bikers and red faces

Please don't ask me how it happens, but inevitably it seems embarrassing moments follow me around like college students chasing after free food. I love my friends words  that have become my personal motto, "embarrassment is a choice". Some how though when your face is an unnatural color of red its hard to convince people your not embarrassed.

Really its just the sun and the fact that my skin is pale so sometimes it is just red. Arguing with someone that your not embarrassed can make the situation even more embarrassing, so sometimes its best to just laugh uproariously as if you meant to do that silly deed on purpose. Everyone always enjoys a clown. The downfall of that endeavor sometimes is that everyone becomes embarrassed for you when you should be embarrassed yourself, but I digress.

The other day I was babysitting two very adorable children. Their mother and I were in need of some coffee and nourishment because even the most adorable of children can cause enough action to put their care takers in need of a triple shot of espresso. I was doing my best at keeping the children controlled I mean happily entertained when the little girl decides to make friends with the leather clad biker.

Naturally the biker is quite taken by the attention of this delightful creature and makes several comments about this to me. Smiling I nod my head and I keep nodding my head as the biker tells me how cute she is just her mom. I'm still smiling and agreeing with him when suddenly I'm filled with horror as I realize the child's mother is across the room and the remark is directed to me. Sputtering I hastily point out that the child does not belong to me and gesture frantically told her mother. The biker just smiles and insists that he was talking to me. Air conditioning has probably made the room cold enough to be a walk in refrigerate, but I'm feeling quite warm and feel relieved when the said man heads off on his bike.

How is it one day people ask me when I'm going to graduate from high school and the next day they ask me about my children? Such a silly unsure world we live in. Sometimes I'm not sure if I produce embarrassing moments or the people around me do.

Me blame shift? Never!

Ministry: What it is.

Emptiness, I never knew that it smelled, but when I walked into the dorm that hadn’t been occupied for three months I knew what emptiness smelled liked. Staleness reeked the room as much as the echoes of bare rooms rocketed about the empty dorm. It’s a weird feeling to be in place that you don’t really feel like you belong, yet is to be your home. College graduates do not make their home in cold dorm rooms, no they go into the world and make their path. 

Apparently I missed that memo, because this fall I’m moving back into a college dorm as if I never walked the stage with diploma in hand three months ago. I’m not doing it to take classes and no in case you were wondering I wasn’t failed either. In fact homework and I will probably keeping a nice distance from each other for quite a while.  Instead I will be busy in the kitchen cooking meals and focusing on spending time with the girls as an assistant dean.

When I was asked to stay at the school and work after graduation. Thousands of thoughts raced through my mind. Maybe that was why it took over four months for me to give a honest answer. Seriously some how you expect that when you have graduated from college that you will go far from the college and do great things. Cooking meals and supervising homework laden girls in the same school you just graduated from really doesn’t seem all that spectacular.

What if  I were to tell you though I was going abroad. Going to a college in China to be their cook and to live in a college dorm and mentor the girls. Wouldn’t that sound wonderful? Would you not think that was a good and noble ministry? I know I would, so why is it when the ministry comes to you in a very unexpected and seemingly most unexpected way do you question if it really is a ministry?

Some how I have this impression in my mind that ministry must be different and exotic then anything I have ever done before. I forget that ministry is the first person you see in the morning, even if it is your mother. Ministry is the way you live life. Ministry is building up those around you serving them as Christ so humbly did for us.

For me ministry will be feeding hungry people and hopefully keeping them from having food poisoning. Ministry for me will be encouraging girls in their walk with the Lord as they fight the insane jungle of college life. Probably this is not the ministry you were called too. No your ministry is described quite differently then mine because God called you to it not me. God is equipping you for your unique ministry just like He is going to give me the power to do whatever comes my way.

Please do not tell me I’m doing this job because I was  too scared  to do anything else. The closer I get to my first day the more terrified I become. Really being put in two positions of responsibility is the most daunting thing in the world to me.

God’s grace will carry me. Just like it did my freshmen year when I nearly quit at Christmas break. Grace brought me back for a second year when I didn’t want too and Grace took me through my senior year. When I knew I had to yes to this job, but wasn’t sure if I could God removed the fear and gave peace.

Adventures are awaiting me and I’m following the God who has taken me through all the adventures before. 

What the North did to Me

One week ago I stood under the darkened sky in the backwoods of Canada taking the crisp air of our last night in the North. Stars twinkled over a tiny village of 600 people. Beautiful were the stars, but the lives of many of the village people were anything but beautiful. Ugly and harsh seemed was the world of these people.

 Tonight as I sit in my comfortable air conditioned living room I wonder about the little girl with the spunky smile. She was the one who told me how her mother almost killed herself with a shotgun. Those words smoothly spilled off her lips as if she was telling me her favorite color.  When  darkness began to fall I asked if maybe she should go home so her mother wouldn’t worry. No she told me it didn’t matter because her mother was drinking and she never went home when her mother was drunk and no she wouldn’t go to her father’s either because likely he would be just as drunk. Young, but not too young to manage her own accommodations for the night. Old enough to know that she better stay away from her parents when they were drinking for her own safety.

The little child knew so much, yet seemed so astounded when I told her how God had actually made man out of dirt. I wonder if when she is around her intoxicated parents if she will remember there is a great and powerful God who loves her more than anything else? Will she remember the American who hugged her tight and listened to her stories?

The next morning we packed our embarrassment of American riches into our cars. Onto the dirt road we drove leaving the little tiny village in the dust. Maybe all of my belongings made it out of the village, but a piece of my heart didn’t. Part of me broke when I journeyed North, never to be put together the same way again.

How can you sleep at night when you know there are children with silver toothed smiles who are cowering under their blankets trying to shut out frightful dreams? How do you go to church and fellowship with other believers when you know there is a lonely missionary couple longing for the sweet fellowship of other believers? How do you pick up the phone and talk to your parents when you know so many children are begging for their parents to love them?

Fix it. Do something. Give money. Write letters. Do anything. Try and do everything you possible can to make the lives of these people better, but you can’t do everything.

God will be there when those children can’t sleep at night because of unspeakable nightmares. God is there with the missionary couple who watch the fruit grow all too slowly. God is there when a drunken parent slaps their child.

I want to do everything, but in the end I have to trust God knowing He is the one who can and will do everything. Difficult….yes, but there is no other way but to trust in the One who is control.

A few days showed me things I never knew and it showed me how to trust God like never before. 

The Rest of the Story

Farming is dangerous. At eleven years of age I was made very well of this when the father of seven children from our church was killed. He wasn't the last person I knew that was killed in a farming accident.

If you read the news you know the story. Train hit by a swather. Young man life flighted to Wichita. Devastating, how could anyone flirt so closely with death and survive? Even as helicopter blades blew over the soil of a farm field; already phone calls were being made and word was spreading quickly about the plight of this young man. Emergency crews of course couldn't arrive right away, but there was someone there to comfort. Close to the accident site lived a family from Jarad's church. The couple soothed Jarad with words and right there at the accident site they prayed. When he felt so alone and there was someone to say that everything was going to be alright. Others quickly heard the news and sent up cries of help in prayer not knowing if they would see mischievous smile of Jarad again.

Before the newspapers and media ever heard about the story a whole community of people rose up to pray for him.

All this went on that Friday morning without me knowing. Away at camp I couldn't answer my cell phone and when I did see my brother's name as a missed call instantly I knew something was wrong. He told me that the man that had been such clown in some of the wedding pictures of his big sister, also the wedding of my big brother, had been hit by a train, but was going to be okay.

I didn't know till later that of course it was question if he would actually live. Being hit by a train isn't exactly the most safest thing in the world. Just a few days later though there are still no brain injuries and though the story isn't over yet he is alive. The family still shudders when they hear a train whistle. Whispers of thanks go through our brains and we try so hard not to think of the what ifs.

We will go to church this morning and it will be a normal Sunday. A Sunday that so easily could have been a time of mourning for a life snuffed out.

Nobody fully understands how the accident happened. Nobody quite understands how he is alive, but all we know in those few horrible seconds Friday morning there was Someone watching out for Jarad. In the moments that followed there were the very tiny wondrous ways that it was evidence Jarad was being taken care of. Yes it was Friday the 13th, but there was not a stroke of bad luck. Bad things just happen. We don't like them, but then happen. What happened to Jarad was a bad thing, but there were the good things. In fact looking back over the events more good things happened then bad. Strangely yet not so so very strangely there has been more good that came out of the supposedly unlucky Friday the 13th then bad.

Friday the 13th last week was a very good day.

we are family

Ice cream, talking and more talking, swimming, laughing and some crying, games, and then more ice cream. Pretty much that has been my life for the past few days. From hither and yonder the aunts and uncles, and cousins came for our family reunion. Not a family to do things half way we have been partying in style. Amongst all the fun the fun and joking there was the quiet moments too.
One hundred and fifty some voices quoting the 100th psalm. Voices just loud enough to be heard speaking their thankfulness of the older generation. Breaking into song to sing the doxology before our meal.

Just as everyone becomes quiet some poor child who could have used a bit more sleep breaks into tears. Soon there is a whole chorus of crying. The great grandchildren reminding everyone they have a bit of maturing to do before they carry on family legacy.

I wonder if grandma ever thought she would see her family in such big numbers. When the first tiny baby lay in casket did grandpa wonder if there would ever be anyone to pass his farm onto? Could grandpa and grandma have imagined that some day there family would be scattered all over the world. Serving missions in the remote places of Mongolia and Africa and other countries, ministering with technology in Spain, and then the many who found time for a short term mission trip .

When for a few years after the baby was buried there weren't any children did they even dare to hope the family name would be carried forth? Grandma didn't know then she would go on to bring eleven children into the world. Grandma didn't know she would again have to bury a child. Not a child but a grown man, father of her seven grandchildren. Soon after grandma got to heaven herself two of her other children joined her.

 The Busenitz mansion up in heaven seems to be already be filling up quite nicely. Naturally we are happy for those who get to party in heaven, but we aren't quite ready just yet to for everybody to go up there.

No, grandma probably didn't expect this. There probably wasn't time to think with so many little children under foot and big farm house to keep under control. Grandma kept busy bringing up her children in the Lord. Teaching them what was important and what was not important. This is why today we have our family the way it is, because of the goodness of God to give us a Christan heritage. We don't deserve it and grandma may not have expected it to be carried forth to the extent it has been.

God's blessings  though are the most unexpected ones. Making us stop and thing about what we really have. One thing grandma did expect was God's faithfulness. Only God alone carried her as a young wife when she buried her first child. Each trial of life rooted grandma stronger in her faith and all of us family watched this testimony and put it into our lives. Sometimes we really didn't know the blessing God had given by letting us see His grace in action. For ever since a handsome farmer pledged his vows to a glowing bride, so many years ago it has been God's grace that has shaped our family.

By the grace of God we are family, all 200 some of us.