A Good and Quiet Choice

There's always this crunch time between coming home from Thailand and going away for my summer Sabbath.

Both are incredible gifts, so I hope it doesn't sound like I'm complaining. Hardly!  The community that is Highview is beautiful and generous to her pastor, allowing me to be away each year in March to visit our Thai family at Hot Springs AND to be away each year in July to sit by still waters in Cognashene where our family has a cottage.  Amazing.  And everything goes along just fine without me both times, which I'm pretty sure wouldn't surprise you, and long ago has stopped surprising me too :).

But this in between time can get intense.  Catching up from everything that was happening while I was in Thailand, and preparing for everything to be in order so I can leave for the cottage.  And that last part isn't just so things will be good over the summer only.  This is the time of year when the bigger plans for the whole of next season, September to June, are talked over and prayed over and calendar'd over and schedules are set and people are contacted; all of it being continuously offered as an open book upon which the Holy Spirit is invited to write.  It's the time of year for appreciations and thank yous and wrapping up in significant, honouring ways.  It's the time of year we celebrate our church's anniversary - this year is number 15! - and that always includes new members and baptisms, and all the wonderful conversations around all of that.

I've felt that intensity over the past two weeks, especially.  It's a dangerous place for a workaholic.  So much to do, so little time (it always seems), all of it's important, and the rush of tending to it, feeling the wind in my hair, seeing good things being accomplished.  A professor once told a class I was in that he didn't know the difference between work and fun because his work was fun.  For me, much of the work of pastoring is fun.  Not the conflict resolution or walking people through pain or the weight of leading, not that part.  But lots of it is.  And when the push is on and you're seeing it happen, and you've got good and honest people to labour with, well, it can get intense.

So I opened my journal this morning in the early sun of the quiet room where my husband still slept, and just sat for a moment and felt it.  The nothing.  And goodness was in the nothing.  And for a few moments I just felt good.  And quiet.  And out of those nothing quiet moments nothing particularly spectacular happened in my soul, except to be reminded that sitting in the sun in the quiet is good. 

It was bit of a strange day anyways.  An interruption in the rhythms of the work week.  A Tuesday trip to Lakefield to see Mom on a day that was originally scheduled to be a 'care counsel' meeting with the team that's looking after he in her new residence.  It was cancelled, but we went on Tuesday anyway, instead of the normal Sunday/Monday thing.  An interruption in the intensity.  A pause.  The whole day.

Fish and chips with Mom in the restaurant, and Hey Jude was playing and Mom said, "This is a pleasant tune."  And I teased her because she didn't realize it was the Beatles.  Growing up we weren't allowed to listen to that nasty rock and roll music. And she laughed at herself, and it was a good and quiet moment.

And later in the afternoon, talking quietly and openly about Mom's funeral service, which she had asked that we do together.  And the goodness in her faith, expressed by a confident longing for what is to come.  And her reassurances of her love for me, and appreciation for me, in the face of some hard family dynamics.

And just having those unspoken moments with Ken in the car, my faithful hero driver, because the drive back and forth has become too much with all the other responsibilities of my life, so he drives instead.  And oh how I need the good and quite of being passenger instead.


I'm still a workaholic, I know.  But I'm more mellow these days.  At least in these kinds of pockets of sunshine and pause and interruptions like today, I am.  I think maybe I'm finally learning, on these kinds of days, to watch for what God thought was so important that He would actually take me away from my 'work' to show me.

And driving home I was glad for choosing it.  And I was looking forward to engaging in the fun again tomorrow.

Mai Nit Noy

Thim is my own sponsored child.

There are 17 amazing Sponsors at Highview, who have committed to providing a monthly life altering contribution to the lives of 17 corresponding and equally amazing children who live at Hot Springs.

Thim's my girl.

She's beautiful. Tall, graceful and smiling always. I've watched her grow more and more into a young woman these past four years. She's 16 now. And beautiful. I mentioned that, I know. But obviously you can see that.

Her temperament is very even. In the six times I've been to visit, she's always been so gentle and pleasant and smiling. She seems to be a stabilizing factor for the other girls a lot of the time. Just quiet and confident and nurturing.

She's expressed her affections freely with me, but always with that quiet reserve. Until this time.

On the Sunday before we left just as we were waiting for church to begin, she found me waiting just outside where it was (relatively) a little cooler. I was looking over the garden, trying to take in my last moments, making them count, trying not to think about how hard the goodbyes will be. Thim came up behind me.

She had a bracelet she had made for me. This is a common symbol of affection and friendship in Thailand. In fact, this wasn't the first I'd received from her. But this time she is speaking to me in Thai and she is choking on her words.

'I give you so little. You give me so much.' She is crying.

I take the hands that had just finished tying the bracelet around my wrist, and draw us to face each other, close. I muster my brain around the rising emotion and speak the best Thai I could manage.

'Mai nit noy,' I say. 'Not little. Thim growing up beautiful young woman, not little. You loving God, worshiping God, not little. Thim grow up beautiful woman become teacher (she had told me once that this was her goal). I will come and see you teaching. If Thim has husband and have babies, I will come hold your babies.'

We're both crying now. And we're hugging, and I'm saying over and again words I now know well, "Ruk mahk, Thim." I love you so much, Thim. "Kit-teung makh." I will miss you so much.

I call Thim 'my girl' but she is in fact very much her own girl. She calls me 'mother' in her letters. Imagine that. Another gift that is anything but little. Mai nit noy.

In fact everything about Thim is mai nit noy.

And who am I that these things should be offered me?

Mountain Sunset Proclamations

How lovely on the mountains
are the feet of those who
bring good news,
who proclaim peace,
who bring good tidings,
who proclaim salvation,
who say to Zion,
"Your God reigns!"
Isaiah 52:7

Dear Suradet and Yupa,

Your feet are lovely.

Respectfully,

Ruth Anne

Breathing Heaven

Who can breathe
in a moment like this?

Hot sun
Cool water
Hearts burning in worship passion

Decided to follow Jesu they did
Wanting to make it public
Wanting to obey what He said to do

Mark it
Here
Now
With this community of wonder

They waited for me to come for this
Unworthily given this gentle honour
To baptize beautifully new believers
To stand knee deep with my brother/friend/fellow warrior
And bear witness to spiritual rebirth

Oh my soul!
How much of heaven can you handle?

Pictures by Megan Ogilvie

Waiting for My Soul to Catch Up

Deep calls to deep
in the roar of your waterfalls; all your waves and breakers
have swept over me.
Psalm 42:7

Jet lag is an odd sort of place to be. It's almost as if your body, mind and soul travel in different dimensions of time.

Your body gets home first, along with your luggage. And it's your body that has the first hot water shower and scrubs the red dirt stains off the bottom of your feet and starts the laundry and has a first non rice meal. And to be real honest, it's your body that kisses your husband hello and receives the enthusiastic hugs of grandchildren.

I think maybe your mind arrives a day or so later. Starts to answer a few emails, checks in with co-workers about items needing attention, puts your purse back together and gathers the papers you'll need to take into the office for 'just the morning' (I promise) tomorrow. It's your mind that responds to requests for reconnection with friends for coffee or a phone call. It's your mind that writes a blog.

But your soul? I'm honestly not sure exactly when my soul even leaves Thailand. Or if it's not still there right now, sitting quietly with Nut, letting the excruciating beauty of the waterfall wash over the deep that calls to Deep.

This sensation, of waiting for a while until my soul is ready to leave the intense and exotic spirituality of Thailand, and rejoin my abundant and satisfying life in Canada, is exaggerated this year. We went as a Team of 11, and with a significant task to accomplish in Day Camp. I celebrate with huge joy the work God has done in us, and the ways in which He was evident throughout the camp time. But the leadership and pastoral requirements were the priority, and my soul was respectfully but most definitely asked to wait its turn. Perhaps as we gain more experience in bigger team/task focused trips I will learn ways to inject my own soul time into the mix. But not this trip.

So if I seem vacant in the next few days, I am. Please forgive me, it's nothing personal. It's just me, waiting for my soul to get home.

My thanks to Megan Ogilvie for these incredible photos.

The Last Sunday Morning

Feeling an unusual weariness of soul this morning as I wait in these moments of preparation for Hot Springs worship service to begin.

I am speaking this morning. That's not unusual. "Hot Springs' spiritual mother" Suradet calls me, and he strongly encourages me to teach as much as possible when I am here.

And I like doing it. But I am also keenly aware of the inadequacies of my language skills and my lack of cultural context. On this trip, particularly, I feel I have not had time for that essence of being so essential for effective spiritual communication to any group of gathered souls.

There's more. I am not quite ready to turn my heart towards home, still greedy for more of this other home to be home for longer.

Father, empower my words this morning. Be my suffiency in all the inadequacies of my tongue and soul. And help my heart know You as home always.

Amen
Sent from my BlackBerry device on the Rogers Wireless Network

That Moment When You Realize It's Actually Happening Way Better Than You Imagined

Pictures: Children from neighbouring village get ready to ride home at the end of ESL Day Camp Day 3.

"We're here, and it's happening!"

This I say to myself several times a day since Monday, when ESL Day Camp began.

What was dreamed of in a visioning conversation with Suradet around the dinner table last year, and has been meticulously planned for over months of Team meetings in Canada, and eagerly prepared for on the Thailand side of things for a while already, has come to reality under a hot sky and God's gentle love.

I think the moments happen most strongly for me when we're singing. Beautiful Asian children smiling recklessly, doing the actions we taught them only yesterday with vigor and enthusiasm.

Or later, quietly, doing the puzzle. Or when a child just comes up beside you for a hug.

It's happening!

We're here making a difference and that's making a difference in each one of us.

ESL Day Camp. A new adventure.

When I was 11, I felt my first tug to Asia, beleiving God had called me to be a missionary. For such a long time I thought that had been a misunderstanding on my part.

But --

I'm here.

And it's happening.