noise

I am sitting at my kitchen table this morning in my 45 minutes before language lessons start trying to communicate with God. Since i am blogging you can see how well that is going. Often times in the morning i will think "oh cool, I will pray while I am getting ready" an attempt to "practice the presence of God" in all I do. But it last for about 6 seconds and then my brain is off on a rabbit trail and 30 minutes later i think "what the heck am i thinking about?"

This morning I was looking out the window and trying to figure out what I am thinking, how I am feeling, how to express that, what to bring to the Lord this morning and I am just blank. It feels to me a little like I have about 17 TV channels on in my head at the same time. One channel is the quiet time channel...soft music...nice lighting...peaceful...it's the main one I want to tune into right now. But then there are 16 others and most of them are WAY louder than the quiet time channel. There is the financial worry channel which is actually the one at full volume today. It's practically screaming "do you have any idea how little money you have!!!!?? How the heck are you gonna get more? What are you going to do when it runs out? How are you going to get people to contribute to all these things you need money for? YAAAAA!!!" and so on. Then there is the you're turning 30 this year channel and that one has been on for a while and most often I can ignore it but I get snatches of things like "bet you never thought this is what your life would look like at 30!" Then there is the organizational and structural chaos channel which has been on a lot lately and it says things like "what are you going to do about this? what are you going to do about that? how are you going to fix this problem? what are you going to say to your boss about that one?" that channel tends to play a lot of re-runs. then there is the condemnation channel which says things like "you suck at your job. you are letting your family down. why can't you get a "real" job. people only like you for what you do for them. you are alone"

there are more...believe me. but i won't write about them. I just know that I have about 17 TV channels on in my head right now and I really just want to have ONE. And intellectually I know that worry is unecessary and that God is in control and that i can't "fix" or manipulate anything and that I just need to trust Him. but the fact remains that I feel like i can't turn these other channels off these days. And some days I think "if one more channel comes on I am going to scream". and they keep turning on and keep getting louder and the nicer channels just get talked over by all the horrible ones.

more than likely I need to get some serious time alone and away from all the distractions that are around me and sincerely ask God to turn off all the channels but one. but there is a part of me that is scared to do that becaue I might not like what is on the quiet time channel. it might be hard to deal with, or it might bring up things about myself that I don't like or it might ask me to forgive or ask forgiveness from someone I don't want to deal with. so as much as i hate the noise i am scared of the silence. so for now I stare out the window and drink my coffee and listen to 17 channels in my head.

reset

I am going to date myself a bit with this...but some of you remember nintendo right? not all this crazy PS2, X-Box, 97 buttons on one controller stuff but the original nintendo...a button, b button, up, down, left right, the end. Ok. Remember when your nintendo would freak out and you couldn't get it to play the games? what did you do first? that is right...you took out the game and blew into it. as if your saliva has some sort ability to solve electrical problems. then you blew into the nintendo itself and put the game back in to try again. and just as you starting to think everything was solved it did it again and you had to hit the RESET button (sometimes in the middle of a game which was a major bummer). I feel like sometimes God hits my reset button. There are times when something inside has gotten a little jumbled so God says, "hang on...let's just restart some things".

In the last few days a couple of things have tapped that reset button for me. I am not saying that everything is 100% in my heart or my head and the things that have been reset are sort of ongoing processes but it is nice to STOP and say, "oh yeah...I can't believe I wasn't thinking about that".

I have been reading the story of Abraham. The Father of the nation of Israel, he trusted God nearly unwaveringly, he was willing to give up what was most precious to him simply because God asked (an amazing illustration of trust). God makes some pretty crazy promises to Abraham...the craziest being that he will be the father of a nation with descendents too numerous to count. It was crazy because Abraham and his wife couldn't have kids, oh yeah and they were about 100 years old. I am sure Abraham was thinking "hmmm, I am not sure how this is going to work. maybe i misunderstood Him. maybe it was only a figure of speach. I mean we are OLD, how the heck are we going to have kids?!" But he chose to trust God's promise...even if it seemed far-fetched

Here is what happened in Genesis 18:10-14:
Then the LORD said, "I will surely return to you about this time next year, and Sarah your wife will have a son." Now Sarah was listening at the entrance to the tent, which was behind him. Abraham and Sarah were already old and well advanced in years, and Sarah was past the age of childbearing. So Sarah laughed to herself as she thought, "After I am worn out and my master is old, will I now have this pleasure?"

Then the LORD said to Abraham, "Why did Sarah laugh and say, 'Will I really have a child, now that I am old?' Is anything too hard for the LORD ? I will return to you at the appointed time next year and Sarah will have a son."

The thing that hit me in this passage was verse 14...IS ANYTHING TOO HARD FOR THE LORD?. I suppose I'd laugh too if this were my situation, so it's understandable that Sarah was a bit cynical about it. But I love this interchange between God and Abraham because God could have said, "gosh, I know this sounds really wild and sort of impossible but here is how it's going to work, so just hang in there and don't flip out or anything" but instead God says really simply the most obvious thing in the world and acts as if this HUGE impossibility is no more difficult than taking a breath...is anything too hard for the LORD? Huh...yeah...good call God. A 90 year old lady getting pregnant is a pretty crazy thing but for God it's a very simple thing. God isn't looking at my life saying, "oh man, I didn't know things would end up like that. how in the world are you going to solve that issue, how are you going to learn this lesson? Gosh, yeah you should start to panic." Nothing is too hard for the LORD. Wow. So when I am sitting around stewing over the difficult things here in Zilina, or in my personal life, or the relational stresses that can occupy my brain I have to ask myself...Is anything too hard for the LORD? Definitively NO.

This thought doesn't exactly "fix" my problems. I still have problems with work, or ministry, or my personal life. But it's a great comfort to know that none of those things are too hard for the LORD. They can be too hard for me. They can be too hard for my friends. They can be too hard for my leaders. But they aren't too hard for the LORD. So when I need help solving, understanding, or simply persevering it's amazing to know that there is nothing that is too hard for the LORD and that sometimes the answer is just to trust that and watch God do something that looks totally impossible.

weekend trip

I spent Friday and Saturday of this weekend in Presov Slovakia. This is the city I moved to when I moved over here a year and a half ago. I left there last December in kind of an abrupt way and haven't spent much time there since I left. I moved from there because I took a different job over here and needed to be where our main office was. There wasn't a whole lot of time between my determining I was moving and actually moving so it was a bit of a shock to some of my friends in Presov. I honetly don't know that I "left well". there were some people I needed to say goodbye to that I didn't but I really did think I would be back there more often.

Being back this weekend made me see how much I missed that city, and the students there and the work that i was doing before I took on a more "corporate" role. I got to spend some sweet time with college and high school girls who were a big part of my world and who I only rarely talk to anymore. It made me miss that element of my life...spending time, real time, with girls who are learning about who God is in their life. I miss knowing what is happening in their lives. I miss knowing about their stuggles and challenges and how God is growing them. Basically I miss my girls. I am so thankful I was able to see some of them (I even got to go to the wedding of one of them!) and I am thankful that I saw that as a real void in my life now. I am so thankful to realize that one of the reasons God has me here is to be a friend and fellow traveler with these girls. I didn't realize how much I missed that section of my life and it was nice to plug back into it even if it was just for a few hours.

Slovak lessons make me sweat

I am not sure exactly why this happens but every time I have a Slovak language lesson I start to sweat...bad. I noticed it last year the 1st time I met with my tutor. She was a really sweet lady (I say lady she's probably early 30s) and didn't speak English at all. She was super kind and really patient but everytime I met with her my hands would sweat, and I would end up pitting out my shirt (hey boys, who wants my number now!). Well today I started private lessons at a language school in town and as soon as i walked in the door...boom...sweat city. ugh. And the thing of it is that I am not really a "sweater". It's just language lessons that make feel like I am about to melt.

Learning language for me is probably one of the heights in humiliation. For most of my life I have been silently telling myself "Just blend in...don't do anything that makes you stick out...just blend". So situations that made me stick out unexpectedly or in a less than flattering way always caused my blood pressure to skyrocket. Think any kind of toilet paper stuck to your shoe, spinach in your teeth, mismatched outfit sort of situation and I wanted to avoid those at all costs. I hate being "obvious" unless it's on my own terms and with people I am comfortable around.

Being a "foreigner" makes blending a bit harder. In general Europeans and North Americans look different...i know that is a generalization but there is a difference in the way people carry themselves, the volume at which people talk, the amount of eye contact etc. and so it's generally pretty easy to spot someone here that doesn't "fit" and I feel like very often i stick out like a sore thumb. And then when i open my mouth it becomes painfully obvious that I am not exactly a local. I try not to talk on my phone on the bus so people don't hear me speak English and realize I am a foreigner, and I guess it comes back to not wanting to stick out.

My need to blend in though can be a problem. I won't ask for help in stores or when I am looking for something because I am afraid i won't be able to communicate what I need or that people will think I am stupid for not being able to speak Slovak. And this is probably the reason why I am so sweaty during language. I want to communicate and fit in and not seem strange to my teacher but the fact remains that I am a foreigner, I don't speak Slovak very well, and I am a "stranger" in many ways. I decided today when I went in to the lesson that I was going to just start talking. I knew I would say things really incorrectly and mess up vocab and grammar but that i was just going to use my words and keep talking even when i felt dumb and sweaty. So for an hour i sweated...and talked...and had to say "nerozumiem" (I don't understand) more times than i wanted. but I survived it and didn't flip out from feeling like a stranger and I suppose that is half the battle with language. Using your words, knowing you will make mistakes and being willing to learn from them. So I am hoping to be brave enough to stick out, and let's face it...I am a foreigner which isn't necessarilly a bad thing!