A life less comfortable

Going the Cheap Route When we first came back almost a year ago I picked up a really cheap comforter from Ollie’s.  I mean, why spend the money on a quality comforter when it’s just for a year?   We decided not to buy any sheets as there were sheets that came with our fully furnished mission house.    Steve’s mom gave us a set of nicer sheets however they are made for a full-sized bed and we have a queen-sized bed.   Though they were the wrong size I still used them and with some effort they did fit!   When changing the fitted sheet on the queen, that last corner becomes a wrestling match with the mattress.    Once finally wrestled into place the victory is short-lived as it unravels whilst in slumber, the corner slips off the edge of the mattress and curls over bunching said sheet into a tangle of wrinkles and frustration.  It’s exhausting.  Also the cheap comforter is made of slippery material that slides easily.  It often ...

Being back in the states this year has opened our eyes to the faithfulness of God’s people in so many ways.  We live a weird life.  Our paycheck comes from churches and individual Christians.  Our bills are paid by the generosity of others. When we first started walking this path of overseas ministry I had a mental image of our family standing in tattered clothing, gathered around a fire drum with a hat in fingerless-gloved hands outstretched asking passersby to “spare a dime”.  Our children would be waif-like thin with smudged dirty faces and shoulders drawn inward.  Their eyes would reflect a painful vulnerability that comes from abject poverty.  This image, straight out of a Charles Dickens novel, lent a sense of shame and timidity towards fund-raising.  Then one day God spoke to me in the midst of a prayer soaked in fear and loathing of having to ask others to join with us in support of starting the mission aviation program for Bongolo. God ...

Once upon a time I attended a tiny two room school in Gazeley, England.  There was big class and little class.  I was there from the time I was 5 until I was 8.  I stayed in little class the entire time.  It was our village primary school.  We had a headmaster and a couple of teachers and the cooks in the lunch room.  The cooks wore the most amazing multi-hued platform shoes (it was the 1970s).  Our Headmaster, Mr Bouldrey, was a tall thin man of Ichabod Crane proportions.  He was spindly and had a chronic scowl on his pinched face.  He was not kind.  He did not like me.  He was the villain in my school world.  If he had a theme song it would be dark and ominous with creepy minor chord undertones. I seemed to be the focus of his hatred towards all things American.  "Since when did the Americans decide to replace the letter 't' for the letter 'd' in the word 'water'?" He sneered in my general direction one day whilst my m...

I was up late the other night scrolling through netflix looking for something worthwhile to watch and I came upon the movie, Ragamuffin, about the life of Rich Mullins.  I had always wanted to see that movie ever since I heard they were making it but being out of the country and somewhat out of the loop I missed it.  I quickly cued it up and settled down to watch.  By 2 am I was weeping as the credits rolled. I have always loved Rich Mullin's music and his songs and voice are linked indelibly in my mind with my dad.  When I was a senior in high school my dad was going through his second course of treatment for Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma.  It had been discovered the year before in the forth and final stage.  His first round of chemo seemed to kick it and we rejoiced.  However it was during our family vacation to an upscale dude ranch of sorts that I knew it was back. We were out to dinner and Dad's voice was weaker than I remembered it being the week befor...

The other night we were driving to Sam's indoor soccer game in Harrisburg.  While driving through the cold and dark landscape, our lights illuminated snowy patches roadside and spindly tree branches pricked the night sky as we listened to This American Life on the old tinny radio.  The story, " Batman " was an intriguing narrative about how the collective thoughts of a culture can profoundly affect what the blind believe they are capable of doing day to day.  This story is one in a series of stories called "Invisibilia" Latin for "all the invisible things" thus, delving into "the intangible forces that shape human behavior – things like ideas, beliefs, assumptions and emotions." - npr.org They interviewed a blind man, Daniel Kish, who can get around quite well by clicking his tongue and using those clicks as a way to navigate, bat-style, through the world.  He was raised without normal blind intervention and climbed trees and rode bikes in ...

One of the best things of being in the states this year is getting to go to our home church, York Alliance.  We started out at YAC in 2000 with Steve on staff in youth ministry and it since has become home.  Just the other week I had a religious experience in the pew during the sermon.  Our good friend and pastor, Brian Kannel, is preaching on a series called, "The God of Promise", a study of Genesis 12-35.  He was preaching specifically on Gen 31:1-32:21, I won't recap the whole sermon here but just highlight the part that hit me with a bona fide religious experience.  Jacob was fleeing Laban and God told him to return to the land of his fathers and God promised to be with him.  Jacob was fleeing one bad situation to find himself in the midst of another.  The schemer was being schemed and forced to return to the place of his birth, a place he fled years before after swindling his brother, Esau, out of his birth right. Brian points out a disturbing p...

Last night my daughter Megan watched the t.v. show "Lost"with two friends, one in Colorado and another in New York.  Olivia, the one in Co. had never watched Lost before so Meg and another friend watched on their own laptops with her and group texted together.  Oh the highs and lows of Lost!  Our family started watching Lost when we moved to France for language study.  Oh how we could relate to feeling lost in a new world filled challenges and a foreign landscape with "the others."  I think it was some kind of bizarre coping skill we developed where once a week we would download Lost and have Lost lunches in our little apartment in Albertville.  Lunch breaks are really long in France.  It was a bit jarring coming from the states where everything is fast paced, especially meal time.  We had 2 and 1/2 hour lunches everyday.  All of us would meet at our apartment from our three different schools and I would make us lunch.  It became an oa...