Dios Movió La Montaña

¿Sabe cómo la gente dice "literalmente" cuando, en verdad, dice figuradamente? ¿Por ejemplo, "Yo era literalmente al final de mi cuerda"? Este no es un tiempo así.

El martes, tres días atrás, Dios literalmente movió una montaña para mí, para mover otra montaña fuera de mi vida.

Por muchas semanas antes de mi viaje a Costa Rica, Juan había sido orando sobre mis temores. Él me dijo, "No es la voluntad de Dios que tengas miedo."

Yo le dije, "Mis inseguridades son un parte de mi personalidad. Siempre lucho con ansiedad cuando cosas estresantes ocurren, pero todo está bien. Dios me ayuda cada vez. Yo medito en las promesas en su Palabra, y Dios me calma."

Juan no acordaba. Aunque yo estaba demasiado orgullosa que lo admita, sabía que Juan tenía razón. En secreto, me pregunté, "¿Cómo podría Dios me libere de mi miedo? "

Un día, este versículo tocó mi corazón: "Porque de cierto os digo que cualquier que dijere a este monte: Quítate y échate en el mar, y no dudare en su corazón, sino creyere que será hecho lo que dice, lo que diga le será hecho." (Marcos 11:23)

Yo dije, "Mi montaña es miedo. Por favor, Padre, mueve la montaña de miedo de mi vida."

Aún así, pensé, "¿Cómo es posible?"

Un Lugar de Sanación / A Healing Place

EN ESPAÑOL ABAJO

[Here is another bilingual travelogue entry, chronicling both my travel experiences and my progress with Spanish in a Costa Rican language immersion program. Note that all grammar errors in the dialogue are mine.]

ENGLISH TRANSLATION FOLLOWS.

[Todos errores gramatical en el diágolo son mios.]

Después de una cena deliciosa en la casa de Macha, y una larga ducha caliente en la casa de mis nuevos amigos, me acosté en mi habitación tranquila a las 8:30.

Un poco calor quedó del día, y debí que dormir con las ventanas abiertas. (En la casa de Macha, puedo dormir con las ventanas cerrados porque el aire tiene de menos calor.) Aquí no hay ventanas de tela metálicas para protegerse contra bichos, pájaros, y geckos.

En este cuarto, solo las cortinas me separan de las criaturas afueras.¡Esperé que se queden afuera! Me descansé  en la cama y escuché a los insectos, un concierto familiar y también inusual, porque vivo en la ciudad normalmente.

En mis pensamientos, Dios habló. “¿Nina de mis ojos, do you hear me singing over you (me oyes cantar sobre ti)?”

Contesté en inglés, “¡Sí, Papá! Oigo. ¡O, gracias! Gracias por tu amor. Te amo, Amado.”

Dos Respuestas en Una / Two Answers in One

[EN ESPAÑOL ABAJO]

For the month of June, I’m back in Costa Rica for a Spanish language immersion program.  Once again, I will write my stories in bad Spanish and then translate them to English so that we can see my progress with learning the language.

[ENGLISH TRANSLATION AT BOTTOM]

Durante el mes de junio, estoy en Costa Rica de nuevo para un programa de inmersión en español. Otra vez, va a escribir mis historias en español malo y entonces traducir a inglés para que podemos ver mi progreso con aprendiendo el idioma. Aviso: Todos errores gramaticales en el diálogo son mío.

Tengo muchas historias que compartir sobre mi tiempo aquí en Costa Rica, pero hoy quiero contar una experiencia que arde en mi corazón. Esta no es un típica cuenta de viajar.

En una historia previa, los dije que tengo inseguridades sobre mi primer noviazgo después de mi divorcio casi siete años atrás. Estos miedos no tienen una conexión con Juan específicamente. Temo la idea de confiando en alguien, porque no quiero tener dolor en el futuro… ni ahora.

Voy a quedarme aquí por cuatro semanas en todo. Juan y yo hubimos sido un pareja por solo dos meses antes de mi viaje; por eso, la separación ha causado luchas en mí. Aunque estoy disfrutando mi tiempo mucho, y estoy aprendiendo español rápidamente, he sufrido de mis inseguridades frecuentemente.

Por la noche, Dios me ayuda; habla conmigo en mis pensamientos y en las escrituras. Una noche, oré, “Por favor, ayúdame a calmarme, como un niño destetado de su madre.”

Reconocí que este pensamiento era una versículo de la Biblia, pero no supe de donde.

Entonces, encontré estos versículos en Salmos:

“[Dios] cambia la tempestad en sosiego, y se apaciguan sus ondas. Luego se alegran, porque se apaciguaron; y así los guía al puerto deseaban.” (Salmo 108:29-30)

Entendí que Dios hace el tormento callado, y por eso, nosotros podemos acallarnos. Además, me di cuenta de mi puerto deseado es cualquier lugar donde mi Amado está--en mi propia casa o miles de kilómetros lejo. Mi refugio, mi lugar más seguro, es en mi corazón, donde el espíritu de Jesucristo vive.
 
¡El día siguiente, en la mañana, abrí la Biblia en el libro de Salmos y inmediatamente encontré este versículo!

En verdad que me he comportado y he acallado mi alma como un niño destetado de su madre; como un niño destetado está mi alma. (Salmo 131:2)

¡Era un eco divina! Supe que Dios había hablado a mí.

Pages Yet to be Turned

After our first phone call, Juan and I talked every day, sometimes for hours. Each conversation ended with a bilingual prayer, and always we declared blessings over each other and over our children. The most beautiful blessing that Juan prayed was something like this: 

Padre, yo pongo Sarah y sus hijos en sus manos. Gracias que ellos son cubierto con el sangre de Jesus, con una valla de angeles alrededor de ellos. (Father, I place Sarah and her children in your hands. Thank you that they are covered with the blood of Jesus, with a fence of angels surrounding them.)

I can't share the details here, but a few days later, I saw evidence that God was answering that prayer, and I was so grateful to have someone praying for our protection.

When we talked about starting a relationship, I warned Juan that I would surely struggle with many insecurities; he would be the first person I'd dated since my divorce six years ago. "I don't want you to be my practice boyfriend," I said. 

"Do you think you're ready for a relationship?" he asked.

Sometimes a Week is Just Too Long

Up until my second coffee date with Juan and Darwin, I had only attended Palabra Viva once per week due to my busy teaching schedule. But I couldn't resist going to church that next day; a week was just too long to wait.

You can imagine my disappointment when a quick scan of the parking lot revealed that Hermano Juan and his orange Mitsubishi were missing. Where could he be? He was always at church, and always on time.

Inside, I knelt at the altar and repented for coming to church, in a cute outfit and matching jewelry (on a work day!), for the wrong reason. My Father was here, and so were many of my brothers and sisters. I asked God to help me receive everything that He had planned for me this evening.

After our individual prayers in silence, Hermana Lupita led a corporate prayer. I was happy to see that I could understand her prayer just as I could Juan's. Her prayer, like his, encouraged me greatly.

After service, I enjoyed chatting with a sweet lady over café y pan (coffee and sweet bread). Ulda is learning English, and I'm learning Spanish, so we are a perfect match. 

In the end, I was glad that Juan had been absent, because had he been there, I would have been talking with him and would have missed the opportunity to make a new friend.

But a week was still too long. As soon as I woke up on Friday (at 6!), I typed this Facebook message with trembling fingers:

Just Coffee... Or Something More?

Remember my big adventure at the beginning of the year, when I somehow ended up visiting a Spanish-speaking church where I knew just one person, only as an acquaintance? In this blog entry, I described my struggle between playing it safe and trying something new:

Could I really show up at a church full of strangers who speak a different language than me? Surely it would be safer to stay where it's comfortable, where life is predictable, if rather boring.

"Lord, thank you for being my gatekeeper," I prayed at bedtime. "You know the hearts of every person, and I trust you to bring all of the friends that you have chosen for me into my life. So, should I go to this church tomorrow?"

God let me choose, and I decided to take a chance. If you've been reading for a while, you know about my first couple of visits. I've been attending Wednesday services there since January, and everyone there has welcomed me as una hermana (sister).

My goal in visiting Palabra Viva (Living Word) was to practice listening to Spanish; I can read, write, and speak it fairly well, but I can't converse because I have a difficult time recognizing the spoken words. I now think that God's plan in bringing me there was very different, though I still don't know the end goal.

The Best Unanswered Prayer

About a year ago, I endured a bitter disappointment. Over spring break, I made arrangements to fly to Guatemala for a Spanish language immersion program that seemed absolutely perfect for my needs and my priorities. The program combined the school with mission work, and all the proceeds benefited the small mountain village where I would be staying. I was a little put off by the admonition not to drink the water or even to use it for brushing my teeth, but I was more than a little excited about experiencing a primitive way of life. Part of my room and board would cover laundry service... washed in a lake! I figured I would try my hand at doing a bit of laundry just so I could see what it was like for my ancestors.

The week before, I had run several errands in order to update my passport. I was so proud of myself for getting that business taken care of months ahead of time.

In under a week, my new passport arrived! I couldn't believe the efficiency of our government (this time). Inside the package was a pamphlet with instructions for registering my trip so that the embassy would know where to find me in the event of a natural disaster or other emergency. Immediately, I went online and registered. At the end of the process, a travel advisory message filled the screen: "The U.S. government strongly advises travelers to reconsider travel plans to this location." I clicked a link for details about travel advisory level 3 (on a scale of 4).

I was horrified to read about violence on the highways out of Guatemala City, where criminals sometimes set up roadblocks and shoot people before taking all of their belongings. I knew that my fair skin and blue eyes would mark me as a tourist, and that traveling alone as a female could also make me a target.

I literally felt nauseated. I had just spent $900 on a nonrefundable ticket and paid a $50 deposit to the school. For two days, I'd been imagining myself living in that lovely mountain village, pounding my clothes against the rocks at the edge of the brilliant blue lake. Maybe I could just go. The village itself seemed quite safe, and I'd be arriving in the daylight. Surely I could get in and out of Guatemala City without incident.

The words echoed in my mind: "Strongly advises... reconsider travel plans."

If I decided to go, I knew I'd have to lie to my mama. Worrying about her daughter in a foreign country for three weeks would have been bad enough, but throwing government warnings into the mix might just kill her.

Hello, My Name Is...

In December, I shared what God was teaching me through a 21-day detox from negative thinking. I completed two cycles to combat these deeply entrenched lies: "I'm not good enough" and "I can't." Throughout my Christmas break, I saturated myself with Scripture, sermons, and positive meditations, and also caught up on sleep and reading for pleasure.

When school resumed in January, I felt much better able to deal with the stresses and to look for the joy in each day. Though I still had mild nerves at times, I felt much more stable in my emotions than ever before.

With each class, I shared the story of how God had given me a new name for 2019. First, I told them how God had given me the name of Beloved when I was going through my divorce, at a time when I felt that my name was Forsaken. After I'd explained what beloved means, I asked whether they thought receiving that name had made all my hurts go away.

"No," they replied.

"You're right," I said. "Even though knowing that I was Beloved helped start my healing, it took a very long time for me to grow into that name. After a few years, though, Beloved became my identity. I hope you have noticed that I am a person who loves very passionately. The reason I can do that is because I know that I myself am richly loved, and I have plenty of love to share. In fact, that's the biggest part of why I wanted to become a teacher again." 

I went on to explain how anxiety over the challenges of teaching had given me another false name: Fearful. "Here at work, what do you think I fear most?" I asked.

The first class I shared this with stared at me mutely, probably because one of our assistant principals was in the room, sitting next to one of my most challenging students. After a few moments of awkward silence, Mr. K spoke up. "You're afraid you will fail your students," he guessed. "You're afraid you won't be able to help them learn." 

"Exactly!" I answered. "It's not the misbehavior or the disrespect that I fear, it's the worry of not being enough, of not meeting my students' needs."

Mr. K and the kids waited expectantly. 

"Over break, I asked God for a new name, just like the time when he called me Beloved. I figured it would be the antonym of Fearful.... What words are the opposite of Fearful?"

This time, they weren't afraid to speak up. 

"Fearless." 

"Brave?"

"Courageous?" 

I smiled. "I thought of all of those and more, but none of them seemed to fit. The name that finally came to me at first didn't seem to be an antonym for Fearful."

I held up a drawing that I'd made of a name badge. 

I then explained, "You can be very brave even though you still feel quite fearful. Real courage is being afraid to do something and doing it anyway. It's different when you feel joyful. That's when the fear fades away even though you're facing all of the same challenges. You see beyond the fear to the joy ahead of you. I'm sure it will take a long time for me to grow into my new name, but I believe 2019 is my year for joy. Through my struggles with teaching, God is teaching me that joy doesn't come from my circumstances. One day, when people look at me, they are going to see a woman who finds joy in everything she does." 

I challenged my students to make their own name badge drawings. "Who do you want to become in the new year?" I asked.

They brainstormed for a few minutes, but they didn't come up with much. Since it had taken a couple of weeks for God to give me the name Joyful, I figured they would need more time, too. I hope that some of them will find a new name.

Since then, several of them have honored my request to remind me of my new name. When they see that frustration is stealing my joy, they ask, "Ms. B, what's your name?" 

I take that opportunity to pause and focus on my reasons for joy. For example, I like to say, "I have joy because God is making me fruitful in the land of my affliction." Sometimes, I elaborate on the fruit of my struggles: love, joy, patience, peace, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, and self control. 

How about you? What false name have you taken on? What true name do you want to take on this year? 

La Hermosa Aventura / The Beautiful Adventure

I woke up on Sunday morning ready for mi gran aventura, a visit to a Spanish-speaking church on the other side of town. Though I felt a bit nervous about meeting so many strangers, I was mainly excited. Regarding myself in the bathroom mirror, though, I sighed heavily over the black eye I had given myself on Christmas Eve.

What would people think? If they had my vivid imagination, they might think that I was dragging myself to church after being battered in a domestic dispute. I'm not sure why I felt so embarrassed over that hypothetical assumption; if I ever met someone who'd gone through that, my reaction would be compassion and not judgment.

I've had to explain the eye a lot of times in the last two weeks, but that's because I've been around people who know me well enough to ask, and well enough to believe my bizarre, but true explanation: For some inexplicable reason, I shut my head in my car's passenger door. Once I had stopped seeing stars, I tried to piece together how it happened, but I couldn't make sense of it. Here's what I do know.

After parking my car in the garage, I went back outside and pulled in my empty trash bins. Then, in the dim light of the one remaining functional fluorescent bulb, I quickly opened the door to retrieve some books I'd left in the passenger seat. Backing away from the car with my precarious armload, I awkwardly slammed the door with my right hand, and the metal corner connected solidly with my left temple.

After dropping the books, I clung to the passenger seat's plastic seat belt loop with one hand and covered my eye with the other one. "Oohhh.... Nnnnnh," I moaned as tears gathered in both eyes. "Ow ow ow!" I whined.

When I finally walked inside, I was surprised to find blood on my hand. Would I need stitches? I peered into the mirror in my dining area. No, the only mark was a small, raised lump that was oozing blood. I quickly made an ice pack and pressed it gingerly against my throbbing temple. Good thing I missed my eye, I thought. That could have given me a nasty shiner!

Why Would I Want to Be Normal?

I've been living out a crazy adventure the last few days that I never could have predicted. It started on Saturday morning, when I was watching a playlist that God had queued up for me on YouTube. For the last several Saturdays, I've been multitasking by listening to various preachers to redeem the time spent on dishes and laundry.

The first video was a teaching from one of my favorite Bible study teachers, Priscilla Shirer. As always, God had arranged just the messages I needed to hear, rather like an extension of our earlier conversation in my prayer closet. Through the familiar story of Jesus feeding the 5000, Priscilla taught these truths:

• When Jesus told his exhausted disciples to come away with him, they didn't just go on vacation. On their quiet getaway with their teacher, they encountered a multitude waiting for them. So they continued to work alongside Him, and that shared ministry is where they found their rest.
  
  This echoed what God has been telling me about how I can find rest in the middle of all the stresses of my very demanding teaching job. Though I don't always have time for physical repose, I can always come to Him with my heavy burdens and find rest for my soul  (Matthew 11:28).
• When the disciples saw the hunger of the multitude, they asked Jesus to send them away so that they could find something to eat. Instead, Jesus told them, "They do not need to go away. You give them something to eat."
  
  Priscilla invited me to think about the multitude around me, the ones who make me feel overwhelmed with their impossible needs. Of course, I thought of my 97 students. She suggested that though I may be tempted to ask God to take away my personal multitude, God has sent me into this impossible situation because I am His plan for them, and His provision and glory will be revealed through me.
  
  The disciples' response was remarkably similar to my own: "We have here only five loaves of bread and two fish." How could they feed such a crowd with those meager resources? And how can I even begin to address all the spiritual and physical needs represented in my classroom... when I feel so inadequate?
• Priscilla's next point addressed that concern. In Jesus's hands, the impossibly tiny supply was more than enough to meet the needs. Not only did they feed the 5000 men, along with their women and children, but they even took home 12 baskets full--one basket per disciple! 

To sum it up, Priscilla said that Jesus's plan for the disciples, and for us is:

1. He called them to a purpose only they could fulfill.
2. He gave them power and authority to accomplish what they could not do through their own abilities.
3. He sent them out to do His work.

For me, the most moving part of the message was a story she shared about the sudden death of her cousin, at age 38. She said that we may think we have lots of time to fulfill God's calling, when actually we could have very little. Life is too short to waste time, she said. Whatever God has given us to do, we should feel an urgency to do it now, and even if fear tells us the job is too hard for us, we can't let that stop us. If we say yes to God's call, we can be certain that He will equip us. 

A Seed of Light

I don't have time to write tonight, but I feel that I must. 

The last three or four weeks have been exceedingly difficult for me. We are implementing a new instructional model that I believe in, but actually putting it into practice has been rough. In theory, most of the class will be reading independently and responding in their journals while I focus on guided reading with a small group.

The reading part is getting better, for the most part. We started several weeks ago with 20 minutes of reading followed by whole-group instruction. That was a battle because over half of my students profess to hate reading. Every day, they'd say, "We're reading again? Why do we have to read every day?"

Each day, I calmly repeated, "This is reading class. That's what we do. You can't get better at reading without reading."