Maywhobiddyhaps things have been a little quiet ’round here. I suppose that depends on your definition of quiet. But it’s for very good reason. A few very good reasons. So shall I continue?
Well, for starters, a little opportunity has come up for the Hubs and myself (which would not involve us moving country or even home – bonus!) and which we are considering and praying about. It seems like a good idea — I am just hungry to know that it’s a God-idea. More on that later.
I’ve tried out going no-poo. (As in quitting shampoo and using this alternative method which is supposed to mean you only have to wash your hair like once a week and it’s still going to be fabulous.) I’ve held off on telling you about this adventure because I didn’t know what to say yet. I fell off the wagon this morning because my scalp was really itchy. I’m going to try again — probably when we get back from SA. Does this relate in any way to the conversation we’re having right now? Mmmm…probably not.
Anywho.
This is what the Bear looks like these days.
Also, we are preparing for a little trip to Atlanta for Easter (scoping out spots for the Bear to hunt Easter eggs) and looking forward to hanging with Unky Russ again. Maybe seeing Rory and Sarah! (Rory whose kilt I was sporting the other day, and Sarah, his unsinkably-good-spirited Lord-loving wife). AND I hope hope hope we’ll be traveling to that South African food store that makes me feel right at home.
Not long after we get back, (11ish days I think?) we take off for SA. Which is VERY exciting. For a gabillion reasons which include seeing Goo-Goo and Gammy and Auntie Lyn, AND seeing Unky Vaughan and Auntie Penny get married. On a game reserve in South Africa — gorgeous!! — where we’ll also get to do game viewing and relax and shew-wee I am pumped!
In other news, I am searching for the bottom of my laundry basket, but it’s been so long since I’ve seen it I’m beginning to think it does not actually exist.
This is what Tiger Tank looks like these days. He is taking steps now and then!
I’ve also been working hard on a redesign, so that, true to my word, I will change the name of this here blog because I’m not blogging From Africa any more. (Still with love of course.) By the time I get it done, I might be blogging from South Africa again. For a month.
Here’s a snippety-preview of what might be coming. Unless I throw it all out and start over again. I already did that twice. And lost half my work once. This might be a pattern I should have checked out.
{Any guesses at what that design is going for?}
In addition to that tidbit which I’m sure will keep you on the edge of your seat, there is a significant possibility that we’ll be able to go to Agnes’s wedding. Yes, it’s Alan’s wedding too, but ya know, Agnes was pretty much the missing link that made sure our second child wasn’t born in a car or on the side of a highway. And so to us it’s Agnes’s wedding. {But we love Alan and we’ll be very glad to see him, too.} And ohmyheart I am already thinking about what the Ring Bear should wear. Lord let it be so!
Then there’s this last little piece of information that draws to a conclusion the many reasons why I’ve had a less-than-average amount to say lately. It does involve the fact that I’m not good at keeping things quiet and so I’m better off just hushing until it’s time to speak. It also involves me being ridiculously tired and fighting regular bouts of nausea. And needing to tinkle at 3 am.
And doing something for the first time and the third time at the same time, this November. (See if you can figure that one out.)
We talked about it in bed a couple of nights ago…was it a Biblical statement? “God will never give you more than you can handle?” That evening Katie — brave and beautiful, living out the Gospel as a single Mom with a houseful of orphans-come-home in Uganda whispered the thought in a blog post: Does He give us more than we can handle so that we will turn to Him?
Yes, Katie — I think so.
Because the point of living out the Gospel-life is learning that in Him we have everything we need for life and godliness. When babies won’t nap and houses need scrubbing. When the refrigerator is empty and we don’t know what we’ll eat tomorrow. When we say goodbye to children for the last time and watch them lowered into the ground.
This testimony has been told, near and far for generations:
Jesus! He is enough.
We didn’t come to a conclusion in bed that night, though as the case usually is my mind was made up. He does give us more than we can handle. Then He also gives us Jesus.
And then the God-whisper comes again, on my screen, a link from a friend — this mother who handles the more-than-you-can-handle by His grace. She has said goodbye to a son named Asher, and my heart tightens, I swallow hard, I look away and tell my eyes not to cry. Arms full with four babies three and under and this is how she does it:
Jesus! He is enough.
I go back to thinking about how we’re going to make it, an unknown future, a known and good God. We’ve got questions, He’s got answers. I’ve got worry. He’s got peace. I don’t know about tomorrow, but He is here today.
And these thoughts, perhaps worth pondering. If He does give us more than we can handle but we think that He won’t — will we know how to handle it? If instead we trust that no matter what fiery furnace or lion’s den we face, we rely on this Truth, this Word, the Word made flesh who dwelt among us — the Word, the Man who is the Truth — surely we can face it all.
Did I ever tell you about the time the deputy sheriff brought me home one night? It was a pretty dramatic affair. In case you don’t know it, I grew up in a pretty small town, and, let’s be honest, a lot of times the reason teenagers get into trouble is because they’re just. plain. bored.
Now I’m not sure where my girlfriends were on this particular evening, but for some reason I was hanging out with a bunch of guys from my neighborhood/school. And I suppose it was summer time and one of the guys had water balloons. We discussed the idea of having a water balloon fight, but I don’t think anyone really wanted to get smashed in the face with a water balloon and spend the rest of the evening soaking wet.
So somebody came up with another…bright idea.
{I interrupt myself to explain: One of the guys hanging in this group was one of the only guys I can think of from my senior-year-circle-of-friends who really seemed to take the idea of walking with Jesus seriously. I’m quite sure he’s still walking with the Lord today.}
That bright idea?
Let’s drive around town and throw water balloons at each other’s cars. And, at other cars, too.
{Glad we didn’t hit this car… Strand, South Africa, 2010}
I’m gonna be completely honest here and say I knew that was stupid. And could possibly get us in a heap of trouble. But when you’re in high school there must be some kind of chip loose in your brain — the one that begins to draw the worst-case-scenario logical conclusion of how bad this could end up. Was my chip loose or was I just too interested in having fun to pay attention? I can’t really remember.
But all of us — except the guy who took Jesus seriously — piled into a car to go for a water-balloon throwing drive. The car was one seat short, and the Jesus-guy graciously {hello, wisdom!} decided he would follow us in his own car.
Some wise little whisper told me I should’ve gotten in his car. But I of course ignored that voice. Girls just wanna have fun, right?
I was sitting in the middle of the back seat and did not hit any oncoming traffic with balloons, if I remember correctly. I’m a little hazy on that detail, but pretty sure I had terrible aim and wasn’t allowed to try because it would’ve been a waste of a perfectly good water balloon.. But what I do remember very clearly was that the second or third car we hit? Was a police car.
More specifically, we hit the deputy sheriff’s car. At fifty miles per hour. Going in the opposite direction.
We were coming along a curve on a dark country road, and the water-balloon thrower (who was also driving — were we honestly complete idiots?) only realized after launching the balloon what had happened. That moment went something like this:
Expletive!* That was a cop!
We sped down the road to a friend’s house, where there were lots of people hanging out. We all parked, abandoned the car, and did what any sensible teenager would do at this point.
We hid.
I think the wise friend who saw what had happened just kept right on driving. I don’t think he’d thrown a balloon at anybody (except maybe our car) that evening.
When the deputy sheriff arrived and began questioning things, the guys came forward and admitted what they had done. I also came forward and admitted to being in the car at the time, but that I hadn’t hit any cars with balloons.
I’ll have to email the guys to ask them what happened after that, because the only thing I can remember is the cop putting me in his car and Driving. Me. Home.
And what made that even worse?
My grandmother was at our house that evening. And I was more than just embarrassed. I was also grounded. For a couple of weeks at least.
Well done, I sarcastically say to that younger version of myself. Well done.
This morning I was reading in Proverbs 13, when verse 20 jumped out at me:
Walk with the wise and become wise; associate with fools and get in trouble.
Hey, Wisdom, there you are!
I definitely had a choice that evening — the same sort of choice we have on a regular basis — about who I would keep company with. If I’d stuck with ‘the wise guy’ I would quite literally not have gotten in trouble. I’m not saying the rest of the guys were absolutely foolish idiots, but I am saying we were being pretty foolish in our decision making process.
When I think about it now — we totally could have caused an accident, someone could’ve gotten hurt, or even killed. Did that thought occur to me at the time? Of course not. We’re young…nothing bad ever happens when you’re young, right?
Let me interject that we absolutely have a call to be salt and light in this world — and I am not negating that fact in the least. But it is also important for us to be thoughtful about which relationships we pursue. Are your friends helping you become a better person? Or maybe just a better consumer or partier or sports fan?
This even applies to what we take in with regard to media and social media. Do you have some friends that are always posting rubbish on Facebook that you need to “unsubscribe” to? Blogs you should stop reading? Are there TV shows or movies you’re watching that are probably not going to do much more than lower your IQ? Should you be picking up a good book {read: not a trashy novel} instead?
{Maybe you could be getting in the Good Word a little more? …Wisdom!!}
You probably get my drift.
An integral part of living out our faith is sharing it with those who don’t yet know the goodness of God in their lives, don’t yet have the wisdom of God at the steering wheel of their lives. But our lives should be marked by the grace of God — and by His wisdom, which He gives freely to those who ask. {James 1:5} (If you are a follower of Jesus, do you think the world can tell the difference?)
The truth is, riding in the car with the boys wasn’t the wisest decision I ever made. If you’re not looking for wisdom, foolishness will usually find you.
Irecently read an article in the Wall Street Journal which talked about the growing cultural divide among classes in America. The author mentioned different levels of income, living in different locations, the likely presence or absence of religion, whether children in each group are likely to grow up with married parents or not. It was very interesting. The premise of the article was that this cultural divide is very problematic for the future of our country, but it will take grassroots efforts, not top-down legislation to bridge the gap and keep us United.
Care to guess the difference between the two groups which stuck out to me more than any other?
Statistics about single parenthood, unemployment, or crime?
‘Course not.
I was completely distracted by the comment that one group eats cereal and milk is not at all likely to eat yogurt and muesli for breakfast.
I was distracted because we eat yogurt and muesli for breakfast, and I hadn’t considered the fact that it’s kind of posh. I guess my foreign hubs has a bit of poshness about him, though I’d more accurately chalk it up to the cultural differences.
Among those differences is his preference, which I’ve inherited (although I still do oatmeal with peanut butter and honey some mornings) — for yogurt and muesli or granola en la mañana. I digress to ‘splain that the muesli we more commonly ate in the UK and SA differs from the granola we eat here because muesli generally consists of rolled oats that haven’t been cooked (they’ve been soaked usually), whereas the granola oats have spent some time in the oven.
Anywho.
This could bring us back to the not-so-posh side of posh, but I’ve been considering making my own granola since Apple became a publicly traded company. Okay, maybe just since before Tiger Tank could crawl.
Similar to the bread issue that kicked off my affinity for baking our bread myself, this adventure was birthed out of a desire to find a cost-effective and healthy alternative to the expensive granola on the shelves at the grocery store.
So I did some research, dragged my feet, went back and reread the recipes I’d already looked at, and dove in.
Here’s the scoop on how you can too. {Make the granola, not drag your feet, that is.}
Start with this team of champions:
Old Fashioned Oats, Unsweetened Applesauce, Brown Sugar, Cinnamon, Nutmeg, Chopped Pecans, Sliced Almonds, Sea Salt, Honey, Vegetable Oil and Raisins.
Turns out making granola with applesauce is a much healthier choice than the traditional method that calls for lots of oil. Applesauce is so magical.
Preheat your oven to 325F/160C.
In a small saucepan, combine 1 cup applesauce,
2 TBSP honey,
and 2 TBSP vegetable oil. This picture might still be honey. I can’t remember.
Oh wait, there’s the oil.
Warm gently over a low heat with an occasional stir. If you want to talk to the food while you’re at it, that’s up to you. I’m not here to judge.
Meanwhile, stir together 5 cups old fashioned oats,
1/2 cup of slivered almonds and 1 cup chopped pecans…
Why, yes I always measure my nuts into pretty dishes when I’m cooking. It had nothing to do with the Hubs taking pictures.
1/2 cup brown sugar…
{dump}
1/2 tsp of sea salt…
2 tsp. cinnamon and 1/2 tsp nutmeg.
{I’d like to note here that if you’re not a big fan of the taste of nutmeg you might want to scale it back to 1/4 tsp or skip it all together. Because we eat our granola with yogurt, it mellows it out to perfection for me.}
Stir to nicely combine.
And then pour in the applesauce mixture which should be nice and warm by now.
Stir till all the oats and pecans feel like they’ve had a chance to warm up in the mushy goodness.
{Did I mention that if you haven’t moved into your aunt’s old home and inherited a smiley face spoon, you haven’t lived? Truth.}
Now evenly distribute the glorious contents of your mixing bowl into two 9 x 13 dishes.
Turn the oven down to 300F/150C and bung them into the oven (that’s how my mother-in-love says it) for about an hour, stirring every 10 minutes, until the granola is a deep brown. (I just think the hot preheat seems to help with my browning. I might just have a lazy oven.)
When you think it looks good, remove it to cool and boo-yow! The breakfast of my champions! It will get a little crunchier as it cools, but if you like yours good ‘n crunchay let it go a little longer. I keep mine on the softer side for the sake of the little teeth that also like to munch it.
Once it has cooled, stir in 2/3 cup of raisins.
Bask in the glorious goodness. And pat yourself on the back. Or whatever you do to celebrate.
This recipe makes about 8 cups. I like to store it in a cleaned out applesauce jar.
Posh, no?
You can easily halve this recipe to see whether or not you like it before going all out. I think this lasts about a week around these parts. Feel free to add 1/2 or 1 cup sunflower kernels, or other nuts. I was just wasn’t feeling the kernels this time. Sorry guys, maybe next time.
I created a printable recipe card for you. Because I love you. And have fun with creating things in Pages.
Let me know if you decide to try it, and how it goes! I borrowed heavily from Drea Wood’s Granola and Fake Ginger’s while finding my own thang. They’ll help you halve the ingredients if you don’t want a bunch like I did. But for all that work, why not make a bunch? 🙂
Back in the summer of 2008, just a few months before the Bear was born, I can remember passionately singing the words to the worship song How He Loves in a cinema-turned church service in the city centre of Edinburgh, Scotland. I remember commenting to a friend that the song felt like a “modern day hymn” as we softly repeated the verses we’d sung that morning in the car on the way home.
It was a song full of life, a fresh look at the love of God, and a song best described by the word passion.
It was only this morning, all these years later, that I heard the powerful backstory to the birth of this beautiful song, and nearly wept.
In November of 2002, a worshiper of God named John Mark McMillan received a call that two of his friends had been critically injured in a car accident. Later that evening, he received another call from his father that Stephen Coffey, his best friend, had passed away.
The next morning he woke up, and as Jonathan David Helser described it in this awesome podcast {click the one called “Born for Greatness”, he decided to get up, and as an answer to the voices surrounding him asking “How could God do this? How can God take your best friend and still be good? Is God really good?” he picked up his guitar and began to sing, over and over again, “He loves us. Oh, how He loves us. He loves us. How He loves us so.”
It was the birth of a song of passion, sung with joy and with weeping by people across this nation and throughout the world. {It was covered by David Crowder Band in 2009 and received a Dove Award in 2010.}
It turns out that on that night, McMillan’s friend Stephen Coffey was at church: a youth minster, at a church prayer meeting. He prayed aloud at that prayer meeting, “I’d give my life today if it would shake the youth of the nation.” And it was that very night that he was in a multi-car accident and died of serious injuries.
That song has shaken the youth of this nation. And to that God who loves us so — our mysterious, majestic, and great Creator — to Him be the glory.
{Yes this is long, but it is worth listening to the end. Very worth it.}
Acouple of weeks ago, I spoke about trusting God, even when a season feels like a straitjacket. Those words resonated with a lot of people. I suppose for everybody at some point life feels that way — you’re in a season that has you sitting still, and it’s often the case that the best you can do is just trust “it ain’t forever” and keep on keepin’ on. There are often great things happening under the surface, and the restraint we feel is often part of a bigger process, whether we’re aware of it or not.
But part of the process of making it through one of those seasons is knowing when the season is done. And sometimes that’s easy to see — you get fired from the job you hated, or you get the promotion you’ve been praying for that will reduce financial stress. The sign changes and the speed limit is no longer 25. Other times, like the butterfly, you are a part of the process of wiggling your way out of the chrysalis that has held you in place while the change was taking place.
So how do you know when it’s time to wiggle?
2 Kings 7 tells this fantastic story that is almost Shakespearean humor to me. Syrians laid siege on the city of Samaria and people were quite literally starving to death. In those days, lepers were banished to live outside the city because people didn’t want to touch them, for fear of being “made unclean.” {Long explanation for that, let’s save it for another day.}
So these four lepers were living outside the city, and when times are tough and people don’t have food for themselves, it’s pretty likely these dudes were on the verge of extinction.
Until they came up with a plan.
“Muchachos,” they said to one another, “why are we just sitting here waiting to die? Obviously, if we go into the city, since there’s no food in the city, we’ll die. And clearly, if we just stay sitting right here, we’re gonna die. So why don’t we head over to the Syrian camp and surrender to them? If they keep us alive, well then sweet potatoes. But if they kill us, what’s the difference, right?”
What these dudes didn’t know was that the Lord had been at work while they were busy reasoning things out. He’d caused the Syrians to hear the sound of a big army coming, and they thought the Samarians had hired some folks to come fight on their behalf.
“The Egyptians and the Hittites are coming to lay the smack down!” they’d shouted to one another. And they took off running scared, leaving all their stuff right there in the camp, shedding layers of clothing so they could run faster.
When those lepers showed up in the camp, it was a ghost town. So {this is the part I really love picturing in my mind} they start raiding the camp from tent to tent. Check it out, guys, there’s food over here! Bro, check out this rocking new garment I just found! I’m gonna go bury this booty in the ground and come back for more! Whoo-hoo! Who’s thirsty???
Eventually they think to themselves, Dudes, we are being totally not cool. The people in the city are about to keel over starving because they think this army is still here. We better go tell them the good news before we get in trouble for being selfish punks.
So these four lepers, who nobody expected anything from, told the city the good news, and in a way, they kind of saved the day. The king sent some of his men to go check out their story and make sure it was true, and then people went out and plundered the tents — the siege was finished and the famine was, too.
Now what if those guys had just decided to stick it out and hope for the best? What if they didn’t decide to get up and at least attempt to change their fate? The time was right for them to make a move.
Call it grace, they made their move, and many people benefited from that decision.
Another story is told*, about these prisoners of war, being held hostage, imprisoned for months. Who knows how badly they’d been treated, what atrocities they’d suffered through in this dark corner of the world.
Some Navy SEALS arrived to rescue them. They flew in by helicopter, stormed the compound and found their way to the room where the hostages were being held. In this filthy, dark room, there these hostages sat, curled up in a corner, terrified.
The SEALS entered, stood at the door, and called to them. “We’re Americans, c’mon, let’s go! Follow us, we’re gonna get you out of here!” But the hostages wouldn’t follow them. They hid their eyes on the floor, fearful, not believing this was real, not believing these rescuers were really Americans who’d come to save them.
There were too many hostages for the SEALS to carry out, and for a moment they didn’t know what to do. Finally one of the SEALS had an idea: he put down his weapon, took off his helmet, and curled up tightly next to the other hostages on the floor, so close that his body was touching some of theirs. He softened the look on his face and put his arms around them. {He did what none of the prison guards would’ve done — do you see the beautiful redemption in this?}
He stayed there for a little while until some of them finally looked at him, and then whispered that they were Americans, there to rescue them. Will you follow us? he asked.
He stood to his feet, and one by one the hostages did the same, eventually every one of them was willing to go. At the end they were safely aboard an aircraft carrier, free from the horrible place where they’d been held captive for so long.
Like the lepers, they had to get up to get free.
You’ve heard the saying that sometimes we stare so long at the door that’s closed we don’t see the open window. And a season can be a closed door, or a period of time where you feel held captive by the circumstances of life.
But one of God’s first promises after the Earth was flooded was about seasons:
“While the earth remains, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, winter and summer, day and night shall not cease.” {Gen. 8:22}
We can be certain of the fact that seasons will always change. There will be a time to plant, a time to reap, a time to kill, a time to heal, {is turn turn turn in the back of you head now?} We can be certain, from the very mouth of God, that no season is going to last forever.
Maybe the straitjacket that’s holding you is still tightly around you, cinched and closed; maybe the process isn’t over, maybe the chrysalis isn’t complete. But be careful to stay alert and mindful: the strings may have already been loosened, the door may already be unlocked.
The Sermon in a Nutshell: Be mindful, be on the lookout, and be ready to face your fears. Recognize that you might have to get up to get out of what’s holding you. There is the distinct possibility that the only thing holding you in the season you’re in is you.
xCC
*I’ve adapted this true story from the book Blue Like Jazz. (Thank you, Don Miller, for sharing it!)
I create resources to help people find deeper, more meaningful relationships with God through pursuing, pondering, and prayer. The "Shop" link above will take you to the home of many of the lovely resources I’ve created to help you keep walking one day deeper with Jesus.
I create resources to help people find deeper, more meaningful relationships with God through pursuing, pondering, and prayer. The "Shop" link above will take you to the home of many of the lovely resources I’ve created to help you keep walking one day deeper with Jesus.