He's in the Waiting

We are all waiting for something. 

For me, it’s the wait for a baby.  We have waited for years, and as much as we have healed from the original trauma of being diagnosed as infertile, it still hurts.  The longing doesn’t go away, and the grief stays with me.  Some, with only the best intentions to try to end my pain, have suggested that I stop waiting, stop wanting, stop praying for healing.

This week I waited for another woman’s baby.  As she battled through each of her difficult contractions and the hours began to pile up, the baby stayed hidden within.  Her husband and I supported her as she fought and breathed.  The midwife assured her that progress was happening, but it was not until the moment of birth that we had the proof.  It would have been easy to get discouraged, but instead my friend repeated, “I can do this.  I will see my baby today.” 

Watching her labour I rediscovered my own courage to fight for my children.  Though they are hidden from me, they are no less real.  I am battling for them in the spiritual realm.  My prayers are not unanswered.  Every one is heard and remembered.  My Heavenly Father holds my hands and looks lovingly into my face as I labour to bring them home.  He has not forgotten me.

Maybe you are like me, waiting for something that seems to be taking too long to come.  You’re weary from the battle.  You feel like you have prayed the same prayer over and over—without visible results.  The baby seems stuck and you are worried that you will be in labour forever. 

Take courage, my friend.  Your prayers are doing in the spiritual realm what we may only be able to see in the triumphant moment of birth. 

He’s in the waiting. 

My Mom, the International Traveller

My parents.  September 2016

My parents don't travel.

Ever.

Even if their daughter became a missionary and raised their grandson in a different country.  They don't travel.  They'll fork out the money to bring us home for a visit and rent us a great apartment to stay in during our visit.  They'll heavily support us each month.  They'll write us emails and buy us an Ipad so that we can use Facetime to talk to them.  All that and more, becuase they are amazing and generous parents.  My Mom and Dad are two of my very closest friends on the planet and we have a great relationship.

But they don't travel.  And since I live three countries away, this was becoming a problem.  I miss them.  Like, ALL the time.  And their grandson misses them.  They are the kind of parents who you want to have around all the time.  My dream life would involve living next door to them and having my mom help me homeschool Z.

I prayed for them to come visit.  I want to share my life with them and have them walk in my world for a while.  To take them to the market and see the sights and smells of a weekly grocery-shopping trip.  To chat beside the pila while I wash clothes by hand.  To take a walk around the Base and pray together in the prayer room.  For the whole three years that we've lived in Guatemala I have prayed for them to visit.

And then suddenly, unexpectedly, during a chat on Facebook, my mom announced that she'd started taking Spanish classes.  I thought this sounded like good news, and suggested again that she come down to visit to hone her skills.  To my shock and delight, she said she'd talk to my dad about it.

The next day, she wrote to say that since Dave will be in Canada for his sister's wedding in May, that she would travel back to Guatemala with him and spend a week with us!  My mom, travelling?  Apparently yes!  Z started making plans for all the toys he wants to show his Moma.

It feels like a miracle.  My beloved Mom is coming to visit me!  I miss her everyday, but during these few days in May we will be together.  We are so thankful and happy!  



 

The Prayer Room

The prayer room at the YWAM base is finally set up.  After 20+ months of pursuing this dream, we finally have a dedicated space for the purpose of prayer and intercession.  Thanks to the generous donations of a couple in the States we were able to purchase everything needed to create a comfortable place for people to join together to pray, or to talk with God on their own.  

Dave spends about half of his time in the prayer room, while I, meanwhile, am pursuing my writing and practicing hospitality by inviting dinner guests a few times a week.  I help out at the base, and at church, while also maintaining our home and home-schooling Z.  It’s a pleasantly-full life, bordering on too-busy.

There are always too many opportunities—good, ministry opportunities.  We are learning to jealously protect our prayer time, knowing that although there are dozens of other good things we could be doing, we would be ignoring God’s best.  All true fruitfulness flows out of intimacy with God, and my heart is consumed with desire to know His heart and to reach the lost from a place of fullness.  I want to be so filled up by His Spirit that His love spills out onto those around me. 

Too often I have tried to minister from a place of thirst.  I have not taken the time to be with my Lord, to hear His voice or experience His love for myself.  I am offering others a drink from an empty cup—and He offers us so much more than this. 

We cannot give what we do not have.  My heart’s cry is to be filled up with more of Jesus, that when I speak to others I would have a fresh word of encouragement and strength for them.  That when they meet me, they would encounter Jesus through me.  But without spending time in His presence, I can do nothing. 

It all starts with prayer. 

  

Prayer request board

Desk for creative intercession 

This is the only room in the base with a carpet-- so people can kneel or lay down when they're praying.  

House of Light

In the morning the light spills over the back wall of our house, filling the kitchen with a golden glow.  If I was to climb the stairs to hang the laundry I would see the sunrise crashing against the corner of the volcano and splaying into a million beautiful rays.  I prepare breakfast in my new kitchen and I feel a calm in my heart that has been missing for a long time.  

David leaves early to work at the YWAM base, and Z and I spend an hour or two at the kitchen table working on his schoolwork.  The neighborhood outside the front door is abuzz with the sounds of the carpenter shop next-door, the metal shop kitty-corner, and the children heading up the block to attend the school.  It's not quiet, but it's pleasant.  I feel surrounded by people.  

Z has begun to attend an afternoon program called Light House, which takes place twice a week in a building just down the road from our house.  He is loving having a special place to call "his own", and I am glad to see him growing in confidence.    

Dave has been given a room at the new YWAM base to use as the "House of Prayer".  He is thankful to be able to continue in his calling as an intercessor, as well as serving as kitchen manager.  His giftings are being utilized to the fullest, and he seems happy every day as he leaves for work.  

I am enjoying the routine of home-schooling every day, and having opportunity to spend time with friends almost every day.  Hosting dinners and chatting with friends over steamy cups of tea in the living room have taken the place of watching movies every night to avoid feeling lonely.  We've found a new church and been accepted immediately.  Dave and I were even able to go on a date, thanks to the amazing friends willing to take care of Z!  

It feels like real life.  It feels happy.  

Our house is filled with friends, and laughter, and plans for adopting in the next year or two, and, of course, non-stop episodes of Adventures in Odyssey (some things don't change).  I'm so thankful to be back in Antigua, I really am.  

As the house fills with morning light each day, the warmth reaches my heart, and I feel the love of my Heavenly Father for bringing us back to the place where we can be part of a community again.    

The Return

Sometimes things don't work out the way we plan.  Actually, that happens a lot of the time, and in those moments we have to trust that God will still take care of us and show us what to do.   

This is one of those times.

We have decided to leave Lake Atitlan and move back to Antigua.  

This decision didn't come easily for us-- we had a lot of dreams for what we hoped to accomplish with God at the lake.  We went back to Canada and told everyone we saw about our work and ministry of prayer.  We made display boards that were covered in pictures of blue water and colorful Mayan handicrafts.  It was epic.  We looked like really cool rural missionaries.  We were the kind of people I would have wanted to be when I was young.  

Now let me, Shawn, speak for only myself.  Dave is that epic missionary.  He deserves to have a book written about his ministry and devotion to prayer.  He's amazing. I am different than he is though, and my giftings and personality didn't mesh as well with the situation.  

The isolation was getting to me.  I was scared of the street dogs and didn't have many friends.  It was to the point that I was hardly willing to leave the house and I felt strangled by any unsolicited visitors that came to the house.  I was drowning in loneliness to the point of not wanting to be around people at all (as if that makes sense). 

 I wanted to be more like Dave.  Able to cope.  Thriving in the face of challenge.  But I couldn't.  

I prayed.  I cried.  I journaled, and wrote a novel, invited people over, and even forced myself to walk to the market when I was scared.  I wrote messages to myself on the white-board that said, "If you didn't leave today, you were a success".  I was burnt out.  I was unhappy and unaffective. 

While we were in Canada, I was a different person.  I was brave and vibrant and excited about life.  I stood in the middle of our apartment (that my parents had kindly rented for us) and told myself, "You should enjoy this month here because you aren't going to be happy again for a long time."  And yet, for Dave's sake, I agreed to go back to Lake Atitlan.  

So how did we get to finally making a decision?  I don't know exactly, but somewhere along the way to re-adjusting to life in Guatemala after our time in Canada, I looked at Dave and said, "I can't adopt children here.  I can hardly take care of myself here.  If having a big family is truly our greatest goal in life, we have to leave the lake."  To which my godly husband said, "Let's pray."  

And after a couple weeks of praying... we agreed, it was time to leave Lake Atitlan and build a more sustainable life in Antigua.  Dave could continue the prayer ministry as usual, just in a new location, and I could raise Z (and our future kids) in a situation that would afford me a community and support.

Four days after making that decision we found out we had only six days to complete our permanent residency application (or be stuck waiting four years more!)... we rushed to Guatemala City and miraculously were able to apply in-time!  We could feel God guiding us and advocating our cause.  In the same week we also found a house that will be perfect for our soon-to-be-growing family, and found a new church that welcomed us with open arms and powerful prayer support.  

... and that's my story.  Sometimes it doesn't work out the way we think it will, or the way we say it will or even how we print 700 brochures to explain how it will.  Life is messier than that, and sometimes it takes a bit too long for true feelings and needs to be addressed and discussed.  But in the end, God is still good, still in sovereign, still loving.  And I know that He goes with me.    

I am so thankful.

The front of our house (Zane with the Realtor)

The courtyard

Ashley showing off the kitchen-- a real sink????

The bathroom-- with a tub!  

Upstairs (two unfinished rooms and a patio up there)

Front door 

Front patio

View up the street 

The Quilting Club

The original concept for my newly-released novel, Under the Red Spotlight, was a story I wrote as a pre-teen.  The story was called, Lionheart, and followed a team of “Sundancers”, basically enslaved acrobat teams, to perform in high-stakes competition for the glory of their owners.  The main character was a teenage girl named Aurora and her boyfriend/acrobatic partner Lance, along with their other teammate, Trent.  Aurora’s ultimate victory?  Finding freedom and having a baby. 

For any of you who have read Red Spotlight—doesn’t this sound familiar? 

   

I was fourteen when I fell in love with writing.  I was home-schooled and boy-crazy, not a very compatible combination, since the only boy around most of the time was my little brother.  Writing about romance was the closest I could come to experiencing the real thing.  After the success of my debut story,  Zack, a story about a teenager stranded on a desert island with her boyfriend (a real page-turner, you can be sure), my little sister and her quilting club requested that I write more stories for them, so I wrote Lionheart.

Oh, and yes, you read that right, my little sister and her quilting club... Remember, we were home-schooled. 

The week I finished writing Lionheart, I waited impatiently each week for all the quilters to assemble.  It took three quilting club meetings to read the entire 18,890 word tale of Aurora and her team.  My sister and her cohorts loved it.  I had them write comments on the back page of the manuscript, y’know, so I could use them as endorsements on the next novel.    

“I read your story it made me almost cry I felt as I was there It was the BEST STORY EVER!!  (I hope there’s 90,000,000 and a lot more storys).”  -- Saralyn

Comments like these spurred my young heart on to write more stories, including a sequel to Lionheart in which I killed most of the main characters and subsequently bankrupted the series of fans.  The quilters were not impressed with my calloused abuse of their hearts.  After that, all my stories had happy endings. 

Fast-forward about eleven years. 

I’d married the love of my life, given birth to a beautiful baby, and moved to Guatemala as a missionary... pretty much fulfilled all of good ol’ Aurora’s dreams.  I was in the middle of our seven months of language school and feeling a bit lost in the world of Spanish verbs and nouns and sentence structure.  Life in a different country felt hard and lonely, and I wanted to go home.  Then it struck me—it was time to write another story. 

And so, in the hours while my son napped every afternoon, I crafted a new, more realistic version of my younger-self’s attempt at a novel.  I found comfort in the familiarity of typing English words, and imagining characters and dialogue and storyline.  With each word I was transported back to the days of reading to my sister and her friends as they huddled over their little nine-patches.  Writing became my solace, my friend when I was lonely. 

Under the Red Spotlight was published in November, 2016, thirteen years after its original conception.  My next manuscript is well on its way, and will hopefully go to publication in 2017—and isn’t based on a childhood story this time.  I’m older now, and my writing has grown up with me... but no matter what changes, I will always treasure where this love of writing began. 

Thanks Quilting Club girls.  You inspire me still.   

Home

On Wednesday I will be going home again, for the second time since August.  

Last time I said the word "home", I meant I was going to Canada, the place where our families live and our passports were issued.  This time when I say "home" I mean that I'm going back to Guatemala, where we have a house full of our belongings and a room-full of kids waiting for us to teach Sunday school.  Both places feel like "home", and then again, neither does.  

I think I understand that verse in the Bible a little better now-- y'know, the one about how are citizenship is in Heaven with God.  I find comfort in the thought that there is a day coming when I will really be home, and it will feel like home, and I will stay there forever and ever.  

As our time at our Canadian home comes to a close I am overwhelmed by the love and generosity that has been poured out upon us.  It's been a time of adjustment welcoming new family members, and a time of enriching old relationships.  Our needs have been great, but greater still is the ability of God to provide in every way.  My heart is strengthened by the encouragement of our family and friends.  I am so thankful to have had this time in Canada.  So very, deeply, thankful.  

I face our imminent departure for our Guatemalan home with hope and even some eagerness.  Leaving our family in Canada is always hard for me, but I feel confident that God is with us, and we are walking in His will.  To walk in obedience to the One who loves me most, for me, must always be enough...even when it's hard to say goodbye.  

I'm looking forward to being in my own home again, in Guatemala, and waking to sunshine and avocados falling on the roof.  I'm excited to buy a papaya at the market and show the Sunday school kids the new puppets.  In not too long it will be time to decorate for Christmas, and in January we will start home-school grade 1 with Z!  So much to look forward to, and yet it's still hard to leave one home for the other.  

In all these bitter-sweet emotions I am struck with a deep gratefulness to God, that I have not one, but two places on this earth to call home.  Two places where I am know and loved.  I am blessed beyond measure.  

And so in the midst of the pain of another goodbye, I reach for my Father's hand, and He leads me home.

"All these people died still believing what God had promised them. They did not receive what was promised, but they saw it all from a distance and welcomed it. They agreed that they were foreigners and nomads here on earth. Obviously people who say such things are looking forward to a country they can call their own. If they had longed for the country they came from, they could have gone back. But they were looking for a better place, a heavenly homeland. That is why God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared a city for them."

 

      -Hebrews 11:13-16