Filed under: Cambodia, God thoughts, Reaching out, at home, garden, loving others, marriage
Life is rapidly falling into a routine in this new world of no-longer-working of mine. Are you suprised that I am actually rather busy? 
The days are melding together, passing by like the drip-drip-drip of the constant rain, and overshadowed by the leaden, glutinous sky that reminds me of winters in England. I love winter. It is relatively short, here, and I relish each day of crisp cold, still warm enough to sit in the sun with my coffee, but cool enough to need a couple of layers of clothing. I love the grey sky and the rain, making it easy to stay inside and cook comforting meals and read, leisurely, on the sofa.
Somehow, too, I am learning a new skill, and have been doing a lot of work on our church’s website. I’m not sure if I will ever grasp the intricacies of the technical side, but I am enjoying designing the pages and writing updates on our blog and providing much creative input. I am finding this very satisfying.
I enjoy having time to exercise each day, dashing out in the morning then coming home and spending an hour or so making our house a home. I am delighting in making sure that my busy husband has very little to do around here once he gets home from work apart from that which he wants to do. We shared chores for so long; now, it is nice to do this for him, because I can. 
I have been gardening and cleaning long-neglected corners. I have had plenty of time to pause and dwell on my Father, in the midst of ordinary things. I have seen friends, too, and had plenty of time for fun.
Yesterday, a dear friend of mine and I went to the opening of Tiffany’s in Perth. We weren’t part of the glamourous champagne set, but watched the festivities from the warmth of the coffee shop across the street, over big bowls of porridge and roasted fruit. We went in afterwards, with an abundance of women from Perth – such fun! It’s our anniversary, soon, and my husband sent me in to peruse the display. I have my eye on this: what do you think? (I notice the link didn’t work. It is on the first page, bottom row, second from the right. )I’d like to have a ring that I can wear on its own, particularly for travel, when I don’t want to take my other rings.
On the subject of travel, we are preparing for a trip to Cambodia next month, just my husband and me. We will be doing some financial teaching, relating to the ministry our church has set up (micro finance loans, giving, managing money – that kind of thing) and then spending a few days building into all the church leaders. I haven’t been to Cambodia for about four years. It will be a joy to reconnect with dear faces old and new.
So, you see, life can take on a new structure and purpose very quickly! You were all right about that!
I think one of the most irritating phrases is, “I’m so tired!”, and yet I find it slipping out of my mouth quite often. I think saying it just reinforces that feeling of inertia and the desire to be horizontal for a day or two. This last weekend was a full one; we had a wedding on Sunday that went pretty much all day. Hubs was playing guitar and coordinating all the music, so Sunday was the culmination of a lot of hard work for him. Someone actually came up to him after the ceremony and asked if the ‘band’ did lots of weddings, and did they have a card? He laughed and told her that they were just mates of the groom. It shows how great they sounded. I know we were busy on Saturday and Friday night, but my brain is only retaining the last three hours or so at present.
Teaching after a long day and a very late night is always fun. The long macchiato I sucked down on the way to work helped, but I am thinking I really need to wean myself off coffee again for a while. It perks you up but then you crash and burn about six hours later.
When we are that tired, there is always the danger of getting run down. It Is easier to fall ill in this state, so I make sure our food is full of nutrition to build up our strength. There was the temptation last night to just order pizza, but I knew this wouldn’t cut it, so I threw together a big salad made from fresh rocket from the garden, raspberry vinagrette, walnuts, avocado and shaved parmesan. Avocado is a powerhouse of nutrients, and dark green rocket is packed full of anti-oxidants. We try to eat a salad at least four times a week.
I also cooked a whole head of broccoli with dinner, which was organic spicy chicken wings and wedges. I think we had enough greens last night! We both woke up feeling a bit better this morning, and I know a really good meal helps with this. It is worth a bit of extra effort. I made sure that I took a healthy lunch, too; leftover vegetable and bean soup. I like the idea of prevention rather than cure, which is why I refused the school’s free flu vaccine and am sticking to a good diet. It is amazing what the body can throw off when it is well-nourished.
This weekend is a big one for me, as we are launching our child-sponsorship program in Cambodia, as well as the business sponsorship and leadership training. I am pretty much coordinating all this, and tomorrow will be packed with picking up the dvds, creating information packs, and working on our presentation. I am excited about it! It is so different to teaching, and yet I find myself enjoying every moment. I know I have an impact on the young lives in my daily care, but there is something about helping to feed and clothe the desperately needy that just feels so right. I love knowing that we are changing the destiny of several lives, and thus changing the face of a nation.
It’s pretty hot around here. Our mornings consist of opening up the house first thing for an hour or so, then battening down the hatches with the a/c running and a glass of cold water somewhere within reach. I can’t remember a day below 35, lately, and there are a lot more to come. I hate drinking a cup of tea with the fan going full bore just so I can bear it. We’ve got an evening sea-breeze, tonight, so everything is open, but it is still pretty warm.
I can’t believe that school starts next week. These have been the fastest six weeks! About two weeks ago, I had a very strong feeling that I wouldn’t be teaching for much longer. Over the last couple of days, the feeling has become even stronger, almost to the point where I’m wondering if I did the right thing in saying I’d work this year at all. I just have the strongest sense that my time there is Done. We’ll see what the next few weeks hold. I can’t pull out without reasonable notice, so I’ll have to see how the term goes.
I’ve also had a strong sense lately that the Lord is bringing back into my/our lives some people from the past. I have some very dear friends who just kind of meandered away out of my life for the past three or four years, but I really sense that the time has come to renew some of these ties. There have been some interesting things happening lately that have kind of shoved people back into our sphere. I have a sense of expectancy about 2008.
On a different note, did I mention that I’m only teaching three days a week this year? That is going to be a blessing in itself! One day will be my day ‘off’, and on the Wednesday I will be working at the church office, which I’m really excited about. I’ll be working on ourtreach stuff – we’re setting up child sponsorship in Cambodia, as well as supporting our church there and a number of pastors and leaders. We also have six remote villages that we help out, financially and spiritually. I’ll be co-ordinating much of this, jsut while the project gets going. I’m also the co-ordinator of our Children’s Church, and we are doing lots of cool stuff this year, so I think my Wednesdays are going to be rather full!
And on another entirely different note, I took great delight this evening in the fact that I could go into our garden, gather about twenty little tomatoes from three or four different varieties, slice them in half and drizzle them with olive oil, and then scatter wild rocket on top, also from our garden. It is very satisfying to eat something you have grown. I am also enjoying right now a cup of peppermint tea, made with mint from our garden topped with boiling water. We did not, however, grow the dark chocolate M & Ms I’m about to have with the tea.
I’ve lived in a lot of places in my life. I was born in South Africa, and we lived for the first five or six years of my life in a semi-rural area, with about ten acres and a lot of trees and animals. We then moved, I think, to a rental, then another home and finally a big house in the suburbs. (Life was luxurious in those days for many South Africans.). When I was eight, my parents (one English, one South African) decided to give their four children a childhood of freedom, not the menacing, cloistered, violent childhood they saw looming in years to come in our beautiful land. They moved us to Australia, a move that had profound effects on all of us, particularly my older sister and I. Moving is stressful for children, let alone emigrating to a new land. You lose all that you hold dear, all that is familiar. For us, we moved to a place where we had no extended family for thousands of kilometres.
I remember always feeling a little ‘different’ – the way I talked, behaved, the life experiences I had had. We had always travelled a lot overseas as a family in my growing up years, and I think I had quite a broad worldview even then. Once here in Australia, we moved a couple of times again, involving new schools each time. When I look back, I think I can count about eight different schools that I attended.
Once I finished university, I took off for London, where I lived for two and half years. Those were some of the best years of my life – meeting new people, relying on God like never before, travelling to new and beautiful lands. The world seemed so big and so small, both at the same time. I discovered that beneath the cultural and geographic exteriors, we are all the same, really. We all eat and drink and wash and play and talk and laugh and love and dream. We all have plans for a family and a future, and we all work for similar goals. Around the world, people are just people. We are not that different from each other.
Coming home, I found that no-one really wanted to hear about my experiences. Life goes on for people, and our own lives and experiences are what we are most involved with. I remember feeling a sense of restlessness, a sense of not belonging. Was I South African? Australian? English? My heart was in all those lands. I fell in love with many places around the globe in the following years. Now, when I land in Singapore or Cambodia there is a distinct sense of ‘coming home’. Many places have a small piece of my heart.
I’ve often thought about patriotism. Having led the life I have, and living in three different countries, no one place feels like my home country. I believe this is not a bad thing. The bible tells us that He has put eternity in our hearts, that our existence here is but a blink of an eye. If we feel passionate about our earthly home, and love it at the cost of loving other nations, we are forgetting that the Lord has told us He has given us all nations. He tells us to go out into the whole world, sharing the Truth of His Son. I’m not saying we should not defend our nations against agressors. I’m just wondering if a national pride prevents us from loving the nations as they should be loved. If our fierce pride in the land of our birth prevents us from living as though this is only our temporary home. If it leads to us thinking that our nationality and culture is the best one, not just one of many that God loves equally. Having that sense of not really belonging completely anywhere means that I live with the knowlege of eternity, that my life is in heaven, not just in this one nation here on earth. It means that if the Lord tells us to go – it is a little easier to leave ‘home’ because our identity is not in a place but in a Person.
Both my husband and I are quite fond of our comfort zones. We value our time out, our time together and our time alone. We are quite fond of having some evenings free each week, and a weekend day free together. One thing the Lord is teaching us (over and over!) is that our time is not our own. We have had to let go of our ’schedule’ and our desire to divide up our time into ‘ours’ and ‘others’. It has all become ‘His’. This means that as we have let go of more of ourselves, the Lord has plopped opportunities in our laps that we just weren’t open to before. It is as though He now trusts us with a lot more responsibility. Let me give you an example.
Last Sunday afternoon, I was on my way to church when I had to stop for petrol at the station round the corner. The guy behind the counter started chatting to me, and I chatted back, even though I didn’t have a lot of extra time.
Petrol guy: So, are you doing anything special today?
Me: No, not really. I’m just off to church, actually.
Petrol guy: Church? Where do you go to church?
Petrol guy and me: General chit chat about church and suburbs and localities. He is from India or Sri Lanka, I think.
Me: Hey, do you go to church?
Petrol guy: No, I’m not really into church.
Me: I’m not really into ‘church’ either, but I’m really into God.
Petrol guy: What do you mean? What do you mean by ‘into God’?
Me: Explain a bit about why I go to church, Jesus, God’s love. A bit amazed by how easy this all is. Invite him to church, but he works every Sunday afternoon. Tell him about how church is not just for Sundays, but that we do other stuff during the week too. He is intrigued by this, and really likes the idea of helping others, particularly the Single Mums thing we’re getting going at church.
To cut a long story short, my husband and Petrol Guy have been ringing and sms-ing, and he was supposed to come and hang out here tonight, but had to work late. He is coming next week instead, and I am amazed at how all this has come about. I know it has a lot to do with releasing our time to Him, and being prepared to step out a little more than usual. This is so not me; inviting strangers into my home, but Jesus is all about loving the stranger, and it all feels right and good. I’ll keep you posted.
