264/366

A day full of tasks, full of here and there and ins and outs, adding items to the list and crossing them off. But the most significant moments of the day couldn't be listed as lines on an index card. Rather, over and again, the best time was spent sitting next to people and listening to stories.

263/366

I spent the afternoon in sewing class for the young ladies from the deaf school, helping to bridge the gaps in communicating from English to Spanish to Mexican Sign Language. We watch our master seamstress check the work of the girls since she has been away, measuring distance between darts and looking for the straight stitch and judging seam allowances with a critical eye. The girls wait for the critique, knowing the high standards of their teacher. We see their faces light when told "well done."

There are four brand new girls, just beginning to learn the signs for the craft and the habits of the seamstress. They move to choose fabric for their first project and feel the weight of the cloth carefully, rubbing it between their fingers, judging if it has suitable heft to be transformed into a bag. They measure, and then measure again, and perhaps again, before cutting. They check everything, and have everything checked.

Measure twice, cut once declares the old adage for carpentry. Yet, some traditions say that it was originally said measure seven times, cut once. I keep thinking, how much better off we would be to adapt the same caution in much of life, to plan and then execute, to think before speaking. I remember the correction and then thoughtful praise of the instructor with her learners, how the girls respond to her expectation of excellence.  The girls are not the only students today.

262/366

"Who are we? We are pilgrims on a journey with a glorious destination assured. What have we been given? Well, the guarantee of the future grace of eternity assures us that we will have all the grace we need in the present or we would never have what we need to finish the journey."
- Paul David Tripp, New Morning Mercies

confession- by late afternoon, I questioned that "all the grace we need in the present" part...

261/366

"God made me fast. And when I run, I feel His pleasure." 
- attributed to Eric Liddell, but actually from the Chariots of Fire script

She's fast. And watching her run makes me smile in awe. But even better is watching her run as part of that group in the shadows. You have a fan club, girl, even if you never win another race ever again.

260/366

"I love the colors of Mexico," wrote my friend after seeing the photo I took on Mexican Independence Day. I smiled. Except that the picture was taken in Texas, I thought. This strange and extraordinary life I live. We began the day with breakfast in a very Mexican restaurant in Texas, huevos mexicanos and tortillas and an empanada and cafe, Spanish resonating from the many televisions, a birthday serenade of Las Mañanitas. We leave and then really do travel over the border, across the bridge, and see the long winding line of those waitingwaitingwaiting to enter the United States today. We curve along the river and past the boy look-outs and horse-drawn carts and into the neighborhood. Morning greetings of Buenos dias, ¿como estas? returned with the very correct assessment of Estamos aquí. I work on the English lessons I'll share with Spanish speakers, young and old, in the week to come. Conversation, and then prayer, spoken in the broken yet fluid rhythm of Spanish, English, Spanish, English. How has God made my mind to adapt? How has God made my heart to soften and mold to love this life of crossing borders and culture and language? ¡Viva México!, indeed.

258/366

Staring at the water about to boil, I think, How is it that the same circumstance affects each of us so differently? Eggs harden while the potato softens. Some cry, some pout, and some retreat in private silence. One sees challenge to be met while the other fears defeat.

You can give yourself to love, to forgive, to confess, to confront, to trust, to persevere, even when things are hard because "he gives more grace." 
- Paul David Tripp, New Morning Mercies

SaveSave

255/366

“Destiny guides our fortunes more favorably than we could have expected. Look there, Sancho Panza, my friend, and see those thirty or so wild giants, with whom I intend to do battle and kill each and all of them, so with their stolen booty we can begin to enrich ourselves. This is nobel, righteous warfare, for it is wonderfully useful to God to have such an evil race wiped from the face of the earth."
"What giants?" Asked Sancho Panza.
"The ones you can see over there," answered his master, "with the huge arms, some of which are very nearly two leagues long."
"Now look, your grace," said Sancho, "what you see over there aren't giants, but windmills, and what seems to be arms are just their sails, that go around in the wind and turn the millstone."
"Obviously," replied Don Quijote, "you don't know much about adventures.” 
― Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Don Quixote

For most of the week just past, I looked to the absolutely open calendar of Sunday, nothing but worship and rest. Maybe I was holding that a little bit too tight.

She travels with a plastic milk crate strapped to a luggage cart by a web of bungee cords. The box is covered by a well-used blue tarp to protect it, and herself, from the ever-present sun and the occasional rains. Most everything she owns can be found in that package. I saw it parked along the hallway when I walked out of Sunday school and realized that perhaps my afternoon was about to detour from that perch on my couch.

She came into our church about a month ago, maybe a little bit more, looking for help in obtaining a driver's license. I didn't realize that she was homeless that day, but I should have. She's very self-sufficient, and living on the street has been a choice for her. Sort of. She doesn't want to stay at the local shelter, but I don't think that she sees herself as vagabond, either.

She says that she wants to work and she earnestly seeks applications. But it doesn't take much time with her to know that she wrestles with demons, and that somehow, something in her past makes her present not quite right. She wants to get a driver's license though she has no reason to believe that she will own a car. "I believe that when a person has a skill they should keep it up, to be ready when they need it," she told me. Who can argue with that?

I've rarely felt as useless to be of any help as when I am with her. I think I've decided that right now, the best good may be as simple as to treat her with the respect and dignity worthy of one created in His image. She listed off, nearly verbatim from the state manual, the skills she needed to practice, changing lanes, ability to yield to oncoming traffic, acknowledge signage and signals... I have sat in the passenger seat for 6 teens learning to drive, and now this. We drive.

We point north and soon find ourselves in the shadows of the towering turbines twirling. I smile and wonder, are we tilting at windmills too? I give up a quiet afternoon at home for a drive in the country, for a load of laundry cleaned, for a simple meal shared, for a few eccentricities and a little inconvenience. I am still learning about becoming less. I am still learning about adventure, too.

162/366

I dozed off and missed the peanut and pretzel parceling out, but I was greeted with a marshmallow-puff sky when I opened my eyes and the window-seat shade. I don't remember my first flight, though I have TWA wings in my childhood jewelry box as an ancient souvenir. Yet even after so many years of flying, I still marvel that a metal tube can zoom above the clouds.

161/366

I firmly believe that butter and cinnamon sugar could solve a great multitude of world issues.

160/366

O Lord, my heart is not lifted up;
    my eyes are not raised too high;
I do not occupy myself with things
    too great and too marvelous for me.
2 But I have calmed and quieted my soul,
    like a weaned child with its mother;
    like a weaned child is my soul within me.

3 O Israel, hope in the Lord
    from this time forth and forevermore.

- Psalm 131 (ESV)

(from Wednesday Daily Office mid-day prayer)

159/366

When I listen to pastors battling away around Europe and the States in well-off areas, I break out in a cold sweat. How do you evangelize in an area where everybody has a decent paying job, a nice place to live, and possibly a car (or two) in the driveway? How do you break through the intellectual pride of a worldview that thinks religion is beneath them and that science has all the answers? How do you witness in an area where the average house price is more than $400,000? How do you talk to a guy who feels no need for Christ because he is distracted by his materialism? How do you make it work in an area filled with nice, law-abiding citizens, who don't cheat on their wives, beat their kids, and spend their evenings stoned on the sofa watching reality television? Now that's hard. In some ways, it's harder. Brutal even!
- from Church in Hard Places by Mez McConnell and Mike McKinley

158/366

At lunch today there was a gaggle of happy kids running around, jumping here and there, giggling cheerfully. It's always a little bit of a sight, when the group of gringos show up at the fields. The big brown-eyes watch expectantly, and manage to draw a few away for games. It is all blessing to share sandwiches and apples and cookies and prayer and Jesus and life in this place.

157/366

“Wherever you are, be all there! Live to the hilt every situation you believe to be the will of God.”

- Jim Elliot

156/366

gratitude-
the power of His hand in the thunder and lightning,
those who devise good meet steadfast love and faithfulness,
a cup in my hand and a place on the couch,
transparency,
hospitality,
plans coming together,
being still at home,
girls who make really good cookies,
promise of tomorrow.

155/366

Friday! Finally, I could order the posole! Posole ranks high on my Comfort Food list. I don't remember NOT eating posole, though it wasn't until college that I learned about radish and cabbage and lime and oregano and chile powder on top. The spicy red broth, the chunks of pork, the hominy, and a side of crunchy tostada shells for dipping-
¡Buen provecho!

154/366

One step in the gate and I sense it. The sound of gurgling water. That smell of earth and plants and water on the path. The 1000 shades of green and bright bursts of color that come from every direction. I feel Horticulture Envy creep in every time I step foot in a nursery. This time! This time will be different..., I think, oh-so-earnestly, oh-so-sincerely, as if suddenly I will become that Mrs. Green Thumb who waters and feeds and tends and talks and does all those loving, nurturing tasks that add up to Urban Paradise Gardens. "Your plants always die," my faithful two remind me. "No, you can't buy that, " they tell me.

They are right.
But maybe, someday...

153/366

More often than I like, I wonder if I should have said "yes." And other times, I am sure that I say "no" all too quickly.
But today's "yes" was just right.

152/366

Three weeks and more than 3000 miles of road.
It was a lot of miles, and as much as I love to travel and as much as I love a good road trip, I love to get home.

Reflections on a road trip...
I love the Midwest and I love our Midwestern family and friends.
Our blood has thinned and high 50's is now winter weather.
The United States is so very diverse and so very beautiful.
There is just an awful lot of Very Tasty Food in this world.
Rhubarb, rhubarb, rhubarb!
There are so many good books yet to be read.
Traveling with two teens is infinitely easier than traveling with 5 preschoolers.
If in doubt, go classic rock radio.
I am embarrassed at how many classic rock lyrics I know and the songs I can identify only three notes in.
Did the inventor of car air conditioning win some sort of Nobel Prize?
Culture shock comes in the most unexpected places.
There's no place like home.
There's no place like Home.

151/366

"I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in the stride toward freedom is not the White citizens’ “Councilor” or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate who is more devoted to “order” than to justice..."
- Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr in "Letter from a Birmingham City Jail," 16 April 1963

(photo from the National Civil Rights Museum, Memphis, Tennessee) 

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How shall we spend it, the last light of our day?
- Doug McKelvey, "100-Year Vision" in The Rabbit Room blog