Dan’s talk sparked a few reflections for me. 

If you were not able to listen to Dan’s testimony last time…have a listen here. Cyndi then follows up with her reflections.

As a family God has sustained us through these past 3 years full of transition.  He has more than sustained us — he has been at work in our hearts breaking and reshaping them.  

Some day I will blog about my convoluted journey as a mother leaving behind my daughters and son-in-law.   Admitting that our decision to follow God’s leading to Brazil, caused suffering in the lives of our children, both those coming with us and those who stayed behind, isn’t an easy thing to write.  Instinctively, I tried to keep my children out of harm’s way and do what was within my power to bring joy to their lives.  Ie. Saving up money to take them to Disney world when they were young.  Praying for them to find good friends.  Hoping they get that amazing grade 5 teacher that you’ve heard so much about.   Trying to communicate in a hundred different ways, I’m here for you.  The one thought that never crosses your mind is: how can I bring about some suffering in my children’s lives.     Uprooting and fracturing our family (reconfiguring sounds better) out of our beautiful home in a comfortable middle class neighbourhood lined with century old maple trees was heart rending.   Yes.  Heart rending. 

When we yield control of our lives to God, when we choose to get out of the driver’s seat what follows is an incredible adventure (meaning challenging, stretching) of faith, filled with both joy and sorrow.  This sustained loss of control leads to a necessary suffering because our egos don’t want to die.  They want to keep calling the shots.  But when they are in charge, we end up living very small lives centered around pleasure, our custom- made comfort zone, and creating our own security systems that ensure we will never be in need for anything or anyone, not even God.   This is the cocktail served up intravenously into the veins of the western world.  It is a powerful cocktail.  It induces a state of stupor that only the cross of Jesus  can remedy on a daily basis.  This daily ‘cross’ bearing means far more than simply the death of our egos, although it begins there to be sure.  It signifies a growing dependence on God to provide all that we need – physical and emotional.  This isn’t an easy path in the initial stages.  There is much anxiety and many questions.  Will God really meet ALL of our needs ?  I wasn’t anxious about being physically sustained in Brazil . . . finding  my daily portion of rice and beans.  But would God prove sufficient in our times of loneliness and the parental ache of living far away from our children.  Those were (and are) the big ticket items for me.   The promise God gave me before our departure for Brazil continues to assure me of His provision.
Isaiah 58:11
“The Lord will guide you always; he will satisfy your needs in a sun-scorched land and will strengthen your frame.  You will be like a well-watered garden, like a spring whose waters never fail.”
We not only have our deeply compelling emotional needs to reckon with, regardless of where we live on the planet, do we.  The lie that Satan spoke to Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden continues to present an impressive block to the flow of trust in our hearts towards God.  The lie that God is withholding good things from us  (see Genesis 3:5)is a formidable hindrance.  It is always good to know the tactics of our enemy.  This lie, left unchecked/unconfronted, operating within us, causes us to live like God really isn’t who He says He is, leaving us to try to create our own meaningful, loving paths.  In recent weeks, I have intentionally rehearsed the truth that God is not withholding anything good from me.  I do not want to live controlled by lies that hold us captive.   This might sound a bit like trying to ‘find my happy place” but truthfully, it has helped me see more clearly the ongoing provision of God in all things.  

Had we not both sensed a compelling call to move to Brazil we would never have left our comfort zone. It’s not easy being led to the edge of your personal resources and allowing your children to reach the brink of theirs, which is why we don’t engineer our own adventures, we are led into them.   And through them we become more than who we were, not less, as Daniel discovered.   James 1:2 says it best:  “Consider it pure joy my brothers and sisters whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance.  Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.”   

Interesting how our trials, should we persevere through them, actually ensure that we will not lack for anything we need.  How counterintuitive is that ?!  We fear they will diminish us in every way.    While as a parent, instinctively we protect our children from harm, there are situations that we shouldn’t mess with, in the maturation of our children’s lives. We don’t go out seeking to engineer difficulties and frankly who needs to, but when they surface in our children’s lives, we must walk our children through them. 

    A few years ago.  a neighborhood boy cracked my son’s skateboard  by jumping onto the center of the board, in jest.    My son’s skateboard was something he used almost on a daily basis, so he asked this youth to compensate for his loss.  The youth refused.    My son persisted in his request for compensation until the father of this youth called our home in anger, on behalf of his son, informing us that there would be no compensation for the skateboard and to leave his son alone.  I remember feeling more sadness for this youth who wasn’t held accountable for his actions than for my son’s loss.   

    

How do we persevere so that we do end up maturing ?  (because there are other outcomes less desirable) 

As a family we set aside time to air our thoughts and feelings, and talk about our shocking experiences of a new culture, and to pray for one another.    I knew that the suffering we were all going through needed to be talked about.  It needed to be heard and understood and our negative emotions like fear, sadness, anger, and loneliness were not to evaluated.  Feelings are not good or bad.  They just are.  They need to be expressed.   The tremendous sense of displacement, disorientation and loneliness that we passed through facilitated a level of conversation in our family that we did not have prior.  Our family ‘huddles’ became raw, honest moments with one another.  Asking Art and our sons to pray for me meant that I was very needy and lonely.   It became a privilege to pray for each other in our neediness.  There was no pretension or illusion. We had been stripped bare of our own human resources and were asking God to keep us afloat day to day.  After a few days on Brazilian soil, David said,  “I just want to crawl into a corner of my room and hide there until 2 years has passed.”  Coming from our extroverted, adventure-seeking son that wanted to move to Brazil, was saying something.  

Some suffering is so disorienting we need people who have gone ahead of us to help us make sense of it.   God doesn’t want us to struggle alone.  All suffering is threatening, but some is blinding.   Ask God to bring wise, mature guides so that our suffering does a deep transformative work in our lives versus taking us off track.

We are a ‘suffering avoidant’ culture held captive to the lie that if we are clever enough (and perfect too) we can avoid suffering.  This has produced a tendency to shift blame on to others when we are caught in a difficult situation, and a declining reserve of seasoned guides, but they exist.  I don’t think you’ll find them at Disney world.  My guess is cancer wards, food banks, people who have lived on the edge of their personal resources but have discovered that there is a deep well, a stream that flows constantly and is enough.  It’s more than enough.   

 I well remember the day I called a friend in Cambridge within our first 6 or 7 months in Brazil feeling a depth of loneliness and alienation that I could not shake. I wept and sobbed my way through this conversation  – at a loss to know how to carry on in this relationally barren context.  Once my tears subsided, my friend quietly prayed for me.   My situation remained equally challenging, but comfort started to trickle inside me and sustain me . . .  enough to carry on.  We under estimate the comfort that we can give one another simply through listening and praying for one another.  We can’t take away one another’s suffering, but knowing that we are not alone changes everything.   Everything.  

Isaiah 45:3  “I will give you hidden treasures, riches stored in secret places, so that you may know that I am the Lord God , the one who calls you by name.”

Often these secret places are seasons of suffering when our lives seem far away from the path we wanted to be on.  Daniel’s treasure was hidden in a dusty, impoverished neighborhood in northern Brazil, and as he candidly admits, he lost everything to find it.