Twas the morning of Christmas, and my alarm was set. The treasured task was given to me; I was the gift giver, the one sent to silently slip upstairs and pour candy and little tokens into the socks spread over the window seat. I woke before my alarm rang, the hour of five calling my consciousness to come back. I stole upstairs, the fairy-lit tree and white electric icicles my only light as I carried the small basket of gifts in. One by one, I lifted the gifts out of the stockings to slip the candy, the oranges, and other small tokens in so the gifts in white wrapping paper would not be crushed. I tried to avoid waking my mother, wrestling silently to open a set of razors (pink, gifts for the girls), and hunting unsuccessfully for scissors. The razor package took more time than the rest of the blessed task, but it was done, and I smiled at the row of seven large stockings (and one tiny, empty one, for Corran cannot eat candy, nor oranges), then sat down on our large, warm couch to open my gifts.
I had the razor, the pencil, the orange, the delicious chocolate, the bottle of perfumed lotion, and pine-permeated candle. But there was one gift down in the toe, one I had no idea what was. I opened and read by the light of the tree a note that made me smile, and then carefully, slowly, opened the present. It was gift from a friend, a pendant hanging from a chain. The ramping lion's claws were high, his tail also above his head, and "COURAGE" was written across the middle. I smiled, a bit amused, and turned it over. "Be strong and courageous. Do not be terrified; do not be discouraged, for the Lord your God will be with you wherever you go." Joshua 1:9. I had once asked a friend to pray for courage, and the same friend who gave this gift texted me that verse. For all my dislike of texting, that was one blessing I did not forget, for I kept the text, and was often warmed by rereading it, remembering how it spoke to me when I was afraid, God's truth slicing the fear and dissipating it. Tears slowly falling, I put the more enduring memory of courage on. I have not taken it off since, except to sleep or shower. It is a memory of God's strength in the past, and an Ebenezer for the times to come, for I leave in less than a year, God willing, to go far from family, to make a new home overseas, and courage is a gift I must have from Him. It is a blessing to know He has already given me some, and given me a marker to remember it by. And it is a blessing to have a friend who sends me messages, and then marks them with silver.
Thursday, December 26, 2013
Wednesday, December 4, 2013
A Letter to my Pastor
These are some questions I've been turning over in my own mind, and I emailed them to my pastor a few minutes ago. I haven't heard back, obviously, but I wanted to post them, so I could remember.
Pastor,
I've been turning something over in my mind, and trying to make sense of it. Again and again in scripture, we're commanded to help those in need (e.g. James 1.27 "Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world" or Leviticus 19.9-10a "you shall not reap your field right up to its edge, neither shall you gather the gleanings after your harvest. And you shall not strip your vineyard bare, neither shall you father the fallen grapes of your vineyard. You shall leave them for the poor and for the sojourner").
There are even more verses in the Bible about loving brothers and sisters in Christ, which I assume also means helping them (e.g. twice in I Peter, "Having purified your souls by your obedience to the truth for a sincere brotherly love, love one another earnestly from a pure heart," "Whoever says he is in the light and hates his brother is still in darkness. Whoever loves his brother abides in the light, and in him there is no cause for stumbling," and "By this it is evident who are the children of God, and who are the children of the devil: whoever does not practice righteousness is not of God, nor is the one who does not love his brother. For this is the message that you have heard from the beginning,that we should love one another. [...] By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers. But if anyone has the world's goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God's love abide in him? Little children, let us not love in word or talk but in deed and in truth. [...] And this is his commandment, that we believe in the name of his Son Jesus Christ and love one another, just as he has commanded us").
Yet, when I look at my own life, I serve my family, I babysit for other church members occasionally, and I volunteer at a stable to help the mentally/physically handicapped. I do not help widows, orphans, or the poor, but mainly my own family. Is that Biblical? My family does come first--and with a sister with a newborn, a mother who is sick, and a sister who is in finals, there are plenty of opportunities to serve--but many of the things I do they could live without, it just makes their lives easier. Reading in Acts of those who had everything in common and who sold their houses to give to the poor, I wonder what a Biblical generosity today would look like; how does that translate?
But it was really brought home when a church member and a good friend lost his job, before he or his wife got another job. I don't mean this to be a criticism of the church, I'm just wondering--when I was helping out with their kids, when he first lost his job, they were using an EBT card for a month. It was just a month, and they needed it, so that is not a criticism of them at all, but, in theory, at least, I have always thought it was the church's job to help the poor, not the government, that the church should be feeding the hungry, not EBT, WIC, or other government programs. But here was a member of our church, who we did not provide for. I asked my friend, the wife, about this some--because she's wonderfully honest and I knew I could--and they're not on a food card anymore, since both of them have jobs, but it raised some questions for me, like what should I be doing, and am I missing something? What does the Bible say about charity/generosity, and how do I live that now? Reading books about foreign missions (such as When Helping Hurts, which shows how American generosity often teaches dependency on charity, not growth), I've seen that defining "poor" can be difficult, let alone "help," or what wise generosity looks like. Yet I also read biographies of Mother Teresa, Amy Carmichael, and others, who changed hundreds of lives without much money, but by following God's commands and giving what they had. Currently, I'm giving what I have to my family, and sometimes to others. Is that enough? Or am I called to more?
I've been turning something over in my mind, and trying to make sense of it. Again and again in scripture, we're commanded to help those in need (e.g. James 1.27 "Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world" or Leviticus 19.9-10a "you shall not reap your field right up to its edge, neither shall you gather the gleanings after your harvest. And you shall not strip your vineyard bare, neither shall you father the fallen grapes of your vineyard. You shall leave them for the poor and for the sojourner").
There are even more verses in the Bible about loving brothers and sisters in Christ, which I assume also means helping them (e.g. twice in I Peter, "Having purified your souls by your obedience to the truth for a sincere brotherly love, love one another earnestly from a pure heart," "Whoever says he is in the light and hates his brother is still in darkness. Whoever loves his brother abides in the light, and in him there is no cause for stumbling," and "By this it is evident who are the children of God, and who are the children of the devil: whoever does not practice righteousness is not of God, nor is the one who does not love his brother. For this is the message that you have heard from the beginning,that we should love one another. [...] By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers. But if anyone has the world's goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God's love abide in him? Little children, let us not love in word or talk but in deed and in truth. [...] And this is his commandment, that we believe in the name of his Son Jesus Christ and love one another, just as he has commanded us").
Yet, when I look at my own life, I serve my family, I babysit for other church members occasionally, and I volunteer at a stable to help the mentally/physically handicapped. I do not help widows, orphans, or the poor, but mainly my own family. Is that Biblical? My family does come first--and with a sister with a newborn, a mother who is sick, and a sister who is in finals, there are plenty of opportunities to serve--but many of the things I do they could live without, it just makes their lives easier. Reading in Acts of those who had everything in common and who sold their houses to give to the poor, I wonder what a Biblical generosity today would look like; how does that translate?
But it was really brought home when a church member and a good friend lost his job, before he or his wife got another job. I don't mean this to be a criticism of the church, I'm just wondering--when I was helping out with their kids, when he first lost his job, they were using an EBT card for a month. It was just a month, and they needed it, so that is not a criticism of them at all, but, in theory, at least, I have always thought it was the church's job to help the poor, not the government, that the church should be feeding the hungry, not EBT, WIC, or other government programs. But here was a member of our church, who we did not provide for. I asked my friend, the wife, about this some--because she's wonderfully honest and I knew I could--and they're not on a food card anymore, since both of them have jobs, but it raised some questions for me, like what should I be doing, and am I missing something? What does the Bible say about charity/generosity, and how do I live that now? Reading books about foreign missions (such as When Helping Hurts, which shows how American generosity often teaches dependency on charity, not growth), I've seen that defining "poor" can be difficult, let alone "help," or what wise generosity looks like. Yet I also read biographies of Mother Teresa, Amy Carmichael, and others, who changed hundreds of lives without much money, but by following God's commands and giving what they had. Currently, I'm giving what I have to my family, and sometimes to others. Is that enough? Or am I called to more?
Sunday, December 1, 2013
New Child
It's 5:30, and I am at the hospital. It looks new, with soft lighting, quiet halls, and a waterfall streaming down marble in the main lobby. The rest of my close family was in a nook hidden in the side of the third floor, watching a detective drama. In the filmed world the main character's teenage daughter had been kidnapped, and he was doing everything money and energy could to get her safely back. I did not blame them; we had been waiting since very early that morning, and distractions were becoming necessary. The drama drew us in, the distraction well written and well acted, but I decided I had enough drama in my life right then and did not need to augment it by TV. I walked into an adjacent hallway, across from my sister's room, and leaned against the wall.
It was then that I started to hear the sounds the TV had masked. First were irregular sounds like large plastic tubes being dragged over something hard. My Mom explained "It's the baby moving; the microphone is for his heartbeat, and has to be very sensitive, so every time he moves it sounds like that." There were occasional gasps from my sister, sounds that made me uneasy, but no other sounds. Time went on, and on, and on, till I walked over for glimpses of the TV's story, but always returned to the hallway to listen to the story I was waiting for. It got closer to eight, and the noises got louder, my sister twice yelling in pain. I was shaken; I had not heard her cry in pain before. I heard her once yelling "I don't have anything left!" I knew childbirth was painful, but I had hoped it was exaggerated, that the stories I had heard were the exception. Listening to my sister, I knew that wasn't so. I prayed. I thought again of the curse in Genesis; I thought of one of the many prices of sin. I do not know if I went white, listening to her, but I prayed for her, for her child, for her husband, for a quick birth. It had been eighteen hours now since this story's climax began.
Nurses had been coming in and out, in and out, always pausing for a second to gather hand sanitizer from a dispenser beside the door. Each one, I watched but said nothing. Each one had a job to do; someone would tell us if there was anything important. None did. In and out, in and out, with their muffled voices coming through the door, urgency in their actions. But wait, now one came out. She told us she could see the crown of our baby's head, my sister's child. Smiling, she told us he had a lot of hair. My mother and sisters joined me in the hallway, waiting with me, my dad sitting back in the nook, reading but smiling. The baby was coming.
Time still went on. We waited and waited, staying in the hall. I thought of a chapter I read in a James Herriot book, where he oversaw two births, one birth in a cow barn, where it was only of interest to him and the cow mother, how no one else had time to watch the birth of a new life, and then after, on a small farm, where the calf's birth was the center of the whole family, even of the farm's dog. He felt the second showed the miracle of what a birth was supposed to be. I knew it would be that miracle for our family. All of us had waited for it for months, keeping in touch every week with my sister, watching her grow, listening as she learned what was happening the baby inside her. We still waited. Most of the nurses who came in and out started to give us uncertain looks; I imagined them wondering if they would have to hold us out of the room when the baby was fully out. We stayed quiet and did not move. Nurse came out, and went back in. They went to the computer at the reception desk three doors down; they came back. They went to the staff room across the hall from my sisters room; they came back out without anything. They were all in the room when we heard the baby cry for the first time; he was born at 8:46.
We waited still. It seemed an hour before they said we could come in. They'd had to clean up the blood (I'd seen a few drops beneath the span of the opening door), stitch up my sister, clean the baby, and try to breastfeed. Mama went in before any of us, helping my sister with the amazing, vast knowledge a mother of six. They gave us details--7 lbs, 5 oz, and 21 inches long. We still waited, waiting till my sister and nephew were clean, the room back to hospital standards, and everything in its place. Then we were allowed in.
He was so tiny. Most babies are born with fat; he was born with length. His feet were long, his hands reached to his knees, his head the size of his stomach, his dark hair completely covering his head. He was swaddled in two blankets, his chin a deeply defined dent in the midst of baby fat on the only place he had it, his head; his hawk nose had white bumps all over it, and his eyes were completely black and fully open.
We got to hold him then. My mother held him first, then another of my sisters, and I witnessed another miracle, another of my sisters crying in front of the family, even if she laughed it off. She had closed herself off from us for the most part, but here was something she openly loved. I sat by the tired, light-headed new mother, who laid back with her eyes closed, and I watched my family while we welcomed this new member.
When it was my turn to hold him, I regarded him with awe. I had not held a baby only a few hours old before, and I realized, holding him, that I was holding the beginning of eighty years. Eighty years can hold anything from wars to the beginning of a nation; here was an entire lifetime where nothing was defined, not even a personality. It is possible to hold an undefined being and love him wholeheartedly. What I held was a person, beyond all doubt, but I knew I could be holding a great warrior for God, a quiet, unnoticed man, a missionary, a plumber, an athlete, and I did not know it. God had already written this boy's story, and I was holding the beginning. Later, as I wrote a friend of his birth, and spoke of holding eighty years in my arms, I realized that his place of birth defined that number, for my friend lives in Cambodia, and that is not the average life span there. But he is here, in America, and he was amazing to hold, to love, and to wonder about and pray for. God willing, he will have a childhood, a life of God's glory, an ever-loving family, and God gave me to see, to even hold, the beginning of his story.
It was then that I started to hear the sounds the TV had masked. First were irregular sounds like large plastic tubes being dragged over something hard. My Mom explained "It's the baby moving; the microphone is for his heartbeat, and has to be very sensitive, so every time he moves it sounds like that." There were occasional gasps from my sister, sounds that made me uneasy, but no other sounds. Time went on, and on, and on, till I walked over for glimpses of the TV's story, but always returned to the hallway to listen to the story I was waiting for. It got closer to eight, and the noises got louder, my sister twice yelling in pain. I was shaken; I had not heard her cry in pain before. I heard her once yelling "I don't have anything left!" I knew childbirth was painful, but I had hoped it was exaggerated, that the stories I had heard were the exception. Listening to my sister, I knew that wasn't so. I prayed. I thought again of the curse in Genesis; I thought of one of the many prices of sin. I do not know if I went white, listening to her, but I prayed for her, for her child, for her husband, for a quick birth. It had been eighteen hours now since this story's climax began.
Nurses had been coming in and out, in and out, always pausing for a second to gather hand sanitizer from a dispenser beside the door. Each one, I watched but said nothing. Each one had a job to do; someone would tell us if there was anything important. None did. In and out, in and out, with their muffled voices coming through the door, urgency in their actions. But wait, now one came out. She told us she could see the crown of our baby's head, my sister's child. Smiling, she told us he had a lot of hair. My mother and sisters joined me in the hallway, waiting with me, my dad sitting back in the nook, reading but smiling. The baby was coming.
Time still went on. We waited and waited, staying in the hall. I thought of a chapter I read in a James Herriot book, where he oversaw two births, one birth in a cow barn, where it was only of interest to him and the cow mother, how no one else had time to watch the birth of a new life, and then after, on a small farm, where the calf's birth was the center of the whole family, even of the farm's dog. He felt the second showed the miracle of what a birth was supposed to be. I knew it would be that miracle for our family. All of us had waited for it for months, keeping in touch every week with my sister, watching her grow, listening as she learned what was happening the baby inside her. We still waited. Most of the nurses who came in and out started to give us uncertain looks; I imagined them wondering if they would have to hold us out of the room when the baby was fully out. We stayed quiet and did not move. Nurse came out, and went back in. They went to the computer at the reception desk three doors down; they came back. They went to the staff room across the hall from my sisters room; they came back out without anything. They were all in the room when we heard the baby cry for the first time; he was born at 8:46.
We waited still. It seemed an hour before they said we could come in. They'd had to clean up the blood (I'd seen a few drops beneath the span of the opening door), stitch up my sister, clean the baby, and try to breastfeed. Mama went in before any of us, helping my sister with the amazing, vast knowledge a mother of six. They gave us details--7 lbs, 5 oz, and 21 inches long. We still waited, waiting till my sister and nephew were clean, the room back to hospital standards, and everything in its place. Then we were allowed in.
He was so tiny. Most babies are born with fat; he was born with length. His feet were long, his hands reached to his knees, his head the size of his stomach, his dark hair completely covering his head. He was swaddled in two blankets, his chin a deeply defined dent in the midst of baby fat on the only place he had it, his head; his hawk nose had white bumps all over it, and his eyes were completely black and fully open.
We got to hold him then. My mother held him first, then another of my sisters, and I witnessed another miracle, another of my sisters crying in front of the family, even if she laughed it off. She had closed herself off from us for the most part, but here was something she openly loved. I sat by the tired, light-headed new mother, who laid back with her eyes closed, and I watched my family while we welcomed this new member.
When it was my turn to hold him, I regarded him with awe. I had not held a baby only a few hours old before, and I realized, holding him, that I was holding the beginning of eighty years. Eighty years can hold anything from wars to the beginning of a nation; here was an entire lifetime where nothing was defined, not even a personality. It is possible to hold an undefined being and love him wholeheartedly. What I held was a person, beyond all doubt, but I knew I could be holding a great warrior for God, a quiet, unnoticed man, a missionary, a plumber, an athlete, and I did not know it. God had already written this boy's story, and I was holding the beginning. Later, as I wrote a friend of his birth, and spoke of holding eighty years in my arms, I realized that his place of birth defined that number, for my friend lives in Cambodia, and that is not the average life span there. But he is here, in America, and he was amazing to hold, to love, and to wonder about and pray for. God willing, he will have a childhood, a life of God's glory, an ever-loving family, and God gave me to see, to even hold, the beginning of his story.
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