Packing up our House

Psalm 121:8: The Lord will watch over your coming and going. Lately I have been too weary to post anything, nor have I had much time.10 days ago we were surprised by an unexpected turn of event here in our home in Africa which has led us to decide to move out of our house immediately and return to the US. For seven days we have been working day and night to pack up everything we own, catalogue in detail the contents of each box, whether it goes back with us or in storage for another family to use, or throwing it in a pile to sell in a garage sale, or just merely throwing it away. My back is killing me. My legs are stiff and my whole body aches. My head is spinning and my ears are ringing. It is hard to sleep. Many times throughout the day I find that I cannot think straight. We never imagined anything like this would happen. But we are pressing on, a little bit more each day. Some friends have come to help, and our guards are helping load up the heavy furniture and move it to a storage room in a colleagues house. We have taken so far 16 truck loads to the storage rooms at our colleagues house. We are tearing up flowers out of the garden and potting them in all sorts of plastic containers, and moving them to another location so that our colleagues can some day enjoy them when they arrive. I have sorted through every piece of clothing, every toy, every bead, trinket, kitchen gadget, and piece of paper in our filing cabinet, throwing things away, burning, packing or giving things away. Fights have ensued a few times between neighbors or local children vying for their right to have even what we throw in our trash. It is insane! It has been hard. We have had some refreshing moments – a cold soda, a laugh here and there, a walk down memory lane, a friend dropping in to help – and the ever present knowledge that we will get through this, that God is with us. The Lord will watch over our coming and going. And even though this situation here seems hopeless, I am reminded that we are merely sojourners on this earth and that our real home is in heaven. We have that hope through the death and resurrection of Jesus, God’s answer to this pitiful place earth has become because of sin. I try to see the light at the end of the tunnel, knowing that in a few more days we will be out of here and can rest and relax a little, and that in 15 days or so we will be back in the US. I hope to post pictures of this whole thing when it is all over. For now, I am focusing on the tasks of each day. Happy Easter to everyone. May the peace and hope that comes from the resurrection fill you in times of uncertainty and turmoil, and give you the strength to press on.

Creamy Chicken Afredo Sauce

Ingredients:

1 onion, minced
1-2 cloves garlic, minced
1/2 cup butter
1/2 cup flour
1 liter of milk
2 boxes (or 300 grams) “Laughing Cow” Cheese or 8 oz cream cheese
2 cups chicken chunks (cooked or raw)
1/2 cup chicken broth
1—2 tsp salt
1 Tbsp parsley
1 T basil
pasta

Sauté onion and garalic in butter, add flour until bubbly. Add milk and cheese, heat and stir with wire whisk until cheese is completely melted. Add chicken with broth, salt, basil and parsley and continue cooking on low heat another 2-3 minutes until sauce boils (or 5 minutes to thoroughly cook raw chicken chunks). Serve on cooked pasta of choice.

Variation: Add broccolli, and velveeta cheese, and serve on rice.

Curried Chicken Riz Gras

Ingredients:
1 onion, diced
1 cup oil
1 cup fine vermicelli
1-2 cloves garlic
4 small tomatoes, diced
1/2—1 cup raisins
2 cups cooked chicken
2 Tbsp curry powder
2 tsp salt
3 cups uncooked rice

Sauté onion and garlic in oil until tender, add vermicelli dry, and fry in oil until brown. Add 6 cups chicken broth or water mixed with broth to total six cups liquid, add diced tomatoes, raisins, curry powder, chicken, salt and uncooked rice. Bring to boil, then simmer until all of rice is cooked and liquid is absorbed. Stir occasionally while cooking.

Recipes!

Over the years I have really developed a love for cooking (which stems from my love for good food!). Living in Africa I have developed lots of yummy dishes from scratch adapted to the simple things we can get here, which I serve to large crowds of visitors who come pretty often from the US or just other folks passing through. So many people have asked me for my recipes, that I have created a recipe book of my favorites and their favorites, that I often give to guests. Since the list of recipes keeps growing, I have decided to begin posting them here, so people can access them more easily. So, if you love cooking like I do, or are just looking for something new that you can serve, especially to a large crowd, stay tuned!

Relationships in God's Economy

I have been reading about bonding and our need for relationship. Relationships are essential to our existence, to our happiness, to our well-being. I find it refreshing to know that God makes us whole in our lives through relationships. I was always told that if we rely too much on other people, we aren’t relying enough on God. I always struggled with that though, because I always found eventually that relationships made me feel complete. When I’m lonely, even if I seek out God, I am still relieved of my loneliness by relationships. I believe God has created us with a deep foundational need for relationships and when we don’t have it, or when those relationships are not right, life is miserable. This is a sign of our deep need to maintain healthy relationships in our lives. Many young ladies mistakenly seek out the wrong relationships to ease that need to bond with someone, by hooking up with the wrong guy, or offering a form of intimacy in order to find that bonding they so desperately need because they lack it in their home life, or elsewhere. They are looking for the right thing, but in the wrong place.

Looking to God’s Word, we see from the beginning of Creation God said “it is not good for man to be alone.” Throughout Scriptures the word “love” is written all over the place. Jesus says that the greatest command is to love the Lord your God with all your heart, and the second is to love your neighbor as yourself. Relationships. Paul states in 1 Corinthians 13 that above all things love is the greatest thing, the most important thing we can do. Well, wake up world! We can’t “love” others without relationships! Relationships are the key! When relationships are broken, people suffer, things go awry, productivity dimishes, crimes happen. When relationships are restored, happiness returns, healing takes place and people thrive and are productive. God’s Word is a tapestry interwoven throughout with teachings on how to do relationships right.

From birth God created us to thrive and exist only in relationships. A newborn baby is totally dependent on its mother. From birth the mother holds the baby, rocks the baby, soothes the baby when it is crying, and speaks soft words to the baby, wooing it into the human race. Without that relationship the baby would not survive or thrive. Instiutionalized babies and children often lack happiness and well-being, developing all sorts of abnormal coping mechanisms to compensate for that lack of bonding. This is not normal and not healthy. The human race is not made up of humans, but of humans IN relationships, who could not pro-create without relationships. Society is healthy only when the individuals work together in a synchronized inter-dependent fashion, meeting one another’s needs.

It is through healthy relationships that God restores and heals people. God comforts us through other people. All counselors will agree that no amount of counseling, or spiritualizing will help a hurting person, put that person in a redemptive parish community of a support group, they have a much greater chance of recovering from just about every addiction, trauma or crisis in life and learning to lead a productive, healthy life. Knowing God loves us in spite of what has happened to us is important, but it is difficult to know that and feel that unless someone tells us that and shows us that THROUGH relationships. Having other people reach out to us in our time of need who empathize with our pain is God’s way of reaching out to us. It is when we see the genuine Christ-like love in others that we can truly sense the depth of God’s love for us. And it is when we act out that love toward others that they see God’s love in us and are drawn to Himself. We cannot expect lost people to come to God without seeing His transforming power having its effect in relationships. When God transforms a life, it is truly a miracle, going against the fiber of the sinful world, and it has the power to transform other lives around it through relationships.

If we never had this deep sense of God’s love for us through relationships when we were young, we may follow one of several paths. One, we may remain isolated, rationalizing that we are just “loners”, but knowing all along deep inside that we are “lonely people” and unhappy. We tend to be self-sufficient, yet restless. Another course we may follow is that we allow people into our lives on the surface, but we never become intimate, because we fear things we do not know. In this case too, we feel lonely in a crowd, we have never bonded with others, it is all surface. We have never expressed our needs and allowed others to meet them. A third way is to learn that God heals us through bonding with others in healthy relationships, and we embrace it. When we pray to God, He hears us, but also beckons us to share our burdens with others so they can do the work of the body of Christ and share our burdens with us. When others pray with us and for us, the flood gates of heaven are opened!

I find it interesting the impact that birth control and family planning has had on our society in this way. God designed married women to bear children on the average every two years, sometimes more often. In the natural order of things the large family was the norm. I have found in my own experience that when I was a mother of two, our family had a very different dynamic than when we moved to four children. At some point around four children the needs of the family become so great that it will not function until everyone pitches in and plays a role. The dynamic changes, and the members of the family are pushed into a natural interdependency, which helps bonding take place and creates a healthy supportive community. It takes more effort and determination on the part of the parents to assure a healthy, functioning family relationship, but it is well worth the effort. I don’t know too many children who come from large families who are selfish, self-centered and unhappy. Most of them are well-adjusted, compassionate and thoughtful of others. With two children, it is easy to spoil them and give them a privileged life. With four or more, that becomes impossible, unrealistic, and indeed ridiculous. Maybe, just maybe, in trying to maintain the 2.2 children, our society has been missing something very vital to our human existence and happiness.

I was one of those children who grew up in the family with 2.2 children. I remember always longing for more siblings. We moved a lot, and it was difficult for me to bond with other kids. Now I know that having a larger family meets the needs for intimacy on many levels. I find it interesting that many large homeschooled families tend to cut back on extra-curricular activities because they often can’t find the time, but they also need it less. Socialization happens in a large family in ways that it cannot happen in a smaller family. In smaller families children need more interaction with outsiders to get the needed “socialization”. Again, maybe our society has overlooked the beauty of what God intended all along. When we mess with God’s design, we mess-up a lot of the built-in mechanisms for healthy functioning.

Living in community, whether in a large family or a close knit body of believers who support one another and live out God’s transforming power in relationships, we learn how God uses relationships to grow us spiritually as well. One author I read shared about a mother who said it was easier to grow spiritually before she became a mom. She had always been told that the only way to grow was to read her Bible and pray more each day. That is what counted. She had never been taught to see that caring for two young children was a training ground for spiritual transformation where she could learn gratitude, humility, patience, forebearance, servanthood and any number of spiritual attributes better than any other place. From being a mother of many children, I have learned more about these things than at any other time or place in my life. I have learned more about God as well.

Redemptive Time

Today I was reading a section of a book about "redemptive time". I found many aspects of the discussion relevant to my life right now. There are seasons in every person’s life – a time to keep and a time to throw away. For years I have been keeping junk, stuff that “you never know” you might need. For the past year as we have planned an eventual departure from Africa we have been doing a lot of downsizing, purging our home of unused and unnecessary things. Little by little we have made decisions about virtually every item we possess – does it bear some special memory that I must hold on to it as a keepsake? Is it something that is still very useful to me? Would I have to buy another one in the US if I got rid of this one? Is it something I can live without? Is it too bulky to take home in a suitcase? Should I sell some in a garage sale? Should I throw it away?

Jim and I are in a period of transition in our lives, moving from one continent and way of life to another. We will need to rebuild our lives in a new context, but we aren’t quite where we need to be to rebuild. We are still in that stage where we are decluttering and purging out the unnecessary stuff. This is a hard place to be sometimes. It is hard because it is a place of “limbo”, and in many ways the progress we so desire is still out there, illusive. The dream we want to build is still far off. There is still so much clutter to get rid of and get out of the way, and the remainder of our time here that we need to complete to "finish well". I am trying to see the decluttering and waiting as part of the building process so that I do not grow discouraged.

People always want quick fixes. I want a quick fix. But change and transition takes time. The same is true with life in general. Life is often a desert journey that takes time. Just like a quick cheap thrill may feel good, but only a faithful loving relationship with a married spouse brings real intimacy. A get-rich-quick scheme may lure us, but blessings come through restraint, self-control, careful planning and saving. Time. Quick diet fads promise to help us lose weight, but only a life-long commitment to a disciplined approach will help us maintain a healthy weight. Medication can help us cope temporarily with crisis and depression, but they do always help us build the character we need to persevere through life.

I am drawn to the example of the papaya tree. We have many in our yard in Africa. They seem to sprout up everywhere, wherever the seeds fall. They are one of the fastest growing trees I have ever seen, often bearing fruit in the first year. Their wood however is soft and airy. Often the tree falls after 5 years or so, too tall to bear its own weight. So too without time growth is not mature or healthy growth, and is doomed for failure. Without time healing is only temporary and does not endure when another crisis arise. Someone once said “the longest distance between two points is the shortcut.” How many times have I found that true trying to get out of a traffic jam.

In Mark 4 Jesus talks about how a farmer plants grain and it grows on its own “thought he does not know how”. That teaches us that we cannot will growth into happening. It just happens. And it takes time. God makes it happen. Just like he makes our bodies heal after they are wounded. He also makes our hearts heal after they are wounded – after the cancer is removed of course. We cannot hide a part of ourselves. If our true self is hidden or suppressed, it may not grow with the rest of us and is left behind. When our true selves are placed in God’s hands in the presence of redemptive time, He can make us into His reborn, remoulded creation for His glory.

A Time of Change is Coming

Looking out my kitchen window, through the opend louvred glass panes powdered with dust, the anti-vole bars and screen I see and hear my children playing together in the garden, laughing, chasing eachother, swinging, running, enjoying the youth of their life without a care in the world. I cherish this moment. I realize that it won’t be long before they will never again play in this garden. They will have a new home. We will be relocating to the US in less than 5 months. Will they miss the freedom of this place? Will they long for this open, beautiful garden that has become their own private home and playground for as long as they can remember? I try to look forward to the new place that will become our home, but something will always be missed about this place. It was our first real home. It is the only home our children have ever known. Will they grow to love the new place as they have loved this place? I moved a lot as a child, and remember the resentment I felt every time we moved. But I always like the new place better in the end. I hope they can see the good and bad of each, and cherish each for the special place that each one is.