Who am I? Are you ever surprised at yourself?

Three things have come to my attention lately and taken together are a challenge to the way I think about myself. Taken separately they seem innocuous enough, but when I put them together it makes me wonder.

1. In July, I visited my grandfather and he was saying something about Jimmy Swaggert who he likes very much, likes to watch on tv and listen to his music on cd from the good ol' days. I made a negative comment based on Jimmy's infamous fall from grace and grandpa said he repented and we shouldn't hold it against him. I didn't argue that Jimmy refused the restoration process or that perhaps the fall should preclude him from telling people from a leadership role how to serve God. But I thought that.

2. I heard a Christian dvd that at one point did one of those personality analysis. It was sort of like, "oh, yeah, another one," but this one used what I would call a more clear break down of the 4 personality types. Perfect, Peace, Fun, and ? okay I forgot the 4th. What I realized was that while I have strong other characteristics, the perfect category dominates me. Not that by any stretch I'm perfect, but that I'm sometimes paralyzed and very motivated by trying to get things "right" and keep them "on track" and that helps me feel like things are right in the world.

3. I read that Martin Luther King Jr had numerous affairs right up until he died and that he plagerized. This disappointed me so much. I was also surprised I'd never heard it, but it was a reliable source I was reading. It sort of lessened his role for me. It tarnished him and I was surprised that everyone had accepted him so much in this leadership with these flaws.

But in recognizing my shock and disappointment; and putting it together with the other two events above I realized how I was throwing out the person and all their work in one fell swoop. Taking this with #2 I realized I have a very high (too high?) standard for leadership. Or maybe it's not that the standard is too high, but that I throw everything out all at once, including their achievements, if it is flawed.  I would say this was a subconscious thing until this week.

Honestly, as I contemplate it I'm not comfortable with the judgmentalism I suddenly recognize in myself but in the same breath I don't feel comfortable with accepting simply any behavior in a leader. I think I need to learn to accept that some good can come from these flawed people and that it doesn't necessarily delegitimize that good if they (gasp) are terribly human and give in to temptation. Something I read said if we only accept truth from flawless people we are all in trouble. I'm not going to sign up for any fan clubs  of fallen and flawed Christians and I will most assuredly have greater respect for the Billy Grahams who don't give in to the dirty laundry of the world as the norm, but what an amazing thing to realize about myself at this point in life. It's time to grow.

Misfits?

On occasion I find myself in a group of strangers for my work with the odd sensation that it is a group of unusual people. They are outside my experience by default as new people, but for some reason there are these groupings where everyone is in eccentric or misfit category. This doesn't bother me and I find these people are more endearing for their eccentricities. And really it's all relative, isn't it? Who gets to judge eccentric or misfit? But you know what I'm saying when you meet these people. I know I've also had the feeling in other circles of being the misfit in the room.

But I had the sudden thought that we are all misfits. None of us can attain a level of perfection or acclimation that will make us acceptable to everyone else on the planet. Much less can we manage ourselves into a state of acceptability to God. In the eternal economy we are all misfits, none of us gets to go across that line of acceptance or goodness based on our own work on our personalities.

What a joy I took in bowing, figuratively, to God  on the same side of the line as the misfits or challenging people (in my limited view). I can't propel myself across the line. It's a freeing idea really. Hopefully it helps me to feel more generous to the people I find different from me recognizing that we all need God's hand to reach across the line and erase the selfishness of myself.

The roar of summer

After nearly 5 years, I am living through a midwestern summer again. The sound of the cicadas here is deafening this August. It's probably been this way my whole life but after being away the sound is incredible.

For those of you who have not experienced in cicadas, they are one strange bug. As a kid, we called them locust, I don't know why and I don't think that's related. They make a distinctive roaring all through the day and night during August more or less.

As a kid I mostly knew the crunchy exoskeleton thing that the cicadas hatch out of to their winged noisy selves. The funny shells they leave behind on tree trunks and fences. They are exceedingly satisfying to crunch under your shoe (they're empty).

I've never, ever seen the cicada inside the shell only in their fully winged rattly buggy noisy existence. They seem to rattle if you find one on the ground and poke at it. If you get 1,000 of them in a tree outside your bedroom window (I don't know the numbers, but it sounds like a lot), you almost need earplugs to sleep.

There's an area in the south of France called Provence, a major tourist destination, full of lavender by summer and villages that squeeze the cute out of you. They have turned the noisy cicada into their mascot and sell lovely little ceramic versions of it in every village and shop. Kansas and Missouri don't seem to have gotten around to making our cicadas a tourist attraction - yet.

A day in the life

Backstory: For six months, I worked on contacting our broadcast partners and others who had been interested in doing one of our Bible stories video projects in another language to arrange a foreign language shoot for the Go Borderless event. After many disappointments and what seemed to be spiritual opposition, I discovered that two guys were coming from Bangladesh to the Go Borderless 10 day training event. We exchanged the script and started planning for them to stay an extra week for the editing process etc. I was so relieved to finally have something locked down and something that would touch so many lives. I was to direct the shoot so I had been out scouting locations, the direction of the sun at various times of day, etc. We would take half the team and shoot half of the man on cameras segments one day and the following day finish them with the other half of the team. Everyone would experience a field shoot and at the same time we'd have another product done in another language. So finally it was all coming together.

Then two weeks before the shoot, we got word that the Spanish embassy had denied the Bengali men's visas to attend Go Borderless. We sent appeals called, faxed. The embassy wouldn't budget. Now with only two weeks to go I was starting over.

The first thing I was sure about was it had to be someone local - we couldn't ask anyone to fly in at the last minute. So I called one of the Christian production houses that also does a drug rehab ministry that is based in Spain. In my unpretty Spanish and his bumpy English, Dani and I talked. He did have someone who could do the man on camera parts. He was busy that day and said send him an email. I had our resident organizer, Spanish speaker, and lawyer - Silvia verify with him. Yes, yes, everything was fine, but he was always too busy to talk it through.

The day of the shoot: I'm organizing the team of Go Borderless volunteers, the equipment is getting loaded in the Speed the Light van for transport to an old village nearby. A man named Javi shows up dressed in jeans and a t-shirt. I start putting make up on him in preparation to go to our location. We are talking, in Spanish, I'm explaining what the day will involve. He thinks it's weird I'm putting make up on him. I try to say we always do this for talent. After we get him done, he is on the phone. I thought he was dressed casually but Dani would be using this for broadcast so I assumed he sent Javi with the casual look on purpose. Javi has told me he is usually a camera man.

We load up and get ready to leave and Javi is still on the phone. We get there and start setting up the equipment on our first of four locations for the day. We are ready to start shooting and I finally understand Javi. He is not a talent/on camera person. He has been on the phone trying to get his boss to send out David who usually does this kind of thing. No wonder Javi thought it was weird I was putting makeup on a camera man.

But we need to start shooting. We are all set up, on location, ready. So I make Javi do the first take. I don't know if David is going to show up ever much less now. After one take, we have to reset some lights and teleprompter things and a car screeches up near us. A man, David, in a suit jumps out. This is the guy. Somewhere we miscommunicated with Dani or he did with someone else. So I'm in the middle of the street in this village putting make up on David (Thankfully, we'd brought it with us!)

David was very good at the man on camera talent and the shoot went really well. Until location #3. A week previously I'd checked this location. Silvia had filed a permit with the town to shoot. Suddenly, the day we need to shoot, they are loudly putting metal scaffolding up in front of the old cathedral. I adjust the shoot plan and we squeeze a shot in that doesn't include scaffolding. AND we do it while the scaffolding men are at lunch - or we would have had no audio whatsoever.

It was a crazy day. I've never had talent change midstream like this. The Spanish version of Path of Jesus was completed and used by the local broadcaster here in Spain who also has stations in South America. In addition, it is being shared with Assemblies of God churches in Spain and that is just the beginning.

Fruitful conflict

So yesterday was an election day and today I read an American Spectator article that emphasized the dichotomy of our country in the political arena. The odd thing is I feel like I'm watching the same thing occuring in the church (in general not one church).

A constant tension exists between what young want, what old want, what music style is preferred, the length of church, the frequency of church, the length of music the length and style of preaching. It's like we as a society are fractured and no longer know how to communicate.

Each side of the equation (political and church) call each other wrong. The Christians can go so far as to say sin and evil. Politicians call each other liars. This has been a sad part of society for me to realize since I've been back in the USA. It may have always been there and for some reason my absence and return brought it to the forefront.

But within the church I had a strange and I'm sure completely unrealistic thought. What would our conflicts look like if we were ruled by the fruit of the Holy Spirit when we dealt with one another and the issues. What if love, joy, peace, patience, self control, kindness, goodness, gentleness, and faithfulness were our watch words in dealing with how others want to do church. I know many of the arguers would say no -- they are being faithful because it is WRONG. But, the situation could still be handled with love, joy and peace surely? Alas, no, it seems not. And this makes me sad.

Hotels and motels

What adventures the itineration life has to offer. We travel a lot for our fund raising work and usually the churches we visit arrange for us to have somewhere to pay. We are so grateful not to have to pay for accomodations each weekend. This helps our cash build up more quickly for our work.

Most of the time we are at a standard motel. A brand name place along the highway - nearly always these are clean and unremarkable. We did get put up in a higher end chain that had nice sheets and a jaccuzi tub. Memorable.

In small towns there are often not chains just local mom and pop motels. Often they compete for the little churches' patronage and the church will ask if it's okay. This is awkward since you don't really know what the competition is and you don't want to be ungrateful for a free room.

A whole series of towns have motels that cater to hunters to stay in business. So we've stayed in several that had hunting motifs and one mobile home converted to hunters quarters. Some places even have notes about, Please don't use the towels for cleaning off mud, or Don't clean animals in the room.It's a world I would never have known.

Recently we stayed at a hunting lodge/b and b, that had started it's life as a nursing home. This was the best place in town according to our hosts and I believed them. It was still looking like a nursing home in the halls, but the room was clean, comfy and practical. It made for good of joking around between Kerry and I and it was an experience I wouldn't trade. Elk heads, deer antlers, biscuits and gravy, shower and hall railings, and all.

We stayed in a place we referred to as the "Killer" motel. It wasn't that anything was bad necessarily. It was a small town motel and run down a little on the outside, a little dark. Some of the cars lurking in the parking lot seemed somehow sinister. The inside was okay, a little well used, but not gross. Maybe it looked like something we'd seen in a creepy movie. Or maybe it was creepy guy at the check-in.

I chose for myself a Super 8 in Florida near family. The new coat of paint on closer inspection covered very little of the age of the place. They weren't friendly and the long hairs in the sheets might have been from the maid, but I tried the other bed anyway. What do I expect - I chose the cheapest place.

On our own vacation, we stayed at a 100+year old hotel in an former mining town. We were downstairs in a shop/lobby when the local Ghost tour went through and up the stairs to where the rooms were. Some woman 90 years ago threw acid on another woman and thus the ghostly story came to be.  The building had settled unevenly and our doors had quite an angle on them as did the floor, but no ghosts showed. The ghost hunters were looking for among other things "cold spots" which they think indicate the presence of ghosts. Our air conditioner wasn't working and I told Kerry, if I found a cold spot I was going to roll around on it so I could cool down. He thought maybe if it was a ghost, the ghost would be grossed out by the sweaty girl rolling around and leave.

Silence and Affirmation

It's interesting that we often take silence as disapproval, but it is often not the case. People forget to say good job or atta-girl. Some tasks and work goes unnoticed. For those of us with who have a greater need for that acknowledgment (love language?), the silence can be painful and negative.

When the affirmation does come, it has that soothing effect of balm on a sore or water in the desert. Ahhhhh.

But I keep asking myself and have been challenged by speakers - what if I could find my affirmation solely and uniquely in how Jesus views me? What if I knew I was so precious to God and He would go to great lengths to have a relationship with me? Really knew it deep in my psyche? Wouldn't that be wonderful?

So harking back to the previous entry, the same author made the comment that Jesus went through the silent years when we know nothing of him. The teens and twenties pass with God not turning him loose to do his calling. But what is the first thing out of the silence that happens? The voice of God comes from heaven after his baptism, "This is my son in whom I am well please." A beautiful affirmation.

God was pleased before Jesus DID all the things he is famous for doing. It reminds me of the phrase before we knew Him, he loved us. What great thoughts. I want to press them into my soul and see that God is affirming me even when I don't meet my own standards of perfection and He is taking me to a better version of me on the journey.

Obscurity

How many of us live our existence is relative obscurity? We have our friends and family but we don't have something infamous or famous and yet what great significance we have.

This theme first occurred to me last week when a memorial video was played of missionaries who have died in the last year who were with my missions organization. All of them were quite old and had fought the good fight and won the race. It made me sad because I thought of grandma who passed in the last year. Some part of me hurt because no one would show a slide show about her month later. Yet, a voice cried out in my mind because I remember and celebrate her, it is okay. She may have lived an obscure life but it was important in its unique way.

The next day there was a lecture by Alicia Britt Chole. She had a very challenging idea that I had not heard presented before in Christian circles. She noted, very eloquently, that nearly of of Christ's existence was hidden. He had this moment of bursting on the scene as an infant, an appearance at the temple, a brief fleeing as a toddler. Next we see him in the temple as a youth and then not again until he is 30 years old. Most of this time is hidden from us. Her challenge was that he became the person he needed to be for his ministry years in that obscurity. It was not "wasted" as we might think of it from a purely public relations, marketing perspective. It was development.

So the third thing this week that made me think of obscurity was receiving my alumni news magazine from my college. It used to make me think dreadful thoughts about how little I've done with my life, but this time I thought differently as I read the accolades of fellow alum. I searched it in a selfish way wondering who might be a connection to someone who would support our missions work or who of these people might be compelled also by our goals. But I also realized that we all send in our current status in an attempt to pull out of our obscurity for a moment. To shine out in the crowd. I too do these things, but for some reason all these things this week have made me realize there is no shame in obscurity. No waste in our quiet bits of life that don't appear on lots of radar screens. Perhaps there is something of treasure there if we know how to look.

How do you know?

I just finished a book of true crime about a woman in Kansas City who poisoned her husband, not killing him, and later, burned her house down with her children in it. One of the three escaped.

I hardly ever read true crime. People who know I read mysteries find this strange, but the true crimes is just too creepy because at no point can you say, "Oh, it's just a story." I was intrigued enough to read this one because it is set here.

This woman could be vivacious and witty and the life of the party, but in her personal relationships she had no coping skills and would throw intense temper tantrums when things did not go her way. Toward the end of the story several people in her life felt that somehow the system had failed that no one had called in outside intervention before death happened. (The husband had tried to have her committed to work on emotional issues but she had been released after three days, partly because she was very good at seeming congenial when necessary.

So I'm not here to rehash simply an old crime, but the question this left me with is how do you know when someone is too unstable or too far gone and something has to be done.  Off the top of my head, I can think of three unstable people in my life who can seem "the life of the party" and can be fun in social situations. These same people in other moments would terrify me if they were at my front door unexpectedly. I would probably not open it, depending on the circumstances.

So the people in this crime story didn't seem to know it was time to intervene. Everyone kept saying, "I didn't think she would hurt her children. They were so important to her." So when do you know that someone has crossed over? Do we recognize a precipitating event when we see one or only after the cataclysm has happened do we see it?

I suppose if the answer to this was clear the field of psychology and analysis would be much more straight forward. For law enforcement, the answer is easier to say but harder to live with. You can't arrest someone because they might commit a crime or are suspicious. They have to violate the law before their rights can be taken. You can't call the cops if someone in your life has been erratic or suspicious -- until they won't leave your house or something. So how do you know when to get help or intervention for someone? Don't we always think, "No, they wouldn't REALLY do anything,"?

Zzzzzzzz

I have told this story verbally many times, but I had an occasion this week to tell it to a pastor who so enjoyed it I figured I would share it here.

Six years a go we were raising funds to go do the media missions work in Spain that we do. It was (and is) a slow process in our system of visiting various churches and sharing the vision we have to touch people with God's love.

Part of this process is calling various pastors and asking them to schedule a visit. The system we are under feels like we need to do 10 meetings a month like this (either with the pastor individually or the whole church). As a missionary phone solicitor, It's tricky to fill the schedule. Plus you have to try to meet new pastors and people all the time because you never know who is going to be the key person in a budget or a project.

We had a service scheduled further afield in Missouri last time and I called and called every church between that place and back home in KC. I got a hold of a pastor in a tiny town. He really discouraged me from coming.

"We are really small and it wouldn't really be worth your while. There's only a few of us older folks on a Sunday night."

"That's okay," I said confidently, "We're driving through on our way home anyway, so it would be a good opportunity to stop and share."

So a couple months later we show up in this town (name withheld) and set up our projector for showing our videos and a table with an assortment of printed materials.

The pastor had indeed predicted correctly. There were six people including the pastor all sporting white hair and a couple of canes. That's okay who knows who will catch the vision for what we do?

The routine was and is that Kerry speaks and shares some videos and then I get up and wrap things up with our testimony. Our total "program" is around 30 minutes usually give or take 5 minutes.

With only seven people in the seats, it was easy to make eye contact with everyone. After I'd been speaking a bit, I realized that everyone was asleep. Except Kerry. Even the little lady at the sound board. All asleep.

I was so stunned that I paused in my speaking. I looked at Kerry who didn't know that they were all asleep. I considered just saying Amen really loud and sitting down. I was contemplating what to do next when my awkward pause awoke the pastor. I decided to finish up with the short version of the talk.