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| I like having Chris around.
We were at lunch the other day (Senor Tequila, yum... c|:{D) (< yes, that's the Senor, wearing a sombrero... and with a double chin too, if you look at it just right.) and Chris was telling me about all the things that are right in his life now. He went down the list of good stuff, and it was super cool (the kind of things that everybody dreams of.) And then he contrasted it to where he was just a year ago.
A year ago Chris was in Dallas, trying to get out of school. He'd already been there longer than he'd expected to be, and it was not looking very hopeful that he'd meet all the (stupid) clinical requirements before the (stupid) deadline (the deal was changed on them several times...). It was hard. (Yeah, and it had been ten years since the guy's first year of college, too. Wow.)
He did make it through (and got his sweet diploma, yay!), but it didn't get better all of a sudden. He went to work with a chiropractor and ended up in another rough situation (something that had to do with working a lot and not getting anything to show for it...). By that time our family had moved to Little Rock, so he came up here following a lead for something new (this was while some of us were Eestimaal this summer).
One thing happened and then another, and he got a good job (with the doctors with whom he works now), but then ran into all kinds of trouble getting licensed to practice in-State. After lots of ho-hum and phone calls and fellow doctors demanding justice, he finally got his license and started practicing. (I guess just a little while before we got back.)
He worked for a couple of months and then stuff started happening within the company. (It's kind of like a chain of clinics in the area all operated by the same people.) The doctor of the main clinic retired, so the owner asked Chris to take his place, and that's where he is now -- doctoring in the main clinic of this chain in Little Rock. (Sweet deal!)
But, that's a lot in one year.
I really can't imagine that. I think I'd still be back in high school. : P Chris tells the story, though, about going to church one Sunday and hearing a sermon that helped him get through everything.
The sermon was about the women who were going to Jesus' tomb to take care of his body after he died. They were on their way when they realized that there was a big stone covering the entrance that they weren't strong enough to move. When they got there, though, the stone had already been rolled away.
Chris said that after that, when he would come up against something too big, he'd remember that it had already been taken care of - just like that stone - and he'd see it when he got there.
I love that. What a cool brother I have - and what a great God. When we persevere where God wants us, when we keep going and don't let the questions about what's ahead defeat us, we find when we get there that it's already been taken care of.
Nothing's too big for God.
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| It's Saturday night. I'm babysitting. We've watched McGee&Me, the boys are showered and blow dried and prepped for Sunday. They've been prayed with, sung with, and are now laying in their bunks singing orchestral music from StarWars before they fall asleep. (Hopefully that will be soon.)
Today was good. Got up this morning and went to Mimi's cafe with Amber for breakfast! It was awesome. The eggs, bacon and pumpkin spice muffin were super (I always appreciate eggs done well, since I'm not much of a scrambler myself), and it was especially nice to hang out with Amber (it had been a while!)
When we came out of the cafe, Amber had a sweet note from a lady named Cyndi stuck under the windshield wiper. (That would be the note that was stuck, not the lady.) It said simply, "Your front right tire is flat. : ( Cyndi."
Cyndi was so right. (And I was so unobservant. But oh well. It was cold and I was ready to be out of the wind!) Amber called Mark after a valiant effort to get the spare tire and jack out of the back of her car (the spare tire came out, the jack did not.) Mark came and saved the proverbial day, removing the jack and replacing the tire with a donut (?), all in the freezing wind. Then we drove to the Firestone up the street (Firestone is an American tire-rotating, oil-changing, car-fixing place) and then Mark picked us up and drove us home. (Where, coincidentally, Geoff and Dad were changing one of Geoff's tires in the driveway as we pulled up.)
The afternoon was pretty relaxed. I sat in the stuffy chair in the living room, drank some Swiss Miss and talked with Masha. Among other important things, we invented the double-smiley. ( : )
Dad, Mom, Kari and Zach left sometime in the afternoon for a big meeting, leaving me in charge for the evening. We had leftover soup and watched Miracle Down Under. I sat on the couch with Titus and cried at the sad parts (and at some of the happy ones too.)
It was still early then, so I dried my tears and had the boys brush their teeth, etc., then let them also watch something short. They picked one of the early, early McGee&Me's. I almost cried in that one as well, but it was because it was filmed in the late 80's (or early 90's?) Yikes. | | |
| Just One of Those Days*** Chapter 1 *** 
Today is just one of those days.
It started off... really bad!
I don't know what it was.
Felt like being rubbed with the hook side of velcro.
I tried to ride it out, but it just got worse.
So I went back to bed.
*** Chapter 2 *** 
I got out of bed again this morning.
I brushed my hair.
I put on my purple sweater and some makeup.
The sun came out.
I felt better.
And it's turning out to be a pretty good day.
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I stole this picture from Stitch's blog once. It still makes me laugh.
This sums up how I feel about cross-cultural communication. I see many, many days like this, whether it's the frustration of forever trying to "get" people, or the times it seems like everyone is trying to give me bunnies.
Sometimes it's hilarious - the way people use certain words, odd phrases that don't actually mean anything, jokes you don't get. You look around sometimes and have to laugh and think, "You've got to be kidding." Then you laugh even harder because they're not kidding. Not a bit.
At other times it's hard - when what was normal one place is considered rude in another, when you're used to a certain amount of personal space or privacy and someone unknowingly invades it, when to communicate you have to study up on culturally all-important goings-on because no one seems to have an interest in anything more.
There are things that I have come to appreciate about this struggle, though. For one thing, although life when struggling to communicate is a constant learning experience, life is a constant learning experience. To stay alive means to keep changing - in how much you can tolerate and how much you can understand - it means to keep becoming. It means to keep growing. And if you survive it, you do grow.
Hilarious or hard, the communication thing is constant work. Some days the energy for it isn't easily come by. Some days you really just don't "get it." Some days it's very hard to simply relate.
This hurdle isn't new to Jaime living in this country or that, it's something that everybody understands -- everybody everywhere every day. Unless we're only around people just like ourselves (how boring!), there are always going to be people with whom we struggle to communicate.
It starts small and personal - in our families; at school; in our church; wherever we work; anywhere we're around people. With these it's not a matter (in most cases) of being able to understand where someone is coming from culturally, it's about understanding beliefs, values and personalities - the whys and hows of people doing the things they do the way they do them.
It's crazy figuring some people out. Even trying to come at things from their perspective seems... hilarious. Or hard. To really understand and to be understood takes time and effort and, yeah, it takes changing too.
I was in one of the gospels the other day, reading parables, and I was so amazed at how Jesus communicated with people -- putting what he wanted to say so clearly into stories and terms that the people could understand and connect with. He used their language so that they could understand what he understood. He came at things from the perspective of other people, and that blows my mind because I know how hard that is.
There are always culturally frustrating people (am one sometimes!) who, because it is so hard, refuse to change the way they understand and behave to best communicate with the people around them, but Jesus wasn't like that. As Creator, who was with God when he made the whole world with all it's peoples and cultures to come, he had the right to walk in and make demands and start making changes. Instead, he came and graciously made himself the least of us all and got to know us.
To come at things from someone else's point of view, you have to know them. You have to know them. You have to speak their language, to be familiar with the things that they are familiar with. You have to know the way they think and what's important to them. Then to really communicate you have to value them more than you value yourself and the way you've always thought and done things.
There's such a difference between knowing about someone and knowing them. In your head you can have all kinds of facts about a person (like from those 20-question get-to-know-your-friends surveys that get passed around), but knowing how they'll react in a certain situation, what to say to bring a smile out, how to make them feel better when they're sad, those are the kinds of things that only come with time spent together.
When we (speaking as one of God's people) only had God's law, we knew a lot of facts about him. We had the ten big ones that we knew made him happy or angry, and then hundreds of others to put in our heads. But when Jesus came, he was Immanuel, "God with us." And we saw him reach out his hand and touch the leper with a compassion that filled him up. That wasn't in his law, we learned that by seeing it. Then we saw him cry when his friend died. We saw how he wanted to take care of the people that came to hear him on the mountainside. We saw him hurt inside. We saw him angry. We saw him love his enemies. We saw him love us.
I love how John calls Jesus, " the Word." He was communication, in a new way, different than before. We knew all these facts about God and had our whole system set up around them, but there's no love in a system. So he loved us first and communicated himself to us in a way that we could really know him, that we could really love him back. He came and understood us first so that we could understand him. He came to be with us first so that we could be with him.
The facts about him and the personal knowing him, they go together. Having only facts doesn't take you anywhere in any relationship, but a relationship doesn't work if you don't know any facts. Relationship is built from who each one is - from the facts. The facts, the relationship - we can't know God without them both. (So don't throw away the "Old Law." Read the facts and find out about God. Then read about Jesus and see him.)
There's no way that we can really know God without Jesus. There just isn't any other way. And there's no way for us to have a relationship with him without understanding and change on our part. Relationships are a two-way thing.
He has spoken. How can we not respond...
"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning." -John 1:1
"That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched -- this we proclaim concerning the Word of life. The life appeared; we have seen it and testify to it, and we proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and has appeared to us. We proclaim to you what we have seen and heard, so that you also may have fellowship with us. And our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ." -1 John 1:1-3
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| Today's the one year anniversary of Dad trying for the job here. I flew in from Florida, Chris and Geoff were in town for their friend's wedding... we were all kind of randomly here. And now we're all kind of randomly here again!
So yeah. One year.
Happy November 4th! | | |
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