Category Archives: Family

Current World Events, Family, God At Work Among Us, Homeschool, Personal Reflection

Follow-Up to ‘The Two Available Fears’

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Yesterday as I ran around our home cleaning, writing instructions for different people, preparing little surprises for our kids and generally getting ready for my first trip to the United States in two-and-half years, I had our two eldest daughters (Dayana, 14, and Jackeline, 11) at the wooden table in our living room working on their homeschool assignments.

One of the assignments was to write one page front and back of organized thoughts about something that has happened in the last few weeks. That may seem like an extremely simple assignment, but in this culture there are teenagers in sixth grade who don’t even know how to write a complete sentence or read a simple paragraph in a children’s book. The idea was to write (and not forget capital letters, periods, comas, etc), and I left it completely open as to what they would write about.

There were numerous topics each young woman could choose to expound upon, including the music concert we held in our home about a week and a half ago in which they both sang and played at least one instrument, some funny occurrence among themselves or with one of the adults in our home, an adventurous trip to the river or mountain with Darwin, etc, so later that afternoon as I sat down with Jackeline to read her thoughts scribbled lightly in pencil on a ripped-out piece of notebook paper from one of her school notebooks, what I found surprised me.

I called her over to help me de-code her writing, as I could barely understand her run-on sentences, complete lack of capital letters, words that were frightfully misspelled or left out, etc. She came over and we went, with almost painstaking slowness, correcting the longest document she had probably ever written in her life. After squinting and guessing through the first several words, everything looking like jibberish to me, I was tempted to just trash the paper or throw up my hands in exasperation, declaring her writing assignment a job poorly done. But as she clarified each point of confusion (and as the Lord granted me patience to persevere), adding accent marks, question marks, and so on, the heart of what came forth was stunningly beautiful. It was as if her writing was a shapeless piece of stone (to me), and as she clarified each gray area, we slowly, word by word, chiseled away all that hid the true message of her words, revealing a raw yet breathtaking statue of Truth.

She wrote:

Saturday Christian [our 13-year-old neighbor who is in second grade in our homeschool program with three of his siblings] came and told my mom that people were killing kids and women just because they have blonde hair and that really scared me because my brother Josue has brown-colored hair. I told my mom that I wanted to talk with her, and she looked at me sadly but she told me that you don’t have to be scared and she showed me a painting that says “In anguish I cried to the Lord and He responded and liberated me. He is with me; I will not fear. What could a simple mortal do to me?” And that shocked me — what could a simple mortal do to me? For me it was a blessing, and in reality I know that I was scared but God calmed me and I asked myself: Why is my mom not scared, and she has blonde hair? Then Christian’s sisters came and they dyed my mom’s hair and we talked about God and she encouraged them, and I know that they were sad about what is happening in our world. What God is doing in my life is that He made me not just to play but also to worship His name. Glory and thanks to God.

As we came to the end of her one mammoth paragraph, I looked at her, stunned, thanked her for taking the time to help clarify and correct her grammar, and then sat back in my chair, only able to repeat the last line of her reflection as my own heart rejoiced at what the Lord is doing in our goofy, precious daughter who has been with us not even four full months: Glory and thanks to God.

Current World Events, Family, God At Work Among Us, Personal Reflection

The Two Available Fears

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(Written Sunday): Last night I dyed my hair for the first time in my life, and it wasn’t because I wanted to. Our thirteen-year-old neighbor who is in homeschool with us came to our home unexpectedly last evening to warn me that a gang in the nearby city of La Ceiba had begun killing people with blonde or red hair.

After investigating further, I learned that the killings started in the two other major cities in Honduras — Tegucigalpa and San Pedro Sula — due to a rivalry between two gangs, and in the past week or so they have brought the chaos to our corner of the country.

So last night I sat at the wooden table in our living room, everything illuminated by a few flickering candles because the electricity and water had been out all day, while a $7.50 cream was massaged into my scalp to turn my hair black. My beauticians were the 22-year-old eldest sister of our homeschool student, already a mother of four, and a 16-year-old young woman who is already ‘married,’ although neither her nor her ‘husband’ are employed and she only completed the first grade. Both young women, who are pale-skinned compared to most Hondurans, had arrived at our gate with freshly-died black hair kindly offering me their help. Seeing as we didn’t have any gloves, the elder of the two wore plastic bags on her hands, secured in place with masking tape, so as not to stain herself with the potent dye. It was a strange feeling knowing I was the only one present who could read the directions on the hair-color box in Spanish.

So while I sat with a grocery bag on my head and dye creeping down my sideburns, I opened up Psalms 12, which we had read as a family earlier that day. I spoke of the injustice in our world that lies in stark contrast to the perfect justice that so wonderfully characterizes our God.

In a matter of 35 minutes my hair turned from a beautiful, completely natural light brown with flecks of red and blonde to a tacky all-black with smudges of the stubborn hair color staining my ears, hairline and neck.

In the middle of the whole ordeal, our 11-year-old daughter Jackeline had an emotional breakdown, losing herself in the midst of many obvious fears, the biggest of which was for the life of her little special needs brother, Josue. He, too, has naturally light brownish-blonde hair, and we were unable to buzz it off due to the fact that there was no electricity and I thus couldn’t connect my hair-clipper.

She sat on one of the chairs in our living room, lost in despair, as tears poured down her cheeks. I found her, squatted down in front of her with my hand on her knee, and gently demanded that she stop drowning in fear and instead focus on God. She protested, “But my biggest fear is that they will come tonight and kill Josue.”

My response: “That could happen.”

Her eyes grew and she looked at me, stunned, probably expecting me to have said, “Shh. Shh. Now, now, you know that won’t happen. Everything will be okay.”

I continued: “That could happen tonight, Jackeline, but the thing is that that could happen any night. Any night gang members or evil people could come and demand our lives or rape us. There are so many things to fear in this world – real things, scary things – that we can continually focus on those things and feel perpetually paralyzed by fear, or we can maintain our gaze on God, knowing that Jesus has overcome the world and that this world was never meant to be our permanent home.”

I then looked around our wonderfully, beautifully humble living room with the collection of family photos Darwin and I had worked together that morning to hang on a previously vacant wall, and said: “This world is not our home, Jackeline. Yes, I am at home right now in the sense that I am in my own living room, and my children and husband live here with me, but my real home is in God’s Kingdom with Him. If tonight or tomorrow or in a few months or years someone kills me or I die of a disease, my real life is not over. I am merely called home sooner than perhaps I had planned. Don’t get me wrong – I don’t want to die tonight, and I’m not hoping or assuming that something tragic will happen, but the thing to understand is that we all will die someday. You will die someday, Jackeline — it’s just a question of when and how.”

I turned around to look at her only biological brother who sat naively behind me, swinging his short legs over the edge of his chair, and I said lovingly, “Josue will die someday.” Her eyes grew even bigger as if that had never occurred to her before. “Someday I will die. Someday Darwin will die. You can choose to live in constant fear – and that is what you are currently doing – or you can choose to trust God, knowing that in the future when His Kingdom comes, there will be no more death or mourning or pain or sorrow. All of those things belong to this world. If your trust and hope are in this world, you will constantly be disappointed, tricked and fearful. Our goal is to faithfully maintain the attitude that No matter what happens, God is just, is good. In Him is my hope, not in what may or may not happen here on earth.”

Oh, I said so many more things to my young, fearful friend whom the Lord has placed in our home as a daughter. In her I saw the face of my beloved grandfather, a dear man who loved to Lord but for some very confusing reason still lived in fear every day of his life. He was a man who lived and died in fear; his dying wish as he lay before me on his hospital bed a few years ago was that I didn’t go to Africa, because the people there would kill me. Sorrow filled my chest for the young woman in front of me and for my grandfather, people who confess faith in Christ but yet don’t understand that He has called us out of fear and into freedom.

So towards the end of our long conversation, after having had to call her out of that lost, bewildered look several times, I reminded her once more: “There are two options: we can fear only God, and thus nothing else, or we can choose to ignore God and fear everything else. God’s Word says that the fear of God is the beginning of wisdom, and later on in the New Testament we learn that it is God’s will for us that we don’t fear anybody. So if I fear the murderers and thieves and liars instead of God, I’m a fool. If I fear only God and, rather than fear the evil people or hate them, pray for them, I’m wise. So tonight you and I can sit down together and pray for our own protection and the lives of those who are doing the killing – imagine how lost, how confused, they must be, having probably suffered great abuse of neglect when they themselves were young! — but we will not sit here in fear, crying and bathing in self-pity.”

These kinds of talks are common in our household and come at the most unexpected of moments. Yesterday early afternoon my husband and our 7-year-old son Jason left town to go on a campout with the boys/men from our faith community, and I had planned on having a quiet evening at home with the rest of the kids before they would return the next day. Little did we know all that would transpire in the one evening they were gone!

So last night I slept alone in our bed with my new stinky black hair listening to our three guard dogs, spooked by the fact that everything was unusually dark (no porch lights, no illuminated lampposts), bark non-stop. And this morning as I rolled groggily out of bed and tested the light switch, nothing happened. So all the food in our refrigerator has now gone bad and I am left wearing a ball-cap that doesn’t cover up all my hair nearly well enough, but God is good, and my understanding of His goodness is renewed and strengthened every time it is put to the test, every time I am forced to choose between the two available fears: fear of the Lord or fear of men.

Psalm 12:

Help, Lord, for no one is faithful anymore;
    those who are loyal have vanished from the human race.
     Everyone lies to their neighbor;
    they flatter with their lips
    but harbor deception in their hearts.

May the Lord silence all flattering lips
    and every boastful tongue—
      those who say,
    “By our tongues we will prevail;
     our own lips will defend us—who is lord over us?”

“Because the poor are plundered and the needy groan,
    I will now arise,” says the Lord.
    “I will protect them from those who malign them.”
And the words of the Lord are flawless,
    like silver purified in a crucible,
    like gold[c] refined seven times.

You, Lord, will keep the needy safe
    and will protect us forever from the wicked,
      who freely strut about
    when what is vile is honored by the human race.

Family, Girls' Youth Basketball, Teaching

Photos of Girls’ Basketball Team

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Last week we had our last girls’ basketball practice until the school year resumes in September. The three young women the Lord has placed in our home as daughters (Dayana, 14; Jackeline, 11; and Gleny, 10) participate in the team in addition to several girls from the local Episcopal School where I teach and coach. We enjoyed the last few minutes of practice to take some photos…

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The three precious crazies the Lord has given us as daughters…

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Community Life, Family, God At Work Among Us, Homeschool, Information About the Mission, Personal Reflection, Teaching

Soapy Buns on a Dirty Floor: a Holy Distraction

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A couple days ago it was early afternoon and I had just finished teaching homeschool to the group of local youth who come to our home each day plus four of our own kids who are in the program. I had shooed everyone outside and shut the door, wanting to sweep, mop and disinfect every corner of the school building to leave it squeaky clean for the next day. The kids have a knack for scuffing up the walls, leaving papers and tidbits of trash thrown about, and, living in the countryside, everything gets dusty and insect-y and muddy in general quite quickly.

Armed with Raid, I was spraying for cockroaches beneath the piano where Darwin gives lessons, lost in a blissful moment of ‘alone time’ in the midst of our life here in which it seems like everyone needs me all the time. The youth played outside or swung on swings right outside the schoolroom window on the building’s front porch. It had been a wonderful morning, but at the same time I was emotionally exhausted after managing four distinct groups of students all in the same small room: three teenagers in fifth grade, two teenagers who just learned how to read sound-it-out style within the last few weeks, and a new batch of three students ages 7-12 who don’t even know the letters of the alphabet. Not to mention our six-year-old, Josue, who is his own group due to his special needs.

I then began pouring Clorox bleach and disinfectant everywhere, ready to cleanse the building entirely, when Dayana, our eldest daughter, called for me from the other side of the locked front door.

I hollered over my shoulder, “Nope. Sorry – I told everyone to take everything they needed for the schoolroom because I am cleaning. You’re going to have to wait!”

She persisted. “No, Ma. We need to talk to you.”

Oh. “Can it wait?” I silently scold myself for asking that. Obviously it’s something urgent or she wouldn’t have interrupted me. “No, it’s fine. Just a sec. Come on in.”

I slid across the slippery, soapy floor and opened the front door to see three young women looking a bit like sad puppies or lost sheep: Dayana, our 14-year-old daughter, Jackeline, our 11-year-old, and their new 12-year-old friend whom I wrote about previously who now comes to our home five days a week for homeschool, agriculture, music, love and Truth.

In these types of moments you just have to breathe deeply, re-adjust your inner gaze so that it is firmly fixed on your Father, and basically brace yourself for anything.

I ushered the three of them across the half-clean floor to sit on the couch in the building’s small living room. I sat on the floor in front of them, soaping up my buns a bit, but it didn’t matter. I looked at them expectantly and, as if knowing her role as leader among the young women who live in or pass through our home, Dayana began to talk.

“[Our new friend’s] dad tried to rape her a couple nights ago, and the next day when she told her mom, she confronted him and he left in a rage, saying he doesn’t care if she and the four kids starve to death. Now the mom is all alone with the four kids, and they don’t have anything to eat.”

The three girls looked at me with open, innocent faces, all three having known this type of suffering too well in their short years. They were waiting for me to say something.

I didn’t.

My mind raced but at the same time it was brought to a dull, peaceful crawl. This young teen’s dad, whom I have met on several occasions and who I detected as a good man and loving, albeit very poor and uneducated, father, tried to rape her and now is gone from the picture… Now the mom, who only last week broke a glass bottle over the father’s head and who has previously left her children for long periods of time to be involved in romantic affairs with different men, is the one left with the kids as the sole provider and care-taker… Mom is illiterate, plus she has a two-year-old, so she can’t work… No welfare program for down-and-out single mothers in Honduras… Will the mom try to give us the four kids so she, too, can be free of them? That would make ten –

Dayana interrupted my mental processing with a sincerity that warmed my heart, “Can we help? Can we send food home with them?”

If only it were that simple.

Everything slowed down as I reached out to touch the young woman’s knee and ask many specific, careful clarifying questions.

I then studied each one’s face, looking into their eyes, not sure what words to choose. I must have stayed in silence for several minutes, ravaging through available vocabulary to find the words that the Lord would have me use. The whole conversation had the strange lightness of a dream, as if at any moment we would wake up and our dear friend would skip off towards her home where her mom waited eagerly for her with freshly baked cookies, her dad playing catch with his two sons in their small, rocky front yard.

Many times in our life here I feel as though I am placed in situations in which I am called upon to put in 1,000 words what the Lord has been teaching me for years. Where to start? How to communicate eternal hope to this young woman in front of me? How can I accurately convey the transformative work the Lord has been doing in my own life over the last decade in an unexpected conversation with a young person who has no concept of a loving, just God?

Oh, I did say so much to my young friend that day as I sat before her on the sudsy tile floor, my hand on her knee, coaxing her time and again to look me in the eyes.

“I cannot tell you that everything will be okay. We can pray for you and support you and help as we are able – and we will – but I cannot tell you that everything will be okay with your family. Maybe it won’t be, and that’s why our hope is not in this world. I don’t even know what will happen in my own life tomorrow. We can send food home with you – and we will – but that won’t solve the immense struggles you and your family are experiencing. Our hope is in Christ alone, in a just, compassionate God who in the end will right all wrongs, will erase death and suffering. That’s our hope. Our hope is not in the here and now, because as all three of you know, this world is unstable, people abuse, people lie, suffering is rampant. I cannot tell you that everything will be okay, but I can tell you that God is faithful, and that in the midst of our suffering we can find Him, or He finds us. He can be followed and loved and glorified here and now, even in the midst of suffering and injustice, and His provision, joy and presence can be experienced. Do not blame God for your suffering. God never intentionally designed a place like our neighborhood, clasping his hands together giddily, content with the hungry children and abusive mothers and absentee fathers, trash on the streets and rampant confusion and sadness, declaring, “Perfect! This is where my image-bearers will live and thrive.” No. He created the perfect environment for us, a wonderful garden with more than enough to eat, everything clean and beautiful, His own presence there richly among us, and presented us with a choice. So what you three have suffered is not God’s fault, but rather it’s the product of your parent’s sin, great-grandparents’, maybe neighbors’, and our own, yours and mine.”

Oh, there is so much more to say, to understand, to experience of God’s perfect love. On conversation did not end there, but rather it continues onward, day after day, as we carefully search out God’s will for us in the life of this young woman. A few weeks ago she arrived at our home for the first time dressed like a prostitute, high heels and a skin-tight, way-too-short, way-too-low-cut black dress. She wobbled about awkwardly, unable to even bend over or sit down properly, much less chase a ball or participate in a rowdy jumprope competition. We’ve talked with her lovingly about her body, the need to cover it and honor it because it belongs to God, and now she wears tennis shoes and feminine but loose-fitting t-shirts with not-skin-tight capris and pants. She has accepted Christ as her Savior and now runs and plays. Smiles.

We don’t know what will happen tomorrow or this afternoon, if in a few days or months her mom will appear at our gate with all or some of her four kids, wanting to leave them permanently with us. Please pray with us for her and her parents and siblings, that He may be glorified even in the midst of intense suffering, and that Darwin, Jenae, our kids and I may serve effectively as lights of Truth in the lives of the people the Lord brings to us.

Community Life, Family, Farm Life, God At Work Among Us, Homeschool, Information About the Mission, Marriage, Music, Personal Reflection, Special Needs Kids, Teaching

Speech Therapy, Tyfoid Fever and Illiterate Youth, Oh My! (Nine Updates: May 2015)

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For those of you who support us or are interested in knowing more of the nuts-and-bolts of our daily life, these updates will provide you with a deeper understanding of certain day-to-day activities we are currently involved in along with personal updates about Darwin and I and the kids under our full-time care. I have also included prayer requests for those of you who want to know how to pray for us in this season.

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Homeschool Program Open to Illiterate Youth from our Neighborhood

Six illiterate youth from our neighborhood (ages 7-14) are enrolled in the nationally-accredited program we use in our homeschool three days per week (Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays from 7:00am-12:00pm) along with Brayan, the local 14-year-old who lived with us for eight months and continues to be like a son and two of our daughters (Dayana, 14, and Jackeline, 11). Please pray for Jenae, Darwin and I as we guide the nine children/teenagers and that above all else their knowledge of and obedience to Christ may strengthen through spending time under our care.

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Who wants to work on homework when you can dogpile on Dayana instead?
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Our 14-year-old son, Brayan, with two young women the Lord has placed in his life to love and serve as sisters. All three are currently in fifth grade in our homeschool program, and we are so proud of them!

A New Tactic With Groceries

Now that we are feeding between 10-15 kids breakfast and lunch Monday-Friday, our grocery bills have shot up! Thanks to the advice of several people here, we have changed grocery stores (the small grocery store in our town has very high prices, and although it was more convenient to shop there because of geographical closeness, it was quickly becoming unreasonable to do so!), thus we now shop once a week at a warehouse-type grocery store about a 35-minute drive away in downtown La Ceiba where prices are considerably lower and we can buy in bulk. I am also in communication with a large grocery chain in La Ceiba about receiving the products they are unable to sell. Please pray that we would trust in God to provide, and let us rejoice that several of our malnourished neighbors who are in the homeschool program are able to eat with us in our home several times per week.

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Our six-year-old son Josue learning to draw!

Darwin’s Music Lessons and Youth Choir with Neighborhood Kids

Darwin has opened our home to give choir, piano, and recorder lessons to kids in our local community as a way of reaching out to them with God’s love. Every Monday afternoon from 2:00-7:30pm we have about a couple dozen kids and teenagers in our home playing and singing music, and we are developing holistic relationships with them and their families in order to plant seeds for God’s Kingdom. We are currently preparing for a community concert we’re going to hold in our home on May 17th.

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Four precious (and rowdy!) neighborhood boys who frecuent our home each week for music classes, meals, homeschool and other activities.

Young Agriculturalists

Every Monday morning from 7:00am-11:00am Darwin works in agriculture and maintenance with 10-15 youth who come to our property to work and learn. Teenage boys, all of whom are also in our homeschool program and/or music lessons, work together in the grassy field with their machetes while our eldest daughter leads the other young women in extensive cleaning projects in the Education House and garden maintenance. This weekly experience has been a blessing both for us and for those who come to work, because unemployment in our little rural town is rampant, and many of the children and youth wander around or sit about without anything to do.

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Prayer for Darwin and I

Please pray for my husband and I during this season, as we both feel exhausted and possibly stretched too thin. Every child and youth the Lord has placed in our path (the five under our full-time care, the 20+ that are involved in activities in our home plus our students in a local school where we teach/coach/guide every Friday) are a blessing and we know the Lord is utilizing us in their lives for His glory, but as of late we are feeling stressed and overwhelmed, especially because more and more children and youth are arriving at our front gate wanting to be in our homeschool program or in music classes, in need of some form of help, etc. Please pray that the Lord may guide us and that we may learn to truly rest in Him at all times, whether we are in a busy schoolroom surrounded by a swarm of students who need us or if we are driving down the highway to take our kids to art class. Also, please pray with us regarding the future and direction of the Living Waters Ranch, as we are continually discerning God’s will for us, those under our care/guidance, and those who may arrive in the future.

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Afternoon educational fun in our dining room with homeschool students and a couple neighborhood boys!

 

My Health

After about seven weeks of battling Tyfoid Fever, my health has finally taken a turn for the better although I still get fatigued very quickly. I got so many shots in my butt cheeks that they turned speckled with bruises! Thank you to those of you who lifted me up in prayer during those difficult weeks, and pray that my body may be strengthened even now as I am recovering physical strength and endurance.

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Josue to Enter Speech Therapy

Josue, the six-year-old little boy who has been placed under our full-time care whom I wrote about in the previous blog entry, will enter an intensive speech therapy schedule for two months before hopefully entering his private special needs school’s pre-school class with other kids. Please pray for his integral recovery from the abuse he suffered when he was little and that Christ may be glorified in and through his life and the way that we love and care for him.

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Educational Progress Report: Jason and Gleny in Their New Christian School

Gleny (age 10, fourth grade) and Jason (age 7, second grade) have been in a small Christian elementary school since early February of this year, and although there have been certain academic and behavioral issues as they have had to become accustomed to a new and somewhat demanding daily routine (4:45am get-ups every morning, school uniforms and homework every afternoon!), they have finally settled in, are making new friends, etc. After the first grading period they passed all of their classes, and they seem genuinely happy in their new school environment. Please pray for our continued discernment regarding what they and the other kids under our full-time care need from us in regards to academic, emotional and spiritual support/guidance.

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Strengthening Forces: A New Laborer Comes Alongside of Us

Martha, a local Honduran woman in her 50s who is a strong Christian and has a gentle yet very active spirit, has come to labor alongside of us after a long, God-inspired series of events. She is a registered nurse and secretary (and excellent cook!), and starting in mid-June will begin coming to our home/mission Monday-Friday to help love on all the kids who come to our home along with take control of the kitchen/community dining room. We give thanks to God for bringing such a dynamic, loving woman into our lives to help fulfill the great purpose the Lord has set before us. Please pray for our developing relationship with her and that Darwin, Jenae, her and I may form a wonderful team.

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Family, God At Work Among Us, Personal Reflection

The Great Umbrella-Shield

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To protect the perpetrator, I’ll conceal the details, but suffice it to say that a couple weeks ago a rather large offense was committed by someone quite small (in stature, that is).

When I abruptly came into the know about said offense on the cusp of getting all six kids squeaky clean and presentable to go to Darwin’s sister’s house for a birthday party (which is a gargantuan task, especially for poopy-pants Josue who always walks around chewing his shirt, thus consistently and dexterously leaving a perfect slobber-ring around his collar), I told Darwin, “The other kids can pile in the truckbed [an acceptable practice in Honduras], so that so-and-so is alone with us in the cab. You drive, because I want to be able to swivel around in my seat to look into the perp’s eyes as we make the 45-minute drive.”

And so it went, and our hearts became heavy as our small, bright-eyed passenger failed to confess her crime in the 15-minute window we gave her during the drive down the gravel road from our home to the main highway. “Think long and hard, and tell us if there’s anything you’ve done, said or written that you know you shouldn’t have that you want to confess. Now’s your chance, because once we reach the highway, we’re going to bring something up if you don’t.”

Nothing was confessed even after several gentle (and very obvious) promptings on my part, so as the tires rolled onto the highway’s asphalt, thus closing the window of opportunity for confession, I took the evidence out of my backpack and addressed the now-wide-eyed assailant head-on.

Although many times we are deeply grieved when it seems as though our children have not ‘caught-on’ to our teachings about always telling the truth, not writing love notes to boys, and not touching things that aren’t theirs, one thing they have learned from us that they faithfully put into practice is making eye-contact with the adult who is speaking to them.

Her unbroken eye contact with me for 45 minutes as we jossled down the pothole-riddled highway was what enabled the following lesson to be delivered, and it might be what saved her from being dealt an even bigger butt-chewing.

God teaches me many things daily, and one of the biggest lessons I am learning right now is how to be an effective channel. Many times I open my mouth without the slightest idea of what will come out, trusting that He will form my words and that they’ll make a lot more sense than any idea I could have meticulously planned out myself.

So I opened my mouth, and out came a long, intricate talk about the Great Umbrella-Shield, something I myself had only briefly heard of once before from our mentor and did not entirely understand until the words flowing out of my mouth ordered themselves one after the other, painting the most logical and true of mental images.

Our unbroken stares matched one another, hers an odd combination of genuine humility and unexpected but not defiant confidence, mine a God-infused compassionate wisdom overriding feelings of devastation, anger and bewilderment.

“Your dad, Aunt Jenae, myself [and I name about a half-dozen other loving Christian adults in her life] have been placed by God to form a sort of great umbrella-shield over and around you,” I say, widening my fingers on both hands and meshing them together loosely to show how our lives come together, even overlapping each other, to form a protective casing above and around her.

It is obvious that she follows, so I continue. “Since you are not yet ready to go out on your own, take care of yourself, have a full-time job or get married, God has placed us in your life to guide, protect and love you. Forming this big umbrella-like shield, we protect you, and we are accountable before God to do so. It is our job to guide and discipline you according the God’s word and to teach you the correct path.”

She’s with me, and I’m encouraged, “If you stay under our umbrella-like protection that all of us form over you – which you can also think of as a roof – you are safe and snug.” Hand motions are my ally, and I think they help all of us understand the issue at hand much clearer.

“But it’s your choice whether you stay under our protection or if you choose to wander out from under it, thus prematurely making yourself responsible before God for your own life.”

We continue rumbling down the 2-lane highway lined on either side with palm trees, vividly green plant overgrowth of all types and brightly colored homes. “If you decide to disobey what we have told you – for example, if we tell you not to lie, and you choose to lie, you are removing yourself from under our protection and wandering off to play with Satan. It’s that serious, and it’s that dangerous. If we tell you, according to what we know of God’s Word and His will for your life, that you should not have sex until you are in a life-long, committed marriage relationship with one man, bound to him legally, and you decide not to obey, choosing to go ahead and do as you please with your body, you are removing yourself from under the umbrella-shield that we form around you, and stepping out intentionally into Satan’s territory, in essence saying that you know better than we do what’s best for you. At that point we are no longer responsible for your decision because it blatantly goes against what we told you to do.”

I suddenly get very serious, my soft, even tone changing abruptly. Her eyebrows shot up ever so slightly as she noticed the change in tone, “I don’t want you to ever forget this. Do not forget this next week, or in five years. Do not ever forget this.”

“Someday I will stand before God and give account of everything I did, said, etc. He’ll ask me, ‘And what did you do with so-and-so under your care?’ and I’ll answer, ‘I guided her as best I could according to your Word, and I loved her dearly.’ If God asks me, ‘And that time when she lied?’ I’ll be able to answer honestly, ‘That was her choice. She disobeyed. She left our umbrella.’ At the end of everything, your dad and I are responsible to God for how we love and guide you, but we’re not responsible for your choices. You are.”

And that’s about how the conversation went that first time during that fateful car ride and then a couple times since. Our little one has lost a mountain of privileges and freedoms for quite some time to come, not only for the crime itself but for concealing it when given the opportunity to confess.

A few days ago, a couple weeks after the big confrontation, as I sat sweating under the intense Honduran sun on a blue plastic stool behind our home, washing the laundry that had been waiting for me a week-and-a-half, my mind came into sharp focus amidst wandering thoughts about another one of our little ones who tends to wander out from under our loving protection: Christ Himself is our great Umbrella-Shield. When we trust and obey, there we are, safe and snug, protected. He knows what is best for us and wants the best for us, and as little children unto their parents, it is merely our task to believe Him and submit ourselves to His guidance and wisdom over our lives. But when we lash out in disobedience – arrogantly thinking that we know better than God what is best for us, we relinquish that protection and blessing – freedom, even, and we set out to play tag with the Devil.

As my soapy arms plunged in and out of the big plastic bucket in front of me, a little ball of sweat beading up on the tip of my nose, I felt deeply content, but at the same time deeply saddened that, even knowing these truths on some level, so many of us dash out or slowly drift away, forsaking our Great Refuge, the One and Only Great Umbrella-Shield for a counterfeit freedom that only produces pain and death.

Family, God At Work Among Us, Personal Reflection

The Never-Say-Die Beast

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The human being is a wily creature, slow to change and stubborn in its dark ways. Tends to hide. Emotionally unstable. Prone to feel lonely even if surrounded by love. Oftentimes deceived by confused thoughts. Loves what will hurt it. Prefers captivity to freedom. Chooses the wrong path even when surrounded by wise counsel. Capable of demise in any instant. Easily distracted. More fragile than a dandelion. Prone to quickly forget Truth.

I thank God that I am reminded of this each and every day on the front lines of this battle field that takes place in my own living room, front lawn, during kitchen clean-up and on road trips. Sometimes when we are surrounded by polished, polite people who have grown up in a good educational system we tend to forget the very — oh, very, very! – real struggle between Good and Evil in every single one of us that rages on all day every day. We are fooled into thinking that everything is “okay,” that everyone is “okay.”

The human race is not okay, and until we are awakened to that fact we cannot understand our need for a Representative before the Perfect, Just God. We just think I will try harder next time. Or They’re not ‘okay’, but I am.

If many people have a tornado of sin, shame, secrets and sadness raging on in the inside, hidden from everyone else but themselves, our home is full of tornados on the outside. We have given up: here there is no faking that everything is okay.

We are sin-sick, ailing, deceived, lonely, dangerous, and we admit it. Oh, yes, there are beautiful sparks of Light, Joy, Truth, Triumph, Thanksgiving — and they are so sweet! But between those glorious moments takes place the most intense of battles whether we’re suited up and well hydrated or not.

She stole again? Why does she look me in the face, smiling, if we both know she’s lying? Lord, protect us from those who come only to deceive and divide! How on earth did she receive such an inappropriate love letter from him – she doesn’t even have breasts yet and still plays with teddy bears! Just confess already! Lord, forgive me for disciplining him with such anger rather than with firm, gentle wisdom. Our son had that, that and that happen to him when he was just a little boy?! What do you mean our eleven-year-old daughter used to watch pornography with her six-year-old SPECIAL NEEDS brother on her mom’s cell phone? What are you hiding in your dresser drawer? She stole food from the kitchen again? Ok, who’s lying this time? We can’t trust any of you! Forgive me, Lord, for my anxiousness; I trust you will provide. She’s really bawling and saying that we don’t love her after all we’ve done? Lord, grant peace over our home and in our hearts!

If anyone needs a wake-up call about the true state of humanity laid bare, come visit our home. You’ll be reminded quite quickly. Our home seems to be a magnet for spiritual battles and layings-bare of all kinds. If other people can pretend they don’t lie, cheat and steal or that they aren’t deeply wounded, on the verge of self-destructing – or if they think worry, bitterness and impatience are ‘acceptable’ sins, personality types even – here there is no pretending. It’s more like a giant clashing of Good versus Evil several times a day. A bit hard on the nerves, but at least we’re in tune with reality.

One thing the Lord is teaching me over and over again – about every 12-15 minutes, in fact — is that raising/parenting/guiding children who have sprung from someone else’s womb and been through a tumbler of some of the most damaging experiences the World has to offer is a lot like full-contact wrestling with a never-say-die beast that doesn’t care if you’re exhausted or in need of a water break.

But actually, that same battle rages on in every corner of society. Sometimes it just happens to be more visible in a struggling third world country like Honduras with a catastrophically high murder rate than in an affluent society with a fairly dependable criminal justice system that knows where to hide its trash.

In our daily life here we see mothers who turn to prostitution in order to feed their kids. Young men who kill for sport — and don’t go to prison. People who cut through chain-link fences just to steal a pair of used girls’ tennis shoes. Divine rescues made only to then be put to the constant test by the forces of darkness. Twelve- and thirteen-year-old girls who have ‘married’ adult men and have their babies. Confused young men who rob Darwin and I at knife point while we’re on a date in the park. Mothers feeding Coca-Cola in baby bottles to their infants. Young girls receiving rape-threats from her neighbors who happen to be gang members. Preteens who weep for fear of sleeping in their own bed. Lives that quite literally hang in the balance between Life and Death.

But it’s more than that – the tremendous forces that are working inside of our environment and kids are also at work in me. In you. My struggle is just more hidden because I know how to behave in public and our 10-year-old daughter doesn’t. You’ve been taught how to be politically correct, independent, self-reliant, to neatly re-name your sins but our 14-year-old son hasn’t. My sins are the ‘acceptable’ ones whereas hers are the loud, screaming kinds. Here we know who the prostitutes and drug lords are; in wealthier countries there is a thicker layer of fog, deception. What’s the difference between a middle-class extramarital love affair and a mom who lets her kids watch pornography? It’s all sin. We’re all condemned.

As I am put in the role to discipline, correct, and guide untrained, hurting kids hour after hour, I become more aware of my own need for Someone to do that for me. To discipline the rebel in me, to tame the never-say-die beast that surges up time and again. I cannot rebuke the little girl pouting in front of me for her overwhelming laziness or impatience or harsh tone without at least questioning whether I am guilty of the same. When I am shocked that our child lied again, I can choose to sweep past my own inner liar, pushing her to one side and letting her keep wreaking her quiet havoc, covering her up with some pious excuse, or I can confront her just as I confronted the dishonest child in the schoolroom. Humble myself and ask for forgiveness just as I expect he will do with his sibling. Ask God to cleanse me of the darkness that still roams in my heart just as I advise my daughter to do.

In this home of screamers and criers and liars and thieves we are scrappers, clinging desperately to faith in a God who will have mercy on us because of our earnest belief in the life, death and resurrection of His Son. The details and transformations are worked out with time and not without great struggle, but our day-to-day battle is very much just that: a battle of cosmic proportions, of choosing Freedom in Christ rather than staying in bondage to Fear, of pleading God to work in and through us in spite of ourselves rather than adopting the futile “I-think-I-can, I-think-I-can” attitude of self-reliance, of being confronted relentlessly with the choice to love or to hate, to forgive or to stay bitter, to choose the way of Christ or the way of the World, to choose to believe God and accept that we are loved or to live miserably believing the lie that we’re not. To obey God or obey the never-say-die beast within each of us.

A few days ago our 14-year-old son Brayan, who joined our family last February, said to us as we all sat talking around the small wooden table in our living room during an informal family meeting, “I was talking with [a guy friend my age] while we were at the river the other day and I told him that if I hadn’t met y’all, who knows what would have become of me. I might have become a murderer.”

I stared at him, momentarily swept up in one of those rare, precious moments of getting to see a glimpse of the fruits of your labor. Darwin responded, “Brayan, it’s Christ. Meeting us is not what has changed your life; it’s Christ.” With that Brayan smiled, recognizing that in Pa and Ma there are just as many mistakes, sins, and struggles as there are in his young life, although they take on different form. It is not we who have saved him or saved anybody; it is the Saver of Men who has come to live within us who reaches out with tendrils of light into the dark heart of this world.

Christ within us is the hope of Glory. And nothing else.

Community Life, Family, God At Work Among Us, Information About the Mission, Marriage, Personal Reflection

This Little Light of Mine…

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A couple nights ago we celebrated Darwin´s 32nd birthday with our six kids and our dear sister Jenae in the dining room we all share. We all prepared posters, poems, Bible verses, cards and presents for one of God´s special servants who serves as husband, father, brother, friend and mentor in our lives. For the first time ever, the kids did a great job keeping a secret — Darwin was genuinely surprised with what we had all put together!

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My husband on the eve of his 32nd birthday! With each year God grants him more wisdom, strength and patience.
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Our sister Jenae Matikke, who has been serving alongside of us for almost two years and who brings laughter, Truth and warmth everywhere she goes
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Jason, our seven-year-old son who has found freedom in Christ from the many chains that used to bind him. He is our young gentleman in training!
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Josue, our six-year-old special needs son, our great teacher who instructs us all in patience and unconditional love
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My ¨Wild¨ Gleny, our 10-year-old daughter who — in my dad´s words — has the heart of a lion!
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Darwin´s wife who loves him dearly and to whom he daily shows much patience and grace!
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Jackeline, our 11-year-old daughter who recently accepted her place in God´s Kingdom as His daughter
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Brayan, our 14-year-old son of whom we are so proud! God is transforming him more and more each day into a man after God´s own heart!
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Dayana, our 14-year-old daughter who is very quickly becoming a young lady! She is our musician, our artist, our fellow traveller along Christ´s liberating Way.
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Darwin has gone from a single man to a married father of six in under two years!

What Jackeline, age 11, wrote in her birthday card to Darwin:

Hi Pa on this very special day I want to tell you ‘Happy birthday’ and tell you that you are the dad I never had. I love you, I love you a lot, Pa. You have given me the life of having a father. I never had a father and now I have someone to give gifts and letters to on Father’s Day. Now I have you, Dad. Darwin Joel Canales Avila, I love you a lot, Dad, and I will give you the time you need, and when you are sick I will cure you [she has aspirations of becoming a nurse]. You won’t have to pay Miss Zoila [our local nurse] and other nurses; only me, and my pay will be your smile. I love you with all my heart. You will always be in my heart, and if my biological mom comes to take me with her, you will still always be in my heart. You will always be the dad I never had. I love you, Pa Darwin. Happy birthday, Pa Darwin. You will always be in my heart!

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What Gleny, age 10, wrote in her birthday card to Darwin:

 For: my dad

Happy birthday Dad.

Thank you for disciplining me and guiding me on the right path. I love you a lot, dad. Thank you for having me well taken-care of here. May you feel loved even more.

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We finally have a photo of all nine of us! This is the Living Waters Ranch family!
Community Life, Family, Farm Life, God At Work Among Us, Homeschool, Information About the Mission, Music, Personal Reflection

A Rescue Shop Within a Yard of Hell

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His fingernails are really long. Offer him your fingernail clippers.

I smiled politely as I gave him a plastic cup of water and a homemade piece of bread, turning to return to my six homeschool students (three of our own and three kids from the local community) who would be waiting for me in the other building.

Offer him your fingernail clippers.

As I walked across our grassy, pebbly lawn from Jenae’s porch to our Education House that also serves as a place to receive kids from the community, God’s voice hovered over my thoughts like a heavy whisper.

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I turned for the front door of the Education House, walking past the living room to our small one-room classroom where we give academic classes three days a week and where Darwin offers music and choir lessons to roughly 20 kids every week. I would get the whiteboard ready for the kids’ next assignment before they all came piling in after recess. I reached for one of the whiteboard markers, my mind trying to ignore God’s command, focusing instead on fractions and percentages, what I would be writing on the board.

The clippers. Go to him. Now.

Before my marker even made contact with the whiteboard, I abruptly set it down, my little red-faced inner-me shouting Ok! Fine, reluctantly choosing to die in favor of a higher command.

I then walked double-time from the Education House to our home next door – The kids need to be coming in from recess right now! This was definitely not on my schedule. I already unlocked the front gate during school hours and let him in, which I really didn’t want to do, and I even gave him a snack and a drink. Very kind of me, obedient even. Now this?

I rummaged around the chaos on top of my dresser through receipts, cough syrups and bobby pins until I found our one pair of fingernail clippers that we all share. I then briskly walked the couple hundred yards across our fenced-in property past the Education House then the community kitchen/dining room until I reached Jenae’s porch where Javier, a 15-year-old kid from the local community, sat in the wooden rocking chair exactly where I had left him only a few minutes prior.

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I thought in protest This is gonna be weird and extended my arm, smiling an awkward smile again, a sort of please-forgive-me-and-accept-the-compassion-of-Christ-that-I-am-now-allowing-to-move-through-me and said, “I noticed that your fingernails are really long. If you want to cut them, you can use my clippers.”

He looked surprised, as I knew he would. I, too, felt surprised by my action. Afterall, we had not exactly been on each other’s ‘good list’ after some sleepless nights and cranky days that led to harsh, abrupt actions on my part toward him. Plus he had asked our eldest daughter to be his girlfriend behind our backs, which didn’t do much for my desire to keep him out of our home. He had a knack for showing up at our gate at inconvenient times and, for me, in inconvenient ways.

Javier is a lost boy, a kid who only owns one outfit and who lives with his grandma because his parents did not fulfill their duties towards him. Left home or got kicked out because of an abusive step-dad, or something along those lines. He can’t read even though he was in fifth grade at some point. He is disrespectful and tried to touch my daughter under the water in the local swimming pool. The perfect candidate to fall into drug-trafficking or gangs.

This lost boy with long fingernails and dirty clothes gave his life to Christ recently at our home after our dear sister Jenae spent countless hours reaching out to him and loving him the way that Christ calls us to love the lost.

This story and a few others like it were beating across my mind like rain several days ago as we gathered with our faith community in our dining room, all of us sitting in an oblong circle/square. With majestic mountains shielding the backside of our property, visible from where we were sitting, I shared excitedly: “I am content because I know that God is doing something here, even in spite of us, in spite of me. He is truly transforming people – me included! – and He is allowing us to see a bigger vision that just our six kids: lost kids in the community who are finding Hope and Life here.” I repeat, laughing: “Even in spite of us, He is moving here. Even though sometimes Darwin, Jenae and I have miscommunications or disagreements or I am in a bad mood or haven’t slept well, God is doing a work here. I can see it.”

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There is a quote by C.T. Studd that says, “Some wish to live within the sound of church or chapel bell. I want to run a rescue shop within a yard of hell.” By God’s grace and design, our home is becoming just that. Lost boys and girls – on the fringes of society, some forgotten by their own families, many who cannot read or write, who spend their days wandering around gravel roads, killing birds and throwing stones, are coming to our gate looking for something.

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Sometimes it ends up being a rowdy afternoon of full-out Cops and Robbers, fifteen or so kids and teenagers sprinting wildly around our property, and sometimes it is a group of a dozen kids sitting on our porch to hear testimonies of God’s grace in the world. Sometimes it is choir practice, and sometimes it is sharing our food with our malnourished neighbors who are way too small for their age. Sometimes we have adequate time and energy to plan how to receive them well, and on other days it seems like everything else has to be put on hold in order to be even peripherally present to the lives God has placed at our front gate. Sometimes there are triumphs, like when someone decides to give their life to Christ or a breakthrough is made, and sometimes the kids just lie and steal from us and make too much noise. Sometimes we feel compassionate, and sometimes we just are out of obedience to our compassionate Father.

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 But God is doing something here, even in spite of us. I can see it in our 14-year-old son Brayan’s transformation from an angry, scared boy orphaned by his father and abandoned by his mother to a gracious, helpful young man who has found love in the family of Christ. I can see it in the redemption God is orchestrating between Himself and many lost boys and girls who have come to know Him. I can see it in my husband, who daily is being formed more and more into a man after God’s own heart, a father to the fatherless. I can see it in Marina, a 14-year-old homeschool student who is learning how to read for the first time, who used to carry a spirit of invisibility, fading too easily into the background, who now knows her Savior and has light in her eyes, who now runs and plays. I can see it in myself, this selfish little girl who grew up in dysfunctional luxury, who for the first time is learning what it really means to allow the Good Shepherd to move through her in spite of herself.

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In this rescue shop within a yard of Hell, I feel as though perhaps I am rescued just as frequently if not more so than the lost boys and girls who wander up the long, isolated path to our front gate. My Father has stationed me at this post not only to catch those who might otherwise fall away, but to remind me daily of my own need of constant rescuing, that this Rescue Shop is not run by men with clever ideas but by the only One who can truly rescue, redeem, give life.

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Community Life, Family, Farm Life, God At Work Among Us, Marriage, Personal Reflection, Special Needs Kids, Teaching

That’s Why We Don’t Have Television.

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Recently we had a very special visit from a dear friend of mine and her husband, Ben and Kailin Craft. Our friendship dates back to the playground in first grade, and although we have not been close since middle school, the Lord has brought us back together during this season to encourage one another along His Way.

At our home we don’t typically receive many visitors, but when we do it is always a blessing to see how everyone gets involved to prep the guest room, decorate big posters, put together flower arrangements, and pray for those on their way to visit us. Below are several photos that were taken during their stay…

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Me: “No! I don’t want to take family photos right now – we just came back from the river and we’re all sweaty and dirty! I need a shower, and Josue’s not wearing a shirt!”

Kailin: “But this is real life!”

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“Kailin, have you already given your life to Christ?” – Jackeline, age 11

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“So if Kailin and Ben are leaving tomorrow, I guess that means you weren’t able to convince them to stay.” – Gleny, age 10

Me: “Not yet, but we’ll keep praying.”

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“I’m not ready to get married – I mean, I don’t even know how to wash the clothes!” – Jackeline, age 11

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“Ben’s mom has a pet bird.”

The kids: “That’s so cruel. Birds should be free.”

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 Jackeline, age 11: “Why can’t you two just stay here forever?”

Kailin, “Well, we have a home and jobs to return to.”

Jackeline: “You have a home and jobs?!”

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 Kailin: “Jason, if you move the tadpole to a different part of the river, don’t you think he’ll miss his family?”

Jason, age 7: “No. At this age they can still move houses.”

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Jackeline, age 11, to Kailin and Ben, who were preparing dinner: “Can you also make a salad?”

Kailin and Ben: “Well, I think with the pasta we have enough food for everyone.”

Jackeline: “Yeah, but it has chemicals.”

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Ben: “Josue [the 6-year-old special needs boy] is the great teacher at the Living Waters Ranch.”

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Kailin: “Good thing the kids don’t know that Ben is a chemical engineer, or they would get really upset [because Darwin has trained the kids to be big on organic farming].”

Me: “They just think he’s a regular engineer.”

Ben: “There’s no such thing.”

Me: “For us there is.”

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The kids: “What did you and our mom do when you were little?”

Kailin, “Well, your mom was crazy…”

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Ben: “I think it’s pretty cool that these kids are astounded when they hear that they were created by God and that he intends for us to be His light in this world, because in America we’ve heard it so many times that we oftentimes forget or lose the true meaning.”

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 Darwin: “The marriage relationship between man and woman is exquisite and precious, and that is the relationship God desires with each one of us.”

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 Kailin: “Ok, kids! We’re going to play a new game: lay down, and whoever falls asleep first, wins!”

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[Looking out at the kids as they put on a broom-balancing, bow-and-arrow-shooting circus show in our front yard after lunch one day]: “That’s why we don’t have television.”

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(Juggling eggs)

Me: “Now we don’t have to buy cheese or milk because our cow gave birth and Darwin milks her every morning at 4:00am.”

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Me: “Ok, to start basketball practice you will do 53 laps up and down the stairs…”

The girls: “What?!”

Me: “…Minus 48. Go!”

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Gleny, age 10, exasperated as she hops into our truck after school, “Ugh, Mom, the kids in my class make me so mad!”

Me: “Uh-oh. What happened?”

Gleny: “They all love money! They’re like ‘Oh, when I’m big I want to make a lot of money and buy all this nice stuff’ and I told them, ‘It’s not about the money!’ and they just kept talking about how they want a big house and stuff, and I said, ‘What about God?! He’s the one who provides!’”

Me, laughing as my heart swelled with gratitude toward God for the character He is forming within this little woman: “Oh, the voice of justice crying out in the fourth grade classroom…”

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Family, God At Work Among Us, Special Needs Kids

Notable Kids’ Quotes on Faith, Life and Family

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Jason, age 7, as I tucked him into bed one night and lovingly broke it to him that his glow wand would probably only last about a day before the synthetic light inside dies out: “Yeah, the things of this world just don’t last like the things of God.”

 

“When was the study of science created, and by whom? The study of mathematics?” – Diana, age 14

 

Jason’s written prayer for his future wife: “God, protect my future wife from evil. God, protect my future wife from the Devil’s lies. Protect my future wife from robberies. God, I ask you that she has good health wherever she is. God, protect my future wife so that she doesn’t focus only on outside beauty.”

 

Jason as we hop in our truck at 5:45am to go to school, and the windshield wipers clean away a thick, dark fog that had settled over the windshield in the night, revealing the dim morning light: “Look! It’s like something from God’s kingdom – first there was darkness, and now there is light.”

 

Me in response to Diana, age 14, after she shared with me how bothered she is with several of the students in one of her music classes who slack off and don’t pay attention even though their parents are paying for them to be there: “Well, I can tell you one thing. Their laziness may serve them now, but long-term –”

Diana: “You reap what you sow.”

Me: “Exactly.”

 

Gleny, age 10: “But, Mom, if I have the door shut while I’m in timeout I’ll feel without freedom.”

Me [Laughing]: “Of course you will! You’ve lost it!”

 

Part of Gleny’s written prayer for her future husband: “God, give [my future husband] strength and life so that he loves You. God, give him strength to not give up in what he does for You.”

 

Gleny, age 10, speaking in a very serious, even tone: “Mom, I need to talk with you in private.”

Me: “Oh, okay. What’s going on?”

Gleny: “Look, it was okay that you used to call me Little Gleny when I was smaller, but, well, I’m getting bigger. Now it’s just Gleny. No ‘little.’ Oh, and only the adults are allowed to call me ‘Wild Gleny.’ I don’t like when the other kids call me that.”

 

Diana, age 14, to me: “I’m frustrated because lately whenever there are problems with Josue or conflicts between us girls, all you say is ‘We’re learning.’”

Me [Laughing]: “Because we are!”

 

Diana, age 14, reflecting on the arrival of the 6-year-old special needs boy to our family who the first day upon arriving opened the shower curtain while Diana was showering and later snuck into her room and ripped up some of her cards: “When Josue came, I thought I just can’t put up with this kid, but after getting to know him, he’s stolen my heart.”

 

Gleny, age 10, in a written school assignment: “My dad loves my mom because Jesus died for us.”

Family, God At Work Among Us, Personal Reflection

Go Tell Her That You Love Her.

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A few days ago most everyone in our household got a haircut — including myself. I stood in front of the only big-enough mirror we have, which happens to be propped up in the bathroom of our schoolhouse. Gleny and Jason perched on the counter beside and behind me, eyes wide.

“I’ve gotta see this!” They were quite impressed that I was going to cut my own hair with nothing more that a pair of scissors and damp curly hair.

As I got near the end of the 5-minute job, I held out a few strands and offered them the scissors, indicating exactly where to cut. It was a fun time.

The following day was not so fun in regards to hair and things of the sort.

Gleny asked me for a certain three-ponytail braid-style hairdo that I do for her frequently, and after executing it well, she reached behind her head, felt how short her ponytail was after I had cut it the day before, and broke down in tears. Frustrated, I said, “Look, you asked me for this hairdo and I did it. If you didn’t want it, you shouldn’t have asked me.”

She threw herself in the hammock on our porch, and shut out the world for a long while, screaming, “I don’t wanna talk right now!” Then she got up, emphatically taking the pony tails out of her hair, and storming across our large front yard like a wild woman with an unruly bob haircut and mismatched clothes.

I watched her through the window as I continued working on some project on the wooden table in our living room. Bitterness creeped into my heart as I justifiably thought, How ungrateful. She better not go crying to Jenae and ask her to re-do the hairdo I just did. I have half a mind to go over there and chew her butt.

Go tell her that you love her.

What? God’s voice whispering through my tempestuous conscience. Yes, that would be very sweet, but she doesn’t deserve that. Maybe next time, when I’m not so bothered. Why is she crying anyway? Her hair looked fine!

Go tell her that you love her.

Now.

I paced, entering our small, cave-like bathroom, searching for some reasonable excuse not to obey what I couldn’t deny was a direct order from God to my hardened heart.

I couldn’t find an excuse, so my clenched-fist will surrendered itself, falling into the bent posture that it frequently fails to maintain.

I then walked directly over to Jenae’s porch a couple hundred yards away where Gleny sat, hair tragically disheveled, legs pulled up to her chest as the wooden rocking chair supported her in her despair.

When she realized I was coming for her and not just to swing by to greet Jenae inside, she sat up uncomfortably, looking at me as if I was about to chew her butt for her extravagant display of unnecessary emotions.

If only she knew.

I got real close — a little too close for a butt-chewing — squatted down so that we were eye-level, and rested my face on my long, crossed arms atop the rocking chair’s armrest. “Gleny? I love you.”

Ok, there, God. I did it. Now I can go.

But I didn’t go. Once you take that initial step of obedience, the next step and the next seem to make more sense.

I reached out and swept her crazy bangs from her sweaty forehead. “What happened, Gleny?”

She stopped crying and we started a genuine conversation that lasted several minutes until I took her hand in mine and we both decided to get up and take a walk.

Later that night after she got out of the shower she came to me and said, “Forgive me, Mom, for complaining today and having a bad attitude.”

I smiled, by now fully in-tune with God’s will for my relationship with this little lion, and said, “Gleny, you’re allowed to be sad. You don’t have to ask forgiveness for that.”

Family, Teaching

Sex Education: Early and Ongoing

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So Friday afternoon as I was cutting my seven-year-old son’s hair on our porch, he looked over at our year-old female German Shepherd dog and casually asked, “What’s happening to her right now happens to you, too, every month, right, Mom?”

Oddly enough, the question didn’t surprise me because he has asked it before, and we’ve held an open, on-going discussion about menstruation ever since.

Leaning into whatever ounce of wisdom God has granted me, I began to respond, this time with more detail than before: “Yeah, that’s right. It’s because all females – human and animal – pass through a similar process because we’re capable of producing new life. It’s not a problem and it’s not something bad. It’s because we’re female, and God has designed us to hold new life within us. Someday when you’re a little bit bigger, I’ll go into more details.”

He sat still as I continued clipping his hair into a perfect buzz cut. A few silent seconds passed by, and he seemed content with my answer but willing and eager to accept more, so I thought Why not today? and gently pressed onward.

“Well, the reason behind menstruation is that what comes out is what would have gone to feed the baby and help it grow were the woman or female animal to be pregnant. But if she’s not pregnant, her body doesn’t need the fluids to make the baby grow because there isn’t one, so her body gets rid of them.” Gleny, Jason’s ten-year-old sister who was playing nearby on the porch, began to inch over on a little four-wheel donkey toy to hear the juicy details Mom was sharing.

“For example, someday if I get pregnant, I won’t have menstruation for the nine months that the baby is growing in me, because the baby will use those fluids to grow.” With that his eyes shot upward to make eye contact with mine as if caught off guard by this new information.

“So Aunt Aracely doesn’t have menstruation right now?” He immediately made the connection between this newfound realization and the fact that a married member of our faith community is pregnant.

“Yeah, that’s right.” I began trimming over his ears as he continued sitting impressively still under my bed-sheet hair-cutting cape with a clothespin to hold it shut at the base of his neck.

“Also, your elder sister Diana already has this happen to her every month because her body is changing and she’s becoming a woman. I think mine came for the first time when I was 12 or 13. I used to get kind of grossed out or embarrassed and didn’t want to talk about it, but there’s nothing to be embarrassed about. It’s normal.” I tried not to laugh out loud with the scissors in my hand and two pairs of eyes glued to me as my mind darted involuntarily to the first time my mom gave me the facts of life when I was nine years old. After bringing me into the know about menstruation and sex with a lot of love and wisdom, I looked at her, horrified, and asked in a shaky voice, “And you and Dad do that?” When she assured me that, yes, they did, I said, “Don’t even look at me” and shut down on the topic for several years.

I then carefully addressed the fact that some women cannot get pregnant, and that this can be a cause of great sadness. It’s no one’s fault; it’s just something that sometimes happens. Both of my listeners seemed genuinely sad, and then I added, “But God gives us many different ways to cultivate life and raise children. Some women get pregnant and raise their own biological children; others raise children that God brings to them through other circumstances.” They both seemed content, and all three of us exchanged sincere comments on the subject.

Realizing that we travelled long and far from my second-grade son’s simple question about our dog in heat, I smiled and said, “Do you have any more questions, or does all of that make pretty good sense?”

He smiled a toothy, contented grin as I squatted down in front of him, eye-level, and he said, “It makes pretty good sense.”

Family, God At Work Among Us, Personal Reflection

Sometimes Quick, Sometimes Slow

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Sometimes the Lord answers our prayers quickly, other times the answer comes after we have waited patiently for quite some time. I want to thank all of you who prayed for us yesterday and let you know that this time the Lord answered your prayers and ours quite quickly!

Yesterday there was a tropical storm passing through our region, so school and other activities were canceled and all eight of us (Darwin, the five kids who live with us, our neighbor-son Brayan, and I) were at home all day. Praise God for the tropical storm that forced all of us to slow down and spend an entire day together uninterrupted! The kids prepared an elaborate vegetable soup for lunch, Darwin and I danced in the living room, we spent time working through the events of the last few weeks with one another and in prayer, a lot of hugs and loving words were exchanged, and there was a riotous tickle-fight after lunch that led Darwin laughing and screaming around our large yard as many little people chased him.

As for 7-year-old Jason, after praying for him while he slept the night before last, yesterday he woke up with an entirely different attitude. He spent the morning and afternoon in his room (part of his consequence for his poor behavior in school), and he re-did the various pages of homework that he had previously torn up, and got ahead on a couple other assignments. He surprised us all with his newfound work ethic and joy, and we pray that it continues.

The three girls and I scheduled a long overdue “women’s meeting” in the afternoon, which consisted in us sitting on the freshly-swept floor in Mom and Dad’s Bedroom to give each person the opportunity to share frustrations, joys, problems, etc, in a safe, open environment. At first no one wanted to share anything, so we began with prayer and a Bible reading, and from there a lot of things came to light — hidden bitternesses, jealousies, honest tears, sincere compliments, worries, feelings of sisterly love and more. A true women’s meeting indeed! I feel that this first intentional encounter we had yesterday was a huge leap in the right direction, and we are planning on holding similar meetings every so often to get everything out on the table and speak the truth to one another in love. At the end of our little group meeting there were about 183 prayer requests, so we joined hands, all sitting cross-legged on our tile floor, and presented ourselves to our Father. As the girls bounced out of our bedroom, there was a tangible lightness and freedom in them that beforehand could only be categorized as darkness, anger and unspoken sadness. They literally galloped out of our room after several group hugs, and they began doing crazy gymnastics on the porch, carrying one another on their shoulders and including little Josue in their wild games of joy. Yes!

On the legal front, I was able to make contact with my new lawyer yesterday, and she’s on the ball and already working on my case! She lives in the capital city of Tegucigalpa, so she has direct access to the government’s offices there and went yesterday to access my file. Please continue to pray for justice and efficiency in regards to my residency, and let us give thanks to God for this turn of events.

Last night after a dinner of peanut butter sandwiches, all eight of us piled on and around our small couch to watch a movie together, something we have not done, well, ever. During the movie we tickled one another’s feet, scratched so-and-so on the head, cuddled together, and rested in God’s love.

As the movie was getting ready to start and everyone hurried in and out of the bathroom to take turns showering, Diana — with a newfound freedom shining from her face — asked sincerely, “What do I call Brayan now that he doesn’t live with us anymore?” I answered, “He’s your brother in Christ and [a term that doesn’t translate directly in English but means ‘non-biological brother with whom you grew up’]”. With that all three of us smiled, content with the unusually large sense of family God has blessed us with.

So I don’t know if we are parents to five or parents to six, although I’m inclined to say six. I don’t know what struggles tomorrow — or even this afternoon — will bring. But I do know one thing: God is with us, and He hears us.

Give thanks to the Lord, for He is good. His love endures forever. –Psalm 136:1