my inadequacy

October 3
by Alanna

I haven't blogged here lately, partly because of a lack of time, and partly because I haven't had a good enough attitude to type grace and blessings and positive here. Many times I have sat down to write, but not found the words. My husband keeps telling me to just write the truth. So today I'm going to try.

The last month of teaching school has been hard. I teach 1st grade most of the day, and also 4th grade language in the morning 6 times a week. For the most part 4th grade has been going well, but the 1st graders have tired me out exceedingly. There are twenty of them, ten boys and ten girls. They are wild, disobedient, talkative, and forgetful. I have had such a hard time managing them, and even a hard time loving them these first couple weeks. I thought I knew better how to discipline and manage kids. All my life, I wanted to work with kids in a third world country. I wanted to come to Honduras.  I thought that love would come easy, that I would have patience for them, that I would see them always as gifts and blessings and rejoice to be their teacher. In some ways, I imagined I was capable.  Loving kids is the only thing I ever thought I could do well.

Our first month of being here has taught me that I am inadequate and incapable. I don't know how to love kids well, let alone how to manage and teach them. I don't possess patience beyond a half hour's worth. I don't have the wisdom to do this job well, or the discernment of how to balance all this work with being a wife. I don't have limitless joy and gratitude that triumphs despite adverse circumstances. I don't always trust that we are right where God wants us to be, and that His plans are best. I am indeed an empty jar of clay.

Perhaps this is one thing God is doing with me here in Honduras. Revealing to me that the wealth I thought I possessed is but nothing.  He is my Sufficiency, to fill up all that I lack.  Although it is hard, I'm glad today that I am nothing without Him. He is everything. I'm amazed that He chooses to use us, weak as we are. I hope that in this weakness, He is glorified.

But we have this treasure

in jars of clay,

to show that the surpassing power

belongs to God

and not to us.

2nd Corinthians 4:7

By His grace

By Mary

I have a Bible study I go to every Wednesday morning. It started out just four of us at my house, when my girl was a couple months old and I didn't have a car to go anywhere. The other girl close to my age worked, and Wednesday mornings was the best free time for her. And the final two in our group were 20-40-ish years older, taking time out of their days to spend time together, to learn and encourage.

There's about 10 of us now every week, plus 8 kids 3 and under (with three more on the way early next year) We meet at church now and one of the loveliest ladies you'll ever meet volunteers to watch the kiddos for us so we can have an hour and half just to focus on the study.

This last week we ended up talking a bit about how God uses us as parents in our little one's lives...but how it's really not within our scope of power to make their hearts choose Him, seek Him, follow after Him. And it's something I've been thinking about a lot in every area of parenting, and just life in general: you don't do all the right things and thus end up with the perfect product.

One woman from church has told me on occasion how well we've trained Gianna. Those words mean so much to me, especially coming from her as she does see a lot of Gia from week to week and she works with kids a lot as well as raising her own. But I never feel it's a compliment to me. I feel so grateful, but it's always just a feeling of encouragement and a little relief, thankful that somebody can see the results of God working in our successes and failures, using and redeeming by His grace.

This verse is always on my mind "But by the grace of God I am what I am: and His grace which was bestowed upon me was not in vain; but I labored more abundantly than they all: yet not I, but the grace of God which was with me." Even in the broken places of my life, it's by His grace alone that I'm nothing worse--for what am I without Him? And His grace continues to lead to better things in the imperfect. And one day, what wonderful perfection awaits!

blessed messes

 By Mary

"You will never have this day with your children again, tomorrow they’ll be a little older than they were today.  This day is a gift, breathe and notice, smell and touch them; study their faces and little feet and pay attention.  Relish the charms of the present.  Enjoy today, mama.  It will be over before you know it” – Jen Hatmaker

The first time I came across this quote, it was linked to another mommy's thoughts on it. She focused on the pressure of the sentiment, guilt she feels at reading something like that when it's just been one of those days and moments haven't seemed so easy to cherish--and really, do we have to make ourselves relish the exhausting, dirty, irritating parts of motherhood?

I can understand her point, but when I read that quote, it speaks so differently to me, about parenthood and life in general. I don't think giving thanks in all things means calling everything good and enjoyable. I think it's important to learn to discern God's goodness and the things that reflect Him and recognize the things in the world that are part of brokenness and sin.

I pulled out our fall decorations this week and in our little tub of seasonal decor there's just a few little things that were all Nick's idea, not mutually agreed upon items...and some of them are actually a little ugly to me. But I smiled when I saw them in that plastic tub and I put them up over the house anyway and somehow they're beautiful because they're part of us and our life.

And it's the same thing with parenting: I don't have to actually like washing diarrhea out of sheets or dealing with a tantrum out in public in order to cherish even those moments. It's all part of such a blessed life. How can I be anything but thankful?

answered prayers

By Mary

Sometimes I struggle with the concept of asking for specific things in prayer. I can definitely understand talking to God, or asking for His will to be done in specific situations. But to ask for my personal desires, believing He'll answer...it's hard for me sometimes. I wonder if He doesn't grant my prayers because I'm actually lacking faith I thought I had when I asked. And I don't have it all figured out or anything but I realize more and more that this usually happens when I don't have much of a relationship with Him in general and I'm treating Him more like a genie in a bottle.

This month I've been realizing so many prayers He's granted that I've just ignored really, taken for granted. So many little prayers with my daughter, like a quick and easy delivery, a healthy baby...and then even right down to her curly hair and blue eyes!

I have a whole list of thankfulness for prayers answered...immediate answers like strength for the day, and long asked for prayers like the adoption of two precious little ones I've waited for years to come to be.

Right now my heart utters praise and gratitude instead of questions and doubts. And it's one of my prayers that I learn the discipline to remain this way.

the blessings of power outages

by Alanna

 

Life has been quite busy for us here in Catacamas. We started school last Wednesday, and received our teaching schedules that same day. It’s been hectic, catching the bus at 6:30 a.m. and getting home between 3 and 5 in the afternoon. After that we cook dinner, eat, wash dishes, and plan until generally around 10 p.m. Teaching has been quite a struggle. Someday I’ll muster up the courage to blog about my failings with children and the cacophony of 20 Spanish speaking 1^st-graders in one room. Tonight I want to write about the 12^th graders, our lack of electricity, and Texaco.

Today was a hard day for me. It was our first full day of actual teaching, and I had the first grade room all to myself from 10 a.m.-2:40 p.m. (Before that I do devotions with them for half an hour, and then teach 4^th grade language). The boys were wild; I felt like giving up; I had duties during recess and lunch which meant no time to simply breathe. 1^st grade is harder than it sounded, and patience is something I severely lack.

During lunch time I was keeping an eye on the kids near the soccer fields, and three high school girls joined me. We talked a little about their plans, and mine. They told me nice things that Mr. Hailu told his class about me, and I rolled my eyes and laughed. “No really- he is in love with you Miss”, they said. It was a little breath in my day, a small reminder to be thankful, when all I wanted to do was lay down and quit.

The bus left without us this afternoon because we had teacher devotions. As usual we were the last teachers to leave, catching a ride home with the director around 4:30. I felt so tired and hungry. Unfortunately we had hardly any food at our apartment, and no Lempiras. The bank had closed at 4 p.m. When I flipped the light switch at home, nothing happened. It gets quite dark here by 6:30 p.m., and so lesson planning would be a problem with no electricity. Our electric burners would of course not work to cook dinner. We laughed, Yonas hung up flash lights, and I got out the bread and jelly and cereal (we are out of peanut butter). My husband reminded me to be thankful for cereal. Then he suggested we go out to eat, something we haven’t yet done here in Catacamas. We walked together in the rain to Texaco, and had our first Honduran date there. We ate a whole pizza, drank coke from a glass bottle, sat across from each other and talked. It was a beautiful calm from the chaos. I think we both praised God for the lack of electricity. By the time we walked home, the lights were back on.

In this crazy schedule of our lives right now, it was so good to have a Texaco date night. I’m so exhausted and I still don’t really want to be a teacher in the morning, but tonight I’m thankful because we live here. I’m thankful for reminders from 12^th graders, for hugs from my first graders and the way they yell “Mrs. Hailu!” when they see me walking. I’m thankful for Texaco and their Visa card reader. I thank God for the ability to buy a pizza if we want to. I thank Him tonight that we didn't have electricity for a time. Such darkness brought unexpected blessings. 

  

one day in the life

by Alanna

My husband is cooking crepes and loudly singing along to Bob Marley. So I’m sitting down to write a small blog of our day. This morning we took the laundry down to the courtyard to wash it in the pila. (The pila is an area with cement washing boards, a drain, and a basin for water. We hand wash everything there). My husband wisely wore mosquito spray, and I smugly didn’t. I was promptly bitten 9 times on my ankle and leg within the first 10 minutes of washing clothes, and so I humbly retreated back upstairs to get mosquito spray as well.

After the laundry, we walked to the bank. There you get asked by the security guards at the door if you have a cell phone, as they are not allowed in the bank. From what I’ve seen, if you are a man you also get waved with a metal detector. Yonas had looked up the word for withdrawal, so we could get Lempiras out of our account here.

From there we walked to the grocery store, La Dispensa. It’s the cheapest one in town for most things. They have loud music playing outside every day, and today the music was inside too. It was hard to think about what Honduran baking powder might look like, when those Honduran pop songs were blaring so loudly next to me. I forgot to be thankful and to rejoice that we have a grocery store and money to use there.

Just as we were paying at the register, we heard the rain come. It was a downpour, and the gutters fast became rivers. We waited at the entrance to the store, along with all the Hondurans, for the rain to let up a little. Then we walked home through muddy puddles with light rain coming down. I laughed because I love puddles, but Yonas was not thrilled because he does not like the rain. This afternoon we had lunch (PBJ again), and washed the floors in our apartment by hand.

Afterward I checked e-mails, and Yonas took a nap in our room. While I was typing, suddenly the wide open bedroom door slammed shut. It was so loud that I jumped right out of my seat. It had been the wind, and right away the rain started pouring down. I thought it would be a hurricane. I ran into our room and jumped right into my husband’s arms, like a little scared child.  I’m so thankful that I have this man to be strong. Thankful that he thinks about things like mosquito spray, that he speaks Spanish, that he leads me by the hand across these crazy streets. I’m thankful that we get to hand wash clothes together, clean floors, grocery shop. I’m thankful that we get to live life together, that I don’t have to be alone here. I’m thankful for his kindness and the way he notices the bathroom needs to be cleaned and just does it.

I don’t want to ever forget what we have been given. These other things- a whisk, a washing machine, a mop, aren’t so important. Even baking powder and paprika I can live without. But I’m thankful that today, I have my husband.  

 

in the desert

By Mary

Its been difficult for me to blog lately...partially because the single mom roll was a little more stressful and wearing than I thought it would be, partially because I've been more tired and low energy lately, but mostly just because its been hard to put my thoughts into words.

I've had a spiritual dry spell for months, I think. I can't give it a time frame because it felt so comfortable for so long. Being lukewarm takes little effort...but it really is so draining, so empty and joyless. God has been on the very outskirts of my consciousness with so many petty things competing for my time and heart.

I think it's simple to fall into this kind of lifestyle. It doesn't take anything dramatic and it doesn't even take a long time. It just takes a little shift of focus from God as number one to...anything else as first. It's easy to lose love when you're not cultivating it. It's natural to lose good habits when you stop exercising them.

But right now, I'm so excited for life. I've got my husband back from all his training for at least the next few months and it seems like we're both in this spiritual rebuilding stage and it's so good. And hopeful. God is as present with me in the desert as when He leads me to the well-watered pastures.