Summertime Stories: The Time I Got A New Purse

It's another summer evening at home, and the boys want 'another story of You!' And I try to think back, and filter through all the sneaky things I did as a child, because apparently they've inherited my mischief, so they don't need encouragement and fresh ideas. 'Ah... have I told you the story about the time I got a new purse?'

I had just finished my sophomore year in college. Two years earlier, after a crazy and amazing series of events, I had ended up with a full ride to a college in the U.S. Part of the scholarship included a trip home every summer. So, I was back at home. I kept in touch with mom very regularly. In fact, it was after my move up North that my parents got Internet at home (you're welcome, brothers). So, I would email a couple times a week (OK, more like every day, and I also called collect when I needed her to call me), and she would keep me posted on the family gossip - mostly.

Mom had mentioned that there were some hardships at home, but never really got into specifics; she had basically just asked me to be praying. The morning after getting home, the two of us sat down to catch up and I had a chance to fully understand what my family had been going through. My dad had lost his job a few months earlier. Money was tight, and well, things were looking pretty grim. The hardest thing was that my brothers' school tuition was past due a couple months, and they had until that afternoon to pay.

Mom and I, years later, having fun at a wedding.

While the two of us sat in my room, and all this new information was sinking in, she said in a giddy way, 'but look! I got this for you in the closet!'  'The Closet' was a place where different donations came in for the faculty and students of the seminary where my mom worked. A couple of weeks earlier, a large donation of purses had arrived, and she had picked the one she thought I would like. It was an interesting mix of a half-backpack half-purse. Hard to describe. I didn't immediately love it - thought it was not really my style. But in front of me, I saw my mother sit with expectation and delight in her eyes. She loved giving presents. Picking things out for others was one of her favorite things to do. So, there she was, going through dire financial circumstances, without a dime to spare to buy a gift for her daughter, but God had provided her with the opportunity to give me a gift to welcome me home.

I reached for the purse, and started checking it out. It had a couple zippers in the front, and then a few pouches inside. All the front outside was furry, and it had a strap in the back. After thanking my mom, without thinking about it, I felt curious about the front zippers. I opened them, reached inside, and then did the same with the one inside. As I slid my hand inside the small pouch, I felt something. I thought it was probably some silica bags. But it felt different, like a roll of paper. Because most of the stuff we got at the closet was second hand, I thought someone had left their trash there.

As I pulled it out, I realized that it was A BUNCH OF BILLS ROLLED UP! I pulled all this money out, as my mom and I sat on my bed, screaming. We counted the money, and it was THE EXACT AMOUNT that was due at the boys' school, and a little extra - for my cafecitos.

I rocked that purse-backpack for a long time. Turns out, it actually was just my style.

Summertime Stories: The Night It Was Too Cold

Summer nights - warm, restless, too full of energy and wonder nights... As a way of trying to settle the boys down, one evening I started showing them pictures of when they were babies, and making small funny narratives about each picture. It was fun, and they loved looking at pictures and hearing stories. But I didn't want them to be looking at either my phone or my computer right before they went to sleep.

All smiles - my first week as a sister!

So, I pulled the picture box where I have pictures of my childhood and started telling them stories. Soon it became part of our bedtime routine, so I'll be sharing here a few of my favorites.

My parents were both professors at a Bible Institute in Guatemala, and we lived on campus. I was an only child at the time. I must have been two when we moved there, and around five when we moved out. The front door of the house led straight into an open space that was first living room and then dining room, right in the middle of the house. To the left were two rooms and a bathroom - my bedroom and my mom's office. To the right was my parent's bedroom, another bathroom, and the kitchen. The house had a fireplace, and being fairly chilly with no central heating, that was always a good thing to have. I remember we also had an electrical portable heater that sometimes would be in my room to keep me warm. I also was a mix of a heavy sleeper and a kid with night terrors, so I would often make it to my parents' bedroom either because of a nightmare or because I had wet the bed.

Cuteness overload at two years old

My mom used to tell this story: The Night It Was Too Cold, she got up around midnight, as it had become her custom, to take me to the bathroom on a preemptive attempt to minimize laundry (I so get it now!), and after we were done, she thought it was just too cold to take me back to my room. As she held me asleep in her arms, she just felt sorry for me, sleeping alone in such a cold night. She thought it was best to let me snuggle with them for the rest of the night. So, she took me to their room, got in bed, and closed the door. Not too long after, both my parents heard a loud noise. Because my mom's office window faced the street, they both thought someone had smashed the window and broken in. My dad said, if that was the case, the best thing was to wait inside their room and if there was actually a thief inside the house, to let them take whatever they wanted.

As they laid in silence, waiting to hear anything else, they both fell back asleep. (I now always shake my head at this part, because we're talking about the worst years of the Guatemalan civil war, living in the countryside, and these two blessed folks in their late twenties with a preschooler heard a loud thud in their house and FELL BACK ASLEEP!)

Anyway... The next morning I remember very well. I remember getting up, walking out of my parents room to find my house as a white Christmas vision - albeit completely out of place. Everything was white. The floors, the furniture, everything was covered by a layer of white dust. As the three of us walked through the house, mouths wide open, we walked into the source of all the dust: The entire asbestos ceiling in my bedroom had caved in. The major breaking point had been right over my bed, where now a huge plank sat over my pillow.

"Do you see how God saved me that night?" I tell the boys. "But how did you mom know?" asks someone. Well, she didn't. She didn't hear a loud voice from heaven saying 'take your daughter with you, as the ceiling in her bedroom is about to fall.' She just felt a tug in her mama's heart, felt she needed to take me with her, and she did. And quite often, God speaks to us that way - we feel we should call someone. Someone comes to mind. We don't know why but we know we must go out, or come home, or say no to that job or that invitation. It's a mystery to me, this movement of the Holy Spirit within us, but I do want to constantly remember that He does love us and wants to guide our lives. May we constantly have ears to hear and eyes to see.

The Lord directs the steps of the godly.
    He delights in every detail of their lives. 

Psalm 37:23

Making Good Theater

I spent a good chunk of my time yesterday morning talking to a coworker about budgeting, fundraising and stewardship. We talked about how close to our heart our resources are, and how easy it is to get worried and fearful. We also talked about how Christ constantly invites us to a life of faith and faithfulness to Him. I must confess I left that call feeling so wise. I took a couple minutes to reminiscence about my different experiences of working in Christian ministries for the last fifteen years doing finances. The trip down memory lane left me feeling so pleased with myself. My heart is in the right place, I thought.

A couple hours later, I got a call from the husband who is working with a team from his home church in Jarabacoa this week. They needed a few extra putty knives, and could I please go find them and bring them up when I came later that afternoon. I went to his toolbox, and found the putty knives, and then, in what came as a natural reflex, without giving it much thought, I just reached for the sharpie and wrote down 'Clifford' in both handles. I placed them on my desk, and went about my business.

Toddler napping, and two boys playing in the sandbox, I found myself with time to sit down and unwind. After checking the news for a few minutes, and become quite disheartened, I thought maybe I should just do some Bible reading. I've been doing a series on the Sermon of the Mount, and what do you know, the reading for the day was on Giving.

"Be especially careful when you are trying to be good so that you don’t make a performance out of it. It might be good theater, but the God who made you won’t be applauding." Matthew 6:1 (The Message).

The putty knives with my name on them came to mind. And it suddenly became obvious that my heart is not always in the right place. I thought about how, being honest, I wanted to make sure someone knew those two putty knives were ours.

Look at us, serving together as a family in a foreign land! Look at us, so willing to give our things to the ministry whenever they need them! Look at us, always ready to serve when needed! And please, look out, make sure you take care of my things because, well... they are mine (specially the one that was chewed by our dog!). Look at me, so afraid of fully giving... afraid of losing.

May we learn how to give in a Christ-like manner, in freedom, and complete trust that whatever loss we may foresee when giving will be plenty satisfied by our Heavenly Father.

Unwritten and Wordless

When I was little, one of my favorite people in the whole world moved away. My uncle and aunt went to study in the United States, taking my closest cousin with them. After a couple of years, they went as missionaries to Spain. My parents and her parents stayed in touch. They would send letters and pictures, and every four years, they would come back. In my teenage years, every once in a while, I would write her a letter. Sometimes, I would start it and actually never even get to the end - the unfinished letter being put away with some other papers in my closet. Other times, I would finish it, put it in an envelope, address it, but never take the bus to the nearest post office. Lucky for us, we ended up (very miraculously) going to the same college, so we got three solid years of being only a floor away from each other in the dorm.

I have a box full of wedding thank you notes that I didn't write. After seven years, I finally threw away the ones I wrote but never mailed. Words come easy to me, but they seem to leave as quickly as they come. Maybe I just need to finish what I start. Maybe it's that sometimes, I'm afraid I don't have the right words to truly express what I wish to say. (Maybe that's why this blog has been dormant since November.)

This week, I realized that the same thing happens to me with prayer a lot of times. I pray for others, and if I tell you that I am praying for you, I am. However, when it comes to bringing my own needs before the Lord, words elude me. What do I really want to pray for? What do I need? Where do I even begin? And sometimes, I start and then don't really know where it is that I was going to with the prayer. And so, I just tuck it away.

I was in this nebulous place earlier this week. I was worried about our kids, thinking I needed to pray for them, but not quite getting how to pray, or for what. It bothered me, and I just had this feeling that I needed to pray for something, and I couldn't put a finger on it.

Yesterday, I got a text from one of my dear friends from Guatemala who now lives in Austria. We hadn't spoken since Christmas. She said "you've been on my mind. Everyone doing OK?" So, as we start texting, and I'm trying to think if I can actually dive into a deep conversation right then and there, while at the grocery store with one child in tow, she says 'I dreamed about your kids, and I didn't get much detail, but I understood that the Lord wants me to be praying for them... that I'm supposed to take care of them in prayer.'

Wait. What? For days, I've been feeling that I need to pray, and I can't find the words, and this friend on the other side of the world dreams about having to pray for my children! You see, when I start writing and don't send a letter, or I don't post it, the words fall flat. They vanish.

But with prayer... oh with prayer, it's a whole new different supernatural ball game. Romans 8:26-27 tells us this fun dynamic: "Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness. For we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words. And he who searches hearts knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God. "