Movements

As I have established in past posts. Life is not always easy. Also as stated in one of my favorite films "While you were sleeping" Life does not always goes as planned. But music can be a source of inspiration in those times. 

My brother gifted me an album by Rend Collective Experiment through iTunes around Thanksgiving and I haven't stopped listening to it! I barely ever want to listen to Christmas music, which is a pretty big thing for me, because I am so obsessed with this album. 

My very favorite song on the whole album spoke to me so loudly when I first heard it and still every time I listen it makes me feel so strong. Like with Him I can do anything. I can fight through all the difficulties and frustrations I face. Even when 7 days late, hope is soaring, then in an instant, dreams crushed. That was the worst, or the most 'real' it's ever been. Just this last time. We really thought this was 'it.' I'm taking hormones, they must have worked... But no. I read later that the hormones I was taking can make you late. That would have been good to know before.

All of this and I leave to go swimming. Hoping to drown my sorrows in the pool. Cold, sunny morning bus ride, headphones on, a banjo plays and then,

"I wanna soar with You

Upon wings like eagles

But I'll crawl with You too

When the dark and lonely questions come"

This is a dark and lonely question if I have ever known one. That is the best way I have ever heard it described actually. Anyone who has experienced this knows, it's dark, sometimes sucking the color from everything in life. It's lonely when everyone around you is moving on in life and you are stuck in the same stage for no good reason. At least as far as you know... the WHY? comes oh so easily. It rolls off in tears and gut wrenching sobs. No relief. till... 

Finally, you put your trust in Him. You resign yourself to the fact that He is in control. That He is trustworthy and good. That you will stand with Him and hold tight until you come out of this. Even if you NEVER come out of it. That is when the peace comes. The peace that you never knew was possible. 

I keep listening. I feel stronger with each verse:

"I wanna stand true

No matter what's new or comes through

I can’t stand still

Whatever hits I'll keep making movements to You"

I'm feeling alive. I am feeling the fight rise up inside of me like never before:

"I'm running fast and free to You

‘Cos You are the movement and fight in me

I'm running fast and free to You

‘Cos You are my home where I wanna be

Come move in me

Where I wanna be, come move in me"

I feel the waves beating against me, but I'm paddling hard to keep myself going to Him: 

"I wanna float with you

The currents driving me

But I'll paddle hard too 

When the waves and rapids overcome"

My emotions are higher than ever, I really thought this was it, but I TRUST you... 

"I wanna stand firm

When my mind’s weak and my emotions squirm

I must stand true

Whatever hits I'll keep making movements to You"

I'm His completely. Nothing can drive me away. 

"I won't walk away, won't walk away"

Those words run over and over in my mind, into my soul. "I won't walk away." No I won't, I really won't. I trust Him. I trust Him. I couldn't say that, even just a few months ago I didn't trust him like I do now. I feel the fight rising up and I will keep going. I don't know what He has for us, but I know it's good. He hasn't failed me yet. He is Fa!thful and good.  Sometimes I will wrestle a bit with what He has for me, but I will keep making movements to Him Even when the dark and lonely questions come and that will have me soaring higher than ever before. 

Knowing you...

For the first time in our four years here, this being our fifth Holiday Season, we invited our local friends to our home to celebrate Thanksgiving this year. We made turkey, gravy, mashed potatoes and all the fixings of a good Thanksgiving feast. But that is not really what made it special. We went around a said what we were thankful for as most Americans do on this Holiday, but this year what I had to be thankful for was very different and unexpected for most of our friends. 

The past three years at Thanksgiving, I have tried to focus on other things to be grateful for and look past the most obvious struggle that I am going through in order to do that. But this year that was the very source of my Thanksgiving. I only realized it the morning before our first Thanksgiving celebration that I had come to a point of surrender that I never had reached in these past three years. 

As we began to sing the words to a song that I have sung many times, I was filled with the overwhelming reality of this truth. ..

“Knowing you, 

Gsus, 

knowing you, 

there is no greater thing.” 

The truth of those words reverberated in my being like never before and I knew that was exactly what he wanted me to share with our friends and I was pretty sure with the world, now and always. 

In these past three years life has been filled with so much disappointment and hopelessness at times. I have no more reason to hope now than I ever did during these years. But I do have hope. I have hope in the everlasting joy of knowing my Sav!our. His love is that good. I have walked with him for several years, but have never had the opportunity to experience intimacy with Him in the way that I have recently.

He has taught me that in the midst of hardship I can either choose to draw closer to him than ever before or allow that hardship to harden me and separate me from him. I have allowed it to separate me from him and I’m not saying that I won’t do that in the future if this continues. But right now I am choosing to let this draw me closer to him. To rely on him fully as the giver of all gifts. 

So I'll leave you with the words of this song, to meditate on. To remind you of this precious gift, the gift of a truly intimate creator who wants nothing more than to know and be known by his children. 

"All I once held dear, built my life upon

All this world reveres and wars to own

All I once thought gain I have counted loss

Spent and worthless now compared to this

Knowing You, Gsus, knowing You

There is no greater thing

You're my all, You're the best

You're my joy, my righteousness

And I love You L0rd

Now my heart's desire is to know You more

To be found in You and know as Yours

To possess by fa!th what I could not earn

All surpassing gift of righteousness

Oh to know the power of Your r!sen life

And to know You in Your sufferings

To become like You in Your death, my L0rd

So with You to live and never die"

Goals are hard

So I know that I just wrote a post about daring to dream that sounded oh so inspirational, but then reality hit me! This weekend I was too lazy for my dreams. I ate lots of fattening foods, I didn’t practice guitar 3x a day and the thought of learning Kazakh was very far from my mind. 

I am not saying that treats are not okay and rest is not okay. Those things are great in moderation, but this was not a weekend of moderation. It was way beyond that. I felt like I had failed on all my goals and I just wanted to give up. 

When I told Curtis, he said something interesting, but so true. I have heard it before, but this time it really hit home...

I told him that I felt like I was failing at all my dreams and he said that usually when we dream we feel like giving up, that is what makes it a dream. The amount of times that all you want to do is give up, but you keep on going, is what separates the ordinary goals from extraordinary ones. There will always be times of wanting to give up when you are doing something worthwhile, something worth fighting for. That is where the fight comes in. 

Its also not always about how you feel. If you just keep pushing through the times when you don’t feel like it, you will eventually get to point of accomplishing your goal. I think most dreams and big goals are like that. the are achieved gradually. So gradually that one day you wake up and realize that you have basically achieved your goal. Like with weight loss. I knew that, but its so much harder when you are going through the motions. You just feel like nothing is changing, until one day you look in the mirror or see a picture of yourself and you realize that you have in fact changed a lot! 

I definitely believe in treating myself, but I think that much of the time when we treat ourselves, if we do it too much, we are actually cheating ourselves of our potential to achieve great things. We get into an entitlement attitude of deserving or needing rest and we end up cheating ourselves of the really great things in life. 

These new dreams have shown me that. So now when I think about just sitting and relaxing before playing guitar or skipping one of my 3x, I remember that if I do I am just cheating myself of the accomplishment and joy that playing the guitar will be someday. 

I’m excited about this new hobby and I hope that someday I will enjoy it so much that I will have to pull myself away from it to achieve other things. But for now I am gonna keep on fighting for the things that I know will feed my sp!r!t and have me soaring to new heights. 

Daring to Dream

As many of you may know from facebook and instagram, I decided to take up guitar this week. As a result, typing this is very painful. For those of you who haven't played guitar, the first week or two is very painful for your fingers because you must form callouses in order to play painlessly in the future.

Lately Papa has been giving me the ability, the passion and the drive to dream again. Losing weight and taking up swimming as a new sport was such a big achievement that it gave me new perspective on my desire to have children. It helped me to see that I could still start and become good at new things. It reminded me to not take this time for granted. Because if children do come, things will change a lot. Through this journey I have shed 20lbs and I'm going for another 5lbs by our 6 year anniversary, November 17th, and a total of 10 more pounds by Christmas :)

Learning Russian was another such achievement. It seemed so big, unthinkable even, to be speaking Russian as fluently as I am now; translating for team meetings, as painful and embarrassing as that is at times; and just being able to be me in Russian is such a relief and a big stress off of my life here in general.

It's really good for me at this point in my life to have goals other than becoming a mother someday, because I am not sure if that is even a realistic goal. I don't want to let go of the hope that it could someday happen, but as a goal, it stinks, because I have absolutely no control over it. Even if there are certain steps I can take to possibly achieve that someday, if it is my entire focus and it never happens, it will ruin me.

I guess I have always known that, but I kept thinking it would happen soon and I wouldn't have to worry about it anymore. I must stress again, I'm not giving up here. I am just evaluating where my focus is. Of course it must be on HIM, but he gives us permission to dream within his will. Right now his will is not what I dreamed before. But He is giving me new inspiration to dream.

One of the biggest surprises was recently, when He made one of those dreams learning another language. Why do I need to learn another language you ask? Well, there are actually two main languages where I live. One is Russian, and about 99% of the people here know Russian. But about 75% of the people's heart language is Kazakh. 

I have absolutely fallen in love with the Russian language and on top of that Russian culture and Russian people. But that leaves out about 75% of the population in the city I live in. There is definitely a very special place in my heart for Kazakh people, but I have not fallen in love with them as I have with Russians. I had been giving this to Papa and asking Him to help change it. He spoke very clearly to me, He asked me one thing "How did you originally fall in love with Russians?" and I knew the answer was language.

I immediately understood that this meant that He wanted me to learn Kazakh in order to have a deeper love for that 75% of the population. It seems to be a common theme among the foreigners who stay here long enough. You fall in love with one culture and one language and Papa shows you that you need space in your heart for the other language and culture as well.

It's not an easy goal. Studying language is not my favorite. I do know quite a bit of Kazakh just from being around it, but I'm not excited about the word order. I do know one thing though, in the wise words of Tom Hanks (aka Jimmy Dugan) "It's the hard that makes it great."  

So I will continue to dream about doing hard things and glorifying His name through it all. It would just be too easy for me to give up on life and say that I dreamed and didn't get what I dreamed of, a family. But that is just a lie from the pit of hell. Seriously. He made me to dream, even when things don't go as planned, so I guess the message is, never give up and keep on dreaming. I sure am.

Who are we hiding from anyway?

Today while sitting on the bus, I saw the “Free-Spirited Runner.” That’s the best way to describe him at least. I don’t know his name. I know nothing other than he is not ashamed to frolick about in public doing hand motions and bouncing off of walls and posts and the many different items lining the sidewalk. Many people turn their heads to stare at him as he does his wild dance, but this never distracts him from just keeping on. 

He got me thinking. 

What am I ashamed of? Why am I always hiding? Why do we hide parts of ourselves away for others not to see? 

We build up giant walls around ourselves to protect us from others. When, I am not sure if that is what it really does. We need to give people a chance. 

I found out something so beautiful from what I shared yesterday. I found that people are not the awful beasts that I make them out to be in my mind. They are filled with love and understanding. 

Let’s be real. They DO let us down. But that doesn’t mean that they aren’t the most amazing creatures of all! We are HIS best creation. So why don’t we remember that when it comes to trusting each other? When it comes to bearing all and sharing who we are with those around us. 

I am not saying sharing every deep dark secret. I’m just saying that as we grow older, as we “mature,” we begin to hide more and more of ourselves from the world, for fear of being judged, ridiculed, criticized etc. But really, people might just think that you are amazing. Because you are YOU! 

No more hiding

I'm going through a hard time right now. Actually that is an understatement. It's the most difficult thing I have ever experienced in my life. It's so hard that I walked out of a group of people lifting their voices to the King the other day. I just couldn't bear to do anything but weep. Drown myself in my sorrows. I couldn't lift my voice to him, except in anguish. I have asked 'why?' way too many times to count at this point.

It sounds pretty dramatic. But to me it is. It's something that all women want in their life. Something natural that you just think when we're ready, we'll try and we'll get one. Three years later, I'm here to tell you that it doesn't work that way for everyone.

I'm not sure what to even make of it sometimes. I didn't want people to know we were trying until we got to make one of those ever so popular baby announcements on Facebook, with a photo of an ultrasound or a positive pregnancy test or just something really catchy, cute or clever. Nowadays those kinds of posts just make me upset. I am sure if that day ever comes I will write something about it on Facebook, but I'm sure it will be different because of the journey.

So I'm not here to just complain about this or to open up about this three year journey that I feel like I have been hiding from the world. I really just wanted to write about how amazing the people I work with are, but I felt like I couldn't just tell everyone I am going through this terrible time and not be open about it what it actually was. But as I began to write,  I felt that the weight of this burden was falling off. The hiding is over, it has been killing me to hide this pain.

I don't want people to take pity on me or anything. I just need people to stand with me as I go through this. I think it's good to be open at this point. It's been a really long time and things may not change. We may NEVER have children and I have to be at PEACE with that and I have to stop feeling SHAME. I am not going to say it's okay or deny my feelings and I am NOT going to stop FIGHTING for it! But I cannot keep pretending, hiding all this pain from everyone and also just thinking 'people will know about it when it's over.' I really don't know WHEN it will be over. But that's OKAY. At least most of the time...

So I guess I am just saying please stand with us as we ask Papa to give us children. We have been asking for three long years and we are getting weary. I have very little hope that things will change soon. But I am trying to continue to trust my G*d because HE IS GOOD!

Now about the people I work with. Papa has placed me in the midst of such loving and understanding people. I walked out of the meeting close to tears and I have never done anything like that before, so many who saw knew that something was up. Some of them know what we are going through and others don't. All the same, they weren't inquisitive about what was wrong, they just hugged me and told me that it was all going to be okay, And it is. It really is.

Papa has blessed me with such a full life. I really couldn't imagine it any other way as I walk through this journey with all these amazing people beside me. Don't even get me started on what an amazing encouragement my husband is through this. We are standing together and fighting to keep our eyes focused on the one who loves us and gives his kids good gifts.

Let's Get Personal

It’s time to get really personal and talk about something I’ve never really talked about on my blog, but thought about countless times. Actually I didn’t even know if I would post this at first, but I went ahead and wrote it to see how I felt about it. 

Like all women, I am always battling the desire to be thinner, but also to do it with a good balance of exercise, healthy eating and knowing when it’s really okay to go ahead and treat myself. Since I came overseas, this balance has been really hard for me to keep. In the States it was much easier. But this new lifestyle threw me into a tailspin and I just haven’t been able to get my head above water since I got here. But interestingly enough, that very thing, water, helped me to get out of that tailspin and bring balance back to the health part of my life. 

Before              and                After
-12lbs

This spring I was at an all-time low, or you could say high, since I arrived here. I had injured my leg, and I’m not even sure how it happened or when it will go away, but I am sure of one thing, swimming is the only thing that helps. Back to the injury, a few months into it I had packed on about 8 pounds on top of the 15 pounds I had packed on in the past three and a half years since we had been here! I was so ashamed of the way my body had become. I felt so lazy because every time I tried to exercise my leg would get worse and I just could not get myself disciplined with food unless I was exercising. 

My physical therapist told me that swimming could help my leg, so I started to gradually go swimming. At first it was 2-3 times a week and eventually five times a week through which it grew into a passion! I really fell in love with it, and still it is the only thing that helps my leg! 

Swimming wasn’t enough at first, but it helped me in disciplining my eating, I started to count my calories after seeing a photo of myself taken by a guy on our team who said it looked normal, while I was thinking “Is that really me?” Anyhow, somehow it always starts with a photo right? I had been finding most photos just downright depressing at that time.

One of the said photos

I wish I had that photo, but I don’t, he deleted it quickly after he saw how disturbed I was by it. I only had a photo that I had taken the summer before when I was actually a little bit thinner than I was earlier this year. I was just too ashamed to take a before photo, and to be honest, I didn’t know if there would be an after. Until a few weeks into it when I realized I was super determined, but it was already too late, I had lost five pounds within just a few weeks. 

It’s taken me a bit longer as I continue to lose the rest. So far it’s a total of 16 pounds, but I know that my body is changing so much because of the swimming. I took this after photo when I had lost 12 pounds. It’s been a while and I’ve only lost four more pounds since then, which means I am ten pounds from my goal. I am not as concerned about the numbers as I was to begin with because I realize that my body is changing, and as they say muscle weighs more than fat.

Before            and              After
-16lbs

I know that this may seem irrelevant to life overseas, but it’s been a big part of MY journey, and finding swimming as a form of exercise and even a way to get out and be a part of the community has transformed the way I look at life here. Also, being able to sustain a healthy lifestyle in this country is very important to me. That takes a lot of discipline and work when you develop a love for baking and work in a cafe with lots of sweets around all the time and part of your job is to taste those things. I found that counting calories worked best for me because I can’t always avoid sweets, but I can make changes elsewhere. So that really transformed the way that I looked at food. 

I am just so grateful because I know that this is something that Papa is doing in my life. It’s not just me. I felt it at the beginning and I know it because I feel like I was made to be a swimmer. Not a pro or anything. But I think He just knew that I would love being in the water and that it would just be an all around great and healthy thing for me. 

I do hope that this mystery injury goes away soon, but I am so grateful that it drew me toward swimming and ultimately to gaining and hopefully sustaining a healthy lifestyle in the country that I am in. 

Movie Review: 180 Degrees South

We have been watching a lot of documentaries lately and I have really been enjoying them. But this one probably impacted me the most.

It starts out simple: a young guy who is an adventure addict, hears about something that these two crazy old guys did when they were young, and maybe even crazier, and he wants to do the same. But in the process of this journey the young man learns so much more than he bargained for and we learn right along with him.

The scenery in the film is breathtaking. I usually tend to think that photos and videos just can't capture the real beauty of a place, but this one gets so close. I really felt like I was on this journey right along with him at times, minus all the hardships.

The thing that really struck me about the film was the message to consumers. Do we realize what a large impact our consumption has on other societies? In this film they uncover just one story, but I am sure there are many more. It literally makes me sick to think of some of the beauty that is being destroyed because of my selfishness.

This film really made me take a step back to think about the footprint I'm leaving behind. I know it's not the most important thing in the world, but it impacts more lives than we often think about.

I would encourage anyone with a sense for adventure and a love for nature to watch this film. But to be honest, I think this film would appeal to most people just because of the sheer beauty of it all. Enjoy!

Home away from home

Our Papa is so amazing. He knows what we need and when we don’t ask him and just assume we know ourselves, he just forces it on us. I see that happening more and more in my life. I have also seen how he enables us/ shows us how to make good out of difficult circumstances or unfortunate situations. Though I am not sure if you could call this a difficult or unfortunate situation, maybe just unexpected... 

Being stuck in Thailand for a week longer than we thought at a very inexpensive place with other ‘family’ members constantly streaming through would not be considered, by most, an unfortunate situation. However, it was a little stressful up to the point which I wrote this (which was last Saturday morning when all of this was still fresh) 

We just weren’t sure how visa stuff would work out, and of course it did, but when it did we realized that the start date for our new visas was actually a week later than the tickets we had booked to go home. (home being Overseas) Long story short we ended up paying extra to change the date of our tickets, but we had to jump through some hoops to get there and at first it was looking a lot more expensive than it ended up being. 

The way it turned out seemed nothing short of miraculous because it looked like it was going to be around a $1,000 mistake, plus possibly two extra weeks here, which is another few hundred dollars, but it ended up being less than half of that and only one extra week here! If it would have started off at that price I wouldn’t have been half as excited about it, but since it was looking so very bleak and miraculously when we called back later in the day two economy class seats had opened up on exactly the flight we were hoping for, we were blown away by Papa’s hand in it all! 

So now we have a week to relax and be thankful that Papa knew what we needed. We thought 8 days was plenty, but He said no. We thought we were ready to go home on Monday and he said wait. He has blessed us with two beautiful weeks at a guest house in Dolphin Bay which is run by family. It’s super inexpensive and nice because it was made to bless people who do the kind of work that we do, and what a huge blessing it is! 

It’s literally across the street from the ocean, but practically on the beach. This is the view from inside! 

And this is the beach across the street... 

I LOVE THIS PLACE!

Here are some of the other awesome accommodations of this place.

Beautiful Room with a balcony and seating outside (perfect for morning quiet times) 

There are so many things to do, yet no pressure to do any of them. 

Bike Rides. My first ride was solo. 

Soon became a tradition to go together every morning and stop at this beautiful lookout before turning back... 

Before we knew it we were enjoying our last Morning bike ride. Till next time at least ;) 

Moped Rides! Most of them were spent with this view since I rode on the back.. 

But we both went solo a few times too... 

Curtis was really into it, so he spent more time on the moped than I did

Cicada Night Market

Really beautiful and fun, live music, amazing Thai food

and great company

Exploring caves was not my favorite. But It was an adventure.

 

Curtis loved it and went back for more later

This was not my favorite adventure... 

Crawling out of the hole where the vent was in the bathroom door after being locked in there for about 10 minutes. It was funny in the end, but super hot in the meantime.... 

So this extra week has been filled with a lot of time doing nothing and everything we possibly wanted. We could have done a lot more, but we really just filled our days with activities that we desired to do, nothing more, nothing less. 

    

There a lot of little things to do in the area and some big outings that you can take as well. You can ride elephants, go to a national park, go out to the night market in a city about 45 minutes away, take a boat ride, go fishing and several other fun activities all under $20. We mainly stuck to the small activities which are predominately under $5. These include kayaking, biking, motorbike rides and going next door for a smoothie made from fresh fruit. ;) 

Smoothie Bar

There are also some free things we did including swimming in the pool and the ocean, playing volleyball on the beach and in the pool, reading/watching something from the big library of books and movies or just simply sitting and relaxing someplace with an amazing view, which is easy to find. 

Most days the only decisions we needed to make were where to sit and enjoy a book, where to take the bike or moped and/or what fruit we wanted in our smoothies. 

On top of all of this, the community here is really great. We have gotten so much encouragement and met so many others doing things similar to what we do. We've formed bonds here that we didn't expect and met some really inspiring and totally humble people. 

It's been a serious time of relaxation and fun. We have soaked up every minute and plan to continue soaking it in through the weekend, I have a massage and a mani/pedi planned all for under $15 before we go. 

We will get back rested and refreshed and ready to serve in the place we have been called to serve. We have really enjoyed this time, but we feel ready to get back out there and do another year. We are really thankful for this time and can't believe that this is where he brought us. We are so very blessed to be walking this road, though hard at times, he has given so many good gifts!