This joy

“You’re blessed when you’re content with just who you are—no more, no less. That’s the moment you find yourselves proud owners of everything that can’t be bought.” Matthew 5:5 (msg)

I was skeptical. (See previous post on cynicism) Every person I’ve known who has been on some kind of mission trip has said how life changing it was. How wonderful the people were. How they got more out of it that what they felt they gave.

Everyone? Really? You slept under mosquito netting and come home and say it was wonderful?

Okay. They’re right. Yep, add me to the voices of people clamoring about how great sleeping with no air conditioning is.

trash and old tires litter the city streets

even the water is filled trash

my roomie fills the small bucket with water from the shower to pour in our toilet so it can be flushed (this is an a hotel)

It’s been a few months since my trip to Haiti and my life hasn’t turned upside down. I didn’t come home and take shorter showers or flush the toilet less (though some of my friends have). I didn’t stop wearing deodorant or feel a tug to adopt a child or even bring one home with me. (Henry was so relieved.)

I’m not even sure I can explain how God has moved my heart or why so many Americans are affected by these brief visits to another life. And that’s what has me thinking. Why do we find joy in less than? Is it like a summer camp experience where you leave your cares behind for the week? There’s no nightly news, no Facebook, no “reality” t.v. or Instagram and Twitter to inform us what to watch, listen to and wear. None of this.

 

children pumping water for their families

She had an outdoor food stand outside our hotel.

Smiles watching their children sing songs at their school.

A few in our group missed the ability to check email, myself included. I had gotten an international plan for my iPhone to keep families and our supporters updated. It was a connection that seemed to provide some kind of “home”.

We have this love/hate relationship with our full lives of excess. I am thankful the dryer is humming while I type this and I don’t have to wash things in a river and dry them on a line. I am grateful to be able to see updates on Facebook from friends in Russia and Sri Lanka and Peru. Even one of the young men at the Children’s Home we visited in Haiti sent me birthday wishes on Facebook. That was awesome!

But for a moment, we step back and enter the world so many live in day after day and this is the point. To name our excess in the face of millions without. And in the midst of what we see they lack, we find what they have: joy. That is what captures us and amazes us and what we want. That joy. That joy that smiles with hands plunged in a basin washing clothes. That joy that doesn’t ask for more but is content. That joy that is peace.

Not happiness that is fleeting but joy that is lasting. I saw it in their faces because with the “less than” in their lives they have found joy in His life. That’s our answer too. Him. Jesus, the giver of joy and peace.

 

My people

Sometimes it’s the simplest things that make me smile. Like looking at our group page on Facebook. A page for residents, friends, Alumni of our ARC. Broken people putting life back together. Lost people now found. People learning to live in recovery and all of us whose lives have been a mess supporting each other, cheering each other and weeping with each other.

 

I try to post pictures of our monthly awards dinner. Pictures of those marking time in sobriety. Friends and family click that “like” button and we celebrate together near and far.

Today I saw this comment under a photo of a group with over a year sobriety. The comment said “These are my people”. My people. That made me smile and now it makes me tear with joy.

 

 

 

Fond-de-Negres, Haiti

Yes, yes, these are my people too. I don’t know how because we’ve had such different lives but they are My People.

But my people are even more. My people wear odd uniforms most people think are pilots or Sheridan employees.

My people have dark skin and walk their children to school down busy roads with neighbors walking sheep and pigs in a country off our shore.

My people annoy me standing there holding a sign asking for help when help is just across the street.

My people is a niece who loves Anime and attends Comicon and I don’t get it all but her heart is deep and open to all of God’s people.

My people are funny and quiet and some haven’t laughed in far too long.

My people are bloggers I’ve never met. My people are you.

In Christ’s family there can be no division into Jew and non-Jew, slave and free, male and female. Among us you are all equal. That is, we are all in a common relationship with Jesus Christ.       Galatians 3:28 the Message

 

Silent enough

“Here’s what I want you to do: Find a quiet, secluded place so you won’t be tempted to role-play before God.  Just be there as simply and honestly as you can manage. The focus will shift from you to God, and you will begin to sense his grace.  Matthew 6:6 the Message

When we step outside our door on a cloudless night we barely see the stars. It’s that way in most cities I reckon. So many street lights surround us they block the natural light from the sky.

It seems growing up the television was always on. I can remember mama turning it off because no one was watching. It was just providing a backdrop for our lives.

sidewalk chalk from the granddaughters last visit awaits her return

Mama valued silence. Peace and quite is what she wanted and scarcely got. Daddy was from the loud family, the family I was born into and never noticed our loudness until my husband declared us to be just that. Not only are we loud, he says we’re the family of announcers too. “I’m going to see if the mail has come.” “I’m getting in the shower.” “I’m upstairs.” One night while sharing a house with my brother’s family on vacation he looked around the room and asked “Where’s Henry?” We all looked around and had no idea where he’d gone. Moments ago he’d been sitting in the midst of us. “I think he went to bed. He’s not from a family of announcers, you know.”

I am the talker. He is not. Many people would be surprised to know how quiet road trips are with us. I prefer to have conversations and not monologues and since he’s not much of a talker and Granny said talking to yourself is fine as long as you don’t answer, well, there are miles of quiet until he requests music. I’m content reading or playing Scrabble on my iPad while his mind is figuring things that sound far too much like work to me.

Our once quiet back porch is now filled with traffic noise since the street has been completed. Much like the lights keeping the stars from view the soundtrack of daily life makes silence a rarity at times. I can block out those noises easier than my Mr. We Mama’s are more practiced at blocking out a variety of noises. So I sit on our porch on this warm afternoon, hearing the cars and trucks and seeing the tops of school buses over our privacy fence and welcome this silence of sorts. It’s silent enough for my thoughts to ramble and let go. To turn off from the alert I seem to stay on when I’m in the office or at events. There is no pressure to say the right thing or listen closely and have a thoughtful reply. Just the rumble of traffic that isn’t so bad after all.

For such a time…

I’ve thought of her often over the years. Wondered. Where she landed. How life turned out for her. It’s been a long time, more years than I care to count but important enough to remember the part she played in my life.

It was that time when life was turned upside down for us and all I could do was keep walking. We’d moved suddenly over Christmas break. Soon my brother and I would discover our parents were divorcing. We were in new schools in a new town for us, even though it was the hometown for our father’s family. She was an assistant pastor at our church. A single woman she’d have responsibility for the youth department too. My memory is pretty thin here, only remembering she cared. She let me ride with her to take other children home. I probably cried to her though I don’t remember. I must have told her about the split though I don’t remember that either. It would have been obvious as dad moved to another state.

 

 

What I remember, why I’ve always remembered is this: that summer, the one that began the month after I turned 14 and went to church camp, that summer she was part of the staff that week of camp. Most of the details aren’t clear to me. I don’t remember why she came to my cabin after lights out one night but I think I’d asked her to come. Again, not sure of her exact words but she told me I couldn’t have my parents salvation. I had to have my own. I had to choose. It was this woman, maybe 10 years older than me though I have no idea, who had shown me God’s love and now helped me as I chose Him for My Savior. That I remember. That moment, thunder rumbling somewhere in that dark night in Eastern Oklahoma. The night Jesus became my choice.

At the end of the summer I moved. Again. With mama we left Northwest Arkansas for Baltimore, MD. We left the known for unknown and we left my friend. Long distance phone calls were a big deal in those days. No email or cell phones. I think there may have been some letters exchanged and when she visited her parents in Washington DC I went down from Baltimore for the weekend. Then life happened and more moving for both of us.

No idea of what married name she may have I typed the name I knew into the Facebook search and there she was. I knew because we had some friends in common so I knew it was her. It was Becky. I saw a few pictures and little had changed from what I remembered, especially in her gentle smile.

Time spent needn’t be a lot to impact the life of another. To listen, give time and love, a visit to Sonic for a Cherry Dr. Pepper. Because of those months many years ago I can say “I thank God for every remembrance of you” Becky.

 

Camera stalker

Long before we got a good camera and long before I was that interested in photography (which has been fueled by getting a good camera – really good.) we’ve spent as many Saturday mornings as our schedule and the weather allows at the beach. Sometimes we stay on the paved walk joining the other Saturday morning walkers and runners and other times we venture to the water’s edge for our walks. This is where having a camera ready really gets good but….I feel like a little like a stalker. Having a telephoto lens helps put some distance between me and whoever we may be aiming at but still…..

If you’re on a paddleboard with your dog you have to KNOW people are going to take your picture!

This little guy was so fun to watch.

The ocean and sea oats, the waves churning and seagulls flying provide great subjects for the lens but people are the real photography prize for me. And that’s where the stalker feel comes into play. I felt much less the stalker last weekend as the young skim boarder we were taking pictures of came up and asked if I’d email him the pictures. Whew! I’d be glad to. Here are a few of my favorites of him and others on the beach.

 

 

 

Please, don’t tell me

I really don’t remember asking but I must have. It would have been the courteous thing to do and I’m sure that’s how it started. One minute I’m asking the man, an alcoholic in a rehabilitation program, “How you doing?” and the next he’s telling me about hemorrhoids. Just how do you say, “No, really. I don’t need to know.”

My husband says I have a sign. Actually, he calls it a beacon. One that lights up and only certain people see it. These are the people who tell me things I don’t want to know.

In another location where we were pastoring a church I asked a teenager the same question. The troublesome, “How are you today?” Her answer was most surprising as she said quite directly, “My cervix hurts”. Honestly, I couldn’t make this stuff up. She was in a bible study group being led by a college student, male, who gave me a rather blank expression. I was the new one here so I suppose he’d heard things like this from her before.

Being in ministry it’s not only the polite thing but it seems it’s even my job to ask people how they’re doing but I find myself praying silently at the same time, “please, don’t tell me.”

Perhaps I look too concerned or too caring. Maybe I need to smile less, not look at people in the eye so much?

Of course I can’t do that, most of the time. Only to the ones who want to tell me about physical ailments no one needs to hear!

This is my first link up with Just Write at The Extraordinary Ordinary. A collective of sharing everyday stories written “in the moment”

Hallelujah People

“At my church we sing a gospel song called, “Hallelujah anyway”. Everything’s a mess, and you’re going down the tube financially and gaining weight? Well, hallelujah anyway.” – Anne Lamont

I want to be this person. This hallelujah person who can look in the face of sorrow and frustration and say, ‘hallelujah anyway’.

When trust has been broken and lies told to our face, ‘hallelujah anyway’.

When one goes back into their addiction and we’ve cared about him for so long and called him friend, yes then, ‘hallelujah anyway’.

When I don’t want to hear one more story or take the time to listen to one who needs listening to, especially then, ‘hallelujah anyway’.

Enough petty frustrations and be gone sorrow for I am the child of God who loves me and enables me to say

HALLELUJAH ANYWAY!