My kitchen floor is clean! Very clean, which is near miraculous since I clean my kitchen floor only in bits and pieces these days, sweeping one area now, another then, letting Patrick rub it with a wet rag when the mood hits him (which, fortunately, is often).

But today the majority of it is scrubbed–with Murphy’s oil soap no less. Yes, there is a story here.

Last night I planned on waffles, getting so far as mixing all the wet ingredients together before going to pick up Nina and Jane from their study hours. When I arrived at the Academy, I realized a soccer game was about to start, and both girls–and of course all the younger ones–wanted to go. “We’ll eat leftovers tonight and have waffles tomorrow,” I said, “and jet back here for the game.”

I put the waffle starter in the fridge overnight and today, when Patrick and I arrived home at a little before 1, I set it on the counter to warm up. Patrick came into the bedroom where I was going to do a quick workout video. He chattered like crazy for a few minutes and then disappeared. Then–clang! “What was that, buddy?” I called.

“Uh, Mom, can you come here?”

I trotted to the kitchen–and stopped. Patrick was standing next to the counter, his arms still up, one hand clutching a paper napkin. All around his feet, on the doors of the cupboards, splattered up his legs, was the waffle batter–all six eggs, four cups of milk, 1 1/2 cups of semi-congealed butter, and another 1/2 cup of oil.

I walked away. Two rooms away, I fussed and fumed. “Really! Why couldn’t he just leave it alone? Why did he have to mess with it? Seriously, God!”

On my way back to the kitchen, I muttered what might be a prayer. “You’re going to have to give grace, Lord. I’m not really inclined toward it myself right now.”

Well, I did fuss at him, stopping every once in a while to remind him–and myself–that “I really do love you, but I’m also pretty mad at the moment.”

I used a dustpan to carry the congealed butter and “slosh” to the sink. A half a roll of paper towels got the rest off the floor, and then I used Murphy’s so we wouldn’t skate on butter gloss every time we crossed the kitchen.

I made him sit in the corner while this was happening. I had finished fussing, had gone through the “what were you thinking?” (he wanted to wipe the condensation off the side of the bowl) and the “why didn’t you ask me?” when he finally said something.

“Mom?”

I looked up, expecting, “I’m really sorry,” but no.

“Mom, does this mean I don’t get to watch a movie this afternoon?”

Um, no. Instead I made him sit in my bedroom while I worked out, and we had an interesting conversation. “Mom, what’s inside your brain?”

“Thoughts,” I answered.

“No, really!”

And now, one hour later, there is even more grace…

He’s asleep.

Our pastor is preaching a series of sermons on Jonah. He began the series about three weeks ago on a day we held church in the park, with the bright sun beating down on our heads. Someone read the entire book, and then Craig (our pastor) gave an introduction: “The theme of Jonah is the grace of God. Everything Jonah encountered was grace: the storm, the fish, the arrival in Ninevah, the death of ‘his’ plant.”

I sat on a folding chair with Nina, Jane, and Vi, one of Jane’s friends staying for the weekend, next to me, and I wondered what they were thinking. They were probably wishing they could be in the shade or, even better, asleep. I don’t think they wanted sweat to be trickling down their backs, eyes squinting against the cloudless sky. Did bringing them to church this morning do any good? Then my mind turned to my task of daily sharing the Gospel with them–with my life, not just my words. How often will I “mess up” with them? I wondered. How often will the gospel message I “speak” be undermined or contradicted by my actions or attitudes, how often will my grumpiness argue louder than my proclamation of God’s love?

I decided then–and I reaffirm it now–that I don’t want to be like Jonah, a reluctant, even vindictive, witness. He did not love the people he spoke to; he wanted calamity to come on them. I don’t think I will want calamity to strike our girls, but it would be very easy to begrudge the time and effort I spend on them. “Ok, I guess I’ll attempt to cook Chinese again,” “If you absolutely have to be there, I’ll drive you,” “Oh, all right, you can have a friend over.” I don’t want to serve through gritted teeth.

Yet I am reminded that God used Jonah in spite of Jonah’s attitude. The Holy Spirit of God seriously WORKED! The Ninevites, a warlike and fierce people, faced with a vindictive prophet gladly preaching a message of doom, turned to God! God was greater than Jonah’s lack.

And He is greater than mine. He can use me in spite of my often-unwilling spirit. He will work in Nina and Jane’s hearts regardless of my attitude.

But I don’t want to miss out on the joy. Jonah’s reluctance kept him from the pure, awesome JOY of seeing the Ninevites change, of seeing them as people created by God. He missed out on knowing God’s heart for the Ninevites, His hope for them, His desire to spare those many people, His giddy gladness when they turned TO Him.

I don’t want to miss God’s heart.

I need to give a little background to this story. Having an African-American child in our family impacts how we view history. For example, when we read a book that was set in the pre-Civil-rights era (the story of courageous little Ruby Bridges going to an all-white school—great book, by the way), the twins were HORRIFIED! “What do you mean? Are you saying that Patrick wouldn’t be able to go to the same school as we do? Why? That’s wrong!” When we explained that this restriction was only a small portion of the injustices, they could not fathom it. Needless to say, we are holding off for a little while longer before we talk about slavery.

With that background in place, let me tell you what happened the other day.

PJ has been like an annoying fly with Jake lately. He bugs him nonstop, dogging his steps, punching him lightly on the arm at every opportunity, grabbing his sleeves, coming up from behind him and poking him—on and on and on. (I think he misses the summer days of being with him all the time.) Finally, early this week, Jake had had enough. PJ bumped him from behind, and Jake whirled around and grabbed PJ’s forearms. “Why are you doing this?” he half-yelled. PJ just stared back, a little pleased, I think, to have gotten Jake mad, but not sure what Jake was going to do.

Jake went on. “Is it because a long time ago white people were really mean to black people?”

PJ’s eyebrows went up because, of course, he had no clue what Jake was talking about. “Well?” Jake demanded. PJ’s eyebrows went even higher, and he shrugged.

So then Jake says, “Well, those days are over, man. They’re over. Stop bugging me.” He dropped PJ’s arms and stalked away, leaving PJ looking around wondering what on earth had just happened and Em and I nearly rolling on the floor laughing.

I LOVE our crazy family.

This is going to be short–I’ve got to get back to lesson planning for the week–but it’s been a theme of the whole day.

I have been entrusted with a great responsibility as a mom to Em, Jake, Maddie, Patrick and–for this year–Nina and Jane. This is a job with Matthew 28 implications. “Go into all the world and make disciples”–in my case, the world has come to me! It’s awesome, amazing, a treasure…

In the abstract, that is! In the day-to-day (and especially on weekends) it’s meal prep after meal prep; it’s loads and loads of laundry; it’s having to revisit fifth-grade math and high school geometry to help Em and Jane with homework (Nina’s in physics; I’ve told her not to bother with me); it’s sweeping the kitchen floor and discovering it’s dirty 30 minutes later; it’s (possibly most hated chore of all) having to shop at Walmart way more than the once-a-month trip I could get by with while living in Kansas.

And it’s awfully easy to get fixated on those things rather than on the eternal perspective. No, it’s more than easy; it’s human nature–human, sinful, self-centered nature.

What’s supernatural is to keep the eternal perspective in view, to hold onto it so that frustration is forgotten in the joyful knowledge that God will use my service to open up hearts to Him.

And God PROMISES that He can provide the strength and the power to do that for me. “Look at Me,” He tells me, “and I will lift you up.” Like Peter, I can stop looking at Christ and find myself wallowing in my own sea of self-pity (and my struggles to get out simply sink me deeper), or I can look up and find myself on top of the waves.

Look up, Jen, look up.

My mother sent our kids a box last week. The girls, of course, got clothes, and the boys, being far less excited about what covers their bodies, got Legos. Jake’s set included an alien, an alien defense capture guy (Jake would disapprove of my vague terminology), and a capture vehicle. He LOVED it and played with it nonstop for days.

Last Sunday, a few days after the box arrived, I was working on lesson plans on the deck when Jake came out to see me. He set his Lego characters on a small table while he showed me an adjustment that he had made to the vehicle. “Look, Mom…” That’s all he got out before IT happened. The small alien figure–Jake’s favorite–toppled off the table and disappeared down a hole in the deck.

“Oh, buddy,” I said, “that’s why I’ve told you not to bring your Legos out here.”

He was distraught. “What can I do? Can I find it? We have to be able to get it somehow!”

Usually my first inclination is to say, “Tough knocks–you learn from experience,” and I have to fight this hardness of my heart. This day, though, Jake’s curled-up face softened me immediately, and I was able to empathize right away.

“Come on, let’s look,” I told him.

We walked all the way around the deck, trying to find a way under it, but the lattice was screwed on tight. We went into the basement hoping one of the windows would open. Those, too, were screwed tight. But the empty flower beds lining one side of the deck were soft from recent rains, and in one there was a gap between the dirt and the bottom of the lattice. “If I dug out a little more of that dirt, would you want to crawl under?” I asked Jake.

He looked at me doubtfully. Jake is like me, cautious and prudent. “What’s under there?” he said. Then, “What about Patrick? I think he might fit.”

That made me laugh, but of course Patrick was game–until I actually deepened the hole and he stuck his head through it and saw the gloomy underbelly of the deck. He pulled back and looked at Jake. “Uh, no.”

“Would you go if Jake went?” I asked him. He nodded.

I dug out more, and Jake got down on his belly. “There’s no way he’ll do this,” I thought. He paused until Patrick, bold now with Jake’s leadership, got right behind him and touched his leg. “What do you see?” Patrick asked.

That did it! With a wiggle and a push from behind, Jake was under the lattice, and Patrick followed right after.

I was so proud of them. I walked up on the deck and found the spot of “disappearance.” “Right about here, guys,” I said, sticking a pen between the boards of the deck.

But the neon green alien could not be found (back in his own world perhaps?), and the boys emerged from their adventure a few minutes later empty handed and covered in dirt. I consoled Jake and thought that was the end of it. But though disappointed in the loss of the alien, there was a swagger to their steps, and a little while later they came out in full explorer gear ready to try again. I envisioned having to wash all the extra clothing and convinced them that explorers going through tight spaces can’t wear quite so much.

The second trip into the murky depths was also unsuccessful but by now they were too pumped to really care. I sat on the deck listening to their chatter beneath me. “Look at this!” “Ooh, that’s creepy!” “I wonder how long it’s been since somebody was down here.”

When they finally came out, it was as if they had conquered something.

Pretty soon I’m going to replace that little green alien. Somehow it just feels right.

A while back I wrote that I would tell a fuller story of our move and of God’s faithfulness in it. This is the beginning of that story.

We left Sterling sometime after 10 on Wednesday evening, July 6, after a LONG day. Dave and I, in separate vehicles, managed to get about three hours down the road before we needed to crash. We stopped at a motel and settled in. The next morning we decided to sleep in a bit and got on the road about an hour later than we had originally planned. A little ways down the highway, Dave called me.

“Jen, we’re going the wrong direction!”

“You’re kidding me.”

“No. How could I have done that?”

He continued to beat himself up, but the Holy Spirit gave me this really calm feeling. I told him. “Hon, we’ve got to trust that God has a plan for this. It’s happened. It’s okay.”

It took us thirty minutes to get back to where we’d started that morning. We were now two hours behind schedule and facing an even longer day of both of us driving.

When we stopped for gas, I noticed smoke coming from under the hood of White Lightning (what we semi-affectionately call Dave’s old Chevy truck). He popped the hood open.

Steam poured out.

The radiator.

The gas attendant directed us to a “great mechanic” just a mile up the road. The mechanic took a look. “Well, you might make it to Chicago just fine, but there’s just as great a chance that you’ll get an hour or two up the road, and that crack will split wide open and you’ll be stranded.”

Stranded in the middle of Iowa, where towns are about as scarce as they are in western Kansas and the ones you do find may not even register on the map–where we would have stopped for gas if we hadn’t gone the wrong direction that morning. We were beginning to see a purpose in our morning delay.

Instead we had a Subway within walking distance, full access to the mechanic shop’s waiting area, with its comfy couches, tv, dvd player, and toys, and a mechanic who put everything else aside and had our truck fixed in great time because, as he put it, “Well, I hadn’t planned on fixing a radiator this morning, but I reckon you weren’t planning on breaking down either.”

What a good God!

Now here’s the lesson that I’ve been remembering this week related to this. In the midst of a long time period of moving and Dave having to be out of town, in a time when I had to cling to God, I could SEE His hand at work in the small frustrations–or at least I was open to the perspective that difficulties have purpose. This week, the last full week of August, school has begun and we are finally getting into a groove, moving from the stage of “just hanging on” to “we’re in routine.” In the last few days I have found myself growing impatient with trains that have stopped my forward motion, my children for losing their lunch three minutes before we’re supposed to walk out the door, copying machines that jam–the little things.

Song of Solomon 2:15 says, “Catch the foxes for us, the little foxes that are ruining the vineyards, while our vineyards…are in blossom.”

This summer has been a trial of sorts, not one of grief–and I’m incredibly thankful for that–but a difficult time when I had to hang on to my Lord for strength and peace of mind. Maybe I could liken it to a very difficult planting season, full of storms and setbacks, a ceaseless time of labor and stress when we had to help all my brood (and myself) pull up roots in one place and put them down in another. But now my “plants” are beginning to grow–mine, too). Will I let the little foxes of impatience and frustration and self-suffieciency destroy my dependency on Christ?

God, thank You for this time, this space. Help me to see that this is a gift, not something I have worked at for myself or “arrived at” because I “persevered.” I don’t want my little foxes to pull me away from You.

Verse for the Day: Our God is faithful in all He does!
All He does!
All
He
Does!
That’s mindboggling.

I cannot fathom being faithful in all I do. I try. I really do, but not only AM I not faithful (I don’t call my mother faithfully every week; I don’t schedule my doctor appointments on time; I forget when I last changed my kids’ sheets), I CANNOT be faithful in all I do. When I count all my “hats,” they would require me to have a clone—or maybe a couple of them. There are not enough hours in the day and enough brains in my head to even organize everything some days.

BUT GOD! He is FAITHFUL in ALL He does. And His number of responsibilities makes mine look like a single dot from an ultrafine point pen on a sheet of paper the size of China (to name one of my cultural contexts of this time in my life). Yet He is able, competent, and sufficient IN Himself to meet every single one of them, and to meet them well.

And not just “well.” He meets them PERFECTLY. He knows my needs, my children’s needs, my international daughters’ needs, my husband’s needs, my students’ needs, my mother’s and father’s needs, my in-laws’ needs…

His list goes on and on and on. And he is faithful in every single one.

Amazing!

I wrote this post a week ago but accidentally posted it to the wrong category on my blog and thought I’d lost it. I quickly wrote a short replacement entry, posted it, and then found the original today. It repeats some of the info of an earlier blog, but it’s a little fuller, so I’m posting it. Sorry for the repetition.

For the past month (starting on the very day we arrived in West Chicago) we’ve been working with the summer international student camp at Wheaton Academy. I taught a reading/vocab class (using two books from C.S. Lewis’ Narnia Chronicles–very cool); Dave shared basics of the Christian faith (there is a Creator; He loves you; He died to redeem you); and our family hung out with them during several of their activity times. Dave will continue this ministry since he teaches all the first-year international students in a special Bible class, but we knew it could also continue in our home if we wanted to host one or two of the students.

No way, we thought. We’ve just moved. It’s been an incredibly crazy summer. We’re getting back to teaching (at Wheaton Academy, where the expectations are wonderfully high). Our kids will be adjusting to new schools… The rational and logical reasons for us NOT to take in students went on and on.

But a still, small voice whispered at the back of my mind and heart. “Will you let these reasons–and be honest, the true reasons are really selfish–keep you from seeing me work in a student’s life AND your own?”

Then I decided to go transparent–generally the best choice with the God who knows all anyway! “I don’t want the bother. It will be uncomfortable and I don’t want to parent a teenager; sometimes I don’t even like parenting my own children. When will I ever get alone time? I’m an introvert–You created me that way!”

But the whisper continued–in Dave’s heart, too, I later discovered–and we moved Nina and Jane (their American names, not their true names) into our home last night. Jane is from Vietnam, Nina from China, and they are both beautiful, wonderful girls created by God and placed for this time very intentionally in our family and home.

So yesterday, when I had to share some interesting fact about myself in the Wheaton Academy new teacher video, I said, “This school year my family has four countries of origin: America, Uganda, Vietnam, and China.” It’s pretty amazing.

An absence of three years from the WA community means that nearly every conversation is an explanation of what we’ve been doing. I’ve also found myself, subconsciously, re-establishing myself, tooting my own horn, so to speak.
“See, I’m not really a ‘newbie,’ I’ve still got it. My time away hasn’t turned me into a clodhopper educationally. Look at what God’s been doing in my life.” (and that last is really “Look at how I’ve been following Jesus!”

My prayer for today is this: Please, my wonderful Lord, help me to be more YOU-focused, others-focused–instead of ME-focused. Guide me away from my own stories, away from the use of “I” and into deep, real interest in others’ lives.

May I decrease. May YOU increase.
In and through me.

One of the best things about living in a tiny town (Sterling’s population doubles each year during its 4th of July celebration–to 5,000 people!) is the understanding of the connection you have with those who live near you. You don’t take your car to Walmart to have the brakes checked because your neighbor works as the manager at the local mechanic and you want to contribute to her livelihood. You do most of your grocery shopping in town because you know nearly all the checkout clerks’ names–and they know yours.

We’ve been trying to keep this lesson in mind as we’ve moved back to West Chicago, with its 27.000 people and central downtown area. We’re getting to know some of the waitresses, by face at least,at El Coco Loco because we often eat there on Thursdays (that’s 99-cent taco night!), and Em and I have already visited St. Vincents, the thrift store on Main Street–one of our favorite places to shop from before our move to Kansas–in honesty I need to admit that it’s about the only place I like to shop. And we’ve become completely hooked on La Michoacana, the Latino ice cream shop a little further down on Main. They make all their ice cream on location, and the strawberry flavor tastes like my father’s-in-law homemade freezer jam. It’s amazing.

Well, this past Saturday, after our first family meal with our international girls with us (it’s continued to be busy), Em and I decided to take them to La Michoacana. It wasn’t until I was in the store and the families sitting at the tables started eyeing us that I realized what an interesting picture we must have made. One mama with two daughters who looked quite a bit like her, a little boy with skin the color of dark chocolate, and two girls from Asia (Jake and Dave stayed home). I had to keep myself from laughing.

Lili, the girl who patiently waited on us through Nina’s four taste tests and my 8-person order, was very kind when I told her the girls would be starting at the Academy next week. “You’ll get the hang of it soon,” she told them and shared how nervous she was when she first started at the public high school in West Chicago (she’s a sophomore there now).

It was a little taste of crazy good.