Held close in God’s loving arms

 

Have you ever felt your life’s circumstances were earthquake-y and unpredictable and mysterious? That the songs of your heart were slightly out of tune? And yet, at the same time you had an inkling that God was slogging through it with you, holding you close, smiling at you, cheering you on?

 

Often we don’t see our situation clearly until later, in hindsight.

 

I look back and see that during my first few weeks in Lomalinda, I was in a fog—not a dense one, but a fog nevertheless—and I recognize now, more than ever, that day by day, morning by morning, new mercies I saw. All I needed, God’s hand provided. Great was His faithfulness!

 

God had put His loving arms around me during those puzzling days of transition—transition out of so much and into so much. . . .

 

• God said He’d be with me and bless me as I left my homeland and instead lived in Colombia as a foreigner (Genesis 26:3);
• He went before me as I transitioned out of my home in Seattle and into my home in Lomalinda (Deuteronomy 31:8);
• His everlasting lovingkindness led me out of my Pacific Northwest culture and into two cultures new to me: (1) the culture of a missionary community and (2) the culture of rural Colombia (Exodus 13:21);
• As I stepped away from my friends and family back home, God circled me, front and back, with His hand of blessing upon me, and led me into new groups of people I’d never met before (Psalm 139:5);
• He assured me He’d be with me and keep me close as I transitioned out of my home church and into a different one—we had only one in Lomalinda (Exodus 28:15);
• He went before me and helped me fight mental and physical battles as I left behind the way I’d always done grocery shopping and meal preparation, and He led me into the Lomalinda way (Deuteronomy 1:30);
• Although I had never been this way before (Joshua 3:4), He helped me transition out of owning a car and into walking everywhere;
• He had sent me to live as a foreigner and promised to bless me there (Genesis 26:3), helping me trade the smells of forest and sea for the smells of jungle and grasslands and mud;
• Because I was a foreigner in a foreign land (Exodus 2:22), God stood beside me as I moved out of cool Seattle temperatures and into sweltering equatorial heat;
• Within each day’s spirals and whorls, and despite my many awkward lurches, with each little victory and each major triumph God was helping me drop puzzle pieces into place. He held my hand, guided me with His counsel, and transitioned me toward a glorious destiny (Psalm 73:23-24).

 

As we traveled this foreign wilderness, I witnessed God caring for Dave, Matt, Karen, and me as a father cares for his child. He had brought us to this place (Deuteronomy 1:31). 

 

Little did I know then that He was preparing a feast for me so that my cup would overflow with blessings (Psalm 23:5).

 

The Lord carried me out of despair and offered me hope: “So do not fear, for I am with you; do not be dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you and help you; I will uphold you with My righteous right hand” (Isaiah 41:10).

 

Joan Chittister writes: “Despair . . . leads us to ignore the very possibilities that could save us. . . .

 

“Hope, on the other hand, . . . knows that whatever happens God lives in it, and expects that, whatever its twists and turns, it will ultimately yield its good to those who live it consciously, to those who live it to the hilt. . . . Hope sends us dancing around dark corners. . . .

 

“Every dimension of the process of struggle is a call to draw from a well of  new understandings. It is that wisdom that carries us beyond the dark night of struggle to the dawn of new wisdom and new strength.” (Joan Chittister, Scarred by Struggle, Transformed by Hope)

 

Hope: It’s a good thing.

 

Wherever you find yourself today,

God holds you in His arms

and offers you hope.

 

“May the God of all hope

fill you with all joy and peace

as you trust Him. . . .”

(Romans 15:13)

 

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.

 

Feeling like a big baby

 

Looking back now, I feel overwhelming gratitude for the people who helped my family and me settle in Lomalinda—people like David Hockett, our neighbor Ruth, Karen Mac, and Lois Metzger. And today I’m going to tell you about Linda Lackey.

 

Each person gently oriented me, offered valuable and practical how-to information, and modeled for me how to live in that foreign place.

 

My days and duties were getting less unfamiliar. Chaos was calming down (emotional, mental, spiritual, and literal) and my homemaking efforts were slowly making a big difference. Each day my young family and I were making progress.

 

But then. . . . But then. . . Rufina began working for us. Dear Rufina.

 

There was nothing wrong with Rufina. But there was something wrong with me.

 

You see, a Lomalinda lady named Dorothy had arranged for a pleasant older woman, Rufina, to work at our house one day a week.

 

I’d never imagined a person like me would have a maid, but in Lomalinda it was the thing to do for several reasons.

 

First, local people needed jobs and, second, because of the intense heat, we all worked at a slower pace than we did in cooler regions of the northern hemisphere—it was a health issue—and that meant we had a hard time getting household chores done.

 

Third, having a maid freed mothers, like me, to fill jobs that contributed to the task of Bible translation, the reason we all lived there.

 

And fourth, it cost little to hire a maid.

 

A few years earlier, Rufina’s husband, a church pastor, had been gunned down by someone waiting for him to step off a bus. She’d worked for several other Lomalinda families and had never stolen from them, which was not the case with some maids.

 

And so, a week before school began, at seven o’clock on a Tuesday morning, Rufina arrived at our door. She stood only two inches taller than our first-grader, Matt. (See photo, below.)

 

Dorothy had given me a mimeographed sheet in Spanish listing common household chores—Rufina spoke no English—and I had made a list and rehearsed it several times. When she arrived, I read her my instructions and let out a big sigh—I was finished! I turned to go—but she had questions. I hadn’t anticipated that.

 

I couldn’t make sense of anything she said so I took a deep breath and told her I didn’t understand. “Yo no comprendo.” Then I asked her to say it again. “Repite usted, por favor.”

 

She did, but she talked twice as fast and twice as long. She was a soft-spoken, gentle lady with a sweet smile that lit up her face, but that didn’t help me understand her. I hoped to catch a few words and look them up in my Spanish dictionary, but I didn’t understand even one.

 

She waited for my answer. I trembled. What was I to do? I felt a panic coming over me. I fought tears.

 

But then I remembered—oh, yes, then I remembered!—that on another day of the week, Rufina worked for the Lackey family. God did that for me—He helped me remember how I could find practical help.

 

I looked up the Lackeys’ number and dialed.

 

Linda Lackey answered. Struggling to steady my voice, I asked if she would talk to Rufina and help me figure out what she was saying.

 

“Oh, of course.” Linda spoke so kindly. “Rufina is hard to understand because she’s missing so many teeth.”

 

I handed the phone to Rufina, and, after a long conversation with Linda, she handed it back to me, smiling.

 

Linda, bless her heart, had helped Rufina understand me

and helped me understand Rufina.

 

A huge relief washed over me as Rufina turned and got to work.

 

Local maids believed it was bad luck to finish the day’s work by doing anything other than ironing so, late that afternoon, Rufina ironed the laundry she had washed that morning. She did an exquisite job. She even ironed things I would never have ironed myself. And best of all, she sang while she worked. That in itself was a lovely blessing.

 

Dorothy had told me to pay Rufina at the end of each day, putting her pesos in an envelope, and to have her sign a notebook in which I recorded the date and amount I paid her. She wrote slowly, the letters large and childlike. It struck me that she probably couldn’t read or write anything more than her own name.

 

The memory of that day still stands out. I hadn’t recognized anything Rufina said after the call to Linda Lackey.

 

Each time I had asked her to repeat herself, she did the same thing she’d done in the morning, telling a story twice as long and twice as fast, with lots of hand gestures and arm-waving. I lost track of how many times I snuck into my bedroom to dry my tears.

 

After Rufina left the phone rang, and Linda Lackey asked how Rufina did the rest of the day.

 

By then I was a big bundle of nerves—

I’d never had a stranger in my house all day

—in my home, my refuge—a stranger!

And I burst out sobbing.

 

I apologized,

but Linda interrupted with comforting words

and a promise to pray for me.

 

Afterward, I felt like a big baby. I reminded myself that Rufina was a lovely lady—sweet, hard-working, and always smiling.

 

Rufina didn’t do anything to make you cry, I told myself. You simply need time to get accustomed to her.

 

Nevertheless, I was giddy with relief

because I had an entire week to pull myself together

before she returned.

(From Chapter 10, Please, God, Don’t Make Me Go:

A Foot-Dragger’s Memoir)

 

Karen second from left; Matt far right; with Rufina

Finding value in taking baby steps in the right direction

 

Yes indeed, God had wheedled me out of my comfort zone and, it seemed, He enjoyed introducing me to altogether new ways of living.

 

Me—the protected and comfortable suburbanite, the straitlaced and genteel young lady.

 

The one who had stayed far away from wildlife and slimy-slippery stuff and anything that even hinted at danger. (Click on If you see red eyes above the waterline . . .)

 

And yet God was succeeding in introducing me to new and good things that were far from all I was accustomed to in suburban Seattle—partly through the exciting and diverse natural environment my son Matt was discovering with his new friends (see recent posts), and partly through Lomalinda’s good people.

 

Yes, I was gradually becoming more accepting of Lomalinda’s lifestyle, but I still faced a handful of challenges.

 

One of them was how to feed my family well from what was—or what was not—available at the commissary.

 

It was a low-lying building painted sky blue. The first time I stepped inside, I was struck by how dark and cramped it was, the size of two rooms in a small house. It smelled of laundry detergent, bleach, insect spray, powdered juice drink, burlap, and bread.

 

Hand-crafted wooden shelves housed canned food—things like tuna and vegetables—but limited supplies shocked me. I found one loaf of bread, a small tin of rolled oats, and coffee, rice, flour, and powdered milk in small plastic bags.

 

That first day, I found no produce or fresh meat, and I despaired. How could I feed my kids well enough? How did people make decent meals?

 

On other days, in the future, I found a few more items, including chunks of local meat, and little by little my refrigerator and kitchen cupboards began to look a little less bare.

 

I’d never been a fancy cook—we came from humble middle-class families and were accustomed to eating humble middle-class food. I wasn’t hoping to provide epicurean meals—I just longed to feed my family nutritious meals. But the items on the commissary shelves didn’t give me much hope.

 

But then. . . . But then. . . . !

 

Ron and Lois Metzger invited us to their home for dinner. Stepping into their red brick house, I could not believe what I saw on the dinner table—it looked like a Thanksgiving feast.

 

But I’d seen the skimpy supplies in the commissary.

 

Dumbfounded, I asked Lois, “Where did you find all this food?”

 

“At the commissary,” she said, smiling.

 

Bless her heart, she had learned to be creative, and I was impressed. (from Chapter 10, Please, God, Don’t Make Me Go:A Foot-Dragger’s Memoir.)

 

I’ve always remembered that meal and the inspiration Lois offered me.

 

She was one of those dear ones I told you about before: In Lomalinda, I was like a baby bird learning to fly. God blessed me with a number of “mama birds,” lovely people who gently showed me how to do life there in that out-of-the-way place—and Lois was one of them.

 

The day would soon come when, inspired by Lois, I would take on the challenge of making attractive, tasty meals from limited supplies in the commissary.

 

It would require resourcefulness and work, but I would thrive on the challenge.

 

But in the beginning, only a few days into Lomalinda life, I was still in transition, and transition can be messy—stumbling through unknowns and waiting for elusive answers. It’s a vulnerable time, a time of letting go and rethinking and stretching.

 

I was slogging through one of those proverbial “one step forward and two steps back” stages of my life.

 

Hooray for one-step-forward days!

 

Even baby steps in the right direction

can make a big difference.

 

As Thomas Merton said,

“You do not need to know precisely

what is happening, or exactly where it is all going.

What you need is to recognize the possibilities and challenges

offered by the present moment,

and to embrace them with courage, faith and hope.”

 

God understands our awkward lurches and still loves us

 

Have you ever watched baby birds learning to fly?

 

I’ve marveled while watching a mama bird train her little ones in our neighbor’s yard. It’s as if she chirps out, “Watch me! Do what I do!” And then she flies from birdhouse to telephone wire, and her little birdie flails its wings and follows. 

 

Next, she flies from telephone wire to rose bush, her baby flapping its way to her side.

 

Then she soars from the rose bush back to the roof of the birdhouse. The babe flutters its wings, hesitates, wavers, flaps those wings hard, lurches upward, and stumbles onto the roof with a less-than-graceful plunk.

 

In Lomalinda, I was like a baby bird learning to fly. God blessed me with a number of “mama birds,” lovely people who gently showed me how to live life there in that out-of-the-way place—people like Karen McIntosh, Ruth Hockett, and others I’ll tell you about in coming weeks.

 

Their generous help reminds me of Deuteronomy 32:11 and God caring for Israel the way a mother eagle cares for her young: she hovers over them, spreading her wings. She gets them going and watches over them, carrying them on her wings.

 

That’s what several Lomalinda people did for me—they got me going, and in the process, I made some wobbly attempts and suffered a few awkward lurches. They checked in on me and kept cheering me on, “Watch me! Do what I do!” And, when necessary, they carried me on their wings to soften my less-than-graceful plunks and thuds.

 

God was so good to send those dear people to me. And now that I think of it, no doubt they, too, floundered and got flustered when they were new to Lomalinda. No doubt even the seasoned ones didn’t get everything right all the time.

 

They had already experienced what Teddy Roosevelt spoke of: 

“It is only through labor and painful effort, 

by grim energy and resolute courage, 

that we move on to better things.” 

They were modeling for me how to live that way.

They, like me, were recipients of God’s generous, gentle grace.

 

No matter what our struggles were, 

or are, or will be, 

we can live day by day wrapped in His loving arms. 

We can enjoy His approving smile. 

We can live with hope.

 

As A.W. Tozer said, “We please [God] most not by frantically trying to make ourselves good, but [by] throwing ourselves into His arms with all our imperfections and believing that He understands everything—and still loves us” (A.W. Tozer, The Root of Righteousness).

 

The value of asking questions—and getting answers

 

Lomalinda and I hadn’t gotten off to a good start—in fact, it was traumatic—but after a few chaotic days, I’d turned a corner.

 

The time had come to steady myself and take a calmer look at all that seemed so foreign, to look toward an unknown future—the next hour, the next day, the next week—with maturity and optimism.

 

The time had come to embrace a can-do spirit. I could make progress by breaking my duties into small chunks, by taking deep breaths, and by asking questions of those who had lived in Lomalinda longer than I.

 

Sometimes pride has made me hesitant to ask questions, insecurity has made me reluctant to ask for help. But asking, and getting answers, can go a long way in solving problems, eliminating mysteries, and making much-needed progress.

 

Asking questions of my new colleagues, seasoned Lomalindians, reminds me of an experience I had on one of my first days in Lomalinda. And the memory makes me smile. Oh, the myriad things I had to learn! And how surprising some of them were!

 

“Wednesday is vegetable day,” Karen MacIntosh had told me. “A big truck brings produce based on what we order the previous week—I put an order in for you already. Next Wednesday morning, drop off your basket at the commissary. You have a great big basket, right?”

 

I nodded, remembering how the commissary manager, Esther Steen, insisted I needed one. Now I knew why.

 

“Good,” Karen said. “When our crew delivers your fruit and veggies Wednesday afternoon, I’ll come over and show you what to do with them.”

 

What to do with them? I wondered what she meant. What’s not to know already about fruits and vegetables? I’d been cooking since I was a kid.

 

Sure enough, Wednesday afternoon an aged truck lumbered and whined up and down Lomalinda’s hills delivering bulging baskets of produce, and soon Karen Mac arrived.

 

“First, we scrub them in soapy water,” she said, filling the kitchen sink.

 

“Then we’ll soak everything for twenty minutes in Lugol, an iodine solution to kill parasites. Those nasty little bugs can really mess up your digestive tract. And cause a lot of embarrassment in public.”

 

While I stood beside her scrubbing, I didn’t recognize some of the produce. I puzzled over some round fruits, yellow or gold in color. “Are these miniature grapefruits?” I asked.

 

“No, they’re oranges,” Karen smiled. Oranges? That was a surprise.

 

My questions continued until I worried I’d asked too many. But then I spotted small round things, green and covered with thick, warty skin. I had no idea what they were, but pride welled up and I told myself, You’ve asked too many questions. Don’t ask again.

 

Eventually, though, curiosity got the best of me and I blurted, “What are these?”

 

Karen laughed. Maybe she remembered asking the same question years earlier.

 

“They’re lemons. Watch this,” she grinned, slicing through the green rind. It was orange inside.

 

Oh, yes, I had so much to learn

about living in Lomalinda,

and some discoveries,

like what a lemon looked like,

made me laugh out loud.

 

And laughter is always good medicine.

 

When you’re not who you think you are

 

Maybe you’ve never had to transition into a foreign culture, but you’ve made other transitions: new jobs, new homes, new states, new relationships, new schools, new churches, new health conditions, new doctors. Even new cell phones!

 

Transitions are awkward—even scary—because we have to let go of the old even before we’ve figured out the new.

 

When we transition into new situations, we often discover we’re not who we thought we were—so, we need to figure out who we are, then.

 

At the same time, we need to transition into new routines, new plans, new perspectives, even new dreams. New hopes. Especially new identities.

 

In my first few days in Lomalinda, God was inviting me—sometimes even pushing me, step by step—through that necessary transition.

 

I was beginning to recognize that my plans and dreams had been too small, too tame, and I had to ask myself:

 

What do God’s ongoing plans for me look like?

 

And will I embrace them with joy?

 

And since, during those first few days, I had this uncomfortable realization that I was not who I thought I was, and that I needed to figure out, then, who I was . . .  

 

. . . and since I’d already made a big mess of everything . . .

 

I was humbled and troubled by how inadequate my own resources were for getting life in Lomalinda right.

 

Ron Hutchcraft writes, “God loves to win major victories with inadequate resources. He arranges mismatches and impossible situations so that we will see how big He is and He will get all the glory!”

 

Ron continues, “God puts us in situations where, like Gideon, we’re left saying, ‘If there’s a victory here, it’s going to have absolutely nothing to do with me.’”

 

As I look back now, I can attest to this: God indeed was working—in mighty yet subtle ways—to transition me into a new, delightful life in Lomalinda.

 

What about you? What transitions are you dealing with? They can be uncomfortable and confusing, can’t they? And mysterious. And complicated.

 

And maybe, like me, you’re haunted by realizing you’re not who you thought you were—and you’re longing for answers: “Who am I, then?”

 

Ron Hutchcraft offers you this: “If you find yourself out-manned, out-gunned, and under-resourced right now . . .  realize this may very well be the prelude to an amazing victory!”

 

As you walk hand-in-hand with God through your transitions, remember these precious words:

 

O Lord, you have examined my heart

and know everything about me.

You know when I sit down or stand up.

You know my every thought when far away.

You chart the path ahead of me

and tell me where to stop and rest.

Every moment you know where I am. . . .

You both precede and follow me.

You place your hand of blessing upon my head. . . .

I can never escape from your spirit!

I can never go away from your presence! . . .

If I ride the wings of the morning,

if I dwell by the farthest oceans,

even there your hand will guide me,

and your strength will support me. . . .

You saw me before I was born.

Every day of my life was recorded in your book.

Every moment was laid out before a single day had passed.

How precious are your thoughts about me, O God!

They are innumerable!

I can’t even count them;

they outnumber the grains of sand!

(Psalm 139:1-19)