Sonroom

This is my fourth weekend off and I’m still relishing every moment of free time, especially now that school has started again. For the past few weeks we have taken advantage of this shared time together to do some things that we’ve talked about doing for a while. Last week we went thrifting. The week before we went down to the River Market, stopping at the Chinese market, Middle Eastern market, and spice vendors to stock up on some international seasonings and discount vegetables. And my first weekend off we painted our sunroom.

We have talked about painting since we moved in….almost six months ago now. Our school and work schedules rarely left us a full day off together, though, so our painting aspirations were pushed aside. Once I switched to working Monday through Friday, though, we resurrected the idea.

One morning in particular I woke up, distracted by crafty things and ideas for how to fix up our apartment while I was trying to spend some quiet time with the Lord. I was a bit frustrated about my inability to focus on the Lord and finally asked Him if there was a way I could possibly meet Him in the place of dreaming about beautiful spaces.

As it turns out, there was (imagine that, ha!). I begin thinking about my long-time dream of creating a space that combined prayer and hospitality, a dream that had fallen by the wayside for a while as I pursued work with children. Soon that led to thoughts of our sunroom, a space I had most often used for quiet time with the Lord. And all of a sudden, I found myself filled with dreams and ideas for turning the sunroom into a prayer room, filled with light and worship with its wide windows looking out east over the city.

(This was the original state of our sunroom:)

The more I dreamed about it, the more I could feel my spirit stirring as God responded to my invitation to meet me in that place of making beautiful space. So that weekend we bought paint and painted the room. It’s a relatively small space, with lots of windows, so we were able to finish the primer and first coat on Saturday and a second coat on Sunday.

 

As we responded to God’s invitation in this new year to return to intimacy with Him, consecrating this particular space in our house felt like a physical representation of our desire to consecrate our time to Him as well.

Since we finished painting, I have been adding to the room little by little. On our thrifting trip a couple weeks later I found a large sheet to cut in half to make curtains (I was inspired by the warm colors and old wood of this sunroom).

This chair in the corner came from the neighbors across the street at the Tracy House. They gave us some stain to fix it up, too, but I think I actually like the look of the old, weathered wood.

As we get more time and inspiration, I’m sure we’ll add more to the room. We’ve talked about possibly getting wall lettering to put Isaiah 56:7 (about how God will make them joyful in His house of prayer) on the wall. I’ve also though about making some toilet paper tube wall art (something like this). And eventually I want to repaint the red room divider (which we found by the side of the road and carried about fifteen blocks and up three flights of stairs; my husband is a trooper).

For now, though, I’m enjoying spending my early mornings in the rocking chair, with my bible, journal, and cup of coffee.

(By the way, I titled this “Sonroom” because one morning God described it that way, promising that it would be a place where we come to know our identity as His sons and daughters)

Another Variation on Pancakes

I am a breakfast person.

I know plenty of people who skip breakfast most days (my husband among them) and I used to count myself as one of those. I usually ate a combination of breakfast/lunch somewhere in the late morning or early afternoon. These days, though, I tend to wake up hungry, my stomach growling before I’ve finished my cup of coffee. Which usually leads to me cooking a bowl of oatmeal (substantial, nutritious, and cheap). After eating oatmeal nearly every morning this week, though, I decided it was time for something different.

I mixed up a batch of these pancakes (based on this recipe), cooking some and refrigerating the rest of the batter for another morning (how long can you refrigerate pancake batter anyhow?). They’re probably some of the fluffiest pancakes I’ve ever had:

Vegan Pancakes

Ingredients:

1 1/4 c. flour (whatever kind you want; I used whole wheat)
2 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. salt
1 tsp. pumpkin pie spice (optional)
1 1/4 c. soy milk
1 tsp. vanilla (or you could just use vanilla soy milk I suppose)
1 Tbsp. vegetable oil

Directions:

Wisk all the dry ingredients together in a large bowl. Add the soy milk, vanilla, and oil and stir with a fork until smooth. Cook on a lightly oiled skillet over medium-high heat until lightly browned on both sides (they don’t get the same golden brown as regular pancakes). I found that sometimes it helps to spread the batter a bit after you pour it since it ends up fairly thick. Serve with your choice of toppings (I prefer a little bit of honey or applesauce; my husband can’t eat them without lots of syrup).

(Note: you can also use just water instead of the milk if you’d like, like the recipe suggests. I tried it with water the first time and it was alright, but I thought they tasted better with the soy milk and vanilla)

 

Deck the Halls with Strings of Paper

This is by no means a recent project, but it’s simple and pretty enough to post now anyway.

I made this Christmas anytime garland over Thanksgiving break when I found myself with a whole week without classes and a craving something creative. I’ve recently become enamored with garlands as a way to add simple color and interest to a room. So I cranked up the Christmas carols and followed a tutorial from education.com. All you need is paper (any kind will do), scissors, a stapler, tape, and a needle and thread. The tutorial gives a very specific size of paper to start with, but I decided that mine didn’t need to be so exact so I started with various sized rectangles cut from magazine papers (by far my favorite colorful medium to use for crafts). It meant that my stars did not end up uniform in size, but I liked that.

After I had finished making the stars, I threaded them together and hung them on our mantle. With all the busyness from school, work, changing jobs, and traveling home for Christmas, this ended up being the only Christmas decorations I put up this year, other than our collection of Christmas cards. I liked the color it added to our mantle, though, and left it up even after Christmas was over. Because stars aren’t strictly for Christmas, right? That’s what I thought :-).

What Does Love Look Like?

“What does love look like?”
is the question I’ve been pondering
“What does love look like?”
“What does love look like?”
is the question I’ve been asking of You

            – Misty Edwards (“Arms Wide Open”)

Over Christmas break my heart has been awakening to the call to love again. It began over my visit home, stirring in the few quiet moments amidst the flurry of activity as we made the rounds of families and friends. On our return to Kansas City, it intensified as I began reading The Practice of the Presence of God, by Brother Lawrence, one of my gifts this Christmas (I’ve wanted to read it for several years now). And as Derek and I joined over twenty thousand people at the Onething conference, I heard that same call to love fully echoed over and over, in the times of worship, in the messages, and in the cry of my own soul in response to it all.

When I began to read The Practice of the Presence of God, Brother Lawrence’s simple descriptions of how he formed a habit of conversing with God continually and doing everything out of love for Him stirred me to the high and simple invitation to desire God above everything else. It sounded so simple. He didn’t share a three-step plan or five essential practices or a formula of any kind. He merely described his experience of loving God and falling back on His grace over and over. It sounded so simple. And yet, it also brought the painful realization of how far I am from that reality in my life. More often than not, I try to slap a half-hearted pursuit of God on top of everything in my life and pretend it’s all for Him. In reality, my motivation comes from so many other places but rarely from genuine love for God. I want genuine love for God to be the root of all that I do, but as I recognized the absence of that in my life I also begin to realize how little I truly understood about what it means to love God well. Or what it means to love Derek well, for that matter. This past semester produced a stellar report card and a new job, but what of my relationship with God? What of my marriage? Did I love well?

During the Onething conference, focused this year on “Jesus, Our Magnificent Obsession”, that invitation to return to my first love for God surfaced over and over, not just in the worship and the talks but in my own heart as I responded to what I heard. Over and over I was reminded that nothing was as crucial as loving God fully.

One of the most profound parts of the conference for me was Dwayne Robert’s talk that Friday morning. He spoke about how Ecclesiastes 3:11 tells us that we go through seasons of our life, yet eternity has been put in the heart of man. We were designed to connect with the Eternal One and nothing will fully satisfy us until we are dwelling with God. He cautioned that our careers and even our ministry cannot be our focus. These are our calling, not our reward, not the place in which we find our satisfaction. We will never be satisfied even by miracles or power going forth from our bodies. Instead, we must be compelled by the love and revelation of Jesus. He said that the cry in the inner room of those who walk in signs and wonders is, “Jesus, my magnificent obsession, I love you!” “I am not going to let this eternal cry be met by anything else but a Man with eyes aflame with love for me,” Dwayne declared. “My life is a failure if I enter eternity with my life dull to Him.”

At the end, he issued a call to be diligent in our calling, but to shift the goals and focus of our lives, to enlarge our hearts, to detach from everything that is contaminating our hearts and to do whatever it takes to break our addiction to the American dream. His words were cutting and powerful, but it was the passion behind them that spoke most deeply to me. As he spoke, I saw a man desperate to love God fully, to turn away from every other passion but Jesus, and to see others engulfed in that same passion for God. I recognized the puniness of my own passion for God lately, how little I truly loved this Man Jesus, how little I even know Him. But it stirred the coals of that fire a little more. I want to know Him. I want to love Him more fully. I want to see my life radiating passion for the Eternal One. I want to see that passion engulf every other passion and desire in my life until it compels everything I do.

So in this new year and new season for me and Derek, I have resolved to pursue God again, to open my life to a deeper knowledge of Jesus and invite Him to feed the flames of love for Him in my heart. Even as I turn my heart back to God again, though, I can feel the tug of my flesh in the other direction. There’s the constant temptation to draw away again, to feed myself with the world, to let my mind and spirit simply coast, to take the easy way. More and more I recognize my incredible need for God’s grace to seek Him and know Him. I am encouraged by a prayer that Brother Lawrence was in the habit of praying whenever he found that he’d failed in his pursuit of loving God fully: “I am used to do so; I shall never do otherwise if I am left to myself” (The Practice of the Presence of God, p. 13). In the past couple weeks I’ve often found myself echoing that prayer in my own words, pouring out confession after confession of my own inability to relate rightly to God, and inviting Him to pour out His grace in the places of my weakness. Because weakness and all, that invitation is still there to love Him more.

Made for Community

Sunday marked the beginning of a new year, which means flipping calendars and, if you’re like me, the beginning of a season of scribbling out dates until I finally remember to write the correct year.

Sunday also marked my last shift at the breakfast restaurant. Several weeks prior I was offered a job as a support teacher at an early childhood education center, mostly working with infants and toddlers. I jumped into the classroom the day after I was hired, soaking up as many hours of experience as I could fit in before I took responsibility for my own extended day classroom this Tuesday. It marked the end of working every Saturday and Sunday, opening up my weekends again.

Despite how much I hated working every Sunday morning, I found myself reluctant to leave the job. Part of it was a reluctance to make yet another transition (we’ve had so many in the past couple years). When Sunday afternoon came, I lingered a bit, trying to figure out how to say goodbye to coworkers who I spent hours with every week but who were not necessarily friends in the sense that they had no place in the rest of my life (am I the only one who finds this a bit awkward?).

That afternoon, as I enjoyed my rest at home, I pondered why I found it hard to leave that job. It wasn’t that I was particularly attached to the restaurant business (though I do love hospitality). Then that still, small voice said simply:

“Because you were made for community.”

I was made for community. Indeed. That simple phrase opened up my perspective. Looking back, I recognized that I have spent a lot of my life feeling alone, so when I find pockets of community, I cling tightly to them. Even surface communities, where the closest ties are merely proximity and we share little of our lives, feed that desire for community. For the past five months I spent more time at the restaurant than anywhere else and I did develop a sense of community there that I sorely missed elsewhere in that busy season of school and work that left little time for anything else.

In a small way, it reminded me of the power of meal-sharing in building a sense of community and acceptance. Though we did not share full meals, there were early morning breakfasts before the customers arrived, sampling the chef’s daily specials, and gathering with the other servers to eat miscooked meals that couldn’t be served to the customers. Even in these brief moments of chatting between bites, I saw how sharing food brought people together, even people who were very different from one another with a wide variety of backgrounds and lifestyles. It reminds me of Brennan Manning’s insights on the power of meal-sharing in A Glimpse of Jesus, in the chapter titled “Healing Through Meal-Sharing”: “In the East, to share a meal with someone is a symbol of peace, trust, brotherhood, and forgiveness; the shared table is a shared life. To say to an Orthodox Jew, ‘I would like to have dinner with you,’ is understood as ‘I would like to enter into friendship with you’” (Manning, A Glimpse of Jesus: The Stranger to Self-Hatred, p. 54).

But I also recognize that a surface sense of community like I experienced at work will never satisfy my desire for true, Christ-centered community. It remains only a shadow of the depth of relationship that God desired among His people and – even more importantly – the communion we were made for with Him. We are made for deep relationships that push deep beyond the surface, that open up our lives to be vulnerable with one another, that carry one another’s sorrows and joys, and that sharpen each other like iron sharpens iron. A surface sense of joint activity will never satisfy the ache for community like that.

I was made for community. Not surface community, not just shared activity, certainly not the facebook version, but true, deep community. This year, as I transition into a new season, I want to intentionally pursue relationship, giving it greater space in my life again.

(P.S. I don’t really do New Year’s resolution, but if I did, I would probably also resolve to blog more this year, so you may be hearing from me more regularly again. Maybe.)

Taking Time to Be Crafty

Since we moved into our new place, I have been compiling a list of things I want to make to decorate our home. The reality of working and going to school full-time has eaten up most of my time (and life) lately, leaving little time for crafty things (or blogging, apparently).

This week I’ve realized the importance of still making space for some of those creative things, though, because it’s something life-giving in the midst of all the busyness. So this week, along with all the work and class and homework, I’ve made time for some cooking, crafting, and taking walks with Derek.

One thing I made was a vase of flowering branches for our living room mantle. I’ve been looking for colorful things to add to that room (which has plain white walls) and when I saw directions for these flowering branches on familyfun.com, I decided they’d be perfect. The original project calls for tissue paper, but my tissue paper options were limited so I ended up using fabric instead because I had some in the exact color I really wanted.

I started by arranging the branches in the jar I had, making sure they were the length I wanted. Then I cute the fabric into a bunch of yellow squares and green triangles.

For each flower blossom, I glued a green triangle to the yellow square, then shaped it around a pencil tip to make a flower bud. Then I glued each one to the branch. Easy, right?

Actually, it would have been a lot easier with a hot glue gun. I used tacky glue, and the flowers kept slipping off the branches and unfolding. I tried holding some of them on with a clothes pin and held others with my fingers until they stuck. Eventually they all stayed, though. I was really pleased with the finished product and love how it looks on the mantle.

When I Was Sick You Visited Me

This afternoon I went to the hospital to visit a friend who was shot in a drive-by shooting this weekend. She’s alive (thank God) but the bullet went through her side and her bladder. The doctors don’t think there should be any long-term damage, but she had surgery and will be in the hospital for a while.

I grieved a lot for her when I heard, for the pain that she’s in and the violence in her life. It mixed in with grief for another dear friend who, along with her young kids, is currently homeless and living in a hotel because of the spiraling cycle of self-destruction she has been careening down for a while, and grief for a family member who just announced, mere days after her daughter’s birth, that her husband no longer wants to live with her as her husband.

These are heavy things. They make me want to cry. To kick something. To shake my fist at the devil. Most of all, they make me want to do something, to fix everything. But I am powerless to fix any of this.

As I was talking to the Lord about all this yesterday morning, He reminded me of Matthew 25, specifically verse 36 where the King says to the blessed ones, “When I was sick you visited me.” With that reminder came the tender invitation to come and be with Him in this place, to visit Him in this place of suffering, to be His friend in these places where He grieves, too. I don’t even know what that looks like, really, but I was overwhelmed with the reality of His nearness to me and to them in these places.

And I realized that the parable of the sheep and the goats in Matthew 25:31-46 has nothing to do with a list of religious “do’s” to gain God’s favor; it’s a sweet invitation to be with Jesus in those places, with “the least of these”, because we are blessed by the nearness of God in those places.

Abba, bring me face to face with You in all this!

"You make beautiful things, You make beautiful things out of the dust...You make beautiful things, You make beautiful things out of us..."

So, It’s Been A While….

I know I’ve been pretty silent her in the blog world for quite a while (for almost two months, actually, if anyone has been keeping track….oops). My life, on the other hand, has been anything but silent. I don’t have adequate words yet for some of what has happened in those two months (and some can’t be shared in a public forum like this anyhow), but I can give you a brief list of some of the major life events since I last wrote:

• We did a lot of wondering and praying about how we were going to pay rent and bills at the end of July.
• I found a job (quite shortly after I wrote that last post about being discouraged by the fruitless job search, actually). Now I work as a server/cashier/dishwasher at a breakfast café in Westport. I really love it (except for working every weekend…). And it has been a reminder of God’s attentiveness to my heart and desires. During my final week of work with the after school program, I was praying and asking God to provide work for me and Derek. I felt God ask, “Well, what kind of work would you like?” The first thing that came to mind was a little breakfast and lunch café, full of bright colors, where I could serve cheerfully. That picture opened the door to a lot of lies in my heart about how I would never be good at the things that I wanted to do (some yucky heart residue from the after school job). About a month later, when I received the call for an interview at this breakfast place, God reminded me of that conversation with Him. Sure enough, the job opened up.
• We contemplated a major, life-changing decision, ultimately deciding to say yes to what we felt was an invitation from God. That following month was an emotional roller coaster, careening though drama, phone calls, urgent meetings, a good deal of heartache, and then eventually ending with all our options exhausted and all the doors closed. God spoke to us deeply in that process, though, and assured us that He always brings forth life. Though we don’t know or understand what that might look like in this and we still carry a fair amount of grief over how things turned out, we’re still believing His word in that. (One of these days I may write a password-protected post sharing some more details of what happened and the ways God spoke in it).
• Derek found a job (just in time to confirm the aforementioned life-changing decision). Now he works three days a week doing apartment maintenance and grounds keeping at an apartment complex near the Plaza (which fits perfectly with his school schedule).
• Derek and I celebrated our second year of marriage by going out to our friend Autumn’s farm out in the middle of nowhere in Kansas. It was so peaceful and perfect. (I came home to discover that my engagement ring was stolen from the house while we were gone, though we got it back later that night, but that’s a whole different story….)
• Derek returned to school for his second semester in CISCO networking. Don’t ask me what that is exactly. I just know it has to do with computers (and nothing to do with facebook) and that now he knows enough about routers to set up a home wireless network for us (pretty handy!).
• I started school full-time. After almost five years out of school (which I still don’t regret, by the way), I’m a student again, this time working towards my associates in child growth and development. The classes are proving to be pretty intensive so far (more so than I expected for me first semester). I’m learning a lot already, though, and growing more and more excited about learning to teach young children well.
• We moved out of the Tracy House and into our own apartment. We had been looking towards this move since the beginning of the summer (we were finding it increasingly difficult to live in community as a married couple, especially in a community with such a diversity of ages, life stages, and values). We felt like God was inviting us into a season of more intentionally establishing the foundations of our family. Somewhat unexpectedly, Lindsay decided that the season of the Tracy House was coming to a close and we all moved out at the end of August. So now, for the first time since we moved to Kansas City, Derek and I have our own space, a huge (and cheap!) third floor apartment, complete with a sunroom and its share of old building quirks. The building is named Isabel, which means, “God’s promise” or “Our God is a vow.” It feels like a significant name for our new home. We are mostly unpacked now (except for the second bedroom, which has become a temporary storage space for everything that doesn’t have a more permanent spot yet). Now I often find myself distracted, dreaming about ways to make the space lovely and home.

So there you have it: the reasons behind my silence over the past couple month. And now, I have some homework to do (or procrastinate on…) and some beautiful weather to enjoy….

Simmering

This past week I’ve wrestled with a lot of discouragement (mostly from my so-far-fruitless job search and the uncertainty about the next couple months that it brings). I feel stretched with the tension of this transition until I’m brittle and snappish. I try to soak in God’s words over me and the dreams solidifying in my heart. But I still feel pretty lost in the in between.

In the meantime, though, I’ve still been doing a lot of cooking, planning menus and trying new recipes. I’ve become enamored with the cinnamon/tumeric combination that give dishes an exotic sort of taste, so I thought I’d share a couple recipes I made recently.

The kids were hanging out in the kitchen with me, munching on bites of tomato and zucchini while I made this first one. When dinner time came, Shelby gave them pizza rolls, but they cried for the vegetable stew until she finally gave them some. They ate all their vegetables – and asked for seconds – but never did finish those pizza rolls. I consider that a success :-).

Couscous with Butter Beans, Zucchini, and Tomato Stew

Ingredients:

1 Tbsp. plus 2 tsp. olive oil
1 medium onion, diced
1 28 oz. can of tomatoes, drained
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 tsp. fresh ginger, minced
1 tsp. coriander
1/2 tsp. tumeric
1/2 tsp. cinnamon
1/4 tsp. cayenne
1 can of butter beans (don’t drain)
3 medium zucchini, diced
2 c. water
1 1/3 c. dried couscous

Directions:

Heat 1 tablespoon of oil over medium heat in a deep skillet. Sauté the onions in the oil, for five minutes, then add the tomatoes, garlic, ginger, coriander, tumeric, cinnamon, and cayenne. Saute, stirring frequently, for 3 minutes. Stir in the butter beans (including the liquid), zucchini, and 1/4 tsp. salt. Cover and cook for 15 minutes, stirring occasionally.

Meanwhile, bring the water to a boil, along with the remaining 1/4 tsp. salt and the remaining 2 tsp. oil. Stir in the couscous. Immediately cover the pan and remove from the heat. Let stand at least 5 minutes. Just before serving, fluff the couscous. Ladled the stew over the couscous and serve.

(This recipe was modified from a recipe in The Best 125 Meatless Mediterranean Dishes, by Susann Geiskopf-Hadler and Mindy Toomay – one of my current favorite cookbooks from the library)

 

Kashmiri Gobi

(A northern India dish)

Ingredients:

1 large onion, chopped
4 garlic cloves
2-inch piece of fresh ginger, peeled and coarsely chopped
3 tomatoes, chopped
6 Tbsp. oil
1 large cauliflower, separated into florets
1 tsp. ground tumeric
1 tsp. cayenne pepper
1 tsp. cinnamon
1/2 tsp. cloves
3 bay leaves
1 tsp. sugar
1 tsp. salt
1/4 c. cashews, chopped

Directions:

Puree the onion, garlic, ginger, and tomatoes together in a food processor. In a saucepan, sauté this mixture with the tumeric and cayenne for 3 minutes. Add the cinnamon, cloves, bay leaves, sugar, and salt and simmer for a 5 more minutes.

Meanwhile, heat the oil in a deep saucepan over medium heat and sauté the cauliflower until it is beginning to brown and soften. Add the prepare sauce and the cashews and stir together. Let cook for about 5 minutes more. Serve over quinoa or your choice of grains.

(This recipe was modified from one found in World Food Café; Global Vegetarian Cooking, by Chris and Carolyn Caldicott)

The Kashmiri Gobi

When a Fish Sandwhich Girl Meets the Abundance of the Father

For a while now I’ve felt God pressing into the places of my unbelief that He is faithful and will provide for us in all circumstances (you may remember this post from this past winter).

About a month ago, at a friend’s suggestion, I looked into the life of George Mueller. I began with a small book of excerpts from his diary. I tucked it into my purse to read on the bus, but was soon gripped by account after account of God’s provision. Sometimes the provision came just in time (money the day rent was due, bread as the family prepared to sit down for dinner) and sometimes it came as soon as he prayed. God provided money, food, material items, workers and supplies for the orphan home he founded, physical strength, and even a vacation. All without Mueller expressing his needs or desires to anyone but God. Now I’m working my way through a biography of George Mueller by Roger Steer. Every time I open it, I’m challenged by the account of this man who was so enthralled by the sweet mercies and graciousness of God that he trusted Him to provide for every need, large or small. I can feel it shifting the paradigms of my heart.

This shifting kicked into high gear a couple weeks ago when Dave Blackwell spoke at the Boiler Room about the abundance of Jesus (you can listen to his talk here – do it). He began by sharing a story about when an uncle of theirs came to visit and took them out to dinner at a fancy seafood restaurant on the plaza. When Dave opened the menu, he immediately went to the cheapest item on the menu – the fish sandwich. He was all set to order it when the uncle asked if they liked crab legs. When they answered that, sure, they liked them, he proceeded to order several pounds of crab legs. And from then on, if they even so much as mentioned that something sounded good, the uncle would call a waiter over and order it. This uncle’s generosity was so extravagant, far beyond the fish sandwich that Dave would have chosen for himself.

Then Dave retold the story of the feeding of the five thousand (John 6:5-13), a situation where it would have been impossible for the disciples to give even the barest minimum, even just a mouthful, to the multitudes. Yet Jesus supplied as much as they wanted and then some – twelve baskets of leftovers after everyone had eaten their fill. Then came the story of the wedding at Cana (John 2:1-11), where Jesus provided the equivalent to about six hundred bottles of wine, because He cares about the celebration and the details. He wanted to show His glory, to  challenge the disciples with the reality of His overflowing bounty. He wanted to reveal the character of the Father, the extravagant giver.

I recognized myself in Dave’s description of “the fish sandwich kind of people,” the ones who settle for the cheapest thing they can get, the bare minimum of what they need. Not only do I literally order the cheapest item on the menu when I go to a restaurant, but I’ve locked the highest bar of my expectation of God’s provision on just getting by with the basics. I even remember a time, shortly after I graduated from high school, when I classified myself as “working class poor…those people who work and work and work but only barely make ends meet. They are the people who drive junkers or walk because they don’t have a car at all. They aren’t homeless or starving; they just never get beyond the basics of getting by.” (from my journal, October 4, 2005). Even more recently I’ve often felt a nagging weight of fear that it’s all up to me to work hard, to earn my way, to make sure we get by. This leaves no space, no expectation, for the abundant, extravagant generosity of the Father.

So that afternoon I began confessing this wrong mindset towards God and asking Him to reveal more of who He is, more of His goodness, faithfulness, and provision. Over and over the prayer broke out of me: show me. Show me. Please, Abba, show me.

And He has.

First it was through boxes and bags of things sent home with me from work as we cleaned and packed up our classrooms: a whole pack of computer paper, several jars of peanut butter, ice cream (the same day that Derek had mentioned a little wistfully how good ice cream sounded), apples….and hundreds – yes, hundreds – of mozzarella cheese sticks. I brought home four gallon-sized Ziploc bags full of them and we threw away more besides that. I gave them away to the interns, to friends, to neighbors, to the kids, and still there were more than we could eat ourselves. (Derek joked that it was kind of like in Exodus when the Israelites were set free from slavery and left carrying the riches of the land with them).

The next day we finished packing the last of the classrooms. As we gathered up our things to leave, I noticed the schoolyard garden, still full of vegetables, and asked if we needed to do something with it. My boss, flustered with the final details of packing everything, said that she’d pay me a little extra time if I stayed to clear it out. So I recruited a friend from the Boiler Room and we spent a couple hours chatting as we cut vegetables and tugged out weeds. In the end, we brought home four large grocery bags full of fresh, homegrown vegetables: kale, collards, red potatoes, beets, onions, and cilantro. I gave some to the teachers and staff at the school, sent some home with the friend who helped, passed some on to the interns, and still had more than we could eat (we’re still working our way through the collards in particular). That evening I made a meal almost entirely out of vegetables from the school. As I washed the dishes afterwards I suddenly realized that I was experiencing the abundance of Jesus that Dave had talked about that Sunday, the abundance that I’d asked God to show me.

Since then my awareness of God’s provision has only heightened, even in the little things. I had an interview at the library (the day my job at the after school program ended, I came home to find the e-mail asking me to come in for an interview). The day after my job ended, I began to nanny once a week for the Blackwell boys (they even offered me an extra day this week, just in time to pay next month’s rent).

And on Thursday I had been thinking about how we’d need to look for another bookshelf when we move because two out of the three that we’re using right now belong with the house. That evening we took the kids down to the park and there across the street, half buried in a pile of junk that someone had cleaned out of a house, sat a gorgeous solid wood bookshelf, with inlaid wood designs, a row of little drawers, and a deep, rich finish. Immediately God reminded me of how I had been wishing (not even praying, just wishing) for another bookshelf that morning. And there He had provided it, not with a bare minimum plywood shelf but with a solid, beautiful piece of furniture. Now it sits in the living room, waiting for the day when we have our own place. Periodically I go over to it and run my hands over the wood, maybe tug open one of the little drawers, and am struck again by the goodness of my Abba in the way He cares for us.

As I learn to recognize God’s provision in these things, gratitude spills out more and more freely. And with that recognition and gratitude come a gentle swelling of faith to ask and trust in the good plans of God for our lives. I’m reminded of something that Dave said, that God is not adverse to giving physical things because we can see and touch them and they act like a switch, turning on revelation of what God is like. This is still a work in progress, but as we walk into summer, I feel like the switch is turning on and the waves of God’s goodness are washing over old fears and mindsets more powerfully than ever before.

“As for me I am poor and needy, yet the Lord takes thought and plans for me. You are my Help and my Deliverer. Oh my God, do not tarry!” – Psalm 40:17