Of hope and turning points

 

“I have found it very important in my own life

to try to let go of my wishes

and instead to live in hope.

 I am finding that

when I choose to let go of my sometimes petty and superficial wishes

and trust that my life is precious and meaningful in the eyes of God

something really new, something beyond my expectations

begins to happen for me.”

(Henri Nouwen, Finding My Way Home)

 

 

I began to notice new, good stuff going on in Lomalinda.

 

For example, Matt, in first grade, and Karen, in Kindergarten, studied Spanish. What a bonus that was! If they’d been enrolled in school back home in Seattle, they’d probably have had to wait until high school to study a foreign language.

 

And they enjoyed using their Spanish.

 

Local Colombians worked alongside us—in the commissary and offices, and as janitors, yard workers, and maids. One worker walked by us every morning on our way to school, and one day Karen piped up, “Buenos días” (hello).

 

That delighted my heart because (a) she wasn’t afraid of someone who spoke a different language than she did, and (b) she was confident enough to use the little bit of Spanish she knew.

 

The Colombians were friendly and patient with those who didn’t speak Spanish well. I had studied Spanish for three years in junior high but was a bit rusty. Soon, though, I began doing better—although I still resorted to hand gestures sometimes. Thank goodness for my Spanish/English dictionary. The maid, Rufina, and I had a good laugh whenever I said, “Un momento” (just a minute) and opened my dictionary. (And I thank God for helping me get accustomed to having a stranger—Rufina—in my home all day once a week. Click on Feeling like a big baby.)

 

And there was more good stuff. Remember how awful the locally made bread smelled and tasted? On one of our first days in Lomalinda, with dreams of making good ol’ homemade sandwiches, I reached for the bread I’d bought at the commissary, but when I untwisted the wrapper, an ugly odor poofed out—rancid lard and something else.

 

I examined the loaf. It looked like bread, but it sure didn’t smell like bread. It was far from fresh, yet I could find no spoilage.

 

I started to slice a piece off the end, but it crumbled apart. I sliced again with the same result.

 

We needed eight pieces for four sandwiches, and every stinking slice fell apart.

 

Well, even that scenario changed: Dave began baking bread on Saturdays. Sometimes we used it for sandwiches, but then one day he tried a Cinnamon Swirl recipe! What a treat!

 

More good stuff: A week or so into the school year, I wrote this in a letter to my parents:

 

Dear Mom and Dad,

 

Karen is reading! I can hardly believe it, and she’s picking it up even faster than Matt did. She has no difficulty with “The girl has a doll. The boy has a bike. Look at the child. He is a boy. She is a girl.” And last night was the first time she’d picked up that book. If we spell a word, she pictures it in her head and sounds it out. And she’s still only four years old.

 

Matt brings home a book each day and reads the whole thing aloud in the evening. Miss Wheeler has trouble finding books challenging enough for him. . . .

 

And, more good stuff: Inspired by Lois Metzger, I took on the challenge of making attractive meals from limited supplies in the commissary. I focused on variety, not just flavor.

 

I made stale bread eater-friendly by dipping sandwiches into an egg-milk mixture and frying them like French toast.

 

Friends sent recipes from home, and I scoured the pages of the cookbook Lomalinda’s women published, Mejores Malocas y Chagras (Better Homes and Gardens). I especially enjoyed Judy Branks’s recipe for Coconut Sweet and Sour Meatballs and Jerri Morgan’s granola, which I still use forty years later.

 

The book included recipes using fruit readily available—mangos, papayas, bananas, and pineapples—and recipes for pickles, relish, mayonnaise, salad dressings, and sauces, those things we really missed.

 

A friend returning to the States sold me her spices and dried herbs, and they added to my fun.

 

Making those foods required resourcefulness and work—we made most everything from scratch—but I thrived on the challenge.

 

And yet more good stuff: After living in Lomalinda for a month, our noses and mouths adjusted—odors smelled less offensive, and our taste buds stopped rebelling. Hooray! (from Chapter 11, Please, God, Don’t Make Me Go: AFoot-Dragger’s Memoir)

 

Looking back now, it’s clear to see that even though my first ten days or so in Lomalinda felt like I was on an out-of-control roller coaster. . .

 

. . . and even though I had kicked and blubbered and rebelled against living there. . .

 

. . . God had good plans for me.

 

He patiently waited for me to calm down.

 

God handed me even more good stuff, though it didn’t seem like it at the time: My sense of failure had exhausted me—physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. (Click on last week’s post, “Without change, there would be no butterflies.”)

 

But that fatigue was a gift: It robbed me of energy that fueled my rebellion against Lomalinda.

 

Only then, in my brokenness, could I “let go of my . . . petty and superficial wishes,” as Henri Nouwen called them, and make much-needed attitude adjustments.

 

That’s what Nouwen meant when he wrote of the way God does “something really new, something beyond my expectations.”

 

Moving to Lomalinda was the last thing 

I’d ever have chosen to do.

But God interrupted my life.

So, I let go of my own plans and surrendered to His,

and He pointed me toward Lomalinda.

 

And there, He was offering me new opportunities.

He was offering me a new perspective,

a new way to do Life.

A new attitude. New goals.

 

New joys.

 

Living among choice saints disguised as regular folks

 

I’d always planned to chase the American Dream—I’d marry a guy who’d earn more money next year than this year. And more money each year after that. And we’d get a bigger, nicer house every so often. And increasingly nice furniture and carpets. New cars, too.

 

And I expected we’d continue our pursuit of happiness—which the Declaration of Independence says is our right. I assumed gaining more and better possessions would lead to that happiness.

 

Abundance. Upward mobility. Living the good life. During my lifetime, the American Dream has been so pervasive in our values, assumptions, and expectations that we have allowed it to be a comfortable, acceptable part of Christianity.

 

In my circles, including my church circles, that was the thing to do—that was the way we lived—so when I was a kid and a young wife and mother, I assumed all of that would be mine. I never questioned those goals. I never questioned my motives for pursuing them. 

 

What a shock it would have been for me if, back then, I had read David Wilkinson’s words in The Prayer of Jabez: “Do we really understand how far the American Dream is from God’s dream for us? We’re steeped in a culture that worships freedom, independence, personal rights, and the pursuit of pleasure.” 

 

And then God sent me to Lomalinda in rural Colombia.

 

Lomalindians thought little of North America’s material trappings. For the most part, they had freed themselves, choosing to be satisfied with skimpy physical creature comforts, willing to overlook inconveniences.

 

I sensed no competition to outdo each other in vehicles, possessions, houses, or décor. They built homes where marriages and children could thrive, where they spent fun times with friends-that-became-like-family.

 

If they’d ever craved a big income, a fancy house, and early retirement, they’d set aside those dreams. They lived at peace with themselves.

 

Our population included charming, good-looking men and lovely, capable ladies. Most folks were clean and attractive but had little concern about the latest clothing trends. People returning from furlough brought back the latest fashions and hairdos, but the materialism frenzy did not flame throughout the community.

 

People worked hard—sometimes too hard. They showed kindness and gentleness and generosity.

 

They enjoyed playing volleyball and softball and taking motorbike trips and singing and playing instruments.

 

They also cried together and prayed together and rejoiced together and grieved together and cheered each other on.

 

God had sent our family to live with some three hundred colleagues who, I would soon learn, served Him with zeal. It’s not that they talked about God all the time or spoke in hallowed tones or prayed a lot in public.

 

No, they were ordinary souls who chose a humble lifestyle so they could live a radical faith, despite consequences that would come their way.

 

“While Christians choose to spend their lives

fulfilling the American dream

instead of giving their lives to proclaiming the kingdom of God,

literally billions in need of the gospel remain in the dark.”

(David Platt, Radical, published in 2010)

 

Half a century or so before Platt penned those words,

the Lomalinda bunch had begun addressing those needs

by translating the Bible, and doing so much more,

for some of those billions.

Lomalindians knew from experience

the meaning and implications of Platt’s words.

 

Now, looking back, I don’t hesitate to call them

spiritual giants,

choice saints.

But I didn’t recognize that in the beginning.

They were camouflaged as regular folks.

 

Saints. What are saints?

 

In the Bible, saints are described as God’s faithful servants, consecrated people, and those who worship Him (2 Samuel 2:9, Psalm 50:5).

 

Henri Nouwen describes saints as “people ‘set apart’ by God to be light in the darkness. . . . What makes them saints is their clear and unwavering focus on God and God’s people.”

 

Set apart, indeed.

 

And yet, Nouwen says, “Although we tend to think about saints as holy and pious, and picture them with halos above their heads and ecstatic gazes, true saints are . . . men and women like us, who live ordinary lives and struggle with ordinary problems. . . .”

 

“Most of their lives are remarkably similar to our own.” (Henri Nouwen, Bread for the Journey)

 

“Remarkably similar to our own,” he said. That’s what I meant when I wrote that Lomalinda’s people “were camouflaged as regular folks.” (From Chapter 10, Please, God, Don’t Make Me Go: A Foot-Dragger’s Memoir)

 

God handed me countless blessings when He sent me to Lomalinda to work alongside choice saints.

 

He gave me a chance to sit around their dinner tables and to invite them to gather around our family’s table.

 

He gave me an opportunity to laugh with them, cry with them, pray with them.

 

In the commissary, I shopped alongside saints.

 

Some of Lomalinda’s saints worked as my kids’ teachers.

 

Saints piloted our fleet of small planes.

 

Saints staffed our clinic, our offices, and our childcare so moms could work during morning hours.

 

And then Henri Nouwen turns the focus away from the saints and instead forces us to look at ourselves: “The saints are our brothers and sisters, calling us to become like them.”

 

While I agree with Nouwen’s statement, I have a hunch genuine saints are not aware they’re calling us to become like them. Lomalinda’s people never even hinted that they were inviting me to be more like them.

 

After all, each of us—even a choice saint—is a recipient of God’s grace, His favor, His loving blessings we don’t deserve and can’t earn. Grace is a gift He gives us as we slog along on our daily journeys through ups and downs, failures and successes.

 

God was handing me one gift after another

and, among the finest, were and still are

His grace and His saints in Lomalinda.

 

“Every flower that ever bloomed had to go through a whole lot of dirt to get there”

 

I had engaged in fierce battles with myself, Lomalinda, and God, so it took me a while to recognize it, but finally it sunk in: If I wanted to transition out of culture shock and settle in well at Lomalinda, I’d have to change my perspective.

 

I’d have to notice the good that was going on around me and my family.

 

The kids, Matt and Karen, had met friends and enjoyed playing with them. Matt was especially enjoying adventures the neighbor boy, Glenny, was taking him on—like throwing rocks at bulls wandering through the neighborhood and fishing for piranhas and chasing giant cockroaches. And playing with boa constrictors.

 

Lomalinda’s birdsongs sounded different from the ones I’d enjoyed back home, but I decided to find the beauty in them. And my kids had parrots living in their yard! Parrots! That would never have happened back home in Seattle.

 

On one of our first days in Lomalinda, Ron and Lois Metzger introduced themselves and invited us to dinner. Their yard teemed with tropical plants and flowers, including orchids. Orchids! And Glenny’s big brother Tommy grew orchids in a special shed he rigged up. Dozens of other brightly colored flowers grew all around Lomalinda. Even though they weren’t familiar to me—like bougainvillea—I began to notice their intense beauty.

 

During our first two weeks, we received a dozen dinner invitations from our new colleagues. They lavished their welcomes on us.

 

We soon learned that hosting friends for meals was the most common way people entertained themselves. We had no televisions or movie theater, and the world then knew nothing of videos, VCRs, the Internet, PCs, laptops, iPads, or cell phones. Many folks played table games and read books in the evenings, but the most popular social pastime was enjoying dinner with other families.

 

Long before we landed in Lomalinda, her people figured out the importance of connecting. “Much more happens at a meal than satisfying hunger and quenching thirst,” Henri Nouwen wrote. “Around the table we become family, friends, and community, yes, a body.” (Bread for the Journey)

 

Lomalinda’s people got it—we needed each other. Though I didn’t yet recognize it, I had arrived at a God-scheduled appointment. He wanted me to see the community as His hands and feet. He wanted me to look into their eyes and see His. When a family invited us to join them at their dinner table, He wanted me to see them feeding His lambs.

 

God and Lomalinda’s people heaped upon us one blessing after another after another. Life was going to be good there.

 

I would have to extend grace to myself, though, because I would make progress in fits and starts. Some days I took one step forward and two steps back.

 

But like Barbara Johnson said, “If things are tough, remember that every flower that ever bloomed had to go through a whole lot of dirt to get there.” 

 

Yes, I’d have to go through a lot of “dirt”—doubts, difficult transitions, tears, homesickness, despair—before I could bloom where I was planted.

 

But I did bloom, eventually. 

I did bloom where I was planted!

 

Barbara continues:

 

“The Almighty Father will use life’s reverses to move you forward.”

 

And He did.

What seemed like reverses turned out to be tools God used to move me forward and upward.

 

 

“God does His deepest work in our darkest hours”

Dear Henri Nouwen wrote, “Our inclination is to show our Lord only what we feel comfortable with.”

How true that is.

But how foolish we are to believe we can hide anything from God! He knew all about my ugly messes and desperate struggles during my first few days in Lomalinda. (See several recent posts.)

Nouwen continued, “But the more we dare to reveal our whole trembling self to Him, the more we will be able to sense that His love, which is perfect love, casts out all our fears.”

We can be vulnerable in God’s presence. We can’t be anything else!

But—oh! Being vulnerable with God hurts. It hurts our pride. We feel ashamed of our failures and weaknesses, ashamed of our sins—ashamed of ourselves, ashamed before God.

And yet, when we feel the bonds of guilt overwhelming us, God brings us dear encouragers, people like Marie Chapian, who points us to God’s words in Isaiah 44:22, “I have blotted out as a thick cloud your transgressions, and as a cloud your sins. Return to Me, for I have redeemed you.” (Amplified Bible)

Then Marie writes this, as if God were speaking to us:

“Confess your sins so I can forgive you, relieving you of the painful burden of sin and failure.

“You tend to see yourself as unclean, as far removed from all that is heavenly. I see you as My precious child.

“You tend to see yourself as a hopeless backslider, a poor refugee. I see you as Mine.

“You can never dig too deep a hole for Me to pull you out. . . .

“Do not think of your Lord as a man, quick to anger, vengeful and spiteful. . . .

“The Father abundantly pardons. . . .

“Hear Me in the wrestling of your mind. . . .

“I shall lift you up above guilt and shame. . . .

“Confess to Me your wanderings. . . . Feelings of guilt do not make you holy or clean. . . .

“Yield all your guilt to Me. In return I’ll give you a new and cleansed heart.” (from His Thoughts Toward Me by Marie Chapian, based on Isaiah 55:7, 8, 9; 54:11, 14) 

What loving, healing, hope-filled words! Heart-changing words! Life-changing words!

Indeed, from personal experience, AW Tozer knew the truth of those words when he wrote: “God does His deepest work in our darkest hours.”

Henri Nouwen knew the truth of them from personal experience, too: “Lord, I promise I will not run away, not give up, not stop praying, even when it seems useless, pointless, and a waste of time and effort. I love you . . . and . . . I hope in you even though I often experience despair. . . .” (A Cry for Mercy)

Hope. Hope is what God asks of us. Hope in Him. Hope in what we can become in Him, hope in what He can do even when we’re in our darkest hours.

 

“Shushing up and slowing down”

“Shushing up and slowing down,” writes Kelly Balarie, “is paramount to God working in us—and strengthening us. . . . God is ready to hit us with unfathomable new perspectives—ones that redefine our past, present, and problems if we will only stop, receive, and consider. Will we? Will we walk unafraid into His presence? Into God’s rhythms? Not cowering from mysteries?” (Fear Fighting: Awakening Courage to Overcome Your Fears)

Sometimes God urges us to come closer. It’s almost as if we hear Him calling us by name, inviting us to quiet ourselves and deliberately listen to Him.

He summons us to a thin place where we mortals experience a sacred intimacy with Him.

That’s what happened to Samuel one night while he was lying down, perhaps trying to fall asleep. We picture a scene without noise or hustle or bustle. And out of the hush, God called his name, “Samuel!”

And in that thin place, alone with God, Samuel answered, “Speak, Lord, I’m listening.”

So, God spoke. He told Samuel to pay attention, because “I am about to do something in Israel that will make the ears of everyone who hears about it tingle” (1 Samuel 3:11, NIV). Samuel was going to receive an important message from God, and, because of his readiness to listen, Samuel didn’t miss it.

How easy it would be for us, in our cluttered, clanging lifestyles, to miss hearing God’s voice. That’s what Kelly Balarie meant when she wrote of the importance of “shushing up and slowing down.”

Sometimes God catches our attention on busy days, within complicated chapters of our lives. Unlike Samuel, Moses was at work, doing his everyday duties—herding his flock on Mt. Sinai (Exodus 3:1-5)—when God called to him, “Moses, Moses!”

“I’m here,” he answered.

Then God said, “Take off your sandals—you’re standing on holy ground.”

And in that thin place, God revealed His identity to Moses (the mighty “I am who I am” in verse 14) and gave him life-changing information for not only himself but for all Israelites.

When God invites us to focus on Him, He longs for us to respond the way Moses did when He called him—but He gives us a choice. (Our loss if we turn Him down!)

God wants us to experience an intimacy with Him, a quiet space where we’re aware we are standing on holy ground. He invites us to worship, pray, reflect, enjoy Him, and pay attention to Him—because like with Samuel and Abraham, He has important information for us.

If God calls our names in the midst of our busy duties, like he did with Moses, what are we to do if we simply can’t drop everything and walk away?

One option is to schedule time to meet with Him every day, such as setting the alarm clock 45 minutes earlier than usual. Another option would be getting out of town for a weekend in-depth personal retreat.

But even if we can’t change our schedules, we can change our mindsets and deep inner thoughts. We can be conscious of God’s presence throughout the day, hear His words, and carry out conversations with Him.

In his daily devotional, Bread for the Journey, Henri Nouwen ponders Psalm 46:10, “Be still and acknowledge that I am God.” 

He writes, “These are words to take with us 

in our busy lives. 

We may think about stillness 

in contrast to our noisy world. 

But perhaps we can go further 

and keep an inner stillness 

even while we carry on business, 

teach, work construction, make music, 

or organize meetings. . . . 

This still place is where God can dwell 

and speak to us. . . . 

Within that stillness 

God can be our gentle guide 

in everything we think, say, or do.”

God wants us to be sensitive to His nudges and whisperings, to ponder His Word in light of our own situations. He welcomes our thoughts and questions, He hopes we’ll be open and transparent, and He wants to give us insight and encouragement and direction.

He can do that best when we set ourselves apart with Him and listen.

Let’s remember what Kelly Balarie said:

“God is ready to hit us with unfathomable new perspectives

—ones that redefine our past, present, and problems

if we will only stop, receive, and consider.

Will we?

Will we walk unafraid into His presence?

Into God’s rhythms?

Not cowering from mysteries?”

(from Fear Fighting: Awakening Courage to Overcome Your Fears)