Farmish thoughts

The compost out-house toilet is not my favorite. It's stinky, and not much of a 'rest'-room. I have however, noticed that there is some good reading material on the table next to the toilet, and thought once or twice about lingering for a good flip through the National Geographic. But then I thought better of it. It does make me wonder just WHO relaxes in there for an article or two. I never thought I would say this, but I much prefer the bucket with toilet seat that sits in my bathroom. It even has a companion bucket filled with sawdust for me to scoop on top when I finish. Guess cats are onto something..

The people here at the farm are fabulous. They have been incredible with the kids, inviting them to help collect and wash eggs, throw around the football and whip up a batch of no-sugar added, natural peanut butter brownies in the community kitchen. I'm impressed so far. And the food!? These people are serious about their food. In just a handful of days, we have eaten such things as chevre (home made goat cheese), some type of organic black bean relish dish with fresh cilantro and tomatoes right off the farm, homemade breads of various kinds, fresh pumpkin polenta, and homemade bruschetta pizza. I have a lot of learning to do! All of the lunches are vegetarian since there are quite a few who eat this way here. I am thrilled to say the least, because most of the dishes I cook center around meat. It amazes me that single girls in their 20's can cook this way! What a gift!

We had out first class this week on the topic of "sustainable vs. organic agriculture" which was very informative. We learned about tilling and how bad it is over long periods of time for the soil, causing erosion. We learned a bit about maintaining soil quality and the pros and cons of organic agriculture as well as the pros and cons of modern agricultural practices. This is a whole new world for us and there is SO much to learn. The people here are from all types of educational backgrounds and many of them are biologists in their own right, scientists-all of them to a degree, but so informed in all of these areas. I hope to be half as educated by the end of this year. Wow.

Well, it's late, and another home school day awaits us in the morning. We are still trying to figure out our schedule and I am trying to be patient and flexible..trying. :) It's good to be settled in a place to call "home" for now, and to be at the beginning of a new season and a new adventure. God has something for us in every time and place and I am looking forward to the things He will add to our lives here at World Hunger Relief.

Life For Rent

Listening to 'dido', "Life For Rent", and thinking how aptly these lyrics give shape to my feelings right now:

I haven't ever really found a place that I call home
I never stick around quite long enough to make it
I apologize once again I'm not in love
But it's not as if I mind
that your heart ain't exactly breaking

It's just a thought, only a thought

But if my life is for rent and I don't learn to buy
Well I deserve nothing more than I get
Cause' nothing I have is truly mine

I've always thought
that I would love to live by the sea
To travel the world alone
and live more simply
I have no idea what's happened to that dream
Cause' there's really nothing left here to stop me

It's just a thought, only a thought

But if my life is for rent and I don't learn to buy
Well I deserve nothing more than I get
Cause' nothing I have is truly mine

If my life is for rent and I don't learn to buy
Well I deserve nothing more than I get
Cos nothing I have is truly mine

While my heart is a shield and I won't let it down
While I am so afraid to fail so I won't even try
Well how can I say I'm alive

If my life is for rent and I don't learn to buy
Well I deserve nothing more than I get
Cause' nothing I have is truly mine

If my life is for rent and I don't learn to buy
Well I deserve nothing more than I get
Cause' nothing I have is truly mine
Cause' nothing I have is truly mine
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I don't recall ever hearing this song before tonight when it popped up on Nathan's I-tunes, but it caught me off guard. The last several years of our life as a family have been so transitional, it's been difficult to feel safe putting down roots. 2006 found us in a year long Spanish training program in South Texas, 2007 saw us move to Guadalajara Mexico for 2.5 years and 2010 finds us back in Texas, preparing to move to Waco for a year of agricultural missions training. I am ready to commit. So ready. I long to plant those roots down deep, make a more permanent nest and raise my children. I am a bit road-weary, and yet I wouldn't trade a single moment of the past few years.
I've also been thinking a lot about fear of failure and what I would do if it were guaranteed that I could NOT fail. I would write. I would send articles in to Christian womens publications. I would speak Spanish sooo much more without the fear of messing up. I would move to an unreached village and have a simple place and do life with simple people and love Jesus and invest myself in discipling and training families. I would speak plainly about the Lord with my Dad. I would love people with more abandon...
My greatest treasures are those things in my life that I have "bought" and not simply rented; my relationship with Jesus, my husband, my children. I want to be one who commits, does the hard work of seeing something through, isn't afraid of failure or loss, but trusts that all my days are in His hands...

Misspelling...

Thomas Merton has a quote that I love, it says; "I am myself a word spoken by God." Lately I've been trying to figure out what 'word' I am..

I am afraid of the power of my own convictions. Well, the convictions are fine, it's the mouth I own that I have trouble with. I know I'm a "black and white" sorta gal. I hate gray. Right is right, wrong is wrong and all that. I know at times, this is a gift; I make no bones about things, cut straight to the point, tell it like it is etc., but in truth, I have a love/hate relationship with this aspect of myself. The problem is, I come from a long line of women who are always right. I wish this wasn't so, as it can be taxing on one's health to have to go around all the time telling everyone they're wrong. ;)

Tongue in cheek, funny, yeah, but really, this is an area I struggle with. On the one hand, I know God has given me strong convictions. I think everyone should have strong convictions. I mean, the message of the cross is not for the faint of heart, and the life of a Christian is the life of the cross. It is authentic, not a title or a religious 'affiliation', but a day-in-day-out quest to become like Jesus, to be conformed to His image. This is radical.

I think I've got the radical thing down. I champion counter-cultural lifestyles that bring people closer to a more simple obedience to Jesus. I love it when people make radical choices towards God. My heart rises up when faced with a challenge that is only possible to overcome with the Holy Spirit. I am refreshed by people who make the Bible their standard, for real-real, regardless of what it says, even the hard parts. Strong Biblical convictions are a fabulous thing to have, they are synonymous with the life that Jesus modeled for us.

The problem is love. Or rather, it is the answer. I can admittedly, lack love in my execution. In all my zeal for ideas and p's and q's and how one should walk out his or her faith, I forget the most important thing. Love. Man, I really want to be good at this. I want HIS portion of love for people, I want to love extravagantly, selflessly, just because people are valuable, created in His image, because they are loved by HIM. So why is this so hard for me to do?

"I am myself a word spoken by God." It is profound to think of yourself as a word that God is speaking to the world, is it not? I want to be THE word He wants to say through me, but I think I keep getting in the way, not translating Him well, misspelling....

Today

No profound thoughts today. Nathan is in Reynosa/McAllen until tomorrow getting a van for the base. I'm excited that this trip came up because he will also be bringing back a glider, a crib, crib sheets and some other much-needed baby gear. I always shift into high-gear when he is out of town. The house is spic and span, the floors are sparkling and there is not a stitch of dirty laundry in the house. I wonder why that is? I think part of it is the mindset that if I don't do it, it's not getting done. If only I could be so motivated all the time.
Deacon has recently discovered he can scale the dining room table and has taken up Averic's old habit of sitting atop it and destroying whatever he may find there. Casualties so far have been my favorite candle, a few highlighters and Ben's flash cards for school. *Sigh* Much of my day has been spent saying "no Deacon!" Yes, another stage is upon us. And now, we will add an infant into the mix! Maybe this is why the man from New York I met yesterday in the check out line kept shaking his head at me and saying "God bless you, God bless you." Hmmm. Well, it made my day anyhow.
I do hold my head a little higher when I am strolling through the grocey store with my handsome little entourage, my belly bump guiding the way. I am a novelty here in Mexico..a white woman with more than two children. I get comments all the time. The lady doing my pedicure the other day said; "You have THREE and one on the way?" I replied in the affirmative, confirming the obvious, and she said "white women don't have that many kids, that is the Mexican's woman's area of expertise." I'm just trying to fit in the best way I know how I guess. ;) By the way Mom, if you're reading this, we are SO going to get pedicures while you're here. Ten bucks for a full spa pedicure! And they turned out beautifully!
I have a lot of energy at this point in the pregnancy and have been trucking along just fine. Of course around 4:30 when the sun has been baking my Stucco house for several hours and I am sutck to my faux leather couch, I start to wane a bit. This is my first time pregnant without AC. I don't recommend it. I hope I labor at night because the birthing center (as well as most public places) in Guadalajara do not have AC either. Such a contrast to the meat locker hospitals in the states! I am feeling good about the birth, and Dr. Jose is such a positive force in the whole deal. He told me VBAC's are his favorite births to attend because it is such a triumph. I am praying that baby will be in position and that God will just take care of the details. I know that I will be allowed to go for days with my water broken if need be and that gives me such peace. I have always been trying to "beat the clock" in my hospital births and I am so OVER that. America's Obstetric world is in crisis and I am thankful not to have to be caught up in that machine again. I am hoping to attend some pain management classes at my midwife's house. I love the woman like a dear friend already! She is constantly sending me e-mails of encouragement, videos of VBAC births and positive statistics. I am getting so much more than we are paying for this time around. And..I THINK we have our names chosen though this is top secret classified information. I don't know why we want to be all secretive with everything this time..we just do! It makes the phone calls more fun! Well, the Deaconator is screeching from his crib....hasta luego.

Is Lynn an Angel?

This is a question I have asked myself more than a few times in recent months. The first day we visited our new church here in Mexico our boys stayed with us during the service. The childrens Sunday school program was not up and running yet so I brought their Bible's and some paper to draw on and we settled in for the sermon. The boys did great, sat still and quiet and looked through their Bible's until the end of the service. As we stepped in to the fellowship hall a heavyset lady in a pink shirt and black pants approached me. "Your boys were so well behaved in the service. What a blessing to see a young family with such well behaved children. Nowadays kids don't seem to know how to sit still and it's nice to see little fellows who mind so well."

Of course my heart was beaming with pride, but more than that I wanted to weep and throw my arms around the this woman's neck because that kind of encouragement is not common to me here in Mexico. I have no "Mom's group", no homeschool co-op or any other type of friend or mentor spurring me on in my motherhood. The fact that someone noticed the hard work I put in to my boys was such a joy to me. Her words were balm to a parched place within me. I lived on that compliment for a full month before beginning to feel heavy hearted again.
I am in a difficult season in my life, in that I have no female companion walking along side me, no other homeschool friends, no stay at home Mom's. And so I am learning to process all these Mommy issues and struggles with the Lord alone. It is a precious time of growth, but a struggle of loneliness at times as well.
I looked for the woman in the pink blouse and black pants every Sunday since then for several months but never found her. Until last week. As we walked in to the sanctuary people were already on their feet for worship. I glanced around the sanctuary and saw her kind face. In the fellowship hall after the service, I helped my two boys get some chocolate chip cookies and when I turned around there was this sweet lady. "You probably don't remember me, my name is Lynn, but I am just so impressed with your boys, and now I see that you have another one on the way? Well, I think with the way that you train children, you should have a dozen or more." Once again, like a burst from heaven straight into my heart, the Lord used the word's of this woman to validate my life's work. I said thank you and she was quickly out the door. I stood there with a chocloate chip cookie in my hand replaying her words and quietly praying "thank you Jesus, thank you Lord, I know that was from you."

I don't know if I'll see Lynn on Sunday, part of me suspects that she is indeed an angel. But if I do, I'm going to tell her the power of her words in my life. I'm going to tell her that her affirmations have fueled my perseverance and that her encouragement has been a balm to my soul. I'm going to tell her that I hear the echo of her words in the midst of the days that I struggle, or when my boys are arguing or misbehaving. And then I'm going to hug her neck!

I will draw her into the wilderness and speak comfort to her..

"I will draw her into the wilderness and speak comfort to her." Hosea 2:14

This is my life verse. The Lord spoke this scripture to me when I was but a year old in my relationship with Him. I was about to leave everything I knew to attend a Discipleship Training School with YWAM. It was 1998. I packed my bags, my Bible, my dreams and expectations and headed to the piney woods of East Texas to share a tiny dorm room with six other girls. The next five months of my life were given to the miraculous un-peeling of the Lord. I know.."un-peeling", not the most beautiful way to describe a work of the Lord, but the most accurate for certain. So, there I was in the "wilderness", grieving, growing, allowing the Lord to unpeel the layers of the world that I had accumulated over the last 22 years. And He spoke comfort to me. He woo'd me, he courted me, won my heart a thousand times over and sealed my devotion to Him. I will never be the same because of His goodness to me and His relentless pursuit of my heart. I can never go back to Egypt, for His faithfulness has been too evident.
He still draws me into the wilderness. This is where I listen best. It is the place where my desperation for Him moves me to action. Those sweet times with the Lord seem harder to come by these days. Three small boys, homeschooling, missions work and pregnancy require my focus most of the time. It is usually in those pre-dawn hours that I find my King waiting for me and hear that still small voice. I felt led today to start this blog to have a place to write, work out my words and thoughts and document His faithfulness to me. I will share a lot about homeschooling, raising my boys, my journey towards a natural birth, missions and whatever else comes up in my heart. Whoever wants to come along is welcome..