Culinary Adventure (or, Sometimes They Really Do Have Those Warning Labels on There for a Reason)

So, I know it was stupid.

There I was, cutting french fries with my vegetable mandoline, and I had this one, funky, irregularly shaped piece of potato left over.

One half of my brain: I know you're never supposed to hold food in your hand when you use this crazy sharp tool, but it'll be okay just this once.

The other half of my brain: DANGER, Will Robinson!! DANGER!!

Unfortunately, that second voice wasn't quite fast enough, which is why I am now missing the tip of my right middle finger.

I'll spare you the details, but know: It was quite exciting.  Fortunately, we had a nurse practitioner visiting for dinner, so I didn't even have to go to urgent care.  It's all okay.  I'll just have a wonky looking finger for a while.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I'm going to be an aunt again!!

While you celebrate with me [happy dance], please pray for the health of the new little Harms, and my sister-in-law, and just all that complicated stuff that goes along with life growing inside another person.

... [another happy dance]

Following God

"Look! Look! Look!" cried Lucy. 
"Where? What?" asked everyone. 
"The Lion," said Lucy. "Aslan himself. Didn't you see?" Her face had changed completely and her eyes shone. 
"Do you really mean—" began Peter. 
"Where did you think you saw him?" asked Susan. 
"I didn't think I saw him," said Lucy. "I saw him… Right up there between those mountain ashes. Up, not down. Just the opposite of the way you want to go. And he wanted us to go where he was—up there." 
"How do you know that was what he wanted?" asked Edmund. 
"He—I—I just know," said Lucy, "by his face." 

- C. S. Lewis, Prince Caspian 

I recently saw a chance to move to South Sudan for a year. I prayed about it. I applied. I prayed some more.

And ultimately, the decision I made was both one of the easiest and one off the hardest decisions I've ever made.

Easiest, because almost immediately after beginning to pray about it, I knew what the answer was.

Hardest, because I didn't like that answer.

The opportunity was perfect, and God said no.

Or I should say, He asked me to say no. Which was worse.

… I have spent a lot of time trying to figure out how to explain this decision to people when they ask. In fact, my fear of telling people that—once again—I was presented with this amazing-sounding opportunity and—once again—I chose not to do it, far outstripped any fear I had of moving to Northern Africa on a whim. I dreaded the disappointment (real or imagined) in the faces and voices of people who had been so excited for me to go. I dreaded the shame of knowing (or suspecting) that people I love and trust think I'm giving into fear, or "wasting my gifts," or making excuses. I dreaded not being able to defend my choice with any reasons that would "make sense."

I spent more than a week begging God—if indeed I was hearing right, that He didn't want me to go—to close the door Himself. If they simply didn't offer me the job, then that was that. No one could blame me. But He left the door open.

And it became clear that the question I've long wrestled with—what I mean when I tell God I'll follow Him anywhere—was deepening into something even harder for me to face than "Will I really do anything He asks, even if I don't see how it's important?"—becoming, instead, "Will I really do anything He asks, even if no one else understands what I'm doing? Even if I can never explain it to them, or even fully to myself? Even if people close to me misunderstand, or are horribly disappointed in me?"

I was being asked to choose: Follow what I and everyone else saw as the perfect opportunity, or follow God.  No matter what anyone else thinks.

I don't think that these will always be the two paths presented at the fork in the road. I didn't say no out of some morbid sense of self-denial: "This sounds fun, so obviously it would be more 'spiritual' to refuse it." I think God enjoys adventuring with us when we step out and throw ourselves into the things that come our way. And I think He has given me gifts and desires and experiences that lend themselves well to working cross-culturally. And I think that often the road that makes sense—that seems good, or exciting, or logical—is the road He leads us down.

But I also know that for me, in this instance, with this particular opportunity, with where I am right now, that saying no to South Sudan was saying yes to following God. 

And, despite my disappointment—and continued confusion about my future—there is a underlying peace in that which cannot be mistaken, or reproduced by the approval of other people.

So, here I am. Continuing to wait.

… I'm glad that God, at least, knows what's going on.

God Himself

Whenever God gives a vision to a Christian, it is as if He puts him in “the shadow of His hand” (Isaiah 49:2). The saint’s duty is to be still and listen. There is a “darkness” that comes from too much light--that is the time to listen. The story of Abram and Hagar in Genesis 16 is an excellent example of listening to so-called good advice during a time of darkness, rather than waiting for God to send the light. When God gives you a vision and darkness follows, wait. God will bring the vision He has given you to reality in your life if you will wait on His timing. Never try to help God fulfill His word. Abram went through thirteen years of silence, but in those years all of his self-sufficiency was destroyed. He grew past the point of relying on his own common sense. Those years of silence were a time of discipline, not a period of God’s displeasure. There is never any need to pretend that your life is filled with joy and confidence; just wait upon God and be grounded in Him (see Isaiah 50:10-11).

Do I trust at all in the flesh? Or have I learned to go beyond all confidence in myself and other people of God? Do I trust in books and prayers or other joys in my life? Or have I placed my confidence in God Himself, not in His blessings? “I am Almighty God . . .”— El-Shaddai, the All-Powerful God (Genesis 17:1). The reason we are all being disciplined is that we will know God is real. As soon as God becomes real to us, people pale by comparison, becoming shadows of reality. Nothing that other saints do or say can ever upset the one who is built on God.

-  Oswald Chambers,  "Vision and Darkness"

A new haunt

Today was one of those gloriously foggy days, where simply breathing was invigorating, and where the mist settled in and gave everything a slightly mysterious air.  I needed to be outside.  

I found a new park.  I was the only one there.

As I walked, the whole world seemed to have turned black and white.

 

 

Then I turned the corner...

...and the world was color again.

  

I wish I had had my real camera with me, and not just my phone.   No photos, though, could really do it justice anyway...

The Gate of the Year

And I said to the man who stood at the gate of the year:
“Give me a light that I may tread safely into the unknown.”
And he replied:
“Go out into the darkness and put your hand into the Hand of God. That shall be to you better than light and safer than a known way.”
So I went forth, and finding the Hand of God, trod gladly into the night...

- Minnie Louise Haskins, "God Knows"

May we all tread gladly through the gate of this year, whatever uncertainty or adventure it may bring.

... And praise God that in His mercy, He holds tightly onto us even if we can't seem to find His hand ourselves.

Cheers.

NaNoWriMo

It is nine whole days into National Novel Writing Month, and I haven't started my novel  yet.  I'm missing out on these thirty days of literary abandon!!

I got distracted.

Shoot.

Let that moment come soon...

It seems as if I am standing on one side of a huge canyon and see how I should grow toward you, live in your presence and serve you, but cannot reach the other side of the canyon where you are. I can speak and write...about the beauty and goodness of the life I see on the other side, but how, O Lord, can I get there?

-  Henri Nouwen, A Cry for Mercy

My life is filled with very good things right now.

I have a steady job.  Affordable rent.  A great housemate.  Beautiful mountains and coastline within reach.  Family nearby. Plentiful food.  Easy transportation.  Good health.  Educational opportunities.  Fall colors right outside my window.

Why, then, am I unhappy?  Why do I still feel like I’m lost in the dark?

It seems so foolish: God has spent the last several years showing me more deeply—more beautifully—that He is what matters.  Not people’s expectations, not my own expectations, not the ways I think I should be serving Him, not how spectacular my life looks.  And yet here I am again, so quickly plagued with doubt and insecurity, so afraid that my life means nothing right now.  So afraid that I have missed what God wanted me to do, that I will always feel adrift and vaguely purposeless. 

And when I see the world around me, around those close to me—the deaths of children, cancer, miscarriages, chronic illness, suicide attempts, friends estranged—I am horrified that I, with my lavish blessings, dare to be unhappy, that I dare to be less than bursting with gratefulness at all times.   But it’s a horror that only makes the sadness soak in deeper, and gives fertile ground to hopelessness.  

The worst part is knowing that I have “the answer”.  Many people are healthy and wealthy, and still sense an emptiness.  I mean, that’s what we tell them when we evangelize, right?  “Still trying to fill that void with [money, sex, success, beauty, drugs, other]?  That’s the God-shaped vacuum in you, that He’s just waiting to fill.  Nothing else can fill it.”

So, what, then, when you have health and wealth and Jesus, and still have a void?  What, when you re-read the things you’ve written—those beautiful lessons, those assurances of grace and significance in Christ, those times when God has been here—and doubt they can ever have been your words?

I know—know for certain—that God has not abandoned me.  I believe His promises never to forsake me.  I know that He is my hope, and my hiding place; my glory and the lifter of my head.  He is faithful, and glorious, and worthy of all praise.  I can see it with my eyes, and even recount it with my lips.  But somehow I can’t get that knowledge to matter, in my gut.  I know that we are not promised warm fuzzy “God is present” feelings all the time.  I know that feelings are not everything.  But somehow  “knowing” that that He’s close, that He loves me, that I’m safe in Him—when I feel so exposed and sin-soaked and alone—makes the separation seem that much more profound.

What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God—through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Thanks, indeed.

I can only keep trying to be faithful, even though I feel faithless most of the time. What else can I do but keep praying to you, even when I feel dark; to keep writing about you, even when I feel numb, to keep speaking in your name, even when I feel alone.

…

I read about "knowing you," about the ways one comes to a knowledge of you, and I pray that what I understand with my mind will descend one day into my heart and give me inner light.

I call to you, O Lord, from my quiet darkness. Show me your mercy and love. Let me see your face, hear your voice, touch the hem of your cloak. I want to love you, be with you, speak to you and simply stand in your presence. But I cannot make it happen. Pressing my eyes against my hands is not praying, and reading about your presence is not living in it.

But there is that moment in which you will come to me, as you did to your fearful disciples, and say "Do not be afraid, it is I". Let that moment come soon, O Lord. And if you want to delay it, then make me patient.  Amen.  - Nouwen

Amen.