Fender Benders and a Five Year Old's Prayer

My word for this year is hope. In an effort to keep my eyes on the source of my hope, I’m planning to share one post every month on this blog page that testifies to God’s power, provision, and goodness.

It was one of the biggest gifts I’d ever seen. In all my ten years I couldn’t remember ever getting a present all wrapped up in pretty paper when it wasn’t even my birthday or Christmas.  This gift was special. It had come all the way from Italy to our home in Oklahoma. I turned the box over to find the seams of the wrapping paper and carefully began peeling it back. I had been collecting porcelain dolls for the past couple of years, and naturally was hoping for another. Yet, it really didn’t matter to me what was inside; I was just so surprised by our Italian friends’ thoughtfulness. It was not the first time they’d shown me kindness; or, I should say, it was not the first time God had chosen to show His kindness towards me through them.

Five years earlier my family and I were far from our home in Oklahoma. Because my father was in the military, we found ourselves in the little town of Dardago, Italy, over 4,000 miles away from home in the U.S. Once there, my parents wanted to enroll me in an Italian school as soon as possible so that I could begin learning the language. They were not the only ones enthusiastic about this plan. I, too, was looking forward to being a part of an “asilo” - an Italian kindergarten.

One beautiful Dardago morning, my mom and I set out to visit the only asilo nearby. We wound through the narrow streets of town in our minivan and soon arrived at the school.  The towering front gate of the asilo might have appeared intimidating to a five-year-old if it had not been for the fascinating playground that could be clearly seen through the gate’s bars. I let my imagination run wild as I took in every brightly colored detail.  There were monkey bars that curved and twisted, swings that looked like they could bring you within reach of clouds, merry-go-rounds, seesaws, and in the corner of the courtyard a particularly interesting ride. It was built like the gliders on most backyard swing sets, but it had enough seats for ten kids. As each kid swayed in rhythm, the ride would glide back and forth like a giant pendulum. I fell in love with the school before ever entering its front gate. A tour, an interview, and a few monkey bar climbs later, I was back in the car with my mom, my expression quite the opposite of what it had been when I first saw the school.

“I’m so sorry honey,” my mom sympathized, “I know you’re disappointed."

My response was to slump down in the backseat of the car. My parents had already decided that I would only attend school if the school allowed me to attend half-days. My parents knew it wouldn’t be good for me to be separated from them for so long at such a young age and to be all day without anyone who spoke my own language.  This asilo, which I was more than ready to call my own, did not fit my parent’s preferences. The head maestra (teacher) of the school told us there was no possible way I could be allowed to enroll for only half-days.
“Why can’t I go?” I whined, already knowing the answer.
“Honey, they won’t let you go for half-days,” my mom answered patiently for the umpteenth time. “You know what we can do though?”
“What?” I asked dolefully.
“We can pray and see what God does.”
“Well,” I thought, “it’s worth a try.”

A few days later my mom and I were out running errands when she noticed the van was low on gas, so she stopped at a station. She was in a hurry as she hopped out of the van, forgetting to put it in park. From the front passenger seat, I watched as the car getting gas in front of us appeared to be coming closer and closer.

“Mom!” I called out at the very instant my mom realized what was happening. The next moment we hit the car in front of us. The driver of the other car, a lady in her thirties, approached us. Considering each knew little of the other’s language, she and my mom were able to communicate fairly well as they exchanged addresses and phone numbers. The next day the lady came to our house and told my mom that her husband wanted to invite her and my dad to dinner to discuss the damages to their car. Apparently they were having difficulty shutting their car’s trunk. My parents had heard stories about Italians scamming foreigners. So it was with hopes for the best, and fears for the worst, that my parents prepared for dinner with the DelMaschios.

On the night of the anticipated dinner, my parents found the home of the DelMaschios warm and bright. My parents were treated to delicious Italian food and authentic Italian hospitality. Several times during dinner, my parents would bring up the car accident and each time they were shushed or laughed off by the DelMaschios. Mr. DelMaschio was a large man with white hair and a mustache that drooped down just past the corners of his often-used smile. Mrs. DelMaschio too had a pleasant face and ready smile. Together, the couple put my parents at ease, and the four found themselves really enjoying each other’s company. Towards the end of the meal, the conversation turned towards school in Italy.  My parents shared how they had already found a grade school for my older sister, but were disappointed that the asilo in Dardago would not accept me for half-days. Upon hearing this, Mr. DelMaschio began to laugh. Mrs. DelMaschio joined him. My parents sat in confusion.

“Il presidente!” Mr. DelMaschio explained. “I am the president of asilo. Of course your daughter can come for just half-days.”

Yes. After I prayed to go to school, my mom just happened to roll into the car of the principal of the school I wanted to go to.

Being a long way from home in a foreign country did not seem like a gift from God.  A refusal from an asilo did not seem like a gift from God. Rolling into someone else’s car did not seem like a gift from God. But unlike the gift I got from the DelMaschios years later, I’ve learned that God’s gifts do not always come in pretty wrapping paper and they are not always big and obvious. God gave my parents peace in accepting a dinner invitation with strangers. God provided kind, Italian friends for my family during our stay in Italy.  God gave a little girl the gift of answered prayer, and allowed me to attend the school I wanted. And as I lifted the box flaps of the gift I’d just received from the DelMaschios, I smiled at the little extra kindness God showed me yet again. Peeking out was a beautiful little peasant doll of porcelain. It would be a most treasured addition to my collection of dolls, a reminder that God looked out for not only my needs, but also the little desires of my heart.

(The above is a modified essay I submitted in high school called God’s Gifts. It reflects my present recollections of events that took place in my life. I’ve attempted to relay those events truthfully, and the important components of the events can be verified by the other individuals named in the account.)

I Can Walk

          I can walk. I have use of both of my legs, pain-free most of the time. Today, as I let these two legs of mine carry me to the mailbox a couple streets over from my place, the realization that I was walking without any pain came to me like a new sensation again. Not everyone has use of their legs. And even when they do it's not always without pain.

          If you've been in my life or reading these posts you know that I injured my knee over a year ago while running. Feel free to go over other posts for more details. The summary I'll give here: multiple doctors, multiple diagnoses (even two different diagnoses from the same doctor), and three rounds of physical therapy between two different places over the course of eleven months - and now I'm walking without pain, redness, or swelling about 98% of the time.

          I went out with friends last night and we danced some. That's another reason my walk being pain-free today was remarkable. I even started running again in October. I'm so grateful that these things can come back into my life again - dancing and running - two of my most favorite things in the world.

          It's strange. I mourned the loss of those two things that I loved. Now that they're back I'm really grateful, but I also kind of don't care. I know that I'm able to be happy without them.

          This last year - and really my whole time here in Philly - has sort of resembled the opening lines of A Tale of Two Cities. It's been an adventure of contradictory experiences and feelings: devastating, hopeful, going perfectly as planned and also full of unexpected surprises. I've been incredibly afraid and alone. I've been wonderfully cared for and surrounded by community. I've been surprised by pain. I've been overwhelmed by joy. I've been disappointed by so much conflict, hatred, blindness and pride in our world. I've been comforted to see so much love put on full display in the sacrifices of those around me. I see racism - subtle and blatant. I see a Church - a multicultural, multiracial, multigenerational Church - that loves each other well in word and in deed, and the effort to get up and try again where they've failed. I have the best job and see and hear some of the worst things. I have so much that I want in life and there's so much that I want in life that I don't have. In short, life is pretty much the same here as it was in Oklahoma.

          I can walk.

          I could do that in Oklahoma too. But I'm happier about that phenomenon here than I was in Oklahoma. It should probably be a good reminder to myself that the best changes - the changes that are truly good and make me truly happy - are the changes that happen in me rather than in my circumstances.

Choosing Love Over Marriage

Things to remind my commitment-phobic self:

     Families are amazing. That a group of such drastically different personalities and strengths and weaknesses can love and accept and enjoy each other for who they are is remarkable - so individual with different goals and desires yet so locked in and committed to the whole.

Of course my appreciation is built around my own experience. Seven different and super imperfect people, plus two more blended in by marriage and 4 adorable spawns of one of those marriages, all loving and enjoying each other and supporting each other's dreams and not giving up on each other or wanting anything less than what is best for each individual or marriage or smaller family within the family.

It's kinda weird.

     And I realized another weird thing. This started because a couple people made a decision - not a decision to be arbitrarily stuck in some legalistic marriage contract - but a decision to stay in love. It's been flowers and gifts and dates and adventures and long kisses at the end of the work day and lots of communicating, intimacy, personal growth and change, and asking and granting forgiveness.

     Again, talking to myself, that any two people would sacrifice their own freedom and desires in order to be tied down to another human being for the rest of their life is a special brand of crazy.

      I may be a Christian but I'm also a hedonist. I really excel at doing whatever I want whenever I want. The thought of giving that up to someone else who will grow old and who will at times be unattractive to me and who will probably bore me at some point eventually is just a little baffling.

     I'm not saying I don't want marriage. Like I've already said, look at the amazing gift of family that comes of it. Look at its enormous flexibility to weather any storm or change life brings. Look at its acceptance and growth and complex dynamics all covered in love. Whether it's between the two or there are children as well, the unconditional constancy and vitality I've witnessed in these relationships is astounding.

But what I am recognizing is that both marriage and family are really bizarre little miracles.

     And I guess I'm saying I'm only willing to go for it if we're on the same page to make that decision to stay in love forever - with the flowers and the gifts and the dates and the adventures and the big, long kisses at the end of the work day and lots of communicating, intimacy, personal growth and change, and asking and granting forgiveness. And that we both do what we can to create that dynamic, flexible, weird group of diverse individuals that weathers any difficulty and knows each other inside and out and loves each other all the more for all of it.

     If it's not that then I'm really happy enough with what I already have and I don't really want to give it up for something less.

There Is No Fear In Love

     So sometimes I put my heart and soul into crafting a post on here. And sometimes I just want to share some basic information with out of town loved ones. That's what this post is today.

     I had a sense I'd be holding out for awhile for the right job. But if someone had told me back when I made the decision to pull out of school that it would be 2 months of no school and no work I would have probably cried anticipating the boredom.

     But life has been anything but boring.

     I injured my knee running at the end of September. I thought it was just an overuse injury that needed rest but after a few weeks of limping and pain medication and eventually crutches I figured it wasn't getting any better. As painful as it is for me to spend money on something ridiculous like a knee injury I caved and bought insurance and saw a doctor.

     In the middle of this I was offered a job at CHOP. It was a desk job addressing concerns of patients/patient families by phone, processing referrals, working with insurance companies, etc. and it was with a really great team of individuals. My heart was towards another job I'd interviewed for but I knew that if the knee was bad enough for surgery a desk job would be wise.  However I didn't know for sure that I would need surgery. If there's one thing I've learned lately in my walk with God it is to not make any decisions based on fear. So I asked for a week to think about it (a totally unrealistic amount of time to expect CHOP to hold on to a job for me) and I touched base with the dream job. After a few days it was settled. I accepted the dream job at Nurse-Family Partnership*.

     My appointment with the doctor came. He suspected a cartilage injury or meniscus tear and ordered an MRI. Either diagnosis often means surgery. I cringed at the possibility of 12wks of recovery time that might keep me from working.

     Some honestly expressed sadness and nighttime tears definitely followed this. But no fear. Or at least not for long. Because regardless of the outcome God has always loved me. Always. And there is no fear in love. I wish I could describe the overwhelming sense of His love and presence with me through all of this.

     I knew these things:
     1. I'm away from every person in my life that is most dear to me.
     2. Not only do I not have a job and income, I might be out of work for awhile because of this injury. So I'm poor and in debt now with potential to get poorer and more in debt.
     3. I might not have any money by the end of this 12wks and will need to consider moving back to Oklahoma and living off of relatives.
     4. God will take care of me. He may not give me what I want, when I want it, and the way I want it -- but He will give me what I need.

     Being the last minute planner and ever self-relier that I can be sometimes, on the Wednesday morning of my MRI I realized it would be pretty difficult to hobble the distance I would need to in order to get from parking in overcrowded downtown to the location of the clinic. I emailed my life group from church and within minutes the co-leader had responded he was nearby that morning and would give me a ride. Even in morning traffic and with these last minute arrangements I was actually a little early to my 9am MRI. Another friend from church, who happens to live a few streets over from me, gave me a ride home from the MRI.

     The appointment to review results was that Friday. Two other friends from church gave me a ride to that appointment and stayed with me for the appointment for support. We were prepared to hear which diagnosis would be mine and how to prepare for the next step of surgery.

     A new diagnosis came out of this visit though.  The MRI indicated patellofemoral pain syndrome and the doctor prescribed 12 weeks of therapy. Therapy! No surgery! About twenty questions I had prepared suddenly became irrelevant and I couldn't stop smiling :)

     Since then I've had my first therapy visit and they explained that cartilage damage hasn't necessarily been ruled out by the MRI. However, therapy is still the best plan right now. As with my previous experience with physical therapy for issues with running, I can tell I'm going to enjoy the people working with me. So Thank You Jesus for injuries that let me spend an hour talking to new friends 3 days a week! 

     I would love prayers that my knee makes a full recovery. Honestly, I don't mind never running again. I like it a lot but it's not worth losing my ability to walk over. I would love to be able to dance again soon. But mostly I am so grateful that I'll still be able to work. What a gift it is to be able to have a job doing something I'm pretty sure I'll enjoy and to get paid for it!

     I think it's interesting that in the 3 week window of time that I was back in Oklahoma for a visit in August, one of the men at my home church of Bridgeway asked me to join him in praying over a woman's knees. She'd been having pain with walking for years. We prayed over them and tears came to her eyes as she tested them out and discovered the pain was gone. That's one of many stories I've witnessed of healing, but I don't think I've ever been part of seeing knees healed specifically. A month later this knee thing happens to me and I know God will heal me. He will heal me quickly, or through 12 wks of therapy, or by exchange of this body for my new one :)
   
     So that's the latest. Well that and our nation is headed for an apocalypse depending on who you listen to. No big deal.

Grace and peace to you all!

*Home visiting service to provide nursing care to pregnant women and to continue to follow their care and the care of their child to age 2. More information can be found here: https://www.nurseledcare.org/programs/philly-nfp.html
   

Good news updates!

1. Multiple job offers = a blessing and a curse to this one who sometimes agonizes too much over making the best decision

2. For the first time since high school I submitted something I've written for publication and just heard back that my articles will be published in December and January (Its a small webzine. Please don't congratulate me. Unless it's simply to congratulate me for writing at all. That's my new goal: just to write a little each day for my own enjoyment, not for an audience)

3. Accepted a job offer to what might be a dream job. I start Nov 14th. More on that in a future post.

4. Some hard things have happened over the past month too. I will share more on that in a future post as well. For now I am so grateful for so many loving and supportive people in my life here in Philadelphia. It feels like nothing short of a miracle how many and how loving and how quickly they have surrounded me.

Much love to any sweet soul reading this. I hope all your dreams come true  <3

Kubo and the Two Strings

Fantastic movie. The incredible attention to detail in this film allowed for a mesmerizing immersion into the world of stop motion animation - the perfect backdrop for a deliberate and unhurried unfolding of the main character’s story. And truly magical (gets a little weird at the end though - wouldn't necessarily recommend for kids). I went to see this during it's opening week in August.

Before I found myself immersed though - I think it was sometime during the previews - I sensed God nudging me to pay extra attention. He seemed to be putting me on alert to catch a nugget of truth He had for me in this movie. So I leaned in closer and was probably even more immersed than I otherwise would have been.

I don’t recommend building your entire relationship with God on films, music, art, nature or personal “senses” of Him speaking. But outside of the historically reliable and time-tested, transformative truth of Scripture, I’ve found that God will also use just about any means possible to reach us. These more subjective means of hearing God should always be interpreted in light of God’s special revelation of Holy Scripture. It keeps in check what could be hurtful, crazy, or just plain incorrect. So I would recommend listening for God always in everything, but what a shedding of light Scripture brings to all things! Knowing it - really truly knowing it and wrestling with all its paradoxes - is like opening a big, wide door to a dark room and letting daylight stream in and make sense of everything in the room that before you could only bump into and make sense of by feeling.

So there I am in a dark theater. Mesmerized, immersed, and leaning in close to listen.

The movie itself is about a storyteller and his story. He goes from being the storyteller to being the center of the story. The boy on an adventure. The main character on a quest.

At one point a main character says to another, “You are my quest.”

Fireworks.

Maybe I should explain what happened the week before I found myself here. A group of friends had been praying for me. One of the friends saw a treasure map and got the word “quest” for me. He said I was on this quest that seemed kinda crazy to people around me, that it didn’t make a lot of sense to others. Nevertheless I was on this journey on this “quest” with God.

You are my quest

I don’t watch movies very often. And I don’t often hear God telling me to pay attention during them. I find myself at this movie, not knowing much about it, essentially there because my brother wants me to see it. Then before the movie starts I hear God telling me to listen to this one. I'd already tucked away "quest" in my heart from the prayer the week before but I don't know what's coming in this movie. It turns out the movie is about a quest. Then “You are my quest” is spoken and I sense God was just using it to confirm further what my friends had already prayed for me. Here's how the prayer and quote have come to be unpacked for me over the last couple months:

I’m not simply on an adventure with God. He is the adventure. Though there are thrills, and I’ve been a thrill seeker, I am no longer thrill seeking. Though there is romance and mystery those are no longer the goals either.  Though there are friends and family, the most wonderful friends and family and the most frequent cause of my heart aching these days, they are not my source of fulfillment.

I wish I could share what amazingly wonderful, beautiful things I’ve said no to in order to get to this place.  NOT to build myself up in any way. Not at all. But if I could only express just how much God is worth all those other things. And even worth the people - oh my heart! - even the people who may never fully understand how incredibly dear to me they are.

Yet He is worth it all. He really, truly is. I hope against all hope that someone who doesn’t know Him, really know Him, is reading these words and can experience even a taste of how good, how sweet, how adventurous and wondrous and completely fulfilling life with Christ is. Maybe enough of a taste to seek God as revealed in Christ - the fulfillment of promises made in Hebrew scriptures centuries before He appeared. Not that I want anyone to seek out religion, but to seek truth, testing everything....

I’m still in the middle of this journey so I say this with a level of timidness - but I want to say with confidence - that I could go anywhere and do anything because with God as my adventure and with Him as my completely satisfying love, nothing is too dirty or too scary. Nothing is too boring or too average. Nothing is too good for me or too far beneath me. Nothing is too important or too small. I could be in Philadelphia or I could be in Oklahoma. I am so over believing that the grass is greener anywhere other than where I am. Right now I’m still confident that God has led me here to Philadelphia. Maybe I’ll be in Oklahoma or China or Syria tomorrow. But today I am here so today here is perfect. Today is an amazing gift. Today I say to Him “You are my quest”. And I say to anyone else - He is worth the search. He is worth the quest.

All things

I feel like I'm in a choose-your-own-adventure book and I get to a page where I'm sure I've chosen the wrong adventure, but then I turn the page and.......... it gets even better. I'm excited to fill everyone in soon. Prayers for discernment/wisdom appreciated and for genuine joy regardless of the outcome. I still don't have a job yet.

This is not a simplistic, shallow promise:

~And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to His purpose ~

So don't name it and claim it and expect material blessings or temporary happiness to be your reward.

But it is a true promise (feel free to check out what it really means in the article). He's proven it a hundred times over to me.

https://www.desiringgod.org/messages/all-things-for-good-part-3