Quite a Day
It was this past Thursday. I showed up at outreach about three in the afternoon having called previously to let it be known I could stay only about an hour and a half that day since I had a Skype meeting to attend in my home at five.
The kids and I worked in small groups of three learning some beginning guitar skills and vocals. The little ones kept surging out of their homework room and surrounding us, getting into the guitar case and touching the tuning keys on the instrument. Break time was called, and an older child from an upstairs group thrust a plastic bowl of bananas and yogurt onto my lap. I grabbed it in time to not see it spill into the dirt, set it down on the wooden preschool chair I’d been perching on, and stood to put the Yamaha into the case, then moved that to the family’s large downstair kitchen, on the side there, where I hoped the kids wouldn’t dare to enter, to further tinker with the guitar.
While I was moving, I saw my friend enter the property from the street and get mobbed by several children with various requests and comments.
A few seconds later she entered her extended family’s kitchen and heaved a big sigh. I said, “What’s up?”
“You would never believe it,” she responded. “I left here at noontime to visit M. and A. (two of our kids, who’d had to be moved, by us, and the government, to a facility one year ago, because of the abuse they were experiencing daily in their living situations), and I stopped to buy some fruit, for a gift for them. While I was buying the fruit, a bulldozer towed my car away!”
“WHAT?? That never happens here, I mean, everybody knows, you park wherever you want to for a few minutes!”
“It happened. So, I had to go downtown to TRANSITO, and try to get the car out of dock, and do this big palaver, and pay the multa…”
While she was still speaking, two middle-sized kids walked up to us, saying, “Tia, we can’t get on the Internet, with the computer (a huge ancient behemoth on its last legs) to do our homework…”
“Yeah…” My friend gestured to the rickety wall outlet beside us at about knee height, in the front wall of the kitchen. “This morning my brother went to plug in his radio here and, it blew the whole circuit to this side of the property. No electricity. And, I haven’t had time to look at it yet and try to fix it.”
“Well, sorry it’s been a bad day”, I murmmered. “Unfortunately, I have to head home now and catch that meeting I’ve got.”
“Hang on a sec. I’ll drive you home in the car.”
“No, REALLY! I want to drive you home. We’ll take some of the 3, 4, and 5-year – olds with us. It’s not far and, I want to clear my head. It’ll do me good to get out for ten minutes. And the kids will love it – they always do…”
So. There is a general exodus to the street, of about 15 gleefully running and screaming tiny munchkins and L., our 14-year-old, who is so enamored of her first guitar lesson (and did SO well at it!), that she doesn’t want to leave me, and decides to go in the car.
As I’m folding myself in to the front passenger side, shifting two tots to my left knee while keeping them out of the gearshift, while heaving the cased guitar in thru the doorway onto the area of my right knee, I close my door on the old car with medium strength and, thank God!, a bit of slow caution.
“TIA!!!” Tears gathering flow and cries gathering strength. Oh NO! I’ve crunched little H.s hand in the car door!
We pile out of the car. I scoop H. up in my arms and start running in, saying to my friend who is running by my side, “Ice. Let’s get some ice on it.” All 16 kids trail us across the street and inside…
After a few minutes of ice and comfort, our little guy stops crying, the injured hand gets examined for the fifth time and – thank God – it’s only a little skin scraped off, and a bruise. We all mill around for a bit, then troop down and out, across the street, and start piling into the car again.
At the back, left-hand passenger door wails and screams and the sound of a car door closing, then opening again are heard. ANOTHER four-year-old, A., has gotten HIS hand slammed in the car door!!! We can’t believe it. It’s true.
Same song, second verse. Out of the car, into the property, ICE. The sobs subside. Everybody’s going to be okay.
We have a nice little drive over to my house; a few seconds into the ride five year-old Javier, on my lap, starts saying, “OW, MY EAR, MY EAR!” but it turns out to be fake. I get all the little kids counting jacaranda trees. They are easy to tell apart this time of the year, because of their breathtaking heaps of lilac blossoms in the springtime, which is now.
My friend and I make eye contact, across almost a dozen little black-haired heads, and smile wryly, both rolling our eyeballs.
Scraps and Pieces from a Good Textbook: “Effective Biblical Counseling” by Lawrence Crabb
” the results of the Fall include separation not only from God and from others, but also from ourselves. we “come apart” as persons, unable to genuinely accept ourselves as we are. Our consequent struggle to be, or to pretend to be what we are not explains much of our deep discontent and personal suffering.”
more gleanings from Daniel Goleman’s book, “Emotional Intelligence”
an informal definition of HIGH emotional intelligence – “a flair for living”.
(from the book)
Gleanings from Readings on Emotional Intelligence
” Anyone can become angry – that is easy. But to be angry with the right person, to the right degree, at the right time, for the right purpose, and in the right way – THAT is not easy. -ARISTOTLE in “The Nichomachean Ethics”
(taken from the book, “Emotional Intelligence” by Daniel Goleman)
A Samuel Taylor Coleridge Quote
” I have found in the Bible words for my inmost thoughts, songs for my joy, utterance for my hidden griefs and pleadings for my shame and feebleness.”
Grace – WHAT??
Reading Philippians 1:1 just now, I started thinking about the word “grace”. I used to be so overly accustomed to this word, from having grown up plus spent most of my adult life with “Christianeese” – that language all its own! – around me, that the word had come to carry no real meaning for me either in English or Spanish, nor in French. I have never studied Greek, so, I was denied the thrill of getting meaning out of it that way.
However several years ago when I was still trying to finish my process of becoming somewhat fluent in Quechua, a language VERY useful here in the Andes, some team colleagues of mine around here were talking a LOT about the fact that the Quechua language had no word for the concept of “grace” or “thank you”, which is a derivative of “grace”. They wanted to FIND or CREATE one in order to help complete the Quechua New Testament translation project of the Bolivian Bible Society.
What they decided to use was a Quechua transliteration of the words “God’s good, free and undeserved, un-earned favor and powerful HELP”. In Quechua, that comes out, ” Diospa k’acha qhasilla k’allpayoj yanapaynin”.
Pick up a copy of the Quechua New Testament – you will see that phrase all through it.
The concept of God’s grace, and also of saying “thank you” picked up a ton of personal meaning for me when that happened and, now, I can never forget THAT’S what grace is, in any language!
Thoughts on soul tattoos…
Could we all use some new ink? I happened to catch part of a Freedom Project clip in which they were interviewing a poverty-stricken U.S.A. woman who said she had been lured, gradually, by a male “handler” into a prostitution ring which had, for her, then led to intravenous drug use and addiction as well as alcohol addiction.
Then, a miracle happened to her (which I ALSO appreciated CNN giving coverage to!). The woman met Jesus Christ as her Lord and God and was saved completely and for eternity by Him! (It’s all there, clearly, right in the Bible. For reading it, I recommend starting with the gospel of John, and the epistle to the Romans, especially chapters 8 and 12, and then, also, the first and second epistles to the Corinthians.)
After that, as she grew spiritually in God, she realized GOD was the only one who owned her, the only one she belonged to! She abandoned her whole former life, overcame with God’s help her addictions, and lived a new clean life, forgiven and free and sharing her good news with others. She walked in God’s strength, for her, and shared God’s love with others in need, out of the overflow of His joy and love that she felt welling up and daily being renewed, within her own spirit. She was standing TALL, in her new God-given identity as a beloved and accepted daughter of the King of kings.
However, her former trafficker, in reality her owner, had demanded that she get four different tattoos on four different places on her body, each of which marked her as his chattel. These tattoos were so placed that it was impossible for her to look at herself in a mirror, from any angle, without seeing one of them.
For her, the tattoos were powerful visual symbols of her former suffering, shame, poor decisions she had taken, and a sinful lifestyle. They were also haunting reminders to her of a pattern of strong coercion and violence, abuses, and other shaming she had fallen prey to and become trapped in.
Psychologically, the old tattoos made spiritual and emotional progress, at an optimal rate, in her new life and identity even more challenging than it already was!
With her new, respectable but NOT well-paying collection of part-time jobs she was working, after a long time she scraped together enough money to have one of the four tattoos – the one on her upper right arm – “covered”, (re-tattooed, in colors, in much larger format, effectively causing the old tattoo to completely disappear.) Her new tattoo had 1 Corinthians 6:20 – New in Christ-Owned by God, and a lovely flower design.
Anyways, there’s more to the story, with believing friends noticing her new arm tattoo and asking, and being told about the other three shame marks she still carried, and helping her with funding to get them covered also. You can look up the whole story on CNN-Freedom Project.
But this pierced my heart. It made me think about how often I let old “shame markers” on my spirit, hold me BACK, partially, from becoming and BEING each DAY, ALL that God wants me to be!
Oh, sure, maybe MY sins and shames and addictions were, and are, not as “horrible”, as “serious”, as blatant, as “out there” as the ones this woman has now been saved by God from. I just saw a Facebook meme float by from somebody that said “Don’t judge someone just because they sin differently from you!” God’s Word clearly teaches that my sins (maybe pride? how about lack of thankfulness? lack of forgiveness? worry? maybe selfishness? lack of love? ) are just as much an affront to a Holy God.
And to make matters worse, maybe these are attitudes I got trapped in, and clung to, AFTER I was made a new creature in Christ, with God already my only owner, unlike the woman in the CNN story. I should have known better, I mean, I’ve been a Christian for YEARS! But…the human heart…we all know.
Here’s the important part. I need to stop feeling the shame of those old “soul tattoos” because, guess what? They are not real; they’re not even THERE anymore! Why not? God’s already forgiven me! I asked Him to, and He did! No condemnation for me! (That’s in the Bible too, in those exact words!)
YES! I am forgiven and FREE, and my only OWNER is my beloved, powerful, GOOD GOD, who wants and promises only the best for me.
You know what? Within the family of God there is now no condemnation for you. So let’s encourage and build up each other in these strong biblical truths, and help each other to stand firm upon them, sometimes in the midst of very challenging lives and circumstances, as we walk forward in community together.
I had always felt life first as a story: and if there is a story, there is a story-teller.
from G.K. Chesterton
This is one of the pictures on the walls at our outreach center, with our children… I like it, because I see in the lives of our 45 kids and other persons, that it is really true.
Importance and Uniqueness of the Bible
“It is a miracle for how long God has preserved His book! How great and glorious it is to have the Word of God!” – Martin Luther
What is sophrosyne?
Sophrosyne: a deeply healthy state of mind; well-being, mental health based in practices of moderation, self-discipline and solid self-awareness and leading to happiness. An ancient Greek philosophical term. In short supply in post-modern western culture.
GlobeRoamer 