Our checking account got hacked today. Thankfully, plenty of things have gone wrong recently, and if nothing else, we have learned to laugh! It helps that my husband is hilarious.

Among the things purchased were discount perfume, a $300 bracelet, and antivirus software. As Stephen was going through each charge with someone from the bank, they said the Mcafee antivirus purchase seemed “normal”–did we purchase it? To which Stephen replied, “Nope. I have a Mac. I’m not paying for anymore antivirus!”

The hacker also renewed his Vimeo account for $60, and then registered a new domain name. Stephen went to the website and found that a new domain name is $3.99, and this hacker spent $399–purchasing a hundred years registration for this particular domain name. Who hacks an account and thinks of a hundred year registration and antivirus?

It’s not news to anyone that this has been a hard season. We’ve tried to be open with people as we can be–seeking wise counsel from different friends, family, and mentors; sharing little bits here and there on the blog. We also want to be loving and respectful of all parties involved.

We have been praying and praying. I can’t defend every action or choice, I’m sure we have made mistakes both big and small, and  I’m still confident we know nothing of what the future will hold.  That said, I can say with my whole heart that we are trying. I don’t know how David was so confident in Psalm 27:8,
“You have said, ‘Seek my face.’ My heart says to you, ‘Your face, Lord, do I seek.'”
I find myself saying, I am trying to seek Your face! {with perhaps a whispered, Where are you?} And this is often followed by, I believe; Lord, help my unbelief! (Mark 9:24)

So we’re here. We are trying to love and live well. We’re falling short, but we keep getting up again.

We have said a number of times in the past while that we feel like God has told us to get up and keep climbing. We have found some resonance in the story of Abraham climbing the mountain to make a sacrifice of his son, Isaac. He was told to go, and he went–not sure what awaited at the end. And though we’re not climbing with a child to sacrifice, it feels like we’re carrying our futures, our plans, our dreams…maybe sometimes our sanity? It seems we’re realizing those might be sacrificed.

But we feel like we’re supposed to keep climbing.

There are two things we have been praying for specifically, and today I felt like it was the time to share them. And more than just sharing them, ask for others to pray with us.

The first is that there would be a ram waiting for us. We are searching and praying for a ram in the thicket. And in this is our second prayer: that we wouldn’t settle for an Ishmael.

As we look through our options for our work at Partners, in Mae Sot, in Southeast Asia, and in the US, we are praying that God would provide a ram beyond our wildest imagination. Or maybe that he would just show us when to stop climbing. But most importantly that we wouldn’t create our own way and our own solution; that we wouldn’t settle for something less than what was promised.

We still don’t know the timelines ahead, but it feels like we are approaching pivotal decisions, thickets, and Ishmaels. Please pray with us: for wisdom to know the difference between rams and Ishmaels; for a ram to be out there; energy to get up and keep climbing; for us to love well in the middle of messes.

In Revelation 3, John writes a letter of God’s message to the church at Laodicea. Verse 18 reads, “I counsel you to buy from me gold refined by fire, so that you may be rich, and white garments so that you may clothe yourself and the shame of your nakedness may not be seen, and salve to anoint your eyes so you may see.” We talked about this in home church a few weeks back, and I find myself praying for this, too: refinement in ourselves, white garments to cover us, and salve than enables us to see.

…Here’s to believing there is a ram around the corner, hoping for the things we cannot see; here’s to finding ourselves refined, covered in grace, and seeing Christ more clearly through it all.

While we are here, working with Partners and living in this community, we live on support–the generosity of so many people, giving month after month, year after year.

I have a love-hate relationship with this.

I’ll start on the negative side of things. I hate being the one to always be attaching strings. I hate that in having a conversation about our lives over coffee, people know there will probably be a request at the end. I hate that the joy of a Christmas card is–well, it feels like to me, tainted–with an update on if we have enough money to get through the next year, and sometimes a request for help. I hate that I feel annoying, repetitive, and needy; I hate that it challenges my pride.

But I love that every month I receive a list of the people that have given to us, again. Have you seen the Friends episode where Chandler gives all of the little foosball men high-fives? Sometimes I feel like that when I read through this list–like I can give every name a high-five, telling them thank you. Thank you for purified water! Thank you for keeping my refrigerator on! Thank you for a night out to that restaurant so I didn’t have to cook! Thank you for my running shoes; that run really made my day! Thank you for data on my phone so I can text my sisters from the hospital!

I love that I can tangibly see what people are giving toward: This couple provided for us to have air conditioning in our bedroom this month, and that is more of a gift than we could ever say. We are well-rested because of you! Or you paid our rent–you literally put a roof over our heads every day! You provided the floor for the kids to play on and pee on. Thank you! It’s as though we have the privilege of seeing the first ripple lead to the second or third or fourth. And as members of race where we are only seeing and knowing in part what we will someday know fully (1 Corinthians 13:12)–a glimpse into a few ripples is a significant privilege.

Sometimes it comes with pressure. These are sacrificial amounts of money, given as a gift–not only to us, but to the Kingdom. It’s like we’re living out of the treasury, or like we’re David and his friends eating the consecrated bread of the Presence (1 Samuel 21).  If you’re going to eat consecrated bread or live off holy money, there is a pressure to spend it well! To cherish each moment, each baht.

We try to. We try to see the generosity of people as well as the provision of God. We try to be wise with each dollar or baht, to be aware of the sacrifices made. We try to be thankful.

By the time this Christmas rolled around, we were low in our support. We had money for our day-to-day living because we were still receiving the same salary each month, but our account within Partners was draining faster than it was filling. We had been watching it do this for around a year, praying through when to ask and how. What does trust look like in this? We are still new on this road.

{Really, at our age, all the roads are new to us.}

We had also been contemplating a car for sometime. While we can currently borrow one from Partners often, it isn’t easy. I feel like a burden to borrow a car more often for the community than for my actual work with Partners. Sometimes it is enough of an emergency we take the motorbike; or does the community feel like a burden to ask for us to get the truck? Is the motorbike safe? How many people can safely ride across town on a motorbike? What age? {And if I’m driving, is it ever really safe?}  We decided to mention this at Christmastime, too–see what God had in store. We mentioned that an older model that would run dependably and has the capacity to take the mountains and potholes would cost around $6,000.

It is mind-boggling to see God provide. It was then, when we saw the money come in, and is now as I still wrap my head around it. To see people give incredibly huge, generous amounts of money that I can even wrap my mind around. And then see people give smaller amounts that I know drastically change their budget; providing us with {fill in the blank}, leaving them without {fill in the blank}.

This year at Christmas, we were given so many gifts of beautiful, consecrated bread. I’m still giving out high-fives, because each day I’m reminded that we now have the capacity to stay longer.  And not only that, we have the absurd capacity to purchase a vehicle–a whole car donated to us! A whole car out of the treasury! A whole car to high-five for!

I’m still processing it weeks later, giving thanks after thanks. We’ve been processing what this means and what decisions have to be made. How do we go about this?

For two newbies-at-this that aren’t very decisive, we thought this could be a process. We started poking around at our research, but thought it’d take awhile. We knew we needed to purchase it in a bigger city–Chiang Mai, Bangkok–and that it would be hard to look at there ahead of time, plus get advice on how its running. We knew we had to simply get this large amount of money into this country from a US bank account. All of this required some processing of the trips involved to go look at cars, who we’d ask for help, which systems to utilize.

I thought it was going to be awhile.

And then a friend came across an ad in the classifieds–a car we had mentioned looking at. She texted us, we emailed him. And before we knew it, we were here: on our way to Chiang Mai to have the car inspected by a trusted mechanic, making a decision, and potentially driving a car home.

{Potentially driving a car home!}

We’ll keep you posted.

Although the storm is raging yet
beneath each spire or minaret
behold the world, the glorious world
has not been destroyed

{a verse from Theodor Storm’s “October Lied”}

This seemed a fitting entry for such a post.

Stephen and I started going to see a counselor in Chiang Mai in July of last year. We went up once a month and had two sessions.

She was really a great counselor, and it was helpful that she lived overseas and understood some of those dynamics. She helped us to process things within our work, our marriage, our family, & the community.

And while it was helpful, I felt like I often broke even. Traveling up to Chiang Mai, which involves interrupting our lives and leaving some of my favorite kiddos to take a six hour bus ride into a big city. It is quite expensive to visit and eat out many meals; we invade other people’s homes, borrow their cars or motorbikes, and generally feel like a burden. This was stressful to me in particular. So while we gained ground with the counselor, the trip itself was stress enough to cause me to lose ground, so I broke even.

One thing I really struggled with was to express to the counselor about our community. To call them “neighbors” just doesn’t really cut it. To call them “friends” is just too simplified, since you imagine us having dinner together around a table or going to coffee to talk; not putting puzzles together and going to the hospital in the middle of the night and sorting through each others’ garbage. I just wished she would come down and live life with us for a day and get a glimpse into what it really meant and what the struggles really are. I wished we could talk in our own home–surrounded by photographs of family miles and miles away, the sound of kids shouting our names at the door, and with our bag from work (and all that represents) sitting on the floor. In our own space, where I felt raw, rather than in a clean room in a city that I feel like a stranger in, where I’d go have a delicious meal afterward and see a movie.

That isn’t my reality, and sometimes it was hard to remember reality from there.

Enter my current position: I could still use some counseling. Both of us probably could, really. I could use someone besides my husband–the one person who will really understand this statement–who knows the feeling in your stomach when your friend asks you for your trash as a gift. Or knows that sweet little girl that comes to our house every single night and looked at me like I was absolutely crazy when I asked if she was sad when her dad left. Or hears the yelling outside while we try to eat dinner and go to sleep. Or understands the decisions at hand when we look at the photographs on the wall and see the photos of sonograms for new nieces and nephews on the way; and then try yet again to to peel ourselves off the floor and make our jobs work.

Here are my two ideas, and I’m actually putting them out there as a request: maybe you know people. First, we thought about a counselor over Skype or FaceTime or any other technology-of-choice. Maybe there is someone who’d be willing to meet with me regularly to talk these things through.

The second idea I just came up with laying in bed tonight, and I think it’s my favorite. Maybe there is someone who would come to see us to do intensive counseling for a brief amount of time. Maybe they could come for a week or two; they could sleep here and eat meals with us and play with the kids. They could sweat in the sun and have tanaka powder smeared on their clothes at kid-hug-height. They could see into our lives here and help us sort out the gaps between the photographs on the wall and the truths in Scripture and the questions at work and the faces at the front door.

These are my ideas. I’ve been praying in this direction–I’m not sure for what exactly–but it seems right to put this out into the void and see what God does, looking for an opportunity to say, “Once again, things went according to man’s confusion and God’s providence.” (Bonhoeffer, p.455)

I wrote about this idea a little over a year ago, in the midst of processing Stephen & I’s grandfathers passing away while we were here in Thailand.

“Then the Lord God said, ‘Behold, the man has become like one of us in knowing good and evil. Now, lest he reach out his hand and take also of the tree of life and eat, and live forever—’ therefore the Lord God sent him out from the garden of Eden to work the ground from which he was taken. He drove out the man, and at the east of the garden of Eden he placed the cherubim and a flaming sword that turned every way to guard the way to the tree of life.”
Genesis 3:22-24

It still crosses my mind quite often, when we deal with death of older people in the community or when I see the suffering in the faces of mothers, fathers, and even the kids. I was just running tonight to Matt Maher’s Christ is Risen, praying it over a little town that sometimes feels death-filled:

Christ is risen from the dead
Trampling over debt by death
Come awake, come awake,
Come and rise up from the grave

Oh, death! Where is your sting?
Oh, hell! Where is your victory?
Oh, church! Come stand in the light!
The glory of God has defeated the night!

Oh, death! Where is your sting?
Oh, hell! Where is your victory?
Oh, church! Come stand in the light!
Our God is not dead; he’s alive, he’s alive!

I just finished Bonhoeffer’s biography tonight, and since he’s titled a martyr on the cover, I’m not spoiling it to say it doesn’t end well. Or does it? He is murdered by the Third Reich of Germany after being engaged for just three months and then imprisoned for eighteen. He writes about the gift of death this way:

“Whether we are young or old makes no difference. What are twenty or thirty or fifty years in the sight of God? And which of us knows how near he or she may already be to the goal? That life only really begins when it ends here on earth, that all that is here is only the prologue before the curtain goes up–that is for young and old alike to think about.
Why are we so afraid when we think about death?…
Death is only dreadful to those who live in dread and fear of it. Death is not wild and terrible, if only we can be still and hold fast to God’s Word. Death is not bitter, if we have not become bitter ourselves. Death is grace, the greatest gift of grace that God gives to people who believe in him. Death is mild, death is sweet and gentle, it beckons us with heavenly power, if only we realize that it is the gateway to our homeland, the tabernacle of joy, the everlasting kingdom of peace.
How do we know that dying is so dreadful? Who knows whether, in our human fear and anguish we are only shivering and shuddering at the most glorious, heavenly, blessed event in the world?
Death is hell and night and cold, if it is not transformed by our faith. But that is just what is so marvelous, that we can transform death.”
(Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy; p.531)

Stephen & I are reading the Walter Isaacson’s biography, Steve Jobs, together. We were reading on Sunday afternoon, but the kids were being quite loud outside. I went to the door, book in hand, and told them to be quiet. I motioned that we were reading.

Yedi pointed to the book and asked, “Jesus?” (The short version of “Are you reading your Bible?”)

“No,” I said, “But he kind of thinks he is Jesus…”

Stephen disagreed and said he never claimed to be Jesus; and we continued reading.

Just pages later, we came across this: “At the company’s first Halloween party, in 1979, he dressed in robes as Jesus Christ, an act…that he considered funny but that caused a lot of eye rolling.” (Steve Jobs, p.91)

Told you so.