VALUABLES AND INVALUABLES

My mother prepared me well for this journey to Beyrouth.   

She died this past summer, so she didn't get to accompany us far.  But she was already praying about  Middle East University's request for Larry's curriculum vitae...a scary-sounding title for 26 pages of professional information. 

Beautiful Gramma!

But for three, maybe four, years she and I spent my visits sifting through pictures of people she couldn't remember.  Memorabilia that had morphed into meaninglessness.  Yellowed school-teacher  files of wild edible plants and the history of Maryland.  Three times during those years we went through her clothes, pulling out blouses she hadn't worn in seven  years and a sweater she bought in Scotland in 1975 and finally dresses that would never go to church again.

I knew we were sorting through treasures she couldn’t part with eight years ago.  Real life from 15 years ago.  Memories of 25 years ago.  But she knew as well as I did that what had once been important…had no value anymore.  The pile destined for the dump grew.   She held on to things loosely.

The exercise was a gift to me.  I found myself well-calibrated to let go and throw.

I’ve never been a collector, but even the minimalist in me has held onto wrapping paper for next Christmas, a guinea pig’s cage, rusty yard tools, odd dinner plates and plenty more reasonable junk.  As I'm sorting through my own things now, I’ve realized that unused stuff however well organized is still just stuff.  And potential value—the possibility that something might some day be useful or important—is still iffy.

So we’re taking pictures of Trek 960 bicycles, a Wells Cargo mini-trailer, Jansport D2 backpacks for Craigslist.  We’re mentally tagging furniture for the moving sale, stuffing trash cans and collecting a garage full of all that might be valuable to someone else.

The very process presses the reality:  Most of the things we own are dispensable.  If I give this away, if I let go of that, if someone else owns this, I’ll still be me.  We'll still have each other.  Life will still carry rich meaning.  

I have to admit that I'm "letting go and throwing away" with the satisfaction of someone losing weight.  When life is lighter, it’s easier to move, to change, to get on with the journey.  For once I’m not measuring a valuable by how much room I have to store it.  I’m measuring it by how well I could continue in life without it.

I also find it easier to identify the invaluable:  Tracing the long history with my Bible study circle.  Hearing our pastor-friends sing "God Be WithYou."   Hugging a senior friend I may not see again—until heaven.  Having a son burst into the house, regretting how far away we will be and hoping we won't die over there.  Maybe that's why I'm planning to bubble-wrap the glass-dipped rose a son gave me years ago. It is tangible for sure.  It’s also valuable; it cost $60.  But it expresses the invaluable.  It will look beautiful catching the southern sun on the window ledge of my little Lebanese house.

Of course, if it shatters in my carry-on during the flight over, I will be terribly disappointed.  But I'll still have the love that it represents.

Come to think of it.  When I meet my mother in heaven and tell her what God did in my life while she rested, we won’t have any of this stuff that clutters our lives.

I LIKE IT

When the invitation to Middle East University (MEU) came, I didn't have many questions.  I had never known Inter-Division Employees (IDE)--folks moving from one continent to serve on another--had any reason to ask very much.    

I remember  my dad, an associate secretary of the General Conference at the time, bemoaning the inquiries he'd gotten from potential inter-division workers:  "Can you get Skippy's Peanut Butter there?"  "What's the scuba-diving like?"  "How can I bring my dog?"  Even as a teenager I knew he prayed for workers who were simply willing.

So when it was suggested we make a pilot visit to MEU, I was surprised. Since when did we get a trip around the world just to check out an assignment?  I  urged Larry to go alone because I'd already made my decision; let them save the money for his budget.

He wouldn't go alone.  

OK.  I could make a small vacation of it, if that's the case.   Free upgrade to business class luxury.  Eighteen quiet flying hours to write to my heart's content.   And what a great way to see my friend Lori!   It's really not that hard to talk me into traveling somewhere.  Anywhere.

By the time we landed I was well-prepared for my adventure.   The flavors of  Lebanon--mint, hummus, lime, zatar.  The view from our dorm window across the treetops of the campus to miles of concrete--and the Mediterranean.  Unlimited fruit.   Ancient ruins in the rain.   Roaming at the whim of Leif's steering wheel, following  nameless roads into the high, open country of Lebanon.  Passing miniature cars sprouting rifles from every window.  (Lebanon's Independence Day is a good day for a favorite Lebanese sport:  bird hunting.)

The afternoon Leif, the president of MEU, suggested we visit the house where we would live  if we agreed to come.  For two days I'd been curled up in bed overtaken by a whopping respiratory infection.  But I considered house-visiting the one legitimate business reason for my visit.  So  I bundled up and shuffled into the car.  Just beyond the campus, up the hill a ways where the other staff houses lined the road, a narrow rocky driveway led down to a quiet corner among the trees and a miniature stone house in the process of being completely renovated.  

No snow-blowing this driveway.

I could hardly believe my eyes.  So this was the  "traditional Lebanese home" they had referred to!  Without the windows in yet, I could almost feel a Bible charade coming on, but with all the conveniences of new plumbing and fixtures, electrical central air and heat, three fully tiled baths like you can't even find at Lowes.  It's  the perfect size for the two of us.  The little place boasts a long and colorful history over the years, serving the Syrian soldiers who patrolled the area and probably a few other unnamed residents, all of whom warranted some drastic repairs.  But that's not what impressed me so much as.... 

The trees!  The campus itself is an oasis of green.  Ancient spreading trees.  Stately palms.  Grassy lawns.  All of it is a stone's throw from tight streets, blocks of apartment complexes and miles of concrete, asphalt and nerve-racking traffic.  But the unbelievable possibility of having  a house looking into a ravine of natural, unperturbed hillside carried more meaning to me than anyone could ever know.  A shy birdsong came from the underbrush.  A fig tree just  beyond the patio might even be strong enough for a...bird feeder?  

Now, where a woman lives is important and I've been very blessed among women!  I've enjoyed the privilege of raising a large family in the beauty and quietness of one of the most scenic corners of southwestern Michigan.  Five acres on a  Michigan scenic road lined with ancient oaks and maples.  A backyard of rolling forest that runs up against the edge of a pond.  The only place our boys have ever known as home.  When we moved to Berrien with two little fellows 27 years ago, I had asked God to confirm our calling with a place my family could call home.  He had answered so profoundly, so thoroughly...a story for another day.

But now, even as we were considering a new calling, a new place, I was touched with how thoughtfully He was speaking to me, meeting me with His confirmation of another task, another challenge.  In my mind I'd already accepted that we no longer needed a place to raise a family.  We didn't need a lot of room or a high-dollar conveniences.  I'd even accepted I could live in the city.  

But, in the midst of giant potential changes in our lives, I heard Him say, "I have confirmed your calling!  Here's a quiet corner in a faraway place that your heart can call home."   Of course the "nature" we look into is much different than what we've known, the banks of apartment buildings beyond the ravine will always remind us of why we're there.  But His care is as clear as ever.

All I could say through my tears was, "I like it."   I am sure God understood like no one else that what I like most is that He has spoken to me once again with such care:  My heart is safe to call this home.   I'm just as sure that Leif knew right there we probably would accept the call!

A place called home.

BEYOND WOW

Try telling someone you're moving to Beirut, Lebanon.   The immediate silence can be hard to decipher; they thought they heard wrong, they're trying to grasp what it would take to get them there, they think we're crazy and want to be nice.  But the eventual response is almost always explosive:

WOW!!   From the ATT rep closing my business phone line.   A violin students' parent.  My neighbor from Chicago.  Macy's cashier.  The luthier reconditioning my violin for the move.  The shoe salesman helping me get a good pair of walking shoes.  The UPS man.  Our entire church.  My sister.  

Actually, she heard our news just days after a car-bombing in downtown Beirut an easy 15 minutes from Middle East University--with no traffic.  She wailed.  It was her embellished, extreme version of WOW!!

I should be used to everyone's astonishment by now. 

Even though I admit I can't get my own mind around such a new and far away idea, it seems like the most....the most natural thing in the world.  Maybe that's because Beirut is only the clinching decision at the end of a long, long line of personal steps and landmark miracles that we've experienced in the last 15 years.  (To me a miracle is anything God does beyond my control that we can't do for ourselves.  Which is just about everything.)

I can't list them all.   But we began recording the unexplainable nearly three years ago.

In the spring of 2010, Larry was facing a crazy summer.   Michigan campmeeting, General Conference Session, and the Montana Mission trip alone crossed off nearly seven weeks of the summer.   Ehren and Erina's wedding was tucked in between all that, then five days in Australia.  The obvious:   He simply couldn't take more time to accept a request to go to Cyprus  for dialoging with others about the Muslim faith and culture.  We both agreed that his ministry and his family needed him at home.  I felt good about the decision; I was relieved.

Somewhere in late spring Ehren came home from Korea--and the crisis bubbling in the north--to get ready for the wedding and return with his bride for another year of teaching English.  But, thinking like a new husband, he wondered about the safety issues, the city life, the pace for his new wife.  "Mom, I was surfing the internet and I've found this place in Cyprus where we could go work; they're looking for a couple to run a community center."  

I had no idea if it was church related, if it paid anything, if it was short-term or long-term.  I just know when I mentioned it to Larry his face fell.  Cyprus? Why would Ehren go there?  Who's he talking to?  Where would he be working?  What would he be doing?  Why is this coming up now?  Of all places in the world.  Larry almost whispered it.  "That's where I should be going."

A few days later, with no extra time to follow through on arrangements, he came to me, "I can't say why God would want Ehren to go to Cyprus, but I know He's gotten my attention; I am certain He wants me in Cyprus."  Within 24 hours the flights were rebooked, the plans replaced.   I gulped.  

But I had learned years earlier--when I chafed for seven of the ten weeks he spent in Ukraine--why I need to keep my hands off what he felt he should do.  Before leaving for his first overseas trip ever, he had bought me ten presents, each wrapped and numbered, to open every Friday night.  At first I couldn't see the meaning of such an investment; instead I saw dollar signs on each gift, small as they were.  I even resented how much he'd spent on wrapping and ribbon.  

Then I opened the  seventh gift--a porcelain refrigerator magnet.  Circled by a wreath of hand-painted pink lilies were three simple words, "You Are Loved."   How impressive can that be?  Extremely, if you're not certain and if your husband is on the other side of the world.  The thought hit me with profound meaning.  And I chose to accept it.  In that moment my heart heard, I was touched.  

I heard Larry telling me he would rather be with me than in a strange country, isolated by an unfamiliar language, sleeping on couches, eating food he'd never known before. He'd rather be surrounded by our sons than preaching his heart out to strangers.  He'd rather live a comfortable, predictable life with those he loved.  Instead...he was doing what God had asked him to do.  It was a bit of a stretch for me to cheerfully give up my husband to the other side of the world--but to keep our love. Yet that night I discovered I had lost nothing at all by letting God do what God chose to do.  I was loved!   

What is distance, or inconvenience, or sacrifice when I am loved?   What could I possibly lose by supporting someone I love?  If I share their vision, isn't their experience my experience, their benefit mine as well?  How much of a blessing could I ever miss by "letting  go" to Someone who loves us both?  And, more than anything else, shouldn't others have a glimpse of His love too?

The three days Larry spent in Cyprus that summer were pivotal.  Larry sensed it during the days he spent with his hosts learning about the culture they served, as they immersed him in the thought world of the Middle East and discussed the comparisons of Islam and Christianity.   For Larry it  was an introduction to a new world...one that most Christians and even fewer Adventists understand.  

It only takes a few times in one's life of being absolutely wrong about what "God's will is" to learn a hesitancy, a deep uncertainty about my opinion of what I think should happen, what I think is best.  I am so relieved God holds Himself accountable for accomplishing great good from His will.  

I have only one very simple request of His plans:  I'm OK with the investment of time and distance and energy and sacrifice if, in all that we are called to do, we see some evidence that God has been with us, able to use us to be a blessing to others. 

Maybe that's why I'm always surprised when folk are stopped short by our plans.  I can't say  WOW, I'm moving to Lebanon. What is more impressive to me is  all that God has done to move us along this far.  He's changed so much in my heart, to bring me to this place.  He's confirmed He's willing to use us to be an encouragement and a blessing to friends in Lebanon I don't even know yet!  That's WOW!

Of course, when I finally land in Beirut a few months from now, I will probably be the one saying WOW, this is really different.  WOW, this is challenging.  WOW, this is a bigger dream than I thought.  WOW, I need so much.

But right now we can trace a long path behind us; this journey started long ago and each day is just another step along the way that says, OK, what do I do now, God?

NEVER LAUGH

We know we've seen the outline of God's hand countless times--and even more so as we've approached this crossroads that has stopped us in our tracks.

At first any abrupt change in our lives (like we're experiencing now) was so far off, the possibilities so many and varied, it would've been sheer guesswork or plain self-determination to say where God was leading us.  Years ago Larry chose not to create a picture for his future or even to draw an outline of where he was going.  Each day has been God's to use.  Each assignment has been the focus.  But looking back we see the pieces God has been putting together:

We were only a few years into ministry when Larry came home from a pastors' meeting stirred, restless.  He had heard a presentation by a young colleague that deep in his heart he knew was neither Adventist or Biblical.  But his fellow ministers were impressed.  Who could challenge something so articulate?  So engaging?  It was the first time Larry expressed a dream for further education.  I wasn't impressed.

I guess I was eavesdropping years later, because I'm sure I wasn't  really part of the conversation between Larry and Dr. Kis one summer afternoon soon after we arrived in Berrien Springs.  We were standing outside a wedding reception on the road outside the Habenicht's home.  I know.  I remember studying the asphalt at Larry's feet.   I didn't want anyone to see me laugh at Dr. Kis's suggestion that Larry should focus his doctoral work on philosophy.  Ethics. Whatever that was.  I could not imagine Larry philosophizing.  I knew he was no Socrates.

But he took his GRE, passed by one humiliating point and prayerfully enrolled for doctoral classes.  As Dr. Hasel--who probably blew off the top of the GRE graph himself--assured him, the most gifted often never finish their Ph.D. or go on to contribute.  One point is enough, he claimed.  And that's all that's needed for Larry's constant reminder that "I am what I am by the grace of God."

So every quarter Larry enrolled in a doctoral class.  For years of quarters studying was his hobby, his off-hours pastime, his recreation, even his vacation.  After sermons, Bible studies,  hospital visits, funerals, committees, and church work bees; after mowing the lawn, staining bookshelves,  putting the boys to bed, and unstopping the toilet of apple cores, he quietly read the volumes, wrote the research papers, did the languages, took the comprehensives, finished the dissertation.   I was so overwhelmed myself with keeping the family boat afloat, I could hardly even acknowledge such an ambitious project or such dogged determination, much less cheer him on.  Not until I sat in his doctoral defense in 1997 did it dawn on me what an unusual journey God had brought him through.

Oh, God, what have You done here?!   And what are You going to do now?   I felt a mix of wordless awe and mounting fear.  The parameters of our life were going to stretch.  I knew it.  That same week, Larry's articulate, engaging colleague from those early years in ministry announced he would be leaving the Adventist Church and beginning a ministry of his own.

The message to my heart was quick and sharp.  My response had to be honest:   OK, God, You've done so much with this ordinary, good man.  Forgive me for laughing.  Forgive me for being too weary to support.  I'll accept whatever You want to do with his life.  I'll accept whatever it means to my life.  

Dr. Kis, Larry's doctoral advisor and a Village member himself, stood up in front of the congregation one Sabbath soon after Larry's graduation and  invited the church family to expand their own vision as Larry took up duties as a "watchman on the walls of Zion," a parish beyond our town and a broader field to serve.  We all wondered what that might mean.

I challenged, but didn't laugh, when Larry was asked to become involved in the Adventist Theological Society.  He felt the need to contribute, but how much he didn't know.   I could see his energies spread, but how far I didn't know.   Let it go, Kathie; after what God has done for him, he has much to answer to God. 

What a relief!  We were on a journey I could leave safely with God.   I knew instinctively that what God was doing would stretch him, use him, and extend us all beyond our imagination.

The outline of God's hand was unmistakable.  I had no worthwhile complaints.

THE JOURNEY BEGINS

I've wondered many times over the last few months just when our journey to Beirut began. 

Was it last summer when Ardyth confided in Larry, "I'm praying, Pastor, you will go work in the Middle East"?  He assured her he had already taught intensives at Middle East University and probably would be going back. "No, I'm praying you will stay there."  He never mentioned it to me though.

Was it the day Lori was leaving one of Tanner's last violin lessons before they left for Beirut themselves and I spontaneously hugged her and for no reason at all reassured her,  "We don't need to say goodbye; our paths will cross again."  

Or was it long before that?

I've heard about the day when Larry and his dad stood on opposite sides of the coffee table as Larry announced  he was going to be baptized.   Papap advised Larry he'd certainly have to change some things in his life.  And, as a hint of the different journeys they were on, Papap  warned that their relationship would never be the same either.    For three months he didn't speak to Larry.  It was the first step on an unusual journey for an ordinary but incredibly focused 12-year-old.  Because he didn't just want to be baptized.  When I met him at Blue Mountain Academy a few years later, I often felt embarrassed for him.  He carried around a Bible case.  He felt he had been called to the ministry.

I clearly remember another day nearly as long ago.  I've thought about it for years, wondering what it meant.   

I had been drafted to walk in a mission pageant at the Takoma Park Church.  It was a youth  conference, I was 14, and they needed help.  So I marched up to the choir loft with all the other costumes of the world, uncomfortably conspicuous in my mother's dazzling Mexican dancing dress.  I was part of the backdrop.  But when Theodore Carcich, his long arms flying over his head dramatically, made an impassioned appeal for young people to dedicate themselves to serve anywhere in the world God needed, I felt called.   I don't remember even a twinge of self-consciousness as I stood, alone.  I only remember I was willing to follow wherever God led me, even to "the ends of the earth!"  It was a decision more significant to me than my baptism.  Even up until a few months ago, I had resigned myself to the fact that my mission field was Berrien Springs, the nest of Adventist comfort.

The journey Larry and I are on has deep roots; God always starts at the beginning and patiently, persistently moves towards His plan.  We don't know all that awaits us in Beyrouth, but we know it is God's place and purpose for us.  We are willing for the journey.  We invite you to join us!   None of us will ever be the same again.