Learning Thai
If you’re going to live in Thailand you have to learn to speak Thai (reputedly the 3rd hardest language in the world).
Julia (14) is soaring through it. Sherry and I at 50 are having a little more resistance from our brain but are persevering. Understandably, our progress will be slower but we are determined to master a functional level of Thai despite our travel schedule. We are learning to read and write in Thai also (which many foreign Thai speakers never attempt due to the complexity of 32 vowels and 44 consonants.) Pray for our brains please. Thanks!
Open Heart, Open Home
When we were 23 and 24 years old we read a very influential book, “Open Heart, Open Home” by Karen Mains. It basically challenges the idea that your home is your fortress or your showpiece. She wrote it after the kid next door from the dysfunctional home repeatedly tracked dirt on her nice carpets, etc. and she was tempted to limit his entrance to her home. Then, of course, the Lord rebuked her and reminded her that it was His house given for her to enjoy and to minister out of so she needed to loosen up and try her best to get lost people and others who needed a shelter to come inside it. That really resonated with us and we have tried to run an open home ever since. We often have an extra half dozen people for dinner at night, and especially on weekends. Sometimes that means someone staying with us for months at a time. Maybe we invite them and sometimes they invite themselves.
Now if you are going to run an open home you need to make a few adjustments. For starters, you need some new systems of care that are not built on entertaining but on practicing biblical hospitality (meeting the person’s real need). For example a tired college student is fine with a sofa to sleep on. Don’t turn him away because you have no more bedrooms. Tables should be round, not rectangular. Sherry says, “There’s always room for one more at a round table.” You need also to have an attitude adjustment about the cost of food, etc. Don’t calculate it. Just give. And it will be given unto you. Good measure, pressed down, running over…. If you look at the context of that verse I really don’t think Jesus was talking about giving in an offering in a church service, but giving to real people in life. Share food, money, and beds with people and God will fill your cupboard and bank account back up when they run empty.
An open home is a little messy most of the time, but it is a place of laughter and warmth. I encourage you to open your doors and your kitchen table and invite someone into your life to share community. We have found so much joy that way and our life is a greater influence. Our home is the absolute center of our ministry. Everything “public” flows from there.
Rebuild your trampoline when you move
I want to talk a bit about a concept I got from Dr. Donald Joy while working on my doctorate at Asbury. He says that we are all a trampoline and we need lots of relationships as springs to hold us up. When we move to a new place we lose all our springs and if we take our family with us, the family unit feels a real strain because the relationship work of support done formerly by dozens of people is now borne only by the family members who went with you.
In general the first order of business when you move to a new place is to rebuild the trampoline of relationships. You will need four kinds of relationships: (1) Casual relationships (nothing too deep, just people you know and say hi to on a daily basis) (2) Nuclear Family: the closest bonds in your life (3) Extended family (even if they are not blood kin you need old people like grandmas and mothers and also aunts and uncle types). You need a brother or a sister, a really satisfying same-sex friendship (4) Work relationships: people you gear up with to accomplish important things. We have moved four times as a family to an entirely new country/place.
This one insight has helped us get established in each location so we had a healthy relational web to support us in our ministry there. HOpe this is helpful to you.
Quinley Road
As a child I grew up disconnected from my extended family. I had an unusual name and no other Quinley in my school, my town, the city of Atlanta (2 million) or anywhere else in the entire southeast as far as I knew. But then there was Bay Minette, Alabama. This is a small farming community. The entire phone book was a round ¼ inch thick but I stared at the pages with amazement at line upon lines of Quinleys. They were an expressive bunch and I loved every visit whether in Summer go help harvest and can vegetables or in winter for Thanksgiving or Christmas holidays which meant great food and an unheated house with big beds and, no lie, at least one inch of quilts on the bed. It was so heavy you could not turn after being tucked in . The adults would stack us in bed like sardines in a tin and in the morning roll the covers down and pop us out. One day the US Post Office decided to do away with all the old RFD addresses. They began naming each road by the name of the family who lived at its end. Thus came Quinley Road into existence. I still feel proud every time I pass the signs.
To Be Truly Loved…and know what to do with it
I guess in every marriage the partners love each other, but every now and then someone gets to experience being truly, truly loved–I mean adored–by someone else. I’m not sure we alwaysunderstand the depth of such a gift when we get it. It means that our lover has chosen to open their heart wide, dropping all protection, to follow their heart’s desire to love without holding back. I think this kind of trusting love is rare. (Most of the time it seems that each partner hold something back to protect themselves against being hurt.)
If you ever get loved like this I think you really owe it to your partner to ponder the value of the gift. If you cheat on them they will feel the betrayal to their very core. If their love makes you feel powerful you may take them for granted or act like their love lord, withholding your affection if you don’t like something. Living like this dishonors the gift.
But every now and then both partners seem to honor the depth of the gift of love they are receiving. They understand that it is almost impossible to be loved so completely twice in this life. They cherish the feelings of being loved and reward that love every day. I think that’s the one flesh union the Bible speaks of as God’s desire between men and women in marriage. I get this from those green eyes every day…and I want to give it back at the same strength.
A Family of Individuals
IpOne of the great challenges of being a large family comes from the fact that the kids did not pop out as clones of a master child design. In one sense we are a tribe, but that doesn’t mean that we are all the same. People often look at all our kids and ask if we adopted them because they don’t even look the same. The differences go much deeper than looks. We have broad extroverts and deep introverts. Some love books and others don’t like to read. Some play video games to near addiction and others can’t seem to get those thumbs to coordinate. Some love an abundance of things and others would be very happy to leave the house and the closets half-filled. Somehow we manage to live as a unit, but it takes grace and the practice of honoring each other and agreeing we all have to keep the family in tact and not let it spin off from neglect. One of our struggles has been giving everyone a certain latitude of personal choice while still keeping ourselves as a unified whole.
I have seen families make the mistake of just letting everyone do whatever they prefer. Some eat their evening meal on the sofa and watch tv. Others take it to their room. In our house we all eat together at the table. TV off. Everyone knows that their personal plans have to be placed on hold when there is a family event planned. With us it’s bad form to watch a DVD the family hasn’t seen or to start movies until everyone gathers in the room. That aggravating practice allows each of us to choose to suburge our individualism into the whole of our family as a body. At the same time we can’t force everyone to be uniform. Brooke can put her pinky through her piercing in her ear lobe. It’s so huge from her gauges. If we can hold it all together one of the rewards will be that there is a tool in the toolbox for just about every need. One of us has the ability to handle any challenge facing the family. We are an organism and an organization–by choice.
Iron Sharpens Iron; so one man sharpens another.” The Bible
“You change the tribe, and the tribe changes you.” –Fierce People
sum Luris
