It's Not So Bad

I love those people who say the glass is half full!

I ran across this article and he has many a good point. Here is his take on the Ten Blessings of a Recession:
1. More familes eating dinner together
2. Shorter gas lines
3. Less junk mail
4. More coupons
5. Free fitness - more walking and biking
6. Bargain SUV's
7. More entrepreneurial startups
8. Growth in the popularity of gardening and growing your own food
9. Musical inspiration - more heartfelt anthems
10. New perspectives - reflect and reassess the true meaning and goals of our lives

Read it for yourself at http://www.bankrate.com/bos/news/pf/20080625_reasons_love_recession_a3.asp

Intensely Happy

Not prone to introspection, this was an interesting weekend that ran the gamut of emotion. After two staff dinners at our house, an unexpected thaw of our freezer requiring “cook it or lose it”, a new project at work, and late night sessions watching the Olympics, my energy level was low. Still, I wanted to join in the Welcome Dinners for new international students by hosting them for dinner Saturday night. We also had an offer to join our old dinner group in Little Rock for Freddy’s famous fish fry, and that sounded really exciting to our sometimes homesick hearts. What to do?

GUILT: As is sometimes the case for us, who like to keep our options open, the options expired without taking action. First, the LR trip was checked off, then the Welcome Dinner. The consolation was that with forecast of rain, we could just stick around and work on our projects. I don’t usually work on Fridays, but last Friday was spent at the office until later than usual and I ended up sleeping on the couch during the coverage of Day 7 then sleepily slipping off to bed—no projects yet. Saturday morning, I got up early to wrap a birthday present for Tozer’s Birthday Party #2 and I was glad we could be in town for that.

FEAR: While wrapping the little package, though, an alarming thought gripped me with fear. “Where are those two (sizable) checks I swept up and stuck somewhere when cleaning up the house last Thursday?” A quick look around in the usual hiding places yielded no results and my anxiety level cranked up a notch or two, but I was due to pick Liz up for the party. I kept telling myself it didn’t make that much difference, but that occasional fear that is not only in your head and heart but also moves down to your stomach was taking hold.

DISCOURAGEMENT: Here it was already Saturday approaching noon, we had missed the opportunity to go home in order to stay home and catch up, but now I was doomed to scouring the house for the missing checks. What do John and Gloria do in circumstances such as these? We took off for an outing to the A-Z store in Alma (45 miles) for an afternoon adventure to get our minds off of the lost checks.

ANXIETY: “Should we try to get back and help our friends now with their international dinner?”
occasionally checking my watch. Another expired option—pizza special picked up from Papa Murphy’s—more watching of the Olympics with one sleepy eye open (still no projects).

ELATION: In the middle of the night, I woke up and passionately asked God to remove the distraction of the lost checks and bring to mind where they might be. (I had tried this to no avail earlier in the day.) In a few minutes, after “walking backwards in my mind” as I used to remind our guys, the thought came to me that I had put an open shoebox on the floor by my bed, so in the dark, I reached over there and immediately put my hand on the blessed box. A quiet trip to the front room confirmed that the missing checks had been there all along, so it was easy to go back to sleep.

MORE FEELING A LITTLE GUILTY: Sunday morning, John’s ongoing sinus congestions was really bothering him. We were on the schedule to greet at church, so we took our positions at the door and decided to sit on the bleachers at the side since he was afraid he might need to get up and leave. Halfway through, we decided he would be better off in the open air (always the case) and on the way out decided we ought to try to redeem the weekend by going on a Sunday afternoon outing to check out the fishing spots he knew about and try to discover new ones. Lee’s short message (to be followed by an interactive activity) was on the Beattitudes, saying “blessed” means “intensely happy”. Being a good Perspectives graduate, I know we are blessed to be a blessing, but “intensely happy” seemed a bit illusive.
INTENSELY HAPPY: The trip to Beaver Dam proved to be just that kind of experience. The weather was near a perfect 10. We sat and listened to the horn blast and watched the water start to flow and felt the cool air moving up toward us. We finished off our picnic on the rocks, laughed at Zipper doing his cute things, and took a few crazy pictures. On the way back through Eureka Springs, we stopped off at Thorncrown Chapel and took more pictures to send to Easton for his “forget me not” book with the chapel in the background. Two often unphotogenic people actually produced some great pictures in the idealic setting. We returned, energized by the day and actually set out to paint the garden benches, clean the grill and do other outside projects.

DISAPPOINTMENT: Downloading the pictures on to the computer is something I’ve never felt very confident in doing, but I wanted to surprise John and do it without asking for help. I’ll spare the details, but—long story short—I forgot to save them and uncharacteristically erased them from the camera. My dear persevering husband spent a very long time trying to retrieve them, but the images were as fleeting as the happiness of the day. After the up and down experiences of the weekend, it was quite a blow to both of us.

So…we both seemed to be processing hard the state of blessedness. This is the life laboratory where it is mixed and the holy compound is produced. I want to record this to recall later because—like fish caught below the dam--we tend to remember the big events but the little ones get away, even though they are daily building blocks of discovering the sufficiency of transformed thinking. Placing lost checks and pictures on the grid of the constancy of the joy of walking in the light is the essence of walking in the Spirit. Monday morning, we find we are a little stronger in our resolve to walk by faith, a little more familiar with our heavenly Father, with a little more insight into how blessing overflows in the most unexpected places.

Thinking about June

Staying close to home is more fun sometimes that going somewhere. This week, we've been remembering why we love Northwest Arkansas so much. Thursday night was a concert at Gulley Park, Friday night was a cookout with some of the staff here, and yesterday we drove over to Eureka Springs for the afternoon. But we've had a busy June and it's fun to remember it. Mike and Susan dropped in to help us celebrate John's birthday.

Tisha and Tozer--the next generation of Kingdom builders at our big National Conference in Dallas.

Amazing Dr. Winter--still looking forward after 35 years of Perspectives.

The "War Room"

It was fun to unite Pasadena and Northwest Arkansas USCWM staff.

Liz and Gloria--the hospitality committee

JP--my boss!

Sussi and her control central team

Kevin, our friend of many years in Little Rock, is helping bring Perspectives to Brazil

Dinner with John's brothers Bryant and Ed and wives at Spring Creek Barbeque on our way out of town.

As Good as it Gets

Normally, I catch up from the weekend on Mondays, but I have a new bullet in my job description--getting out a resource newsletter to Perspectives alumnae. What looked like a short hour or two turned into an afternoon at our office, but it is a joy-filled task and I was well aware that God had given me a great privilege. I went home and cooked the corn on the cob and tomato wraps that we had bought at a roadside vendor we just discovered, right on Crossover by our house. Life is good.

It was beautiful and cool so I went out to do a little painting and ended up priming two garden benches that had weathered over the winter. Then the phone rang. It was Evan, husband of Emily and father of our dear Ella and Easton. John pretty much did the talking as I painted but I noticed my heart kind of sinking as they talked. As much as I love what we are doing right now, there is always that ache that there are grandkids a 15-hour drive away that I would love to be taking to the park, reading to, treating to McDonald's for breakfast, having puppet shows with, playing dress up with. The threatening cloud of dispair over my head turned into a full-fledged rainstorm when I came in, checked e-mail and found out about Carolyn, free of cancer for 16 years, but now faced with it again.

Just what kind of Christianity am I on a team trying to export around the world anyway? If it isn't able to fill the gaping holes of "heart hurt"--whether it's serious like starvation in a world far away or life-threatening anywhere or loneliness and disappointment--what good is it? He tells me to test me in this and see what I will do. I'm stepping out on what looks like thin air and you are the solid rock, suddenly materializing. It's good--and--it's worth exporting.

Our Cambodian Adventure

John and I just returned from two wonderful weeks in Cambodia with Hayden. One day from my journal captures the essence of the whole experience, I think. Write me at glomom@aristotle.net if you'd like to suffer through the whole account.

Sunday, May 18:
We were up early again, expecting Vonnie, Hayden’s old roommate to pick us up at 7. It was more like 7:45 after having picked up a niece and nephew (or cousins?) spending the day with him. We headed off to his village for church (Baptist), not too far out of town. We were a little late, but they graciously brought us chairs and water. At the end, they brought out some cookies for the congregation. Hayden said snacks were traditional and he added some bananas and other unidentifiable fruit to the table which was quickly snapped up.

Someone announced that those involved in the movie to be made (teaching Cambodian to tell Bible stories, effective in a Buddhist culture) should come to Vonnie’s house so when we got there in Vonnie’s brother’s borrowed Toyota, there was already a crowd. We had to wait a while until Tharit (Samuel) and David showed up. I pulled out some Kissable candies and put them on the table and they looked at them rather warily and a few disappeared. They said our food was too strange for them. Vonnie’s father was sitting at the table reading Hayden’s Cambodian Bible and later set the candies on the Bible and carried them into the house. Tired of waiting, the guys put on the costumes and they went ahead with the scene where Samuel chooses David out of a lineup of brothers.

More cell phone conversations, more confusion as to where to meet Tharit. So in the time we drove back up to the church to meet Tharit, he had arrived with his church van (rented from the church rather than a company so they could receive the $60 rental instead) and picked up all the guys (not the plan, but who wants to tell them they can’t come now? Not Hayden). By this time, it’s getting close to lunch, so both loaded cars head up the road. This mission requires sheep, almost non-existent in Cambodia but Tharit had managed to locate some dark rough-looking ones that—for the world—looked like they belonged in David’s world. The decision is made to stop for lunch, as it’s still an hour’s drive away to the sheep. The restaurant is a big open-air affair with large tables that everyone sits around on cross-legged. Hayden orders 4 dishes for the group, but the waiters see a chance to increase the income from this large group and brings out 13 dishes. Tharit and Hayden go and complain but the damage is done and the movie budget for the day has been increased substantially. I couldn’t eat anything but the rice, but these young guys seemed to think this soup with bugs in it (really!) was great.

Without any thank-you’s for the budget-breaker lunch, we loaded up again, and eventually pulled off the roadside at a non-descript little spot where they spilled out again and ran down to the muddy flowing river. We waited for a boat to cross and ferry us back to the island, inhabited mostly by widows. We noticed the boat was taking in water and were relieved to get to the island where everyone disembarked. In the typical unorganized Cambodian way, the scene was shot and the sheep cooperated beautifully. Afterwards, Tharit told us this had been a killing field and took us across the field to look in a shed where he said the bones had been gathered but someone had buried them. No one, obviously, had baled water out of the boat, so still taking it in, we arrived at the other side and, paid up, Tharit returned the vanload of boys back to the village. We were becoming hopeful that we would be returned ourselves.

Vonnie, though, thought it seemed normal for Hayden and his parents to participate in the customary Sunday afternoon visiting of each other’s houses. Vehicles used to haul things during the week were loaded today with people riding around from place to place. We stopped at a relative’s house, thinking it was where the niece and nephew lived, but they got out and played while we sat on the table in front of their house, not talking, just drinking the water they had offered us. We walked down to the river behind their house then Hayden suggested it was time to move on. One more stop was in order and this time it was where the children lived, but we still accepted another bottle of water and visited best we could. Hayden ran back over to the office and returned with spicy tuna and bread and we all collapsed. I told John while we were sitting at Vonnie’s that I felt like I might as well be in outer space, the whole thing was so surreal and I think we will always refer to Sunday as our alien adventure.

I Scream, You Scream, We All Scream...

According to that great American poetry, we all scream for ice cream! This weekend, we had a staff retreat at Silver Dollar City, ate at Fuddrucker's across the street from the hotel, and then mosied over to Cold Stone Creamery afterwards on the other side of the parking lot. At CSC, if you want just a taste, order the "Like It". If that doesn't seem adequate, order "Love It". But if you want the mother lode of that frozen delight, go for the "Gotta Have It"! If life is an ice cream parlor, why do I always order "Like It"? Provider of All Life's Delights, increase my appetite for all you have, mixed with all the add in's. I want to feel like I "gotta have it".

Connoisseurs

Since we have moved to Fayetteville, we are amazed at how the junk mail producers have found us up here. In today's mail, John received a free year reservation card from a magazine called Robb Report, subtitled "for the luxury lifestyle" for a mere $65, $153 off the newstand price. This is very interesting, considering we are doing anything but pursuing a "luxury lifestyle" up here at the USCWM. Better check that target market, Robb.

It clearly states "It's a state of mind. A way of life. An attitude. It's nothing but the best." The little enclosure for hesitant recipients--they all have these, I know; I was a marketing major--says "Why you?" They think John is "someone with sophistication, style, and a self-assured sense of the finer things in life" (meaning yachts, Chateau Haut-Brion 2002, Matasa cigars, Patek Philippe Swiss watches, Lamborghini's $1.5 million Super Coupe,...). They think John is "a connoisseur of life's rewards". That one hit me--if they only knew what a connoisseur he is, well versed on the glories yet to be revealed. He knows exactly where life's rewards are and I'm guessing they're not found in the pages of Robb Report.