Raven Street Notes no. 9

I think about this blog like twenty times a week, and I think about what I want to write.  And then the phone rings, or the baby wants milk, or it’s time to make dinner.

So here I am on a Friday night with nothing on my mind, or rather  a million things on my mind, not one crowning all the rest. Truly, I have been taking notes and I’ve written no essays on any of my studies or subjects:

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We have one girl going through a new stage. She’s writing letters regarding her discontent and delivering them to me or Mark.  We are terrible parents, she says, because we have not taken her to Disney World. Everyone else in her class has been there.  We don’t do anything fun (like Disney World) or go anyplace fun (like Disney World). And I make terrible food, like quinoa and sourdough bread and black bean soup when she’d rather be eating hamburgers or French fries or pasta. The cumulative weight of these grievances are great indeed, and yet we have no plans for Disney World, and I made her eat all the quinoa salad at dinner.  Some she spat into the garbage can, and I’m almost certain a spoonful was flushed down a toilet.  But mostly, she ate it.

I told her sister that they would thank me someday.

Someday,her sister agreed. But not NOW.

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Now that Tiny is well (she’s well! She’s well!), the rest of us are still flirting with headcolds.  But it warms me to watch a healthy Tiny sport around the house like she owns the place. In spite of our warnings and admonitions, she keeps climbing up on this low, wide coffee table in our sunroom, standing up, arms wide open,  a little Leo-DeCaprio-I’m-the-king-of-the-world.

Until this week, I haven’t had any trouble understanding Tiny’s words. They’ve been solitary, stand-alone expressions related to context. Her meaning was obvious. But now, she’s taken a turn into sophistication, with “I’ll get it,” “clean up,” “here you go,” “here it is,” “Evvy’s” (note the use of the possessive), and “change you” (which really means “change me”). In addition to all of that, she’s trying to tell me other things I don’t understand yet, language that sounds like a bunch of gobbledygook, but insistent, purposeful gibberish. She’s staring at me, she’s holding out her hand, she’s looking at something. She’s repeating the same phrase over and over. But I don’t know what she wants.

At the same time, we’re weaning her off her moment-to-moment use of the pacifier (aka “Paci”).  It’s been a little bit like a death in the family, her frequent asking for paci and my having to explain that Paci is “taking a nap right now” or that Paci is “all gone” and that we’ll see Paci “when we go to sleep.”  I get a bit heartbroken over it all, wondering what that comfort really means to her and how we should make up for it. Does her need for Paci speak to some deeper level of need for security and comfort that I need to provide in another form?

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Oops. I wrote all of the above two weeks ago before I got sicker and before a round of Zithromax. We’re healthy now, all of us. And today I’m grateful for a mild March walk around the pond in our neighborhood, two ducks in sight, and Tiny crying out to “Touch it! Touch it!” The sun lingered long enough for me to trim one of the overgrown evergreen bushes in the front yard.

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I was also grateful for the checks that arrived by mail in support of our Mozambique trip.  We’ve raised almost $900 of the 7K we’ll need.  I’ve been humbled by the responses from those near and far. Even my chiropractor slipped me an envelope yesterday and then confided that he was particularly moved by the prospects of our upcoming adventure. I haven’t had a chance to thank each one personally (YET), but if you’re reading this, you know who you are. Thank you.

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In spite of the outpouring of support, we are still far from the total sum we will need. But every time I open one check in the mail, I'm thankful for the person who sent it and for their gift. 

And I remember the loaves and the fishes.

Shame and the USPS

If you're reading this, chances are high that you'll be getting a piece of mail from me through the USPS in the next couple weeks.  You'll see the envelope, a spark of recognition and anticipation might light a fire under you. Perhaps the Webers finally got around to sending me that Christmas card-turned-New-Year's greeting they are late with? Nope. Maybe Heather was affectionately thinking of me, and her fondness was so rooted and ageless and meaningful that she felt the need to do something as quaint and concrete as sending me a handwritten note through an old-fashioned, honest to goodness postperson?  Close. I was thinking of you. And regarding most of you, I admit affection of varying depths. But I did not send you a handwritten note to express it.  I'm very sorry to disappoint all of you who will look at that envelope expecting personal sentiments or trinkets or, in the case of one friend who replied to my request for her address: "Please send money and gluten free cookies."

God help me, and God help all of you.  I have written a fundraising letter. Horror of my deepest horrors. I have described a humanitarian adventure my daughter and I will take in July and I have requested that you take up the adventure with us, in spirit of course, by way of two things: 1) prayer, if you're the praying type and 2) financial contributions to our trip, if you're the giving type. Of course, one may also pray and give. 

In my heart of hearts, I believe this is a great venture to invest prayers and/or dollars.  I believe the work done by Iris Ministries is changing lives in ways both athiests and believers would deem worthy. But it's terrible to ask for money.  Which is why I don't "ask" for it per se.  In my letter, I let you know that if you'd like to partner with us, there is an opportunity.  But I'm not fooling anyone. It's a fundraising letter, with a self addressed envelope included so that you can all send money back to me so that Una and I can buy our passports and plane tickets to Mozambique.   Were it not for the possibility of financial help, I could have sent you all an email and asked for prayers, best wishes, and blessed thoughts.

My friend and pastor, Rich, who was a missionary in Bangladesh for nine years says people are more likely to give if you present them with some numbers, if you suggest $15 or $100 or $1000 donations.  So I printed up these slips to go with the envelope. They say somethign to the effect of (imagine a perky voice): If you would like to financially support us on our trip, we welcome any contribution you would like to make!!  Small numbers add up to big numbers when many people are involved!!  And then I list how many people would need to give if everyone gave $15  or $100, and so on. 

I put these slips in five envelopes and then I had to stop.

Do me a favor, if you get this letter in the mail, forget that you even have a wallet.  Just read the story in the letter. Read it and see how your insides feel when you're done.  If some piece of yourself is crying out in agreement with this story, with our adventure, with the work we have ahead of us, then, maybe, possibly, remember that you have a wallet and see if that place inside of you is leaping at the chance to open it.

But if you read the letter, and you think, eh, then you might want to just cut out the picture of me and Una to remember us by.  And then add the rest of it to your recyling bin.

Raven Street Notes no. 8

My blog is ugly and outdated. 

To the right, my blog lists “current faves.”  These are over a year old.  I don’t have time for web design.

I know, JBeyer, you have offered to do this for me.  I’ve been too lazy to take you up on the offer.  Yet, I wince with shame at the ugliness.

Also, my printer is slowly printing coupons from the Target.com web site. One sheet at a time, every 20 seconds. 

The saying comes to mind, right at this minute, in regard to productivity (mine and the printer’s): Off we go now like a herd of turtles.

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Want to know something?  I thought of something really deep and meaningful that I wanted to say last week, for a minute. And then I forgot it. But take my word for it: it was deep. And meaningful.

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I think I forgot that very deep, meaningful thought because I have been so busy, like you all have been.  I’ve been packing and traveling for a family of five.  Been doing lots of church work. And laundry. Lunch packing. Reading. Studying. Praying. Fretting. Mopping Floors. Cleaning Bathrooms. Grocery Shopping. Clipping Coupons. Baking Pies. Gingerbread-house Building. Cooking Dinner. Reading Aloud. Watching Alias. 

Yes, watching lots and lots of Alias because I have to finish all five seasons now that I’ve started re-watching the series from the beginning. It’s almost a curse, I tell you, because I can’t don’t want to stop until Sydney and Vaughn can live happily ever after with their two children, Jack and Isabelle, on a sandy beach in what appears to be SoCal.

I tell myself that watching this series is about more than soul-soothing entertainment.  No, I dream to myself, metaphors abound in Alias, the profundities of which I am still in the process of ferretting out. But WILL.

I WILL, mind you.

I WILL.

And if I don’t, I’ll just like it and like it forever and ever, like how some ladies still like (and wear) that same big frosted hairdo they loved in the 80s.

We can’t help what we love.

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But then, I think, sometimes I have to help myself to love--or do the loving thing. Like getting up at 5 a.m. or dark-thirty to soothe a crying Tiny. Or making those lunches. Signing those school papers. Washing someone’s favorite shirt when I’d be happy never laying eyes on a washing machine again in my life. Practicing patience. Practicing hope.  Helping the children practice patience and hope.  Refereeing conflict. Instituting discipline (because I love them, I say).  

Maybe it’s all the “helping ourselves” to love--every choice in a series of choices that conveys the message I love [you]--is what leads to things like ugly web pages and outdated reading lists and having to print out stupid coupons from Target at 9:30 at night when I’d much rather be wait for it watching Alias.

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Then there are the other things love makes us compels us to do. For instance, I’m going on a trip. At least I think so.  A trip to Africa all because of a bad case of love.

See, once, a long time ago, I heard a woman talk about her love for Jesus. She talked about the Jesus I already knew in such a way that made me wonder if I really knew him. She talked about knowing him where she lived in Pemba, Mozambique, and how one day she hoped to and believed she would  I know, this sounds crazy dance on the waters of the Indian Ocean with him. She meant it in the most biblical way, alluding to Peter, his walk of faith in the middle of the storm, Jesus just yards away, eyes on him and so nothing else mattered. When she said this, I knew I wanted to know a Jesus whose eyes on me could make all my fears stop mattering, stop overpowering my puny body and soul.

I wanted to know that Jesus like nothing else.

This woman was not flaky, although you might wonder. No, she spoke of gritty realities and of living in a place where she and a team of others cared for the needs of widows and orphans—the children of Mozambique who came daily to their missions base for food, physical contact, love, prayer.  Pemba was a place, she said and so have others, where for so many God was the only hope, the only solace, the only excitement, the only entertainment, the only joy.  And strangely, ironically, perfectly--because of the raw need for him in a place so bereft of other comforts—the woman said that in this place she saw God. Well, not in the flesh, exactly. But she saw his handiwork in the ears of deaf villagers who suddenly could hear, in the sight of mothers who’d never seen their own children.  She knew God in the exuberance of miraculous provision of food for the children who came for their daily bread.  And when she spoke of this kind of God, this God I claimed to love, I knew I really did not know him in the same way, yet I wanted to so very badly, so achingly badly—a far worse ache than my need for Sydney and Vaughn to arrive at just closure to their narrative.  This was far more serious than my need love for Alias.

And so events have scrambled to this moment, now:  It seems I’m going this summer to serve alongside an organization that serves the people of Mozambique, near the boundaries of the Indian Ocean.  I am going, God-willing—and by that I mean that (I think) God is willing but I’ll know for sure once I miraculously have in my possession the eight thousand dollars required for me and Oldest to go.  And yes, Oldest is going (we think).  She hates the idea of immunization shots, of long plane rides.  In fact, these factors reduce her to tears at least twice weekly.  But when I tell her she doesn’t have to go, that I’m not making her, she cries even harder, setting her jaw, and says I have to, I’m going as if she’s been hardwired for this decision her entire life.  Then I ask her why, just to check, to double check, to make sure that my Oldest realizes that this is not Disneyland we’re going to, that the toilet situation is far from glamorous, that rice and beans will be our only daily fare.  And every time she says unapologetically for some kind of irrational can't-help-what-she-loves love: “Because." She sets her jaw, "I want to play with the orphans.”