Roatan's Barefoot Island Boys

All proceeds from this self-published, soft-cover children's photo book go to Clinica Esperanza of Sandy Bay, Roatan--a medical clinic servicing the poorest in the community. Nurse Peggy Stranges, who founded the clinic, appears in the book stitching up one barefoot boy's foot.

Featuring the boys of Roatan who've traipsed around my house and into my heart. A joint project with the boys, actually--they supplied the themes for each stanza and let me capture their antics with my camera. Front cover to the right, back cover below.



Suggested donation is $20. Paypal by clicking on the link, include your mailing address and we'll get it mailed out. A sampling of interior pages below.

You live where?

A few more things I've gotten used to seeing here in Roatan:

Trash flying off the trash truck as it flies down the road, workers standing in the back and dodging the limbs that overhang the road.

A rat in the grocery store, hiding behind a big bag of toilet paper. Seriously. I saw him running and then saw his little nose peaking out from safety.

No street addresses. To get to our house from the airport, head toward Sandy Bay on the only paved road there is. Turn at the sign that says "Welcome to Sandy Bay." Go until you're on the beach and about to run into the ocean. Then turn left. Cross over water on a concrete bridge thingy and go down what we lovingly refer to as "Naked Baby Alley." (Be careful not to hit one of them.) We're one of those wooden houses with the ocean in our backyard--the ones that get blasted with saltwater during storms.

Naked babies.

Barb wire fence toppers (the ones that keep criminals from climbing easily in) facing the wrong way. Someone really ought to explain installation to the fencers here.

Ants, mosquitoes, sandflies, geckos ... most happily at home with us.

The local drunks bedded down in the root systems of the mango trees near our house.

Beautiful, glowing, brown faces, pink gauzy dresses and square, dirty feet.

Uncoordinated polyester prints pulled tight over all curves.

Hundreds of mangos rotting wherever they've fallen.

Land crabs caught in the headlights, crunching under tires.

Old men riding sidesaddle on the front of bikes that young men pump.

Hearing Voices, But Feeling More Sane

What is wrong with me! Two guys from church came down to the dock to swim with the boys. I said I’d go too but then realized I was passing up on some free time. So I stepped out on the balcony and yelled down that I wasn’t actually gonna go, that I was going to enjoy some "relaxing" time.

On my way in the door, I notice dirt on the floor. Get the broom, sweep it up.

And while I’m sweeping near the door, just outside the door on the balcony needs sweeping, too. Done.

And those plants out there, having moved them around to sweep, I see they need water. Get the watering can and do it.

This pot's not got a plant in it anymore. Take that dirt and cover the other ones.

Now I can use what’s left in the watering can to wash down the porch. Pour, scrub with broom. Get more water to rinse out broom.

Now I’ve got dirt under my fingernails, so I go to scrub them out at the sink and remember that getting the brillo pad on that mineral stain around the drain is on my to-do list. Scrub.

And now that that’s looking white again, I might as well use the brillo on the stains in the shower as well. … What was that I was going to do twenty minutes ago? Relax? Ha! Even now, I’m thinking of all the people I’m supposed to have already emailed (a month ago) and a cool “What I Need Right Now” list that I've gotta get printed out for a women’s group on Thursday night.

There’s a new lounge chair out on the balcony. New—not quite. Peggy next door had pitched three of them down from her balcony onto the beach to “see how long they’d last.” Meaning, how long it'd take for them to walk away or rust away. The boys hauled one up to our porch and washed it down. It’s a great place to relax.

To relax: to reduce or stop work, effort, application, especially for the sake of rest or recreation; to release oneself from inhibition, worry, tension.

What’s my problem? Why do I so easily distract myself from relaxation with cleaning and cooking and organizing—with domestic usefulness. What I really desire—to be a woman whose heart is at rest, a woman who could maybe be still enough to spin a story or two on her computer screen, a woman who has energy enough to play Nerf gun battles with her sons or initiate with her husband—what I really desire gets benched while the useful me runs down the court hogging the basketball.

Unable to get out of the dilemma of desire, we’ve found a powerful drug--distraction. … Walmart is open twenty-four hours a day now, with a dozen restaurants nearby. Next door, a multiplex theater with thirty screens. Or stay home—we have more than a hundred channels on the TV. Then there are computer games and the Internet. We’ve discovered gourmet coffee (tell your grandfather you’re paying five dollars for a cup), gourmet jelly beans, gourmet popcorn—you name it. We’ve nearly perfected our little pleasures. When the going gets tough, the tough go shopping or fishing or out to dinner. They’re all impostors—every one. But we’re so taken by the dizzying array of choices, we never have to stop and take a good look at what we’re doing. (from Journey of Desire by John Eldredge).

My drug of choice, my "little pleasure," as innocent and legitimate as it may seem (and yes, can be), is busy domestic usefulness. It's keeping me not just from the release of rest and recreation, but from who I truly desire to be.

Well, guess what? I can help it, dawgonnit! Right now I’m sitting in that new, old lounge chair. Warm brown boys from the neighborhood with their machine-gun-tempo Spanish are down below me showering off (in shower water from our house). One kid with long green rubber gloves on is sitting on the steps to the dock and staring up at me.

I hear two voices: 1) The sun has a ruler-sized distance to travel down, by my vantage point, to touch the palms on the key out there. It’s whispering, “Watch me.” 2) There’s a soil-caked spoon, the one I used to dig out the potted dirt, on the railing here beside me. It’s screaming, “Get up and take care of me.”

But right now, I’ll choose to take care of me. There are no wings-with-teeth out right now (aka sand flies). The boy with green gloves has walked away. And I remember that I have a Dances With Wolves soundtrack song in iTunes. The perfect compliment to the setting sun, the waves rolling over the reef out there, and the sound of my own relaxed breathing.

Crowning Sherbet-Swirled Skies

He comes to the thought of those who know him beyond thought, not to those who imagine he can be attained by thought. He is unknown to the learned and known to the simple (from the Kena Upanishad).

Instead of all our self-conscious and self-centered efforts to be “good” and to learn more about God, we should learn just to be with Him and allow ourselves the luxury of being loved and possessed by Him. It’s in the faith practice of contemplation, or centering prayer, that we will enter into the mystery of God’s presence within—into the cloud of unknowing. We will have moved from taking from the deadly tree of knowing to the Life found in the Tree of Unknowing (Basking in His Presence: A Call to the Prayer of Silence, Bill Volkman).

On one of our stateside road trips over the holidays, Andrew (my eleven-year-old) and I were listening to some tapes for men. At the end of one of them, the conference speaker asked all the men present to sit quietly with the Lord, to ask God what He thinks of them, to put their question before the Lord. Andrew, gazing through the window into the blackness lit up every now and then with headlights or tiny points of light from country porches, took his question to God. The moment felt rich with potential. My heart hoped through the quiet.

“What did you sense, Andrew?” (I know it’s for you, it’s yours from God; but oh, can’t I just get a little peek?)

“That he loves me. That he has good things for me.”

Yesterday morning when the boys and I sat quietly listening/praying, I suggested asking again, “What do you think of me, God?”

After a while Jacob ventured, very shyly, “He said, ‘A beautiful boy.’” Andrew said he didn’t hear anything specific, but “it felt very peaceful.”

I sensed, “You are the crown of creation, Jenny.”

This—the crown of creation--as I looked out the window over the palm-covered key, the wind-tossed ocean, the sherbet-swirled sky. How precious we are to you, Lord God. That you created butterflies and sea turtles, coconut trees and stallions--and then you crowned it with us, bearing your image.

Oh, that we would indeed be beautiful to you, a true crown of creation, rather than its destroyer. And that you would come to us, who are so simple. That we’d be less concerned with knowing more, and more passionate about the simple luxury of being loved by you.

And when I’m trying to shovel knowledge into those two blonde-headed noggins, keep me remembering that, while it’s giving their minds a bed of rich soil to grow up from, that soil is nothing compared to the flower of knowing that they’re beautiful, loved boys of the Creator.

Give me eyes to see every child, every person, as a precious thing of beauty on this earth.

I'm Dreaming of a Sandy Christmas ...

Christmas Eve in Texas surrounds me with blinking lights and jingling bells, but I'm thinking of Roatan like she's a lonely friend I've left behind. This was the view of the afternoon before we flew out. (Check out Clint's toes in the bottom left corner.)

And all the pictures below are the new SNUBA building with the pool in the back and kayak storage in the front. But the last picture in the bunch is my favorite. Of Clint and a few of 'da boys. His workers, who I'm hoping will all have a happy, safe Christmas tomorrow.










Happy Christmas Eve, boys! I hope your tips are big tomorrow!

Thanksgiving Day in Roatan

Oh, thank you, God, ... for food (notice that one cake decorated with fresh picked flowers)

... and for water (the big blue and our friends' rectangle blue)

... and for sunsets (faithful every day)

... and for family (including the ones not pictured)

... and for REST!

Oh, and for the dolphins who swam past our Thanksgiving celebration. And for friends who take us in and make us feel like family. Thanks, Rita, for a wonderful day.

In My Element

Clint in his element--organizing the kids in the church yard for kickball.

Me in my element--engaged in an adult game, but with books by my side just in case I can slip away with them, and a plastic bag full of veggies, fruits, water and bug spray.

In our elements, Clint's not usually one to look starry-eyed, and I'm not usually one to be very social-butterfly-ie. But the other night, in our element together, we surprised each other.

Clint had helped the oldest orphanage resident, Mario, get his laptop ready for selling, so Mario offered us a dinner out at the Mayan Princess resort where he waits tables.

Mario gave us a wonderful evening. He'd picked flowers and leaves and suspended them between two glasses mouth-to-mouth, full of water from the pool. He called us "sir" and "ma'am," though betrayed his nervousness sometimes when he got them switched. I turned extra chatty, I guess, with our trying-to-make-everything-so-perfect waiter. Then, once when Mario had walked away, I turned to Clint to see him sitting back with a curious smile and starry eyes.

"What?”

"You just surprise me sometimes, that’s all.”

"How?”

"I don’t usually see you as someone who’s all bubbly and chatty. But sometimes you are.”

He liked it, I could tell. Seeing something unexpected in me.

I think I may have had similar starry eyes looking back at Clint from the rearview mirror a fews days later. Loading scuba tanks, frowning and puffing his cheeks with exertion, arms fluid and dexterous. His blonde hair flipping out above his collar, sunglasses propped on top of his head. He just looked hot. And in more than just the sweaty sort of way.

There would have been a time when seeing Clint take charge with a rowdy bunch of kids would have put me to gazing. Another discovery about this man I think I might one day marry. And maybe a time when Clint seeing my card-playing competitiveness would have put him to gazing. Another discover about the woman he thinks he just might marry one day.

Now, I think it's the smaller discoveries that give me a spine shiver.

I think I'm having these moments with God again, too. Starry-eyed every now and then. Remembering the excitement and promise at the beginning of our relationship. The love is deeper now, more comfortable, more secure. More mature (though that word feels so stoic to me, not connoting what I mean, which is something deeply pleasurable).

Jesus resumed talking to the people, but now tenderly. ... "Are you tired? Worn out? Burned out on religion? Come to me. Get away with me and you'll recover your life. I'll show you how to take a real rest. Walk with me and work with me—watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. I won't lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you. Keep company with me and you'll learn to live freely and lightly." (The Message, Matthew 11:27-30)

His tender way of talking, his unforced rhythms of grace. He's taking me by surprise these days. And my heart is responding: "Oh God, I love you."