I had been running on adrenaline since we had arrived in East Timor. With #2 son falling sick when we arrived, I was in nurse/caregiver mode to the extreme. Besides keeping up with toddler girl without the usual strollers, high chairs and safe play areas, I also had to do round-the-clock temperature checking, medicine dispensing, sponging the fever ridden little boy. I knew I was being prayed for because I had a miraculous level of energy during the week. I didn’t not feel the exhaustion that I should have based on how little rest I was getting.

So when it came to that day we visited the clinic, I felt the adrenaline begin to wear off. As this missionary brought us for a simple tour of the facilities, I think we could all sense the deep peace this woman had from walking closely with the Lord. She brought us into the church with the thatched roof and gathered a few of the believers there. She told us her story–God’s story. She told us all she’d learned and seen and how her faith had grown as had the number of believers in her 9 years there. This was a woman from whom the love of God flowed freely. She’d seen miracles and she’d trusted God for more.

Then we sang and then that small group of believers prayed for us.

As we were gathered there and the prayers rose in a language I didn’t even know, tears poured down my face. I felt release. I felt the tiredness that had been kept at bay for all those days but the tiredness was a peaceful one. I felt like Elijah who’d been on the run and then the Lord just let him lie down under the tree and rest. I was ready and able to rest–the Lord had given to me what I needed most.

It was a time for Him to do more of the deep faith work. Dismantling and undoing the trust in self, the trust in others, the trust in doctors and medicine. It was time for him to break me (and us, as a family) so that He could rebuild us.

I shared with a few young parents about how #2 son fell sick the moment we arrived in East Timor…about how the supposed allergy problems were really a virulent virus… about how the fever went up and up… about the trip to see the doctor that we couldn’t communicate with… about the limitations at the hospital we visited…about how the sickness in him went on for five of the seven days of this very short term mission trip.

They were stunned, shocked, stressed on my behalf. I could see it was hard to hear. But I had to go on. I had shared how hard it was to go through it; I had to go on. I had to share what God was doing while bodies and spirits languished under the weight of sickness and the added weight of being far from home and our usual ways of coping.

It became a time for prayer work. Every time the fever went up, #2 son asked for us to pray for him.  “Daddy, please pray for me AGAIN.” He was learning, too. He didn’t ask for more medicine, he asked for more prayer.

It became a time for faith work. In tears we offered ourselves again and again to Him. We offered our son to Him. We are yours. He is yours. It’s all yours. In our helplessness we came back to that place again–we knew were nothing ;we had nothing. We couldn’t cure our son, we couldn’t get him to the best doctors or hospital, we couldn’t even get him the best medicine.

And all the while the Enemy was whispering–”See? See what happens when you bring kids on a mission trip? See how much trouble and worry you’ve caused yourselves and your team and the missionary you are supposed to be helping? I bet you won’t do this again.”  The enemy is betting on us coming undone. But we know better than to fall for his lies. We need faith. And with faith (which is a gift from the Father) we will obey Him if He calls us to go again. We said it in tears that night, after giving the midnight dose of medicine to the boy burning with fever. We said we would obey; we said we would not listen to the Enemy’s whispers, we would not be undone by temptation. If we were to be undone, it would be at the hands of our Maker. Our undoing would be for our transformation, for our remoulding into the vessels ready for deeper faith work.

And then I ask:

Can this go deeper?

It can. It will. I am undone and I will submit. I am His.

#1 son gets home around 7:30pm, his boundless energy spent after 2 hours of intense physical training. So we had a dilemma when we realized we needed to increase the academic training time for Chinese. We had been making an effort to do this most evenings but thought gym nights might have to be excluded. It was not pleasant most nights– our  parental efforts being  met with much complaining…but when I came out of the kitchen after washing up the dinner dishes one Tuesday night, this is the scene that greeted me: 

With the carrot of iphone game playing time dangling in front of him, tired #1 son set himself to the task at hand. “This is possible,” I thought to myself. While he need an extra incentive to get going, this became a night of possiblities in my mind. Now gym nights are also Chinese nights and no one is the worse for it.

So there are Tuesday and Thursday nights where many things seem impossible because of the late gymnastics classes…and then there are Wednesday afternoons where many things seem possible but rarely materialize.

On Wednesdays, there are no regular appointments or classes. There is no need for me to prepare dinner (we go to my in-laws’ for dinner every Wednesday evening). According to my master plan, we should have free time to go for walks or do projects or play games. It almost never happens. Schoolwork doesn’t get done in the morning and drags on until dinner time. When schoolwork drags, I drag my self though the afternoon ‘should’-ing on myself for not being more strict and resentful that I’m not getting a break. Tempers flare in our tiredness, #2 son retreats to his room to read, and #1 resists all my efforts to get him through his schoolwork. I hate it when this happens and I always tell myself there must be a better way….

Then one Wednesday, we all got up earlier, all the schoolwork was done before lunch and this is what we did while little sister took her afternoon nap:

It is possible and now that I know this, now that we’ve done it once, I pray next homeschool year we will see more afternoons of games, walks, talks or just peaceful rest. It is easy to lose sight of what is really important when the pressures of keeping up with the local curriculum loom over our heads. It is easy to swing to the other extreme and be complacent about the discipline that is good for all of us.  So, we find ourselves again teetering on a see-saw of priorities, praying we’ll get the right balance to fulfill that command to “Train up our children in the way they should go.” (Proverbs 22:6)

Training children takes discipline. All day. Every day.

(My bones are tired just writing those words.)

Writing is a discipline.

I know–people have been telling me this for years.

Getting up early to commune with God when it’s quiet is a discipline.

Yes. And I love it but don’t do it often enough.

Even the educator Charlotte Mason said it: “Education is an atmosphere, a discipline, a life.”

Discipline always seems to be an area where I fall short. I guess I need more, er, discipline…See?! There’s that word again. The long and short of it is this: If I want my life to amount to anything, I need some measure of discipline. So today I post this and today I pray–

Lord, teach me the secrets of a disciplined life in You. Not a life lived by the letter of the law but by the spirit. Let this disciplined life be immersed in grace and let me discipline myself to keep my eyes fixed on YOU.

First, it was gym. He’d been going to the gym and watching his brother  for several months when I began asking him if he’d like to try a gym class. He protested that it was too hard and he couldn’t do the things that his big brother could do. We were thinking he just lacked confidence, so we talked to him and finally persuaded him, after weeks of urging, to take a gym class for his age group. For the first month or so, he was thrilled. He got to wear his own shirt with the gym logo, go to his own class, be with one of his homeschool buddies and do lots of running and jumping. Somewhere along the way, things went wrong. His buddy switched to another class, new people joined the class, and the class got bigger. And suddenly, #2 son wasn’t so happy to have a class of his own anymore. He began complaining, not wanting to go to gym class and acting up in class. So…we talked about it, we analyzed, we thought of many possible reasons why things weren’t going well, we tried moving him to another class with his buddy, but there was no change. “It’s just not his thing,” we concluded. After all, he’s only 4…why force him to do this if he really gets nothing out of it.

Art class was our next attempt. Teacher A was a nice enough lady, but certainly more a old school teacher type than a creative free and easy type. “He just likes to do his own thing!” she exclaimed after struggling to get him through a lesson one day. She didn’t exactly mean that as a compliment. He enjoys art-y things in general–drawing, painting, doodling, etc.–so I *thought* this would be his thing…but after a few lessons we decided it wasn’t working so well either. It had been convenient for me as he had the art lesson just next door to where his brother had a weekly Chinese class…then the Chinese class ended, I was expecting and minimizing outings, and eventually that little Art studio closed.

In July last year, it was Grandmother to the rescue! She had the time to give him the attention and the walks to the park that he needed. He would be so happy and refreshed after coming back from his walks with Grandmother and was always eager to tell us what he’d seen or show us what he’d collected.

At first I felt badly that I hadn’t given him that individual time that he needed, but I decided not to dwell on that and take this as a learning point. This son is an introvert. He does not like crowds. He does not like to be in a rush. He is in his element in a 1 to 1 environment where he can go at his own pace. He doesn’t dislike people but he needs a break–a class of his own. Now it is up to me and his dad to make those special times happen–even if it is a simple prayer whispered together at bedtime or running an errand with Daddy. Lord, help us to bring up this child in the way he should go.

Over the past couple of years I have read The Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini. These two gut-wrenching stories piqued my interest in the country and its people even further. So while browing the juvenile section of the local library another title jumped out at me: Shooting Kabul by N.H. Senzai. While not as graphic as Hosseini’s novels, this book gave the same picture of Afghan culture, the same sense of cyclical desperation and hope faced by those who lived in Afghanistan in the late 20th and early 21st Century.

It occurred to me to read more about Afghanistan…but how to find the time to do research and read history books?

Then one day, while lying down looking at the bookcase near the foot of the bed, a title jumped out at me.

Inside Afghanistan.

A friend had given me this book several (7?) years ago with a pile of other things she was getting rid of. I had always meant to read it …no more ‘buts’…I got up immediately, took the book off the shelf and began reading.

The man who wrote the book, John Weaver, is no famous writer or theologian. In fact his writing style is nothing special. But it doesn’t have to be. The events that took place in his life and his reflections on those events simply had to be written down in order to fully engage and captivate a reader like me. What captivated me most was this man’s ability to stay focused on God and on his work while at the same time being completely immersed in a culture that was almost entirely Islamic. He was as constant in his love of the country and people of Afghanistan as he was in his love for God.

It was a refreshing read for me, exhausted as I am on most days. So I can review the book, and recommend it, but I think the real challenge is to review my life, my mission, my concern for those who might be in need around me and in the world. John Weaver stands as an excellent model for me in this.

To be perfectly honest, I LIKE staying at home. I don’t feel the need to go out every day. A walk outdoors is fine but those long trips out (as most of them are) really wear me down. I’m making efforts to simplify.  I’m looking at my commitments and ruthlessly deciding what might have to go. I’m fasting from Facebook (and may never go back). I hate to let people down or to back out on plans (I *really* wanted to see that good friend off at the airport at 4:30am but just could not do it) so I often keep going until I reach a breaking point and then do nothing at all for a while. I’m trying to slow things down now before reaching that point.

We are coming to the end of our first 12-week school term and I am looking forward to a planned week off of school. We’ll be going to the zoo one day and I have some time reserved for planning term 2. I’m hoping we can spend most of the week just enjoying being at home.

But now, having lived in Asia for the past 11 years, I have done things in the kitchen that never even entered my imagination. I grew up in very white, very southern, very deep-fried community. I hardly ate rice. I never set foot in a Chinese restaurant until I was in university. Taco Bell was about as ethnic as our family ever got when it came to eating out.

There have been several moments of epiphany over the past 11 years in which I realized I turned a corner in cultural assimilation–one of them occurred in the kitchen just the other night.

I had a number of fresh vegetables that needed to be eaten–lettuce, baby spinach, celery, carrots, cucumbers. I looked the lot over, washed them, chopped them and thought  “salad”. Just as was turning to get the oil and vinegar out of the refrigerator to make salad dressing I thought, “Ed will hate this.” He’s Chinese after all; he has this thing about eating vegetables raw. I’m not sure if it has more to do with the food being cold or the uncertainty as to whether the vegetables have been washed thoroughly enough to get all the soil and “fertilizer’ traces off. He does eat salad and knows it’s healthy, but I can tell it makes him uncomfortable at times.

Hmm. I could fry the spinach, but it’s really not enough to make a reasonable sized dish on its own. And then it hit me: Fry it all. Yes. Fried salad. A little oil, a little salt, some water later to make a little sauce. I used all my vegetables and Ed ate heartily.

I have entered a whole new cooking world.

Fried salad. I should write this down.

How do you do it all?

Do you have any help?

How do you manage three kids by yourself?

Can you still homeschool with the baby around?

You cook?!?

I usually answer these questions with the same list of replies–and I try to keep the focus on the things I have:

–I have boys who are older now and do a lot of things for themselves

–I have my rocking chair next to the school tables so I can feed the baby while supervising lessons

–I have a part-time house cleaner

–I have a husband who does a lot of things around the house and with the children

–I have good friends who come to my rescue when I need it

–I have a small cafe downstairs where I can buy food on days when cooking is difficult

–I have a dishwasher and a clothes dryer

Frankly speaking, I have many things and people that help and I have it a lot easier than many other people I know who don’t have all these things that I have. Many people, usually people who don’t know me that well, seem to view me as a have not. That is one thought-path I don’t want to walk down. No, I don’t have a full-time live-in maid. No, I don’t have a spotless home. No, I don’t have perfect control over my tongue when I’m at home with my children all day. And no, I don’t have perfectly behaved children…

But I am convinced, in the midst of the messes we all make, that this is right for our family, it is settled–settled in the deep place in a way that makes me able to say truthfully that I like being home with my children and I enjoy homeschooling.

I have so much.  Above all, I have  Grace, which covers me in the areas where I’m a have not.

Bebo says it best:

The requirements on the award are as follows:-
1. Specify three destinations to which you want to travel and write why.
2. Pass on if you wish, to as many or few as you wish.
3. I think I would add a thank you to the blog that gave it to you is in order as well. : )

My choices…

1. Greece

I have a fascination with the sea and it’s immensity. I would love to spend a summer island hopping in the Aegean. What I really have always wanted to do is to spend a weekend at the monastery at Mt Athos…but when I read up on it, I learned that women are not allowed.

2. Turkey

I love history and I love Middle Eastern history especially. I don’t want just a week in Turkey…I’d want to spend a year there…travel to the cities mentioned in the Bible and then some.

3. Odessa, Ukraine

I spent a year in Odessa about 15 years ago. This photo shows an ever familiar courtyard scene. I have heard the city has changed tremendously and I would love to go back and visit again.