Friday, February 24, 2012

The Frame





I love my art. Each of my pieces is meaningful to me--they remind me of places I have lived or visited or of the artist who created it. Each work of art has become like a personal friend, one who graces my home with beauty and interacts with those who visit me. This one, the Blue Nude, painted by my friend Phyllis Jean, speaks to me. Her attitude says, "I'm chillin' in my art studio, surrounded by my Modigliani's. So what?"


'Blue Nude' is a watercolor painted on silk, but others are rich oil paintings of landscapes or people from other lands. There is hand-painted pottery by the Lencan Indians from Honduras and a wood block carved by Italian woodworkers. There are watercolors,  pen-and-ink drawings, a colorful origami crane, and two Nicaraguan sketches painted with coffee on pieces of cardboard. Each is as unique as the artist who created them. 


When I was in college I tried my hand at various artistic endeavors: pottery, knitting, crocheting, quilting, and weaving, to name a few.  After just a few weaving classes, I was a fledgling weaver, turning out pieces of cloth that complied with the basic tenets of the process: it had warp and weft, but that's about it. Years later, as I was going through mounds of accumulated stuff, getting ready for yet another move, my daughter found a small piece of weaving that I had made back then and claimed it for her own. I had it framed for her, and voilá! Art!


The art of tapestry or Oriental rug weaving, on the other hand, is just a bit more complicated and a LOT more magnificent. The weavers tell stories of medieval knights, fierce battles, historical milestones, or they just create incredibly intricate designs. Each story or design is woven into the warp and weft of the fabric, thread by thread, knot by knot. Looking from the back of the tapestry, however, there is no rhyme or reason to it. It just looks like a big mess of knots. You have to go around to the front and step back to get a good vantage point. Only then will it come into focus, and you can clearly see the artist's intent.


I have had the imagery of the tapestry as a metaphor for my life for a while now. The way I have always thought of it was always centered around me: me at the back of the tapestry, knotting the cords one by one, creating my life, one thread at a time. If things didn't make sense or looked like one huge mess, all I had to do was back up and get a good look at the tapestry from a vantage point farther away, so it could all come into focus. Often that happened with the passing of time, as the images unfolded and became clearer in retrospect, and the art emerged as a cohesive, comprehensible whole.


But recently one little phrase in the devotional book Streams in the Desert (February 12th) made me stop and think: "You are the Workman, I the frame."  It is the Workman, not me, who is knotting the cords behind the loom.  My only job is to display His workmanship in the finished, even the unfinished, product. I am the frame-- the part that just holds up the real art, the part that allows God's artwork to be viewed and appreciated. No one even looks at the frame. They look at the artwork.


So, what does the tapestry of my life reveal? I'm sure I won't know until the Workman finishes His artwork and takes me home where it will be displayed in a different realm. But the legacy of my life will remain on this earth, knots and all. Will it reflect His workmanship? What will the knots proclaim, me or Him?


Only the Artist knows for sure what the finished product will be. But I'm trusting that what the Creator began, He will finish, His intent fully known and wonderfully revealed.


And it will be a work of art, knots and all.


"For You formed my inward parts; You wove me in my mother’s womb. 
I will give thanks to You, for 
I am fearfully and wonderfully made. . ." Psalm 139: 13-14


"For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them." Ephesians 2:10

Monday, February 6, 2012

The Conversation


You really get to know a person well when you drive around with him every day, all week long. But when I first met Arnaldo, we didn't talk very much at all. I wasn't very confident speaking Spanish yet, and he was naturally on the quiet side.

Arnaldo was first assigned as my husband's driver when he spent a few days in Tegucigalpa, Honduras while he was interviewing for a job. When my husband was eventually elected, and we moved overseas, Arnaldo was assigned to me, and a different driver (see previous post, 'The Bodyguard') was assigned to my husband. Looking back, I think that God specifically chose this gentle, humble man for this particular job for a specific moment in time that was waiting for us five years in the future.

But first, there was a lot to do. I had to figure out my role as the wife of a diplomat, living overseas in a strange country, with no friends, struggling with a language I could barely speak. I remember sitting in my den, asking God to show me what I should do. What a concept! I hardly ever do that. My first instinct is just to go ahead and do whatever I feel like doing and figure God will somehow just show up and bless it. Or not. But, looking back, I suppose I was at the point where there wasn't much of an option. So I asked. And then I took baby steps.

And so it happened that, among all the other good causes I became involved in, one undertaking became my passion and joy. And it came about by talking to the person who was closest in proximity to me, the one arm's length away. The driver. How are you? (I could say that.) Are you married? (Yes.) How old are your children? Baby steps. Conversational Spanish 101. 

Venturing out a bit further, I discovered that my driver was a pastor, a Christian.  He pastored a small church in his neighborhood, Las Palmas. Baby step by baby step, I learned about the church, neighborhood, and the families who lived there. We did a Christmas outreach there on the first Christmas and purchased 200 toys for the children--about twice that many kids and their families showed up! 

And then, over time, I asked him another question that my sister-in-law and I had been thinking about. "What would your church be able to do for your community, if you could do one thing? What is most needed?" (Just thinking about how the subjunctive probably came out in Spanish makes me cringe!) 

It turned out that what they most needed was a childcare center for the children of single moms who often worked late and whose children ended up at Arnaldo and his wife's front door. Or sometimes they were locked into their homes and fed through the bars on the windows by neighbors. Or they were 'taken care of' by their older brothers or sisters of elementary school age. Or they just wandered the neighborhood, alone. Or they were put into service by the local gangs. It broke my heart, as I knew it did his.

And so, what began as a conversation, became a small reality: Fundación Casa de Luz (House of Light Foundation), was born. We are partnering with Old Cutler Presbyterian Church and a non-profit organization here in the States (the result of another conversation) called Institute for Community, which shares our same vision of effecting change in the community through connecting with people and meeting their needs. Three American missionaries and several women from the local church have joined us, and we learned how to create a board of directors . . . More conversations. Now the happy chattering of children has been added to the conversation.

Fast forward five years to another conversation in that same car . . .The conversation most meaningful to me, the one that I most needed in my darkest hour, the one I never saw coming, was a conversation without words. The very moment I knew my husband had been the victim of a plane crash, a hand reached out to the back seat. I grabbed it and held on for dear life. This conversation needed no words, no translation, no subjunctive verb tenses gone awry . . . My driver had become my pastor.

God, Who I sadly seldom take into account, had been a silent partner to those leisurely chats all along. He was, in fact, the 'third party to our conversation' that day as well. He knew years before why this particular person needed to be with me that day. Incredibly, without condemnation for neglecting Him in the past, He descended into that car and, in spite of all the chaos, brought with Him a tremendous peace--a supernatural peace that 'passes all understanding'. It was the 'right word at the right time.'

A new conversation had begun--with a God who, unbelievably, surprisingly, amazingly, cares for the intimate details in our lives. Who knew? 

I'm sure I promised never to neglect Him ever again after that day, and I'm equally sure that I've already broken that promise. But it is my heart's desire to get to know Him better as I converse with Him day by day. Baby steps. 

You never know where that conversation will lead somewhere down the road.

(And thankfully, I won't be needing that damn Spanish subjunctive!)

"...Those long hours of leisure as we walked arm in arm, God a third party to our conversation." 
Psalm 55: 12 (The Message)


"Congenial conversation—what a pleasure! The right word at the right time—beautiful!" 
Proverbs 15:23 (The Message)

Visit Casa de Luz on Facebook: Fundación Casa de Luz

Or, at Institute for Community's webpage:
http://instituteforcommunity.webs.com/casadeluz.htm

Wednesday, February 1, 2012

The Bodyguard

 

You'd never know it just by looking at him, but this man is deathly afraid of needles. . . as in,  hypodermic needles. His name is Felix, and he was my husband's driver and bodyguard during the five years we lived in Honduras--a highly trained ex-military-turned-security guard with years of warfare under his belt. He was practically blown apart while fighting against the Nicaraguan Sandinistas during the 1980's, and still carries in his body bits and pieces of shrapnel from the grenade that almost took off his hand and blew a hole in his stomach. He walked out of the jungle on his own, holding his gut together with his injured hand, to try to save the lives of his men in his unit. He lived, but some of his men did not.

But point a needle at him, and he goes weak in the knees.

I could describe Felix in so many ways--he is a crusty old curmudgeon on the outside, but there is a heart of gold beating on the inside; he has a wicked sense of humor; he adores his family-- his youngest daughter, especially, has him wrapped around her little finger . . . and, it turns out, he's a poet. He wrote one of the most touching, poignant poems I have ever read as a tribute to my husband when he passed away. But here's the thing that makes him stand tall above everyone else:

He would have taken a bullet for the one he loved. Literally. If he could have saved my husband's life by throwing himself in front of the plane as it skidded off the runway, I know he would have. 


When we first arrived in Honduras, I was not looking forward to having people around us at such close quarters 24/7. However, over time he, and a few others, became part of our 'extended family' of people who worked for us and took care of us while we lived there.  Having bodyguards and drivers were a necessary precaution for many expats living in this particular country--but no one really believed that anything would ever really happen. You are as vigilant as possible, but then you just go on with your life. What more can you do? In the end, I cannot imagine how I could have endured what I did without him and the others who became such an integral part of our lives.

The thing is, we don't know how many disasters God spares us from daily as we make our way through life. Sometimes we get a glimpse of the near miss as we swerve to avoid the car whizzing by; or when we catch ourselves and avoid a serious fall; or we scoop up the baby just as she goes to grab the knife or the lye or the razor...or when the surgery is successful or the test comes back negative. Our hearts race with the realization what could have been...

God is so near, so real, so palpable sometimes we can taste Him. And at other times we feel so alone, so afraid, so abandoned that we begin to believe that He is far away and removed from what matters in our lives. Nothing could be further from the truth.

And yet, sometimes the worst does happen. Sometimes the plane does crash, the test does come back positive, the surgery is not successful and the baby gets cut.  Where was God? Someone challenged me a long time ago that if you feel that God is far away, guess who moved?  I still don't understand so much about the how's or why's of the way God works, but I choose to believe one thing:

God has not abandoned me. He is not afraid of the dark or the jungle or the bogeyman lurking in the shadows, or even . . . shudder . . . hypodermic needles. 

He, like the bodyguard, is on duty 24/7, watching, guarding, protecting in an often-scary world. He, like the bodyguard, would willingly take the bullet and lay down his life for the one he loves. 

In fact, He already has. 


"For he will command his angels concerning you to guard you in all your ways . . ." Psalm 91:11

". . . for the LORD will go before you, the God of Israel will be your rear guard." Isaiah 52:12


Casa de Luz

Casa de Luz
marcela and dyana