Christmas 2017 (Never Underestimate Love)

Last Christmas I gave you my heart. The very next day you.... haha, just kidding.

I spent last Christmas eve caroling on the Judean hills overlooking Bethlehem, about where the shepherds might have been chillin' when the angels appeared in the sky and sang a heavenly joyful chorus about Jesus' birth. It was beyond magical. It brought me to tears. Click here to read about it.

Then on Christmas day, I went over to Jalene and Daniel's house and we enjoyed an amazing dinner of raclettes (a meal kind of like fondue, but cooking things on a hot stone rather than in broth) and then opened gifts to each other. I have that post in my blog drafts, but I never got around to posting it.

This year, to save me from tears.... heh! Couldn't resist...

I've been in Michigan this year spending time with my husband's side of the family, which has been so lovely. Smaller families--er, I mean, regular-sized families--make for more individual attention, which I'm not used to, so I feel like a glutton for it. Okay, I'm making it sound like I got a ton of individual attention, but really, I just got some attention... but compared to my own family... Try living in a family with 8 siblings, and now when we somehow make it all together it's around 20-27 people (that's just my parents, my siblings, and their spouses and kids). I often (mistakenly) feel like background noise, even though truthfully I get a lot of love.

I got gifts from aunts and uncles and grandparents-in-law this year--extended family--which I am also not used to. My own immediate family moved to America from Canada when I was six. I never got to know my cousins very well, never spent much time with my grandparents who are now gone, and hardly saw my aunts and uncles. And then I moved to Israel, so I don't have the ability to go visit them all. And even though I've spent the holidays with my in-law family for the past few years, this year is the first time I have felt like an insider.

Before, I was just getting used to the customs, the dynamics, taking cues from Dustin on how to act and respond to the humor, and generally dealing with the awkwardness of being new... By now, which is only a few years, family members are making dishes just for me, knowing what I like, and even Dustin's dad got four chairs for his living room--for him, his two sons, and for me! (at least that's what I tell myself. Haha! But it's what I feel). And at this stage, I am experiencing a whirlwind of emotions. After some of our get-togethers this week, I rode home feeling strange feelings--both joy and sorrow--that make me want to go out into the woods to process what on earth is going on with me...

But I think I know. It's the kind of sorrow that comes from a heart realizing it is recieving what it never knew it wanted or even needed. It is a heart healing from certain wounds it didn't know it had. And though I won't express the deeper things too personal, I will say that my heart is so full.

Don't you ever underestimate what love does to people. Simple gestures even. You never know what it can mean.

A Sea of Expectations

I'm working on my message for our group discussion on Acts tonight and just thinking about various conversations that happened in the past month. It's distracting me from my work. I had multiple different people suggest to me what things they'd like to see me do with this particular group of young people; others telling me what they'd like to see me do as a worship leader, as a teacher, as an administrator...

What I'm trying to say is that I feel a bit bogged down in general by other people's expectations. (not by peoples' requests for help, which is a different thing).

I actually appreciate that other people have vision for me. It's an expression of their genuine deference to me. And expressing those expectations to me shows me they have faith in my abilities to accomplish these things. My problem is that once I know what others expect of me, I have a great desire to meet those expectations, and if I'm not vigilant I will find myself doing it at the expense of my own personal health. And in ministry it's tough, because it can be quite an amoebas thing. The general goal is to get people together for the sake of building up the Body of Christ and there are so many different ways to do that.

Other careers seem to have clear cut boundaries (I say that because I see them from a distance, which makes them seem simpler). Any career has the potential to consume a person's time, but it seems like there's always more I should be doing in ministry. People want to see expansion, growth, more, more, more... and so naturally when they see people with ability and talent, they place expectations on those people to fulfill their own vision of what a ministry should look like.

This is not a critique of what others are telling me they want me to do. They all want me to do good things. This is my way of processing through all these conversations to find a place of healthy balance. Writing helps me process. And hopefully by processing through them here, I can help someone else who might be experiencing similar feelings. I often find myself drowning in a sea of expectations I feel I cannot meet, and I need to once again remind myself that life is not about pleasing others, or meeting impossible standards. I need to take these feelings of pressure and turn them into feelings of confidence that others see potential in me. And I need to remind myself that it's not my responsibility to meet all those expectations. I have only one body, one life, and I can only accomplish a certain amount of things. I must be true to my own heart.

How Truly Unfortunate Lemony Snicket's Events Are

The other day, I thought I'd watch the first episode of this new Lemony Snicket's "A Series of Unfortunate Events," series on Netflix which was styled after the movie made in 2004. I've always been a fan of the movie, and the artistry seemed promising. I won't go into my shpeal about why I was disappointed in the show (no one can match Jim Carrey's performance), but one scene hit me: the kids sleeping in their little room in Count Olaf's attic. The roof was dripping and they were shivering and worn out and sad. It was the first time the sight of poor living conditions on film elicited an emotional response from me.

Before I elaborate, I want to take a moment to acknowledge that in the next paragraphs--for lack of a better phrase--my "privilege is showing." And that's what I'm talking about: a few ways in which living in Israel is showing me how blessed I was in the USA (and how blessed I still am). You never really realize how much the little things matter to you until they are taken away.

This past winter I've lived in a poorly insulated apartment and so for the first few days it was cold here, we were shivering constantly, and I couldn't seem to get warm. And then my apartment flooded (which I've mentioned in previous posts) and then the mold came. If any of you know me, I HATE mold!

So, even though I was generally in good spirits, throughout the days I felt this undertone of tension and frustration that made me snappy and impatient. We had several days where our living room had a huge fan blowing at our carpet, and with the windows open, our home was FREEZING. My inner hypochondriac was on full alert, causing me paranoia at night about mold and bacteria from the pidgeon-dropping-filled water that soaked through a big portion of our house when it flooded. I couldn't relax because our house was damp and humid and cold. I spent hours doing laundry and disinfecting everything with bleach. And on the parts of the wall that was soaked through, the mold just kept growing back within 12 hours of bleaching it! I'd come home from work and get to work bleaching! I didn't sleep much. Since then I've figured out how Israelis cope with these things and we've gotten things under control. Plus we've come past the initial shock of it all.

But more importantly, I never knew how blessed I truly was in America until I left it. I have always had a warm bed to sleep in. Always.

I hate to admit this, and I never expressed this feeling to anyone at the time because it's just so petty, but the first week of living here, I remember feeling frustrated at how rough and cheap the paper towels at every place were. In fact, I felt sad about how hard everything was: all houses are tile and walls are heavy cement, and the streets are stone. I was used to carpet and wood and grass...

I was also used to being able to get anything I wanted. In the states, if I couldn't find something in the stores, I could get it shipped to my house for an affordable price. If I wanted to do something I could search for a store or business by category and find out how many there were, where they all are, and how to get there... and then I could hop in my car and get there within the hour.

Here, not a lot of stores are on google, and if they are, it's all in Hebrew! So I have no idea where to find things except to ask friends and get directions, and I usually have to walk or take a bus. So depending on how big an item is, I have to plan for how I'm going to get it home (whether I have to bring my cart or my backpack, etc). I am considering the size and weight of everything and whether or not I can carry it. And if I want it shipped, I have to pay a lot more and wait a lot longer. Compared to the US, acquiring things here feels impossible.

I can't tell you how many times I've spent two or three or four hours looking for something and coming home empty-handed. There came a point of diminishing returns at which the effort it took searching was not worth the thing wanted, so I just gave up. I actually went through a period of mourning and loss over the things I couldn't get (and Pinterest crafts I'd never be able to make... darn you Pinterest!). I never realized how materialistic I had become. (I know, I know, first world problems)...

Even though I feel terribly embarrassed about it, I have to admit that these things actually mattered to me and weighed down on my ability to cope. I'm a fairly adaptable person, but even I have had to make a huge mental shift and had to totally let go of expectations (in so many more ways than I've explained here). In a way, it's freeing. And what's taken the place of spending time on things is spending time with people. And I find that I'm much happier because of it.

So when I saw the image of the Baudelaire children sleeping on a cot in a dirty rain-filled attic, I felt it. I looked at the pot catching rain drips from the ceiling and inwardly winced. And that was a defamiliarizing feeling for me. Why is it hard to care about some people? It's because we have no idea what they're going through. We have no feelings to associate with their situation. And so we can look at the sad pictures of poverty, or read about sad things in a newspaper, or listen to people screaming their pain, and we can feel nothing. Any feelings we try to have are still detached. And because we are so detached, we may even be tempted to tell them their problems don't exist. We can't help it. We can't make ourselves understand. Even the narrator in the show pointed this out. He said (my paraphrase), "if you've ever experienced the loss of a loved one, you understand how impossible it is to describe. And if you haven't, then you can't possibly imagine."