Eucharisteos!

 Raylin, Rheanna, Riley and Austin at Gina's graduation!  Austin is a confused boy, he stood when they asked family of graduates to stand, he was sitting with the Clines, and just stood as though that were obvious!  Duh!  he is a cline!  Thanks Clines for bieng family to Austin! :)  Love you kids who have now grown into such amazing adults!

 Derek, Amber, Natalie and Brian at Gina's graduation.  We are enjoying getting to know Brian so much.  He and Natalie have been dating for almost 6 months! 

 Brian, Natalie, Austin, Phil, me, Amber and Derek on Mother's Day!  The kids did a wonderful brunch, and I didn't lift a finger!

 Shoh, Tabitha, me, and Taylor!  These are the leaders that I worked with at Biola last year.  Each of them is a ministry leader and I got to pour into them as they led these ministries.  Truly me getting to work in my sweet spot!  I loved them, and my job!

                                                      Da Girls celebrating G's big day!

Helen and I at her graduation.  Helen has been a dear friend through ISF, and she is a missionary in Indonesia, home to study at ISF.  She graduated in May and is returning to the field soon.  I will so miss Helen, but it has been an honor to have walked with her these last two years.  These are just a few of God's eucharisteo's to me in the form of people.

Our "home" in Lakewood--detail warning!

 Phil and Austin headed out to a Giant's game, standing in front of our house that we rent in Lakewood.  This has been "home" since end of December 2010!  I am doing this for my friends in Ecuador who might like to see our home here, and for my mom and brother David and his wife!

 From the front door, looking into to our living area.  Notice the touches of home--my carpet from Pakistan, our paintings from Ecuador, things that Russ and Gina helped us get back up here in their shipment.  You will see those touches throughout.  Thank you Russ and Gina, and thank you to those of you who carried extra suitcases home after the wedding in June 2010!  You have helped us feel like we have touches of home around us for these last two years. 

 Standing by our front window looking into house....dining room is just to right

dining room is right by front door

 From doorway into kitchen from dining room...yes, another yellow kitchen in my long line of yellow kitchens....:)  Thank you Riley and Austin!

From other doorway into kitchen!  There are three doorways in this kitchen!

 From kitchen sink, looking back....

 Laundry by back door of kitchen, I was spoiled this summer getting to use Tassy's full size washer and dryer!  I have to take my linens to either a laundromat or to Amber's house to wash!  They don't fit in this tiny washer!  I am grateful that it is mostly just Phil and I so laundry isn't what it once was when we were 6!

 Looking out to the back yard from the kitchen door....we love our back yard and use it to entertain all the time, as the house is too small for our family to really fit in! We have had lots of fun working in the yards and bringing them back from chaos!  We love gardening, and it has been a good outlet from book work for me!

 From kitchen door, towards little hall and bedrooms, bathroom on the right

The bathroom!  Yup, after all those years in Ecuador of 3-5 bathrooms, we have only one!  Nice when it comes to cleaning for sure!

Austin/Natalie's room and my office!  The think tank!

 Our bedroom....

 Back yard from my office chair!  I love this view...and in the early morning it is getting the sunrise in this window.

 Oh, back to kitchen...our old stove!

Bedroom!   Notice my trunk from Ecuador!  A birthday gift from my 40th birthday!  I know shocking, I am over 40!  hard to believe!  tee hee!

 It is very meaningful to me to have pieces that help me feel at home!  Continuity, constancy.  I am so grateful that we have had some of those things amidst all that has been new and changing in this new season! 

We get lovely sun in our room in the afternoon!

 My printing station, and little book shelf! 

My work area!  This is where many a paper has been written, and many a test studied for!  I love sitting by this window, it offers inspiration and rest!

Love, love, love family!

Natalie, Sammie, Logan, Derek and Amber--pic nic dinner at Manhatten beach at sunset! Fun times being back together, just missing Phil and Austin and Brian! :)

Twin "A" and Twin "B"

Logan picked me up at the airport, and had lilies in his hand for me!  I was so touched!  They were from him and Natalie, but he had picked them up and chosen them!  We pulled into our driveway, and Amber came out of the house with flowers--lilies!  Think they are twins?  Think they are on the same wavelength?  Over the years I have had lots of fun observing the nuances of raising twins.  Beyond doubt in my mind there is a special connection between them.  This was just a fun, and pretty concrete example of this connection!  They had not communicated at all about buying flowers.  They just did, and bought the same ones!  [for the skeptical you may be thinking, easy!  they are your favorite, and they both knew that--no, i really have no favorite flower, love them all, so they couldn't have known my favorite, as it doesn't exist.]
Also, it was bookends to my summer.  Brad and Sandi had met me at the airport in Quito with a beautiful bundle of flowers, and Cameron had put flowers in my room at the guesthouse to welcome me back to Quito!  Flowers are a fun part of living in Ecuador, they are one of their main exports.  Flowers here!  Flowers there!  Bookends to my arrivals--eucharisteos!  Thank you!

Soul Care: Why it matters

Lush Gardens, well watered and cared for plants are a great, living and tangible picture of soul care!  We cannot see our souls as we can see a plant!  But we can learn about caring for the soul from learning to care for plants.  God has taught me incredible and powerful lessons over the years as I have gardened, and learned to garden and care for plants. (Thank you to Brenda Payne, Karan McCreery, Jan Jenison, and Linda Underwood in particular for how they taught me about gardening and flowers.) Last Spring one of our professors actually gave us each a small plant to tend and care for over the semester, as we were in training as Spiritual Friends or Directors.  At the end of the semester we had to write a paper about what we had learned from both tending a plant, and tending souls and compare and contrast the two.  I loved that assignment.  My little plant went through some interesting times, but in May when I left it, it was 1 1/2 old and was flourishing. I had had to transplant it it had grown so much.

Below that plant is pictured at the end of July.  The water from sprinklers did not reach it, and in two months, 55 days, it is bone dry, and very dead!  Two months passes quickly, how many of us push through seasons longer than two months of neglecting our souls, neglecting time with God, time to rest, time to play and laugh, and stop and smell the flowers!  We put our heads down, and barrel through "just another day, or project, or week" only if we were to look up it would be months!   I know I have been guilty of this, even in this program and the intense schedule for study, it can be a temptation.   This plant was a shocking and clear picture to me of the importance of caring for our souls as we care for plants, daily, weekly, consistently--you can't put them on hold or you can, but at great cost!  If you could snap your finger, and your soul's condition would be manifest in a plant before you, what would it look like?  Well-watered, lush, beautiful?  Or wizened, dried, brittle, crisp?  Perhaps ask someone close to you?  Maybe they are feeling the impact of your "crisp, brittle" soul!
Our of the overflow of the heart the mouth speaks, so what are your words betraying about the shape of your soul?

Lord keep me humble enough to realize that I am not a plastic plant that can go indefinitely without water or fertilizer, pruning or repotting!  I need constant care, teach me more and more what that is to be cared for by you, to care for others with your love and attentiveness.  Teach me to care for my own soul, and take responsibility for that in wisdom and discipline, and teach me when I must depend on others and be needy for the touch of another! 

Transitions--my" four letter word"! Reflections/redemption

Reflecting Christ not Chaos in Transition!

On July 25, 1999 our family loaded onto a Continental flight headed for Ecuador.  We were moving there to live and work in Quito with Youth World.  On July 25, 2012, I boarded an American Airlines flight, leaving Quito to return to the USA to finish up my last four classes of my Masters Program at Talbot's Institute of Spiritual Formation!  I had many emotions as I processed the journey in reverse that we had taken so many years ago, and all that God has been teaching and doing in me and our family through the many, many, many transitions that have faced us through these years.  I finally got to a place where I would politely but firmly say to those who said "we are in a transition period"  that they were setting themselves up for disappointment and non-reality, if they had expectation that transition would be short-lived, and then pass!  No such thing!  Living abroad in this day and age heightens the reality that transition is one of the main cornerstones of life!  People coming and going, we come and go on Home Ministry Assignment.  I can't think of too many jobs in the world where you are required to up and leave for 8-10 weeks minimum over the summer, or 3-6 months every few years, go back to a "home" country, live out of a suitcase and visit and talk about your ministry for those six months and return to the field "rested!"  For sure this system is glitched to put it nicely!  Then there are the transitions of kids graduating and you parenting in two different continents, in different time zones etc.  Yes, transition is part of life, and when God began to challenge me about it's permanence, rather than its transitory nature, I began to be helped!  This summer the hunt for eucharisteo has been significant in my journey to joy in transition.  Oh, I am far from being grace-filled and gratitude saturated in transition, I still prefer not to, still prefer permanence and constancy and stability, but God is afoot shifting my focus, and helping find His grace gifts amidst the change and shifting shadows that are part of transition.  So, I am transitioning back to the States!  For another season of an undetermined amount of weeks, months I will be here.  Phil will come back next week for a few weeks and then return to Ecuador.  He continues to go back and forth many times a year!  He has done this to allow me to be in school.   A grace gift for sure! 
Maybe the "shock" will hit, but overall, the transition has been fairly painless.  I am a little tired, it is wonderful to see the kids.  I find myself thinking about what people in Ecuador are doing, gas trucks are stirring, honking their horns through the neighborhood, my Carolina walking buddies will be in the park, Graham will be napping, etc.  I find it normal to be here, and normal to be in Quito, whatever normal is!  I have found myself thinking about how there are quite a few places that I can slip into and feel a semblance of "normal" and wonder if that is a grace gift that I have fought against and resisted for a long time, because I wanted one home, one place that I belong to.  Could it be that I am living the miracle that follows eucharisteo, joy?  It is Saturday morning, a week from now, I will be driving from Moses Lake towards Gig Harbor where I will commence my 3-week retreat of solitude and silence, part of my Masters program, and part of God's divine plan for me in 2012!

God-incidences and Eucharisteos Abound! Soul Care-2

                    Ricky and Ashley overlooking the waterfall, spending time with God.

 I looked up through the canopy of green and this sight caught my breath--Mary Kay this is for you!  I prayed for you the moment I looked up and saw this.  Mary Kay is a friend from school who shared a photograph of the sun shining through the trees in Washington on her 3-week retreat (that I am about to go on Aug. 4-24) and it was a moment that God used in a significant way to bring some things together for her, reminders of His love, faithfulness, and healing in her life.  It struck a chord in me because seeing sunlight like this has been something I have loved forever.  Mary Kay and I became friends right away when I got to ISF, and this last semester she was my prayer partner for retreat class, and wrote a retreat for me. 

 Gaby sitting on the porch of one of the few buildings in the gardens.  Isn't it a beautiful structure.  If I ever get to build a house on this earth, I want it to be in this simple style.  I love the beams and the tile roof! 

 In the afternoon I walked out to see the rose garden again, and as I did I saw Austin!  There he was enjoying the roses! 

 Stopping to smell them even!  Another eucharisteo for this mom and facillitator!  Someone appreciating and enjoying the beauty of God's creativity in flowers, down to how they smell!

 ...and ofcourse, how they look, a gorgeous double rose!

                                           This is Diana!  I wish you could know her too. 

 Ricky, reflected in the stillness of the pond below him.  This was another eucharisteo, a young man with His God, Bible in hand, praying and being open to what God is doing.

 O.k. I have lived here in Ecuador for 14 years now!  I have never once seen a daffodil.  (Bulbs aren't big here, although I will see Iris occasionally)  But here infront of me as I rounded a corner and sitting beside a stream was a daffodil!  Just one!  You got it, a eucharisteo.  I stopped, took the picture, and sat on a rock enjoying it for a while.  Then a few hours later, Laura came up to me and gave me a card, and said good bye to me!  She had to leave a little early.  I opened the card, and there on the front was a painting of a daffodil!  Laura is an artist, so my first thought was that she had painted it.  But her card told me that this was one of her grandmother's paintings.  She had just gone home to be with her family for her grandmother's funeral, so this was doubly meaningful for me that she would share this card and painting with me.  But, I ran and tried to find her, so I could show her the daffodil.  She had not seen it, and we actually ran into each other across the pond from where it was.  She came over, saw it, and I shared the God-incidence of it all with her!  She left and my awe was deep at how detailed God is in sending us gifts!  Two in one day, connected to each other in a very specific way.  There were many more, but these two had a visible connection as well.  Kind of crazy and wonderful!  "Don't be anxious about your life, what you will eat or wear, etc. because God clothes the lilies (and daffodils and every other flower) of the field and Solomon in all his glory was not clothed as they are!"  Matt. 6

 So, I took a picture of the card that dear Grandma Pat Jennings painted back in the Carolinas, and this lonely, stunning, surprising daffodil in Quito's botanical gardens.  A tangible reminder of what is always always true, God is good, and cares, and knows the hairs on my head and yours!  Why do we worry!