can.

But I do. Tutu is my interpreter. I thank them for their warm hospitality and for letting us come to visit them. I tell them that I am from the upside down country of Canada where everything is very cold and people would just be starting to wake up on this day they have already had. I tell them I am glad to have made such delightful new friends.

I tell them that I see they are well behaved children. I encourage them to keep studying hard in school. I encourage them to obey their parents and be kind to each other. I tell them I believe that God has big dreams for them, and if they do these things and cooperate with God, then they will grow up to be and do many wonderful things for Him. I tell them God loves each one of them very, very much.

As I speak to them they fix their eyes on me. Even when Tutu repeats my words in their language, their eyes look at me. I am looking into the eyes of real human children who live in the cellar of a church and call that home. The eyes of children who have known more grief and fear and confusion in their few years than I will likely ever see in my life time. Children who have been discarded, beaten, left to beg. Children who have known hunger and desperation. Brown eyes, all of them.

In English we sometimes describe experiences as having “knocked us over”. This is a wrecking ball to the gut. I said it out loud before I left, that I was willing to let my heart be broken with the things that break the heart of God. What a foolish naïve thought. I had no idea whatsoever what I was talking about. Tonight my heart is smashed.

I am glad that even before getting on the plane, I was inclined to present to the Elders that we take the Hot Springs home as our Asian partners. I am glad, because I fully recognize the effects of the heat and the fatigue in how I’ve experienced tonight. Without the little bit of cognitive processing that has gone on before tonight, this would run the risk of being a totally emotional knee jerk reaction. Compassion gone rogue. We will think this through together, the Team here, the Elders as we send word home, Dave Atkins and the people at Asia’s Hope. We will make a good decision and be careful not to promise what we can’t deliver. You don’t do that to desperate people.

But tonight is still a defining moment. Tonight partnering with Suradet and the Hot Springs home isn’t just an idea any more. It’s people. It’s Suradet and Yupa and thirteen children who are looking at me. And their faces, their eyes are burning into my heart.

On the way home in the car, Tutu tells us more. These children recently went with Suradet into the bamboo forest to forage for shoots to eat. His personal resources are being stretched the max. The church is trying to help, but all of the people who make up this little community of faith are of simple means themselves.

She talks about two of her friends, growing up, who were too poor to go to school. They succumbed to the despair, and committed suicide. Both of them. They were 11. She’s crying. I’m crying. We arrive back to the Guest House and everyone is very quiet.

--------------

That was last year. Last year, when I walked about that place and heard God saying, "These are my children. Do something."

So this week.....the mattresses have arrived. And I am beside myself with joy.

For Christmas I received a bit a of money from my parents and I chose to purchase the Rosetta Stone Thai computer language program. I've only got three and a half months left!!!!!!

George and Starr, I can't wait to go with you. Jen, I so wish there was some way we could go together this year, but I'm glad you get to go just the same. (You're doing an amazing job of getting there, by the way, on all fronts.)

Friends at Highview and elsewhere who have already expressed their support in my next trip...thank you so much. We have a lot to do there, mostly just simply loving these kids.

Who now get to sleep on mattresses!