The {Im}Perfect Way to Start Advent

I tend to think that the days are slipping me by when I don't write on here. But I think there is some part of me that wrongly starts to feel guilty and twitchy, like something is missing if I haven't shared about it. The truth is that life is probably best lived in the secret, in the quiet. When I am disconnected from updating, I am assuredly more present in the living. So lest I ever think of this space as another place to upload my life, please remind me: Life isn't slipping me by because I haven't written about it. This is a place for pondering, thinking, and working things out through the written word. If it's done with any regularity that just means my brain has not been sucked dry by life with four kids or trying to figure out how to speak one of the hardest languages known to man.

---------------

It is Advent season and the days-slipping-by theme seems to be in full swing. Now you must know, I love Advent. Love. Love. Love. I am a Think Deeply About Themes kind of person so give me a book and some Scripture and tell me how light and darkness and hope and expectation and lament and rejoicing all weave together through stories and symbols and I am going to jump on that bandwagon and ride it til the cows come home. So the fact that we are now on Day 9 of the Advent calendar and five out of four of those days have gone Un-Observed because of some family sickness has not been easy on my Advent-loving heart.

Yes we have been sick and more sick around here. Almost 10 days now of off and on stomach serious nastiness and fevers and colds and children lying all over my house in various degrees of compromised health. I was thankful and proud that our Christmas decor was all arranged a few days before Thanksgiving. But then the Sick hit us and as my dear daughter pointed out with a grimace in my general direction the other morning, the tree has lights but nothing else. We didn't do our tree decorating cozy evening yet. We didn't hang stockings. I barely got the advent calendar up. We've spent a few nights reading our daily portions and lighting candles, but at this point if feels disjointed at best.

But as in so many things in life that go this way, I think in the end the days of sick may just be the way we need it this year for Advent. If these few days of preparation are meant to help us open our minds, enlarge our hearts, and allow space to ponder anew the coming of Jesus, to see what He is doing in the world and to recognize how he is speaking in our lives, then being home without much to do but care for needy kids is one very pared down way to do that.

Because even in preparing for Advent-- the very season to ready you for the coming of Christ-- you can get caught up in the preparations, in making sure you are doing all the right activities, becoming either somewhat frenzied or at least particular and controlling about the ways in which you will create a space to experience the real meaning of the season. And then once again, the Person you are trying to meet gets missed, or smothered.

If the space and time I need to think about the darkness of this world and the hope of the Light that has come into it, is created by sitting with a fevered, wimpering child all afternoon, then iso be it. In some small way, this is my point of entry-- at least this year-- into the mystery of the Bethlehem Story and all it's inconveniences that birthed a Savior into the world.

Things I am Loving

Coming home from grocery shopping to this hobbit/kid in an apron.

The way things are coming together for a study with both chinese and foreign friends.

The smell of these pumpkin cookies in the oven, and the excitement they will produce when my kids walk in on a Friday afternoon from school.

The way food makes my children adore me. I have many faults that make me hard to live with, but the food thing is one way we make peace and promise to live happily ever after together.

Studying Jesus in the gospels. The unexpectedness of it... the way he seems ever more real to me. 

The things that make me laugh. Like remembering Jen Hatmaker's quote about her reaction to surprise information that came home from school about costumes. "What fresh hell is this??" 

It is so where I am at right now. It is my new motto.

Other funny stuff like these taglines

Starting the Fellowship of the Ring with my boys after not having read it for maybe 10 years? We started in, and then... I remembered why... and I can't wait to get to know them all again.

Listening to Johann Sebastian Bach on Pandora. And then I came across this article.  The man's life: not easy. His music: equally challenging and difficult. But was his music a true gift of God, a divine inspiration? I love this line...But in the end, [the author] finds, it comes down to an act of faith. Other composers, among them Monteverdi, Beethoven and Mozart, have achieved greatness in various ways, “but it is Bach…who gives us the voice of God—in human form.”

Kneading bread. It's so contemplative to me. It's my favorite way to be quiet right now.

Helping my eldest study for his spelling bee. For as many as he gets wrong, I am still amazed at what the kid can spell! Where do they pick up these things?

The dimples, the uneven cowlicks, the jolted run, the constant jibber jabbering of our littlest man. (Not loving the endless forays into the sugar bin, the rice bin, the emptying of the water tower, ad infinitum).

Starting Chinese classes again, which translates into the hope of someday not sounding or feeling like a moron. Incidentally, I learned the word for "hope" this week... xiwang 希望. 

The way my Man rallies. He pulls himself together. He pulls me together. He pulls us all together. He's a rock, a steady force. 

On Making Ravioli and Children

Hey, I have a good idea. Feeling frustrated? Irritated by some circumstance in your day? Why don't you go ahead and try to make one of the more difficult pasta dishes by hand, from scratch? It's sure to be therapeutic in an opposite sort of way.

Yes, that was me today-- plunging ahead into a ravioli making endeavor even though I spent most of the morning struggling to look at my children without losing it on them, listening to whining and fighting, missing my husband who has been gone most of the week and last night and now today as well, dealing with the same water spilling and bowl breaking issue over and over again with this little one year old.

So after the little guy was down for his nap and the other two were happily engaged, I started rolling out the pasta dough and brushing the edges and filling the little squares, some with pumpkin and some with a spinach/ricotta filling. Starting out, I really did think I was kind of an idiot, knowing how foul a mood I was in and thinking that if this didn't go well it was only my own fault for attempting it on the least patient and long-suffering of days.

Thankfully, it all went fine. The dough did not stick to the counter in a huge sheet of gluey mess as it had in my one and only previous attempt at fresh pasta making. The filling was ready thanks to prep I did earlier in the week, so the process overall was less tedious and time consuming. The kitchen was not a flour covered sea of disaster and did not take long to clean up. The cute little things looked good with their rustic fork pressed edges, and were even kind of fun to pull together.

And the quiet, hand-consuming work gave me a little time to reflect, to let my mind wander over the day and the little people that have filled it. Imps, urchins, cantankerous little devils with wills and selfish needs all their own. That is how I responded to them most of the morning. There were a few glimpses of hope, a few moments where goodness seemed to seep in the edges of the conversation and sprinkle a few drops of grace on an otherwise stormy situation, but most of the time I was on edge and raw. I could see the mirror slapping me in the face as I implored one child to think not of his own interests... but remember that Jesus always ignored his own rights and poured out his love for us, even when we were at that very time sinning against him. I just kind of sat there, quiet-- the child waiting for me to say more-- and all I could think of was my own need to digest this.

Later, as I was carefully pressing the edges of each little pocket of pasta, all the words I had read over the week seemed to converge in my mind.

"If anyone would be first, he must be last of all and servant of all." And he took a child and put him in the midst of them, and taking him in his arms, he said to them, "Whoever receives one such child in my name receives me, and whoever receives me, receives not me but him who sent me." Mark 9:35-36

One of the more staggering things about our great God is the very particular way he cares for each and every human life, and calls that one life sacred. In that, he calls me to join him, even as he knows I am an impatient, selfish woman who is constantly veering back towards my own needs and wants. He must have known all that when he looked at his flesh-crusted disciples and said to them, "whoever receives one such child in my name receives me." He knew he was calling incapable people to act like him.

I have to find some kind of precious hope in that, when feeling incredibly full of incapability. How do you get there, from I am super irritated and can't say nice things to you, to receiving and responding to these children as if they were the God-man himself?

A little like ravioli making maybe? You confess that you are an idiot. You admit it seems a task with little prospect of going well. You believe that it is still worth your time and effort to go ahead with. You plunge ahead. You pray for grace, for help. And the Spirit of God always helps us in our weaknesses. He is real, our faith is required, trust is implied, and obedience is the way forward.

Why I {Love to} Live in China :: Neighborhood

Every Monday and Friday morning I head out with my three-wheeled scooter and stash of grocery bags to pick up fresh goods from the market and other weekly necessities from the large grocery around the corner. The side streets are a throng of other morning shoppers. The three-wheeled bikes and scooters piled high in the back with whatever is in season are dotted along the roadside, surrounded by people from the neighborhood looking for the best bargains for their evening meal. I am a bit of an oddity, buying vegetables to sustain me for the next 4 days of meals. Everyone else is looking for one chive, a head of greens, maybe a potato or handful of green beans. The red peppers are a must have.

Grandmas are pushing little trikes with their fat grandbabies who stare at the morning melee with big, curious brown eyes,  the young women xiaojie's carefully pick through the crowd and stalls with their high heels and short, colorful dresses, old men shuffle by with pipes or a cane or both. Some sit listlessly in wheelchairs, simply gazing, out for their morning air. The house helper baomus are there, looking for the  bargains. They talk and haggle with one another, laughing and pointing out the best prices, the greens or melon that will best be suited to this day and this type of weather.

It is not sterile. It is not well lit. Something about it though reminds me of the small town we visited this summer, where in the span of one day I saw the same 5 people at the post office, the antique shop, the grocery store, on a walk in front of our house, and in a newspaper article. It's close. It's a neighborhood.

I think too, on the streets here the realities of life seem so smack dab in your face. There are no pretensions. This is not a row of clean, well manicured lawns type of place. The store fronts are open, the shop lady is there, cooking her lunch on a hot plate and wok beside the steps. The dirty laundry is literally hanging up all around you, outside apartment windows, in the back of a store, along an alley. We all air our dirty laundry for everyone to see around here. The blind masseuse stands just inside his shop doorway, shuffling in his manner that betrays a lifetime of getting along without seeing. He is there, living his daily routine out in front of you.

I am not entirely sure what it is about all this that endears itself to me. I like cleanliness and manicured lawns and a good Wegmans as much as the next girl. I don't think you need China specifically to make this happen, but I do like that it forces me not to take my life as the status quo. I have to think about my surroundings, I have to take it in and digest it and most of the time it points to a way of life so different than my own, in a way that challenges my own assumptions about what is necessary, what is worth my time, what is important, what is missing, what is the good I am aiming for and the the purposes I am striving for.

And some days, when I find I am taking myself too seriously, I just buy my fruit and go home.

Why I Live In China :: Part II

For the first part of the evening, as another man shared, he stared blandly somewhere near his knees. Then someone asked him to pray. He rose up and his voice bellowed forward, melodic and rhythmic and it filled the room in a way his frail frame did not suggest was possible. "His Name is Wonderful!" he repeated several times. And I knew he believed it in a way I have yet to learn.

He has lived in China for more than twice the number of decades I've been alive, and he has seen changes most people will never relate to or understand. He spoke of many of those changes and the testimony of faithfulness of His God whose Name is Wonderful. He has tested that faithfulness through war torn years, change of power, dark and tense years when much of life as we understand it was being undermined and even destroyed, and finally, in prison. 

His Name is Wonderful he said, and this man believed that for that Name it was worth standing in prayer before a building that was being bulldozed to the ground, because it was built for the Name. Bulldoze away, they said, we will rebuild it again. And they did, and again they knocked it down, and again they rebuilt and now it still stands. But stronger than that building is the faith of these men and stronger than their faith is the One they put their faith in. 

One of our white faces stood up to share our thanks, for being able to sit at the feet of these men as they shared their stories and their hearts for their country with us. We feel small, he said. We are humbled. Faith as small as a mustard seed can move a mountain, and though our faith felt so small it is the size of the one we have faith in that really matters. And in that, we were all brothers and sisters, perhaps worlds away in culture, experience, history, age, and maturity, but clinging to the one whose Name is Wonderful in any age or land.

And what did I learn? That perhaps a stripping away of all that seems necessary can be a purifying thing for gathering worshipers. That for some, starting a school that aims to teach from a Logos-Worldview is a frightening and important venture that is vital to the minds and hearts of the next generation, not merely another school option. That old men who look like they are sleeping, are just waiting to stand up and shout Hallelujah. That some people get geeked about rock concerts or celebrity sightings, but this is where I become a hopeless and pathetically adoring fan.

Dear Old Man, I could listen to you sing out "His Name is Wonderful" for the rest of my days, and someday... I will.

Why I Live In China

In China, there is one commodity that teems through its cities and villages in numbers greater than any other nation on earth. People. Living, breathing, eternal souls who work fields and factories, inhabit high rise apartments and simple, dirty shacks, buy cell phones and sell roadside vegetables.

It was a person that was the crowning achievement, the glorious moment that culminated God's first creative act. And it was for people that He gave the final and Greatest Sacrifice. For this reason, in all that we endeavor to care for, live for, and love before God on this earth, it is people in their teeming masses, but always scaled down to the one living soul before us in any given moment, that is of supreme importance.

Because of this rather grand statement, no matter where you live in the world, if you are under this calling, you are under the highest calling a person can answer in their lifetime. China is one place on earth where the call is almost deafening if for no other reason than the sheer numbers of people that live there, and so many of them having so much need.

This great calling also means that often what most inspires us, what lifts us to a life beyond ourselves, is the example of people who evidence some act or attitude of divine, sacrificial love. They beckon us to a love of a different quality, a costly kind of love that seems weighted with the gold of heaven. It is the kind of love that also raises the person it is poured out on to the heights of God's vision for what they were meant to be and what he gave so much to make possible.

I heard this quote the other day, from someone who was sharing about this hard work of loving people going on in China.

True discipleship takes time and is very costly time-wise.  I’ve found those growing the most were closest but there was a sense of disappointment that it took so much time.  But discipleship is sacrificial, it’s going to cost your life.  To disciple the nations is going to cost many lives.” ~Rob Cheeley

The thought was sobering and beautiful in the weight of its importance.

I sat and listened this week to two women, two teachers in our school, both Chinese. Their hearts are shaped by the Love of their Lord; and their hearts beat for humanity, specifically for their countrymen, for the humanity that teems through their China's vast cities and rural villages. There are many ways they could answer this call to love their many neighbors, but they are teachers and so this is the path their burden takes.

I listened to them and felt like a tiny grit of sand that is part of a large rock on which these women stand. I loved to watch them far above me, poised as unique individuals because they have been raised in a Chinese education system, trained in a western education system, and have hearts to reach the children and families who are mired in the struggles and pitfalls of their country's current path.

One of our visions as a team here of both foreign and Chinese teachers, administrators, and families, is to raise up national teachers who have a heart for the Chinese, have been given educational tools alongside their foreign teachers, and can go out to schools all over China, transforming classrooms from the inside out, reaching students and faculty and parents with this Difference in purpose and method.

As I listened to these two women, I could see the cost their discipleship has required of them, the pleasures they have given up and the trials they have endured and know they will endure. And all I need to do is hear one story of one child who was changed, or one family who came asking for more, for answers to their heart's greatest need, and I am sold. Sold that this is why we are here, laboring to make this school happen where we are alongside our Chinese brothers and sisters, training and supporting and sending them out as they follow the Call to Discipleship, their hearts bleeding for their country. They do not see their lives as their own, but their trust is implicit and the reverence they have for the importance of their task deepens my respect for them.

My daily work is simple and compared to the vision above it can also seem pretty small. I don't sit in the rural classroom with the migrant worker's child. But she will. And she will teach others to do the same. One waters, another plants, but it is God who makes it grow.

"If you can't feed a hundred people, feed just one."
- Mother Teresa

expat coffee ladies

The other day I went to a sort of meet and greet for expat ladies in the city. It's not my scene really, but I go to be a face for our school and to rub shoulders with other women who are not in my immediate circles. There are always some colorful characters to muse over and that part I secretly enjoy a little too much.

Exhibit Lady A: from Texas, with the big hair, big makeup, and big jewelry one comes to fondly expect of ladies from this fine state. She also plays Mrs. Santa every year alongside her husband at the Christmas Bazaar, and she is a big reader-- attending multiple book clubs per week. She speaks up quite a bit, and warmly greets everyone in the room as she breezes through with her amply filled out blouse, extending a hand and offering her full name as a sort of audio business card. Before you know it, she's on to the next person.

Exhibit Lady B: Romanian, with hair constantly dyed a different but equally vibrant shade of red, she is a jack of all kinds of trades: gemstone jewelry designer, choir member, graphic designer, Rotary club president, and she will somehow touch on each of those interests in nearly every conversation you have with her.

There was the wise old lady doctor who looks like something straight out of the 19th century with her wrinkles and white hair and British accent and the way she rides her bike everywhere, tanned and clearly bent on nothing other than spending time with and for the Chinese she lives to serve.

There were the consulate wives, and the newly arrived business expat wives who were keen to be involved in everything, especially mah-jong clubs. "Teach us Mah-jong! any! and all kinds of Mah-jong!" they were practically screaming from their seats.

There were a few, quiet Chinese women, though one spoke up for just a moment to offer her ukelele-playing, winner-of-awards-in-Hawaii brother as entertainment for the Christmas Bazaar. We listened and nodded. For a ukelele player, winning an award in Hawaii seemed to really tip the scales.

I sat next to a woman who has spent the last 19 years moving every two years to a different location with her husband and now 4 year old son. I felt inclined to be her friend for those moments and peppered her with conversation, but couldn't tell if she was just naturally reticent or had lost that social edge with the weariness of always meeting new people.

At the end there was a call to involvement, especially in the events that raise money for charity, which is a typical hobby for expat wives living in these foreign cities. The charities are worthy causes: heart surgeries for the children of poor families, and dormitory and latrine construction for migrant worker's schools. Money is important; money is what allows practical needs to be met, needs that are essential to life itself, if not a quality of life that is desirable by most people.

Charities are good (amazing statement there) and necessary. Though there is something that seems out of place when spending a lot of money for a dinner or event with the intent that the proceeds will go towards people in need. It seems like we should just give our money out of generosity and compassion and maybe even with some measure of involvement. But regardless, there are still great numbers of people hurting, struggling and suffering here that any means to help them is worthy enough.