That Time When I Couldn't Nap So I Blogged About Numbers Instead

In less than 12 hours we'll be on our way.

This time out a team of 5 will head to Hot Springs for a 2 and a half week stay with our Thai family, and I am stoked!  Three have never been before.  Three are young adults on various amazing adventures.  Two are Sponsors of children there.  One we are leaving behind for a six month stay.  One brings a treasure to leave behind according to his mother's wishes.  For 1 this is a 4th visit with lots of next steps in language and culture to anticipate.  And for 1, that's me, the grace poured out to allow this to be a regular and repeated part of what I do is overwhelming. 

I'll leave you to ponder the math and Venn diagrams I've just laid out.  But it will give you a glimpse into the dynamics and potential of the group I get to travel with....in just a few hours.

I should be napping.

When you get up before 5 to be ready to preach, and you also have to board a plane at 1:45 a.m. in the same stint of a day, napping isn't just a cute little Gramma luxury.  It's a much needful thing.

But apparently getting up a 5, having a robust and wonderful time of worship with beloveds, being totally packed and having an all-checked-off list, isn't enough to convince my body to lay low today.  Not right now anyways.

I think I'm just too 'abundanced'. 

It overwhelmed me on my way into the church early this morning to observe my pre-preaching ritual (something I'm grateful I have the freedom to do in this post-pastor reality) of arriving first, praying over the sermon and the service, and rehearsing what I hope will be God's message to people I love.  Even before I got to doing all of that, alread in the van I was drinking in the morning sky and couldn't help but begin my worship there.  I mean, come on.  My life!

I'm just back from a sacred space where the flat water and kayak and quiet are sanctuaries incredible.
Here in the city, in my backyard, over the pond at the church, and in the context of so many deep friendships (lovely dinner out last night), there are holy places too.  And then today, much later, so much later we'll call it tomorrow morning even though it won't feel like it, I get to head to another place, literally half way around the world, where heaven touches earth some more. 

What kind of God is so lavish? 

I can't add it up, and it's not because the part of my brain that does math died in grade 4 (true fact), but because there's too much, so much, big much blessing.

When I travel with others as a leader or guide to our mission experience, it is always my prayer that they will receive this over abundance thing too.

When I visit Hot Springs as an ambassador of love and support from so many here who lavish their love on our kids, it is always my prayer that those supporters will experience it too.

So, not napping, oh well.  Lots of time to just sit and be still on the flights that will get us there.

Not napping.  Counting blessings makes me so happy, but it clearly doesn't have the same effect as counting sheep.

Best By Choice

I love my work.

I love being outside when the weather is warm and the air is fresh.

So I guess it might be called a ‘sweet spot’ when I can work outside in the summer.

And if that’s the case, I’ve most definitely been in a sweet spot this week.

It was a very unusual beginning to our cottage stay this year to bring three of four grandkids with us for the week, and immediately after that, have our entire family up here for what ended up being the first two full weeks of the season.  Normally I’ve had some time already to slow down my soul and soak in some solitude on the dock and in the kayak, as well as some solid deck work time indulging in the slower, deeper thinking this place so openly lends itself to.   With the understanding that our time here with family is so precious (and I will never take for granted that we can all be together like this), it has been such a bonus to come into this week of stellar weather and be able to spend so much time outside working in the quiet. 

Just to be clear, my ‘work station’ resembles more of a lounging area, protected from the sun and wind on the north side of the cottage under a large umbrella (happy birthday to me from my gifted-gifter husband).  My view is blue and green of the most vibrant kinds, with water and sky and trees providing the hues.  I am interrupted only by short and happy visits from a chipmunk named Gray (so named by the children), a hummingbird (who is shy enough to ask that her name be withheld and who also hasn’t given me permission to even take her picture let along post it), a mother goose and a good-sized gosling (who stopped by to munch on the grass at the bottom of the deck stairs without introducing themselves), Jenny the wren (self explanatory there), and my newest friend Mama Squirrel (obviously great with child(ren), even to my untrained eye – more on her in another blog). 

So the work is work but -- come on.

Still, there’s work to, and a fair bit of too.  More than I would normally bring to the cottage.  The unexpected nature of May pushed some writing, planning, mapping and communicating well into June, which in turn ended up spilling into July, which is now.  No worries.  With my sweet spot in place, just in these three quiet days so far, I’ve been able to accomplish quite a bit of what I would have much preferred to have had completed and tucked away before we arrived with the kids.  No small chunk of that has been sermon and lesson planning for the two weeks I’ll be in Thailand very soon(July 29 to August 14). 

Which brings me to another sweet spot.    My outside work station at Hot Springs.  

It was one of the highlights of my three months stay in the fall of 2015, and remains part of what I love about the work day when I stay there on my own for any extended time.   I’ll be working there soon, for some of the days (not as much when there’s a Team going), fine tuning the ESL and Bible lessons I’ve just fleshed out, rehearsing the sermons I’m writing here. 

And now there’s another overlapping happening, but this time of the two sweet spots themselves.  Here I am, working all day today outside, on work I love that I’ll be working on some more, outside, when I’m in Thailand....best of both worlds.

The best.  And it occurs to me that somewhere along the way, I’ve learned to choose to lock onto what’s best, also known as true and noble and right and pure and lovely and excellent and praiseworthy.  Because there was a time in my spiritual development when I found this hard to do.  I sort of knew that if I did, I could have more peace, more joy.  But there seemed to be so much that was false and ignoble and wrong and impure and unlovely and messed up and curse-worthy to think about. 

There still is, actually.  In both my worlds.  Sadness and grief and confusing realities, and work I just plain don’t like to do, no matter where I’ve set up my work station.  There’s all that to contend with and deal with and sort out, for sure.  Suradet and Yupa have it too.  And then some.   Working in a culture where poverty is rampant and infrastructures non-existent is no picnic.  They have twenty-one kids right now and no less than eight of them are teenagers, so just use your imagination.  And then there’s the fact that they’re coming up on the third year anniversary of their 20 year old son Bee’s death in a motorcycle accident.  Yeah, that.

There’s lots outside the sweet spot that’s not so sweet.  Can’t ignore all that. 

Still.  Choose the best.

I think I’ve learned so much about this from them actually.  Suradet and Yupa have a persistently faith-filled outlook that’s fixed on what’s best; chooses to sit in the best; chooses to find and work and live in the sweet spots of God’s love and provision for them. 

On this day when I work outside, anticipating the work I’ll soon be privileged again to do on the other side of the world, I am also grieving and processing big things.  No outside workstation with a lovely view changes any of that.

But with so much joy to be had, on this quiet day of working outside, my soul knows this is the best place I could be.