green spatula

at this point, i'm sure most of the people who read this thing have moved on to greener pastures. i believe my parents have quit reading. in fact, mom or dad or any family member for that matter, if you are reading this, call me and say "green spatula" and nothing else- not hello and not goodbye, simply "green spatula."

this will be long. accounting makes me reflect and also makes me wordy.

tonight i began to do my final accounting for my time in moldova. it was a strange thing to do this time. every receipt reminded me of life there, of conversations, of good times of my guys. it was like getting a whiff of a smell that takes you back to a place in time you had thought you'd forgot or never could.

as i got to the last month, i couldn't help but think of the last week or two i was there on my own. it was hard. it was emotional. a large part of that was because of dima.

we spent a lot of time together those last couple weeks. we had been trying to get him to become serious about seeking a good job. several times he had been very dishonest with me and the other people trying to help him. we caught him in many of his lies and were suspicious about a few other things. it was a constant struggle to get him to be honest.

after one particularly hard day with dima, i finally made him call numbers from the want ads looking for a job. it took all day, me buying the paper, supplying the phone and sitting next to him as he made call after call, but he got a job. it's not great but it is a foot in the door and a step in the right direction.

after he started at the job we were still meeting together quite regularly. he was constantly fighting against becoming independent of our organization. as an organization, we knew he had to be. he knew he needed to be. but he kept finding excuses not to. for weeks, dima would offer up an excuse and we would get rid of it. he needed an i-d, we got it. he needed help to buy groceries, i took him to the market. everything he offered up as an excuse was removed until there was nothing left.

that was where we were when we had a long conversation about life. he had no excuses and no answers for his life. he looked at me and asked me this: 'why is my life so bad?'

i have no idea.

now, there were obvious answers that could be offered. dima, you've lied a lot to people trying to help you. dima, you've stolen from people, including 1500 dollars (in us dollars) from his aunt. dima, your work habits were awful and you didn't work at improving them even after we warned you time and time again. those were there, we talked about those.

but in the end....

i have no idea.

your circumstances suck dima. the context of your life is something i can't understand and i won't pretend that 8 months of living with you in that context has given me total enlightenment on what it must be like to be in your shoes. but in the end our circumstances don't matter.

sometime life is hard, sometimes it isn't. you were born into an impoverished nation and i was born into one with money-o-plenty. in either context, we must encounter the grace of Christ if we want life.

we have both been confronted with Christ. He has pursued as, as God does, and we both have to be true to that confrontation. we both have to look at God and answer Him honestly because we can't fake it with Him. we can try to ignore Him but it will burn within us and will eat at us and pester us and make us miserable until we recognize that we have to make up our minds: follow Him or don't follow Him.

that is why your life is bad. because you won't give Him a straight answer. you haven't given anybody a straight answer. i don't know if that is because you've been hurt in your life, or because you're scared God might reject you or leave you or die, or because you've not had anybody in your life be honest with you, or because you were dealt a lowsy hand. i have no idea why. but dima, if there is anything i'm certain of, it is that you cannot be dishonest with God and expect everything to be fine. God doesn't play that game. God demands truth.

know that dima. please. know that God wants you to be real with Him. know that God won't leave you or forsake you and that He has defeated death. know that God will allow you to be content in all circumstances. know that God heals your wounds. but please know that you will not know any of that until you man up and face God from the depth of your heart, from the gut. i'm learning that too. it isn't easy. it works against our very nature. but God makes us into new creations through Christ and his cross. He knows what you've done. it doesn't matter. He wants to love you.

i have no idea why your life is so bad. all i know is that it doesn't have to be.

and with the end of that conversation, there was little else to say. i was exhausted from 8 months of the struggle. i'd said all i could over that time. i had no words. he had none either.

the last time we spent time together was on his birthday a couple weeks later. i had told him that i would buy him some shoes for it (right after that i spent about 30 dollars getting him some stuff he needed. this lessend the amount i was able to spend on shoes). when we went to the market, i told him how much i could spend. it was an amount that could easily buy a decent pair of shoes.

he continually picked out shoes that were twice as much as the amount i had told him. he would show me a pair that were too expensive. i would show him a pair within the price range. he would pick out another, more expensive, shoe. basically he wanted nike's which were priced higher than the other shoes. after a while, he decided that no shoes would be better than free shoes. instead of walking away with a pair of shoes, he walked away with 3 lei for the marshrutka ride home.

it was saddening. it was hard not to look at that instance as a microcosm of my time with dima. after all that we had tried to do for dima, he was content to have nothing. it's like that lewis quote about being able to enjoy the beautiful beach in paradise but being content to play in the mud.

sometimes, that is ministry. you will poor yourself into somebody or something and you will feel like you haven't made a dent. it will drain you, burden you and consume you and in the end you won't see any return on the time and energy you invested. there is probably something there you don't see, a reason for it all. but you may never see it or know it. the burden may never alleviate. i can look back in my life of serving God and see total failures: Bible studies that faded away, friends that didn't come to know Christ regardless of how much i pleaded with God that they would or how much i talked to them about it, ministries that lost their way and so on and so forth. some of those still hurt. they will stick with you as the thorn in your side until you're done with this life.

other times, ministry is clean and clearly effective. the fruit is blatant and the return is fantastic. i've experienced that too and i praise God for that, for His gracious hand.

it is just not always that way. it wasn't even with Jesus in his ministry. the rich young man walked away, one of his 12 turned him in to be crucified, peter denied him after years together.

but we have to be willing to experience that. we have to be willing to have our hearts torn apart for the sake of a longshot that falls short. it requires faith to be a part of that. it teaches us that it is indeed God's grace, not ours, that the world needs. it is humbling. it is beautiful. it makes us people of depth and substance, something this world needs so very desperately.

there were definite and tangible successes in my time serving in moldova. those were beautiful too. i cling to those and am pleased by the joy in those from time to time. but today i was reminded that sometimes ministry is pouring everything into something that just falls apart, that just doesn't go how you thought it would.

i believe if you're serving and seeking God, you will "fail" at some point or many. if you don't, you are either very blessed or are only doing what is safe, not growing in faith, in the knowledge of Christ. let's not be afraid to fail, to fall short. i believe that Godly failure is full of more worth than any amount of success apart from Him. in the end it isn't failure at all, just through our worldly eyes. 'failing' is sometimes the only success. i have to believe that with dima. the question is there: will dima grab a hold of God's truth, Christ Jesus?

i have no idea.

all i know is that i've done all i can and the rest is between them. to me, that is any kind of ministry's heart. i am so grateful for my time in moldova, every aspect of it has shown me, in part, the delight of serving the Father.

watching dogs

insert obligatory apology for not updating regularly here: ________

Now that I've gotten that out of the way, I can get to something mindless and rambling in nature. In a handfull of days, I shall have been home for a solid month. The wistful old man in me desires to say something along the lines of "where does the time go?" but I shall refrain in the spirit of youthful rebellion.

When I first returned home, I took a week or two to rest and reacclimate to American living. It is certainly different living here. So many things are so very easy to accomplish. But we love to find ways to make things difficult, mostly on those around us. For the most part things are so good and comfortable around us. It is on the inside that our lives are in shambles or are completely uncomfortable. Sometimes that can manifest itself in our interactions with other people. We want company in our hurt or our discontent and try to pull people into it. If only more people would do that with their joy and their satisfaction.

In Moldova, I would talk to the boys about living above their circumstances. I would always stress that I did not mean financially. They lived in an impoverished country, but they did not have to feel impoverished. God has the capacity to make poor men richer than Bill Gates. We live in a wealthy country but so many of us are poor in spirit. Paul saying "I have learned to be content in all circumstances" is lost in both cultures. We look at Christ's message, that he has come so we would have life and life to the fullest, not knowing how to claim it. Poor and wealthy seem to have trouble with this.

My thoughts are becoming much clearer. That doesn't mean that I'll be able to express them any better than before. But I'm sure nobody was expecting that. It has been a good month. I've been back working for a few weeks now. It has been nice to get a paycheck again. It's been a while. I've seen a lot of my friends. I've got a lot more to catch up with though. If I haven't contacted you, I'm sorry. I do suck.

Oh yes, the title refers to the fact that I've been watching my brother's dogs while he and his wife are in California. They enjoy making me clean up their bodily functions as opposed to ridding themselves of them outside when we go for our walks. They are good listeners though, I'll give them that.

Goodbye Billy Volek.