Keep Going

"Merhaba, peynir pide? Iki. Evet, paket. Ne kadar? Tesekkurler." I stood in the little bakery and practised my Turkish with the friendly baker on the other side of the counter. He smiled rather bemusedly but patiently waited for me to place my order, confirmed he indeed had cheese pide, and asked if I wanted it to go. I said I did, so he cut the two pide in half, wrapped them in wax paper, and slipped them along with a couple of napkins into a small plastic bag. I handed the 40 lira to him and thanked him as I turned to go. 

Less than three months ago I stepped off a plane in my new home country of Istanbul, Turkey. I was excited, nervous, anxious, and tired. We'd arrived with 4 suitcases, 2 carry-ons, 2 backpacks, and as many miscellaneous bags of odds and ends that the airline would let us bring without charging us extra. 

A week later, I was sitting in Turkish language classes in Kadikoy. The friendly young Muslim teacher was reviewing the numbers and months with the class. We'd missed the first two days of class as we were in another city doing seminars, but my husband was confident we wouldn't miss much. He was wrong. 

I felt rather overwhelmed those first few weeks. Even though we were in the beginner level, studying at the slow pace, I still felt lost. The teacher was very good; she presented the concept, gave many examples, had us practice, and then gave homework to solidify it in our minds. Yet I often felt frustrated because the course was not set up for people with zero knowledge of the language. As the teacher began to speak less and less in English, and the grammar concepts began to get harder and harder, there were times I sat in class and just wanted to cry. 

"How can I answer the questions if I cannot even understand the sentence?" I wailed to my husband one day when we were doing homework together. He'd lived in Turkey for two years before and, while he hadn't been speaking the language for five years, he had a working knowledge of it and the vocabulary was quickly coming back to him. It took me three weeks in class to realize that when the teacher said, "Tennefus" before our ten-minute break every 50 minutes, that she meant "break-time"! 

Now I had ever so much more sympathy for my foreign language students that I'd been teaching English to just a few short months ago. Now I understood the glazed over looks on their faces, the confusion as I explained the idea of a hook or thesis statement using English words, even though they were advanced level students. Now, as a student, I understood what it meant to feel very very small in front of a language easily being spoken by millions of people. 

But I didn't give up. Even as I aimed my camera at a homework's paragraph and tried to decipher it using Google Translate, I reminded myself that it didn't matter how much I learned as long as I kept on going. There would be bad days but there would always be a good day waiting somewhere. I didn't have to have all the answers and I didn't have to be the star student. I just had to keep studying, keep going to class, and keep trying. 

And now, 2.5 months later, as I sit in class and the teacher chats about her day in Turkish or I copy a sentence off the whiteboard into my notebook, I understand what she is saying. I do not know all the vocabulary and there are still days when I am about ready to cry in class because the word on the board has 3 endings and I am not sure how to decipher all its conjugations, but I am so so proud of myself. I'm learning a new language, I'm speaking it as best I can, and I'm not giving up. 

The Lost Hat

I sat on the bus musing out the window as the city flew by. There was always something new to see as I went to and from Turkish class on the short 10-minute ride. Sometimes there was a shouting match between a taxi driver and our bus driver as both tried to claim the same side of the road. Once there was a scream and suddenly a lady was stumbling out of her seat into the aisle, clutching her ear and grimacing as her seatmate shouted at her. Most of us hadn't seen what had caused the old lady to scratch the other lady's head, but we all peered intently and listened to the old lady who continued her rant. The other lady had found another seat next to a rather portly man who cautioned her with a finger to his lip not to reply to the old lady's ravings. 

"Maniyac" I heard all around me. A young lady put her hand on the hurt lady's shoulder, asking her if she was okay. One little old lady next to me moved forward with great interest to see what was going on. Even though it was a full bus and an empty seat was usually prized real estate, the seat next to the old lady remained empty. She continued to shout. The bus driver leaned over and, in an equally loud voice, told her to be quiet. She refused to listen, reducing the volume but continuing to mumble to herself. 

As we got off the bus, a small crowd huddled around the hurt lady, making sure she was okay. Nobody knew her personally, yet they were concerned. The old lady hobbled off by herself, nearly bent double with age. 

On the way home, I sat with my purple winter hat in one hand, the other protectively holding my backpack so it wouldn't fall and inconvenience the other passengers sitting across from me. As the bus neared my stop, I quickly stood up and followed a young lady to the door. Unlike the metro, which allowed a good 30 seconds for people to get on and off, most bus drivers would only open the door as long as they saw movement. The moment there was none, the door closed, at times trapping a stroller or a purse in its clutches. Then there would be a shout from the passengers and the bus driver would open the door again. As I grabbed my backpack and left my seat, my foot stepped on something soft. I was worried I'd stepped on the foot of the man sitting next to me but I had no time to check. I knew I had to be waiting by the door the instant the bus stopped, so I could get off. 

I stepped off, the doors closed, and the bus continued on its route. I started to walk in the direction of home, then reached to put on my warm winter hat. It was a chilly 5 degrees and my ears were already getting cold. Except my hands were empty. My hat, at that very moment, was sitting on the floor of the bus that was rapidly getting further and further away. 

In that moment I could hear my husband's voice, saying, "You're going to lose that hat one day. You should put it in your backpack." He was right. I'd already dropped it twice in restaurants and each time he had rescued it for me. Except that day he was home sick with the flu and I'd gone to class by myself so he wasn't there to notice when the hat had slipped out of my hands as I'd hurried to get off the bus in time. I was so so sad. I loved that hat. I'd worn it every cold day I'd been in Istanbul. It was in all my pictures. I could probably buy another hat but I didn't want to. I wanted my hat!

Before I knew it, my feet started running. I sent up a quick prayer for God to send traffic and red lights in front of the bus. I knew the bus was headed to two bus stops before reaching the end of the line and starting its route back. If I was quick enough, perhaps I could catch it at the last stop. So I kept running on the side of the road, keeping the bus in view, dodging pedestrians and mini busses randomly disgorging their passengers, praying with each breath that I could catch the bus. 

I didn't make it. The traffic wasn't too heavy and the bus didn't wait for long at the bus stops. Quickly rethinking my strategy, I decided to see if I could make it to the bus stop at the end of the line. The bus would have to do a U-turn and usually there were many passengers waiting to get on at that bus stop so perhaps I would have enough time. 

I reached the bus stops all out of breath. By this point I'd slowed to a walk as I couldn't run anymore. Quickly scanning the stops, I started to panic when I couldn't see the bus number anywhere. Then I looked to the left and saw the bus heading towards me. As it pulled to a stop in front of a very long line of people, I rushed to the back and banged on the door so the bus driver would open it. He didn't, of course, because everyone had to go in the front door so they could scan their cards. I peered inside and at first saw nothing on the floor. My heart sank. Somebody had taken it. Then I looked up and saw my jaunty purple hat, now seated comfortably on the seat opposite where I'd been sitting. 

With great excitement, I rushed to the front door and squeezed my way to the front of the line. A rather unhappy young man let me go in front of him and I quickly told the bus driver "I left my hat on the bus!" while vigorously pantomining putting a hat on my head. He motioned me to go back, opening the middle door so I could get off easily as the hordes continued to pile on behind me. I ran back, grabbed the hat, and waved it madly in the air. He grinned at me from the rearview mirror, giving me a thumbs-up as I hurried off the bus and he closed the door behind me. 

A moment later, I was pulling my purple hat onto my head as tears started to form in the corners of my eyes. I hadn't lost my hat after all. I'd taken a chance, refused to accept that it was lost forever, and ran to rescue it. And God had answered my prayer. 

I vowed I would take much better care of it from now. "I won't lose you this time!" I said as I began to walk home, the hat keeping my head and ears warm in the frosty air. And as I walked, I thought about how God cares so much more for each of us than I cared for my hat. How He was running to rescue each lost person, who perhaps knew they were lost or not. How He didn't give up and rejoiced greatly when the lost was found. Could I have this same passion for lost souls as I did for my winter hat?

A Lady With A Wobble

We made an incongruous couple—the little old lady and I. She, dressed in a thin dress, threadbare shawl over her shoulders, and a scarf covering her head, all three of different fabrics, with her feet shuffled into thick black slippers that were so worn, they were pilling on top like an old sweater. I, in my burgundy pants, bright yellow ski jacket, bright blue shoulder bag, and purple hat with ear muffs to keep me warm in Istanbul's chilly winter, clashing colors yet unconcerned as how warm I felt was of more importance than being a fashion statement at the moment. I stood out; she was lost in the crowd. So lost that I encountered her nearly falling down the incline of the side road we lived off of. I was on my way home after Turkish class, a bag of toilet paper and a paket of cheese pide in one hand, when I passed her. She was struggling to pull a metal cart with a giant bag of recycling plastic strapped firmly onto it. The cart had one wheel; the other was missing. In her right hand she held tightly to a single metal hospital crutch, its screws long gone, a thick white elastic band wrapped around it to keep it together. I hurriedly took the cart from her and asked, "Okay, where are we going?" 

She spoke no English; I spoke just a few words of Turkish after 2 1/2 months of class where we mostly learned how to conjugate past, present, and negative statements. I could recite to her the verb endings for I, you, he/she/it, we, you (plural), and they, but I doubted that would be very helpful. So I pulled the cart and followed her as she stumbled down the road. 

A moment later, her uncertain feet nearly slipped as the wobbly crutch hit an uneven spot. "Yavash, yavash!" I exclaimed, using one of the Turkish words that had managed to stick in my mind. I hoped dearly I was telling her to slow down, not speed up! She slowed her pace a bit, then picked it up again. I kept in step with her, maneuvering the cart around obstacles along our way, a restaurant sign, a chair, a corner of a building, righting it when the single wheel jammed against the obstacle and tipped the cart sideways. Undeterred, the little old lady kept going, step by determined wobbly step. We went down the incline, across the road, down another road, and turned right. At one point she looked at me and asked who I was. Or at least that was what I assumed as I had no clue what her toothless smile was saying as she peered at me out of her flowered scarf. I summoned up all the words I could muster and said, "Hollandalym. Turk'ce orgenciyim. Yabanci." She was confused, thinking I was from Poland, so I shouted "Hollanda!" at her several times until she finally understood. I knew I had butchered all the tenses but at least I had communicated I was studying Turkish and was a foreigner. That was enough for her and off we went. 

After we'd been walking for about 10 minutes, I asked, "Evde nerede?" wondering how much further it was to her house. She pointed up the road aways and continued hobbling along. The thought briefly entered my mind that she could be pretending to be a little old lady and was perhaps leading me down some deserted alley to then attempt to rob me. I didn't have much money on me, though, and decided that if we didn't reach her final destination soon, I could always turn the cart back over to her and be on my way. 

Finally, she stopped next to a door and thanked me. Two older men were standing inside. One came out, thanking me also, and began to untie the recycling bag. I promptly forgot how to say goodbye, smiled awkwardly, and turned to go home. As I started to walk back, I wondered how she would get home. Would she do the trip in reverse—wobbling her way home, only this time with an empty cart? The cart hadn't been that heavy; it was just unwieldy to maneuver. Should I have waited to help her back home? I decided I had done my good deed for the day and continued on home. 

That evening, when I excitedly recounted my day's adventures to my husband, he promptly reprimanded me. "You shouldn't help people," he said. "People who shine shoes drop their kit on purpose, you go to pick it up, and then someone steals your purse. It happens all the time. What if the lady had fallen on the ground and died? What would you have done then?" 

He was right. I'd grown up in an extremely sheltered Adventist bubble my whole life. I'd never lived life in a big city like this where we were on our own. I didn't speak the language and I didn't have a community of friends around me yet. I didn't have any street smarts and I didn't know what to do if I got into a difficult situation. He had a black belt in judo, had lived in big cities most of his life, and knew how to read people while I was a very trusting person. 

"But as Christians, aren't we supposed to help people?" I wondered. 

"Yes, but you need to be careful," he replied. I agreed. And yet I couldn't forget about the little old lady, hobbling and wobbling along with her cart of recycling plastic. What if that had been my mother? A friend? How would I be able to share Jesus through my actions if I couldn't help others? 

It was a question as yet to be answered. 

To Know He Calms My Storms

Absorbed in their efforts to save themselves, they had forgotten that Jesus was on board. ~Desire of Ages, p. 334

It's a familiar story. Jesus steps into a boat and asks His disciples to take Him to the other side of the lake so He can rest a while from the demands of a multitude desperate for His healing. He falls asleep almost instantly, weariness overcoming Him, and into a sleep so deep and sound that the sudden storm cannot wake Him.

I've been out on the Mediterranean Sea when the waves were choppy but it was a clear day and while the boat tipped from side to side, there was no danger of it tipping over or even filling with water. This, however, was not the case on that dark night. The disciples "were in real danger" (Luke 8:23) in this terrible storm that came up so suddenly (Matthew 8:24) as "high waves began to break into the boat until it was nearly full of water" (Mark 4:37).

Seasoned fishermen as they were, they could not save themselves in this frightening storm. They struggled to bail the water out and keep the boat from sinking, doing all in their own efforts that they could, but in a moment of panic they all realized they were going to drown. The storm was too strong and they were too weak.

A couple of days ago a friend and I headed to the coast for a few hours of relaxation after a hectic week. She with a building renovation project for her school for refugee children and I after a three day camp overseeing 50 teenagers, we were both grateful for the call of the sea and its relaxing turquoise blues. After spreading our towels out on the pebbled shore, we made our way down to the water.

The day before, I had been with the 50 teenagers at the sea about 30 minutes north of where I now was. The unusual summer breeze that kept us cool on our campus just outside Beirut now whipped up the shore with crashing surf and waves that made it hard to keep our balance as they pummeled the rocks. I had joined the brave ones in the water, but even though I'd swam out past the first set of waves, the giant waves that crashed over my head filled me with more salt water than I cared for so I soon sat back on the shore.

Thinking it would be the same at the spot we now were, and disregarding the fact that there was nobody else in the water, and only a couple people on the beach, I once again swam out a little past the first set of crashing waves. The day before, my feet were always touching the sea floor but now I suddenly found I could no longer feel the bottom. Then things happened all at once.

I bobbed up and over a couple of large waves but started to feel uneasy and when I turned to look to shore I realized I was further out than I had planned. My friend was about the same distance out but not so close to me and I decided I wanted to head back to shore. I faced the shore and began to swim.

Within a moment, I realized I wasn't getting anywhere nearer to the shore. I could feel a strong current holding me in place so that my attempts to propel myself through the water were helpless. I began to panic even as I thought about what I should do. I remembered reading about how you should swim parallel to the shore rather than tiring yourself out trying to fight a current, so I turned to face parallel but even then the current kept me from moving anywhere, or so it seemed.

As the panic grew stronger and I tried to calm down even as I knew I could not anchor myself to the sea's pebbled floor nor pull myself out of the water by my own strength, I had a moment of lucidity. Let the waves push you to shore.

I knew that when the waves crashed on the shore, they pushed in their wake small stones, depositing them on the shore even as they rushed back out to sea. As a huge wave came up behind me, I instinctively allowed it to push me towards the shore, not fighting it, but allowing it to have its way in propelling me forwards. Salt water was up my nose, I couldn't see anything as the wave crashed over me, and I was terrified, but I knew I was closer to shore than I was a moment before.

A second wave came immediately behind it and this one pushed me into waters where I could get my footing. My knee was bruised from crashing against the shore, I was coughing out more salt water than I'd swallowed in years, and my feet hurt from the rougher stones but I hastily stumbled up the rocky shore until I could collapse beyond the reach of the waves' strength. A flashback of a similar experience from 20 years ago came to mind and I sent up a silent prayer of thanks to a Father Who cared enough about me to rescue me from my stupidity.

There's a challenge I'm facing in my life right now and I have no idea how it will be resolved. In some ways, it feels like those crashing waves that the disciples faced thousands of years ago that were ready to drown them, or the current that threatened to pull me out to sea just a couple of days ago. As I read the chapter Peace, Be Still, I was struck by that single sentence. The disciples had forgotten Who was with them.

I wonder how things would have been different if they had remembered Jesus right away instead of doing all they could in their own efforts first. If, at the first sign of a storm, they had looked for Jesus and told Him, We're afraid, and seen Him calm the storm immediately. I tend to be somewhat of a worrywart and when I was younger, my mother would tell me, Don't worry about something before it's happened, because then you've wasted all the effort. If the disciples had gone to Jesus the moment the storm became bigger than they could handle, they would have saved all their worry and panic and wearisome efforts because Jesus would have solved their problem then rather than after they had tired themselves out.

Perhaps this is how my life is too. Perhaps I'm so absorbed in my own efforts to sort out my dilemma that I have forgotten Who is with me. Jesus trusted His Father implicitly; He could sleep in a terrible storm. Me, on the other hand, finds it easier to worry and cry and spend my time talking to every person around me in an attempt to find a solution rather than simply asking the One Who knows me best to help me find a solution.

There were other boats on the sea that night. Other boats whose occupants were also in danger of drowning. The moment the sea was still, they too saw the miracle of Jesus' power to calm the storm. When I let Jesus calm the storm of my life, there may be others close by who are watching me and seeing the storm settle may be a testimony to them to also let Jesus in their lives to calm their storms.

It was in faith--faith in God's love and care--that Jesus rested. . .As Jesus rested by faith in the Father's care, so we are to rest in the care of our Saviour. . .Living faith in the Redeemer will smooth the sea of life, and will deliver us from danger in the way that He knows to be best. ~Desire of Ages p. 336

To Know Him

I've battled with the perception for 20 years that personal devotions were supposed to be rigidly structured in order to meet the requirements of the good Christian checklist. While a helpful Bible teacher in college encouraged me to start with just 5 minutes a day of reading my Bible, being the emotional sanguine that I am, I didn't manage to stay focused for long and got lost when reading through Leviticus.

Yesterday over pizza and Pepsi, a university student and I wrestled with what it meant to be a real Christian. She's on her exploratory journey while I'm settling in to what seems right for me but even at our different points, with a generation between us, we found understanding in talking through our questions. Frustrated with organized religion that dictated more rote than relationship, we painted mental pictures of what we wished a church and spirituality would look like.

This afternoon I came home from work, exhausted and overwhelmed. It's difficult, sometimes, when the workplace is the ministry, as expectations are then tempered with less professionalism and more religiousees. To be honest, I've been going in to work as late as I can, taking long lunch breaks, and leaving early, using sick leave for a head cold, and just doing the simple minimum to get my hours in. It's been one of those weeks, or months actually, where I'm tired of the interpersonal clashes, the cultural conflicts, and the constant feeling that I can't keep up with doing 2 full-time jobs.

I lay on my bed and reached for my Bible, turning to 1 Peter 5 where I knew the familiar verse lay about giving my burdens to God. As I prayed aloud, jumping right into expressing how very much I needed God because I couldn't handle everything anymore, the thought came to mind again. It was one I'd been mulling all morning.

What if God doesn't expect me to worship Him through deep exegetical Bible study? What if He doesn't want me to worship Him that way? What if He created me to worship Him through walking in nature and observing the insects and flowers and listening to the birds' spring songs and contemplating while listening for His impressions? What if He created me to worship Him through listening to worship songs that speak to my heart with encouragement for that day? What if He created me to worship Him through reading a book such as Uninvited by Lysa Terkeurst that can help me understand human rejection and how I relate it to God? What if He created me to read a single Bible verse and then illustrate it with a beautiful mosaic or write a blog post connecting it to my experience? What if He created me to simply sit on my bed and pray, opening my heart in all sincerity to Him as I express my struggle to trust and believe in His truth? 

Imagining worship in any and all of these ways brought such joy to my heart that I wondered why I'd never realized before that these are acceptable ways to come closer to God. For what is worship, after all, but an experience whereby we step into God's presence as intimately as we can and in doing so, we are changed? Deep Bible study is good, I'm not denying its power to change. But for me, the one who feels and writes and sings and revels in silence, it is drier than a week-old crust of bread.

I used to think God required me to worship Him in penance and that if I tried hard enough, eventually it would become easier and more interesting. But what does God ask for? It's simple enough.  

To walk humbly with my God. (Micah 6:8). To love Him and serve Him with all my heart and soul. (Deuteronomy 10:12). To wait patiently for God, to cry, to walk on solid ground, to sing a new hymn of praise, to trust God, to recite all the wonderful things He's done for me, to listen, to search for God, and to experience joy and gladness (Psalm 40). 

Simply worship. 

You Take the High Road

I watched her swinging 30 feet or more above the ground, her feet gripping a smoothly polished log and her hands holding tightly to black ropes that were fastened to the high ropes course. Her safety harness was hooked to a thin wire above her head and she had opportunity to test its capability as she missed her footing a couple times and slipped off the logs she was carefully traversing in the air to reach the final steel platform that signaled the end of the course.

Not being a risk-taker myself, I was content to watch my friend from the ground, admiring her bravery as she stopped to take a breath. Her legs were shaking from the tension and unusual usage of muscles that hadn't been exercised before. Her hands were sore from gripping the ropes to keep her balance. Yet she continued to swing back and forth, waiting til she was close enough to the next log to quickly lunge for it and try to get her footing secure even as she reached for the next set of ropes.

It was then that I heard a whisper. That's what I do for you. I'm your safety harness, keeping you from falling. When life gets difficult and you feel like it's impossible to take another step, you can take that step knowing I am the solid log beneath your feet and the harness holding you secure. 

When my friend started the high ropes course, the first section seemed easy enough that even I could have done it. It was a set of flat log boards in the shape of an X and all she had to do was step from the middle of one X to the middle of the next. The boards were fixed fairly firmly in place and it was easy to reach the first platform. By the time she reached the next to last one though, a tightrope now required her to carefully slide along, foot by foot, as she used her body weight to lean out and stay upright. Then the final section faced her. This was the hardest of all and by this point it wasn't possible to take the steps down to the ground. She had to go forward.

Life is kind of like that. We are walking along, thinking that it really isn't that difficult after all, but after a while it starts to get a little more challenging. Then one day we find ourself facing a challenge we did not prepare for and it seems impossible to get through. We have no choice though. Some things come to us in life and we have to face them whether or not we want to. It is then that we can be encouraged knowing that even as we step from swaying log to swaying log, we are held securely in God's loving hands. He may not be able to keep us from slipping and falling at times, but He has promised His love will support us (Psalm 94:18).

Every time.

When I Find You

The hardest part about being away from home for me is that I miss having someone to talk to. I know, if I was home right now, my mom would be watching Dr. Phil and my brother would be doing a flight plan on his laptop, and I would be interrupting them with random thoughts that popped into my head. They would be rather unresponsive and would soon return to what they were doing while I would busy myself cooking lunch and listening to Mandisa or Carrie Underwood on my phone.

But just knowing they were there would be enough. Here, I don't have that. I come home after work to an empty room, filled only with stuff, and not with the very real presence of those I love oh so dearly. See for me, oftentimes it's enough just to know my family is home to settle my soul. I can wake up in the middle of the night and be happy because I know I'm not alone.

My sister left home before I did. She was an independent soul who needed to fly and of the 6 or more years she's been gone, she had a flatmate for 4 of them. Life is ironic, that it gives her, the one who is comfortable with silence and being alone, a flatmate, and me, the one who needs people to thrive, a single solitary dorm room where I'm surrounded by young ladies 20 years younger than me.

I sat on my bed feeling rather sad this evening and wondered why. Then I realized it was because I hadn't had any quality talk today. Sure, I'd seen several people throughout the day, all nice people, who had popped in to my office or called and we'd chatted a bit. But I didn't have time to sit with someone for an hour or even 30 minutes and just relax into the conversation knowing I was understood. I'd listened most of the day but I hadn't been heard.

I am thankful for those in my life who sense my need to be heard and patiently listen without making me feel like I am too much. While it may seem like a simple thing, it is a profound gift for me because I spend most of my day being the hearer. My heart is full when someone really notices me through what I'm saying, because it is in that moment that I know--I am home.