Translation needs in the Pacific

Through the rest of this week, I want to showcase some beautiful graphic-representations of the needs left in five major world-regions. Today we look at the Pacific, an area dear to my heart because of Papua New Guinea! Many of the Bibleless people groups are in this area of the world, with 1,311 living languages still spoken within this region! Language varieties were often kept separate and distinct in these areas (as opposed to the expansion and overlapping of many other languages, like how English spread) due to sharp geographical features, like mountains that historically made communication between people groups much more unlikely. Take a look at these language and world facts, focusing on the work that is left to be done. 

View a clickable, larger version at http://blog.wycliffe.org/2014/06/16/wycliffe-world-highlights-pacific/

Mourning a path and gardening willingness

This is the week I was supposed to move to Papua New Guinea. ..Was supposed to get on a plane and leave everything behind but the relationships sending me, all my family and friends tethering me with love to this place. ..Was supposed to fly in multiple stages across datelines and timezones to a mountainous land throbbing from the ground with groans of longing for the Word in their languages...

I feel it pulse under my skin, everything put on hold, a twelve-year process prolonged into waiting once again.

And there is deep sadness in that, sorrow that some weakness in my physical body could explode into such severity now, and delay me from this work that I have felt my Lord tug at me about for more than half my years. Maybe it’s the steroids, but I find myself weeping often now, grasping to grieve for the scariness that November in the hospital was, for the confusion caused by getting so close to launching into Language Survey and then hearing God’s clear “No, still not yet.”

But that’s not quite it, maybe not quite true enough. I find myself grieving for the ifs. It’s too soon to know, but I find my soul reaching for answers about what things can be like once I’m in remission again——will it be possible to be a surveyor still, or will I need to do less physical roles in the Bible translation process? Will the Third World ever open up as an option again, or will these medicines (immuno-suppressants) be God’s tools of redirection, bringing me to work in a country I didn’t expect?  If it can no longer be Papua New Guinea, why did God spend all that time moving me in that direction, researching these people and their languages, investing in this Survey team, and creating a passion in me for the work He is doing there?——the questions can go on an on, but even they only scratch the surface, as it's more complicated than that. I can SEE God weaving together intricate stories that require more complexity, more ambiguity and waiting on Him than I'm comfortable with, but His results are always better than I can dream up, and the answers to those questions aren't the point..

Maybe more than this, then, I am grieving for how I can be so fully sold, so completely the property of my Jesus, and then still find willfulness in me that—in a tiny corner of my most honest and bare soul—hopes for my vision of things, my understanding, more than I fling myself at His feet to do whatever He pleases. Because He is most concerned with the conversation. There is no doubt that He will win. There is no doubt that all will hear, and He is mobilizing everyone who is willing to form the lines that will march forward with His healing, His breath, His salvation for every tribe and tongue. But more than just this end result, He uses every sorrow, every delay, every fog-enshrouded question mark, tear, and crumple to draw us and everyone around us into His lap, and to cultivate in us every good thing that cannot be there without whatever furnace He has brought us to. His sovereignty demands that I redefine everything—that if He allows it, that I should then call it Good, and open up my whole being to being drenched by that fire so we can continue on our way, refined and sharpened, and not consumed (Isaiah 43:2). He is fiercely committed to exacting every small rebirth of ferocious trust in us that will come from changing our plans, that will come from a million little deaths during our lifetimes, a million little lettings-go, even when He authored the direction of those plans in the first place (John 12:24). He loves me enough to forge an evermore iron-clad trust even when that process hurts.

So this week I grieve with my ribcage cracked open. I unlock that chamber so alter-flames can lick this heart with fiery tongues, can lap up disappointment and fear of loss, can dress every physical wound and every veins’ ache, can let in every EXTRAVAGANT joy that God has placed in my life in this season and every need that is before me right here, remembering that trusting Him is worth immeasurably more to Him than ministering for Him in any particular way. One will ALWAYS lead to the other (trust and love leading to ministry and worship), but He will zealously continue refining my trust until I am a closely-knit-to-Him shadow, turning on a dime, pouring Him out in the most unexpected ways and places, following His dancing Image more closely and with more abandon than I did before. Amen.

Redeeming what could have been "Stranded Friday"

[A Friday morning song I'd love for you to hear (referred to later in this post!)]


I never have trouble understanding that “no man is an island”.

This feels like in-grown knowledge that I’m always certain of, and more often than not, it’s harder for me to handle being in situations that make me feel like one. I don't dislike solitude, and longingly crave it sometimes, but this week has been one of those funny convergences of lots of solitude that just sort of happened by default…  Krissy and Chris have been on vacation, so this big house has been devoid of anyone but me and the Great Companion Scout. I have been working a lot this week too, because everyone in the office is at a conference, and whenever this has happened anytime in the last 3 years, I’ve been the Fort-Holder-Downer for the team…that’s just what we do, and it works wonderfully. 

BUT—It also means that the office has been down to one or two people, and much quieter than usual. THIS much quiet (waking up to it, driving to work in it, rolling in it from 9-5, and returning home to it for a quiet evening) for days and days in a row has historically made me squirrelly, itchy for people and stories, voices and interaction. It's just how God wired me. 

BUT—This week I've found Him beautifully pushing on those wires, and making enough quiet room for me to have space to notice His provision. In the midst of this plan for the Silent Bustle Week, my car broke down. I was running to go meet a dear woman for a we-haven't-done-this-in-TOO-LONG coffee-chat, and it was going to be my reprieve from the first few days of being on my own. "Err-errr-ERrrrrrr" went my little Sentra, and nothing I could do would coax it out of stubborn stuckness. 

BUT—I keep being reminded that His timing is good, even for brokenness.
The breakdown happening this week meant there was a vehicle to borrow, and work has gone on just as it needed to. Such a blessing! I was able to get to the needed, nourishing conversation, wherein we out-night-owled the coffee shop, and I've been able to have the time and solitude in the evenings that I've needed to re-kindle fervent prayer — Prayer about provision and "first world needs" like car repairs, about habits that I want to strengthen in my life that I have time to notice when it gets hushed and still, about awesome decisions that are coming up concerning Papua New Guinea, and the name of a region that I've been asked to pray about working in once I'm initially settled in... 

It is only in solitude that things like this get to roll around my mind and tongue the way they should... In this solitude, my heart readjusts its need to process out loud with someone, and finds itself reminded that Christ knows my voice and wants to hear these things first. He knows the name of this region in PNG and knows every person there. He knows what's wrong with my car and how He will sort out every worry of mine, so much so that He would prefer I let the air out of those worries before I decide it's holy to fill them up and let them fly upward like wind-hoisted balloons...

So this morning was about a joy-filled, weightless, extra-early drive to work in a borrowed car, where my heart found thanks and felicity dribbling out of it (to the tune of the song above!), with the comfortable knowledge that it is well, and that we ought to be singing while we wait to see the surprising, jubilant provision of the Lord. Happy Friday, dearest loved ones. May you feel Him so warmly in your rush or silence today too.

Transition Measured in Books..

I once heard Kay Arthur tell a story about how she sold all her possessions before becoming a missionary when she was younger because she “read in the Bible that ‘where your treasure is, there your heart is also’, and ‘I didn’t want my heart to be stuck in a storage facility somewhere’”J… In person, her delivery was clearly humorous, but I can definitely relate! 

A few weeks ago, I decided that if I didn’t start going through my belongings now to at least majorly minimize, I was going to move to Papua New Guinea in a few months with boxes of things in my family members’ homes that don’t need to be sitting there for years.

So in March, I began with the books! As I swiped at the dust and pages with my fingers and lovingly inspected each one, I realized the books on my colossal shelf go back through a habit of at least twenty years of story-hoarding...   In school, through my most awkward years, books were my escape to incredible places and times, and characters that could understand me more than the people I was meeting in middle school. Though I was mostly a library borrower then, the habit stuck, and I found delight in large vocabulary words and the characters that used them.

College-Mon working
on my Senior Project

By high school, I was a full-fledged Lit-nerd who'd begun the habit of scouring used book stores for the oldest copies of favorites I could find, and becoming an English Major in college only multiplied the "problem" ten-fold! Each semester would bring a new long list to acquire, read, absorb, and analyze, and by the time I graduated, I'd plotted to buy a bookshelf to house "my loves" so they didn't have to live in odd, studious floor-stacks anymore.

When I moved out on my own after college for the first time, I found a used, three-part, mammoth bookshelf that felt perfect and proud to hold them, and when I became a teacher later, I found myself continuing the habit of hitting up used book stores after particularly stressful or rewarding teaching days to mark the momentous occasion J. Later, the well-loved collection even required a fourth build-it-yourself, additional tall shelf! 

So now, as I tried to undertake the minimization of this heap o' books, I found myself quite a sentimental goose over them—over and over again, I found little notes tucked away in the pages, and not the grocery-list kind, but the memory-fiber, weighty kind. I rediscovered a meaningful letter from my village roommate during my time in Ghana in '04, there were cards of encouragement from friends at all different points in my life, and post-its my parents had hidden away for me to find when I was in Italy. There was a lunch-note with doodles my sister and I had passed back and forth over a few days in high school, and some drawings we'd swiveled to make each other smile. Many of the books were given to me as gifts, with heart-words poured out on the cover pages. Some marked epochs in my personal growth, or instantly took me back to seasons of struggle when I'd clung to those pages for comfort.

There was something beautifully cathartic in this sifting process, and when I was finished I had a medium-sized keep-stack, a pile of precious notes, bookmarks, and letters, and several boxes of books to part with! It was fascinating to find that my whole life until this point could be partially measured out in books, and it was also beautiful to learn that these outward shells were not my treasure, but that there are so many deeply lovely memories, lessons, people, and so much unwavering human emotion that I connect to those titles and the words found within them. These things I carry with me, and several oceans won't change that.

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