lessons in giant pumpkins

A year ago in October, a friend was describing the process of growing giant pumpkins. Listening to her, however, I knew it was an analogy for my life. Hang with me here as I describe the process:

Giant pumpkins take a special kind of seed planted in a excellent blend of fertilized soil. They need a lot of sunshine, and a fair amount of water.

The good growing conditions are not enough. Once the vine has grown to a certain length, and the flowers have turned into a number of small round fruits, the farmer has to do some knowledgeable selection.

The farmer's role is crucial. She chooses the one best pumpkin on the vine she believes will grow to be a giant, and must pinch off all the other baby pumpkins. They all look like they could grow to be equally large, but she must choose.

If they aren't pinched, then a good number of pumpkins will grow, but none of them will be of unique size. You see, there is only a certain amount of nutrients to go around. Funneling all of the energy of the plant into one fruit is what creates the giant, prize-winning pumpkin. One vine can produce either a lot of normal sized pumpkins, or one giant pumpkin, but it cannot do both.

My friend's narration of the process confirmed that in my life it was pumpkin pinching time. Part of that, I knew immediately, was laying this little blog aside for a while - it was one thing that could be pinched.

The timing of all this fell a few months after our return to the U.S. from a season of overseas adventure. A season when nearly everything that gave me comfort had been stripped away. I didn't feel surprised that my little writing hobby here was next.

I was decidedly disappointed. Mostly in myself, realizing that I am not capable of carrying all things well (this truth always comes as a surprise to me). After all of the letting go through our year's adventures, after all the laying down of things, it was disappointing that there was still more to surrender. There always will be.

Through the disappointment, I could see a gentle INVITATION. God's ways are never forceful, they are invitational. Trust me with the gifts I gave you in the first place, He faithfully whispered into that anxious place in my heart. Another invitation to lay something down is another invitation to grow

Writing has been a great gift to me. To me. It had become a gift of allowing me a place to process in all of those years stuck at home with small children. A gift of using my brain in a season of very limited academic stimulation. A gift of encouragement when I couldn't actually be with other human beings over 3 feet tall. A gift of having a place to articulate all of the growth I was experiencing as a mother, without physically leaving my house full of babies. A gift of using a gift right from my living room at nap time.

Then this past spring, our family got out in the dirt together to begin our vegetable garden, around 6 months after the conversation with my friend. I came across an old paper bag we've had lying around the garage for years labeled "GIANT PUMPKIN SEEDS". It was surely a sign.

For fun, I investigated and discovered that the grand prize for giant pumpkins at our local county fair is $400. Exciting! This must be the year that pinching pumpkin in gardens and lives would lead to something glorious, potentially ending in a notable prize.

I planted 10 seeds. Despite being many years old, every single of one of them sprouted. The amount of green vine produced from 10 seeds soon took over the perimeter of the garden overflowing onto the driveway. Despite some loss of vines to gophers and others to poor location, very quickly my garden became a jungle of pumpkins vines (with some tomatoes, green beans and sunflowers mixed in.)

Favorite summer game: pretending to be bunnies in the overgrown garden.

Choosing a few of the Giant Pumpkin vines that looked worthy, I faithfully pinched, watered, and rolled those pumpkins regularly for roundness, doing everything I could to grow a giant prize winning pumpkin.

Despite all of my best efforts, at the end of the summer, my largest pumpkin came in a good 400 pounds below the weight of the County Fair prize-winners. They were beautiful, but not big enough to bother entering the county contest.

It seems to me that God has a very good sense of humor. While I felt certain that I was called into pinching pumpkins and funneling my energy into just a few things I am called to do well (namely, parenting children and being present in the lives of those in a few select ministries right in front of me), God's little metaphor helped me see that His intentions were never for me to end up a prize-winner.

Sometimes we are simply called to lay things down. They may be inherently good and wholesome things, gifts from God Himself. Laying one thing down may be the key to allowing something else to grow. A lot of times, the things we faithfully cultivate will not be prize-winners, and that doesn't mean they aren't worthy.

We ended up with somewhere over 50 individual pumpkins and an uncounted number of small gourds in our garden this year. Ironically, most of the vines came up as volunteers out of the compost pile, which means they didn't take any energy from me at all. I never expected the abundance of fruit I didn't plant.

Perhaps we found more joy in giving our abundance of pumpkins away to friends and family than we would have in any prize? After giving so many away, we still ended up with a porch full of pumpkins. Because I grew them myself, I loved all of their imperfections, warts, ridiculous stems and dents more than usual this year.

I share this today because, after all this time, I may pick up and write on this blog periodically, and I may not. Either way, I've learned a lot about pinching pumpkins, and a lot about what it means to lay one thing down in my life in order to let something else grow. Not a single one of us can grow all things well. Maybe you, too, need encouragement to lay something down.

From seed trays...

... to planting in rows...

... to garden jungle.

Help bringing in the harvest.

Carve 'em up!

As a much better surprise at the County Fair than an award for a giant piece of fruit was Annike's fun "Best In Show" award for her collection of bird nests! We do love the County Fair!

the cultural stronghold of stuff

For a better reference of understanding, you may want to start reading with the first two posts in this series on cultural strongholds:
1)  Cultural Strongholds
2)  The Cultural Stronghold of Being in Control

* * * * * * * * * * * * *

A theme of our past year has been purging the "stuff" in our lives. Last July, we left on our traveling adventure with 4 suitcases, a stroller, and 3 car seats, which actually isn't that much when you consider that we would be gone for 9 months. One of our main goals was to live simply, in every sense of the concept. We began with our physical needs, buying only what we needed and traveling light. With that in mind, we still managed to collect plenty along the way including every kind of winter clothing, assorted toys, bicycles, a coffee maker (because we kept showing up in new places that didn't have one and caffeine remained at the top of the "need" list), school supplies, stuffed animals, and of course, mementos from every touristy place we visited.

The problem was that we had to keep moving, literally. Each time a new change came along, we had to reconfigure our collection so that it could all fit into our car (what I consider the size of a small SUV.) If you've ever taken a road trip with children, then you understand this was not an easy task. We were already living with only the bare essentials, so anything we allowed ourselves to collect felt either necessary or meaningful.

We discussed other options, like boxing things up to ship to the U.S., or buying a luggage container for the roof of the car, but those options felt like compromises to our original goal to live simply. Anyone can buy more storage space, but it was the discipline of regularly purging a lot of stuff we liked that began to shape our character. With the size of our car as the limiting factor, we repeatedly opened ourselves up to redefining the difference between our needs and our wants.

In the process of packing up monthly, sometimes weekly, I often found there was something I had trouble letting go of. There were all kinds of reasons for wanting to keep things... memories, fear of future need, comfort, not wanting to waste money and buy the same thing again later. It was strange to find that certain items had almost a physical hold on me, and I struggled to justify keeping them.

What surprised me every time was the feeling that overcame me when I finally decided to let an item go, sometimes only after a disagreement with my husband about the importance of said item. I expected sadness, or regret, or loss. Every time, I was overcome instead by the feeling of freedom.

Anything we will ever own is accompanied by a lie we find easy to believe. The lie comes in many variations, but the crux of the lie is to elevate the importance of the object in our lives. It tells us that we need this particular item for happiness or comfort or ease, and letting go of it will harm us in some way. That lie is a well-established stronghold, and we become slaves to it when we can't let things go.

The truth I understand better than ever is that letting go of things brings me freedom, and therefore ownership brings the opposite of freedom. I can see it in the contrast of my two lives, one much simpler than another. Part of the lie I bought is that all of these things purpose to make my life easier in some way, but I will tell you that a bigger house takes longer to clean, and requires purchasing more furniture to fill more rooms, and becomes a time vacuum in the effort to maintain all those things. The more toys my kids own, the more toys get spread around the house throughout the day, and the more time it takes to pick up those toys every evening, assuming they get picked up. Bigger, newer, and more does not equate to better.

All of the stuff just adds to the burden of investing more and more in myself, me, and the things I own. Very few items I own represent time or money invested in issues that impact an eternal level. The minute I take even a small step backwards to look at a bigger picture, the "stuff" in my life doesn't matter. For this reason I find it supremely unfulfilling.

I share this in my effort to reconcile the difference between two extreme worlds. While the reality of our lives as travelers could be pared down to a few suitcases, the realities of our lives back at home inevitably include a lot more ownership. Yes, it can be viewed as good stewardship, and part of being a responsible adult, and despite the picture I just painted, I don't actually believe it is wrong to own things... I just wonder how we can practice ownership in a way that is honors an eternal perspective?

One conviction we want to live by is that whatever we own we should be sharing. Own a car? Go out of your way to pick people up in it. Own a house? Invite people to it. Own a set of china dishes? Eat on them with good friends, and maybe even small children. Maybe. Own a lot of good books? Loan them out and don't worry about whether you get them back. We can remain in a healthy status with our things as long as they don't begin to be the owners of us. Sometimes we don't realize we have bought the lie until we have trouble sharing or letting go.

Our normal California lives will never have to fit into one of our vehicles, but that season practicing simplicity in the discipline of purging will not go wasted. I feel especially glad for the victories I've seen in the lives of my children, as one child in particular comes from the variety that cannot throw away her straw from a restaurant but instead wants to keep it in a special box in her room, filled with other such junk. Eek! At the end of our trip, watching her freely choose toys to give away was part of an ending I never expected.

Behind the letting go is freedom from the stronghold of material things and the false sense of security they provide. In letting go of things we can hold, we invite the same freedom to filter into other parts of our life. Living simply is a philosophy for more than the stuff we collect, but also for our emotional hang ups, our circumstances, our relationships, our whole lives. This is the miracle of breaking a stronghold.

the cultural stronghold of being in control

Last week I talked about the idea of cultural strongholds that we are often blind to living in the U.S.A. You can read a more detailed explanation about them here. Accepted parts of our culture can
become strongholds in a believer's life that are hard to identify. That's one of the deceptive powers of a stronghold.

My family and I may have moved to Switzerland for part of last year, but our bigger journey was the one of surrender that started well before we left the U.S. It began in the quiet places of our heart with a simple willingness to be pushed a little bit outside of what felt comfortable. With each baby step, there was a letting go process that required surrendering many previously unidentified fears and expectations. Over the course of the year, we were gradually stripped of so many things that we considered safety zones. 

Through the stripping process, piece by piece, layer by layer, we began to see the value of living a little less in control of our lives. It was a little more surrendered to a God who knew just how to move the pieces around. It required a lot of trust in Him because the pieces were always landing in a way that didn't necessarily make sense, but the end was also far better than we might have imagined.

Coming back home after this unique year, I am surprised to hear so much limitation in the voices of friends talking about basic decisions that are made. There is an amount of measured control, and I hear the sounds of holding back out of fear or anxiety. Over and over I hear the wonderful, well-meaning people around me limiting themselves to all of the things that make them comfortable, or that give them a sense of routine, or that offer security in some form. Whatever seems safe is viewed as a decision made in "wisdom"... but it isn't wisdom unless God is intricately involved in the process. And it can't be confirmed as the best decision if it is actually made out of fear.

The school example comes to mind, because how many of us have felt paralyzed when deciding where to enroll our first child into kindergarten? There are so many options, and all of them seem to involve putting our babies into school with ravenous wolves. There is stigma against public school, and snobbery among private schoolers, and defensive tendencies among home school families, because after all, everyone who isn't homeschooling has a conflicting opinion. I had a friend recently tell me all about the plan she had for her child's future through school, beginning with kindergarten on up through college. There is nothing that can make me feel more inadequate than a conversation with a woman who has a plan that reaches farther into the future than my plan does.

The thing is that there isn't just one way. It does matter where and how our children are schooled, and there isn't a one size answer that fits all. Whether it is schooling, or which side of town to live on, or which job to take, many of life's biggest decisions inherently have no moral right or wrong, and yet the choices matter immensely.

It isn't the choices, or circumstances, or upcoming changes that my dearest friends are experiencing that troubles me, it is the habitual inflexibility I hear while confronting some of life's big decisions. I hear this constantly limiting language used, and I readily admit to having said most of myself at one time. I hear it in the "I could never"s...
"I could never move to that side of town"...
"I could never leave this house that we have lived in for so long"...
"I could never learn to do that at this point in my life"...
"I could never uproot my children"...

We control our lives by limiting them. 

Every time we limit ourselves, we actually limit God. We cripple His ability to lead us somewhere. Maybe He wants to whisper softly that our child could be a light in the local public school. Or maybe He wants to challenge us to be become people who stretch beyond our natural personality and gift set... just so He can step in and provide the strength and abilities we need to do what He's asked. Maybe He wants to take us down a path that involves some hard work, or discomfort, or insecurity. Maybe He will lead us in a direction that will increase our dependence on Him rather than decrease it. Maybe.

Many of us who follow Jesus desire to live a life of big faith. We admire faith stories, and want to see God move mountains because we believed He could. But our lives in America have grown so comfortable, and predictable, so full of tangible security, that we have little left that we need to trust God for. After all, if I have already decided where the safest place to send my child to school is, then why do I need to exercise big faith?

Ironically, it feels harder to live surrendered in a setting that provides a lot of security. We are wired as human beings to seek out safety, and once we find it, to cling tightly to it. Comfortable things are just plain difficult to let go of. On the contrary, the more uncertainty or insecurity we are experiencing, the more likely we are to trust God with it. Hard things are easier to surrender to a God who loves us, because we just plain don't have any other choice.

Our lives are pretty easy here in 21st century America. But we still live with a lot of limitations, like parameters around with what we are willing to trust Jesus. It is a deception to believe that being in control is all about making decisions out of wisdom. It may instead be making decisions out of fear. That, my friend, is a stronghold.

* * * * * * * * *
"The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom."

Psalm 111:10
* * * * * * * * *

My challenge is to ask God today, with lots of prayer and an open mind, to reveal an area where fear, rather than wisdom, is dictating your decisions. A challenge to identify and begin to crumble a stronghold.

cultural strongholds

It has taken the whole of last month to settle back into our California home, with all of the unpacking and reconnecting and catching up on the duties of property ownership. Now school, and temporary work, and the sketching of plans that come next but still remain too uncertain to sit comfortably in them.

There was certainly some culture shock upon reentry to our old lifestyle, and I am finding that as the stereotypes suggest, everything is indeed bigger in America. We can't find enough laundry for a full load in these luxurious washing machines. Many trips to Costco have not filled up my giant refrigerator. And my daily errands feel a lot farther away than they used to... can I possibly be remembering wrong? We miss walking to the grocery store every other day, but we are also happy to be sleeping in our own beds after eating a delicious plate of Mexican food.

While the "shock" portion of reentering American culture is already fading, I am fighting desperately to hang onto all of the cultural revelations. We had a rare opportunity to have our eyes opened to the way things have always been done. I don't want to forget what I see now that I have never seen before.

Often as a discipline of embracing new or renewed truth in my own life, I write about it. Processing all that I have learned about myself as a follower of Jesus over the course of this past year has taken longer than I expected, but finally, I am reaching some articulate thoughts. Over the next month or so I am challenging myself to write a little bit more, sharing here a series of cultural strongholds that my eyes have been newly opened to. These are a few aspects of our culture that now stand out in sharp contrast to the way that we were living overseas, and I can see how they are crippling to our culture.

Ancient strongholds were fortresses set up against the attack of enemy armies. I picture some of the crumbling castles that we visited in the medieval towns of Europe, often on the crest of a hilltop, surrounded by a fortified wall. It was a good defense and took a lot to tear those walls down. When the whole land surrendered to invaders, these strongholds firmly resisted.

When God invades our life we can surrender it to Him willingly and still withhold areas for ourselves, like strongholds. Within that surrendered life, we manage to maintain a lot of fortified walls... some out of self-protection, some out of fear of the unknown, or some walls that we simply refuse to see because they blend in so smoothly with our surroundings. It has never been His way to take our lives by force.

Cultural strongholds are unsurrendered areas that appear repeatedly among person after person in a particular culture. They stem from aspects so accepted in our culture that when a person turns her life over to Jesus, the cultural stronghold remains unnoticed, just like that well-disguised fortified wall. And yet, living a surrendered life means that every piece of it should get turned over when God invades.

The saying goes that "ignorance is bliss", but I wouldn't feel convicted about sharing all of this if I believed we were better off not knowing. Withholding some areas from heavenly influence might sound tempting, more comfortable, easier, but it doesn't make our lives better.

We have a lot of growing problems in the U.S. like anxiety, and addictions, and the break down of the family unit, and teen suicide. Big and broken things that often affect Believers as statistically often as non-Believers. I can't help wondering if we could change that by revealing and surrendering some of our strongholds.

Our life overseas living in foreign countries was very simple, full of humbling and hard experiences, and challenging on every level. It included many adventures but lacked any frills. The part I miss the most is our utter dependence on God for each decision that we made.

There are four specific areas of my own life where strongholds were revealed and broken, and I am fighting to keep them from succumbing to cultural norms now that we are once again living in a setting where they are completely acceptable. Join me (in what I hope is a weekly post) over the next month to read a little more about these areas as I see them. And pray for me as I put them into words as I will pray for those who read this.

Next time: The cultural stronghold of being in control

plant your garden

One of the hardest things about this season abroad for us has been all of the transitions we have faced. We have had housing changes, and friend changes, and school changes, and neighbor changes, and routine changes, and even a change in the country we live in, resulting in a significantly different culture and community change mid-way through our time here. Flexibility has become our motto, but some of the transitions grow tiring over time.

Around a month ago we made the move to our new residence in Switzerland, which has turned out to be a lovely place and even comes with household pets that the kids adore. There is a long and involved story that I won't tell here, but this house is only ours for 3 months, at which point we need to find another place to live. Another transition. Another unknown. Another distraction from the things I expected to be focused on.

Meanwhile, in this season of changing fall colors and tentative plans, I have been thinking about our garden from our California home. It takes some degree of permanence to want to plant a garden. This year, we opted not to plant our vegetables because we knew we wouldn't be home to harvest them. What is the point of planting a garden if you can't enjoy the fruit?

As we were getting ready to leave back in June, however, we discovered a large vine of volunteer pumpkins sprouting on the hillside beside the driveway. It started itself from last year's gourds that we aimlessly tossed into a composting hole, and looked like it might produce 20-30 large pumpkins. I have to laugh because I always dream of having an entire porch full of pumpkins that I didn't have to pay $15 each for, and this would have been the year. Never would I have planted those pumpkins knowing I wouldn't be around to harvest the fruit.

Living under temporary circumstances can send us into a form of self-preservation fearing the commitment or energy it takes to invest in something that might not end up being permanent. Whether it is pumpkins or relationships, I find that the changes, the uncertainties, and the knowledge of upcoming transitions, makes me hold back.

In a season full of temporaries, I struggle with not wanting to invest in whatever today holds because tomorrow I might discover it was all for nought.

No one knew this better than the exiles of Israel, who were carried from Jerusalem into a foreign land against their will, with no return plan in sight. Please don't mistakenly assume that is how I would describe myself right now, it is just to say that the exiles knew better than anyone what it meant to be strangers in a land leading a life full of transitions.

Jeremiah 29 is a beautiful chapter in the Old Testament written as an exhortation for them to get up and live their lives no matter what they thought might come in their future. This is a passage quite well known for a few verses that promise God's prospering plans, hope, and future. While it is wonderful to receive an encouraging promise for the unknowns in life, sometimes we want more. Sometimes we also want instructions about what to do next:

"This is what the Lord Almighty, the God of Israel, says to all those I carried into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon: "Build houses and settle down; plant gardens and eat what they produce. Marry and have sons and daughters; find wives for your sons and give your daughters in marriage, so that they too may have sons and daughters. Increase in number there; do not decrease. Also, seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you into exile. Pray to the Lord for it, because if it prospers, you too will prosper... 

"...For I know the plans I have for you," declares the Lord, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you a hope and a future. Then you will call to me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.""  

Jeremiah 29:4-7, 11-13

More than just a promise, these are instructions on how to live while we wait.

"Build houses and settle down; plant gardens and eat..." Those things don't happen overnight. They take time, and materials, and energy, and the hope of getting to enjoy the house built out of much labor, or the fruit produced by that garden.

The truth is that no one can ever know what is in store for the future. Some of us are living in a season we believe will be the same for the next 20 years - but that can only be an illusion. We can't know what will happen tomorrow, no matter how secure today seems. I might be feeling a bit unstable as I see the reality of transitions approaching, but they are coming whether I see them or not.

In this season of temporaries, I recognize God's desire for me to plant gardens even if I am not the one who gets to harvest the fruit, or eat it. His instructions are to invest no matter what I see in the future. And to trust His prospering plan.

Might you, also, be living in a place that you didn't intend?  Plant your garden.

Feeling left behind by others who are pursuing their dreams while you wonder if you will ever get to pursue yours?  Plant your garden. 

At home with small children who deter all goals and sense of productivity?  Plant your garden.

Stuck in a job that you don't want forever?  Plant your garden.

Dreaming of a future that is more comfortable, or more exciting, or less hard work? Plant your garden.

In "exile" somewhere, not knowing how to proceed?  Plant your garden.

Stop wasting time waiting around for a different season in life, or wishing things were different. Plant your garden.

 

a season abroad

This is a continuation of my last post, which may be important background information for what our family is doing next. I didn't intend to leave the end of that last post hanging mysteriously... I just wasn't ready to put it out there in all of its permanence on the internet.

So many details are left unconfirmed, subject to change, negotiable. We are building an entire trip around details we don't have control over. There are days when that fact is the cause of major anxiety. The future is so uncertain... and yet... isn't it always uncertain?

Walking forward continues to seem like the right thing to do, one step at a time, not being able to see clearly down the long path but only knowing what is right in front of us. This is not to be a trip planned around knowing all of the details. In fact, the one thing we are counting on is that the details are certain to change.

Perhaps this is because the purpose of our journey is wrapped up in who we want to become rather than where we want to end up. It is accurately a journey, rather than a destination.

In two short months our family is going to embark on a character shaping, patience trying, comfort stretching, stressful but exciting journey lasting around 8 months to........ GERMANY and SWITZERLAND!

To satisfy curious minds, the skeleton plans are as follows: My husband has applied to a masters' program in public health at the University of Basel (Switzerland) which will begin in the fall. We hope to live over the border in Germany and enroll the girls in a bilingual German/English school for language, culture, and community. To help finance the journey, we have begun the process of setting our California home up to be rented out. My personal role overseas will be much of the usual caring for my family and supporting the dreams of my spouse, except in an unfamiliar country where I am attempting to also learn the language. When I can steal the time, I will update this blog with any of the usual or unusual lessons God is teaching us through the rhythm of daily life. We aim to arrive in Europe early to give a bit of extra time for getting settled and exploring before school starts in September.

There are a number of problems with these plans, starting with the fact that my husband has not yet been accepted to his program, and we don't yet have visas to live in a foreign country. My husband has to quit his job to make this work, and most of us don't speak German. Let me reiterate, this is not to be a trip about the details. We will humbly accept any prayers for the way things fall into place, because right now all we actually have in hand is our plane tickets!

Dreaming this up began with a whole series of circumstances that I can't even begin to explain. We have been processing what it might look like to live creatively, then seized an opportunity arising from a job transition. Blending that with a desire to live abroad for a season as a way of learning to see the world through the eyes of another person led us to where we are right now. All of it steeped in prayer. On top of that, my husband has always had a deep heart for Europe and its people. The echo resounding in my head is that when a place and a people group call your name, it is never an accident.

There are plenty of people I know doing far more courageous things, living in far reaches of the globe, serving God as missionaries to the world's injustices. It is a great calling, and I want to be clear that not for a minute do we pretend to compete. In God's kingdom, however, every one of us is called to live with a missional heart. In Africa or the United States, in El Salvador or in Europe, in poverty or in wealth, as a pastor or a mailman. We are each challenged to live our individual lives in way that speaks loudly of who Jesus Christ is. Pursuing that missional call has led us to this juncture. Whatever the big picture reason, pursuing a season abroad seems to be the next thing for us.

Thus we are following loosely laid plans of men with a sensitivity to discerning the greater plans of God. We go with missional hearts in a desire to be part of community, linger in conversations, love boldly in Truth and be challenged in our world view. It is the kind of mission that may change our own selves more than it changes the people we meet.

If you want to follow along with our adventures, this blog will be the place to do it. We may need your comments to encourage and re-inspire along the way. (There is a place to sign up for email updates in the margin on the right if you aren't good at remembering to check on your own.) I can't promise regular updates, but I do promise to be authentic about the trials and joys of our travels, and the baby steps we take in seeking to become the kind of people that God wants us to be with the kind of character that God wants us to have.

UPDATE (6/1/2016): My husband was accepted to the masters' program he applied to at the University of Basel!  This is one more piece that fits into the greater puzzle, but it apparently does not guarantee our visas to stay for longer than 90 days. We hope to get word about those by August.

**above photos taken in Austria looking into Switzerland the last time we visited in 2013**

instead of pursuing happiness

When I first met the man I would one day marry, I feared I was too young to settle down. There was so much that I had yet not done. He met me at a time in my life when my future stretched grandly in front of me. I had visions of living abroad, learning new languages, traveling the world on a budget, meeting interesting foreigners, and practicing a life of abandon that both honored God and gave me global experiences.

It was still in the early days of the relationship, however, when I wondered if, despite the many unfinished goals on my list, God might be intentionally pairing us. He had put a man in front of me who shared so many of my dreams. Travel and global adventures being a few of them.

In our first years of marriage, he challenged my ideas in the best of ways and took me to places I had never heard of before. We honeymooned on the Cook Islands, got our scuba certificates on the island of Utila (Honduras), served on medical mission teams in rural El Salvador, and in between jobs spent 3 months backpacking through Europe sleeping on trains and in some of the dumpiest hotels imaginable.

That was all before children entered the picture. Something happens to those dreams of wild and unconventional adventures when our families start to grow. We begin to pursue stability and consistency, schedules and routines, dependability and sleep. Mostly we pursue all things related to sleep. Stability is a necessity of survival during the little years.

Last week, my husband and I celebrated 13 years of marriage. I like this photo from our date night out because we look happy. And we are happy... mostly. Happiness doesn't happen on its own though.

In fact, we have spent the majority of the past year in conversations together processing some of the deeper issues of what this life should be all about. We find ourselves in a place with much of that dearly sought stability... with a house, and a big yard, and two cars, and three kids, and a good school, and nice friends, and a Bible-teaching church. This is what it looks like to live the quintessential American dream. We can feel immensely grateful for the blessings of this season in our life, at the same time as we wrestle with that niggling feeling in our hearts that this isn't the end of the story for us. Because never have we been fooled into thinking that pursuing the American dream is what makes "happy".

There was that time in my youth when I saw myself as an adventurous go-getter, but someone much more subdued has emerged out of me in these recent years of raising small children. Anything outside of our routine, that doesn't involve staying at home, with access to my car, and the closet full of entertaining toys for the kids, and the familiarity of my community just sounds really hard to me.

Perhaps it is for this reason that my personal journey this year has been to surrender more. That journey, and my husband's own mid-life "reflection", as we have come to call it, is leading us to let go of some of our so called stability in order to make room for the next thing God might have for us. We are being challenged not to fall into the trap of pursuing the things that deceptively lure us to a place we never intended to end up. Anything other than God that begins to master or motivate us can become a false promise to perceived happiness.

Our trust and hope cannot rest in the pursuit of stability, or the pursuit of empty promises, or even in the pursuit of happiness itself. More accurately, happiness comes as a kind of by-product to the pursuit of God's best. When we are becoming who God uniquely and individually created us to be, fulfilling our purpose in Him, then sometimes along the way we are gifted with that wonderfully warm feeling called "happy". The hard days still exist, but perhaps happiness finds us a little more often when the dreams we are pursuing mostly belong to God.

My husband continues to challenge and stretch my ideas, and he gets the major credit for what we are about to do next. I am not ready to reveal here on this public space quite yet, but keep checking back! Thirteen years into our marriage, another great adventure awaits. In fact, after thirteen years, the adventures just keep getting better... stay tuned for more details!

In the meantime, here are some photos of our past weekend/anniversary/family trip to a place that gives me a glimpse into God's incredible imagination - Yosemite National Park.

Upper and Lower Yosemite Falls at peak water flow due to snow melt
- the tallest falls in the United States with a vertical drop of 2425 feet.

surrender continued

There are sounds of sweet giggles coming from the other room, little voices playing. The 4-year-old is mothering the 2-year-old who is pretending to be her pet puppy. Two little children playing beautifully with each other... until, suddenly, they are not.

The music in my ears has quickly become shrieks, and thumps, and crying, and "that's MINE!" yelled with ferocious intensity. Best friends or worst enemies... they don't always bring out the best in each other.

It amazes me how children don't realize how much they love a toy until they have to let go of it. We all have to start out somewhere on our journey of letting go of things. The question ringing in my heart is: Where does it end?

I am pleased to report that I have made it past the toy stage, and I have no trouble handing over colorful plastic animals and other things used for the make believe world. If it has no practical purpose I am happy to share, toss, or pass it on. Instead, I have graduated to learning to let go of much bigger items and aspects of my life.

At the onset of the new year, I shared about my word for the year: surrender. This word translated into a simple discipline of daily prayer for me. Each day I asked God to reveal the thing in my heart that I was hanging onto most tightly. Once identified, I continued to pray over it until I felt the freedom to let it go. After a few days of basking in my new freedom over the surrender of one item, God would begin to reveal a new one to me, in which I began the process over again. And then again, and then again.

It was all very well and good when I could see things in my heart that shouldn't be there. I didn't want unfounded fears to hold me back from God's best, and my honest desire was to hand things like that over. Even though it took work, it felt good.

But now I have gotten in really deep. Things are getting harder than I initially envisioned. I am being asked to surrender more than I expected, including aspects of my life that are positive and I believed were healthy. Things like relationships and future plans. They aren't the kind of things you can buy again at the store, and quite frankly, I am a little afraid to fully trust God with them. What if I never get them back?

We are only 3 months into the year 2016, but I am finding that there seems to be no ending place in this journey to surrender. The more my eyes are opened to the things I need to let go of, the more I realize there is no going back.

A small sampling of some specifics, and what I am learning in the process, as I am challenged in...

* ... surrendering fear of working too hard - Life seems hard enough just living "normal". Adding any big change or any new goals sounds like a lot of work! BUT I have never been a lazy person, so why would I let a little hard work prevent me from moving into something better?

* ... surrendering fear of my life not looking normal - What is "normal" anyway? The American dream easily becomes a crutch as we pursue the next thing that makes our lives more comfortable. Especially with kids, it is so easy to get caught up in "creating a future" for them. BUT those are not the dreams I want my children to chase when they grow up. Why would we raise them to be "normal" if we don't want them to pursue that kind of normal when they are older?

* ... surrendering the approval of others - Any people pleaser has trouble surrendering approval. We want to live in a world where everyone agrees with us, supports us, and there isn't any conflict. It makes us easy-going and likeable. However, making decisions can be devastating because there are people who stand on all sides of a decision and someone is inevitably left disappointed, hurt, angry, or simply with a lack of understanding. BUT Jesus was the greatest example of someone who lived to a standard that pleased God instead of others. He prioritized fulfilling His God-given purpose and remained full of integrity, gentleness, love, and kindness. Would He have had the same impact if He had worried about what His family thought of Him?

* ... surrendering Christian community - We have a community of friends who have long been steadfast encouragers to us and it would break my heart to be separated from those friendships, even for a short time. BUT our long term purpose in relationships is not to be simply fulfilled by comfortable friendships. It is instead to show compassion and love to those who don't have it. Could releasing close relationships create space in our lives to foster new relationships with those of greater need?

* ... surrendering writing time - The rare moments when our house is somewhat quiet, and the chores are mostly done, and I have deeper thoughts to process, are when I steal away to write on this blog. These stolen moments have been a great gift to me during the years of raising little children when intellectual conversation is a non-existent part of my day. I selfishly covet, and grasp for, and love this time by myself that offers me some greater purpose outside of our household. BUT God has greater purpose for me yet, and isn't quite through with me. Could it be that letting go of my need for this time might usher in room for greater purpose still?

Many of these things I am letting go of are inherently GOOD things that make for a rich life. I am learning, though, that sometimes a thing can seem so perfect that it becomes more important than trusting God. A thing can be so good that it becomes an area that hinders us from walking into something better.

Perhaps God is challenging my priorities not because they are bad in themselves, but because of the way it will form and shape my character. The same way that I teach my children to share a toy, not because I care who was holding it first, or whose name is written on the tag, but because of the bigger lesson learned in letting go.

"But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, 

I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which 

God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus."

Philippians 3:13-14

~ What might God be challenging you to surrender today? ~