Relaxed inside

A North African friend was searching for the English word “peace.” The word eluded her. Instead of asking for a translation, she created my new favorite collocation: “relaxed inside.”

Isn’t “relaxed inside” a beautiful description of peace? That inner knowledge that one’s slate is erased of error. That gentle cleansing after destruction of guilt. And the confidence that at the end of our life struggle is heaven.

Peace

This peace tonight
Surpasses understanding.
Fresh. Gentle.
A cool summer sunset
That settles in naked nothingness
Around my shoulders
Like slippery sheets.
A completed dream
That leaves me thirsty,
Arising in the blackness
To pray.
And when sleep comes again
There is only God.

The pattern of practical loving

Sometimes I don’t know what the practical side of love is supposed to look like. And by the practical side of love, I’m referring to loving those in need. Is it really even “supposed to” look like anything, as if it were a consistent pattern?

This is on my mind because today on my way to the store, I saw the same beggar that I always see on the way to the store. As usual, she sat on the sidewalk, her swollen feet outstretched for passersby to take pity on her condition.

I smiled and greeted her. Her face lit with an almost-toothless grin. She cackled a greeting in return and asked how I was. She wasn’t expecting anything more from me than what I gave.

So what did she really want? Was it the couple of coins I could have dropped into her hand? Was it the groceries I could have bought for her? Or did she really just want eye-contact: to be treated like a normal person, to be loved instead of patronized by a stranger?

When I walked back out of the store, I had nothing for her except another smile. And she was ready with that same brilliant grin. What I had given her was all she wanted from me today.

Perhaps the only consistent “pattern” in practical loving the fact that one is loving.

“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.”
Matt. 22:37-40

Bad mood

I am telling myself it’s a combination of yet another rainy day and of not having a break from school. I’m exhausted and on the last day of the school week, I am required to slosh through puddles and mud and still be late for class.

And then I get home, reheat the coffee I didn’t have time to finish before school, and try to drown my melancholy mood in language study.

But in the apartment below, I hear the neighbors playing the Qur’an. The sing-songy chant grates on me. So I turn on my own music:

You’re the God of this city.
You’re the King of these people.
You’re the Lord of this nation.
You are.
You’re the Light in this darkness.
You’re the Hope to the hopeless.
You’re the Peace to the restless.
You are.
There is no one like our God.
For greater things have yet to come
And greater things are still to be done in this city.

No matter how “done” I feel with life right now, His work has only begun in this city. And He wants to use me now, right where I am. In the middle of puddles, mud, and too much homework.

My calling to glorify Him isn’t based on circumstance.

Let us become more aware

I shielded my eyes from the morning sun as we walked the familiar streets to church. My heart was quiet and my mind was ready to receive a word from Him. Any word. Yet, I was still grappling with the paradox of God feeling absent even when I knew He wasn’t.

“Let us become more aware of Your presence.”

The words became my prayer as we sang them together. And it happened. Not in a warm, fuzzy feeling, but in the faces around me.

The beggar who spoke blessing on me, my health, my parents, (and possibly everyone and everything that I’ve ever known!).
The moment of reconnecting with a lady I had met on the train.
The little boy who ignored my words until I got down to his level and placed my hand on his shoulder.
The church guardian who offered to drive me home from church.

It wasn’t until I was home that I realized what had happened. And I thought of Martin in Tolstoy’s “Where Love Is, There God Is Also.” Sometimes God’s presence is as quiet as the weak and powerless.

The quiet road

It’s been a quiet road. Not a lot of mountains, valleys, or even speed bumps. But sometimes the quiet is the hardest part of the journey. I feel alone sometimes. Well, a lot of times. The world at home continues without me… like it should and like I knew it would. But it hurts when I can’t be a part of it.

This week at the international church, the speaker brought a very real struggle into the open: it doesn’t seem fair that we have to be the ones leaving behind what we know.

But His call is personal. He instructs Peter to “Feed my sheep” and “Follow me” (John 21). When Peter questions him about another disciple, He pulls Peter’s focus back to the personal calling: “What is that to you? You follow me!”

See, it’s not a matter of what we have or what we leave behind; it’s a matter of following.

So, although the quiet road is lonely, I don’t have to feel something supernatural and emotional to be able to claim God’s promise that He is with me.

In a dry and weary land

Right now, perhaps you are imagining me in loose desert garb astride a handsome camel under the blazing Saharan sun. Well, now you have pictured exactly how my trip wasn’t.

The Sahara trip officially started when eight of us girls piled into a tourist mini-bus. “Oh no! People will think we’re tourists!” It took a few kilometers of riding the tourist bus through my own city to realize that I was a tourist. I had just traded in my student identity.

The changing landscape sang the mighty power of God as we bumped along in our bus along paved highways and skinny mountain paths.

There were tree trunks covered in brilliant green moss, flat orange plateaus with snow-covered mountains beyond, and startling blue lakes.

shepherd with his sheep with looming snow-covered mountains beyond

valley with sheep grazing beside streams

We spent the night in a hotel on the edge of the desert. The next morning, a driver took us to the edge of the dunes. “Are these even real?” we wondered. The dunes looked exactly like the myriad pictures one might find anywhere. It was almost anti-climatic to see exactly what I had expected.

table and chairs perched on orange sand dunes

In the early evening, we started across the dunes on camels. The first 30 minutes may have been more enjoyable if a paparazzi hadn’t followed us to snap pictures of our camel train.

When we arrived at our desert camp, we ate a big meal and then strolled around outside of the camp to gaze at the expanse of bright stars that blanketed the dark sky. We contemplated the insignificance of man (Ps. 8) and then joined a group of other tourist around a campfire.

The next morning, we watched the sun rise over the dunes and then rode our camels back to civilization. On the way home we made several stops, one of them to have tea with our driver’s family who lived far up in the mountains. The scenery along the way was breathtaking.

But it was wonderful to come home again!

First day of school

This wouldn’t be so bad.

I gathered my school supplies, double-checking everything at least once. Forgetting a necessary item on the first day of English class wasn’t acceptable. Where was my flashdrive? In my handbag next to the stapler.

Ready.

It had been almost three months since I had arrived in North Africa. Three days after arriving, I started teaching English to twelve students ages 13-16. Each class period was different because depending on which trouble-makers attended, the dynamics could swing wildly. I planned each lesson with trembling, trying to predict the mood of the class upon its execution.

I had signed up to teach English, not manage behavior.

But this semester would be different, right? I locked the front door and went in search of a taxi. At the school gate, the guardian’s familiar smile was hardly encouraging. I had seen that smile every day last semester just before my carefully planned lesson was trampled by misbehavior.

I worked with the other teachers in the computer lab to make copies. I hesitated to leave the lab, knowing that unprotected by chatter and laughter my stomach would begin its nervous churn.

What if this semester was just as stressful as last?

“Here is your class roster.” The director handed me a sheet of paper. I had been told I would be teaching a class of 5-7 adults. This list had fourteen names. But it was okay. They were adults. Easy, right?

Except that last semester I had heard several teachers complaining about adult ego problems. “Classroom management is still an issue with adults,” they had said.

“And could you sign the contract please?”

Fourteen students. And what exactly did the contract say again? I pressed the pen to the paper and then signed my name quickly. What would the semester hold?

I still don’t know. But I do know that I loved every minute of my first class with these students. And I know that no matter what problems I may face this semester, I have a God who has not given me the spirit of fear but of power and love and self-control (2 Tim. 1:7).

Surrender

With fists half-closed I promise to release
If you will but see things my way after all.
Yes, I’ll give you everything!
Except that which I’m afraid you’ll take.
I’m right, you know, in what I do,
In what I think, and where I go.
I’m capable to live life my way.
The only reason I offer up these half-closed fists
Is not because I’m weak but because—
Well, maybe because I just want you to feel strong.
You see, I’m right in what I do
And once you realize this,
Of course I will surrender!

Who are these people really?

Do you ever look at someone and marvel that they are just as real to themselves as you are to yourself? Sometimes that thought startles me; perhaps I subconsciously believe that I am the only real person in the world, or at least the only person with real thoughts and desires.

But sometimes I look at someone and realize that to them, they are “me” just like I am “me” to myself.

Sometimes, I wonder about their past. What happened that the shriveled lady in the worn burqa sits on the same corner to beg day after day? Why does that man call out inappropriate comments to women as they walk by? Why does this well-dressed father spend more time in cafés and on the street than at home with his family?

Often, people are merely splotches strewn upon the canvas of my momentary perception of life. Other times, I realize that the Artist painted them there for a reason. Those are the times that I look around, aghast: Who are these people really?

I’m a failure

Recently, a friend prayed for me: “God, let her learn what you’re teaching her through what she considers failure.”

“Failure” is a word I bump up against often. Too often for my poor, wounded pride. Although I’ve learned this lesson dozens of times, it still hasn’t traversed the head-to-heart channel.

I want to be the best. The best foreign Arabic speaker in North Africa. The English teacher that inspires others to change the world. In short, I want people to reflect on my life and call me accomplished.

That’s one of the reasons I’m here. Not because I’m excelling but because I’m not excelling. God set me up for what I consider failure. He sees that deep down in the dank crevices of my heart, I believe the lie that it’s about me and what I accomplish. So when I’m struggling to survive instead of excelling, I label it “failure” and try to soothe my pride in other ways.

But at the end of the day:

“It is good for me that I was afflicted, that I might learn your statutes.”
Ps. 119:71

Maybe this time the lesson will reach my heart.