Eagles

The evidence for God's loving care to me personally, and to the earth is all around me.  Another year has come full circle.  Ten months ago fields were covered in 2 meters of snow.  Seven months ago they sprouted green shoots of barley which were watered by rain and have since ripened and been harvested, and now the barley has been sown to sleep again under a blanket of snow until the sun awakens it in April. 

Another year is coming to an end.  My children are growing taller and stronger and smarter and funnier and more sarcastic.  My face has a few more lines and there are a few more grey hairs on my head.  All this is His grace and care.  Scripture assures me of His nearness, of His listening.  And yet there are days when I am unsure if He really hears me, days when I want to experience His open ear to me.

Last week I was feasting at my table in the wilderness, savoring what might be my last day out there this year.  From that vantage point I see snow covered peaks, orchards in Fall colors, villages built into the sides of mountains.  But I have not seen eagles out this way so I asked God for eagles that day, feeling a bit like a greedy child in an ice cream shop who already has 3 scoops on her sundae and is asking for a fourth. 

I made my tea, heated my scone and sat and read for a while.  Then I sensed a Whisper saying, "put that down and just enjoy."  I looked out and saw an eagle flying way out by the village across the ravine.  I looked the other direction and there was another one across the river.  I was stunned. He heard me and sent me eagles. 

Then I looked to the right and there was an eagle right at my eye level about 15 meters away, circling.  He then turned to fly about 6 meters directly in front of me.  I have seen many eagles in Kinnaur but usually they are far away from me, never this close.  I could see this bird's eye, and watch his tail feathers swivel as he made a sharp turn.  He flew up the valley and was gone from my sight. (My eagle pictures are from Google, I did not take them).

I let out the breath I had been unconsciously holding in while this incredible event unfolded before me.  It escaped as a sob.  He heard me and sent me eagles.  He certainly didn't have to send them, but did all the same. This very personal reminder has given me reassurance that He also hears the many other requests I'm pouring out before Him.  Those majestic birds are a reminder that is His ear is not deaf, nor His arm to short to rescue.  I find myself living in expectation of eagles, of someday seeing answers.

Solitude

Sometimes I get the feeling that I don't give a very well rounded picture of my life, that my desire to be grateful can paint a picture of all rainbows and sun beams.  I am also thankful to be in a season of undoing on the inside, an overhaul of my inner workings, examination of the tapestry of my life and unraveling of some sections previously stitched.  I am not able to articulate much of all that yet, but appreciate some of the new things being woven into my life. 

This year I have delighted in solitude.  That sounds all spiritual but the reality is I didn't even know what I was doing, I just knew that if I didn't start having some times all by myself that I felt I might lose my ever-loving mind.  I felt desperate for regular times that I was not on call for anyone and would not be interrupted by the chai boiling over on the stove or refereeing my children's fights (as I growl to them, "speak with kindness" or a neighbor at the door.  Thanks to Carolyn coming and teaching all four of my children 3 mornings a week, I had an unprecedented unscheduled time in my week without my children at home (not to mention all the hours I haven't spent working on homeschooling since she has done that!).  I decided to use at least one of those mornings most weeks to hop on my bike and ride to a quiet place to think, pray, journal, read.  It is a bonus that we live in the most beautiful place on earth, but that isn't required for this kind of thing. 

In her book Spiritual Rhythms Ruth Haley Barton describes what I was sort of doing as a spiritual discipline called Solitude.  She says, "I needed to be alone with what was happening inside."  I deeply resonate with that.  She also says, "Since we're not always sure how to live with our humanness....we try to shove it down rather than attend to it.  But it takes energy to repress these aspects of our humanness, and eventually the effort itself wears us out."  She exhorts the reader about "how important it is to have time and a space for being with what's real in my life--to celebrate the joys grieve the losses, shed my tears, sit with the questions, feel my anger, attend to my loneliness.  This 'being with what is' is not the same thing as problem solving or fixing because not everything can be fixed or solved.  Rather it means allowing God to be with me in that place and waiting for Him to do what is needed."

Huh. This is not how I have walked on this planet thus far.  Until this year I have mostly tried really really hard to keep myself and my patch of earth together as best I knew how without paying attention to the tremors of emotion or signs that my soul needed some care.  If something felt amiss I worked hard to get it running smoothly without investigating too deeply  Again from Spiritual Rhythns, "When we don't attend to our vulnerabilities and instead try to repress it all and keep soldiering on, we get weary from holding it in.  Eventually it leaks out in ways that are damaging to us and to others."  Yup.  This was happening, and it still happens some days and I'm learning to notice it.

It is still a bit strange for me to sit with what is, inviting the presence of Jesus to sit with me there.  I want to jump to the solving bit, to the asking and brainstorming and problem solving.  My thoughts tend to skip around all sorts of places and jump ahead and yet He is there, with me in my scattered thoughts and rabbit trails of grocery lists and emails I've forgotten to write.  I find it uncomfortable to just sit with things as they are, not as I so wish they were (did you really think that my life is ALL beautiful bike rides?  it's not).  This practice is bizarrely calming, and it has awakened me to God with me in my days in a way I haven't known before.  Sometimes to make it happen I run out the door before any emails or neighbors or chores restrain me.  This morning my kitchen looked like this as I packed my little Magic Stove for a cup of tea on the side of a mountain and half an hour to sit with God with what is true in my life:

It is getting cold in our mountains and soon it will be miserable to sit out on a mountain to sit for long.  Freezing will be the overwhelming thing that is true in my life.  I want to find another place for this kind of connection.   I would love to hear what others have found helpful for the practical application of this.  When? Where?

It's beginning to feel a lot like winter!

It's a record, this is our THIRD winter in one place!!  In the 15 years of our marriage, we have never lived 3 winters in a row in the same place.  So I find that the ritual of preparation this time is strangely soothing and comforting, predictable as much as anything can be in this land of The Unexpected. 

Last month I did the Winter Clothing Inventory to assure myself that all of my children will have no excuse when I proclaim, "Outside time!!"...meaning they each have a coat, snowpants, boots, hats, gloves.  Each November our town has a huge old-timey fair (see my boys on the human run ferris wheel below) and part of that is selling such things as these so we filled in the gaps and are set for the cold.  My kids love winter and would like to start wearing their snowpants just for fun even though it is sunny and 55F outside today. 

Storing water is vital so on this gloriously mild November day I filled our indoor water storage tanks and containers.  We also have water storage on the roof that we can siphon down to our house even when the taps are closed, but sometimes it freezes solid so it's good to have some inside.  We have about 60 gallons stored inside, which could last us about 10 days if we were very conservative and did not bathe or flush toilets.  Usually we can melt snow for flushing toilets and bathing once in a while. 

 

 

Our daily water system is this: morning and evening water pipes from a reservoir up the mountain from us run water into a couple of 250 gallon water tanks on our roof.  That stored amount of water is then available for our usage that day, and it is plenty.  If the water system is broken and for some reason (a wedding has diverted all their pipes to their house for the weekend, a cow has eaten through a plastic portion of pipe, a farmer has chopped into a pipe while hoeing his field, a rusty pipe underground has developed a hole so the water is seeping into the mountain instead of flowing and filling tanks) doesn't fill our tanks on the roof, we have to conserve and only have whatever amount is in our tanks.  Every year our house pipes freeze and burst, rendering them unusable until the plumbers return sometime in April and get around to fixing them.  This year our landlady has wisely decided that we will drain the tanks and pipes and disconnect from our morning and evening water source so that the pipes won't burst.  This will mean we really won't have running water for those months, but when the Spring thaw happens, we should be able to hook back up to the water system without having to do a lot of repairs.  Usually in the winter a hose appears from somewhere up the mountain from time to time and that allows us to refill our indoor water storage and flush toilets.  This may be more than you cared to know about water.


To stay warm we have a woodstove.  We buy giant logs the size of grown men and then hire real live men to chop them into the right sized pieces.  They use an old fashioned cross cut saw like I've seen in American museums to cut them the right length, and the chop them into logs.  It takes a couple days to have it all chopped and it's a social event too, serving them tea and lunch and chatting.  We also gather large splinters of a local kind of wood that is rich in natural oils and is a great firestarter.  Our front and back porches hold all this chopped wood and I'm trying to remember just where I hung my laundry the past two years with no porch space available. 

 

 

I need to check which windows and doors are very drafty and rip up some holey sweatpants to fill those gaps so the cold wind and snow won't blow into the house. 

Hi, my name is Jenny and I'm a Food Preserver ("Hi, Jenny").   My love of all things food preservation and planning for food runs almost to a clinical level and maybe there is a seven step program for people like me...or maybe we could just share our ideas and learn even more about this.  Needless to say, this is my favorite part of winter prep.  Our markets are open most of the winter, but excessive snowfall can close the roads that connect us to the rest of the country so it's a good idea to stock up on foodstuffs.   Knowing we won't have running water probably Jan-Mar we also stock up on paper plates.  Even when the road is open, getting to and from town in the snow can be dicey so we like to be well stocked on things like beans, rice, flour, oil, lentils, nuts.  The past several months I have canned spaghetti sauce, salsa, and fruit and I aim to fill every one of my canning jars before January.  I've also dehydrated some fruits and vegetables.  I started my crock of fermenting sauerkraut about a month ago and we will keep enjoying and feeding it until Spring. 

The first year when we fumbled our way through these new-to-us patterns of life it felt awkward and unsure, an uncoordinated blip in the time of our life. There is a joy of belonging as we grow in understanding and sharing the rhythm of life.   Now when I see my neighbors gathering to harvest pine nuts, thresh wheat, shell kidney beans, bring 100lb sacks of flour home on their backs, my heart knows what season it is and how to dance in this Fall wind.

Do It Yourself Orthodontics

         I am a midwife and have seen my fair share of bodily events that should have turned my stomach and didn’t.  I’m also a mom of four children and between the midwifery and motherhood I’ve been drenched in solids and liquids galore without any ill effects.  I’m the one in the family on the lookout for pimples and blackheads and a chance to surprise attack pop them on anyone who will sit still (under my crushing weight) long enough to let me.  I soak fingers in salt water and do minor surgery for the splinters, dig out the ingrown toenails, carefully spoon the wax out of my children’s ears using tiny Chinese ear spoons, letting them examine the ‘barbeque’ themselves.  I happily dressed the puncture wounds from a snow leopard’s bite on the neck of our poor puppy (before said creature devoured him a month later).   I can calmly look at my three year old’s cheek that is split open to the bone and think, ‘wow, I’ve never seen a bone from this angle.’

The one thing I don’t like is mouths or anything dental.  “I don’t do mouths.”  Any mouth complaint is immediately referred to my husband, aka Dr. Sahib.  A child who runs in screaming with a bloody mouth gets a cold washcloth and spot on my lap facing outward so I don’t have to see it and gives me a chance to practice the visualization and deep breathing I used while giving birth.   Anything beyond a little teeth brushing I start feeling that warm flush and ringing in my ears which precedes passing out.  This gives me compassion (instead of my typical response of, ‘wuss!’) for those who pass out at the sight of blood and birthing and placentas, and it gives me a good reason to pass all such cases to Dr. Sahib. 

However, dental crises do not cooperate with Dr. Sahib’s schedule.  He is not home this week and yesterday our daughter started complaining about pain from the space maintainer her orthodontist put in the top of her mouth.  That device is like the St. Louis arch on the roof her mouth, anchored between some of her back teeth (or that’s what I guessed it was like, never having looked at it for above reasons).  She wanted me to check it so I did and could see it had snapped off one of the back anchors on one side and that loose side of the arch was cutting into the sweet li’l roof of her mouth, poor darling.  

We live 2 days tortuous  travel (one way) from her orthodontist, and 1 day tortuous travel (one way) from any quack orthodontist.  My kids and I get carsick on these roads.  Dr. Sahib is not coming till next week.  How can I help my little girl?  I consult with Dr. Sahib and he capably suggests just snipping off the other end of the arch and taking the whole arch out.  Easy enough for him to say, and would be easy enough for him to do.  He can do anything, my Dr. Sahib, with confidence and skill.  But we’re talking about me…will I even be able to see the thing for the fuzzy singing stars in my eyes as I gaze on the raw roof of her mouth? 

I put that possibility out of my head.  Then, as if my mouth has a mind of its own, I tell her what Dr. Sahib suggests and she is all for it.  She encourages me, “Mommy, you won’t hurt me, you can do it.”  I’m thinking, “Oh girly, if you only knew!  I could make a huge mess of all this, might puncture the roof of your mouth right up to your sinuses!” I don't know why she trusts me or believes in me, but it does give me strength.

I dig through the tool box and grab the wire cutters.  My only experience with wire cutters is making wire sticks for roasting marshmallows, or cutting wire to make the skeletons of paper mache swords.  She opens wide and I stick the wire cutters in the general direction of the wire and realize I’m going to have to really look, to make sure I’m cutting the wire, not her gums.  Oh geeeee (well, that’s the polite version of the words in my head).   

I locate the connection point between the arch and its anchor, open the wire cutters and then close them hard and yank them out of her mouth as if they might burn her.  She is calmly lying on the couch, looking out the window, studying the patterns of snow on the Himalayas.  I fiddle with the wire and it comes out in my hand.  I sliced her gums next to the wire a little bit but she says it doesn’t hurt much and feels much better to have it all out. 

I collapse, shaking and feeling like I’m going to puke and she reassures me, “I’m fine, mama, you did great.”  All those clamoring fears of maiming her are silenced.   

And just like that there is a sense of triumph in me.  A sense of Divine provision for what I could not do by myself.  A realization of the gift of grace that I actually didn’t faint on top of her.  It’s a good beginning to the day to see that My Provider is again giving what we need, putting courage in my fearful heart, bringing healing to raw places, turning my eyes away from, “I just can’t do THAT” and re-orienting me to Love.  The Deliverer Of My Fears gives me strength to prefer another instead of staying stuck in my own limitations. High time some of this happened, not just in her mouth.