Elizabeth’s

A Few of My Favorite Things {November 2015}

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We packed a whole lot into this month! Here are some of the highlights. ~Elizabeth

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Watching the Kansas City Royals win the World Series with our kids. The Royals went to the World Series last year, but try as we might to stream the last game to our home in Phnom Penh, we weren’t able to view it. And then the Royals lost anyway. Not so this year! Yes, it’s true that these kinds of close-scoring games stress me out, and yes, it’s true that I went and hid in my room and blogged for most of the series (see here, here, here, and here for the evidence), but I did muster enough courage to come out of my writing cave for the last inning of the last game. Another plus: my kids got to learn the rules of baseball, which, since no one plays baseball in Cambodia, they didn’t previously know. I hope they always remember the autumn we spent in America and watched our home town team win the world series for the first time in 30 years.

Meeting other bloggers in person. In a two-week period I met four! First I met Robynn Bliss, who blogs weekly at Marilyn Gardner’s site Communicating Across Boundaries and who co-authored Expectations and Burnout, a landmark book for women serving overseas (and which I reviewed here). Then Jonathan and I hung out with Kay and Andy Bruner, who are on the leadership team with us at the collective blog A Life Overseas. Kay has written several books, the most notable of which is As Soon as I Fell, which women all over the world have fallen in love with and which I previously reviewed. Kay blogs here and has just written another book which I’ll review below in the books section. Lastly, we spent an evening with Aaron and Danielle Wheeler. Danielle launched the website Velvet Ashes as a watering hole for women serving overseas. Every single one of these people is a true kindred spirit to me, and I still can’t believe I was able to meet them all in person this fall.

Meeting old college friends. We were able to share meals with several sets of friends from our old campus ministry in Rolla, MO. Many of them we hadn’t seen in years — one couple we hadn’t seen in 8 years, another we hadn’t seen in 12. Yet with all of them, it was like no time had elapsed at all. We just picked up right where we left off, and it was a balm to my soul.

Viewing the night sky through a telescope. At the house of some of our oldest college friends, we stayed long enough into the night to see the sky through their telescope. (They live in the country and they home school, so yes, they do cool things like that.) We didn’t stay awake long enough to see some of our friends’ favorite parts of the sky, but we were able to glimpse the nearest galaxy: Andromeda. It’s just a smudge on the glass, and it was a reminder to me how very far away even our nearest galaxy is, that it’s not clear even with a telescope. We also pointed the telescope to a section of the sky that doesn’t appear very populated with stars, but because the telescope can catch their light better than our naked eyes can, we were able to see dozens of stars in the void.

Watching the moon. (Yes, seriously.) Ever since the total lunar eclipse in September, I’ve been simply fascinated, all over again, with the moon. Watching the moon grounds me. It reminds me how small I really am. I think about how big the earth under my feet is, compared to me, and I marvel. I stare at the moon and think about something that’s so far away but that still appears as big as it does in our sky. I think about how we see so much detail in its surface even though it is so far away. I get a thrill out of looking at the moon and imagining where everything is currently positioned in the plane of the solar system (similar to my musings on Jupiter earlier this year). I really cannot explain in words my sense of wonder at our plain old moon.

BOOKS

Mission Smart by David L. Frazier. This book isn’t too thick, but it has some really practical questions to consider when preparing to move overseas. They were things I hadn’t thought of before, and I hope everyone in training for moving overseas will read this book.

Debunking the Myths of Forgive-and-Forget by Kay Bruner. I was privileged to review this book pre-publication, and Kay drew applications from Jesus’ words that were extremely insightful and that I had never thought of or heard about before. In fact I need to go read it again! She also differentiated between healing and forgiveness and offered some helpful graphics on the topic.

How God Became King by N.T. Wright. I picked up this book again because at our organization’s Team Leader Summit this past month, speaker Jerry Trousdale talked a lot about the Kingdom of God. It sparked my imagination and resonated with me because of the little I’d read of Wright’s book. Then, at the end of his presentations, he recommended the book! So I knew I needed to get back to it.

 

VIDEOS AND PODCASTS

Laura Hackett Park on trusting God. I love Laura’s music and have talked about it several times before. I love her take on trust here, how it stretches without pushing and is honest without being fake. It’s gentle and grace-filled and freeing. Do yourself a favor and watch this 2-minute video.

This physical representation of the Pythagorean theorem, which states that the sum of the squares of the sides of a right triangle is equal to the square of the hypotenuse. Or you can just look at the pretty picture.

An expanding visual of the Fibonacci Spiral. I’m obsessed with the Fibonacci spiral and draw it on graph paper every chance I get. Fibonacci, golden, and other logarithmic spirals are beautiful and found many places in nature: galaxies, hurricanes, nautilus shells, pineapples, pine cones. Even apart from finding them in creation, I just can’t get over the numerical beauty of these spirals.

Andy Stanley’s N Commandments. We listened to some of his sermons on our long travels. Our kids are old enough now to really pay attention to a podcast and even to find it interesting. They really enjoyed the way Andy tells a story, and we had some good discussions afterward. I’m realizing that my kids are growing up and craving higher-level thinking about the Bible. Time to take it to the next level, I guess.

 

BLOG POSTS

Why I’m Grateful for My Anxiety by Heather Caliri. A life-giving post on how the struggles we think are so bad for us can actually guide us.

Where’s God in the Maze of Life by Katrina Ryder. Katrina strikes again with something fresh and original, which, I’ve gotta admit, is hard to come by these days. (And if you’re a writer who needs an editor, Katrina is now freelance editing. Let me know if you want her contact info.)

Same Same, Thankfully by Katie Kleinjung. I cannot tell you how much I loved this guest post on A Life Overseas. (“Same same, but different” is a common phrase in Cambodia and Thailand.) Katie is both funny and piercing.

Why Arguing with God is Not the Same as Not Believing in Him by Justin Welby. I’m so glad I read this piece. It’s ok to argue with God! It doesn’t mean you don’t believe in Him. Rather, it’s a good thing; it means you’re still talking to Him. Then Jonathan quoted Billy Graham in his sermon yesterday, and it made so much sense to me: “The Psalms teach us how to get along with God.” It’s true; sometimes I argue with God. And sometimes I have a hard time getting along with Him. I tell Him things aren’t fair; I tell Him things aren’t right. I tell Him I’m not happy with the way things are. It’s good to know I’m not alone in that, and that it’s ok to say such things to the ruler and creator of the universe.

Confessions of a Good Girl by Amy Medina. I’ve followed Amy’s blog ever since she wrote a killer emotional post for A Life Overseas earlier this year. Not only is Amy honest and truthful about a subject many of us have struggled with (grace), but she’s funny while she does it.

Joy in a Minor Key by Tanya Marlow. The phrase “joy in a minor key” is an apt description of where I’m at these days. Sometimes I feel stuck on Lament Cycle and unable to move on from it. I have a wonderful life — a wonderful husband and four wonderful children, friends I love, and work and ministry I enjoy — but I mourn a lot of things in life, both personal and public. It’s hard to hold the joy and sorrow in tension, but I’m trying to get more comfortable with it.

Good Will Come: How Life and Living Overseas Has Changed My Views on Suffering by Lisa McKay. I have not had nearly the number of bad things happen to me that Lisa has, but just the same I’ve had to grapple with the concept of suffering, and I’ve come to the same conclusions as Lisa. I’m so glad she put it into words here — comforting words that I promise will not hit you over the head with a God who wants to hurt you.

 

MUSIC

Commodity from Remedy Drive. This album is the perfect combination of longing and hope. We listened to it a lot on our travels, and it gave voice to a lot of what was going on inside me. If you ever tire of typical Contemporary Christian Music, Remedy Drive’s “Commodity” is the album for you. Do yourself a favor and get the entire album, don’t just pick a few songs here and there. You need the entire thing, and you probably needed it yesterday. You can get a taste of the music here.

Painting Pictures of Egypt by Sara Groves. When I talked about longing for the past in my most recent Velvet Ashes blog post, one of the commenters told me about this song. It.it.perfect. Every word, perfect. I love this song, and it’s going to be in my head for a good, long time. This is the chorus, but you can read the rest of the lyrics here:

I’ve been painting pictures of Egypt
Leaving out what it lacks
The future feels so hard
And I want to go back
But the places that used to fit me
Cannot hold the things I’ve learned
Those roads were closed off to me
While my back was turned

This I Believe (The Creed) by Hillsong Worship. Even in the midst of all my complaining to God about this world He’s made, the world we broke that He has yet to completely fix, I can still fully declare my belief in the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and in the Resurrection. It’s something that’s imprinted more deeply in my heart than even the Lament I sometimes get stuck in. God’s character and redemption story feels like one of the truest things I know. And I’ve said this before, but I’ll say it again: not many songs get my hands raised high to the sky. So when one does, I pay attention to it. I find the song usually speaks to deep, core beliefs of mine, truths I need to return to over and over again:

I believe in God our Father
I believe in Christ the Son
I believe in the Holy Spirit
Our God is three in one
I believe in the resurrection
That we will rise again
For I believe in the name of Jesus

I believe in life eternal
I believe in the virgin birth
I believe in the saints’ communion
And in Your holy Church
I believe in the resurrection
When Jesus comes again
For I believe, in the name of Jesus

 

THE LORD’S PRAYER

Seven Reasons to Ban the Lord’s Prayer by Steven Croft. Although I’m not English or even Anglican, and as such am unaffected by the controversy this post describes, if you read a bit further down the page, you’ll get to his theological reasons for why the Lord’s Prayer is important in the Christian life. Beautiful.

And in that same vein, Jerry Trousdale, whom I mentioned earlier, did some teaching on the Lord’s Prayer at the Team Leader Summit. It impacted me greatly, and I furiously scribbled down the following notes. This is how he unpacked it:

Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name.

(Our ministry should be unbranded and not for ourselves. We’ll work with others, we won’t care whose name is attached to the results, and God will get the glory. ALWAYS.)

Your kingdom come,

(Jesus is the King; we are His subjects.)

Your will be done, on earth, as it is in heaven.

(It’s all about transformation, about the restoration of Eden, about bringing heaven down to earth.)

Give us this day our daily bread,

(We must depend on God for all our provision. Just like manna.)

Forgive us our debts,

(We take sin seriously.)

As we also have forgiven our debtors.

(And we take reconciliation seriously.)     

Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.

(This is about spiritual warfare, which he didn’t elaborate on.) 

I really latched onto Jerry’s explanation of the Lord’s Prayer as a prayer I can pray personally, but with more meaning than before. It connected the prayer I usually think of as a personal prayer to the larger world of missions, something I really appreciated.

Naming the Missing Pieces of Our Souls {Velvet Ashes}

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Elizabeth is over at Velvet Ashes today . . .

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I grew up in a faith tradition that sang acappella. Worship could arise in any place and any time: our voices were all we needed. We didn’t need advance planning. We didn’t even need songbooks, for the words were written on our hearts.

The songs of my childhood held such depth and resonance. There were four-part harmonies and four-part songs, echoes and counter melodies, descants and rounds. There were the “Greatest Commands” and the “Magnificat.” There was “Lord, Be There” and “Someday.”

There was singing in the stairwell after Sunday night church, where acoustics were the best. There was singing in the dirt at summer camp, amongst the bugs and under a canopy of stars.

No one could sing “On Zion’s Glorious Summit Stood” or “O Lord, Our Lord, How Excellent Thy Name,” like the Kansas camp counselors of my youth. And no one could sing the seven-fold amen of “The Lord Bless You and Keep You” like the Arkansas camp counselors I later worked with.

The singing of my childhood was like none other. These days, however, I worship with an interdenominational fellowship that uses instruments. (And I love it.) But somehow when I’m there, the acappella tradition of my past seems distant indeed.

Finish reading here.

Dear American Church

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by Elizabeth

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Dear American Church,

I love you. You are the Church that birthed me, the Church that raised me, the Church that sent me out — and I will always be grateful for you. I will always love you.

But, dear American Church, can you not see? The walking wounded are among you, and you seem blind to their pain. Have you no eyes to see, no ears to hear, no heart to care?

There are people among you who long to be listened to, who long to be cared for. Who better to care, than the Body of Christ? And who better to walk alongside, than the people of God?

But from my vantage point, American Church, you’re not paying any attention.

In all my stateside travels, the one constant has been people who want to tell their stories. Perhaps they’ve lived overseas for a time or moved here from abroad. Perhaps they stayed in America and simply accumulated some pain along the way.

These people, they’re hurting, and they don’t have anyone to tell their stories to. No one seems to be listening. For who could possibly be interested in anything besides American sports and American vacations and the relentless keeping-up-with-the-Joneses-American-rat-race life??

Everywhere I go in America, I talk to people who’ve had life-changing experiences, who are lonely and hurting. When I sit down with them, their stories start flowing. When I ask them if they have anyone else to tell their stories to, they answer, “No.”

Won’t anyone listen to them?? Won’t anyone be a safe place for them to land??

Dear American church, people want to tell you their stories. They want to be heard. They want to be known. From the immigrant to the missionary, from the layperson to the local minister, these travelers are hungry for people who care.

Dear American Church, don’t you remember that we bear God’s image? And as image-bearers, don’t you know that God calls us to imitate Him in His question to Hagar: “Where have you come from, and where are you going?”?

Dear American Church, you know you don’t have to fix people’s problems, right?? All you have to do is open up your heart and show that you care. All you have to do is sit in silence and listen. All you have to do is offer up the occasional hug and prayer.

All you have to do is let their hurt, hurt you.

Dear American Church, let me tell you something. The wounded? They’re closer to heaven than you are. They’ve seen brokenness. They’ve watched the world break people. They’ve watched the world break them. And they are closer to the Kingdom because of it.

Blessed are those who realize their need for Him, for the Kingdom of heaven is theirs. These words come straight from the mouth of Jesus. The Kingdom is at hand, He tells us; it’s near the brokenhearted. And when we draw near the brokenhearted, we draw near the Kingdom, too.

Blessed are the pure in heart, says our Christ, for they will see God. Blessed are the ones whose hearts are honest in all things, whose hearts know their wounds and know their own deceit. They are closer to heaven than we are. They are the ones who will see God, who will experience Him.

The lonely and the hurting, they know what heaven is, because they know what heaven isn’t — it’s everything they’re not living. They know they need care and companionship, redemption and restoration. In their weakness and in their longing, they are that much closer to heaven, that much closer to the heart of our Savior for this broken world.

Dear American Church, stretch out your hand to them, and take one step closer to the rule of Christ. Touch their pain, and walk arm and arm into the Kingdom with them. Share in their sorrows, and taste of heaven.

Ask questions and listen to their answers. Cry with them, grieve with them, long with them. All they need is you, dear American Church, open-handed and open-hearted.

Dear American Church, I beg of you to do this with me. I cannot bear this burden alone. And neither can I bear the thought of losing my faith in you.  So won’t you enter the Kingdom with me? Won’t you take a look at suffering, and see God with me?

Let us enter into the Kingdom hand in hand with the hurting. They will lead us. They will guide us. The poor in spirit and the pure in heart, the ones who are honest, the ones who are needy, let them take us by the hand and lead us into the Kingdom.

I’m willing. Are you?

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Other posts in The Church series:

Hungry for Community

“Me Too” Moments

On Not Being the Casserole Lady

I am a Worshipper

Authenticity is Not New

The Art of Pressing On in Our Rhythms {Velvet Ashes}

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Elizabeth is over at Velvet Ashes today . . .

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I used to stuff and starve. I’d stuff myself with food, and then deprive myself of it. Or I’d fast in preparation for a big meal. I didn’t want those binges showing up on my body.

Unfortunately, stuffing and starving doesn’t work for weight control in the long run (or so I remember reading somewhere). It’s also not very comfortable. I was always ravenously hungry or painfully full, never moderately hungry or pleasantly satisfied. I was stuck in a cycle of feast or famine.

I used to do the same thing with sleep. When my high school homework kept me up late, I’d sleep in on the weekends. My physics teacher Mr. Carmichael told me the engineering students at the university I was planning to attend also studied late into the weeknights and then tried to catch up on the weekends.

But, he said, the science showed that this approach doesn’t work. Habitually depriving ourselves of sleep and then sleeping in on the weekends doesn’t give us quality rest. Our bodies aren’t made for that rhythm. (Though of course his wisdom did nothing to prevent me from succumbing to it again in college.)

I think I used to stuff and starve in my relationship with God, too. I’d subsist on crumbs from Sunday morning services and on pre-digested meals from Bible class. Then I’d spiritually pig out at conferences and camps.

Finish reading this piece here.

I’m Only Here for the Food

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by Elizabeth

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As I’ve worked my way chronologically through the Gospels, I’ve noticed how Jesus keeps telling His disciples that they don’t understand. For instance, when Peter asks Jesus to explain a parable about unclean food in Matthew 15, Jesus replies, “Don’t you understand yet?”

And just a little bit later, when the disciples start arguing about the yeast of the Pharisees, Jesus says in exasperation, “Don’t you understand even yet? Why can’t you understand that I’m not talking about bread?”

Then in Mark 6 after Jesus walks on water, gets into the disciples’ boat, and calms the wind, the text says that “They were totally amazed, for they still didn’t understand the significance of the miracle of the loaves. Their hearts were too hard to take it in.”

Now if I had been one of Jesus’ disciples, I might have started taking offense at His constant accusations. What do you mean, Jesus? My heart is too hard to take in this miracle? Just how stupid do You think I am??

So by the time I got to Jesus’ words in John 6:26 — “I tell you the truth, you want to be with Me because I fed you, not because you understood the miraculous signs.” — I started to think that for all the thousands of years and countless sermons and Bible commentaries standing between me and those poor dense disciples, perhaps I don’t understand the big picture, either. Maybe I don’t understand the significance of it all.

Because His miracles still amaze me. And because His power still impresses me. And because, truthfully, I can only echo the words of Jacqueline in the movie Ever After: “I’m only here for the food.”

All I know is that I keep coming back to Jesus because He feeds me.

In this passage Jesus is talking to some of the 5000 He’d fed the day before. They had witnessed His wonders. They had seen His signs. Yet Jesus knew they weren’t there for the right reasons; they were only there for the food.

And I start to wonder, do I really understand this Jesus business?? Or am I completely missing the point?? If I’m only here because He feeds me, what is it that I’m not quite getting??

But then Jesus seems to go off the deep end in verse 35 and claim that He’s the bread of life. Huh?? The bread of life? As in, getting my nourishment from Jesus? You mean that maybe, just maybe, the way I survive is the way Jesus actually wants us to survive??

So maybe I’m not too terribly far off base here. Maybe it’s ok that I’m only here for the food, that I’m only here for the Bread of Life. I still might not understand the true significance of the miracles, but He feeds me, and that’s all I care about.

I’m with Peter, who, when asked just a little while later if he was going to desert Jesus like so many others had, answered, “Lord, to whom would we go? You have the words that give eternal life.”

Amen to that, Peter. I’m putting a stake in the ground along with you. For truly, Lord, to whom would we go? You are our food and You are our drink. You are the True Bread that came down from Heaven, and we’re only here for You.