So... a few weeks turned into a few months... But alas, here I am with so much to tell!

The plans and timing of the Lord never cease to amaze me.  Going back to the States last January made me reflect on a lot of things -- who I was, how the Lord was changing me, and where I fit in to His greater plan.  I didn't come up with answers to everything, but I realized that the three years I spent in Central Asia were somewhat formative years for me -- the Lord matured my faith in a lot of ways and helped me establish a "presence" where I was living -- but I also felt like He was preparing me for something bigger.  Little did I know just how big it was.

If you have seen the movie Shall We Dance? (2004), Susan Sarandon's character has a wonderful monologue about marriage halfway through the movie.  She says...

We need a witness to our lives.  There's a billion people on the planet... I mean, what does any one life really mean?  But in a marriage, you're promising to care about everything.  The good things, the bad things, the terrible things, the mundane things... all of it, all of the time, every day.  You're saying, 'Your life will not go unnoticed because I will notice it.  Your life will not go un-witnessed because I will be your witness.'

God helped me come to a place of relative contentment as a single working in a society that puts a lot of pressure on to get married.  I realized that He had allowed me to do things that I would not have been able to do as a married woman.  I was able to feely devote all my time to relationships with locals without any other demands on me.  For this first phase of my time in Central Asia, that was wonderful because the things I was able to learn enabled me to grow as a person.  But as the time moved on, I was feeling more of a desire to have a "witness" to my life.  Someone to share the joys and struggles, triumphs and heartbreaks with.  That person did not seem to be anyone in my life at that point, so again I laid it all in God's sovereign hands.

Then the Lord did one of the most amazing things that I have seen so far in my life...

The week that I returned to the States, a former classmate of mine e-mailed me.  It started off innocent enough, him asking me about our 10-year reunion that was coming up.  We continued to communicate and with each email and phone conversation we realized more and more that the two paths that we had been wandering on since high school were, without our knowledge, leading us closer together.

So, let me introduce you to Tyler, the man that has chosen me, and I him, to be witnesses to one another's lives, to explore love unconditional through eternity with and to draw each other closer to the Father's heart.

Tyler is a joy unspeakable to me and the biggest blessing that the Lord has ever entrusted me with.  He is an instant friend to everyone, good-hearted, laid-back, sensitive, easy-to-be-around, and passionate about the ways of the Lord.  He makes me smile, makes me laugh, and makes me want to be closer to the Lord.  He is a reminder to me that God is good and takes care of us.  His plans, His gifts, His dreams for us are so much bigger and grander than we can imagine.  Praise Him for that!

Tyler and I are going to join our "paths" and be married on December 2nd of this year.  Rejoice and be glad with us about God's sovereign and perfect plans!

Currently Listening Josh Groban By Josh Groban see related

Wow!  It has been so long since I have updated this thing!  And believe me, it is not because I have a lack of things to say!  Since getting back to the States just over three months ago, so, so much has happened.  Unfortunately, you are going to have to wait a few weeks before I update you on all of it!  But let me tease you with this...  It is good!

I have been thinking a lot about faith, hope and love.  The greatest of these is certainly love, just as 1 Corinthians 13 says.  After all, faith and hope will one blessed day come to an end.  Love is the only one that never fails and never ends. 

So much is written about love.  Every song on the radio depicts it in one way or another: 

"What the world needs now is love sweet love."

"Love is a many splendored thing."

"I will always love you."

"Said I loved you but I lied."

"What's love got to do with it?"

And on and on...  But can we ever fully know what love is?  God is infinitely larger than our imaginations, I hope we can all agree on that.  And if God is love, then maybe it stands that love, too, is infinitely beyond our imaginations.  We see expressions of it every day... The look of a mother with her newborn baby, a child that thought he was lost and was suddenly found by his parent, newlyweds gazing at each other from across the table, an older couple walking hand-in-hand down the street. 

But in our fraility, can we ever know fully what unconditional love is?  We often put limitations on our own love.  We love our neighbor as long as they keep to themselves, we love our coworkers as long as they don't cause trouble for us, we love our spouse until we divorce, and unfortunately, there are a lot of cases of loving our children until they disappoint us and we give them up.  We see expressions of love all around us, but are they expressions of unconditional love or love in a temporal sense? 

The most-well known passage of love in the Bible is 1 Corinthians 13.  According to God's word in that passage, love is all of these things:

Patient, kind, without envy and without boasting, not arrogant, not rude, never insisting on its own way, not irritating, not resentful, never rejoicing at wrongdoing but rejoicing in the truth, it bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things and endures all things, never-ending.

According to the same passage, if we do anything without love, we are doing nothing. 

Wow.  Can you ever say that you have done anything while possessing all of the characteristics on the list above? 

Can we live a life of unconditional love?  I sure don't know, but I can't see the hurt or shame in trying!  Love is the most talked about, most questioned, most researched concept (turn on Oprah and Dr. Phil and you will know!) and yet still lies infinitely outside of our imaginations.  I can think of no other concept worth living for.  And I certainly can think of no greater virtue worth dying for.

"For God so loved the world that He gave His only Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life" (John 3:16).

Stayed tuned for more

“All I have is my Bible and a journal!  What do I do?”

A friend of mine and I had a great discussion the other day and it has been the inspiration for this entry.  (Thanks Amy!)  Let me start with a couple of questions…

How spiritual do you think you are?  I mean, honestly…  With no one around to judge your pride J how “spiritual” do you think you really are?  I shy away from the term “religious”, because in this day and age, that term almost has a negative connotation to it.  The PC term is now “spiritual”.  Back to my question.  No one is going to hear your answer, so honestly think about the question. How spiritual do you think you are? 

What immediately came to your mind?  How many times you go to church in a week?  In a month?  How many activities (bible studies, small groups, intramural sports leagues, etc.) you are involved with?  How many groups you have led?  How many organizations or “causes” you give money to?  Did you count up your spiritual gifts or how many fruits of the spirit you daily portray?  Did you compare yourself to someone else you know?  What about that co-worker that is a constant thorn-in-your-side?  Are you more spiritual than him/her?  And how about “those sinners” that don’t ever step foot inside a church?  Surely you are more spiritual than them?! 

Okay.  Now let me take you somewhere.  Try to imagine it (but don’t close your eyes until you have finished reading!).  Imagine you are whisked away to a place where there is no church.  There are no pastors around to teach you and there are no small groups to attend.  There are no bookstores that you can drive to in order to find the latest “Christian Living” bestseller.  There are no radio or television programs that are preaching the Gospel or singing worship songs.  It’s just you.  You are all alone.  You have a Bible, but it doesn’t have study helps or devotional studies.  It’s just a Bible.  You don’t have a devotional with you, just a blank journal. 

What do you do?

This exact situation has happened to so many Christians that have traveled overseas for any length of time.  Suddenly the comforts of America are gone.  They are no longer attending church, because there either isn’t one or there isn’t one that preaches in a language that they understand.  They don’t have a pastor or other spiritual leader in real life or in the form of books, radio, television, etc.  They don’t have a large group of people around them to teach them.  The crutches that they have held on to for support for so long are suddenly gone.  And they realize, “It’s just me… alone… with God.”

It is in that very moment that a Christian finds out who they truly are.  The things that they once counted as a notch on their spirituality belt don’t matter any more.  In fact, they don’t even exist.  It is a scary place to be.  I know.  I have been there. 

My friend (who had also gone through this defining stage of her walk) asked me if when I was in Asia I felt like I had to struggle to keep going.  Not just to keep surviving, but to keep up a spiritual walk without the crutches that we have in America.  I answered with an emphatic, “YES!”  My struggle began when I first got to my overseas home and lasted for a better part of a year and a half.  Let me explain.

I had never said in my mind that I was anything special or that I was any better than any one else because of what I was doing.  But compared to where I had been years before, I thought I was doing pretty well in the “spirituality” department.  God had been teaching me so much through my church.  I had grown tremendously since spending time in Mexico and then moving to Texas.  I was involved in so many church-related activities.  I loved to read and I had read so many books and since I had worked in a Christian bookstore, even the ones that I hadn’t read I could talk about with some knowledge.  I loved to worship in my church and to feel the presence of the Lord there among so many of His children.  I loved my crutches because they were what brought me closer to the Lord. 

I knew that when I moved to Asia, I wouldn’t have a church to attend or a bookstore to hang out in.  But I didn’t realize how much I depended on those things.  (Let me put a disclaimer in here that, although I am calling them crutches, I do not in any way believe that these are bad things or that they shouldn’t be used!  Praise God for what we have in America and the spiritual giants on whose shoulders we can walk and learn from!)  After a few months, I quickly found that I had hit a plateau.  I wouldn’t call it a “valley”, it was just a plateau.  I wasn’t learning anything and I didn’t feel like I was growing… I was just flat.  I never lost my faith nor felt like God wasn’t with me; I just didn’t know how to reconnect.  I wasn’t being fed by anything or anyone.  After all, there wasn’t anyone there to feed me.  It was just me, my Bible, and God.  I trusted Him, but I felt like I couldn’t get any deeper with Him.

During this time, I began to struggle with a lot of things.  We had a small fellowship that met once a week, but it all felt so redundant and surface-level.  I would hear corporate prayers that were spoken out loud by me and by members of our fellowship and I couldn’t help but think, “I have heard those words over and over!  When are we going to go deeper?  Isn’t there anything left for us?”  I struggled to read my Bible because I felt like I was reading empty words.  I didn’t have anyone to give me any answers.  I was alone. 

I remember spending the night at a coworker’s house somewhere in the middle of all of this.  She had gone to bed early, so I decided to look at the small set of books that she had brought from home.  One of them was a selection of Psalms.  I began to read them and for the first time in a long time, I felt my heart coming back to life.  Over and over in the Psalms I was reading cries for help.  David cried out to God, “How long will you forget me?” Over and over he said, “How long must I take counsel in my soul and have sorrow in my heart all the day?” 

This is how I was feeling.  My heart felt such great sorrow because all that I had known was gone.  It didn’t matter that I used to be at the church building two or three times a week.  It didn’t matter how many small groups I was involved with.  And I didn’t have my pastor to be my “quiet time” for me.  I was left with nothing but me.  And it was sorrowful!  For about a month, I kept finding myself back in the Psalms because that was the only place where I could find a connection for my heart.  I knew that God was the constant; He never changed.  But I was having a hard time knowing how to go deeper with Him.  “Consider and answer me, O Lord my God; light up my eyes, lest I sleep the sleep of death.”  I felt that if God were not to show me how to go deeper on my own without someone else telling me how, I would be sleeping the “sleep of death”, because that is what that plateau felt like to me… death. 

I had cried out day and night that God would show me how to have a deeper passion, love and connection with Him.  And then He answered me.  He showed me that my view or perception of Him had been too small.  I was limiting Him to the notches on my spiritual belt, when in fact, He was so much more than that.  Yes, church is vital to our growth, we need that fellowship and accountability and spurring on of one another, but that wasn’t all there was.  There was one more thing that was even more important…  Him.  Since He had brought me to a place where all of my crutches were gone, I would have to find different ways of worshiping Him.  I couldn’t do it in the church, because one didn’t exist.  I had to do it on my own.  Just me, my Bible and God. 

I began to journal again.  I am an expresser through my writing, meaning that often I don’t know how I feel or what I think until I start to write it.  I began to meditate.  There is a time for reading huge chunks of God’s word at one time, but there is also a time to read smaller portions and meditate on what it means.  I began to read the old stories and parables again and found that I was seeing them in a fresh light.  God began to reveal things to me that I hadn’t seen before.  I was growing!  And He was drawing me closer and closer to Himself, without the use of my crutches.

So what is the point of all of this?  Why do I think that this was important enough to share?  I guess I think that we all should have this kind of experience.  No matter how “spiritual” you think you are (or aren’t), take a minute and ask yourself why?  If the answer lies in a statistic – how many times you do this or that – or in a comparison – how much more spiritual you are than someone else – that maybe you are missing the point.  Statistics don’t matter when it comes to your relationship with God.  What matters is if you are drawing your breath from Him, or if you are using a crutch to get you through.  Take away the buildings, the meetings, the books, and the radio.  Put yourself in a place where you are alone with only your Bible and God.  Learn from Him.  Draw strength from Him.  Worship Him.  Learn to walk with Him, not just with your crutches.  Come to a place where if He was all you had, you would not be afraid to keep on worshiping Him.

Currently Reading Essential Rumi By Coleman Barks see related

I have been home for just over a week now.  The most common question is, “What is it like to be back home?”  I usually give my standard answer of, “It is a little strange, but it is really good to see everyone.”  This is a true answer, but one that is helping me hide behind my uncertainties and not really figure out how I am really doing.  I was nervous to come back because of how much I knew everything would have changed.  And things have…  The city looks different, my sister has two more kids than when I left, everyone is involved with new activities with their jobs or church or school…  But there is still a lot that remains the same.  There are still an overwhelming amount of choices everywhere you go – restaurants, grocery stores, movie theaters, the mall – and there are still more and more Starbucks popping up everywhere.  These things are the same as I remember; there are just more of them now. 

I have gone from one extreme to another in many ways.  The most obvious is modernity.  I have come from a small city with bumpy roads and people selling goods on carts, with horses, camels and donkeys sharing the road with taxis and huge trucks.  I have come to a city with smooth beautiful streets, big buildings that aren’t made out of mud, and cars of all shapes and sizes all moving along in the same direction, following the same rules.  I have come from the developing third-world to the bustling first-world.  (I am happy to announce that I am officially a legal driver again after having to go through a driving test where 3 mph over the speed limit is not smiled upon.  Oops!)

I have come from a relational culture to task-oriented culture.  Where I come from, it is not about what you accomplished during the day, but who you were able to see and spend time with.  Maybe you only got one thing done on your list of things to do (if you still keep one) but it does not matter because you can do it tomorrow.  The important thing is you were able to spend time with a relative or a neighbor and invest in their lives.  I have come to a culture where everyone has date planners not only written in a planner, but also synchronized to their Palm, computer and cell phone, just in case they were to forget.  There is not a lot of time to just sit and spend the day together, but maybe in three weeks after work but before the meeting we could get together for a half hour or so.  (I am not talking about anyone in particular, so don’t try to guess!  It is just a general theme.)  I am not used to having plans beyond the next day, so I had to buy a planner so that I won’t agree to everyone and then find out it was all for the same day. 

And the other most obvious change from one extreme to the next is my status.  I have gone from being a rich foreigner that has all the answers to a poor overseas worker that doesn’t know how to get to the local coffee shop without asking!

What has been the hardest?  Being away from the people that I have spent my life with for the last three years.  Being a relational culture, I have been with the family that I live with day in and day out for the better part of those three years.  Since the baby was born two months ago, I have held him in my arms all day and all night.  I have played with, reasoned with and fought with the little 5-year old boy and taken him to school every day.  I did the 8-year old girl’s hair almost every morning.  I helped the other two older kids with their homework in the evening.  I watched their grandmother make dinner every night and helped her with the wash or with whatever other little chores she allowed me to do.  I chatted with the children’s father about what it would take to finish rebuilding the country and about the different places that he saw on television.  I sat with my friend, the children’s mom, and laughed with her, cried with her, wondered with her, went everywhere with her always by my side.  And now they are on the other side of the world.  Yes, I am glad to be back, but yes, my heart aches for what I left behind.  It is not that I love them more or like being here less, it is just where my heart has been inclined to be. 

All of this has brought me to really question what home is.  I know that my real home is in heaven, face-to-face with my Savior, but until then I find that I am just a prisoner of time wandering through this world.  I read on someone’s shirt once that “everyone who wanders is not lost” and that is how I feel.  Not lost, but wandering around this earth, planting little pieces of my heart in different places. 

What is the best part of being home?  My family.  I have missed them so much and it feels good to be in their presence once again.  It is nice to reminisce and be able to pick back up on some of the same stories and jokes that we used to have.  Yes, some things will always remain the same.  The only difference with my family is that I feel like I have a deeper love and appreciation for them than I ever did before, one that I cannot quite express with words. 

I know this is a long entry, but I have been reading a lot of Rumi's poetry and wanted to leave this entry with one of them.  Thanks for reading!

My Worst Habit

My worst habit is I get so tired of winter

I become a torture to those I'm with.

If you're not here, nothing grows.

I lack clarity.  My words

tangle and knot up.

How to cure bad water? Send it back to the river.

How to cure bad habits? Send me back to you.

When water gets caught in habitual whirlpools,

dig a way out through the bottom

to the ocean. There is a secret medicine

given only to those who hurt so hard

they can't hope.

The hopers would feel slighted if they knew.

Look as long as you can at the friend you love,

no matter whether that friend is moving away from you

or coming back to you.

Currently Listening Divine Discontent By Sixpence None the Richer A Million Parachutes see related

Three years.  That can be a long or a short amount of time depending on the context.  A three-year old car is still new.  A three-year old laptop is ancient.  Three years in elementary school and you have just started.  Three years in college and you are almost finished.  A three-year old bottle of wine still hasn't reached its peak.  A three-year old loaf of bread hit its peak three years prior.  Three years in a new city and you are still new.  Three years away from your homeland and you have been away for a lifetime.  My coworkers are having a fun time telling me, "Jayme, you can't do that when you get to America."  "Jayme, don't wear that when you get to America."  "Jayme, you can't say that when you get to America..."   Needless to say, I am getting a little nervous!  If any of you are reading this and are going to see me in the first month of me being home, I ask now for your forgiveness.  Forgive me if I eat a fine dinner with my hands.  Forgive me if I don't know how to sit properly on furniture.  Forgive me if my clothes are a little out of style.  Forgive me if I say that you have gotten fat since I last saw you (that is a compliment here, by the way!).  Forgive me if my English is not correct or if I have trouble getting the words out.  Forgive me if you are male and I don't look you in the eyes or back away if you try to hug me.  Forgive me if you are a girl and I hold your hand a little longer than you are comfortable with.  And forgive me if I look a little lost and start breaking down in tears.

You may not think three years away from home is a long time.  But I challenge you to think of where you were three years ago.  Look at a picture of who you were.  Has your appearance changed?  Have your opinions or attitudes about anything changed?  Have you lost or made new friends?  Do you have new family members?  Have you changed jobs?  Homes?  Cities?  Are you wearing different clothes?  Do you have a new hair style?  How many miles have you driven?  How many vacations have you taken? 

A lot has happened in three years. 

I cannot wait to be home, don't get me wrong.  I am excited beyond measure to see my family and friends.  To drive a car.  To eat in a restaurant.  To go to a shopping mall.  To not be stared at or grabbed as I walk down the street.  To not have my head covered and be able to wear whatever I want. 

But I am nervous.  I am nervous because I have changed.  I am nervous because you have changed.  I am nervous that I won't be able to find where I fit.  I have been living in a country where I have adapted to but am not completely like "them" and am now going back to a country where I am like "them" but have adapted away from. 

I guess I am and always will just be a sojourner in this world.