Reflections on my "Redemptive Time" Post

I find it ironic that a few weeks ago I wrote about wanting "a quick fix" and not having to wait to make the transition at this phase of our lives. Now we have suddenly found ourselves swept forward very quickly into that transition due to the events of the last few weeks. As stressful as it was, I have to say that I am relieved that the time has come and we can get on with it. What a crazy ride it has been. In just a few days we will fly home to the US. We are getting anxious and excited. It is hard to imagine while sitting here by the fan in this cement-block, screened-in guest house on the Western coast of Africa at the hottest, sweatiest, dirtiest time of year, that by the end of this week we will be sitting in an air-conditioned, carpeted, dry-walled house in the Midwestern United States with 24-hour electricity, running water and all the creature comforts, with a Taco-Bell and Walmart just minutes away. The bumpy pot-holed filled dirt-roads will be replaced by smooth, paved freeways. Jim always says everything in the US is "plus doux" (sweeter, softer, more comfortable). We are so thankful for those things that many people in the US take for granted. Even at this crossroads in life where we are officially "homeless" (ok, it isn't as bad as it sounds) I am so thankful for the many blessings God has showered upon us- for family, for friends, for providing for all of our needs, for people here in Africa who have become family to us and who will always be a part of our lives even though removed by long distance, and on the other side of the ocean those from whom we have been apart for so long, who are ready to receive us back home, who are already offering their help to meet us at the airport, store our belongings, find us a vehicle, and find us housing. We are truly blessed. We count it such a privelege to have the friendship of so many and to be a part of the body of Christ around the world.

Not Looking Back

Well, we finally moved out of our African home of 11 years. It has been a hard two weeks. For more information, you can read about it on our family blog, www.bettisonfamily.blogspot.com.

It has been hard, but I'm truly thankful it is behind us and over. It may take us awhile to recover, but we are so ready to move on and look forward to starting over somewhere else together as a family. In all the stress and chaos, there was a sense of great peace in knowing we had our faith and we had eachother. Home is not a house, but it is family, and we are together through it all. Our kids seem to be taking it all very well, better than their parents for sure.

I take comfort in the words of Jeremiah, who in times of distress found hope in God, and in whom all God's people can find hope and refuge: "For I know the plans that I have for you,' declares the LORD, 'plans for welfare and not for calamity to give you a future and a hope." Jeremiah 29:11

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.