A {Perfectly Difficult} Day in the Mountains

{the start}

The morning sky was just beginning to show itself when we headed out yesterday. We were up at five-o'clock, filling a daypack full of food meant to feed six people for the day, hauling the children out of bed, and heading out with the hope of a day in the mountains; a day breathing air that was fresh and clean from the pollution of the city, a day with a dirt path under our feet and the smell of pine and thick underbrush in the air.

If there is one small thing I have learned living in a country that is not your own, it is that things often don't go according to plan. Here is a good rule: The plan will be different than you anticipated, and who knows what may happen. Inevitably, I have found that heading out to do anything, anything at all (with or without my family trailing along) is usually a harder, longer task than I expected. This may sound frustrating, and it can be. But this simple reality has taught me quite a lot and it has changed me. It has shown me that I am not naturally the flexible, easy-going girl I imagine myself to be in my head. And it has taught me that if I knew all the facts ahead of time, I would likely choose to opt out of most experiences that have actually ended up being far more rewarding and important than the "difficulties" they were made up of.

{following}

Yesterday was no exception.
Our plan on paper was to head out with a group of local friends to an undeveloped area in the mountains outside the city. To get there was an hour ride on the subway, then a two hour bus ride. We were expecting to hike on a moderate trail with no stone steps, no crowds, and no trailside vendors selling trinkets and food along the way. We were expecting to stop for lunch somewhere on this moderate path, and then hike down in the afternoon, boarding the bus around three-o'clock and being home somewhere around time for dinner.

Instead, we found ourselves tagging along on an ambitious effort to ascend a steep, slick, endlessly upward trail with the goal of reaching the summit in four hours (or however long it took) and then heading back down to "hopefully" board the buses by seven or eight-o'clock. Maybe we would get home by ten.

As our team leader shared this plan ten minutes into our hike, I looked around at the two-year old strapped to my Man's back, the boys plunging ambitiously ahead of the pack, and my five-year old bringing up the rear of the group and wondered if we were going to fit into the day's agenda very well.

It's true, on paper I would not be up for this. A mountain outing all day with a two-year old who can't keep from hurling himself over the rock ledge and into the creek? No thank you. An all day mountain outing with a five year old dragging herself up miles of steep, slippery rock trails, falling and scraping her leg with no choice but to keep going? No thank you. An all day mountain outing where five unexpected hours are spent at a little bee infested creekside clearing, waiting on the rest of the group to summit and return? No thank you. An all day mountain outing where it takes four different legs of travel by taxi, subway, bus and walking just to reach the trailhead? No thank you. An all day mountain outing where I have four little people to keep watered, fed, safe from falls and scrapes and pricks, not to mention psychologically strong enough to keep going and not give up? No thank you. Yes, on paper it sounds like a nightmare and everything opposite of refreshing.

{rock lover}

But this is where so many of these circumstances happening over and over again in these recent years have taught me a most valuable lesson. It is valuable to me at least, because I can see that without it, I would continue to see myself as "flexible and easygoing," all the while being unwilling and unable to push through hard circumstances to experience the reward that comes with them.

Sometimes these rewards seem small on paper too. But they are not small, and I find time and time again that they are far more than enough. This is something that keeps pounding itself into my head as I learn this lesson over and over again: even after a trying day, there are intangible pieces of goodness that come in greater measure than the long list of difficulties. Yesterday for instance was filled with not a little discomfort, but in equal measure there was joy in watching my children romp through the outdoors, and find real happiness in it. Not a trumped up, I'm-making-this-sound-better-than-it-was for the sake of my story kind of happiness. Just the kind that comes from humans being in the beauty of God's natural world and finding it fun. And they didn't seem to know they should be tired and whiney and complaining this was far too much for them too handle. They pushed through and worked hard and kept going. I was so proud of their strength and tenacity and so thankful for the fun and freshness of the day in spite of it all.

It's going to seem small as I list them, the snapshots of goodness that were were given, but they were reward enough for me.

There was silliness on the bus as we shared embarrassed introductions in broken English and halting Chinese. There was my my girl catching butterflies and my boys building dams in the creek. There was the rushing of water over rocks and wild ferns at my feet. There was the vista and the view and the sky wide and blue overhead. There was the evening light stealing over the mountainside and the smell of twilight in the air, something that always does my camp-loving heart a great deal of good. There were our friends, hearty and generous and ambitious, and if for a moment I felt that at times they were not thinking of our predicament, they also taught me that at times I am too uptight and there is real truth in their little phrase meiwenti, it's not a problem.

There was more and it is all wrapped up in my memory of the day, and in the memory each of us will have of it. I am reminded that it is God's mercy that I don't know everything ahead of time and that I am not given the facts of the day before it is played out. I wouldn't choose it, but having gone through it, I know that I would not choose otherwise. Isn't this the way of our lives, the days that make up the years that make up the whole of what we will one day look back on? I'm certain that what I am learning is nothing less than faith and trust, played out in tales of days in the mountains which impress upon me like parables, and in the day to day life I am called to that often feels nothing like an adventure, but will one day be see in all it's wildness and wonder.

{pretty}

{boulder climbing is the best}

{ferns are my favorite}

{riverside painting}

{lovely path}

{hold him or he swims}

{who needs boyscouts}

{vista}

{inevitable end}

Sowing and Reaping and all that Rubbish

I have been pulling lettuce from the garden almost daily for our salads this week. Big, beautiful mounds of crunchy Red Romaine and Mantila Butter Leaf. It's hard to believe they were seeds just a few weeks ago. The same goes for the tomato plants, which are climbing out of control and the basil that must think it's in some sort of Plant of the Year competition. Watching the process of growth from preparing the soil, to planting the seed, to waiting patiently, and then seeing this precarious seedling grow into something bountiful and edible and beautiful to behold, is astounding in a way. And yet, it's pretty scientific, pretty down to earth when you follow the "rules." The right conditions, the right procedure, and you are guaranteed a pretty sure outcome. Soil. Water. Sunlight. Temperate Climate. Oila-- harvest.

The boys traipsed off to their piano lesson this morning. It can feel a bit like the seed planting, this piano thing. Put in the hard work now and one day you'll sow a prodigy. That's not really it of course. I want them to enjoy and appreciate music, to give develop and flight to that possibility in them that may have an affinity for it, and to be able to give of that pleasure to others too. But these "building years" can play with your mind too. You can begin to believe that put in, put out... if you do it right and have all your worthwhile ducks in a row, you will grow a nice human. Lessons. Practice. Committment. Don't give up. And oila-- well rounded little musicians.

I picked up a book a few days ago that is fast turning into my obsessive summer-read. Chinese Lessons: Five Classmates and the Story of New China by John Pomfret. I am a sucker for these memoirs and biographies about life in China. I especially love when the stories run deep, revealing the complex frailty and abiding strength of our humanness, both at once hard to understand in the worst moments of any nations history. How can we do these things to one another? How can we believe and live in these circumstances? How can we survive? How can there be any hope... for change? For recovery? One of the men in the book, Zhou, after recounting his horrific experiences which included maligning and renouncing his own father, asks the question: "How do you think a society where that type of behavior was condoned, no, not condoned, mandated, can heal itself? Do you think it ever can?" The seeds were planted, the harm done. Can there be any stopping the harvest it brings?

One of our memory pieces for the summer is Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream." Dwelling on his beautiful, poetic lines day after day don't take away the stringent truth that is starkly evident with each sentence. A nation reaping the woes of sorrow and atrocity they had been sowing for far too many years.

And then there is me. Being a parent. Who can be a parent and not either feel the burden of all their mistakes and failures on a regular basis, or else a false sense of pride that having done much of the sowing as per the manual, they are sure to reap the child that turns out Just Right. This is me, worrying that as the Sowing and Reaping principle goes with children, I am surely failing in creating the right conditions.

And China, oh China. My life is lived in you, given over to you. And what do you do when you sow and sow and wonder when the reaping happens? The principle of it starts to play on my heart strings, to play with my mind. Perhaps you sowed all wrong. In vain. Something is wrong with your sowing. It's all sticks and stones. It's all for the burning. Maybe there won't ever be any good fruit to show for it all.

Sowing and Reaping is scientific. It's matter of fact. It's get what you deserve. And this for much of life, is the way it works. Jesus himself preaches that.

But there are miracles. Jesus, the miracle worker showed us that. And in this world of Sowing and Reaping there is the wonder and unexpected gift of something we don't deserve. Time and time again we get it. We get the kindness of God. We get his smile on us. We get his patience toward us. We get his work on our behalf when we have stopped working, or when we do it all wrong.

The lettuce bounty is evidence that you do reap what you sow. But people are evidence of the fact that God is at work in souls in ways that go beyond the fixed laws of nature... just as he bent those laws in his miracle working ways so many years ago, to still raging seas, to change water to wine, to heal blind and lame men, to bring a girl back to life and a man out of the tomb.

I cling to the fact that there is more to my tasks of sowing than getting the conditions right. God is there, with his miracle of daily, amazing, not-according-to-my-rules, grace.

Summer in China

It's Summer.

The students have gone away, the staff have mostly left for various home countries, the neighborhood is even a little quieter with families away on summer leave or furlough. It is quiet and peaceful and there is nothing more I want in the world than this right now.

It has been another long year and even though the sky is grey outside with a soft blanket of mist falling from it, I am not disappointed by the rain. I think we are all in need of the comfort that it brings. We need rest. We need to be together. We need to soak up the goodness and provision of Heaven.

For us, Summer in America means reuniting with family, traveling, blue skies, camping, eating our favorite foods and seeing old friends, shopping and stocking up for the coming term. Summer in America means go and revel and spend.

Summer in China means rest, routine, memorizing and reading, family time and few friends, rainy days and baffling heat. Summer in China means rest and reflect and restore.

So we are here in rainy China land with our Summer Schedule up on the fridge and I am thankful.

Everybody got a Super Summer Bucket with reading plans and journals, books and games, soccer jerseys (because it's a World Cup Craze going on in this house right now) and swimming gear in the hope that the rain won't be here forever.

I am also happily and gratefully heading out each morning for a couple hours of Chinese class, another of my top reasons for enjoying our summers in China... intense and profitable Chinese lessons. Though I did get a little teary eyed this morning at one point when I felt so overwhelmed at the vast amount of this language I still don't understand. Still, I love my morning walk by myself and the way it  reminds me of those quiet, simple mornings when I took summer courses in college. The routine that develops with grabbing a coffee and your breakfast on the way to class, the focus you can give to a single subject. My life is so far from the freedom and study of those university days, but this little morning bit with my walk and my language lesson brings me back and makes me smile inside.

So does getting kids excited over new books and watching them chip away at memory work, like Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech. I am not sure who gets the greater benefit-- the ones memorizing, or the one helping them. I know all the words I have floating around in my head and on the tip of my tongue from Romans and Proverbs and Martin Luther King are a little like those rain drops outside, sent from above, settling into places in me that need a drink of something higher and better and wiser than myself. 

Who would have thought, a summer in China, a little piece of heaven.

Chinese New Year :: This Is the Way

We just finished two weeks of rest together at home with no work, and no school, thanks to the Chinese New Year holiday that takes over the land. For many foreigners living in China, this holiday means jetting somewhere warm and far away from the cold, the billions-of-people-trying-to-get-back-to their families-migration, and the shut down of stores and conveniences all over the country. We dream of maybe doing something warm and wonderful someday too... but for the last 7 years, we have stayed put, and it has been one of the best building blocks of a life loved here in China. Here's why:

1. We have built traditions, built because they are not natural to us or our heritage, but over time spent in country and with our Chinese friends, they have become a special time of the year for us. Making jiaozi is a Chinese New Year family tradition and we love to get together with friends to master the art of securing little meat filled dumplings and then cooking them together for a grand feast. Our entire family adores this meal and we like to keep track of who has the best jiaozi making skills.

2. It's a unique time to spend with our local friends, meeting their families and being invited into their lives. We get to see them in their element, learn about their family dynamics- the good and the bad, the unique strengths and burdensome pressures.

This is my friend and her grandma. She loves to tell stories about the old days. Her life spans 7 children, and a history in China unlike any other generation. 

3. Our children get to see and practice the art of seeing a whole different way of living. 

We were brought with our friend's family to visit a local Buddhist temple. For our hosts it was more about social prestige (in knowing the head monk) and cultural affiliation. For us, it was deeply spiritual as we felt the weight of the beliefs so sunk in the hearts and minds of the place and people who were there. I prayed much of the time I was there. I grieved for anyone bound to a life where hope is tied to a god that is approached through karma and spells, through incense and offerings, none of which you can be sure are heard, or that even if they are heard are not offset by something done in your past life. I sat with the monk, and asked about his life, and the meaning of the bracelet he gave me. He does not like his life. I told him who I know, and that with Him there is a relationship that is real. I left feeling heavy with all those unheard prayers, and the man's life who for all its sacrifice can earn him nothing. I know a Man who lived the sacrifice for you! I still think of that monk.

4. We get to travel in the People's Way. At least I like to call it that. We love to take trains in China. It's an experience, and a good one. It's slow, and crowded, and full of interesting, regular old people of every shape and color of life. Our girl always, always finds some kind of friend she can talk to. And for a few dollars we get to experience the "thrill" of going somewhere, of window gazing, and of building our own store of family memories made of moments that can only happen on a slow train in China.

Bullet Point Thoughts :: Rats and Breakfast, Facebook and Puritans.

• There has been a rat in our house. He is pretty brazen; thinks he owns the place. One morning when my eyes were still a little blurry before the coffee had done its magic, it skittered across the counter top and jumped off, then ran right under my feet and into the living room. Needless to say, we are all pretty much skeeved out and determined for this rat to never ever EVER AGAIN set foot in this house. 
• My children have been making breakfast in the mornings. It is Chinese New Year break so we have not been getting up for school, and they are surprising me with the kind of meals they can pull off. I was encouraged to realize that even if I don't spend a ton of time walking them through step by step tutorials on how to bake, cook, etc., just by proximity and the amount of time they spend watching me do it all, they are picking things up. So in the past week we have had pancakes, ham and cheese egg sandwiches, french toast, and one muffin attempt. The fractions were going well until 3/4 cup milk became 3 cups of milk out of 4. And the oven does not work just by matter of placing something inside it, you must turn it on. Still, I think it's clear that lessons are being learned. And they are having a ton of fun...and their chests stick out a little further each morning as they roll their creation out of the kitchen.
• Social media is driving me crazy. It's just driving me crazy. I have pulled out before, "fasted" from it. But right now I just feel resigned and lethargic about it. The complaining. The negativity. The insensitivity. The look-at-me-ness of it. The sheer amount of thought that should be kept private or between two people that gets exposed to the world. It's all part of the price we pay to "keep in touch" I suppose. 
• I think the Puritan writers make great virtual pastors. Since moving to China, and throughout much of my life really, I have not had a pastor who shepherded me in the way all believers need to help them grow into maturity. It is one of the things that can feel lonely or even a little helpless while living here. But every time I pick up a book written by a Puritan, I immediately feel "pastored" as though I were one of their little flock, and they were looking into my heart, determining my soul sickness and needs, and administering just the right tonic through the Word and teachings of either conviction or explanation or encouragement or instruction. If I remember correctly, the Puritans were even called something along those lines... Soul Physicians. I recently picked up Rare Jewel of Christian Contentment by Jeremiah Buroughs and I am finding the same old thing is happening again. If you can't have the warm body of a real pastor, these guys are the most relevant dead men your soul may ever need.
• We are getting on a train tomorrow. To go visit one of our local friends in a smaller city a short distance from here. She invited us to come spend some time with her family and celebrate her grandma's birthday together with them. I love doing things like this. It will be a day full of some discomfort for sure... lots of travel with little kids, meeting new people and struggling to speak their language or understand them, feeling awkward and unsure of how to act appropriately, wanting to say so much more than you can express, and watching my friend struggle with the dynamics of her family. But it is the kind of thing we live for. 

Why I Love Living In China :: A Book. A New Year

I just finished reading The City of Tranquil Light by Bo Caldwell. It’s a novel about an American couple serving as missionaries in inland China during the early 20^th century. It’s a somewhat prosaic story about their love, longevity, loss, and the lessons they learned as well as the difficult things that still remained a mystery for them at the end of their lives. In many ways the story is far removed from the China of today and the way we experience life here. But there was a spirit about it that was compelling, or at least had hints of a camaraderie in it to me… like that red silk thread that adoption families talk about, an invisible connection that ties them to their son or daughter in an inexplicable but very real way.

It made me think about the powerful influence of Time in our lives. How it can bind you in a slow, rhythmic way over days and months and years to a place, or a people. To many people, there may be very little on the face of living in China that is attractive. To the naked eye, comparing it to other places in the world, this city is dirty, polluted, frustrating and difficult. In many ways the stories and lives around us are maddening, sometimes horrifying, or just plain depressing. For all appearances, it's not a great place to raise kids. And I read all of this in The City of Tranquil Light too, though to a much greater degree. Life was so different back then, far harder, far more isolating and much more physically demanding. The sacrifices were incredible and seemed never to let up.  Yet in time, as the years swept over them like the dust storms that covered the land, this ordinary couple was molded by those long stretches of time, and the shape of those years gave form to love. The hardships and people, the relationships and experiences shaped their growing love like a baby that forms slowly in the womb and one day you look upon it’s face, seeing with your eyes what has all these months been blossoming by it’s taking from your own flesh and blood.

Time gives birth to love it seems. As does hardship. And weaving in and out of these two is every relationship, great and small that you make along the way. Relationships on every level are the ribbon of light that brings a wonder of luminescence to the fabric of time and hardship. It’s the part of life that keeps you keeping on, and that sometimes makes you feel as though all the world is breaking apart. In the book, it’s the relationships that make it hardest to leave China in the end. And though my family is not leaving, as I read it I felt the pull that is always there for us, the tension that rides under the surface of emotions almost all the time: the people we love and “lose” every day in a sense because we are not a part of their lives anymore, living way over on the other side of the world, but at the same time growing ever more grateful and attached to the people we have the gift of knowing here.

Sometimes I wonder if it makes any sense that we give up knowing cousins and aunties and uncles and grandparents, so that we can instead share life with the young woman, the student, the couple. These are things I can’t weigh in the balance. I can’t see what the worth of anything really is. And I have to put it all in the hands of my Lord who feels the weight of things correctly, and simply asks me to keep seeing with eyes of faith.

It is the start of another Lunar New Year today, chu yi the first day of the first month, and the most important holiday of the year. Everywhere are fireworks and families gathering. Red chinese lanterns are strung along the streets and in windows. The doors are covered with traditional banners declaring good fortune and well wishes over the household for the coming year. It is another mysterious sort of gift to me, this sharing in a tradition that is not ours by birth or rite. We are foreign to it and at most take part in a surface sort of way. But this too was something that struck me as I read, how joining in these festivities ties you to a place as well.  And without making too much of it, I think in some small but perhaps important ways, our family has been graced with good things that we otherwise may have missed were we not able to every year celebrate the Chinese New Year.

As is the tradition, on the Eve of the New Year, we made jiaozi, meat filled dumplings representing abundance and good fortune. As I sat with all four of my children and husband at our table, the plate heaped full with steaming, crunchy jiaozi that we all love with an almost improper ferocity, I did indeed feel fortunate. I knew and know that we are blessed.

It is perhaps easiest to look around and see the physical blessings, but as I have been pondering lately from the words of Jesus, as we work not for food that spoils but for food that endures to eternal life, our eyes are ever opened more and more to the unseen realities that our ours in Christ. He who gives the food and the rain and the house and the clothes also gives the joy and faith and love. You can have joy and faith and love without house or clothes. But to have house or clothes without joy and faith and love is no life at all. This is the life that is worth living… and it is a life that is learned over time, through hardship, in the midst of relationship. This is the essence of the good life that the couple in The City of Tranquil Light knew. And in this, and their love for China,  and the slow years that grew them, I feel I too one day may, in some distant way know a part of their story.

Lavish Birthday Love

Today is my birthday. 34 years old, I am. That sounds rather middle aged to me, which I will probably be thinking and feeling for another good fifteen years or so until I hit 50, at which point it seems you turn "old." Birthdays in this house are rather understated, but special. We don't do a lot of flashy parties or huge surprises, but the groove we seem to have settled into is to pour on a whole lot of "you're special" and even more "we love you." I woke up today to both of those things.

Yesterday was the last day of school for 2 weeks and the start of our Chun Jie vacation (which is the Chinese New Year, or more literally, the Spring Festival holiday and the number one holiday of the year for this nation). The day felt appropriately filled with little ways to share in the celebrating that is starting to happen all over the city and country.

• Josh and the kids performed Chinese songs at school for the Chun Jie concert. They rocked it, and I was so proud of them. Listening to them practice the tongue twisting Chinese lyrics over the past several weeks has kept me awake too many nights with the tune playing like a broken record in my head. 
• We put up Chinese decorations, just a few of our regulars, the paper cuttings in the windows and the banners over the door. 
• The kids went out in the afternoon and ended up playing some version of a basketball game with some neighborhood Chinese boys. They came in celebrating that they were able to understand and communicate with their new friends. My boy was particularly pleased, saying that one of the boys was someone who earlier this fall had been part of a small run-in that had occurred between all the boys playing outside. It was one of those miscommunication battles that can happen when you don't understand them and they don't understand you, someone reads a gesture wrong that you made or the way you waved your stick, and suddenly a war is on. But today, they played together and he felt like a bridge had formed and the 9 year old bad blood had been wiped away.
• We went out for dinner with friends at a local Chinese restaurant, something we don't brave too often no matter what country we live in, mostly because of the age and amount of children underfoot. But the food was good and the place festively hong ran, loud and noisy, just the way the Chinese like it. Afterwards we set off a few fireworks in the concrete park next to our apartment, dodging the dancing grandmas and men practicing their top-spinning with giant whips.

As we often do during times like this, on certain days that mark our time here, we reflected a little on our years here, our strangely blessed lives that can at one and the same time feel hard and less than what you would "dream of" for your life, but at the same time abundantly good and beyond what you deserve. The facts don't always add up if you tally the positives and negatives in neat little columns. It's like the weight of an intangible goodness that we sense like a giant blanket over all the pieces of our life here.

Then today was my birthday. Another day that inevitably brings on a little reflection. I sat alone with a cup of coffee and my Book of books, and read about what a gift my life is. What a gift my life in Christ is. I read Ephesians 2 and it read like a Giant Heavenly Birthday card, pouring out all the measure of God's great love for us, the extensive lavishness of his gifts, and the kindness that he showed and shows towards me each and every day, lifting me up out of who I was and who I am and setting me on the Rock. So that I can't help but think on the fact that I don't have enough goodness in me, and that is usually quite depressing, but He makes me good because He gives his goodness to me. And I can't make my life worth living, which can be less than inspiring, but He makes my life worthwhile because He says that the life I live by faith in the Son of God is a life of eternal value, with its weight and worth reaching down even to the dirt of this earth. It was by far the sweetest thing I read all day, and I felt all loved and special all over again.

Those sweet notes and cards and extra hugs and "I love you, you're the greatest mom" from my kids were pretty wonderful too. And the depth of devotion and love and committed thoughtfulness that exudes from My Man is something I feel moved by so many moments and so many days it is hardly fair to think that a birthday should need any extra effort. But he makes it. And I blunder through my appreciation,  all the time I like the girl who sits under the Ephesians 2 chapter, being lavished with love and barely knowing how to understand the greatness of it.