Closing up #30daydietofpassion

What a month! I look back at these daily posts and feel overwhelming gratitude.

Gratitude that God saved us. That God speaks to us. That His plan for redemption is through the Church. 

Gratitude that God is growing an army, equipped with His Word, and passionate about translating themselves into other cultures and His holy Word into their tongues. Gratitude and hope that one day His voice might no longer be foreign to the millions of people still waiting to hear it speak to them.

I pray you have enjoyed these real stories, that they have tucked themselves away into your heart, irrevocably. 

And as I leave them with you, I want to ask you to pray. As members of our Lord's one holy Church, He gifts and uses each of us in different ways, but this one role of prayer is for each of us.  Speak to your local church, reach out to missionaries you know, find creative ways to know what God is up to in the world, and PRAY fiercely for this work! And if you're interested in knowing more on a regular basis, or on receiving a specific Bibleless People Group to pray for, please go to www.bibleless.org to further connect!

I have heard the cries of my people..

I've been thinking a lot about Moses and Joshua, about the faith they had to see impossible tasks completed, and their willingness and watchfulness as God brought not just resolution and deliverance, but resolution and deliverance in unimaginable ways---miraculous, jaw-dropping, perfectly-timed, defying-the-natural-laws-of-science kind of ways.

Over and over, in the New Testament and Old, we see the Lord say "I have heard the cries of my people…" and great acts of love and deliverance follow.  It isn't that He needs us to ask, but the fact that our asking, engaging, and earnest yearning means so much to Him is an incredible honor. He extends to us a huge power and responsibility---that all Believers would be a part of the Great Commission---a huge mission of resolution and deliverance---by going, sending, and praying.

We often minimize the importance of the praying part, as though it were the lesser of the three, and today I wanted to highlight two stories through this video that remind me of the power and necessity of prayer in the gigantic task of Bible translation. I invite you to watch it, and then to also follow the link below to become a steady prayer partner for Bibleless people groups all over the world. 

Even now, Jonathon and I pray that wherever we end up working and translating, that God is raising up a team of national surveyors and translators to work with us, and that this would be happening all over the world in various translation projects. Please lift up the harvest-workers that are abroad now, laboring even in dangerous places, that need their Father's protection, blessing, strength, healing, and provision for the great task before them, and for His resolution and deliverance, in unimaginable ways. Amen.

http://www2.wycliffe.org/finishline

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.

ROAD TRIP! - Part II

As I left our party for Oma that evening, my heart pulsed with the voices of my family——voices of energetic children, the sweet singing of my Oma's voice, as she metered-out the beat of a hymn with her dancing pointer-finger, and the kind, quivering voices that lifted me up in prayer at the end of the night to a Father that hears every quiet syllable...

I   will   never   forget   it.

Lately, in a serene, steady way, Luke 2:19 swirls in my mind: "But Mary treasured up all these things, pondering them in her heart". I'm certainly not Mary, and not undertaking the weighty journey that she walked, but I find this progress towards the mission field is pregnant in it's own way; it is a season of waiting, planning, and dreaming, full of growth, growing pains, and a million little moments gathering up in my heart, and they are good.

The second leg of this trip was just as full of that... priceless togetherness, and my family members' intentionality, fleshed out in so many beautiful ways that will stick with me all the days of my life: my thoughtful Tante keeping me company on the route between Hamptonville and Garner, an impromptu Birthday party for Krissy and I, a Garner-Wondracek family dinner, blessed evening time with just Tante Eve and Onkel Mirvan, and a breakfast with my cousin Paul. I don't have words for these million moments, but hear me that they are so deeply, meticulously, lovingly stored up and treasured.

        

A spontaneous Birthday party thrown by my
thoughtful Tante for the 31 year old twins!

Cousins!

Passed by a street sign commemorating
one of my earliest missionary inspirations

When it was time to leave my family, I drove three hours to Charlotte for the last leg of my trip~

With the last destination, I got to meet a friend that I've known through Skype for almost a year! Diane is also a member of Wycliffe and worked with me through 2012 when I was in the membership application process. She interviewed me, answered my questions, and patiently walked me through narrowing down which country I would serve in.  It was delightful to meet for coffee, to talk face-to-face with my dear guide.

When I left the Starbucks, I got to meet up with precious nearly-family that I grew up with in NY for my last night in North Carolina. Pastor Prado is one of my spiritual fathers, and it was a keen joy to sit for a meal with the Prado family, chatting with grandchildren, and praying for one another. 

All of these moments gather with the others, a heart thrumming with a satchel of things to ponder.

November 3, 2008 - Thoughts on "lack" and a mall mishap :)

Tonight I walked into my house and felt overwhelmed. I had been shuffling in the mall, whose hallways and speakers have ALREADY been adorned with “Christmas”… the outward colors of it without any inward depth. I had to squinch my ears to tell if I really was hearing the instrumental song that I thought I was… but it became undeniably clear the moment I saw the most unhappy Santa I have ever seen. There was a photographer; enormous, red, shiny Christmas ornaments; rolls of carpet moving in various directions for lines that would wrap around and around.
But there were no lines; only a Santa who was more than likely musing about skeletons and pumpkins, and a Persian man that said I am going-k to change your li-fe today…this cream! We vill get all the pimps off your face, it will change your life. All the pimps. Yes, that’s what he said.

I returned home to my beautiful girls, but conversation quickly turned to the one that is part of my daily life right now: I seem to have been having long weeks of the same conversation, dropped by one person, continued with another in my life, taken on by several others, dwindled and taken up again by someone that has noticed the same thing my heart has. It began over dinner with my pastor’s family. We somehow got to speaking about men in their 20’s and 30’s, in and out of our church, and Pastor Tommy said we should pray. There is this struggle, this fight, this dropping away of the men I knew that were committed to Christ, and a dearth of ones that are freshly arriving to Him, heart in hands. So we spoke more of praying for the men that let commitment and the forward-fight dribble between their fingers’ grasp; for the boys that have no idea what being a man should look like, and for the women that haven’t seen an example of anything but settling for this.

Then Rachel un-paused a video-teaching they were about to watch and the first words out of the speaker’s mouth were about The Beginning, and he began by breaking down the name Elohim. Break to the only response to emotionally-charged-stimuli that I seem to currently have on tap—a spasmodic visceral reaction: I fled the room.

It felt involuntary, an instant response— I couldn’t stay. The man said Elohim, and jumped into parts of the word, the root, the meaning. And it hurt. Ache. Want. The feeling that my heart would gut itself if I listened just now, tied, I guess, to the study of words, and God, and Hebrew, and Greek. Then instant repulsion at the dramatic nature of those emotions (oy-ve!!), annoyance that the ache makes me hostile, anger that I don’t know what to do with my heart.

I think I’m just tired, but it ends up coming out as a garbled, toe-crunching “rawr”. I would so much rather embrace what I long for—or the waiting for it—and not rush out of the room because of something stinging and poignant. I just felt a little sad. And hated that it comes on the heels of others’ joy. It’s all the change again: my wonderful childhood best friend gets married in 6 days, and in moments of weakness it feeds into the questions of what I’ve screwed up that keeps me from having what God has given to others. What have I done or been that is so irreversible? I feel like I’ve been longing and seeking, and allowing necessary separation… and still ache, distance, faint mimicries of emptiness.
And none of this is fair questioning, and I know this. I hate feeling consumed with lack; lack that my spirit, without false filters and worldly schematics laid over it, knows is not there, or knows that the vessel part, the decaying, unlasting part of me insists on identifying…conjuring.

Bleh. There it is. But out where its sting, or shame at such emotions, can dissipate, and out where the seeming-truth of some of those statements can be illuminated, shown for the shadows they are.

And then replaced. Replaced by the truth of blessing. Blessing in the form of roommates that have been abundant sources of “laughter like breaking dishes”, wisdom, and commiseration. Blessing in the form of joy in welling-up moments spent in my car. Blessing in the view down the hill in the morning mist.
There are some beautiful events in the last few weeks that I need to come back and mention; sights and company that have made my heart burst!—only tonight the other feelings usurped my attention first, so here they sit. My apologies~ :)

Posted on 3 November 2008 at 10:53 PM Comments (1)