joy in "leanin' on the Lord's side"

We sang a song in Uganda that I loved - "Whose side are you leanin' on? " "I'm leanin' on the Lord's side". We would lean back with each line of the chorus - it was a great stretch! - " I lean, I lean, I lean, I lean, I'm leanin' on the Lord's side". Until yesterday I always thought about that song in terms of being on God's team, doing things His way, you know...being on HIS side, instead of on Satan's or the world's. The guy from England who taught us the song didn't give a talk with it, or give us a theology for it. But when I think about that now, the actions didn't really fit with that theology. Because if you were on God's team, you wouldn't want to be spending a lot of time leaning back...you'd want to be moving forward!! It would seem that leaning should be reserved for the times when YOU were needing someone to lean on. But somehow, in that time when I was a missionary and enjoying leading all sorts of action songs in the workshops and Bible classes and Scripture Union conferences that I was involved in, I didn't think that one through.

Now of course, as you know from reading my blog, this season in my life since my missionary days has had a lot of leaning. It has been incredibly fruitful of course, and I am learning so much about being someone whom others can lean on. Not that I didn't before, but I didn't think of it that way. I just did it. Now it is a very intentional aware process, from being a parent of teenagers to studying to be a counsellor/therapist.

Yesterday's entry in Streams in the Desert opened up my understanding in a whole new way about this. The simplest and best way would seem to be to quote from it directly:

"Someone gained a good lesson from a southern prayer meeting. A colored brother asked the Lord for various blessings - as you and I do, and thanked the Lord for many already received - as you and I do; but he closed with this unusual petition: "And, O Lord, support us! Yes support us Lord on every leanin' side! Have you any leanin' sides? This humble man's prayer pictures them in a new way and shows the Great Supporter in a new light also. He is always walking by the Christian, ready to extend His mighty arm and steady the weak one on 'every leanin' side.".

It feels to me like having my daughters back home is supporting me again on a leanin' side, and that many ways God provides for me bring such supports. By the same token, I have to remember always that my support comes from Him. My girls, or any other human friends or loves, will not always support me on my leanin' side. They might even cause me to lean, to go off balance, to need support from another direction. And then the challenge for me is to gain that balance in God's way, to find the way to stay on level ground, and keep on straight paths. Only God can do that, and be there to support me on my "leanin' sides". So may He be there for me, and may I always remember that when I do lean, to do it on HIS side, so that He can make me "UP right" again!!

joy in being a girl with my girls, new creations together

In the early morning rain I have been pondering the healing for me and my girls in our sharing since their return from Uganda. It has been a huge blessing to go through their re-entry with them step by step as I have not had supply teaching and have been going with them to appointments. Sarah and I saw Mamma Mia together last night. Rachel and I had shared it in the summer before she went away. Not only have I been able to hear many of the hurts that Sarah has particularly been carrying over her time away, the misunderstandings of other Christians of her feminine creative spirit, but also the young woman, the teenager and the little girl in me are being released into greater freedom. I have fostered and nurtured in my daughters what was misunderstood and quelled in me, and now I am reaping more fruit from that in their continuing fostering and nurturing of the same in me. The hurt inner child and wounded teenager and young woman in me are being healed, not only through the work God has been doing with me in deep work with a counsellor, but also in these primary relationships with my daughters. It is one of the wondrous ways God is restoring me, and can restore each of us. He promised to restore the years the locust has eaten. And He is. It seems another example of His statement about Himself: "I am that I am". His existence beyond time means that all that has been for me can be restoried into the new creation He has already made me, and whom I am discovering more each day. May that be so for you today, too.

joy in a new season

It's fall. The softer sunshine beckons me. The gentle reminders of the earth's beauty, silent voices speaking of the changing seasons. We are in a small town, but we have big plans. I have many concerns in my own life, but I am blessed that they can fit in around my daughters' needs, and I can have the joy of helping them readjust to Canadian life, to home life, to school, to making plans for work and future study. So much to discuss, so much to help assess and make realistic plans about. Even now I need to google some bus rates, have my quiet time, and get us off for the first appointment of a number in this day. It is Sept. 11th. A reminder that we are still peaceful and safe in a world that has become increasingly scary for others. A reminder that my girls are safely home, off the airlines, and into a new phase which is complicated and momentous enough. What a joy to have more than my own plans to deal with.

joy in the reality of the power of love in relationship

It's Wednesday again, the day for my post on the team devotional blog, www.whateverhesays.blogspot.com Here it is.

It’s all about a relationship

I wonder how I would have been today if my children had not come home last night. If the British Airways flight they were on had been blown up by terrorists, or if there had been a technical failure in the engines, or whatever. In some ways the possibilities of what could have happened are endless. I know Uganda well enough to be amazed that “nothing” amiss happened to them in their months away. They weren’t robbed, they didn’t lose their passports, their money, their camera, any of their possessions. They had the usual inappropriate requests from Ugandans, and all the stuff that goes with being white in Africa, and with being pretty young women who are white, etc. But all their connections went smoothly, they were blessed by friends and acquaintances, and they blessed others. People were sorry to see them go. Their reconnection with the land of their childhood, their former home, their childhood friends, was a fulfilling and enriching and empowering experience. A great adventure. And now they are safe at home, warm and snug in their beds, and I have a grin from ear to ear, and great peace in my soul.

I am so blessed. I am rewarded for my faithfulness as a mother, my trust in letting them go, my belief in their capacity to cope, my expectation of God’s provision for them and their growing trust in and connection with Him. But still, it is all about God, all about His faithfulness in this time, these relationships, and His purposes in their lives and ours. But it might not have been so. I could have been like the mother of one of the soldiers killed by a roadside bomb in Afghanistan. Her baby was only a few years older than my babes. Why should it be okay for me, and not for her? Do I love my children any more than she did hers?

And what about my rejoicing in comparison with the father of the prodigal son? Is mine more or less because my daughters have not been prodigals? They have been wise with their money, and plan to pay back their portion of the cost of the trip. Their choices about relationships have been mature and chaste. I do not know the grief of parents over “wayward” children, doing drugs or sex or “getting into trouble”. That reminds me of my horror struck reaction to an interview on CBC in their series on kids and school. A parent was describing the experience of witnessing his daughter’s rebellion and how it alienated him from her. My immediate reaction was that he was the one with the problem. He had no admission that his part in their family system might have contributed to her choices. No recognition that there but for the grace of God he might have gone. No looking at the possibility of his own addictive choices, whatever they might be. I was enraged at him, and filled with compassion for his daughter.

I think, if you are a mother or a father, you join with me in the intense inner joy of being a parent, an acknowledgement that you didn’t know fear or joy before being a parent like you do now. It reminds me of the words of the mother in “What Every Girl Wants” who said to her ex-husband, played by Colin Firth, who, having just discovered he had a daughter, was full of anxiety about her. She said “It never ends”. (How I appreciate the honest human truth in so many movies that have bits that can be offensive to fastidious uptight Christians!) And how unnatural it would be to sit in judgment instead of reaching out. I think most of us know what it is to feel we would die for our children, that we could not live with the guilt of causing them to stumble, or making them feel rejected. Can a mother forget her child? It is as if they are carved on the palms of our hands.

As I waited for two hours at the airport, watching every face that came around the corner of the arrivals concourse, witnessing the joy of many reunions, my eyes fixed on the spot where I would suddenly spy my babes, I kept thinking of that father of the lost son, who, when his son was a long way off, ran to meet him. There was nothing in that moment except his relationship with his son. Nothing else mattered. And when my girls finally appeared, from the other side because they had insisted on declaring all their sweet gifts from Uganda, they looked so amazing, so grown up and lovely. I could not believe they were mine. These were the babes that came out of my womb.

My heart is rejoicing today. The relationship with my children is teaching me about the power and intensity of love, its fierce devotion and all encompassing reality. And how wonderful to know, from reading scripture, and knowing that story, that God’s love for my daughters, for me, and for each one of us, is just as intense, just as specific and powerful. No wonder we can sing “The love of God is greater far than tongue or pen can ever tell”. I thank God today not only for the safe return of my children, the joy in their goodness and blossoming beauty and faith, the bright hope for our future days together, but most of all for the reminder this relationship and experience gives me of His intense love for and joy in me, and all His children.

joy in the upcoming reunion

Today we will see our lovely daughters again. We talked to them in London yesterday, at Jim's sister's home, and they and we are all so excited that we will be together again by this evening. It is so wonderful to us that they are thrilled to be coming home, even though they have had such a great adventure. They have grown up so much, learned so much about themselves and our life that we left behind in Uganda. Although we were close before, we will be closer now that they have been away. The past few days I have been musing upon the story of the prodigal son. I have had a taste of what the father would have felt as he ran to meet his son on the road. How I have wished I could run across the Atlantic so that nothing could prevent my reconnection with my daughters. A parent's bond is so overwhelming and strong. In our case our daughters are not prodigal in any way. They have not been rebellious, or squandered themselves, their money or our money, in any way. They have been and are delightful, responsible, beautiful children. But their going away and their returning have changed something. Most of all what is so precious for all of us is our upcoming joy in reunion. It is already a tangible, sustaining, lifegiving thing. What joy to realize that and to know that the joy will only increase once we are together.

joy in being grateful for communication technology

Flight BA0062 from Entebbe to Heathrow is in the air. Actually it left on time, but the BA website fooled me for more than half an hour giving the appearance that it was late departing. That gave me a few worried moments. But I am so glad to be able to know that it is safely launched. And an hour before it left I said goodbye to my dear girls on their last minutes of airtime on the African networked cell phone and my last minutes of Skype. I can't imagine how the trip would have been if we hadn't had that contact. I got the chance to "see" my brave girls to the departure gate. After all, they had travelled on their own for half an hour in a taxi from Kampala, leaving our friends' home at 6 a.m. their time. How could I have been sure they really got there safely without talking to them? I know Uganda so well. Anything can happen. Yet the whole trip has gone so smoothly, and I am so grateful to have had so much contact by cell phone and often by e mail. So different than when we lived there. My mother got a weekly fax from us, sent from the local post office. Mind you I was not nineteen or seventeen and she was not a fairly new Mum. So here's this doting Mum, so proud of my girls, getting to participate in their lives, show my love in a tangible way, and pray them through the next stage.

But I guess the big communication deal is really in the "air" in a different way. It's all about God's "technology", His airtime, and His power. Cellphones and internet have got nothing on Him. Never did. Thank God for that. But thank God for them anyway.

joy in stilling and quieting my soul

I have been thinking all night and yesterday about how wonderful it feels to have "stilled and quieted my soul", as the psalmist of Psalm 131 said. For so much of my life that has seemed an unattainable state. There have been moments of it, but not a steady state, at least not on the inside. I am someone who often appears much more peaceful than I really am, attested to my sister and me recently when she met a receptionist who remembered me as such a calm and peaceful person. My sister and I both laughed, but we agreed that that is part of me, just as it is part of her. Again we both know that it is Christ's presence within us which makes us so, regardless of the storms in our lives.

But yesterday and today I am particularly conscious of this, and of my own part in it, as the psalmist says. I have made choices so that it is possible to be still and quiet. And those choices are not ones that mean I am inactive or unusually reflective. In fact I am very busy. During the garage sale yesterday I was strongly aware of this peace, and enjoyed conversations with people. It wasn't the money that mattered, which wasn't a great amount, but I so appreciated meeting people and learning about some of their lives. And by taking a load to the recycling room at the dump afterwards I was blessed with an almost new bedstead for Rachel!!

My great joy today is in the tangible quality of this peace, in my part in making it possible, in God's multiplication of that effort on my part, and of its presence at this time when my daughters are about to embark on their return flights from Uganda, spanning two days of travel through London, England, on Monday and Tuesday of this week.