My Missions Blog, Part II

The next day was down to the nitty gritty of the trip. There is a bell that rings when it is meal time, gathering time or some emergency. It means come to where the bell is. It rings every morning in the 7:30 – 8:15 range. There is no real schedule in these parts and the camp leaders are rather proud of that fact. They are an interesting family. The wife’s father built the lodge. The husband is a tall, gangly man with terrible teeth, bowl cut hair and a face only the best of Christian’s could love. He is a good man though with a great heart for the kids who come to camp each year. His wife has this generic northerner look. Nordic features with dark hair. She plays the guitar and leads worship for the camp. They both cook because it is a never ending job with 44 people to feed three times a day. They have two children who are both home-schooled and have the social skills to prove it. Sweet kids. The girl is very shy and smiles eagerly through her long red hair & freckles. The son is… well… all boy. They all have great immune systems because in this neck of the woods, cleanliness is NOT next to godliness. Their home and the entire lodge is maintained rather minimally. I am growing fond of this place and these people despite it’s peculiarities.

Today is chinking day. It is repairing the girl’s cabin day. And sharing the gospel day. Our group is split into two groups. One will do manual labor & the other will go door to door hanging literature on door knobs. My hand cannot fly up fast enough to do manual labor. I really do not like it when Jehovah’s Witnesses & Mormons come to my home. It feels like an invasion of my privacy. I do not want to be that person. I believe sharing your faith should be a natural extension of the life you live. Either your life shares it or it doesn’t. Mine is rather iffy on that account. Actions always speak louder than words and words tend to be empty all too often. There are definitely times when words of encouragement & guidance can lead someone closer to or into their personal relationship with Jesus, but if our lives don’t match what we say then it is hard for other’s to trust. In this skeptical culture we have developed in America a pamphlet on my door knob might as well be a Walmart sale advertisement. I feel it carries very little weight but I do occasionally take advantage of their roll back prices so I won’t knock it too hard. Just not my cup of tea.

So I spend my day chinking logs. I learned that Oaken is this kind of rope that looks like it is made out of horse hair that gets stuffed between the logs in a log cabin. It acts as insulation. My job was to take the flat end of a crow bar & stuff it back in. All around the lodge. We did not have any new Oaken so we had to just stuff the existing Oaken back in that had fallen out. I found a rat’s nest that had been made of the stuff above the cabinet in the dining area. I recycled most of it but the little rodent had also shred a stuffed ball into the mix so I had to try to shake that part out. The things you do for missions. I also helped prepare meals the whole day in between chinking. The campers arrived at 11am and chaos ensued. I just kept chinking and ignored them mostly. I am not a really good kid person. I love mine, but…

It was a tedious day. And then my employment back in Georgia started invading my space for a while. The poor camp directors had to let me into their house to use their internet connection, not once but twice, so I could send a few documents over for work. They did not have a scanner or a fax machine so I had to get one of them to drive me to the nearest town to fax a document that had to have my signature on it. By the time I got done with that it was time to help prepare dinner. My 73 year old room mate & I made chocolate chip muffins and had the funniest time doing it. They were the hit of dinner, of course, and we beamed proudly at each other as we ate dinner side by side. I sat there admiring my chinking and feeling pretty accomplished.

Eating with the little campers all around is noisy & hectic but they all seem very happy to be at camp & are generally cooperative. We went out to a camp fire later and froze our toes off while singing choruses & listening to a Bible story. Three little boys accepted Christ that night and the bell rang 3 times. I took a long hot shower afterwards and fell asleep with my hair still wet, out of sheer exhaustion.

I must admit I felt almost drugged the next morning when I woke up. All the travel, work & general hoopla had me dragging. I woke up with medusa hair from sleeping on it wet & decided it was definitely a hat day. I got into the kitchen early enough to help slice some nectarines & pull grapes off the stem for breakfast. After a meal of French toast, bacon, fruit and hot chocolate we met as a team in this little trailer along the path to the RV graveyard. Everything here is orange, green & brown plaid. Most of the furniture is from the 70’s and has the original fabrics still on them. We decided at the trailer meeting that some of us would go out on the streets again and some would paint the ceiling in the basement of the church in town that was associated with the camp. Wow. Painting a ceiling. It was tough work but you know I volunteered for it. My hands would go numb and my head was throbbing while I looked up to paint some sort of cork board that seemed to drink in the paint like a sponge. We ate salami & turkey sandwiches for lunch and painted some more. I finally decided my pounding head was from caffeine withdrawal. I had not had a Mountain Dew in probably 36 hours and not even 4 Ibuprofen dulled the pain. I took a break and swang on the tree swing with the kids for a while and then started back painting. Soon we were ready to head back to camp but not before the kids were stained red & purple from eating Mulberries straight from the trees and Raspberries from the field. I guess we abandoned the counting off system because we were off to Walmart when we pondered if we had left anyone behind. We decided we hadn’t. I bought $150 worth of warmer clothes at Mr. Walton’s boutique and we headed back to camp. Morgan decided to abandon me for the night and sleep in the tree house with the camp girls. Staying with a 73 year old and your Mom can’t really compete, huh? I guess it could more accurately be described as a Tree Bus since it is an old camp bus they put up in the tree. My roommate & I were silly, I suppose, for wanting to actually sleep at 11pm. About midnight we realized our room was the closest route for 8 campers to get to the tree house as they trounced through our bedroom giggling and talking loudly. This was also the night that my little critter friends came to visit. I guess Morgan had gotten something out of the zipped bag & forgot to re-zip it. About 4am I heard the little whatever-it-was rustling the plastic & snapped up out of bed clapping my hands. I got up and secured everything & could not go back to sleep. Of course. I tried to find a place where I could type without disturbing someone but every corner seemed to have someone on a pallet or air mattress. Even the main lodge. So I laid in bed trying to play brick breakers on my blackberry but even that had some kind of glitch in it. Grrr. So I harrumphed and just laid in bed staring at the ceiling for an hour or so until sleep finally came.

Everyone’s personality is definitely coming out by this point in the journey. Our parolee is a funny guy. Very child like but with the strong opinions of an adult. He is starting to annoy some of the adults. He speaks with strong Ebonics and the young preacher’s wife is determined to get him to say S-TR-EETS but every time it comes out Skreets. I told her she needed to give up & expand her linguistics skills. He really has a good heart and is pretty amazing over all considering what he has been through in his 33 years. I am getting a little annoyed with the adults for being annoyed with him. He has been a Christian for 1 year. What is their excuse?

I have found the leader with the poofy mustache to be a roller coaster ride of mood swings. He is never completely unpleasant but he gets irritated and snippy sometimes and then can be almost annoyingly chipper and bouncy other times. For some reason he walks around every parking lot we pull into & picks up trash & returns buggies to the holding corral. He is a flurry of motion at all times. Oh gosh, and the crocs. He has red crocs. Camo crocs. Blue crocs. He is a lover of crocs. He really doesn’t like it if anyone second guesses his instructions and he is very knowledgeable about what to do when. I was especially frustrated with him when he lost his patience with the parolee once over something that was so petty it shouldn’t have been an issue… in my mind. But we are all getting tired now & I know these things are going to happen.

The almost 14 year old boy who came by himself is quiet and then alternately hyper and a very sweet guy. Super polite. As far as almost-15-year-old boys go, though, he is way above the curve. That one has a bright future!

The 17 year old girl has a neat story. She lived with her Mom until she was 10 but never sees her now. From 10 years old she has lived with her Dad & step mom whom she calls her Mom. She went to church alone for years and has been praying for her family to come too. Her Dad just got saved last year and now her whole family goes to church together. She asked lots of questions about life & church while we painted the ceiling together. Hope I didn’t ruin her with my answers. She is one of my favorites. Her and the 4 ½ year old boy. He is a HAND FULL but he is one of those with personality plus. He just cracks me up the whole trip with his antics, making his parents crazy and getting into all kinds of trouble. Sometimes I think to myself that the things they are expecting of him lead him into getting in trouble because no 4 year old can have that much endurance, discipline & pay attention for the lengths of time required. His family are work, work, workers. They volunteer quickly to go door to door. They have much more patience than I do and I am beginning to admire them as well. I would probably not hang out with them much without them becoming disapproving of aspects of my life but I like them. I think I am an OK Christian but not a very good Baptist and these guys, all of these guys on the trip, are thoroughbreds in that area. But this little couple is very laid back & sincere. They do exhaust me from afar because I remember how much work little kids are. Their 9 year old daughter is a saucy little thing who gets along well with most of the kids & is easily corrected when she goes astray. She spends a lot of time with Morgan, playing her Nintendo DS Fashion game. Divas!

Another favorite of mine is my 73 year old room mate. Talk about spunky. She was married to the music director at her church for 48 years. He died about 1 ½ years ago, so she is really figuring out what to do with her life now. I found out she lives in my neighborhood. So much for mowing the grass with a Corona in hand, anymore. She has been away from home for almost 3 weeks now. She has a wry sense of humor like mine & finds the leader a bit too perky at times as well. She is a servant at heart & works easily in the kitchen with the rest of us ladies, although she is occasionally a little too helpful and kinda gets on the leader’s wife’s nerves. It has all gone very smoothly though. Her 14 year old grandson has been on the three week trek with her. They will be riding home with us, so now our head count will go up to 14 instead of 12. I am and will always be SIX, however.

My son Noah is such an easy going laid back kid. He has fit in easily with the guys in his cabin. Sometimes he hangs with the 14 year old who came with his grandmother, my room mate, and sometimes he plays with the campers. Morgan & Noah both are generally quiet & compliant. I am so proud of both of them. Neither of them were the hardest workers but they are genuinely sweet, loving kids. More to come...

My Mission Blog

We began our trip at 8am on a Friday. I was expecting the usual. Church bus. Bouncy roads. A 17 hour drive to Western New York. There’s an assorted array of participants. The leader is a middle aged man with a large bushy mustache and clogs to match most sports team shirts that he wore. He is a jolly soul who I am certain has lived a good life full of character and moral excellence. There is the elderly man who really came along to monitor his very young pastor’s behavior, I suspect. And to support and encourage him. He is a kind man who doesn’t sleep well but has a sweet spirit anyway. His 30 year old pastor brought his entire family along. The wife and two kids, 4 & 9, had just returned from a youth camp and immediately turned around and went on this mission trip. They are clearly a family immersed in the “doing” of church. They have sincere hearts with a steady determination in their eyes. There is also the parolee who is a reformed and now evangelical ex-criminal and the only black person on the trip. Special arrangements have been made for him to come on this trip while on parole. For a man of 33 with such a past, it is amazing how child-like he seems. He has a multitude of fears but is going on this trip anyway. True courage. There is a 14 year old boy who came along by himself and a 17 year old girl who is also flying solo. The 17 year old girl has been away from home at the youth camp with the 30 year old pastor’s family and she is now home sick and tucks up under them for most of the trip. And then there is us: A single mom with two amazing kids who must seem such a mystery to all of these good church folk. Everybody from these parts knows everyone’s cousin’s mama’s sisters. I know they are terribly curious as to my story but everyone is respectful and no one pries. Twelve passengers ready to make a difference.

We discovered the morning of the trip that there was no hitch on the bus. All of the luggage that was to go in the trailer must now be piled in the back two rows of seats. We head out in the usual form. Everyone is assigned a number and every time we exit & re-enter the bus we sound off. “SIX!” is my road warrior cry each time we head out. We drive through Georgia for most of the first day and sleep in the basement of a church in Kentucky that first night.

No snorers.

There is a God.

We rise and leave at 7:30am and travel through Ohio & Pennsylvania on the fourth of July. The roads up north are much bumpier than our southern roads and the mountain of luggage in the back row, which has been packed & unpacked once already, begins to landslide. This is only of significance if you are the one sitting in the next to last row, which my children & I were. I spent that whole day getting pelted by various hanging bags, air mattresses & boxes of supplies. I pinched a nerve in my neck that day, somewhere between sleeping crookedly in a bus seat and shoving luggage back onto the top of the heap. Just a nagging crick to keep me company for the next 2 days. We eat at the assorted food establishments along the way: Chick-fil-a, Arby’s, and of course Bob Evans. Can’t forget Bob. Shortly after we fill up on salads, ribs, and other miscellaneous foods courtesy of Mr. Evans in Jamestown NY, we head to the camp.

As we drive into the camp there are random broken down RV’s along the road on either side. It feels more like a processional to an RV grave yard than a summer camp site. When we arrive it is dusk and the ducks are meandering through the construction debris to the right and the pot belly pig is tucked away in her bed inside a work shed on the left. Her name is Mayberry and she gets grumpy at night in her “house” so we must tread lightly. It has rained for several weeks and the camp site is a mud slide. We slip & slide our way into the lodge with bags in tow. Plus it is cold. Very cold. Must be in the mid to low 40’s. Most of us are dressed in shorts. I skid my way to our cabin covered in goose bumps in my mud covered flip flops and find my bunk. Our fearless leader described it as rustic and his words did not fail him. I choose the bottom bunk with the double mattress and assess the bathroom that looks somewhat like those porta-potties you see at festivals, but with a shower. I think UGH. I walk back into the cabin room and my daughter is perched on the top bunk above me, grinning with satisfaction & says “This is going to be so awesome!” I smiled, rubbed her hair and said, “Yes it is sweetie. Yes it is.”

We made it through the first night with just a few pitter patters from our rodent room mates. I had been warned about both chipmunks and mice. I had showered in the porta-potty the night before, so getting to breakfast & then the bus on time was a cinch. With a hearty SIX! we were off to church. Church came and went rather un-ceremoniously. Ironic, I know. There were all sorts of interesting characters there, however. Most of the members ride over on a bus from a group home. Bi-polars. Mentally disabled. Physically disabled. They came in all shapes, sizes and ages. Then there was ZZ Top. At the last minute a lady, a young girl and three extraordinarily tall men with long hair & beards walked in and sat down. Well, only the men had beards. You can imagine my surprise when, later at the spaghetti social, they spoke with this odd Swedish/Dutch accent. It was like Bruno from Popeye having Minnie Mouse’s voice. Evidently the Swedish don’t bathe too often either, if you get my drift. Lunch was finished, dishes were cleaned and with a swift SIX! we were back at the camp site napping until time for evening services.

Evening service was rather unremarkable as well, and we were back at camp before I knew it. I spent some time blogging about the day and then joined the crowd around the grill where Bubba Burgers were cooking. I exchanged children stories with the young pastor’s wife and noted that they were young pups compared to me. I will be 39 next month. I don’t feel almost 40. I am the second most senior woman on this trip. The next eldest is 73. We ate and watched the kids have a roller derby in the lodge lobby with what looked like furniture movers like the ones you put under piano’s. After an hour with no injuries we decided we had pushed our luck far enough and bedtime was called. More to come…

Learning to Respect Myself Part II

I will never regret giving someone I care about the benefit of the doubt. I will never think twice about waiting, listening, sizing up all of the information. It is easy in personal relationships to have widely ranging emotions. It is not always easy to manage them appropriately. I am queen bee in that area. Passionate to a fault. But I am learning where the lines are.

The line for me these days is respect. In my life, generally, I feel that I am well respected. Maybe not always liked… but mostly respected. I don’t demand respect. It is just a part of who I am to work hard to respect other & expect that in exchange. I think it is a natural reciprocal relationship when respect is mutual.

However, when respect is a one way street it has become adamantly, strongly & sometimes vehemently unacceptable to me. Disrespect is offensive and often times surprising. Sometimes shocking. I recently had this encounter with someone that I had considered a friend. I have completely walked away from that relationship, realizing that if they do not respect me enough to show basic civil and moral decency, there is no place in my life for them. I work hard to be a good woman, a good mother, daughter, worker. Not because I want to impress anyone but because I want to like myself. I want to live my life without regrets as much as possible and I want to respect the life I lead. I have worked to try to be a high caliber woman. I will not be treated as anything but. If someone in your life does not realize the caliber of person you are and treats you as less, it will only lead to pulling you down to the level in which they regard you rather than keeping you on an upward climb. If I allowed this abuse of my self esteem to continue it would only drag me down. My life is in too much of an upward turn for me to risk it now on unproductive and damaging relationships.

As I age, self respect is becoming more concrete. More defined. I like myself & loath my missteps more with each passing year. But I am finding who I am, and that is amazing.

Whatever did I do?

What have I done? I have committed to go on a working mission trip to some middle of no-where Baptist church & camp ground in New York that ministers mostly to people from a group home. Sorry for my political incorrectness... but I should fit in well with the tards. It was the love of my children that made me temporarily insane enough to say yes to this. I will go for 8 days and do some things I believe strongly in. I will do some things I am apathetic about. I will do some things I am fundamentally opposed to. All because I know my children need this. I need this. These things are fundamental building blocks of our Christian faith. Good, bad & ugly. I do not regret the decision. I am just gonna need to blog alot to get through it.

What have I done? I have never done anything so great as to deserve the children I have been given. I'm telling you... they are PRIME examples of grace abundant. We were going on vacation this weekend. We were gonna go see some AWESOME friends & go to a kangaroo reserve & a music festival with their favorite band playing. They saw the mission trip in the bulletin. They decided to forfeit this incredibly fun vacation to use their own money to pay for a mission trip. What kids do that? Sure, I encourage them to be good kids, but that is ALL God right there. I had to laugh tonight when the leader was explaining the devotional time & asking my kids to volunteer to lead one. Morgan asked, "What is a devotional?" OMG! No hiding my lack of training in that area. And later on Noah came in my bedroom & asked, "Do you have any extra Bibles?" I said, "No. Why baby?" He said, "Because me & Morgan need one for the trip." OMG! They don't have Bibles. But God's grace is right there... taking up my slack. I am so thankful that I cannot express it.

What have I done? My parents did so much more right than I have. They were so consistent. So faithful. So genuine. They've been married almost 47 years. But you know, thinking back I realize we never had "devotionals" either. Not much. We tried occasionally, which I have done too. But I always had a Bible. Gosh. Going tomorrow. I always had a quarter to give to the offering. I tithe so faithfully to this day that it must have stuck. It was their example. Their life. Their love. That is where I saw Christ. I hope my kids see that in me too, even though my life is much more "affected" by sin than their was.

Whatever did I do to be such a blessed woman in the middle of this crazy world? Work slammed me today. Life man-handled me. I was almost in tears when we came home from the missions meeting realizing we were leaving in three days and I still had at least an hour of work to do before bed. My kids were so excited about everything that they decided to pack all their clothes for the trip tonight & then wash, dry & fold all of the laundry to help me out. When I finished working I even soaked in my great big jacuzzi tub for the first time since we moved in. I cannot complain about how tiring, busy & overwhelming my life is when I am so blessed.

I never did anything to deserve this life. It's just God.

That's all I can say.

It's All About Personality

Growing up can be excruciating. Especially those early teen years. Kids can be so cruel. Kids must be so resilient. My daughter is not your typical 13 year old & I love that about her. We had some friends over last night and she was crawling around on the floor with the four year old pretending to be her cat. Alot of 13 year old girls these days are doing drugs and having sex. I cannot imagine it. Do not want to fathom the possibility.

By the time I was 13, I was dating a 17 year old. That really puts things into perspective for me. I dated him for a little over 2 years. At the ripe old age of 15 I was ending a very formative relationship in my life. I have to give him lots of credit too. He always acted very respectfully and never took advantage of my youthful ignorance. Not many 19 year olds have that presence of character. I was fortunate to have that relationship as a foundation for the future.

God gives us all very distinct personalities. Each has it's strengths and it's weaknesses. I have found the key to success in life is finding out A) what God has given you and B) learning to manage that wisely. My major was psychology in college. I had alot of personal stuff to wade through. I learned so much about myself and others while exploring the world inside our minds and emotions. This field of study is like any other. As my Dad says from a farmer's perspective, "You gotta chew up the hay & spit out the sticks."

The cruxt of my total reformation that has taken place over the past 4 years is, in many ways, all about personality. I had to take a Caliper test to get hired with my current company. It is basically a personality test as it applies to my work. It shows I have a strong ego drive, I am tenatious, I am boistrous, resilient and out-going. No big shockers there. Those same traits could also be listed as arrogant, stubborn, and loudmouthed if not managed properly. I have learned who I am & who I am not over the past four years. I have a hot temper but I have remorse when I lose it. I learn from my mistakes and move forward rather than continually repeating them. I am getting healthier by the minute on this journey into the new me.

So I encourage you to exlpore your personality. Most likely at first you will not like certain aspects of what you find out, possibly even thinking the assessment must be incorrect. But as it sinks in and you accept what God has given you, you can also learn to manage those things wisely. Here is one I found helpful: http://www.humanmetrics.com/cgi-win/JTypes2.asp

Happy hunting!

Ebb and Flow

I have begun to realize that life has it's own syncopation. Sometimes it moves in slow motion & other times at lightning speed. Intermittently. Sometimes it feels random but always has this hidden rhythm all it's own. Sometimes it is grinding and loud and painful. Other times it flits along like a flute trilling. The melody of life is amazing if we listen closely.

I am learning more and more to just go with what life puts in front of me. It is there for a reason. I used to try to grab hold of the thing and wrestling it into what I thought it should look like. Sometimes I would pull back because I thought things were moving too fast. Other times I would try to speed things along because I was certain I knew the correct timing best.

Fear and arrogance have a strangely close relationship in this process of trying to control life. Fear causes us to pull away from what clearly was put in our lives for a reason. Arrogance causes us to feel we are the all knowing eye that understands when things are appropriate, never realizing how in-appropriate we are being in the process. The older I get the more I realize how little I know. I also have learned to just simply trust what is happening. None of this is in my control. I trust the One who is.

What I can control is my intentional actions. When I see that a friend or opportunity has been placed in my life, I can seize the opportunity. I can run with it. The more I run with what life drops in my lap the more joy I have found in the journey. All these random opportunities to have fun, laugh at things, be a successful business woman, raise great kids and build a beautiful life just flow when I stop trying to contort life into my own origami. It is beautiful as it comes.

Random thoughts...

When sitting at a beach front Jazz Concert, on the fly, I love to watch people. Which leads to random streams of thought. Like:

Some people have a happy place and go there well. And often. Despite wearing coral earrings, a pea green shirt, aqua shorts with black leggings under neath and hot pink flip flops. Or maybe because of...

I love the smile on people's faces when they dance... even if they look goofy.

Chiseled muscles under really, really dark black skin looks like marble. Very beautiful.

The girl holding her 3 year old son and wearing white shorts needs to go up two sizes. And she needs to NOT hold her cigarette in the same hand as her son. Jerk.

Jazz musicians have so much fun. There is nothing like watching their faces while they play music they love.

Drunk people in lawn chairs are funny.

If I had someone here with me I would totally be cutting a rug, too. Even if I looked goofy.

I wonder what makes people randomly rush to dance, all at the same time. But I love it when they do.

Watching the sunset on the beach while listening to Jazz and watching these funny, weird, wonderful people was a blessing. So I better go home before it gets too late.

I have so much to be thankful for. When you have so much, you have so much to lose... so I always err on the side of caution and never stay out late at night by myself when traveling alone. I do not take any of this for granted. I have so much to share with that someone special who will enter my life one day. I am so enjoying my life until then.

I am watching the sun rise, now, from my balcony. There is a long and hot work week ahead. I can face it without fear because when push comes to shove I can always don coral earrings, a pea green shirt, aqua shorts with black leggings under neath and hot pink flip flops and go to my happy place.

Or... maybe just remember the lady who could... and smile.