Of Grace and Grief and Gratefulness...

I've struggled quite a bit recently with keeping my heart and eyes down on the page here.... keeping my hand on the plow right in front of me, rather than letting my eyes drift to a dream, a fiction future that has no roots in reality.   I wonder how long the Father will keep us here, use us here?  When can we live nearer to family, know the great grands and grandparents and cousins and all better?  When will our kids get to go to a school?  When might our family be able to find a grassy field and run and play together?  When can we buy groceries that we enjoy, pull into the driveway and offload them right into the kitchen?  When can I find any book I need at the library?  When a church? When a home with a yard? When a dog?  When could we call all that our very own?

There's been a bit of a new kind of grieving, a new season of dying to self, for me lately.   I've never had such grown up kids to imagine futures for before... and now that I do, seeing their future here kinda scares me.  Lord, give me faith.  Help me to die to myself and lean hard into You for this.  

For most of the eleven years we've been in China, we've felt like China is home.  We're used to things here... the kids' bunk beds and their own pillows, their favorite toys and books.  We do life here well... at least we're used to living in the rut we've dug for ourselves and it works.  (Though I'm still illiterate!!)

And this is actually a great grace....  What a gift to not be able to call America or our human rights or culture comforts "mine."  Because even for Americans, none of it is promised you or due you or actually, fully yours.  Its a tender help that living here enforces this view of how alien we really are.... It's true:  We don't belong here.  Nothing in this world is Ours.  This is a sweet grace that I pray our kids won't miss being shaped by.

May they, may we, always know that we were made to be pilgrims in this world, made for an unfallen world with our King and Maker as The Glorious Light and Center.  We were made to be in the world and not of it, to be radically serving, radically loving, poured out offerings, exuberant evidence of JOY Himself, undistracted and unhindered- not storing up junk for ourselves here....  May they, may we, be heaven-smitten, cross-captured, simple sheep, delighters in this God of Majesty that made us for Himself, well worn as His image bearers bringing His kingdom down.

a similar scene, taken a few years ago in the south of our province

Two weeks ago, as I was walking home from the veggie shop, I stared into the face of a little beauty whose eyes were right level with mine.  I walked not too far behind her daddy and she stared at me right over his shoulder.   I was a little shocked to think of how deeply I'd miss her, miss all this one day, whenever we might not be here anymore.  

I'd have to find a way to bring it with me.  To capture it and capsulate something of the beauty-wonder-pain-sorrow-joy mix that it is for us to live here....

How could I ever contain in any way what it means that we live here now?  There's no amount of photography or video that could tuck these relationships,  these 360 degrees and depths of sights and smells, these expectations and assumptions of what's so everyday regular here, these experiences into any others in the world....   The six of us, who see it together, who process it and are growing up in our own K ways on this side of the earth while it wildly spins...This is ours, in a way.  (Just like every family gets to say.)  This mess of what we love and what we'd love to leave... this is our home, our place, the city we share with this precious mix of neighbors that will never fully understand, but brokenly fully love, and one day may never be with again anywhere in history, except before the Throne.

As I watched that little girl, I was pierced with grief, grief that was somehow all smothered in gratitude, for the life that the Father has given us in this great city.  Oh may You take our frailty and weakness and every crack in the pots that we are in your hands, and shine through us, Father.  Shine through us, your grace.

Thank You, that giving thanks for this land has been such a healing for my heart in this way, Lord.   Help me to live here, now...   slow and worshipful, rich in relationships, serving with joy.


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So this has become a new hope for me.  I'm dreaming of and drafting up a few more posts that I want to link together under the label "U-Town".  I hope it will give you insight and joy and fuel prayers for the city and people we love and I hope and trust it will fortify my own heart too....