Keep Listening

Roatan's Barefoot Island Boys

2008-11-26T18:30:00.001-05:00

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?

2008-09-22T22:30:00.000-04:00

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

2008-02-04T17:30:00.000-05:00

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

2008-02-02T21:00:00.000-05:00

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 ...

2007-12-24T13:35:00.000-05:00

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

2007-11-22T22:08:00.000-05:00

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

2007-11-20T19:00:00.000-05:00

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."

Even in Paradise

2007-11-16T11:26:00.000-05:00

A cool breeze mellowed the warmth of the sun and set to shivering the lush growth of hibiscus, philodendron, jasmine, ginger, penta, and lantana. All those hearty, living flora with their roots creeping deeper into the soil overshadowed the frail, lifeless bundles of roses and stiff arrangements of foreign flowers.

Amplifiers boomed the messages and singing, while hundreds pressed around the pool inside the courtyard with countless more jammed in the entry and pouring out into the drive. The shimmering water, like aqua silk rippling in the breeze, swallowed the droning vibrations. The water’s playful surface seduced us with its blanket of silence beneath. Its offer of escape from the ocean of tears that traveled around the oval of the pool.

After the ceremony the mosaic of black sundresses and tank tops, dark button-downs and Bermuda shorts, punctuated here and there with whites and pastels, streamed around to the casket. Strong Honduran brothers, still as statues, sunglasses masking any emotion, stood behind holding the lid open.

We filed past the casket and back around the pool, took a giant step over the diving board, then out again into the drive and up to the far corner of the family property (plantation-like in grandeur) for the burial. The fertile smell of soil and the squish of it under our feet. Hushed, reverent murmur. Low tree limbs cradling us together.

Julito had shot himself mid-morning on Tuesday, in his home. Wednesday, while family frenzied with funeral preparations or plunged into dazed idleness, a flurry of cruise passengers streamed past his lovely house to get to the monkeys and parrots in his uncle’s park. Or zipped right past on the canopy tour. Or swam past on a snorkel tour. Or paddled past on a kayak tour. Oblivious.

Wednesday night the cruise ship twinkled off into the dark like a lit Christmas tree lying on the backs of the waves. Thursday morning, the day of the funeral, the sun rose with the prayers of islanders drawn together in mourning. Julito belonged to the Galindo family, one of Roatan’s most influential. Forty-one years old, he left behind his wife and three children, ages five, eight and thirteen. He managed Anthony’s Key Resort, home of the dolphins.

Though I hate the cliche, life does go on. After the funeral I went to a friend’s house. We sat on wicker couches twisting floppy ribbon into giant, glittering bows for a fundraiser Christmas gala at the airport next month. We planned a baby shower for a friend’s coming granddaughter, saving back some of the white-pink iridescent ribbon for that.

This morning my eleven-year old has cleaned the entire kitchen while my fingers have plugged away at this keyboard. When I hugged him hard from the seat here, my ear suctioned onto the soft of his bare tummy.

In all this living, though, my heart keeps jumping back to the pulse of the funeral music. One song in particular that came rumbling forth from the island women standing all around me, women with softly wrinkled, brown cheeks and black umbrellas to block the sun.

Fa’da’ alon’ we know ah’ ‘bout ‘dat, (Farther along we'll know all about it)
Fa’da’ alon’ we undastan’ why (Farther along we'll understand why)
Cheer-‘rap, ma’ bruda’, lev’ in da’ sun-shine, (Cheer up my brother live in the sunshine)
We undastan’ ‘dat aw’ by ‘n by. (We'll understand it all by and by.)

It’s Friday today, day after the funeral. Ten o’clock. The sun’s just emerged from the clouds and begun to dry the mud puddles from this morning’s rain. Puddles which the cruise passengers, stuffed from their breakfast buffets and last night’s delicacies, won’t even notice. They’ll take pictures of Julito’s house, same as we did on our first visit to Roatan. They’ll dream of the life of paradise they imagine its inhabitants enjoy. They wouldn’t dream of an oldest daughter pouring her heart into a loving, prayerful poem to her forever-lost father. Or of a young son staring tearfully at his father’s empty chair. Or a mother and daughter embracing in grief.

Life hits hard, even in paradise.

Pics and Thoughts ...

2007-11-02T08:26:00.000-05:00

as random as the raindrops falling right now on rocking ocean waves.

For the Harvest Festival at church, Jacob was gonna go as “bandana boy,” (the boys' own invention) but I started feeling sorry for him, not even knowing his costume was gonna be pretty lame. We had a box, so I got on the internet and looked up ideas. First a refrigerator that opened to show food. No. Then a robot. No. But when we found Spongebob, that was it.

During the festival, Clint worked a fishing booth while I did face painting--a surprisingly intimate task, actually. Such beautiful, smooth brown skin, such open trusting faces. Their dark, curious eyes studied my face while I concentrated on painting theirs. One little girl whom I painted into a kitty cat hung around petting on me while I painted other kids. I had a red sequined piece of fabric tied around my head, lots of jewelry on, and dark eyeliner around my eyes to simulate Egyptian eyes. She gently reach under the sequined red to discover my hair down my back. Then she touched as lightly as possible the necklace I had double-looped tightly around my upper arm. Then, as gently as she could, so as not to mess up the movement of my arm painting the other kids, she put her cheek to my arm and nuzzled it just a little. I’ve never been adored like that by a perfect stranger. I loved it, actually. ... And once I got used to each new set of curious eyes moving over my face, I liked that too.

The boys enjoying smoothies:

Andrew's our official smoothie maker. Different concoctions every time. Come try one in our porch hammock, looking at this:

We've had two birthday parties, one for Eduard, one for Kenfor, two of the Lord of the Fly boys.

I've been surprised more haven't just told me it's their birthday to get the cake and ice cream. Especially since honesty isn't a valued trait here. Every other island-slang phrase out of their mouths is, "Tha' a LIE!" Clint's started saying it to me, with the same inflections, when I'm saying anything. "I made a double batch of beef stroganoff and a whole barbecue chicken today." "Tha' a LIE!" "I was reading through emails--" "Tha' a LIE!"

It's annoying and hilarious.

The Best Restaurant Service

2007-11-01T17:34:00.000-05:00

The best restaurant service has very little to do with whether your waiter remembers the evening specials, whether he gets your order right, or whether he threatens something terrible if you don't tip him. Our two waiters the other night did all those things, but they were the best waiters I think I've ever had.

I'd gone crazy cooking spaghetti with three different sauces, meat sauce, sauce with meatballs (the boys' favorite), and a primavera sauce with sweet peppers, onions, zucchini, pesto, etc. (for me). But I was in the mood for a date with Clint, so I asked Andrew if he’d be interested in being the “waiter” for me and Daddy to have a romantic dinner. He was all over that, enlisting Jacob as his assistant.

Both waiters dictated exactly what I'd wear (a little black number with white and pink that Waiter Andrew had actually handpicked for me months ago in the store). When Clint got in from work, he was ordered by Andrew to get in the shower, "no questions asked," and I was ordered to wait on the couch. Andrew and Jacob then locked the bedroom door, cranked up the A/C, cleared off the office table and lit a candle. About the time Clint came into the living room wondering why he was locked out and why I was dressed so nice, Andrew showed up in a collared shirt with a folded hand towel draped over his forearm.

“Your table for two is ready,” he said, suppressing a smile.

Clint and I walked holding hands down the hall behind him, then sat awkwardly at the table, as if on a first date. Clint softened the atmosphere by putting on some music for the restaurant.

Our waiters were a great tag team. Silverware wrapped in napkins, then drinks. (Andrew had been disappointed we didn’t have Fresca to serve Clint, then in walked Clint from work with a fresh cold Fresca from the neighborhood pulperia. Perfect!)

“I’m sorry but tonight we only have one selection for you—spaghetti." (Hey, what about the three different sauces! And the green beans!)

"Can I get you anything else?" Head Waiter asked after delivering the food, suppressing a smile again.

"Yes, do you have any bread?" Clint, testing the wait staff.

Jacob came back with slices of coconut bread microwaved with butter served on two Tupperware lids. Clint's sat for too long and became a big, soft crouton.

"Excuse me, the chef wants to know if you would be interested in a mystery desert for two,” asked Jacob.

"Sure."

A bright green plastic plate arrrived with two lemon cookies for eyes, one square wheat thin for a nose, and about six multi-colored gummy fruit snacks in the shape of a smile across the bottom.

When Jacob took the desert plate away, he was almost out the door when he said, “Oh, would you like me to take that cup, ma’am?” I said no, that I thought I’d finish it off, but he could take the knife. As soon as he was back out the door, Clint and I stared at each other and burst into laughter. There was just something so funny about the way he’d said it.

Our bill: “spegetti and desert--FREE," but on the flip side it said, “tip nessesary or else*.” (I’ve got to add those words to the spelling list.) We sent Jacob back with two $50 bills, asking that we get our change back. Andrew came back with two Lemps (the equivalent of ten cents). We all laughed. Well, poor Jacob thought he really was gonna get the $50.

“Oh, we thought those were 50 Lemps, not dollars.” So we ended up giving them 50 Lemps (about $2.50) each for the service. Not bad.

It wasn’t until I was almost done doing all the dishes with the leftovers in the frig that the assistant waiter burst in saying, “I’m so hungry! Where’s my food!” Oh yeah, he’d actually said he was so hungry around 5:30, when I was busy cooking. Poor things. They were so focused, they forgot their own stomachs.

And I so enjoyed the date (and the waiters), I forgot, too.

*I was informed by the Head Waiter later that he had two Nerf guns stuck in his pants, just in case.

Of Moles and Patches

2007-10-26T20:54:00.000-04:00

All four of us had our elbows propped on the table during dinner tonight eating our grilled ham sandwiches, when Clint remarked that we all had skinny arms. Jacob ranked us from skinniest to least skinniest.

“What! Look at those muscles, Clint! … Hey, you’re not even looking.”

“Jenny, I know your body so well, if I could draw well, I could draw you by memory.”

That’s when I slapped my hands over my eyebrows. “Oh yeah, which eyebrow has a mole over it?”

“That one,” pointing.

“No! You’re wrong!”

“And I had a 50-50 chance.”

That’s when Clint flung his arms out straight to either side. “Oh, yeah, which arm has the small* patch of hair on the back of it?”

I thought about which side I’ve felt it on, and whether from the front or the back. I was sure I had it. But darn. And I even had a 50-50 chance too. ... But honestly the patch is getting harder to see the older and more hairy he gets.

This is the stuff you talk about after nearly 17 years together.

*Clint wanted that "small" stuck in there. He didn't really say "small." He's not a freak or anything.

The Perfect Day

2007-10-09T00:32:00.000-04:00

It started at 7 a.m. surrounded by fish and ended with my oldest son killing me and getting away with it.

We all rolled out of bed and decided to do a family snorkel, rather than Clint and I doing our usual swim without the boys. Holding Andrew's hand on the swim out, watching Clint pull Jacob in a little blow-up boat--it was "on earth as it is in heaven." We could have all been flying on deep blue, wet clouds with exotic fish-birds flitting about.

School time slipped as smoothly by as the queen angel fish had. We broke early and treated the boys to Bojangles (fried chicken), the only fast food joint on the island. Later we babysat the orphanage kids so the houseparents could have a date. After dinner, a movie and bedtime for the youngest, we played Killer (or Mafia/Murder) with the older kids (plus our oldest Andrew).

That's when I was killed. Our last round, my own son drew the Killer card, picked me off first, then successfully killed everyone else to win the game. He had to give a defense a couple times when accused and he'd say with a straight face, so persuasively, "I was just innocently playing a card game with all my fellows." I couldn't have been more proud of him and his maturing poker face.

I remember thinking while in the water that morning, It’s my turn. It’s my turn.

Our parents had their turns with their families all together, kids still young and with them. It was their turn then. And my kids will one day move on with their own lives to have their young families. It’ll be their turn then. But right now, it’s my turn.

Now. In this moment.

"History is more or less bunk. It's tradition. We don't want
tradition. We want to live in the present and the only history that's
worth a tinker's damn is the history we make today." --Henry Ford

About Us

2007-10-07T15:51:00.000-04:00

Clint just updated our http://www.robertscj.com/ site. He asked me to do an "About Us" write-up. I thought I'd stick it in here as well, to explain why my blogger location says "Texas and Roatan."

Back in October 2004, Clint forwarded me an email from work with the heading: "Want to move to an island?" The email described a business/marketplace ministry opportunity, forwarded to Clint's dad from a friend of the family. I sat at home looking at the computer screen, knowing that I COULD move to an island. In fact, something strange started going on in my heart at once. Tears even came to my eyes as I shot back through email, "Sure! ... Seriously, actually. Let's talk when you get home."

Long story short, we talked and prayed and emailed and traveled and sold our house and most our possessions and ended up doing something midlife crazy. ... And now, instead of going to the gym in the mornings, we grab our masks, jump off the dock and kick out to the reef. Instead of traffic and desks and sales calls for Clint, there's SNUBA briefings and kayak tours and scuba tank refilling. Instead of running to PE or science or art classes and mowing the lawn and one-stop-shopping at Kroger for me, there's homeschooling with the occasional local sit-ins, lifeguarding at the beach and slapping tortillas into shape.

Our boys, now 8 and 11, speak Spanglish, climb up mango trees, know which coconuts have more juice vs. meat and have grown gills behind their ears.

We're in Roatan most the year, with regular extended visits back stateside that usually coincide with holidays and summer break. We love this island. We love the people here. We love the unique experience God's put together here. And we love sharing it with others. So come on down!

You Can't HANDLE the Truth!

2007-09-25T00:37:00.001-04:00

So today Andrew and I are sitting at the kitchen table doing math work when I hear a thud on the front porch. I turn around just in time to see a stick whacking the banana stalk we’ve got hanging out there with tons of apple-bananas ripening. I yell and run outside to see who’s the culprit. No one’s there.

But I know who it is and send Jacob down the stairs, around the house and through the next house’s gate to tell them to come to the porch.

Nobody comes.

Long story short, it takes another five minutes (including conversations with one of them from the roof of the house next door) to get Antony, Alex and Carlos to stop hiding and to follow me up the stairs to my porch. I have to shush them four times on the way there. They’re so used to lying their way out of anything. Stealing and lying are just part of their culture.

We walk straight to the apple-bananas, apple-bananas which I’ve just thrown down the night before to eight or so of the neighborhood “Lord of the Flies” boys’ gang (some of whom are part of Clint’s following and now regular stop-ins at our house, sharing our meals).

I pull off an apple-banana for each of them and thrust it into their hands. I have Alex, who’s standing in the middle, translate every word.

If you want something I have, if you want a banana, just ask for it. I’m a nice person (smiling). I’ll give it to you. All you have to do is ask. But if you steal from my front porch, you’ll probably steal from inside my house. And if you steal from inside my house, that means you’re not welcome in my house. And I want you to be welcome in my house.

And when you’re eating mangos on my porch or in my house, use the trash for the pits and peeling. I don’t want them (pointing at the pits and peelings I’ve just noticed on the porch and then pointing into the house where I found them behind the couch last night) thrown down on my porch or in my house. Use the trash can.

Now, do you want another banana? No? You sure? Because I’ll give you one.

Okay, go. Don’t come back until tomorrow.

They had hung most every waking hour of the weekend in and out of our house and most of the day today on my front porch. Eating mangos (throwing down the pits and peelings), playing the drums on the balcony rails with handmade drum sticks and trying to get Andrew and Jacob to ditch their lessons and come play.

It wasn’t really the apple-banana stealing scheme that bothered me. They’re mysteriously always out of school. They’re bored. They’re raised by fathers without mothers, or mothers without fathers or grandmothers without parents, all of whom leave them for most of the day to roam in their “Lord of the Flies” gang. And it’s much more fun to contrive a stealing game—you two get on the roof, I’ll knock them out with this stick so they land on the roof—than to just ask Jenny for another one. Yeah, this is fun. Oops, until we’re caught. But first we’ll hide. That usually works because the adults get distracted and move on. But if that doesn’t work, then I’ll blame you, you’ll blame me and we’ll get out of it like always.

It wasn’t really the stealing that got to me. As I said, that was just boredom and childishness leading to stupidity. Like when Antony decided to try to get Ricky back for slapping spit in his face by peeing on him—from the top of our stairs, down our stairs onto Ricky under the stairs. That was stupid.

It’s always the lying that gets to me.

It wasn’t me, it was Ricky. It was Carlos. Christian. Alex. Antony. Anybody but me.

Later this afternoon, Carlos called up to Jacob saying he wanted to talk to Clint. I walked out on the porch instead and looked down over the railing at him and his friends. He wanted to explain to me that it wasn’t him, it was Alex who was actually hitting them with the stick (though Antony had said it was Carlos). (Even if you weren’t robbing the convenient store, Carlos, you were in the getaway car. Or hunkered down on the far side of the rooftop.) But ANYWAY! It doesn’t matter.

You guys are always—SIEMPRE!—telling lies, so how can I know who to believe. Just start telling me the truth, no matter what the truth is. (I can handle it.) And just ask me when you want something instead of making stupid choices that get you in trouble. It’s okay. It’s okay.

I love you guys. I want you always welcome in my house. I wanna keep putting Neosporin and Band-aids on your infected shins and elbows. Especially you boys without mothers. There’s something beautiful in your faces that makes me want to see you smiling because you know you’re loved. So dawgonnit! Stop throwin’ yer mango pits b’hind my couch, and stop bruisin’ my apple-bananas with that stick. And start going to school! Or joining mine. After your 24-hour banishment, of course.

Andrew and Jacob with some of the Lord of the Flies gang, pausing briefing from freeze-tag for a photo op. They'd just helped me (especially Eduar in the camo shirt, whom I especially love) clean up trash in the neighborhood. Carlos has a Band-Aid on his shin.

An Open Letter to: All Roatan Construction and Landscape Workers

2007-09-22T12:56:00.000-04:00

From: Women of Roatan

We’d like to take a moment to thank you for your service to women here on the island. You work hard, pouring sweat, the sun beating down on your necks, your backs pushed to breaking point hefting lumber and buckets of cement.

Your palms are calloused from shovel handles, your fingernails black with dirt, your muscles ripped under the grueling work that awaits you from sunrise to sunset. Your daily perseverance turns chaotic piles of rocks and sand into oases of constructed beauty.

And you make the best of the shoddy transportation solution you’ve been given, cramming shoulder to shoulder with other dirt-streaked fathers and brothers and sons into trucks that wind the roads morning and evening.

We Women of Roatan thank you for your labor, for your faithfulness, for your artistry evident across this growing island. We respect you.

However, we have one simple request: In the words of Aretha Franklin, “R-E-S-P-E-C-T!”

While it’s always nice to receive a compliment, especially from a husband or friend, we’d prefer not to hear exactly how you could endear yourselves to us shouted from a truckload of sweat- and testosterone-drenched men.

Catcalls, air kisses, your loving plans for us and the like—we’re not sure if you realize that your approach to winning our hearts (or otherwise) is having an entirely opposite effect.

We will grant one exception: If we, the Women of Roatan, initiate with shouting catcalls, air kisses, our loving plans for you and such, you are more than welcome to reciprocate in turn. This occurrence may never actually happen in your lifetime here in Roatan, but it is always something you can hold out for.

If you are absolutely overtaken by the beauty We Women of Roatan possess, you may respectfully wave and smile. Even a simple, friendly “Hola” or “Hello.” But please, these greetings are not to be followed by “Mama” or “Sexy Mama” or “Baby.”

Thank you for your irreplaceable service to the island of Roatan and to us, the Women of Roatan. Thank you most of all for your RESPECT.

Respectfully and Truly (but not necessarily) Yours,
Women of Roatan

Clint and the Gang

2007-09-11T18:33:00.000-04:00

Clint has a following. Two weeks ago Sunday he had a run-in with some wannabe tough kids in our neighborhood. They’re basically decent kids who’re trying to be tough kids, I think (I hope). Later that Sunday one of those tough kids threw the breaker on our electricity, making us think the power had gone out yet again. So we decided with the eight or so boys already in our house, we’d form a cleaning crew for the neighborhood. Of course, any hard worker who joined would get the same reward—dinner at Bojangles (only fast-food on the island, fried chicken).

Some of the tough kids joined. Some stood around (the entire time) to watch, distract and heckle the workers. But man, were they disappointed when, after we jumped off the dock to cool off and then showered off, all the worker kids loaded up with us for free dinner. One desperate tough kid even said he was sorry at the driver’s window to Clint as we drove away.

The next Saturday word had gotten around—to good and tough alike—that Clint would be serving breakfast to the gang at 8 o’clock, followed by swimming at West Bay Beach. Of course, they were all loitering on our porch at 6:45.

The breakfast, at 8 sharp, was quite a hit.

The drive to the beach was almost more fun than the beach itself. Our van started overheating, so we turned the engine off and pretended we were all on a rollercoaster, cheering to make it up the next hill. We had to walk part of the way there, but those kids are used to walking everywhere.

They’re now walking to our house every day.

Yesterday Clint decided to entertain the handful of kids on the porch with a card game. I won’t mention what card game. But I will say the frijole “chips” were all backed by Clint’s money only. And cheaters were threatened with expulsion from premises.

Another hit.

They all showed up again today. But, Mean Mama Teacher that I am, I made them stay outside until we were done with school. I can handle two or three more for school, but the whole gang? … They’re Clint’s following anyway, right?

Thankful

2007-09-05T20:00:00.001-04:00

So much for Hurricane Dean hitting Roatan. We had amazingly clear blue ocean today, reflecting the bluest sky. And if that weren't enough to get excited about, listen to this:

Clint and I were headed out barefoot in swimsuits with masks in hand when, just at the end of the dock we saw about six dolphin fins slicing the water's surface. I took off running down the dock, pulled my mask on and jumped in.

Of course, they stayed on course and were far gone by the time my feet hit the water. But wow. How many opportunities does a person have to see dolphins going through their backyard.

To the left across the water from where we live is Anthony's Key, one of the most popular dive resorts here in Roatan and, so I've heard, one of the best dolphin operations in the world. The dolphins regularly head out with the boats, or without as they were this afternoon, and then head back home later.

This picture is from our visit to Anthony's Key when we first arrived on the island.

Thanks for everyone's concern and prayers. The dolphins say thanks, too.

Staying Safe

2007-09-04T10:23:00.000-04:00

Thanks for everyone's concern about Hurricane Felix and our safety. As of right now, it's still sunny and breezy here. It looks like the storm is hitting the Miskito coast of Nicaragua hard, though.

We're not taking anything for granted. The ocean is about five giant steps from our back porch, so we'll be moving to a sturdy concrete construction if the hurricane looks like it's getting anywhere near us. And we'll let you know how everything turns out.

General update stories are coming soon. I promise. Thanks for asking for more of them.

Brilliant Surprises

2007-08-06T18:00:00.000-04:00

Roatan surprises me sometimes. Ants occasionally squirt out of the faucet onto my waiting toothpaste. Bugs fly out of plastic-wrapped, refrigerated broccoli. My husband Clint can pick up copy paper at the office supply counter of the women’s boutique where I’m finding a great sport bra.

But maybe I surprise Roatan sometimes. And not necessarily when I squeal and fling my scuba bootie across the sand because some little cucaracha’s hiding inside.

It’s that I’m changing. I’m not the same woman I was when my foot first touched Roatan’s steamy tarmac. I’m changing, and I think the island is taking note. I can feel it winking at me, laughing at me, and sometimes pushing me in the middle of my back.

Clint and I were actually talking about this last night on our date. Not Roatan pushing me in the middle of my back. But change. In silly conversation, we discovered that we both have the same favorite color—red. And for the same reasons. Passion, fierceness, life. And the same second favorite color, too. Blue—because of Roatan’s ocean.

A silly surprise. How is it I could be with someone for almost 17 years and not know his favorite color. Maybe because our favorite colors have both changed.

And that’s surprising. The way we’ve both changed so much.

In the beginning we had the intrigue of getting to know each other, the romantic mystery of not knowing. Attraction exciting us and pushing us toward greater vulnerability. My reaching for his hand not knowing if he’d want to hold mine. His running into me on campus, not knowing if I was as thrilled as he was. Crying in each other’s arms on the top of the parking garage, because we both realized we couldn’t live without each other.

But for a while, maybe we drifted into a rut of cohabitating. Maybe we settled into assumptions—he wants to hold my hand and I’ll smile at that joke and we’ll always live together … and love each other.

Right now, though, wherever the push in the middle of my back came from—Roatan’s perceived paradise but sometimes purgatory lifestyle, striking out again just the two of us (plus the boys), doing something a lot like a mid-life crisis together—whatever it was, I’m thankful for it. I needed to fall forward onto my husband’s chest, back into his heart. I needed to stop assuming and start exposing my own heart in the wild way we did when we were dating.

Maybe it’s like watching biscuits bake as a child. They never ever seem to change! Your feet get tired and you get distracted. You stop watching and next thing you know—there’s the timer going off. And you feel like they went from being round, white dough balls to golden, flaky biscuits in an instant. They’ve changed.

I never want to stop watching. So the intrigue and romantic mystery can still arouse me every now and then. So I can feel like a giddy fifth-grader with her boyfriend of a whopping four days when I find out we have the same favorite color. Or when he holds me in the sprinkler water and I remember how strong he is.

I know, this sounds so elementary. I’ve read it a thousand times: There’s always new discoveries to be made about your spouse.

It’s so cliché. And it bothers me that it is. Because it feels so monumental for me right now.

And another cliché: Love takes effort. Duh. It’s just that somehow the effort of all the other things in my life left me to cohabitating … Let me rephrase more responsibly: I chose to use up most my energy in the other things and to just cohabitate with Clint, who, of course, would love me no matter what. Of course.

Well, thank God for that. Seriously. “I’ve always loved you, Jenny.” That’s when we were lying on the rug in the hall (of all places), crying in each other’s arms again, hit full in the face with the affects of cohabitation, realizing that we still can’t live without each other. And that we’ve neglected the silly, wild, romantic (and effort/time-consuming) things lovers do.

I have to say silly, wild, romantic things more often. And sometimes I have to put those words in his mouth. Author/comedian Becky Freeman does this. She used the word ravishing, actually. And well, I just knew I couldn’t use that word. But I made myself. With great embarrassment, “You just think I’m ravishing, don’t you.” The result was brilliant. Which is another thing we’ve recently discovered we have in common: We both love the way the British use the adjective brilliant.

I’m reaching out my hand to hold his. I’m kissing him for no good reason (our eight-year-old did tell us very loudly in a crowd at a water park last week to “Get a room," having no idea what that meant). I’m smelling the nape of his neck and squeezing tight. I’m laughing in the sprinklers and plotting my next move in the ongoing water fight. It’s feeling a bit like in the beginning, but so, so, so much better.

It’s work. It’s worth it. It’s ... like Roatan. Paradise sometimes with lots of everyday sweat and sand and aching feet and bugs.

... Thanks, God, for such brilliant surprises.

Redefining Chocolate

2007-07-12T16:22:00.000-04:00

I have to stop typing every now and then to pop raisins in my mouth. I may have consumed my weight in raisins and prunes over the last six months. That’s about how long it’s been since I came off sugar.

It started with Lent about four years ago. A friend of mine shared that she was fasting from all sweets during Lent that year. That was her response to my outstretched hand full of plastic-wrapped cookies for the picnic. My mouth hung open with a look of horror. I’d rather fast from all food for a day or two than six weeks of no sweets. Gooey chocolate chip cookies. Dark-chocolate-covered Altoids. Those delectable restaurant desserts drizzled with sauce. Chocolate malted robin eggs. “Chocolate-craving” is in my personal profile.

But it’s not true anymore. Really. It took about four years for me to muster the courage to try it, to fast from sweets for Lent. But I figured the cravings had gotten so out of hand, I’d have almost 24-hour focus on God, if every time a craving hit me that’s who I turned to.

Well, let me tell you. I AM LIBERATED! Isn’t it usually after the addict is clean that they realize how enslaving their addiction was? I don’t have to worry about where my next chocolate fix is coming from. I don’t have to feel the guilt after I’ve enjoyed the chocolate fix. Or a dozen chocolate fixes in under five minutes. I don’t feel anxious to resist the dessert, and then loathsome when I don’t.

I feel free.

Sure, my body screamed for those after-dinner sugar fixes. And it was hard. Had it not been a vow I’d made to God, something between us two, I never would have made it. But I did. And still am. Though it should have been a ridiculous stuffing-face-with-all-things-baked-and-gooey day, Easter came and went without so much as a “hi” from my cravings. They’d stopped yelling about four weeks into the fast, and then just went to sleep. Not so much as a peep for an Easter peep.

One week has followed another and while the cravings whimper occasionally when the birthday cake’s being cut or everybody’s slurping milkshakes during the fireworks display, my body usually says, “No thanks,” and actually means it.

I’m not a no-sugar freak. I don’t ask if everything has sugar. I’m not enslaved, one way or the other.

And it feels good!

Chocolate, with all its connotations, is redefining itself for me. It’s my husband feeling silly when he calls me baby, but he does it anyway because I like it. It’s the perfect pillow in another bed that’s not my own. It’s parrot fish and bougainvillea and turquoise water. And chill bumps in the shower after a sweat-drenched day. It’s Andrew’s “Let’s sit outside, Mom, just me and you.” I’m craving those truffles of chocolate, and enjoying them more, without the cravings pestering me with “Man, this sure would be better with chocolate. … Get me something chocolate now!”

Maybe one day I’ll be able to be a responsible chocolate eater again. But for now, I’m a recovered chocoholic. Where’s the next meeting? “Hello, my name is Jenny, and I’m a chocoholic. Can you spare me a raisin?”

A Cup of Cold Water

2007-06-16T12:49:00.000-04:00

“Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony.” -- Mohandas K. Gandhi

I wasn’t paying that much attention to the chatter my son Jacob was carrying on with some tourists the other day. He’s my outgoing one, the one who moves so effortlessly in and around a crowd, like water around pebbles. Then I heard one of the tourists question him, “Church slash hotel?” in a tone that sounded skeptical, as if to say, “What kind of establishment is that?”

I elaborated for Jacob to our friend-for-a-day tourist: “Yes, believe it or not, it’s actually a church slash hotel slash coffee shop slash water treatment provider slash soup kitchen slash recreation facility …” But the skepticism behind the tourist’s question got me to thinking, What kind of establishment is it, really? The church?

The church in general. And particularly, the yellow Son Rise Calvary beside the road in Sandy Bay here in Roatan. It’s certainly not the building, with its ever dusty floors, its termite-riddled, half-missing siding, and its leaky sanctuary roof.

When I walk the church grounds, something so much more substantial than wood and concrete materializes: island-wide interdependence, which reminds me of something Jesus told his disciples. What was it? By this all men will know that you are my disciples, … if you pack out the pews and ring out the hymns to the far reaches of the neighborhood? If you know your Bibles backwards and forwards and can recite a verse to anyone with a problem? If you dress appropriately for your Sabbath day and on most other days too? … No, simply, “if you love one another” (John 13:34-35).

No church is perfect, but the people at Son Rise Calvary seem to have a pretty decent handle on the “love one another” command.

Walking toward the coffee shop, I pass an open door and see a Finding Nemo measurement chart on the wall—remnants from Nurse Peggy’s Clinica Esperanza. Ms. Peggy needed a place and Son Rise supplied it to her—for over two years until the construction of her hospital a stone’s throw down the road.

Stephanie Poschwatta from Canada runs the Higher Grounds coffee shop at Son Rise. She’s got lattes and mochaccinos and all those other chic-sounding specialty coffees, along with biscotti and whole wheat-honey-ginger bread (my favorite) and extremely sticky sticky buns. She’s got bookshelves stuffed with Bibles and books and games—and crafted jade and onyx jewelry by Yourgin Levy on display. A Sandy Bay resident, Yourgin’s passion shows in his eyes when he’s describing the quality of each piece of work, work that supports his family. But I think it’s the hours he spends visiting the inmates at the Coxen Hole jail that stirs the passions of his heart most. … My heart is stirred by the total affect of Stephanie’s little haven for human connection—around tables which have caught both tears and laughter, Uno cards and sticky bun dribbles.

Walking through the screen doors toward the serving counter on a Sunday after church, there’s usually a line of thirty or more children, most of whom show up without their parents, all waiting in line to receive a plate of food. From no run-of-the-mill “soup kitchen” either. Watching Tia, wife to Pastor Chuck Laird, orchestrate the feeding of as many as a hundred is like watching an artist splashing paint on a canvas. It might be messy at the start, but it all comes together beautifully in the end. This Sunday: spaghetti, salad, garlic bread, watermelon, iced strawberry cake and Tang. Another Sunday: chicken and rice, beans, tortillas, watermelon and spiced banana cake. Adults help the kids carry their overflowing plates and drinks down into the sanctuary, which is quickly converted every Sunday from church rows into tables and chairs. Tia says, “I just want God to be glorified, not us. We are such imperfect vessels. And He’s the one doing the work.”

Behind the counter, filling the plates and pouring the drinks, stands Tia, with warm eyes and a thoughtful smile, along with anyone else willing to pitch in. Maybe Suzanne visiting from Pennsylvania or Davinci from down the street in Sandy Bay or Esmeralda who grew up on the mainland. Just people, differences aside, working together, depending on each other. True community.

That community is just what I see in the mural on the wall down in the sanctuary. Luma (aka Dennis Mejia) an artistically talented, dreadlock-donning church member, has depicted islanders going to a freshwater source for water, playing in it, being baptized in it, carrying it away in jars of clay. I would bet Luma’s choice for subject reveals both the physical and spiritual nourishment he’s drinking in at Son Rise.

In response to my description of Son Rise as church slash hotel slash etc., Stephanie, sitting in the coffee shop painting an “open” sign to hang out front, says, “You know, the water treatment ministry is the one that gets me most excited.”

Pastor Chuck Laird, who before coming to Roatan owned a small water treatment company in California, is mostly quiet and soft-spoken (even when he’s preaching). He’s ever ready to throw himself headlong after a ball on the volleyball court out back, and he’s just as moved to action on behalf of the residents of Policarpo Galindo Colonia, where the families of over 400 homes have been without well water for over eight months. He relates with a burdened heart what he’s seen there:

“When their wells went dry, they started digging into the gray water ditches to get water for cooking, cleaning, bathing and drinking. Tiny children, as small as Carlton [his eighteen month old], wrap their entire bodies around these five-gallon water jugs to haul them five or ten steps up, then rest, then do it again another five or ten more steps, and again and again, until they make it up to their homes. With jugs full of parasite-infested ditch water.”

Clinica Esperanza says that since the rains have stopped, the Colonia health problems caused by contaminated water have risen from 50% to 75%. “It is just a matter of time before cholera will be in the Colonia if the water and sewage problems are not corrected,” says Dr. Robert Buckingham, an epidemiologist employed at the University of New Mexico. Dr. Buckingham, who recently visited the Colonia and could smell open raw sewage, works with both PAHO (Pan American Health Organization) and the World Health Organization.

Pastor Chuck, partnering with Henry Zittrower, founder of Living Water 4 Roatan, has been providing a temporary fix for the Colonia’s water problem, hauling purified drinking water in trucks every Tuesday and Thursday, as many as a dozen trips each day (about 5,000 gallons a day). Pastor Chuck says, “Our good God provided an abundant water source from the well on Henry’s land, which is the site for the treatment system,” a MIOX treatment system that is able purify 1/3 million gallons of water a day for 100 lempiras per 1,000 gallons. The MIOX is the only water treatment system known to purify even chlorine-resistant parasites by using mixed oxidants.

Mission teams working with Son Rise dug trenches and ran pipes down the hill from Henry’s house, across the road, through the church property and into the Sandy Bay community behind the facility. They also assisted Ms. Peggy in installing a new well and purification system for her new Clinica Esperanza.

Pastor Chuck and Henry have obtained permission from landowners for running the water lines along property lines from Henry’s well to the Church of God’s Prophecy in the Colonia, to be distributed daily—an emergency clean water line to alleviate the need to truck water. The lines are almost complete, but in the meantime, Pastor Chuck makes sure to take his water gun on all those water hauling trips to entertain the kids (and himself).

Six-year-old Josue is in the crowd that’s already gathered and waiting under the shade of some banana trees when Pastor Chuck’s little Mitsubishi pulls up. All sorts and sizes of empty containers wait as well. The distribution process seems almost quiet and reverent, with people queuing up and helping each other—except for Josue and other little shirtless boys who’re all yelling “aqui!” to the water-gun wielding, boyishly grinning pastor.

Maybe it’s the water that has brought Josue down to the church at Son Rise Calvary. Maybe it’s the nourishing lunches after church. Maybe it’s the children’s church with occasional visits from “Captain Amazing.” Josue doesn’t smile all that much; his face already has an adult quality. He picks up a crayon to draw a picture of himself during craft time and asks for help when he can’t get the arms and legs right—and he’s receiving it. Help, that is. Not from just one or two—from the whole community that makes up Son Rise Calvary Chapel. From those keeping the diapers changed and the faces smiling on the littlest ones. From those keeping the energy alive and contained in the outdoor children’s church. From those donating for kids to get back in school and those changing the sheets in the hotel rooms. From those translating the sermon message and those counseling couples. From those meeting for Bible studies and those stopping to pray on the spot for a need. From those sweating in the kitchen and those getting drenched from a squirt gun in water-laden delivery trucks.

Island-wide interdependence. That is church. That’s what kind of establishment Son Rise Calvary is. And I think it’s the kind of community Jesus had in mind for his followers. A community that keeps in harmony what they think, what they say, and what they do, wherein Gandhi said lies happiness.

But wait, before you start thinking I’ve painted a utopia of happiness. Writer John Eldredge describes the underside of community better than I:

“It is a royal mess. I will not whitewash this. It is disruptive. Going to church … to sit and hear a sermon doesn’t ask much of you. It certainly will never expose you. That’s why most folks prefer it. Because community will. It will reveal where you have yet to become holy, right at the very moment you are so keenly aware of how they have yet to become holy. It will bring you close and you will be seen and you will be known, and therein lies the power and therein lies the danger. … Living in community is like camping together. For a month. In the desert. Without tents. All your stuff is scattered out there for everyone to see. C’mon—anybody can look captured for Christ an hour a week, from a distance, in his Sunday best. But your life is open to those you live in community with. Some philosopher described it like a pack of porcupines on a winter night. You come together because of the cold, and you are forced apart because of the spines.”1

It never gets that cold here in Roatan; but there is a cold that’s bringing these people of Son Rise Calvary together, and keeping them together. When they see the hungry, the thirsty, the lonely, the naked, the sick, the prisoner—they see Jesus, who says “I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.” Not only that: “If anyone gives even a cup of cold water to one of these little ones because he is my disciple, I tell you the truth, he will certainly not lose his reward.”

Rewards might be few and far between when you’re washing another pot or digging another waterline trench, and the true community living practiced by these people might be difficult and downright nerve-racking at times, but they’re still handing out cups of cold water. Literally and figuratively. One cup after another. Loving one another.

1 Eldredge, John. Waking the Dead: The Glory of a Heart Fully Alive. Nashville,
TN: Thomas Nelson, Inc., 2003

I'm Lovin' It!

2007-06-12T19:53:00.000-04:00

***I meant to publish this yesterday, but instead I was groaning in bed with malaria. NOT FUN! Especially on your anniversary. I'm on meds now and only groaning occasionally. Anyway:

I'm loving it! Not McDonald's. ... I'm still loving life with my husband, Clint, that is. Married June 11, 1994 and still enjoying each other.

It ain't always been easy. Sometimes I've wanted to strangle him. Okay, and maybe he's wanted to strangle me too. BUT, to have someone who loves me, and loves me good. Someone who's made my life better than I ever thought it could be. Now that is a miracle.

Happy 13th, Clint. I love you always.

A haiku

2007-06-04T20:48:00.000-04:00

Boys with smashed faces
On hot summer glass, I laugh.
Roatan sillies.

Stop Wherever You Are

2007-05-28T19:30:00.000-04:00

Whatever we do, ... we should stop for a few minutes—as often as possible—to praise God from the depths of our hearts, to enjoy Him there in secret. Since we believe that God is always with us, no matter what we may be doing, why shouldn’t we stop for awhile to adore Him, to praise Him, to petition Him, to offer Him our hearts, and to thank Him? --Brother Lawrence

GROSS! GROSS! GROSS!

2007-05-25T17:38:00.000-04:00

Okay, I have a "World's Most Disgusting Experience" entry.

Have you ever seen roach poop? Would you even know it was roach poop if you saw it?

Well, I would now, but not a few days ago. Cleaning my kitchen countertop, I found what I thought was an uncooked Honduran red bean (a little smaller than a US kidney bean). I picked it up and noticed that this was one unusual bean. It had ridges running lengthwise down one side. Wondering how a bean ended up like that, I gave it a little squeeze and ...

POP! This yellowish gunk exploded all IN MY FACE!

My face has never been scrubbed so hard. And that was before I searched the web for images of "roach droppings." Ugh! I am APPALLED!
I've never scrubbed my face so hard. And that was before I even discovered what it was. Now that I've done an internet search for "roach droppings," I am APPALLED!

So, can anybody beat that?

Schools in Roatan?

2007-05-23T16:15:00.000-04:00

I know of two great ones. Here are pictures of 'em. The first, a school of friends at Andrew and Jacob's birthday party. The second, a school of fish. Both gifts from God!

Passing It On

2007-05-18T18:49:00.000-04:00

My sweet, beautiful Costa Rican friend Audrey had to leave the island early—headed back to her home country. That meant I was left with over forty toys to hand out on my own. It had been Audrey’s idea. She had told me about growing up very poor with tons of siblings, and how unforgettable it was when some foreigners came around to hand out gifts to her and all the community children. Here in Roatan, she had felt compelled to pass that memory on to the really poor kids who lived around her, and she had asked me to help her. That’s when I solicited friends and family from the states to help us, and when I came back laden with toys.

Audrey and I had set a date for distributing—a Friday. But she left unexpectedly—the Tuesday before.

Disappointed, I let the toys sit in boxes in a corner of our little house for a few weeks. Until Clint and I and the boys finally took up Audrey’s vision, loaded them all up and headed out. We went up into Policarpo Galindo Colonia where our pastor, Chuck Laird, distributes water. The families of over 800 homes there have been without water for too long. When their wells went dry, they started digging into the gray water ditches to get water. As Pastor Chuck said, “Tiny children, as small as Carlton [his eighteen month old], wrap their entire bodies around these five-gallon water jugs to haul them five or ten steps up, then rest, then do it again another five or ten more steps, and again and again, until they make it up to their homes. With jugs full of parasite-infested ditch water.” The local clinic says that over 50% of all the health problems in the Colonia are caused by the contaminated water.

People knew Chuck was on his way. There was a crowd gathered, sitting under the shade of some banana trees, with all sorts and sizes of empty water containers waiting. And amazingly, the process went smoothly as people queued up and helped each other. It seemed quiet and reverent, almost, except for Pastor Chuck squirting the kids with his water gun.

After the last drip made it into a pail, we opened the back of the suburban doors and started handing out our big blue gift bags of toys, candy and cookies. Once the first child walked away with bag in hand, the car was swarming. Everyone asking and hoping. Andrew was standing on the bumper above the crowd and said later, “I was giving to all the kids who looked like they weren’t gonna be able to get anything.” Jacob said he wanted to do that all the time, “It made me feel a little happy.”

Me, too, Jacob. What a small dent we made in the hundreds and thousands of needs. But if one little girl or boy, beautiful and innocent, comes away with an unforgettable experience the way my beautiful friend Audrey did in Costa Rica, it was a big dent. And I’m thankful to Audrey who had the desire and to all those stateside who provided the means to get the toys and get them here.

Inside each bag was a handwritten note, a note of God’s love for each recipient. Pray that they’ll know God’s love and provision in a new way. And that they’ll one day be like Audrey and want to pass it on.

Playing with my Mom

2007-05-14T01:15:00.000-04:00

A little late for Mother's Day, but I thought I'd share some pictures from my mom's most recent visit to Roatan.

My mom and I underwater (she's the one on the right).

The boys with my mom, their "Manna."

It's this picture that reminds me of my own childhood--reminds me of how my Mama played with me, just as she plays with the boys.

Here's an excerpt from her journal, Monday, February 16, 1976:
“Busy Monday! Jenny and I went to the grocery store to buy cloves for Mission Friends children to make air fresheners. Jenny took her money to the store to buy some gum but didn’t want to give up her money for it. It was a beautiful day! … After Mission Friends Julie, Jenny and I played softball with the neighborhood children. I hit a homerun. I also ran into a tree and made a nice puncture wound in my hand.”

And here we are, playing.

Look at the joy on our faces. Holding hands, ready to go sliding down together. … Together. Through the good and bad, the fun and frustrating. When we're lost in a foreign city and ready to strangle each other. When we're holding hands underwater, engulfed in beauty. Together. I think most, if not all, of my sense of security comes from having a Mama who was there. Her love taught me that even if I go through times in my life when I feel I don't fit in, don't belong, I'll always belong to her. She's always been proud to take my hand and slide down life with me.

“You can do anything with children if you only play with them.” —Otto von Bismarck

Keep Dreaming

2007-05-13T20:54:00.000-04:00

Hey, guess what? I’ve got a full page in the Voice Magazine for this month!!! (The Magazine for the Bay Islands here.) It’s a story I wrote called “Promptings and Parting Words,” about my Aunt Laurie who passed away, Jimmy Miller (an old man who died here) and my friend Greg in high school (who died our senior year). I knew the editor was planning to run one of the articles I’d submitted to him, but I didn’t know which issue and didn’t know if it would actually happen. It’s really something to see your own words, your own name, printed in a magazine that you pick up off the rack at Eldon’s Grocery in French Harbor.

You know, here’s the really funny thing. The first “official” time I’m published, the ONE word that is changed/edited makes me into a curser! My “darn it” is changed to “damn it.” Clint saw it first, caught up with me in the canned goods and asked, “Did you write the word damn in your story?” “No, it was darn it.” “Well, now it’s damn it.” Sure enough. We both laughed about it. And wanting to give the editor the benefit of the doubt, I decided that since English isn’t his native language (he’s Polish), he must have thought that d-a-r-n was a typo from d-a-m-n. He just corrected the “mistake.”

Part of what makes it funny to me is that the “darn it” is actually my response to God’s prompting to speak to Jimmy Miller in the taxi, when I’m on the way to the airport for Aunt Laurie’s funeral, when I realize I have to heed the prompting and speak to Jimmy, no matter how much I’d prefer to keep to my own emotions/agenda.

Of course, to Clint and me it’s not that big of a deal. But one missionary friend I mentioned it to on the island immediately prayed over it, that it wouldn’t offend anyone. And, yes, I definitely hope it doesn’t offend anyone. (Lord, keep it from offending, please.)

Mainly, I’m just really happy to be published (and happy to have learned what words to avoid altogether next time). I’ve really sensed the Lord prompting me (and I won’t say darn-it this time) to stop playing it safe with some of my dreams. Specifically, at a women’s Bible study a few weeks ago, singing ”Surrender,” which has a line about laying down dreams, I sensed the Lord telling me that for too long now I’ve laid down my dreams, that it’s time to start taking them up again. Then a few days later just sitting, listening for God, I sensed something like this:

“Take up your dreams, Jenny. You’ve surrendered them long enough. Seek opportunities. I’ll lead you. I am God. Truly God. You are mine, truly mine. This isn’t a charade. Smoke and mirrors. This is my presence, my intimacy, my making the path straight before you. … Leave me to make the path straight. Trust me. And strike out new with me. No playing it safe. Seek the new.”

The paraphrase Message Bible I’ve been reading writes that in Jesus’ story of the three servants with their invested “talents,” the master says of the third servant: “Get rid of this ‘play-it-safe’ who won’t go out on a limb.” When I read that I realized that “surrendering my dreams” had become part of “playing to safe,” rather than moving forward with no fear, led by God.

Seeing my words in print does encourage me to keep writing and keep seeking opportunities for sharing it. Even if one little word isn’t my word at all! Darn-it!

Keep me listening, Lord, and striking out on new paths with you.

This you just have to experience!

2007-05-07T21:39:00.000-04:00

Mountains bow down and the seas will roar at the sound of God's name!

This, this! is chocolate for me. It's like a foot massage after eight hours standing. Like ice cold water after a sweat-pouring run. Like thunderstorms at midnight. It just does it for me. It's God's Roatan Chocolate for me!

Saturday the waves were crashing in on the north side of the island. This particular spot is just breathtaking, with the ironshore and foliage and views far down the island and sometimes views of other islands or the mainland out across the ocean. I didn't get many pictures, 'cause I ended up drenched. Compare the pictures below. The first is the same place on a calm day (my mom's the fisherman), standing all the way down on the ironshore, at the water's edge. The second is Saturday's wave-crashing day.

She Ain't Dead Yet

2007-05-04T13:05:00.000-04:00

This past Saturday my mom was working at the town art guild when she got a call from my cousin John Hoyet. In an almost breathless whisper he said, "Aunt Mary,” then a long pause and “are you okay?” She responded, “Yes, I’m fine.” That’s when he told her that a relative had called her brother, my Uncle Drinnon, to tell him that my mom had been killed in a car wreck on her way to the Talladega racetrack. John Hoyet said that Drinnon and his wife Mary were at my cousin Josh’s house and my mom needed to call them.

She finally got through on Mary’s cell phone and said, “Mary, I am alive and well.”

Mary broke down crying, unable to speak, and handed the phone to Drinnon, who was also crying. Barely able to talk, Drinnon said Josh was on the phone with state police trying to verify the wreck. They said they were already making plans for a funeral, calling my Aunt Bonnie (their other sister) and trying to get a hold of my sister Julie. (Just over a year ago, their sister Laurie died very unexpectedly, so they’ve had recent practice at this.)

With everything set straight (it was another “doctor’s first wife” who had died, small town, that’s how rumors go), it still took quite a while for feelings of happiness and relief to truly set in. But they did.

By evening, with more of the family gathered at Josh’s house for a barbecue, my Uncle Drinnon ended his blessing over the dinner with, “And Dear Lord, we thank you so much that Aunt Mary ain’t dead.”

My mom closed her email to me on this story with, “Well, I ain’t dead yet!” (She’s got a spunky side.) I’m glad you ain’t dead yet either, Mama!

More Tears, More Love

2007-04-27T17:37:00.000-04:00

Virginia had something I envied. Five years old, living at the orphanage here in Roatan, she was a little firecracker. Clint and I taught her in children’s church on Sundays. But it wasn’t until after one of those Sundays when I visited her at the orphanage that I grew envious. She was up on her bunk-bed drawing and “writing.” When she saw me, she beamed happiness, excitement and expectancy, as if I were a fairy godmother come to tap her on the head with a wand of magic. But mostly, perched above my eye-level on her flowery-pink painted bed, she poured forth a self-assured daring and confidence, as if her bed were a throne. She possessed a poise that you mostly only see in the very old, in those who’ve cast off their insecurity and self-doubting to finally be comfortable and free inside their own skin. Virginia had that.

And that’s what drew me to her, what I envied. Plus, Virginia liked me. In spit-fire style, she didn’t beat around the bush, “I like you. I want you to stay here forever. Some people just come and stay a little bit. Are you going to stay here forever?”

“For as long as God wants me to,” I answered her. But in my heart was I thinking, ME, you want ME to be here forever? Me? I’m the woman who’s always said, “I’m not a kid person.” I’m the one who’s steered mostly toward adults because adults don’t generally require me to help blow their noses or to answer endless “but why” questions or to pour yet another glass of water.

At Virginia’s funeral last week, I kept seeing her beaming face and hearing her spunky voice, “Are you going to stay here forever? I want you to stay here forever.” For the rest of your precious life here on earth, Virginia, yes.

And what a full life. Grandmothers and fathers and children all stood to paint a collaborative picture of who Virginia was to all of us. Bruce, who’d only met her ten days before her death, stood in trembling, teary silence before he was able to recount how she had led him around, introducing him to everyone only moments after she’d met him. “This is Mr. Bruce. He’s a good man. He’s my friend.”

Children talked about how she loved to sing, how she even sang in her sleep and wanted to be a singer one day. Sarah said, “She wanted me to be her sister, for sure.” “I miss Virginia very much,” said eight-year-old Kery. There were stories of how she loved to make cards for people. I know this--I had to convince her to please write her name on every picture we made in church instead of the name of the person she wanted to give it to. And I’m told by Sarah that she always wanted to make me a card before leaving for church but always ran out of time.

Her closet little friend, Jacika, stood and tried to share, but just stood covering her grief with both hands. Shy and quiet, she shared with me today on the couch at the orphanage, “We used to make up stories, something to play. I used to be the mom and she used to be my little girl. Sometimes she had to get pretend spankings. One of her favorite things was to play play-doh. She made food, like doughnuts.” And she loved to pray. With giggles Jacika imitated with clasped hands: “Dear God, thank you for this day, forgive me for my sins, and help Santa Claus not to pee his bed.” “She’d pray so long, she’d pray and pray and pray and pray.”

Kimberly, a volunteer at the orphanage, said that when Virginia was leaving for her surgery, she turned to everyone and said, “Don’t worry for me, because it’s not just me and Ms. Debbie who are going to the hospital. God is going to be there with us.” Virginia had gone in for a routine orthopedic surgery to reset her arm from a previous break, but had an allergic reaction to the anesthesia.

I think Virginia had something else I envied. Another ability the old and wise so often have--that ability to discern the hidden potential in someone, to see promise and to draw it out through love. Maybe she saw growing within me--the me who always avoided children--the ability to embrace children. Embracing children has been a prayer desire of mine for too long. Jesus embraced them when everyone else shooed them away. He said God’s kingdom is made of up the childlike. It’s high time embracing children moved from a prayer desire of mine to an action, whether I feel the emotions with it or not.

Virginia called out the best in me. She did it simply by living out of the best in her--filling up five short years with all the spunk and passion and love she could pack into them. That's what I want in all my years, Virginia. Thanks for inspiring me to go for it more.

Jesus said, “I’m telling you, once and for all, that unless you return to square one and start over like children, you’re not even going to get a look at the kingdom, let alone get in. Whoever becomes simple and elemental again, like this child, will rank high in God’s kingdom. What’s more, when you receive the childlike on my account, it’s the same as receiving me.”

Tu Hermanito, Your Little Brother

2007-04-17T21:06:00.000-04:00

Dead calm all week. Sauna sweat pouring. Then tonight, as I’m driving to baby Kevin’s wake, the trees come alive with breath blown through them. They’re bending low, trying to touch me, to shore me up as I drive by. It’s surreal. I’m moving through some sort of exultant leaf-clapping commotion while tears stream down my face.

Iris, the mother of my sons’ “other brothers,” their first and best island friends, has delivered her baby. But el nino murio, Omar, her husband, has told me over the phone. The child died. Iris is at the hospital. The baby is at their home.

I don’t know what to expect. I grab some food—fresh fruits and vegetables, bread and meat—and drive over. Walking up the dark path to their house, I take a deep breath and determine not to cry. People are standing or sitting in plastic lawn chairs around the porch. The kids see me and tell me that father and child are inside.

I don’t want to go in.

In the cramped entryway, which serves as their kitchen/dining/living area (the size of a long bathroom stall), their tiny kitchen table is covered in pillowy white. Eder, eleven, pulls away the gauzy white covering from the baby’s face. “Mira, Jenny, mira.”

I don’t want to see.

But oh, what a beautiful child. A sleeping angel. His mother’s perfect red lips, cheeks like his brother Nelson, a chin the spitting image of his brother Omarcito. Perfection. I’m waiting for its cry.

Tears are rolling. I’m using the collar of my shirt to wipe my nose, feeling ashamed of the tears while everyone else seems to just love the baby, to feel so proud of it, to be so moved at its beauty. Six-year-old sister Jesli is smiling up at me.

Omar, the father, opens up the white bundle further to show me the little hands, the perfect little fingers resting on its chest. His fingers caress the baby’s, which curl just as baby’s finger’s do around their father’s. Then the little legs and feet, how long they both are. A big boy. A proud father.

But the legs need straightening. They’ve fallen open the way infants’ legs will do when in their relaxed sleep. He turns to his mother, the grandmother, who’s made it over on the ferry from the mainland. She steps in to help him adjust the legs, to put them straight again.

Omar rests both hands on the table on either side of his baby son. He’s still, gazing. Long, intimate moments, father and child, face to face. This is heartbreaking. But he turns to me and his mother to say that Kevin, this baby, is now in heaven with everyone rejoicing. He claps and dances and points to the sky to make sure I understand his Spanish.

He pulls his youngest daughter Jesli into his arms to tell her again and again, “This is your little brother,” “tu hermanito.” He pulls another son to him, takes that son’s chin in his hand, then does the same with the baby’s, to say how they are exactly the same. He talks about Andrew and Jacob saying they’d have another best friend to go swimming with, another “brother.”

But never with tears, this father. He’s just proud right now.

All I can do is stand there crying, amid people so intimate with death, so used to it, so sure of what to do and how to handle it.

Baby Kevin. You are beautiful. I’ll not truly know you until I get to the other side. Even now, though, you’ve spoken to me. I’m home now, and I’ve found the faces of my sons. I’ve found their infant faces with their infant scents, still burned in my memory. How fragile they still are. How fragile we are. … Your Daddy sent your two oldest brothers, Danis and Nelson, to walk me back down the path to my car. To take care with me. You’ve reminded me, though. I’m taking care with them. I’m taking care with mine. My sons and my husband. My family and friends. How fragile we begin. How fragile we remain.

Picture Worth a Thousand Watts

2007-04-07T13:10:00.000-04:00

Forget no electricity, here's the sunset from our front porch.

THAT'S worth some "minor" inconveniences, wouldn't you say?

Anyway, hide and seek in the pitch black darkness of our house without electricity is crazy fun.

Ode to Electricity

2007-03-26T09:17:00.000-04:00

When I was a kid no electricity felt romantic. The flicker of the candle across our dinner plates or over our board game turned those common activities into something more reverent. More dignified. And the quiet that draped over us. Like the quiet I stole while sitting Indian-style on the bottom of the swimming pool late in the afternoon when everyone else was drying off. A commanding quiet that softened our voices, tiptoed our bare feet and sank us into the down-filled couch to listen to our own breathing. And to think about Little House on the Prairie, horse-drawn wagons, outhouses and braids under sunbonnets.

But I’m not a kid anymore.

And can I just say there’s nothing romantic, reverent or dignified anymore about no electricity. Peaceful quiet draping over us? Huh. I’ve grown to welcome that little hum the refrigerator makes. Even the boat-builder’s power tools outside that usually drive me crazy when I’m reading to the boys—they sound good after another outage.

Everybody says they’re “running from Mr. Reco” here. That means they’re trying to keep their Reco bill down. Reco: Roatan Electric Co. The only real electric company on the island. The one with the monopoly and the high prices. The very one that everyone’s saying is broke with all their equipment failing, with generators running at 70% now, with the demand for power higher than ever before and only growing along with the island. The same one the rumors say will have the entire island of Roatan off the grid for who knows how long if their main generator goes out, which is predicted.

Okay, I can live with that. Without electricity, I mean. (I think.) I cannot, though, live without water. And water requires a pump. And yes, a pump requires power. I don’t wanna be walking past the thirteen pigs out back every day to haul water from the well.

Tangent: Yes, we have thirteen pigs, nine babies and four big ‘uns. Andrew named his favorite brown spotted one Barbecue Ribs. Jacob’s is Whitey. Andrew keeps asking if we can put barbecue seasoning on the scraps we give them.

But back to my Ode to Electricity: When we first started renting here in Roatan, we were okay as long as we had a decent kitchen (stove, microwave, refrigerator), two bedrooms for the four of us, a bathroom, a couch, a TV and an A/C in one of the bedrooms.

That was when we first started renting here. Our house now has no microwave, no (working) TV, and no couch. We’ve draped the lawn chairs in the living room with beach towels. If the power goes out as predicted, we’ll have no refrigerator. (Milk, cheese, meats, vegetables, things that’ll melt—like chocolate!) No bedroom A/C. No computers. And eventually no water. Saving grace: We do have a gas stove. So I can sweat over it and then go jump in the ocean out front!

O woe is me. What a wimp I am. But really, how blessed I am. How truly blessed. Comparatively speaking. Here’s how it usually goes:

It’s sweltering out: “At least we have power to run the fans.”
The power goes out: “At least there’s a breeze picking up.”
It’s dead calm out: “At least we’ve still got water.”
The water runs out: “At least I can still cook on the stove.”
The gas burns out. …

It’s a shame that it takes losing one thing for me to really appreciate what’s usually completely taken for granted. So we have to sit on lawn chairs in the living room. At least we have lawn chairs. So we might have to go without power, maybe even water and refrigeration for who knows how long. At least we had it while we did. At least.

And at the least I’m learning a little more firsthand how MOST of the world lives every day of their lives. And God is with them. And, in the words of Bono at his NAACP acceptance speech, God is with us when we are with them. “You have been a refuge for the poor, a refuge for the needy in his distress, a shelter from the storm and a shade from the heat.” Isaiah 25:4

Refrigerator humming or not, I am blessed. God is with me. And maybe working some of my wimpiness into compassion and action for those His heart is with.

(It’s taken a few days to get this published. Why? I’ve been ready to hit publish when the electricity’s gone out!)

Be the Banana, Jenny

2007-03-06T19:30:00.000-05:00

On my run up this morning the sun was just cresting the valley between two small peaks. I sensed something like this in my heart:

The sun rises first over the valley.

I love this. I’m reminded that the Lord is most sensitive, most comforting, most bright and revealing to those who are in the valley, even if all they’re aware of are the surrounding mountains and their relative lowness. Jesus came for the poor and needy, the imprisoned and low.

When I reached the very top of my run I looked out over the familiar beauty I always stop and brag about to God—a thousand shades of blue in the ocean and sky, another thousand shades of green in the jungled hills. “Thank you, Lord. It’s beautiful!” I sense from the Lord: “Tell me something new this morning.” Something new, different from the typical bragging I do.

It came to me instantly, “I want to be beautiful for you, too.”

I want my life to be like the beauty of creation that makes you stop and thank and praise God.

On the walk down to home, I sensed, “I have more to say to you.” So, Lord. I’m here. I want your words to me. Mostly, I want more of You. Can you tell me more about You, open my heart to understand You more, to hold more tightly to you in love?

As so often happens, He had me take notice of something ordinary. The small apple-banana I was eating. The skin was thin and peeled down easily, leaving the meat exposed. The day before I’d sawed through the prickly outside of a pineapple with our dull knife—the only one we have. The meat was wonderful, but the effort to access it somehow made it seem less sweet, less desirable, than the apple-banana meat. Plus, the banana was sweet through and through, no toughness on the inside like the pineapple with its hard, tasteless core.

Again I sensed: “When one of mine hardens toward others, makes it difficult for others to see their heart and taste the fruit of their life, it creates a place within that’s impenetrable, off limits, to Me as well.”

“Be the banana, Jenny. That doesn’t mean you walk around peel and exposed, offering your fruit to everyone. It means your heart is easily revealed, the fruit of your life easily received by others.”

“There is fruit in you, Jenny. Fruit I grew here. Even if you don’t see it, I am shining upon it as in the valley, and am causing others to marvel at it as you did the beauty this morning. You are the beauty. You are fruit. Open yourself when asked, Jenny. Rely on me to give you the words, same as I did with my beloved disciples.”

“You are Precious, Not Perfect and Proud to shine for me, Jenny.” (This has been a “mantra” for me. A message of healing to me.)

“I love you.”

I love you, Lord. I love that you speak to my heart, that you call me to listen, even when I’ve drifted from the practice, when I’ve fallen in my desire to hear. Increase my love for you, Lord. Call me away with you, to listen, to enjoy, to grow in your light.

Ah, Sweet Roatan

2007-02-28T18:31:00.000-05:00

Ah, to be back in Roatan again ... feeling sand in my bed again every night, smushing ants under my fingers on the kitchen countertops again. And seeing views like this one.

Let's go swimming!

2007-02-23T22:07:00.000-05:00

This little fish is waiting for me. He can't wait any longer. I must go!

In other words, I'll be in Roatan for the next few months. I'm not sure how much access I'll have to the internet. But I'll try to post something here and there.

Vengo, mi amigo de pez!

Who Aren't In Heaven

2007-02-20T06:00:00.001-05:00

Every morning we start our school out with some prayers, some songs, some memory work. Basically I'm trying to expose the boys to various traditions in the faith--whether Protestant, Catholic, Orthodox--just things they might come across in life that I'd like them to at least have familiarity with. Simple things, like the Doxology, or the Rosary, or the Glory Be, or the Lord's Prayer.

Actually, the Lord's Prayer has been quite a regular for quite a while. But just this morning, Jacob finally got around to asking me this: "Mom, why do we say, 'Our Father, who aren't in heaven'?"

Oh, Jacob! You make me laugh. My child, who art full of hugs in the early morning.

Iris Gave Me More

2007-02-20T06:00:00.000-05:00

As I'm still stateside but dying to get back down to Roatan, I've read back through journal entries from our first stay. Found this (which I've tweaked):

I did some "not-knowing-what-I'm-praying-for” praying last week for my neighbor, Iris. She'd come up to ask to borrow 100 Lempira (about $5), but before she could finish asking, she crumbled in tears. I put my arms around her and she just wailed, Spanish pouring out as fast as her tears. Too fast to catch. She mentioned something about going to her husband in West End (a town just down the road), so Clint gave her a ride. Later she came back to ask for 1,000 Lempira (about $50). That's when I finally deciphered what I was praying for (with the aid of my Spanish-English dictionary). An uncle on the mainland had just passed away, and she desperately wanted to go to her family there.

Clint and I talked and decided we would not loan her the money but bless her with it as a gift (un regalo). “Funny” how my current reading through the Gospels has me noticing how often Jesus references money, giving to those you don't expect to pay you back, using your worldly wealth to make friends, storing up treasures in heaven ... Giving.

Iris praised God for the money. As did I: “Gloria a Dios solamente” (glory to God only). After all, it’s his money in our hands to place in hers. To get her on the ferry from here to her family on Honduras’ mainland.

Once Iris had returned from the trip, a crowd of people gathered, standing on the red dirt hillside around her front porch. Singing praises to God in the dark, illuminated with only a bulb from her porch, a sliver of moon and zillions of stars (that my eight-year-old said looked like you could just reach up and touch). Danis, Iris’ eldest son, repeated some of the Spanish words from the short, little, bundle-of-fire preacher who came.

Though my mind understood close to nothing, my heart soaked in something beautiful. Something so much more valuable in my heart than money in my hands. Iris had given me more.

See, I've been struggling lately with temptations to just feel like a loser Christian. Like I'm just selfish, self-centered, lazy, incapable of personal sacrifice, a hearer not a doer, prideful, not a loving-enough mother or wife ... you name it. Wondering why in the world we're here on this island, who am I kidding that God could touch anyone through me.

BUT, standing under those stars, on that wet red dirt, engulfed in those Honduran prayers and songs, I realized I can at least be thankful that I've been someone Iris can come to. She reminded me that I am, after all, who God says I am (not who condemnation’s voice says I am). God's word is alive and active in my life. And God's purpose will prevail in my life.

Today when she was standing in my doorway to leave, having brought me up some homemade tortillas and beans and cheese, I just sensed the Lord saying, "Go over there and just squeeze her." Of course, something else was saying, "You don't wanna do that." But I did. I just went over and squeezed her. Choosing to act out of who God says am, what His Word is doing in me, and how His purpose is leading me.

Tonight all five of Iris' beautiful, brown, Mayan-descended children were up here in our tiny bedroom, all piled on our double bed to watch a movie with my two boys in the mix. Hopefully it gave Iris some time to relax in God’s arms and find more of his comfort for her grieving heart.

Lord, both our hearts--continue the work you've begun there.

Singin' with the Oinker Sisters

2007-02-19T09:12:00.000-05:00

I woke this morning singing along with Nathan Lane and The Oinker Sisters. What were we all singing? Why, "Sing," of course. You know you know it, from Sesame Street ...

Sing, sing a song
Sing out loud
Sing out strong
Sing of good things, not bad
Sing of happy, not sad
Sing, sing a song
Make it simple
To last your whole life long
Don't worry that it's not good enough
For anyone else to hear
Sing, sing a song
La la la la la la la la la la la
La la la la la la la
La la la la la la la la la la la
La la la la la la la!

Now, come on, you can't tell me that song doesn't just make you want to sing. And just be happy.

Really, Sesame Street and Mister Rogers have so much depth of truth for living, I'm realizing now that I catch some of them as an adult. Mister Rogers consistently makes me cry when he's talking straight to me (to the camera) to tell me I'm really something special. And "Sing." Darn it, I'm not gonna worry if it's not good enough, I'm just gonna sing my little happy song. Maybe I'll sweep up one of my boys in the process and drag their too-long-for-holding-anymore legs in a waltz around the kitchen.

Join me, anyone?

Starry, Starry Night

2007-02-18T11:51:00.000-05:00

If possible, carry your laptop outside under the stars tonight and enjoy this: The paintings of Vincent Van Gogh set to Don McLean's "Starry Starry Night." So beautiful.

My thoughts are like grasshoppers, ...

2007-02-17T01:55:00.000-05:00

springing every which direction in front of a lawnmower.

I’m borrowing from JourneyMama today. She had thoughts “like clouds, driven by a stiff wind” that she numbered out in this post. Here’s mine:

1. I'm freezing in this old house.
2. I’m hungry.
3. I just finished up reading a Mother Teresa book to the boys and can’t help but contemplate what living out a vow of poverty would look like for me.
4. I’d want more variety in my foods. I don’t really like day-in-day-out rice and bulgur.
5. I’m not really sure what bulgur is.
6. Also, I don’t think I could handle the rough white sari with the blue trim and the sandals. Especially when I’d have to go accept a Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo, Norway. Because it’s freezing there and my feet would crack off like icicles.
7. I think I could handle having just one outfit though, if it weren’t for temperature changes. Especially once everyone just came to “get it.”
8. “Yeah, she always wears those pajama pants and running sandals with the grey hooded sweatshirt.”
9. I’d also want more than just a bucket and a bar of soap as my sole toiletry items. Seriously, what did they do, the sisters you know, during that time of month? And what about zits and stuff. I gotta have my Aveeno foaming cleanser and my Neutrogena On the Spot and shampoo. Soap on my hair?
10. All too often I realize that while the thought of something is, well, appealing, the actual reality of it is entirely something else. Like the thought of living among the poorest of the poor, to be able to touch the body of Christ in one of Teresa’s “dying destitutes.” How cool would that be, like totally a documentary moment in the life of Jenny, Nun of the Sisters of Married with Kids.
11. Then again, I’m looking into those sores on that poor dying destitute and I think I might spy … yes, I do … maggots. … And I’m running for the nearest bathroom with my hand over my mouth. Seriously. (I just finished reading the book.)
12. Sometimes I think it’s just that I’m fickle. Even with my “passions.”
13. I love writing. When I’m writing, I feel purpose and fulfillment. I’m a good writer.
14. I’m a terrible writer. Who was I kidding. The process of it frustrates me and the product of it bores people.
15. I am fickle. And generally selfish. There’s no way I could take a vow of poverty.
16. I can’t even pass up a set of six plastic Valentine cups on sale for 50 cents at Walmart. I rationalized: Less than 10 cents each and I can “share the love” in Roatan.
17. And another thing about the poverty vow. What about dental hygiene? I’ve gotta have my dental floss.
18. So, I try to listen to God’s voice—or is it just my own trying to make me feel okay with this life I live?
19. And while listening, I hear something Mother Teresa said, “Spread love everywhere you go: first of all in your own house. Give love to your children, to your wife or husband, to a next door neighbor... Let no one ever come to you without leaving better and happier. Be the living expression of God's kindness; kindness in your face, kindness in your eyes, kindness in your smile, kindness in your warm greeting.”
20. Now, is that so hard?
21. Well, yeah, sometimes it does feel too hard. Because I feel so much of a failure at those things so often. I haven’t been “spreading the love,” even in possession of cheap plastic Valentine cups.
22. I’ve been hoarding it. Clutching the cups as if they were all filled to the brim with every drop of Jenny-energy-love I have left.
23. But what if I could take the vow of poverty? Live among the poorest of the poor? Do without the foaming cleanser? Stop being so darn fickle and selfish.
24. Shoot, there I go again, glamorizing the thought of something when I know good and well the reality of it is, well, not so glamorous.
25. So here I am.
26. Here I am.
27. That’s all it has to be. I think.
28. In this chair, in these clothes, with this blasted lotion smeared on my face. With two boys and a husband and friends and family and strangers.
29. On this piece of dirt on planet Earth, swinging and spinning around in space.
30. I don’t have to be hoarding cups of Jenny-energy-love.
31. I’m tiny.
32. But God is great. He’s got something up his sleeve in putting me here, with everything bound up inside this body that He wanted to put there. Even if I am freezing and hungry and fickle and selfish all the time, he's up to something with me.
33. You wanna Valentine cup? It’s not my love inside. It’s God’s.

Everything's bigger in Texas?

2007-02-16T01:11:00.000-05:00

My ten-year-old Andrew can be extremely serious sometimes (a lot like me). Such as during our first extended stay in Roatan when he came to me with this very serious observation about the island:

“Mom, I’ve noticed something about living here that’s different from living in Texas. When you fart here in Honduras, you smell it less than when you fart in Texas. And you don’t hear it as much here either.”

So serious, he was, I tell you.

(HeyJeana, have I used yet another word you never figured I'd use in a post?)

Gotta Laugh

2007-02-15T18:03:00.000-05:00

A true story that still makes me laugh:

So, my cousin H. goes to boy scout camp. When my other cousin P. and his parents go up to visit H., he's been in the infirmary because he’s had this severe, severe headache.

The cure for the headache? Tons of Vaseline smeared on the back of his head.

Why, why, you ask? ... He’d gotten a tick in the back of his head which had stayed so long and sucked so much blood, it was giving him severe headaches. The only way the camp nurse could get it out was to suffocate it out with the Vaseline.

Eeew! ... I did recently find a tick on the back of my knee. I was in the passenger's seat with a friend, talking and scratching absentmindedly at what I thought was a scab there--one of those scabs that won't let go. When it let go, Eeew! A tick! Conveniently, the windows were down and I flicked it out without missing a beat in the conversation.

Works for Me: Geography CD

2007-02-14T06:00:00.000-05:00

This "Geography Songs" CD:

Imagine this: Your seven-year-old skipping around the kitchen in his pajamas singing a very Arabic sounding tune with words like this: "The Middle East has Israel, Iran, Iraq, Bahrain, Yemen, Kuwait. ... Saudi Arabia, Oman, Qatar, United Arab Emirates ... "

Or imagine your ten-year-old knowing where to find Melanesia on the globe.

That's what'll happen from very little effort on your part. Just play the CD with a big map in front of you all. The songs'll just get into your head--and their heads. They'll be humming them when you tuck them into bed at night. Best of all, they'll be learning the geography of this wonderful world! Fostering a love for it all.

We don't have the states and capitols, just the world geography. I hear the latest version has 33 songs covering 225 countries.

Well, shucks.

2007-02-13T02:13:00.000-05:00

I feel like I'm in fourth grade again, when I won first place in the "Why I Love My Mom" contest and got it published in the town newspaper. (With a whopping circulation of probably 500!)

I haven't "won" anything, but it's just as good as that: Mary over at Owlhaven chose my "I Am From" entry as one of three finalists. There's also three finalists in the "I Am" category. All six, I must say, are wonderful. (Did you catch that? I included myself! Hee, hee.)

So go visit Mary's finalists post, then read all six, then vote. I've got my personal favorites, but you decide!

And thanks, Mary, for liking where I Am From!

Valentine's 81-100

2007-02-13T02:08:00.000-05:00

of 100 Random Things I love about My Husband.

(He's finally arrived in Roatan, Honduras, by the way, having driven from Texas. When we got the news my 10-year-old Andrew and I danced. Jumped around holding hands until we were winded. Woo-hoo! His car was packed out with toys for a children's party and baby things for a baby shower--both in Roatan. So thankful all those things made it intact as well.)

So now, the remainder of the list (his Valentine's gift):

81. He’s got great taste in music. I thought I was eclectic. He’s broadened my appreciation even more.

82. Usually he plays his current favorite so much I end up hating it.

83. He’s a sucker for a good rock ballad. He’ll dedicate one to me and then dance with me to it.

84. Anytime I need a night out, or a weekend away, he gives it to me. Not as a privilege or something I have to negotiate for. Just something that comes free.

85. He misses me when I’m gone. I can tell from the way he loves on me when I’m back.

86. He’s not much of a phone-talker, same as me. We don’t feel obligated to call each other all the time to check in.

87. I’ve never known anyone as generally happy as he usually is. He’s just content.

88. He’d love a motorcycle. Already has the motorcycle license. But he’s content for the time being without one.

89. Already has the motorcycle leather jacket too. Sharp, sharp looking. A deep, dark brown one with sleek lines. He saw it and revisited it quite a few times until it was 75% off.

90. He’s not an impulse buyer. He’ll walk away from anything in the store to try the internet for a better price. Or to wait for a sale.

91. He’s not obsessed with organization the way I am. His shoes reside wherever he takes them off. And his jeans and underwear and shirt …

92. He’s seriously organized with finances and business. Excel spreadsheets reach their full potential in his hands.

93. He walks with really heavy feet. I used to hold my breath every time he walked from one end of our apartment to the other on behalf of those below us. Andrew’s inherited his heavy feet. Funny, they’re both pretty much lightweights.

94. He’s the BEST husband.

95. He doesn’t like it when someone says they have the “best” husband. Like they’re bragging, like theirs is better than everyone else’s.

96. He’s a really good dad. I’m happiest when one or both boys are pinned on the ground under him, squealing and laughing.

97. He doesn’t say “I love you” very much, but when he does, it’s serious.

98. He’s very slow to anger. Provoking him is major work on my part.

99. He’s very slow to worry. Anxiety is something I don’t think he’s ever seriously experienced. Not because he doesn’t have reason, but just because he’s just so trusting that things will work out.

100. I think he’ll be able to look back on his life and have very few regrets. Something I wish I could say of myself.

Love Keeps Knocking

2007-02-11T20:54:00.000-05:00

I'm a sucker for chocolate, which is the prize for Scribbit's Write-Away contest this month. The topic is love. So here's my entry:

“The poorest of the poor are those who feel that they are unloved.” —Mother Teresa

There was an old run-down cracker-box of a house—probably an ancient slave house with brown shingles nailed around the sides, broken windows and a sagging porch—in “the quarters” on the way out to our house in Old Magee. “The quarters,” along with Confederate flags draped across the cab windows of pick-up trucks and boys that bragged about their KKK dads—those things grew from roots sunk deep in the wet, black soil of my Dixie hometown.

That old run-down shack was just something that slid past my window while after-school snacks of ginger snaps and milk or the chocolate iced cake under the cake-plate cover awaited me in the kitchen at home. But to my mama, that shack was something to do something about. Something to teach me about love.

Love wasn’t just something my mama wrote on her homemade Valentine boxes of red construction paper and white doilies. It wasn’t just something she sang about in church.

The first time we parked the car and stepped onto the rotten planks of that porch to knock on the door, I was scared to death. I’d wanted to hide behind my mama’s back, but she had me do the knocking. She had me hold the basket of fruit.

Whew, I thought. No one came to the door. Something like rats scratching across the floor sounded from inside. We stood around a little longer, then left the basket outside.

Week after week we’d stop and knock on the old lady’s door. Sometimes she’d be sitting in an old metal lawn chair on her front porch. But as we pulled up, she’d scoot inside like a scared rabbit hiding from dogs. She’d hide behind the door while we tried coaxing her out with a pot of beans or some canned stuff, a box of candy or some sheets and bed covers. Whatever we happened to think of.

My Mama asked around in the neighborhood, trying to find out if the old woman had any family, if anyone helped her out. Everyone’s response: “Naw, ma’am, you don’ wanna mess with her. She’s crazy.”

That didn’t matter. My Mama’s love didn’t care about crazy or not. We kept knocking.

And about the time I was comfortable with our little routine of hide-and-seek-and-leave-a-treat, she started opening the door just a crack. The poor thing would tuck her head down and fix her eyes just in front of our feet. Behind her the room looked dark, dank, ghostly. The reek of sewage seeped out.

“Well, hello, ma’am. How’re you t’day? … Well, this is my daughter Jenny and we live just over yonder that way. … We just wanted to give you this watermelon. We see you here sittin’ on your porch and just thought you might like a watermelon t’day. ”

We’d ask her if she needed anything, if she had some family, if she liked purple-hull peas, if we could fix her broken windows, … anything. But she’d never answer more than indecipherable mumbles and “no’m, no’m.” She’d just take what we left, keeping her head down, and shut the door back. She did get really excited about firewood. We’d seen smoke from her chimney. No telling what she was finding to burn. Mama started having the men who delivered our firewood deliver some to her house, too.

All this went on for three or four years. About as long as it took me to start feeling love for that crazy ol’ lady. To see that she wasn’t anything to be scared of.

One day we stopped by and she was gone. Not just hiding inside. The door was open, revealing abandoned filth.

It took us a while to track her down in government housing. A little one-room apartment scattered with things from our house—the quilt on her cot, the Coca-cola glasses by the sink, the pot on the stovetop.

The last time I went with Mama to see her before heading off to college, carrying food and a huge vase of flowers, she was just tickled to see us. Her head was up. Her eyes came up to meet ours. And she asked us to come in. She hugged us both “but good,” as my Mama says. She let us sit down in her new little place. We still couldn’t understand much of her mumbles. But that didn’t matter. We loved each other.

“Dear children, let us not love with words and tongue, but with actions and in truth.” 1 John 3:18

Valentine's 61-80

2007-02-11T10:39:00.000-05:00

of 100 Random Things about my Husband (finally continuing on with the rest of his Valentine's gift):

61. He cries about as many times as not when he’s praying about me and the family.

62. He hates jogging. Sometimes he’ll let me torture him with it. I’m mean. I’ll mix in lunges and jumps and other mean, hard stuff.

63. Sometimes he makes me exercise with him. Basketball is his favorite torture. Or football. I can’t play seriously. I laugh too hard. I start giggling just thinking about trying to make a goal and end up doubled over mid-court.

64. He might procrastinate, but he always gets the job done. His way is usually a lesson for me in trust, in not getting ahead of myself, or ahead of God.

65. His elementary teachers let him get away with terrible letter construction. I mean, he uses so many unnecessary strokes. Somebody should have caught it at the start and corrected it. It’s too late now. And it’s chicken-scratch.

66. He wears as few clothes as possible. Through all seasons he wears slide-on sandals. And t-shirts in the dead of winter. Andrew takes after him, which means in the winter everyone gives me that “You ought to be dressing your poor child better” look.

67. He loves me good. This is amazing to me.

68. He’s got the same tastes as me in so many things—clothes, decorating, movies, food.

69. He used to have beautiful teeth, until a hockey stick got him across the mouth. Now he has beautiful crowns.

70. Sometimes he carries on the most hilarious conversations with me in his sleep. “What you don’t understand about that monkey over there is …”

71. He’s really good at putting people at ease in the ocean and coaxing them to do things they’ve never tried before.

72. He takes really good care of his possessions. His favorite sweatshirt. His leather jacket. His technology.

73. He’s not a reader, but when I finish a book, if I tell him it’s really good and he ought to read it, he will. Even if it’s a 500+ pager like Poisonwood Bible.

74. He’s a good listener. Unless I’m telling him where to look for something.

75. He can never find anything, even when it’s literally right in front of him.

76. He’s an excellent coach, at just about anything.

77. He’s extremely competitive, but he doesn’t mind losing. People who quit (or quit playing hard) because they’re losing really bother him. He’s a great sport.

78. During a volleyball game once, he punched a guy in the nose, drew blood and everything. Then walked into our newlywed apartment with a bloody (not his blood), torn shirt. Moments later he turned around and drove back to the court to apologize. He’d responded simply in defense, to avoid a punch himself, and got the guy in the nose on his first and only punch. He didn’t come home the second time until hours later, having resumed the game with the now slightly humbled volleyball star.

79. Once he said to me, “No one can make you feel stupid unless you already believe you are.” I don’t know if it’s completely true, but it’s made a big difference.

80. He’s not afraid of confrontation. It’s part of honesty for him, being true to himself with others.

I Am From

2007-02-10T01:45:00.000-05:00

This is my "entry" into Owlhaven's writing contest, due by noon tomorrow. She has an "I am from" writing prompt that I fell in love with it and couldn't stop thinking about until I had done it. So here it is:

I am from slow rumbling thunder on drizzly days, handmade quilts, moss hanging from live oaks, and purple hull peas shelled on the porch swing. From empty Coco-cola bottles refunded at Piggly Wiggly, and Ford pickups moseying over country roads with kids in the back holding Sonic cherry slushies.

I am from front yards ankle-deep in pine needles and leaf piles burning. From jacks tingling from Mama’s hands onto the green kitchen linoleum and the crackle of kindling in the fireplace while socked feet pad down the stairs.

I am from abandoned cemeteries overrun with daffodils, dogwood trees blooming in the back ravine, ticks and mosquito bites, fat tadpoles in Mason jars, lightening bugs cupped in our hands, cockleburs stuck on our bobbysocks and sour wild plums along the barbed-wire fence.

I am from graveside ceremonies that aren’t over until everyone’s shoveled some dirt on. I am from white Easter hats and stockings on sisters who romped during the week in corduroys with their bottle-fed goats, calves, colts and kittens. I am from gentle brown eyes and delicate fingers on strong women, from Farris and Mary and Marie. From saw-dust hands carrying leathery doctor’s bags, from E.A. and Charlie and Charles.

I am from Dixie and Confederate flags and KKK, but from family who taught me “Ain’t no difference ‘tween my black skin and your white, we all the same unda’neath. And God loves ever one of us.” I am from Southern hospitality to ever one. From thinkers and doers “do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”

From “Pretty is, is pretty does” and “Practice makes perfect” piano lessons tomorrow. From “Hold your shoulders back.”

I am from week-long revivals and old-fashioned-day Sundays with “dinner on the ground” and flappy calico sunbonnets. From yelling preachers and a mama whispering prayers on her knees every morning and “let’s fix the windows on the widow’s house before the cold sets in.”

I'm from hillbilly Louisiana and red-neck Mississippi, French Huguenots and Scottish nobility, from Indian women who married English gun-packing farmers. I am from fried apple pies and turnip greens. From lucky black-eyed peas on Magnolia china for New Years and fruit salad mounded into watermelon baskets on Fourth of July.

From the grandfather who called me his gal-baby and taught me how to punch the letters of my name into leather, from the grandmother who’d let me watch cartoons sitting Indian-style on the floor with an entire bottle of Maraschino cherries, and from another grandmother who wrote poetry and fiddled and sang and painted and crocheted her creativity into my soul.

I am from dresser drawers stuffed with journals and farmer’s almanacs and old love letters. From snapshots hanging on all the walls and in little frames on every tabletop. And from long-gone storytellers whose precious memories still travel from my lips to the ears of my boys snug under their quilts at bedtime.

Valentine's 41-60

2007-02-09T18:52:00.000-05:00

of 100 Random Things about My Husband:

41. He likes to play sports, not watch them. For this, I am grateful.

42. He loves volleyball. His ball control is exceptional. If only he were a few inches taller. But he can still jump higher than most white boys.

43. He’s not afraid of change. We both sort of seem to thrive on it, actually.

44. He’s eaten the same cereal for breakfast every morning for years and years. He’s drank the same Tropicana orange juice for at least sixteen years.

45. When I met him his diet consisted of dry grilled chicken, corn on the cob, broccoli-cheese rice and dry salad. Now he’s eating grouper and shrimp and crab and broccoli and green beans and, if it’s part of my “Saucy Chicken and Asparagus,” asparagus.

46. He loves Skittles. And sour candy. My jaw aches thinking about it.

47. He’s good with computers. I love that.

48. He gives me technology when I think I don’t really need it, only to realize a few days later that I can’t live without it. Such as my first laptop.

49. He loves researching what interests him. On the internet. Once our email inbox had an email about the latest in turbine energy.

50. Mostly he researches technology, like surround sound/home entertainment technology. He knows how to find the best deal on any technology. http://www.visualapex.com/ That’s one of his favorites.

51. He’s ordered more projectors and receivers and plasmas and surround-sound systems than I can count. He’s installed for quite a few friends, family and one Walmart stranger.

52. He’ll spend hours on the internet before purchasing any technology. He says he’s got to hold up his reputation. I know it’s just ‘cause he wants them to have the best for their money.

53. He’s great with teenagers and kids. He’d rather hang out with them any day over adults. If a group of kids needs someone to get them interacting, playing, having fun, Clint’s the man for the job.

54. I think teenagers and kids like Clint because they sense his honesty and authenticity. But mainly that he's still one of them.

55. He totally gets when I have a migraine and have to be left alone in the dark with no noise.

56. He’s a pretty decent sick man. He doesn’t whine. Or exaggerate symptoms. At least I don’t think so.

57. He loves watching movies, but doesn’t remember many he’s watched.

58. He’s really good with finances. He was a finance major in college, but it just comes naturally for him.

59. He’s amazing with math, but not a great math teacher. Thankfully, that’s not his calling.

60. He’s not a list maker. Or not with pen and paper anyway. His math mind keeps his list pretty organized right there in his head.

Valentine's 21-40

2007-02-08T08:40:00.000-05:00

of 100 Random Things I love about my husband (his Valentine's gift):

21. He’s strong. Once he and a college friend untied my rappelling line with me still attached. My hair had gotten tangled in the line, stopping me. They had to lower me down.

22. He’s got really soft skin, the softest forehead and back. I love kissing his forehead.

23. His hair feels like silk slipping across my fingers.

24. When we graduated college and started our first “real” jobs, he kept his head covered with a bandana during the summer because he thought blonde hair didn’t look that professional. (Of course, now it totally fits his profession.)

25. He’s honest. Plain honest. Don’t ask him if you don’t want to hear the truth.

26. Sometimes his honesty gets him in trouble.

27. What you see is what you get with him. He doesn’t pretend to be anything he’s not. His lack of playing good ole Southern gentleman the way my past boyfriends had with my mom didn’t really get him started on the right foot with her.

28. He’s on the right foot now. My mom adores him, calls him "son" and means it.

29. Speaking of feet, the callouses on the bottom of his feet are lethal.

30. He won’t let me do anything about them.

31. He’s able to walk over any surface. Maybe even nails and coals.

32. While feet callouses are off-limits, he lets me trim and pluck his eyebrows. He ends it with “Okay, okay, I can’t take it anymore!”

33. He loves helping people with anything he knows something about. He met a guy in the electronics department of Walmart, sent him out of Walmart with a website and his cell number in hand, and went over to the guy’s house a few days later to help him wire everything. A complete stranger.

34. He can talk country. Such as with that guy from Walmart. “I ain’t got nothing else to do tonight.” The guy gave him $50 when he left.

35. He looks sort of sexy when he hasn’t had a shower in a couple of days. It’s the way his beard grows, darker in the goatie area.

36. He’s sexiest when he’s fresh out of the ocean with a mask on his forehead or when he’s just pulled his hood off from snowskiing or boarding. Or after hard off-road mountain biking. Basically, anytime he’s disheveled and sweaty.

37. His hair is wavier in Roatan. It flips out in the back a little so you can see it from the front on either side. I especially like that when he’s got a bandana on.

38. Almost all his shirts are white or off-white. A few in black. ALL his board shorts are black.

39. Things don’t have to be black and white for him. He’s okay with gray.

40. He’s never worn a watch but always seems to know what time it is. It’s weird.

Valentine's 1-20

2007-02-07T10:23:00.000-05:00

I'm sharing with you all my Valentine's Day gift to my husband Clint. I already gave it to him, since we'll be apart this Valentine's. No, sorry, it's not chocolate. It's ... drum roll ... a 100 Random Things about My Husband list!

His primary "love language" isn't words of affirmation, but I think it meant a lot to him. And to me, just to sit and "count the ways." (I challenge you girls: Make a 100 Things list for your hubbies. Link me, or whatever you call it, if you do.)

I won't make this one as drawn out as my 100 Things list. So, in 20 per batch, here's 1 to 20.

1. I love his laugh. I have an exhale laugh that doesn’t make a lot of noise (unless it's really funny and I'm still laughing after taking a breath). Clint has a really pleasant chuckle. We laugh at the same things.

2. He has a great sense of humor. More precisely, he’s extremely quick-witted. I’ve gotta be on my toes to keep up with him on humorous comments.

3. He’s amazing in the water. He likes to scuba dive, not for all the reef and fish, but for the joy of playing weightlessly in the water.

4. Adventure calls him and he answers. Fear isn’t in his makeup.

5. He zooms down off-road mountain-biking trails. He flies over bumps on skis, slides down rails or launches off jumps on a board. He tries a 360 flip at the end of every wakeboarding run, even though he never lands it. He climbs and rappels and takes me on a shark dive for our anniversary.

6. He’s not easily frustrated. He’ll fall in powder up to his neck with a board bound on his feet, have to work forever to get out, then zoom past me saying how awesome that powder was.

7. He always surprises me with something for Christmas. Even though I’ve never really given him an official Christmas gift. ... That sounds terrible in writing.

8. Our first Christmas as newlyweds in Chicago, when we said we weren’t giving each other gifts, he stayed gone way too long and came back with a stack of boxes just for me.

9. He has no patience with gift-giving. I opened my boxes right then and there.

10. And no patience with marriage proposals either. We’d practically just sat down for dinner and, having grown ravenous after snow-skiing hard all day, my mouth was stuffed with appetizers when he popped the question. I always thought those things were supposed to happen over dessert.

11. The proposing and the “yes” were a given. But he’s made sure the days since then have been all about surprise.

12. He pays attention to what I need and surprises me with it. He bought me a Foodsaver this Christmas ‘cause he knew I really envied my friend’s in Roatan.

13. Clint’s completely accepting of himself in the area of looks. I envy this.

14. My husband isn’t a singer, but I love his voice most of all. His falsetto melts me.

15. I can’t tell if he’s fallen asleep or not when we’re watching a movie. His eyes are pretty squinty anyway. If I nudge him he swears he was awake, even when he has no idea what’s happening in the movie. I hold my hand in front of his eyes, then nudge him, to prove to both of us he was asleep.

16. If he gets sleepy while driving, he stops or passes the wheel to someone else. He’s a reliable late-night driver.

17. He wants to be corrected if he’s saying something wrong (wrong grammar, pronunciation and so forth). He’s almost done with saying “I’d went” instead of “had gone.” Go-went-gone. Go-went-gone.

18. A true Texas cowboy, he is. Grew up mucking horse stalls and all the rest.

19. He’s a hard worker, in part because of all those stalls.

20. He’s a true Florida beach bum. He was born there and loves every chance he gets to be in the ocean or in the sand.

Mi Familia!

2007-02-06T09:55:00.000-05:00

Important announcement:

My hubby Clint just left this morning to drive from here in Texas to Roatan, Honduras (about a five day trip). He'll be stopping off in Houston to coordinate with traveling companions. The boys and I will be racing around for quick visits with family and friends before flying down to meet him in a couple of weeks. The extended separation and thoughts of Daddy traveling so far are hitting the boys a little hard. (And I think Jacob's watched too many boat-sinking movies. Clint's last leg on a ferry ride sounded just too dangerous.) Anyway, hopes and prayers appreciated!

And now, back to regular programming:

Finally, no more 100 Random Things about Me list! For those of you who now know me a little better (even if you're thinking too much better, thank you very much), here's a couple of family pics. First in Roatan, at the park where we work, after a full day of SNUBA diving and kayaking and entertaining tourists.

And here we are at my husband's parent's home for Christmas. Now, no woman would ever say she liked her pictures, so it's no surprise I'm saying it. But, seriously, I've got some racoon-eye thing going on down there. See it? Remember how I said I hate makeup. Well, I was trying to cover under-eye blue circles. Instead, I made under-eye white circles. ... I know, nevermind.

Stay tuned for another 100 Things list. (Hey, I heard that!) NOT about ME again! Something infinitely more fun to me than that.

91-100 of 100

2007-02-06T09:18:00.000-05:00

Random things about me. (I know you'll wanna read it all over again once you get to the end, so here's where to start at the beginning.)

91. I don’t laugh out loud very much. I wish I did. My friend Jeana has a great laugh-out-loud laugh.

92. I find myself closing off around certain people in my life, or just stifling myself a bit (whether to protect them or myself, I don’t know), not being as free as I’d like to be. I wish I didn’t do that.

93. The older I get, the freer. The more I embrace freedom in Jesus. The more I know him, the more I know myself. Knowing the truth sets me free.

94. When I was a girl, I rescued a kitten from a mother who wouldn’t nurse it. She used to climb under my shirt up to my arm pit and nurse on my shirt sleeve there until I had wet pits. I named her Precious. Precious ended up buried in a pine box under a holly tree in the yard.

95. Precious II was paid for with my saved-up Christmas and birthday money. A runty, tortoiseshell Persian. I never could get over feeling sorry for her, since she was a runt and all. (I’m realizing the number of times I've said “feeling sorry” in this list and that it is a frequent motivator in my life.)

96. The name I consistently sense the Lord speaking to me is Precious. A word that went out of my vocabulary for years, probably about the time Precious II died when I went off to college, when my heart’s ability to harden dramatically increased.

97. Knowing I am Precious to God—it feels significant and intimate for me. And breaks through the hardness.

98. I’m precious, NOT perfect. Perfectionism has always been an issue for me. But I'm learning to be more gracious with myself.

99. I agree with Mohandas K. Ghandi: “Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony.”

100. I feel most disappointed with myself when what I do isn’t in line with what I think and say. I think, “I will practice the presence of God throughout this day, pausing to think of him and enjoy him and hear him every so often, because I love him and feel most at peace in his presence. And because doing this sets me in a place of peace with others.” Then I wake up the next day and think it again, realizing that it’s the first time I’ve thought of it since yesterday morning.

81-90 of 100

2007-02-05T18:20:00.000-05:00

Random things about me. (Start at the beginning of this humongo list here.)

81. One day I want to draw and paint again. My mom is an artist (actually makes money in her town’s art gallery). I took for granted the art lessons I got through high school. Maybe one day I’ll have the opportunity again (and will appreciate them this time).

82. One time on the kindergarteners’ playground, some 1st graders made fun of my rusty red corduroy pants. I still can’t wear corduroy pants.

83. I like to think being in style isn’t that important to me. But I do find myself making mental notes, “I will not look like/wear anything like that when I’m old,” “I’m gonna be a hip old lady.” Old is so relative.

84. I’m getting quite a few grays. The fact that they’re in the trashcan betrays my vanity.

85. I have “virgin” hair. That’s what friends in Roatan called it—never been touched by coloring products.

86. I consistently hear from the Lord that my husband is one of his most precious gifts to me. Most precious and fragile. Like an unopened present that I must handle with great care. Sometimes I forget this.

87. My two sons are pure sunshine and hope to me. My heart breaks with love for them. Being their mother is the best job. An honor.

88. Sometimes the weight of responsibility in parenting feels too much to bear. I realize this is motivated out of fear and God is the one who can bear that weight for me.

89. I never follow recipes strictly. I take 'em more like "suggestions for creating your own concoction." I've made amazing meals once and no more.

90. I can’t really just sit and watch TV. It feels too purposeless. There are times, though, when the purpose of vegetation pulls me in.

Go to 91-100.

71-80 of 100

2007-02-04T20:50:00.000-05:00

Random things about me. (Start at 1-10 here. )

71. I love learning. I keep a list of “Things I need to learn more about.”

72. I love researching. I love the internet for that reason. I type in “history of the word sincere” to find out that it doesn’t actually mean “without wax” in Greek. It’s origins are Latin. (Research it.)

73. I went through a short stage in college when I ate oranges like they were apples. Biting through and eating peel and all. I think it was sleep deprivation.

74. I have about 30 handwritten journals and about 30 more typed journals. I started when I was about ten. I’ve been off and on. It helps me with post-game analysis and pre-game preparation (with life, not football).

75. I print out my typed journals, put them in three-ring binders and include any notes, napkins, crafts, receipts, articles or other stuff that’s important to me.

76. I’m planning to read back through all my journals when I’m old. Or when my kids have moved out. That’s why I’m trying to be as honest as I can, get down to the heart of the matter. My mom did (and does) this with her journals and it’s beautiful.

77. I’m hoping one day I can write a novel. Or just be a good storyteller to my grandkids. I love great stories and great storytellers. I listened to Frank McCourt reading one of his books on tape. I think he’s an excellent storyteller.

78. I want to be cremated. Then sprinkled wherever those left after me want to sprinkle me. Donating me to science might be okay, too.

79. When I’m dead I won’t care if anyone reads my journals. They’re the real me, I hope. The evolving me.

80. I’m ridiculously cold natured. I’m freezing to death right now.

Go to 81-90.

Chocolate!

2007-02-03T17:55:00.000-05:00

Alrighty, as requested, here's one of my favorite recipes. (I double the sauce and then overdose on it.)

Chocolate Chunk Bread Pudding with White Chocolate Brandy Sauce

1 loaf day old French bread
3 ½ cups milk
1 cup half-n-half
4 large eggs, lightly beaten
1 cup sugar
2 Tbs melted butter
1 Tbs vanilla
1/8 tsp salt
2 (4 oz) Ghirardelli bittersweet chocolate bars, chopped

Tear bread into small pieces; place in a large bowl. Add milk and half-and half; let stand 10 minutes. Combine eggs, sugar, butter, vanilla and salt. Add to bread; stirring well. Stir in chopped chocolate. Spoon mixture into greased 9x13 pan. Bake, uncovered at 325 for 55 minutes or until firm and lightly browned. Cut into squares and serve warm with White Chocolate Brandy Sauce.

For White Chocolate Brandy Sauce:
½ cup sugar
½ cup butter
½ cup half and half
1 (4 oz) Ghirardelli White Chocolate bar
3 Tbs brandy

Combine first 3 ingredients in a saucepan. Bring to a boil over medium heat, stirring until sugar dissolves. Reduce heat and simmer 5 minutes. Remove from heat and add white chocolate, stirring until chocolate melts. Stir in brandy. Serve warm!

61-70 of 100

2007-02-03T10:31:00.000-05:00

Random things about me. ... (Start with 1-10.)

61. I hate yelling (in anger). Yelling is the ultimate insult.

62. I think people who yell at the game on their TV sets are funny. Like people who yell at a horserace.

63. At my only horserace, I yelled at the top of my lungs. “My” horse had a limp before the race. I felt sorry for him. I YELLED for him! And he won! Woo-hoo!

64. I always felt sorry for my dolls and stuffed animals when I had to go off to school. I felt like they cried when I left.

65. I was probably a little OCD with my dolls and stuffed animals, who had to be arranged just so in order for me to go to sleep, or go anywhere.

66. I’m the ultimate organizer and packer. I could become a consultant on “How to move from a large home to a 10 x 10 storage unit with ease and organization.” Not sure the slogan would attract that many. But I could do it. Clutter gets into my head. I have to have things organized. It’s probably borderline OCD “positively channeled.” That’s my story anyway.

67. About two years ago we sold our house and most of our possessions to start a new adventure in Roatan. I haven’t missed any of it.

68. I’ve found that my home is anywhere I am with God. The sky is always the same, God’s spellbinding roof over my head.

69. I homeschool my kids. It fits our lifestyle at the moment.

70. I read so much to my kids every day that sometimes by the time I’m putting them to bed, reading to them one last time, my tongue actually hurts. Seriously. I’m not making it up. My oldest asked me to read to him while he took a bath last night. I did.

Go to 71-80.

51-60 of 100

2007-02-02T17:28:00.000-05:00

Random things about me. ... I know, I know, you're one of those people who has to finish what they start, and now you're dying for this to hurry up and be over. Don't worry. You'll be seeing 100 before you know it. (Wanna start at the beginning of this thing? 1-10 is here.)

51. I make a mean dark chocolate bread pudding with white chocolate brandy sauce. Ghirardelli chocolate only. Mmm. Bread pudding without brandy or rum sauce isn’t bread pudding.

52. Almost every male in my family is a doctor. Both grandfathers, my dad, uncles, brother-in-law, cousins. My mom, aunt and sister are nurses. I tried going pre-med with an English major. English won out. As a teenage lab assistant, I fainted once in the hospital after drawing an old lady’s blood.

53. I generally don’t like doctors and have only gone to see them when I’ve had my babies. Oh, and for the not-so-yearly well-woman’s. … This implies nothing about the men in my family, whom I love.

54. I waited so late to go to the hospital to have my babies, my doctors missed the deliveries. Fifteen minutes before Andrew was born. Five minutes before Jacob was born. An inexperienced triage nurse was holding Jacob yelling, “Help! Help me!”

55. I have a high tolerance for pain. But I don’t like to be pestered with anything irritatingly painful. Like Clint popping my toes. I hate it. But he hasn’t done it in about eight years.

56. I have true friends. It took me a while to find them. Now I’m not letting go. They know me and love me anyway. They won’t let me talk bad about myself.

57. God Calling is my all-time most favorite devotional book. Its words most closely reflect what I continually sense the Lord speaking to my heart.

58. I hate the feeling of saltwater drying on my skin. I love the feeling of saltwater all around me. I love sea life. We’re friends.

59. I love well-written books. Nothing whatsoever exciting can happen in them. As long as they’re well written.

60. I consciously enjoy fresh air. Freezing air in Colorado. Hot grass-burned air in Texas. Salty, palm-tree-waving air in Roatan. Cool, wood-pew-smelling air in my mom’s church. Any fresh air. I hate that we’re not doing a good job at taking better care of it.

Got to 61-70.

Well, I'm surprised!

2007-02-01T20:00:00.000-05:00

Okay, so I just went to vote for Jeana and Chilihead at the Share the Love Blog Awards. I figured I wouldn't recognize too many others to vote for but scanned the lists anyway. That's when I found my blog--ha, my blog--nominated for "Most Inspiring." (Of course, just when I'm doing a stupid "random things about me" list.)

Now I'm wondering, who nominated me? ... Well, muchas gracias, mi amiga! ... Go vote, like Chilihead said, whether it's for me or not.

41-50 of 100

2007-02-01T19:15:00.000-05:00

Random things about me. You know you want more! (Say you want more even if you don't, please.) ... Click here to start at 1-10.

41. I used to be illogically afraid of superglue, that I was gonna accidentally glue myself to the front of the refrigerator. (To clarify, “used to be” was as a child, probably after that all-important “superglue talk.”)

42. I have major doubts about what I believe, but I believe it. I believe it. “Lord, I believe, help my disbelief!”

43. I have compassion on people who don’t believe, who can’t believe, or who believe something different from me. I might one day believe something different from me.

44. I don’t have it all figured out.

45. People who have it all figured out bother me. Almost as much as people who are dishonest.

46. I drink only water. No milk, no juices, no pops, no coffee. Even with pizza and popcorn. When I’m low on drinking water in Roatan, I get anxious.

47. I’ll have a coffee or hot tea, decaffeinated, when there’s peer pressure. Like at a “meet for coffee” thing.

48. I will have any alcoholic drink my grandmother’s having. I love drinking with her. Or with friends who are also responsible drinkers.

49. I love martinis. Especially apple martinis and mudslide martinis.

50. I’ve recently discovered that grapefruit wine is to die for.

Go to 51-60.

31-40 of 100

2007-01-31T20:50:00.000-05:00

Random things about me. (Start with 1-10 here.)

31. I love stopping in powdery snow in the trees, hearing my snowboard crunch deeper. Hearing nothing else.

32. I listen. I want to really hear and see people. And nature. I love the line from that song, … “Try not to focus on yourself, share that love with someone else.”

33. I love to exercise. It’s a drug for me. I start getting anxious when I’ve gone a week or two without exercise. It’s seriously a drug. I feel better emotionally.

34. I’ve promised myself that if my PMS gets much worse with age, I’m doing more than the natural stuff—exercise, eating right, vitamins, etc. My family deserves that.

35. I might be borderline-borderline-borderline (don’t freak out here) eating disorder. Basically I have to eat pretty decently or at least not let holiday-type eating go on for too long, or I feel completely disgusted with myself. I have to eat right.

36. I’ll eat just about anything if it’s good for me. I’ve broken off pieces of red-leaf lettuce, folded them up into little pockets and stuffed them in my mouth. For breakfast in the airport.

37. I started making whole-wheat-vegetable tortillas in Roatan. And beans. Two things I’ve never made before Roatan. Sometimes I put flaxseeds in the tortillas. Sometimes I sprinkle flaxseeds on top of the beans in the tortilla with flaxseeds. I love flaxseeds.

38. I can sing a pretty good Tracy Chapman “Fast Car.” I’d sing that for karaoke if I had to. Had to.

39. I hate makeup. But I won’t go anywhere without lipstick. My lips feel terrible without it. I put powder on once every few months. Minimal eye makeup with the lipstick if I’m headed out to anywhere other than the grocery or the beach.

40. I wonder if the older I get, the more I should consider using more makeup. I think it’s the other way around that actually works best. Use less the older you get. Maybe I’m just making excuses.

Go to 41-50.

21-30 of 100

2007-01-30T19:15:00.000-05:00

Random things about me. (So if you were looking for 21-30 year old single, attractive females, sorry, try a different search phrase.) For 1-10, go here.

21. Windshield wipers bother me. I want them on the lowest setting possible, as soon as possible. I’d rather drive in the rain so I can take care of the wipers. I’m anal about it.

22. I’m less anal and more fun because of my sons. Trampoline tricks. Hide and seek. King of the hill. Freeze tag. Squealing high dives. Ocean football. Snowmen. Pillow fights. Kitchen karaoke.

23. Thanks to Roatan, I've pretty much overcome my fear of spiders and other crunchy, crawly things.

24. I live in running sandals (Hi-Tec V-Lite Siroccos, to be exact), unless of course I’m running.

25. I’m afraid of too many things. Mostly of people who might not like me. I don’t want to have this problem.

26. I generally assume that people won’t like me. Most people like me. I think.

27. Knowing my Creator likes me, loves me—the more I really buy into that, the less fear I live with.

28. I really love my husband. My husband really loves me. This blows me away sometimes. We’ve been “an item” since 1990.

29. I’m more adventurous because I’m married to my husband. I ski and board; I scuba dive; I mountain bike; I climb and rappel; I reside part-time on an island—I just live more adventurously. All because of him. He’s so fun.

30. The first rollercoaster I ever got on was with my husband—he forced me. One of the WORST in Texas—the Texas Rattler at Six Flags. I hated it. But I rode every other one that day, and I’ll ride just about anything now. (Unless it just spins, then I’ll throw up.)

Go to 31-40.

11-20 of 100

2007-01-29T17:09:00.000-05:00

Random things about me, that is. If you haven't read 1-10 yet, start here.

11. I’m a list maker. I feel funny when I don’t have a list. I’d probably start one with “Start a to-do list.”

12. I want to be more people- than task-oriented. But I sure do like the accomplishment of a finished task. Sure do like friends too, though.

13. Cut flowers usually stress me out. I’m just waiting for them to hurry up and wilt enough so I can throw them out. It’s the list-maker in me. I want to cross that eventual chore off my list.

14. Cheap artificial flowers bother me. If you can’t have the real thing (or a really good imitation—emphasis on really), just decorate with something else.

15. I love to shop when it’s something on my to-do list, something specific I need to buy. Like a paring knife, or a Spanish book for a friend in Roatan, or a pair of pajama pants ‘cause mine wore a hole in the crotch.

16. I’m very indecisive when shopping. But I know exactly what I want off the menu, though I like asking my servers what their favorite is.

17. I’ve always tried to cover my butt. My best friend says I don’t have one. I laugh. That’s why she’s my best friend.

18. The older I get, the less I care about my butt.

19. The first time I officially read through the Bible it took me about four years. I’m on my third time through now, but it hasn’t gotten much easier. A great majority of it baffles and frustrates me.

20. I love chocolate. It can’t be cheap chocolate. I love chocolate liquors. Cocoa is the secret ingredient in my sausage-bean soup.

Go to 21-30.

1-10 of 100

2007-01-28T18:52:00.000-05:00

So, I came up with a sure-fire plan to put up at least twenty new posts in the next month or so. First up, a "100 Randon Things about Me" list, broken into groups of ten. The 100 Things idea came from Chilihead. The groups of ten came from Jeana, who, when I was raving about Chilihead's list, said she never could get all the way through longs lists. ... I'll not telling yet what the second half of twenty posts will be about.

1. Every month or so someone says I look just like someone they know. There are now hundreds of Jenny look-alikes in the world.

2. I keep a fortune cookie paper in my wallet that says: “You find beauty in ordinary things. Appreciate this gift.” I like to think that’s true of me.

3. I have this thing with rocks. I pick up ones that seem to symbolize certain things for me. Not always, but sometimes when I’m reflective, listening to God.

4. For about a year as a preteen I tried to hide my hands. I felt they were monstrously, hideously large. They’re normal now. … Or are they?

5. I’ve always coveted blue eyes. My two sons and I are the only brown-eyed people in the whole twenty-odd people on my husband’s side.

6. I love to write, but it’s not something that comes easily for me. I edit too much, I mean excessively, no too much. I edit too much.

7. I have my mama’s body. Almost to a “t.” The same knobby shin bones, the same hands, the same dimples in our shoulders. She’s my hero.

8. The first thing I can remember strangers saying about me to my parents was something about my big brown eyes. The second thing: “She’s so shy!” Nobody much comments on my eyes anymore. Or my shyness, though it’s something I’m still overcoming.

9. I hate that I was born shy. I envy the sense of positive self-awareness and confidence that my husband Clint has. I love seeing Clint’s confidence in Jacob. I’m glad Andrew’s doing a better job than I did at overcoming the case of shyness I passed on to him.

10. Most people say after they know me that their initial impression was so different from who I really am. Me, intimidating? I’m usually the one feeling intimidated!

Go to 11-20.

Wrapped Up

2007-01-24T16:40:00.000-05:00

"Let us be grateful to people who make us happy; they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom." --Marcel Proust

These little "gardeners" of mine were flying around carefree first, then wrapped up for a posed shot. I'm wrapped up in love with them.

Language Classes

2006-12-27T16:30:00.000-05:00

One of our neighbors—crazy man neighbor who’s always trying to sell Clint a rock for $5—sometimes tells people we aren’t home when they’re walking down the hill past his little plywood box on stilts. Roddiriki’s window is a rectangle hole with a wooden door that swings out on hinges, almost overhanging the dirt road. Sometimes he peeks up from the bottom of the window sill, his eyes and half his nose showing like a timid puppet behind a little plywood stage, spying on us as we’re walking home. Sometimes he throws Clint the infamous $5 rock to check out. Sometimes he tells us our place is safe, he’s got everything under control. Sometimes his hand just waggles out the window at us.

Roddiriki told Audrey, Nadia and Daniella we weren’t home a few weeks ago. They come in the afternoons for “English classes” around my little termite-infested table. Fortunately, Clint was on the walk down just as they’d turned around to walk away.

“English classes” are nothing more than conversations. I get to ask them whatever I want and say whatever I want, just so long as it’s all in English. We use Jacob’s little dry erase board for clarification either by writing or drawing. And lots of language dictionaries.

I love those three women, seeing them sit in my home, comfortable here. Audrey the Costa Rican, Nadia the Honduran, Daniella the Italian. And me the American.

Our conversations look like Tinkertoy constructions. One topic spins off another, like sticks spreading out from disk hubs. Chasing rabbits is what it’s all about. And I find out the most interesting things. For example, that Audrey wants to get “more fatter.” She’s got a slew of clothes that are too big for her, so she wants “more fat” to wear them again. Or that Daniella’s favorite holiday was the Epiphany (January 6, the “Twelfth Night” after Christmas, which commemorates the wise men’s adoration of the Christ child), on which she anticipated a good witch riding a broom to deliver toys and candies to poor children. Or for example, how the mafia really exists in Southern Italy. Or that its Honduran counterpart (mareros) really exists in much less organized fashion on the mainland. Or that iguanas taste like chicken or that Napoli has the best pizza.

Torrents of chilly rain pour outside in rainy season style, while friendship moves in swirls around the table and settles its warmth into my stomach. My afternoon meal. This is their gift to me. But they come laden with others as well. Audrey’s brought me a beautiful necklace of blue beads and mother-of-pearl from Costa Rica. It hangs on a nail in the bathroom when it’s not hanging around my neck. Daniella’s made me a little crocheted purse and belt, two weeks worth of labor. Black thread, a beautiful closure button and the know-how from her boyfriend’s mother—all from Italy. Nadia’s unwrapped a German beer flask from a market here on the island and filled it with agua de coco as a gift to me.

Those women are as different as their gifts to me. But we humans are all the same. We might grow up with a dozen brothers and sisters all living in one little shack beside a beautiful river in Costa Rica. Or cozy near the mountains in Northern Italy. On the lively streets of the capital Tegucigalpa; or on the languid roads of a redneck, one-light town in Mississippi. We humans are all the same. We’ve got the same insecurities and fears and all. The same dreams and hopes. And the same heart language. How many times I don’t believe this. I forget this. How many times I stand off in fear because of the surface differences. How often I’ve assumed I’ll be disliked or dismissed or disregarded because I think I’m different.

But God so loved the world. Every one of us. The same.

Lord, you know all language. Give me the gift of speaking others’ language. And give us conversation around this little table that pleases you, that leads us more deeply into your heart. Turn the babble around my table into something that reaches yours and joins us. A sweet communion.

I’m thinking of Donald Miller’s description of communion with Jesus:

“Sometimes I picture this Osama Bin Laden-looking Jesus talking with his friends around a fire, except he is not rambling about anything, he is really listening, not so much pushing an agenda but being kind and understanding and speaking some truth and encouragement into their lives. Helping them believe in the mission they feel inside themselves, the mission that surrounded Jesus and the crazy life they had embraced” (235, Searching for God Knows What).

Of course, these “English classes” might sound more nostalgic than they always are in reality. Sometimes it feels like we’ve got three Tinkertoy sticks and no more, no hubs, no rabbits. Sometimes I’ve cleared the table and no one shows. Sometimes I’ve got on my running shoes and shorts and someone knocks at the door unexpectedly. Sometimes I’m just tired and cranky. Or someone else is tired and cranky. Sometimes I just want to be alone.

Sometimes the desire to just be alone drives me too long and too far. To loneliness. And I have to open the door again, clear the table, pour the drinks, offer the bread and search for the Tinkertoy hubs and rabbits. I love what Miller says about loneliness too:

“Loneliness is something that happens to us, but I think it is something we can move ourselves out of. I think a person who is lonely should dig into a community, give himself to a community, humble himself before his friends, initiate community, teach people to care for each other, love each other. Jesus does not want us floating through space or sitting in front of our televisions. Jesus wants us interacting, eating together, laughing together, praying together. Loneliness is something that came with the fall. If loving other people is a bit of heaven then certainly isolation is a bit of hell, and to that degree, here on earth, we decide in which state we would like to live” (173).

Miller says we should have people around bugging us and getting under our skin because without people we can’t grow—we can’t grow in God, and we can’t grow as a human.

I agree. “Language class” (community) is a must, whether you’re trying to learn an actual foreign language or not. Language class--learning God’s language of love, how to hear it from Him and how to speak it with others. I try to enroll every morning.

Listening to Enjoy

2006-10-29T19:00:00.000-05:00

This morning while we were praying during school, Jacob asked if we could do the “other prayer.” The Lord’s Prayer? The Doxology? The Glory Be? (I’m trying to expose them to various traditions in the faith.) No, he meant the “listening prayer.”

We start with a mental picture of being with God. Sometimes I try to help them out with this by suggesting various images of the throne or sitting in God’s lap, kneeling before him or walking with him. This time, though, Andrew asked if he had to picture what I was saying or if he could just do that on his own. So I stopped with, “Just picture yourself with God.”

*Wait, you should know this info on Andrew, Jacob and me before you read the next paragraph: As I continue to lean more towards vegetarian eating, my son Andrew’s turning into a major meat-eater. A meat-eater. He loves steaks, ribs even more. He eats a triple adult portion, usually, licking his fingers and lips clean. As for Jacob, he’s always looking for a good time, for fun, for play. Here on the island he’s got a perpetual smile and sweaty hair, for running around looking for fun. As for me, I smile when I see words fill up my computer screen, words that make it from my jumbled mind into semi-logical paragraphs. I love writing.

And now, the rest of the story:

After a quiet moment Andrew said he pictured himself and God at a restaurant together. God was eating a steak. “Oh, and you were eating a steak with him, huh.”

“No, … ribs!”

“Oh, even better for you!”

Jacob said he pictured himself and God going down two side-by-side slides, holding hands. He said from there they went to a water park and again slid side-by-side down two huge yellow chutes, holding hands.

Then I shared what I had pictured: God sitting with me while I was writing, writing and helping me write.

We three pictured God doing something with us that brings us pleasure personally. Andrew LOVES meat. He and God were enjoying that together. Jacob LOVES to play. He and God were enjoying that together. I LOVE to write. God and I were enjoying that together.

Just being together, enjoying things together.

This is really you, God. Thank you for Jacob's reminding me to listen. And for teaching us to listen. For teaching us to enjoy you and your presence in everything we do.

“Yes, Jenny, enjoying my children--this brings glory and honor to me as well. And joy to my heart. Continue teaching your children to enjoy me, as much as I enjoy them.”

I guess I’ve never really thought about that--that you enjoy my children. I’ve thought more of the parent-child relationship in terms of you knowing what’s truly best, you forgiving, you being patient with us demanding children, etc. Not how you enjoy us. How you enjoy my children. Yes, thank you for reminding me of this. And for reminding me to enjoy them myself.

Words from one who truly enjoyed your presence, over 300 years ago:

God my King … who is full of goodness and mercy, … embraces me lovingly and invites me to eat at His table. He serves me Himself and gives me the keys to His treasury, treating me as His favorite. He converses with me without mentioning either my sins or His forgiveness. My former habits are seemingly forgotten. Although I beg Him to do whatever He wishes with me, He does nothing but caress me. This is what being in His holy presence is like.

My day-to-day life consists of giving God my simple, loving attention. If I am distracted, He calls me back in tones that are supernaturally beautiful. …

My prayers consist of a simple continuation of this same exercise. Sometimes I imagine that I’m a piece of stone, waiting for the sculptor. When I give myself to God this way, He begins sculpting my soul into the perfect image of His beloved Son. At other times, I feel my whole mind and heart being raised up into God’s presence, as if, without effort, they had always belonged there. (Brother Lawrence, The Practice of the Presence of God, 41-42)

Enjoying God's Presence, Jenny

Home in Roatan

2006-10-18T13:00:00.000-04:00

Yesterday Jacob’s writing assignment was to describe the house he would live in if he could live anywhere in the world. He said this very house. This rent house, the one with linoleum held down with rusty nails and staples, with no mirror in the bathroom, with spider webs in the closets, with not a single picture on all the empty nails, with the ant trails and the one fought-over toilet. This very house Jacob wanted, of course with some secret doors accessed by a button behind the refrig that led to his bedroom. But this house. In Roatan, Honduras.

Actually, Jacob, maybe me, too. But it’s not the linoleum (though it does remind me of the moments when my Mama would squat down beside me in our old kitchen to play jacks). Nor is it the fought-over toilet which is now less fought-over since our stomachs have settled back into Honduran cuisine. Nor the ant trails or spider webs or geckos that scamper across my shoulder in bed like rolling rubber balls.

No, it’s something bigger. Something that feels mystical. Like destiny. Something that feels … right. Definitely not always easy, but right. When that wet heat slapped me in the face at the top of the plane stairs only a few weeks ago, it was as if I were reawakened. Breathing deeply. Home again.

Home is a back porch that always has bananas hanging to ripen. Apple-bananas (that taste just like the name) or plantain or chata bananas (short, fat and good for frying).

Home is where the boys discover coconuts, limes, bananas, oranges and other unknown fruits all around the house. They come in with shirt-fulls of limes, asking for limeade (limonada) sweetened with mounds of coarse Honduran sugar. Machete whack-whacks outside let me know they’re about to deliver coconuts with perfect holes in the ends for drinking.

Home is walking to the ocean from our house to swim (if the construction workers aren’t on break nearby).

Home is fresh blended NONI juice from my neighbor Iris (the stuff you health nuts might know of in capsule form that costs more money than I’m willing to pay in the states). Watch out, though. Take a breath, hold your nose and down it. Most my friends know I can eat/drink anything without wincing if it’s good for me. This stuff, though, is worse than … well, the taste in your mouth during a stomach flu.

Home is praying—my neighbor Iris and I, with a round, soft-spoken pastor named Salvan. On Iris’ front porch—the only part of her house big enough to hold the three of us standing in a circle holding hands. Bilingual praying.

Home is brushing stray ants off my hanging clothes before choosing something to put on.

Home is Honduran upholstery. My first night here, in exhaustion, I flopped down on the couch, which has the softness equivalence of a park bench. Later I did the same thing on my bed mattress and felt springs in my back.

Home is dumping dry pasta and beans onto the countertop to pick out the bugs before boiling them all together.

Home is being in the water with friends again. “Oh, so nice to see you again, fish, coral. I’ve missed you.”

Home is realizing those lonely nails in all the walls are quite convenient for hanging towels, hair bands, necklaces, keys, the boys’ crafts and pictures, ziplock bags of miscellaneous ...

Home is hearing an albino island woman, Ezmerelda, and a dark island boy, Cardy, lead worship together, island-style, on Sundays: “Shout to da Lard, Ah de eart, let uh sing … I sing fa joy at de wor of ya han, … Na-ting compares to da promise I ha’ in you.”

Home is lots of beans, tortillas and rice. And lots of cooking lessons from Honduran amigas.

Home is running up the hill (what islanders call la montaña) to stop dead in my tracks at the top when I see the sunset out over the endless ocean. The heavens declare the glory of their Creator. And I can’t help but respond.

Home is, in one day, walking, hiking, kayaking, swimming and biking. Then falling onto mattress springs.

Home is a Costa Rican, a Honduran, an Italian and an American (that’d be me) sitting around my slightly termite-eaten table for “English classes.” I teach Andrew and Jacob until around two when Audrey, Nadia and Daniella show up for conversations in English. Between an English-Spanish, a Spanish-Italian and an Italian-English dictionary, as well as Jacob’s little dry erase board, we can communicate pretty well.

Home is making dinner for six hungry boys (mine and neighbors): scrambled eggs, tons of mac-n-cheese, fried bananas (which Andrew, the wannabe chef, always takes care of), and salad. … Home is realizing my heart has changed in this. I don’t do it begrudgingly, wishing they wouldn’t hang around through dinner. I genuinely enjoy doing it (which is no small miracle).

Home is hearing the boys speak alien (a strange mix of bad English, bad Spanish and good sound effects).

Home is passing a little, old, shriveled island woman with a calico sun bonnet flopping on her head and hearing Andrew say, “She looked like an old woman and a little girl.”

Home is sand flies (wings with teeth) and mosquitoes and squishing in taxis and sweating and itching and sorting through eight keys to get all the way into one tiny house. Home is sea shells, wet crumpled Lempiras (money), and “Puede repetirlo, por favor” (“Can you repeat it, please”). Home is sandy feet and salty-wrinkled fingers and color so extravagant outside our windows it’s as if a rainbow turned to paint and splattered upon us.

The other day Clint said to a friend that “back home” we have such-and-such. Andrew was quick to correct him. “We are home, Dad. This is our home.” Oh, yeah, God, what was that you spoke to me my very first night in Roatan, surrounded by a bunch of Spanish speakers firing off gibberish at machine-gun speed?

“Listen to this. Listen to this. … Here is your home. Here is your home.”

Aaaaaie! I was thinking, What! … Okay, I trust you, Lord.

Then I realized and heard:

“Because I am your home. Wherever you are is home, because you’re home is in Me.”

I sensed back then a complete security in knowing that God would provide for all our needs, the boys’ and mine and Clint’s, whether in Roatan, in Texas or elsewhere. In knowing that we are precious to Him, that He won’t be careless or dangerous with us.

He has provided. He hasn’t been careless or dangerous. He’s been precious. He’s been Home. Yes, na-ting compares to da promise I ha’ in You.

(Any of you want to come experience our home, we’d be glad to share our mattress springs or our park-bench-couch, unless you’d rather bring an air mattress.)

Promptings and Parting Words

2006-09-29T18:30:00.000-04:00

March 20th of this year, tired, sweaty, sandy, hungry and swatting mosquitoes, I sat under some mango trees beside my husband Clint. I was waiting for him to fold up the laptop so we could walk farther down West End beach road to find something to eat. Then I could finally get home to shower and relax.

“Oh, Jenny, I’m so sorry to tell you this,” Clint said, looking at the computer screen.

“WHAT!” Anxiety-riddled already. (I’ve heard that tone too often. I know that voice and those words. Just out with it.)

“Your Aunt Laurie has died.”

My evening, my agenda, my comforts and discomforts. None of it mattered anymore. My aunt, one of the “three sisters,” my Mama’s sisters, had died. Here I was in Roatan, unsuspecting. There she was in Mississippi. Gone from Mississippi, actually.

… But life does go on. My life had to. I had a husband and two boys with empty stomachs. They had to eat. I ate a saucer-full and let tears slip quietly down my cheeks. What onlookers must have thought.

The next day for me was full of frustrations and hopelessness covered over with miracles. By evening I was miraculously lying in a hotel in Miami, amazed to have made it through the hardest leg of a long journey from Roatan to Jackson, MS. Part of that leg was sharing one of numerous taxis with an old islander named Jimmy Miller.

When I first met Jimmy he was lying in a rough twine hammock on the beach, outside a shack quite holding its own beside the multi-million-dollar villa next door. He had scripture verses, “God is so good to all, are you?”, “I got the cure for aids,” and other messages misspelled and painted all over his tin/wood home. A shack that more resembled something my boys might throw up from scrap pieces for a clubhouse than would a sixty-seven-year-old man for a home. Jimmy was always in his hammock with lots of mango pits and puppies in the sand around him. The boys loved his puppies. I loved (sort of) the soliloquies he could give on the Bible—from Adam through future eternity and back again. He needed someone to listen. So I did.

But that day I got in the taxi with Jimmy, he didn’t recognize me. He hadn’t been recognizing people the last few days. Maybe he’d started with drinking or drugs. I don’t know. I sat there in my grief and anger and impatience—my own agenda—and thought about going the whole way with him not recognizing me. I could just sit in my own thoughts in peace. Undisturbed. I wouldn’t have to cipher his beautiful sing-songy island English (which I’m still unaccustomed to) or listen to a soliloquy.

But darnit, the Prompting wouldn’t let me. That quiet whisper to my heart urged me. I stretched my hand to his shoulder in the front seat.

“You don’t recognize me, Jimmy. I’m Andrew and Jacob’s mom.”

Then all the usual about Andrew and Jacob, the boys who love his puppies, yes, he’d just seen them recently with their dad. Yes, those boys ...

When his stop came in Coxen Hole, he opened the back door and leaned in to me, but with no words, no anything. He seemed lost, suspended somewhere within himself. I reach out finally and took his hand. “God bless you, Jimmy.” I squeezed his hand, and he found himself again, I think. He smiled and stared into me. He nodded. Then he closed the door and was gone. And tears were slipping silently down my cheeks again.

I didn’t know that would be the last I’d see Jimmy. I was back on the mission to get home to grieving family, a mission I wasn’t sure would be at all successful.

But it was the last time. I opened my email days later and read that a friend had heard gunshots from Jimmy’s shack, had run upstairs to look out the window, and there was Jimmy lying dead on the beach. A police shootout. Jimmy hadn’t been himself, raging against a beach cleaning crew and firing at police.

I hadn’t known that “God bless you, Jimmy” would be my last word to him. Nor had I known that a simple “Amen, Sister” would be my last word to my Aunt Laurie.

I’d felt the Prompting with her, too. I was in Texas, she in Mississippi. But the urging was to email her, specifically to tell her how much something she’d shared with me had meant. She’d been honest and vulnerable when last she was with me; and I wanted to acknowledge it and tell her I cherished it. She responded: “Can't remember just exactly what I said but will pray God leads us both to truth and deeper relationship with Him. Love you, Aunt L.”

All I responded was: “AMEN, SISTER!” Just like that.

I can think of one other time long ago when I heeded a prompting to speak what would become parting words. I was a senior in high school and my boyfriend had just scolded me for talking to another guy—a guy who happened to be one of my closest friends. (My boyfriend was jealous.) I could have behaved myself. Instead I sneaked out the back door of school and met my friend, Greg, in the parking lot. We talked for more than an hour, things that teenagers didn’t really talk about when I was a teenager. Like how much I loved him, how much my mama loved him. How much his family and he loved us.

That next morning I came bounding down from upstairs, fresh out of bed, and picked up the ringing phone. My Mama, who’d been trying to let me sleep as long as I would, came around the corner just in time to catch my head into her stomach as I dropped the phone down by my side in limpness. She didn’t say much. She just held my head there and let me cry into her stomach. Greg, his mom and another friend—all killed on their way back home from last night’s basketball game. I still remember waving a furtive goodbye to him as we walked to our separate cars with our parents in that rainy, foggy night.

Promptings. Parting words. Sweaty hands clasped in a dirty taxi. A quick email. Stolen moments in a parking lot. Promptings and parting words. They happen every day, probably, without my even realizing it. How many other final words have I spoken to people I’ll never again see on this side of eternity? Oh, Lord, have mercy on me. Forgive me for all those unheeded promptings, the hundreds and hundreds. Keep prompting, please. I want to keep listening. And heeding.

“Why not open our hearts wide today, in the living presence of our loved ones, rather than procrastinating until they’re gone? Why wait for death’s cruel crowbar to pry the lid off our feelings? Why not let people be infinitely precious to us right now? Now is the time to eulogize.” from Practicing the Presence of People: How We Learn to Love, by Mike Mason (Colorado Springs: WaterBrook Press, 1999)

Mutt Musings, Adrenaline Overdoses

2006-09-03T21:20:00.000-04:00

"The barking of a dog does not disturb the man on a camel." - Egyptian Proverb

But I’m not on a camel.

The twenty or so miles I bike on these Texas back roads are dotted with farm houses, with or without chain-link fences and dogs. Dogs. Lots of dogs.

One particular house could boast ownership of the meanest dogs in Henderson county, I bet. If personified, this tan clapboard house would be Charlie Brown’s friend Pigpen, who walked in a perpetual cloud of dust. It’s lost amidst a lackluster collection of lawn art (read: front-yard dump), a chicken coup with a sign reading “Fresh Eggs for Sale,” a few too many caged roosters for the hens (which makes me wonder, hmm, after-hours cock-fights?), lots and lots of dust, and an assortment of ten or so restless, roaming mutts.

Don’t get me wrong, I love mutts. I’ve stood over quite of few burials of said mutts under dogwood or pine trees in the backyard. But of the “meanest in Henderson county” mutts, there’s one who clearly salivates over a bite of my ankles. And from my ankles panic streaks up my veins, through my heart to my shoulders, where it lodges with a twinge. An adrenaline overdose.

Before I changed my route, I would stock up on rocks to pelt at them. When I ran out of rocks I’d brandish the piece of picket fence I’d found and held against my handlebars. Once a cop happened to be passing in the other direction about the time I’d unclipped my foot to kick. Thankfully, his honking coerced them out the road and away from my ankles (which are boney and tasteless anyway, I’m sure).

But the adrenaline charge, combined with frantic pumping of leg muscles, was pushing my body way past the pain in “no pain, no gain”; so I changed routes.

My new route has two hunting dogs, grey with brown spots. They’re fast as lightening. But I’ve usually got enough speed, and their house is set far enough back, that by the time they get to the road my back’s to them and they decide it’s not worth the chase. On this route, I’ve also encountered a pack of attack Chihuahua/Pomeranian dogs. Seven or so of ‘em. Tiny things. In serious attack mode. Once I walked beside my bike, keeping it between me and them, charging at them every other step to keep them at bay. They’d get so frenzied in their barking that they’d turn and bite each other’s necks and ears. Strange.

Once I turned onto a dirt road with trees tangled together overhead to make a cool canopy. I unclipped and stood, water dribbling down my neck from my water bottle. That’s when I saw from the corner of my eyes a pit bull and a collie mutt stalking me, poking their heads out from behind bushes and slinking forward. Needless to say, I hightailed it. The canopy shade doesn’t tempt me anymore.

The other day I came up on a lone coyote-looking dog. Shaggy yellow, with a desperate look in his faded eyes. I rasped “git.” He just cowered on the edge of the asphalt. Wild, but old and weary of his desperado days, I guess.

But thank God for friends who care. My friend Jimmy dropped some pepper spray onto the kitchen counter in front of me last time he and his wife were over. “Use it,” he said.

I think I will. My poor ankles (and the rest of me) thank you. The barking of a dog does not disturb the man on a camel, nor the woman on a bike with pepper spray.

Biking Glorious Ruins

2006-08-13T02:25:00.000-04:00

… think for a moment about the millions of tourists who visit ancient sites like the Parthenon, the Colosseum, and the Pyramids. Though ravaged by time, the elements, and vandals through the ages, mere shadows of their former glory, these ruins still awe and inspire. Though fallen, their glory cannot be fully extinguished. There is something at once sad and grand about them. And such are we. Abused, neglected, vandalized, fallen—we are still fearful and wonderful. We are, as one theologian put it, ‘glorious ruins.’ –John Eldredge in Ransomed Heart, Day 324

My parents rolled a silver-blue bike through the grass to me as I sat at a white, tablecloth-covered table during my sweet-sixteen outdoor birthday party. Even though it only saw a few summers of use before we parted ways when I left for college, that bike opened something up in me that I’d never experienced before. Yes, a terribly sore rear end. But more than that. Earth, wind, water and fire—all there together. My own muscles pumping me over miles and miles of earth, while wind cooled the flush on my face, sweat like water poured down my back, and grit to go one hill farther sparked like a hot campfire.

More than twice sweet-sixteen now, I’ve got myself another silver-blue bike. And I love being out on the road—Texas back roads that remind me of the Mississippi ones I road at sixteen. I love the little communities I go through, like Log Cabin, Gun Barrel City and Payne Springs. I love the little cemeteries and churches, the cows, donkeys, horses and goats, the humble farm houses and old fallen-in shacks with empty front porches.

I love when I get past “the wall,” when the zone comes and I’m just pumping and watching everything slip by. Leaning out and pedaling hard around a curve this morning, I almost started laughing. Everything in its place, doing what it’s supposed to do: cows grazing, colts playing, dogs chasing, grass waving, clouds building and me biking. I’m as much a part of it all—of everything in its place—as the stumpy Texas oaks sprinkled across these pastures. Coming around that curve this morning, I sensed the Creator looking down on his Creation and seeing me out there in it. And I felt like a baby again, being applauded for doing something that just comes naturally, like toddling a few steps or opening wide for a spoonful of mushy cereal. For just biking, for integrating and functioning within creation. Nothing “officially” spiritual or religious. But mystical nonetheless. And yes, glorious.

Crossing a bridge yesterday I saw an egret fly off from the lake and leave behind a huge white feather swirling in the water. I saw a long-horned steer with so many colors in his coat he looked like an autumn tie-dye. My favorite every day is a massive, solemn black cow with an orange ear tag. He stands and watches me coming and going. We stare. I tell him how wise he looks. He tells me I ought to slow down, I think.

One horse swung himself around so fast to catch a glimpse of me, he looked like someone had caught him in mischief and slapped his rump. I wonder if I was worth the effort.

I’ve caused a few stampedes of cows. One or two will startle and bolt, causing the rest to run haywire through the brush and mesquite trees, while paper-white birds around them flit and flap off low over the grass trying to steer clear of the clambering hooves. Sometimes a dozen or more black cows are jumbled together under the shade of the one lone tree in their pasture. Miserable looking, but communally so. I love to see that.

And I love that smile I sense from the Creator when I'm in it all. That smile, I think it pulls out of me some of the hidden glory John Eldredge was talking about above. Though “abused, neglected, vandalized and fallen,” there is something fearfully wonderful about the glorious ruin that is this world, and that is me. That is all of us. No one excluded. No exceptions.

Note to self: Keep waking up with the sun; keep getting outside; keep remembering who you were created to be; keep being it; keep enjoying it.
(My husband took this picture, by the way, of the lake we're living at right now.)

Mainland Honduras Has My Heart: Installment 4

2006-08-06T20:50:00.000-04:00

The highlight of the trip was when we struck out all on our own during the afternoon of Day 2. Craving another escapade, we hiked back down to the river. Clint led the way, finding swirling pools and falls to play in, more rocks to jump from, a cave with tree roots dangling from ceiling to watery floor. We saw boys and men with old-fashioned masks on their faces and wooden spears in their hands. They’d go under around the rocks right at a small waterfall and come up with little fish on the ends of their spears.

I’ve failed to mention the rocks at the river. God often speaks to me through rocks, which I've mentioned before. Not always the astounding, massive ones. Just the little ordinary ones. The mammoth ones on Rio Cangrejal, regally enduring the pounding of the river, made me think the small ones even more amazing. Imagining that once long, long ago, they too were stately and imposing. This handful of pebbles. Amazing. How timeless and powerful they seem, yet how yielding and humble. Qualities I myself desire.

So many different colors, too. White, black, gray, pink, orange, brown, green, blue and every color in between. And how beautiful they were all together. The moment I separated a “perfect one” from the rest to take home, it lost something. Its multi-racial family. I finally took one of soft black with white square flecks through it. I love it.

We loved it all. The four of us, together in the world. Having fun.

But finally we had to tear ourselves away to honor our six o’clock dinner reservations back at the lodge. Vegetarian chili, banana conch and alfredo pasta with bacon, with more bread and herd spread, salad, mango salsa, fruit and homemade coconut ice cream.

The next day after breakfast Silvia called a taxi for us, which drove us to the mall to kill time before our ferry ride back to Roatan. Mental note for next time: Kill that extra time in a hammock at the lodge. Forget the mall. Funny things about the mall: 1) The music. Like Ann Murray’s “You Needed Me” or half a dozen Air Supply songs. 2) About 50 mall moppers. Seriously, every step was off course to avoid a mop. It felt like a conspiracy. Or a Saturday Night Live skit. Or Candid Camera. Except it wasn’t. It was just weird. Lots of dirty mops going back and forth over dingy tile, with not one collapsible yellow “Wet Floor” warning sign. 3) And a toilet paper conspiracy, which I’ve already mentioned here.

Finally we headed back “home,” to Roatan, on the ferry. A beautiful, old, brown island lady sat beside in the salty breeze on the ferry ride back. The waves kept lifting the ferry from the same angle, which meant that my island lady kept bumping closer and closer, until she was well-nigh sitting on top of me. But that’s a Central American thing, I guess. No concept of personal space. When you’re in line, be prepared to feel the breath of the person behind you on your neck, which I felt, of course, among the tangles of people disembarking.

But strangely, I guess I’ve fallen so in love with these dark-skinned, Spanish-speaking, multi-cultural people, I don’t much mind their breath on my neck. As long as they don’t mind their black and white speckled rock in my pocket.

Madly in Love with Mainland Honduras: Installment 3

2006-08-05T17:45:00.000-04:00

On day two of our mainland adventure, I read to the boys for a while in their beds until we’d heard enough morning stirrings to venture out for breakfast. Fresh pineapple and melon smoothies, eggs, bacon, toast and fruit.

Next came life jackets and helmets for our river hiking and white-water rafting. And another short ride in the Landcruiser, with a yellow raft strapped on top.

First the river hiking. The exhilaration of it had waned for our guide, winsome Yatushi from Japan. But for us, trekking over boulders in and out of the water, jumped into eddies, climbed up through small caves hollowed out by the water. Running down slopes and squealing until our feet hit the water. Being carried down through rapids and over small water falls. Bobbing in our lifejackets. It was a dream. A dream in which one discovers a braver, freer self.

Another strange mix, this time of fear and daring, propelled me. Often I wanted to crawl back down (and take the boys with me). But each time I stepped out as that other, braver self and flung my arms to the side as I leapt. Watching the thin, stringy bodies of my ten- and seven-year-olds rapaciously tackling each feat, I was reminded how Wild at Heart boys and men are. How God created them for adventure like this, for thrilling discovery, for that which requires and builds courage. Those boys—soon to be men—absolutely loved it. We were high before we even began the white water rafting with Jeremy.

It was technical, maneuvering around rocks, going down waterfalls. “Hold on, get down! … Back on the job! … Forward two! … Back one!” The boys, in the front, were drilled numerous times on the commands. They worked it hard and had a blast. A truly exciting raft. Not those long intervals of floating and rowing Clint and I have known.

On the hike back up to the hummer, Jeremy--by now twenty-something-older-brother-pestering-adoring-Jeremy--stopped with the raft balancing on his shoulders to show Andrew the tattoo fern. When he told Andrew to pick a certain fern and bring it to him, that he wanted to show him a trick, I was worried.

Earlier that day while helping the boys reach some 15 cent bags of chips, Jeremy had asked them if they wanted large or small chips. Jacob said small, so Jeremy put his bag on the table and slammed it with his hand, sending half the chips spewing out the sides and the remaining ones inside “small.” Jacob was a good sport, said he liked them that way and licked ‘em right up. So back to the fern, when Andrew was standing with his elbow up, a fern leaf laid perfectly on his upper arm, I was worried. And Jeremy slapped the fern. Oh no! But, wait, how nice actually: when he took the fern away, there appeared a perfect white tattoo of the fern leaves on Andrew’s arm. From the white powder on the underside of the fern leaves.

Back at the lodge again for lunch we enjoyed steaming, looped and twisted, herb-infused pasta with fresh, chunky tomato sauce and bread. Then the boys spent some time swimming, some time exploring and some time talking to any fellow wayfarers who’d listen. Meanwhile I grabbed a book and read/slept in one of those shaded hammocks.

Come back tomorrow to see what happened after the nap ...

Loving Mainland Honduras: Installment 2

2006-08-04T01:04:00.000-04:00

The first waterfall we came to cascaded into a clear, deep pool with red and yellow leaves lying on the bottom. Alejandro climbed up to a high spot to show us we could jump. Next Clint jumps. Then, “Mirame, Alejandro!” which means, “Watch me!” and Clint does a flip. O poor, old Alejandro. He climbs up and says the same thing. But then the fear sweeps across his face. He sucks in a breath, jumps and lands flat on his back in the water. Poor, gentle Alejandro. Every time he went underwater, he sounded like a little motor boat, just the way I sounded when I was a little girl humming underwater.

After shimmying back into our clothes, we hiked farther up to a waterfall that fell so far it stung our shoulders. The boys most enjoyed the plump tadpoles, so sluggishly fat they were easily cupped up. They least enjoyed posing for a picture under the falls. Twice. It’s difficult to get positioned, over slippery rocks while water’s pounding you from above. And difficult to yell to Alejandro (in Spanish) over the sound of the falls. So, when we all came back over and discovered Alejandro hadn’t been successful, darn! All back over again.

After the water pounding, Alejandro opened his backpack and produced water, lettuce-tomato-cheese sandwiches, Honduran chips (which are always almost all crumbs), Honduran candy, cookies and a cantaloupe, which he took to the stream to cut and then propped the slices on the rocks. No Godiva truffles, but this was better!

Experiencing a strange mix of fatigue and invigoration back at the lodge, the boys and Clint enjoyed the stream-fed pool while I headed straight to the outdoor shower. A single swirl of wall made from smooth river rocks, circled deeper and deeper until privacy was achieved. With plants growing up the wall and overhanging from the top. Cubbyholes for candles and soap. In the distance I saw misty, flat mountains. And the blue sky deepening as dusk came. Water just warm enough from the sun to take the chill of the air away. Pure, salubrious air.

Having put in our order for dinner when we came off the trail, we sat down at six to bread with fresh herb spread and salads, followed by coconut shrimp, vegetarian lasagna and chicken. Again, in artistic arrays, the plate as canvas. Garnishes of carved fruit, mango salsa, fried plantain, potato wedges. Afterward a family of game of Jenga with homemade coffee ice cream. Then Dominos. … Three enormous cockroaches came scurrying out of the wooden bowl of Jenga blocks that Silvia put on our table. Ick! But okay. The indoors are out, so it’s to be expected. And chuckled about.

Day 2 on the mainland's coming tomorrow ...

Falling in Love with Mainland Honduras: Installment 1

2006-08-02T22:15:00.000-04:00

If life is like a box of chocolates, for two days this May, my husband, boys and I sunk our teeth into all Godiva truffles on the mainland of Honduras. Here’s "Installment 1" of the novella. (Yes, Installment 1! That means you’ll have to come back to get "the rest of the story.")
One scan of the crowd streaming off the ferry ride from Roatan to the mainland that morning and Jeremy from New Zealand, snaggle-toothed, tanned and boyishly muscled, knew we were The Roberts, here for our jungle adventure. Our gear strapped to the top, we dusted the seats and climbed into his ’82 yellow Landcruiser. Moments later we were dustier than the seats had been, zooming up the gravel road to Omega Tours Eco-Lodge. Swerving past dust-engulfed women with bananas draped over their heads.

Our travel grit melted away, though, the moment we climbed down into the wet coolness of the mountainous air and the leafy jungle growth in which the lodge was tucked. On a backdrop of greens, tin and thatched roofs cover walls of screen and wood or walls washed with faded whites, Caribbean blues, muted yellows and burnt reds. Stepping stones, water trickling, outdoor mahogany tables and benches, a stream-fed pool, lazy dogs, a chalkboard menu surrounded by wooden bowls of fruit, squeaky screen doors, hammocks slung in the shade, cut flowers resting in carafes of water, hanging wood sculptures of fish. The indoors brought out. The outdoors brought in. … Restlessness and rush evaporated.

We threw our backpacks on the beds in our “cabin”—screen and wood (mostly screen), obscure in the foliage, straddling a cool stream that gurgled over smooth rocks, that would lull us into a cool, moist sleep at night. An outdoor shower down the path. Toilets a little farther.

Before heading out for our first tour, we ordered a second breakfast of yogurt, eggs, toast, cereal, fresh mango jelly and lots of fresh fruit, delivered in artistic arrays. Stomachs sated, we were off on a four hour hike. Up and into the jungle with our Spanish-speaking, 62-year-old little Honduran guide, Alejandro. I’d have bet he was mid-forty. He insisted on carrying our picnic lunch and water as well as our three essentials—bug spray, sunscreen and camera.

First we waded across the Rio Cangrejal. Well, Clint, Alejandro and I waded; the boys fell again and again, laughing all the way. We all soon matched their dripping appearance when the sweat started pouring on the hike up. Oddly enough, a cool, refreshing sweat under the shady canopy of the jungle.

This was no gradually ascending, well-trodden trail to some US national landmark. Real hiking. And climbing. Over boulders and roots, across fallen trees, avoiding thorns and spiked trees, beside hiding snakes, over tarantulas. Sweet Alejandro’s care was as a mother hen’s. He in his tall rubber boots, long trousers and sleeves, machete in hand; we in our swimsuits, tshirts and sandals. Amazingly, though, NO mosquitoes. And I’m usually a walking, swatting feast for them. Must have been none within a fifty mile radius, as they usually send word I’m in the area.

Alejandro taught us about one tree whose flower buds, mixed with river water, make a rich, aromatic lather; one with crushed leaves permeating the scent of peppery mint; another called a Tambor which tribesmen once used to communicate to each other by beating the drum-sounding base; another called the Ceiba (La Ceiba was our docking town) which grows into a massive tree in only thirty years. And Escalera de Monos, or in English, Monkey Ladder, a.k.a. the vines Tarzan swung from. Alejandro shinnied right up one. Followed by Clint. Tarzan himself in my eyes.

Come back tomorrow for more ...

Dialog in Roatan

2006-07-14T18:49:00.000-04:00

Here's some snippets of dialog you might hear while visiting us in Roatan:

“A bag of water, please.” “Can you get me a bag of corn oil?” “Reach me the bag of crema (Honduran sour cream) from the ‘frig, please.” --Me or Clint, regarding the little square baggies of items you wouldn’t normally expect to be sold in baggies. It’s quite environmentally friendly, which I love. Problem is, if you’re not planning on consuming it all at once, you’re stuck with a messy, little, sagging bag that leaks from its torn corner.

“I really don’t know what he just said. But look, I can imitate his voice inflection and his hand motions, like this one that looks like I’m pointing out the airplane’s exit row … Just nod and look at him like you’re very pleased. Please.” –Me, pretending I know how to translate an old mainlander’s slurred Spanish.

“It’s really clean. It has running water.” –Kate from England, who’s telling me about the clinic where she’s planning to deliver her baby. Of course, it sounded so sophisticated in her English accent, but at the same time funny. We’d never clarify the cleanliness of a doctor’s clinic by noting that it had running water. That would be a given.

We call that digging for gold. And it’s generally not something we do while simultaneously checking ourselves out in the rearview mirror and driving a packed out taxi. –What you’ll think about the socially acceptable practice of nose-picking. … So if you catch one of us stateside, digging for gold, try to just smile and remind yourself that where we’ve been living, it’s about equivalent to scratching your forehead.

“Wow, it’s an explosion of stars up there!” –Me, with my head cocked back, feeling dizzy, while hiking up the hill to our house at night.

Ew, please, couldn’t you NOT crawl into my washing machine to die in my clean clothes. ... Could you wait until I actually spread in the dab of lotion on my hand before landing and sticking in it. –Me, to a roach squashed in with the towels, and to an unidentified flying insect suffocating in my hand lotion.

“Beep. Beep. Beep. Beeeeep. Be-beep. Beep.” –Taxi drivers. Curse their horns. I swear they’ve invented their own horn language. There’s English, Spanish and Spanglish. This would be “Annoy-the-heck-outta-Clint-ish.” His response: “No! If I wanted a ride, I’d put up my hand. That’s the universal ‘I need a taxi’ sign. Don’t you watch TV to know these things?!”

“Let me out, Clint.” –Me, sitting in the back of most boobie-trapped taxis (after we've put our hand up to catch 'em). Almost always the door handles are not there. You have to reach through the window to open from the outside, and sometimes there’s a rope contraption instead of a handle there.

“[Huff, puff, huff] … Man, am I glad we’ve lived up that long, steep hill.” –Clint, on our “extreme sports” hike in Pico Bonito National Park on the mainland. That hill, with its final 100 sod-n-rock steps up to our house, trained us for the mainland mountains.

“Where’d all these bugs come from? Fifty of ‘em. All congregated here on the kitchen floor?” “Oh, the neighbor kids left the door open when they went home tonight.” –Me and Clint. Bugs, bugs, glorious bugs.

“Did you say you’re headed to the grocery store? Can I catch a ride with you?” –Me, never knowing when my next grocery store visit will be, compliments of not having a car and being too cheap to take a taxi.

“Excuse me. There’s no toilet paper.”—Clint, on my behalf, in Spanish to a security guard with a bullet proof vest and weapon, as I stood looking anxious outside the bathroom at the mall in La Ceiba (on the mainland, a short ferry ride from Roatan). Every other woman was coming and going, pun intended, with no apparent problems. There weren’t even toilet paper holders in each stall. Just one on the wall opposite the sinks where everyone had to take what they estimated they’d need ahead of time. But no paper in that one either. The security guard, bless his bullet-proof-protected heart, having looked at my face, was more than happy to go find a cleaning lady. When she arrived with that much coveted roll of paper, she handed me a square or two and then stood guard over that one roll, giving every other woman a square or two as well. You'd have thought it was gold leaf.

“Can you pass me the hot sauce? … Can you pass me the OFF?” –Me, at the going-away dinner party friends threw for me. Both were condiments in the center of the table.

“Mami!” (pronounced “mommy”)–Danis, the neighbor kid who’s just got my heart, throwing his arms around my waist and squeezing (my gizzards out, as my mamma would say). Mi otro hijo, gracias Senor. –Me.

“Why aren’t there any people walking on the side of the street here?” –Jacob, back in the US, not used to seeing everyone in a car rather than walking.

They are provided for. I will provide for you. See this, not knowing yet relying, as an exciting adventure, because you see my hand at work on your behalf. –God, to me, when he called my attention every morning to the chickens in the grass below our balcony. Walking and scratching and eating.

“That’ll do, pig.” –Our island neighbor--or rather, what I imagine my island neighbor says every morning to his pig. In the early morning, in moist lushness and the shadow of the jungle, after he puts the food out, he watches his pig. He stands there watching him eat. Then he pats him. He pats his pig and watches him. Later he returns with a water hose to spray the clay-dirt ground until it’s nice and muddy. … Once he's come back out with a pistol, trying to shoot his neighbor’s chickens who wouldn't stop pecking around his pig. At least that’s what I thought he was trying to do.

Speaking of pigs and chickens, I wrote this in my journal as a description of pride: Not seeing my true condition, that I am utterly hopeless and helpless without God, that I am a leashed pig with no way of feeding myself, that I am a chicken on an ash heap, incapable of sustaining myself. When I’m scrounging to provide for myself, to bring about even God’s adventure for my life, I’m the leashed pig and the ash covered chicken.

"That'll do, pig" --Me, to myself just now. (Think "Babe," the movie. ... Oh, you should watch it if you've never.)

Island Amigos

2006-06-12T12:46:00.000-04:00

Andrew and Danis, Belonging

Things You Might Think or Hear While in Roatan

2006-06-11T12:25:00.000-04:00

Ew, that wasn’t a scab stubbornly refusing to come off. That was a tick! … “Roll the window down, I gotta throw this tick out.”

A scream, followed by: “Mom, come in here! There’s fireworks out our window!” –the boys, from their beds on Good Friday night. We’re so high on a hill in Sandy Bay, we can see them all the way from a boat in West End Bay. Semana Santa (Holy Week) and Good Friday are big holidays here. Lots of booze.

“Oh Mom, let me cut a hole in that coconut for you. I know how to do it really good. And I know where the machete is.” –seven-year-old Jacob. He returned from the front porch with a perfect drinking hole in my coconut.

“Mom, I’m bored. Can I go chop some weeds with the machete?” –ten-year-old Andrew. “Sure.”

Me: “Where’s Lorena?” Zeilor: “Oh, she’s in the bedroom sick. She has malaria.” At a dinner party given to us by Costa Rican friends before we left the island, with doors and windows open, lizards and grasshoppers and, yes, mosquitoes, fly all around. … In Costa Rica, by the way, they call grasshoppers Hopes. Esperanzas. They’re supposed to be good luck, but our young Costa Rican friends can’t remember from their grandmothers exactly why.

“Ah great. … Andrew/Jacob, you’ve got lice again.” Only three cases this time. I check so regularly, there’s never been a complete infestation.

In Spanish: “Look at his hair! So beautiful!” Women on the street, at the beach, in the grocery, on the ferry, anywhere. Touching Andrew’s hair.

“Boys, that’s not a good idea!” “But we do it all the time!” Pulling glowing, orange-tipped sticks from our neighbor Iris’ outdoor stove to sword-fight with Iris’ boys or bang them around and watch the sparks fly. Everyone’s barefoot. “Uh-uh. No mas!”

“Mom, my sandals broke again.” “Okay, get your next pair from the closet.” “Mom, my sandals broke again.” “Okay, you’ll have to wear a pair of mine.” Both boys tore through two sets of sandals in less than three months. And then poor Jacob’s second set, by the time we were walking to customs in Houston, had a loose sole that flapped and folded backwards, tripping him. We finally had to peel it the rest of the way off so that one sandal was half an inch thinner than the other. But it was funny, watching him lift that knee waist high for a while.

A Norwegian song of blessing, a cappella in beautiful harmony, from an amazing group of Norwegians standing in our kitchen. We regularly meet such amazing people from all over the world. The Norwegians we took to lunch, then on a SNUBA dive, then cookies and Tropical Uva (grape soda) at our house, then later a movie at our house. The song came when we were saying goodbye. What a moment. I took a deep, peace-filled breath and beamed a heart-felt smile, resting my eyes on each face, enjoying their young, open faces and gentle voices. They would walk out the door and be gone from me for the rest of my life, probably. But in that moment, they belonged to me, and I to them.

It reminds me of what I sensed from God this morning. I’d read this in John Eldredge’s book Ransomed Heart:

Meister Eckhart had it right when he said that we are born out of the laughter of the Trinity. From the Heart of the universe come our beating hearts. From this Fellowship spring all our longings for a friend, a family, a fellowship--for someplace to belong.” (299)

Reflecting and listening, I sensed the Lord speak this word to my heart:

Let people belong to you, in your heart. Invite people to make themselves at home with you, to feel belonging with you. Welcome and embrace them. This is the ministry of the Spirit in you.

I want this ministry of the Spirit to flow through me. I belong to You. Make me inviting to others.

… Extra: This morning as I grabbed my laptop to type that “word” from God into my journal, Jacob stood before me, entreating me to play Go Fish with him. He read my desire to kiss his cheek as a bribe, that since he’d let me, now I had to play with him. With computer in hand, desiring to proceed with my agenda, I thought of what I’d just received from the Lord. Give Jacob that welcome and embrace, that feel of belonging to you, too. So I did. Two games. Belonging.

Mango, anyone?

2006-06-09T01:28:00.000-04:00

Does anyone know where the writer of this blog has hidden herself? … Oh, okay, I guess I’ll come out and write again. Now that everyone’s given up and left. … But hadn’t I told myself this blog was “for me” anyway? That gratifying my love of writing is what's important, not whether I have readers? Anyway …

I’ve mentioned before that I love the trees in Roatan. All of them. But the fruit trees especially, which provide candy for the eyes and the mouth. Like the banana trees so heavy with bananas they’re propped up with poles cut from other trees. Or short coconut trees packed with yellow coconuts clusters just above eye-level. Or mango trees with their fruit strewn underneath like peas under a toddler’s highchair. Here are some of my favorite fruit pictures.

Any guesses? A mango, cut the way my friend Milady taught me. (Cut as close to the core as possible, hold that half in your hand and score it deep enough to feel it on the peel against your palm. Then “pop” it inside out.)

The milk from this coconut was better than any soft drink on earth.

I wanted to hop out of the car and follow this guy into the jungle when he turned his horse off the road and disappeared.

He disappeared ... but hopefully I won't ... for too long anyway (if anyone's still reading). More stories and photos from Roatan coming soon!

Beauty from Roatan

2006-05-05T21:14:00.000-04:00

O LORD, our Lord, the majesty of your name fills the earth!
Your glory is higher than the heavens.

When I look at the night sky and see the work of your fingers--
the moon and the stars you have set in place--

what are mortals that you should think of us,
mere humans that you should care for us?
For you made us only a little lower than God,
and you crowned us with glory and honor.

You put us in charge of everything you made,
giving us authority over all things--

the sheep and the cattle
and all the wild animals,

the birds in the sky, the fish in the sea,
and everything that swims the ocean currents.
O LORD, our Lord, the majesty of your name fills the earth! (Psalm 8)

This Disappearing World

2006-04-29T18:04:00.000-04:00

We have grown dull toward this world in which we live; we have forgotten that it is not normal or scientific in any sense of the word. It is fantastic. It is fairy tale through and through. Really now. Elephants? Caterpillars? Snow? At what point did you lose your wonder at it all? Even so, once in a while something will come along and shock us right out of our dullness and resignation. … And for a moment we realize that we were born into a world as astonishing as any fairy tale. A world made for romance. (from John Eldredge’s Epic)

It happened for me Thursday. My tumble through the dull wardrobe into this fantastic world. I started my afternoon workout, hiking up to the highest point above our house, so high I can’t see our house tucked below, but I can see various keys and mangroves off shore, quiet turquoise bays and an infinite horizon of blue ocean. But I hadn’t reached the summit yet. The wind and the sound of it in the trees to my right called me there. I walked over to peer down into the ravine.

Below, something whole and bigger than all its parts appeared. Something magnificent. A fierce jungle of palms and trees, dancing, fighting, bowing, reaching, laughing, crying, singing, clapping, worshiping. Chaotic yet choreographed. Dangerous yet inviting. A powerful, yet soothing whrrr, shhhh. Glorious. With a glistening black body of wings soaring above, massive and fragile.

Then the song playing on my iPod erupted it all.

"Disappearing World," by David Gray
Slowly the truth is loading,
I'm weighted down with love,
Snow lying deep and even,
Strung out and dreaming of,
Night falling on the city,
Quite something to behold,
Don’t it just look so pretty,
This disappearing world,

We’re threading hope like fire,
Down through the desperate blood,
Down through the trailing wire,
Into the leafless wood.
Night falling on the city,
Quite something to behold,
Don’t it just look so pretty,
This disappearing world, This disappearing world.

I'll be sticking right there with it,
I'll be by your side,
Sailing like a silver bullet,
Hit ‘em ‘tween the eyes,
Through the smoke and rising water,
Cross the great divide,
Baby till it all feels right.
Night falling on the city,
Sparkling red and gold,
Girl, don’t it just look so pretty,
This disappearing world, This disappearing world,
This disappearing world, This disappearing world.

A lone melancholy piano begins. It builds into a crescendo, fueled by a relentless, even pounding. Dissipating again at the end. Hope and determination, mourning and despair all wrapped together. An embrace of life here in this disappearing world.

Snow wasn’t lying deep and even. Night wasn’t falling red and gold on the city. But truth loaded into me. Love weighed down on me. Beauty strung me out. My arms stretched to either side, imitating the trees, their glorious movements, blown in the same invisible force. I joined their magnum opus. Resting, waiting, reaching, worshiping. Crying.

Yes, quite something to behold; it does just look so pretty. This disappearing world.

The ravine belonged to me in that moment. Others, like Brian McLaren, have experienced this possessing:

I feel (not every single moment, but often) that I am carrying around this hilarious secret: that I actually own all things, that all things are mine—because I am Christ’s, and Christ is God’s, and God allows me to have things in the way that matters most. Not by having them in my legal possession (which has many downsides, including upkeep and taxes!), but by having them in my spiritual possession by gratefully seeing them, gratefully knowing and cherishing them. (A Generous Orthodoxy)

Seeing, knowing, cherishing. This disappearing world. This disappearing me. I, like the singer, am determined to stick right here with it, with this disappearing world, with its disappearing trees and its disappearing people. I’m threading hope, sailing like a silver bullet, wherever Love sends me. Over the smoke and waters of desperation, to cross the great divide. Until this disappearing body of mine turns back to dust and this spirit moves on to the eternal world.

On the jog down, tears wiped clear from my face, feeling purposeful and free, I picked up a rock. I do things like that on occasion, prompted by a sense that the Lord wants me to notice something deeper. A maroon colored rock it was, with what looked like remnants of concrete on it. Nothing special, but part of the whole.

It was me. I, like it, don’t just disappear into this disappearing world. All the rocks in all the world have contributed to the topsoil, the food, the very life that this world is today. After my life is gone, worn down through years and years of living and forgotten after that, I will still be a part of all of this. Having contributed my own being—those purposes the Creator placed within me before the creation the world—to the course of this disappearing world.

As I jogged on, the rock felt warm in my right hand, the same way I’m warm and safe in my Creator’s hand. He’s holding me, taking me places.
Listen carefully: Unless a grain of wheat is buried in the ground, dead to the world, it is never any more than a grain of wheat. But if it is buried, it sprouts and reproduces itself many times over. In the same way, anyone who holds on to life just as it is destroys that life. But if you let it go, reckless in your love, you'll have it forever, real and eternal.” (John 12:24-25 The Message)

Holy Cows, Devilish Cockroaches and Hellish Hollering

2006-04-10T22:56:00.000-04:00

Holy cow! My son Jacob and I went last night to a church service with Iris and four of her children.

Getting there, we turned off the main road with one flashlight to cut through the jungle, climb through two or three barbed wire fences, and stumble over hills, roots, horse poop, standing water, cement blocks, thick sand, briars and who knows what else. Finally we came out to a tiny, semi-concrete, one-room structure with a tin roof. Wooden shutters on the rough wood walls opened into the church to let in some breeze with the multitude of insects.

Holy cows, devilish cockroaches and hellish hollering. I sat there thinking, I am in hell! Well, I wasn’t at first. But there were premonitions. The first: After walking about four steps into the church, once my back was to the few men standing back there, I heard quite a number of LOUD “hallelujahs” and other “gracias a Dios” shouts. Were those in reference to me? Are they thankful for some fresh unsaved meat?

Well, never mind. Standing before one of fourteen white plastic chairs in the middle of the room, I clapped along to tolerably loud, energetic yell-singing. Jacob, squished onto a low bench (board) that ran the length of one wall, right where that wood shutter could whack him in the head if the wind blew hard enough, clapped and sang gibberish (Spanish) same as I did.

Then the praying started. I really love praying here. With Hondurans, that is. “Let’s pray” means let’s pray. Everybody all together now. A chorus of “Gracias, Padre,” “Gloria a Dios,” and “Hallelujah, Senor.” Once you get used to it, it’s far from distracting. Hearing everyone else’s voiced prayers mingled with my own seems to keep me more focused than when I’m listening to (read: fighting wandering thoughts during) one seasoned pray-er’s prayer.

But alas, another premonition. One fellow in the back, yelling so loud, so loud, I could have yelled at the top of my lungs to Jacob over on his board seat and he wouldn’t have heard me. Oh Lord, don’t let this guy get that microphone in his hand. … Of course, nobody heard that vocalized prayer. And well, apparently neither did God.

Thirty or so minutes later, inside my head:

This is torture. You’re looking right at me, yelling who knows what. … Can you read my thoughts? Torture! My ears are gonna break off and shatter on this concrete floor. … O look, there’s a huge flying cockroach that’s just landed above Jacob’s head on the wall. All those little girls have discovered it. … Jacob’s eating up all that attention from those girls. He’s pantomiming, “Stop pinching me,” but I know he’s loving it. … Eew, is that lice in her hair in front of me? Eew. … What’s that about Vera Cruz? Why would he be yelling about some city in Mexico? … Oh, that’s cruz, the cross. … Yeah, you know what you’re doing, cucaracha. I just wish I had wings to fly out the window with you. … A masseuse? Oh, that’s Jesus with an H. … Why are you so angry? We can all hear you. Well, I can hear you, but I have no idea what you’re saying. And my Spanish isn’t that bad. It’s the distortion of the speaker, whistling high-pitched from your yelling. … Would you talk to your wife this way? Do you talk to your friends this way? Why (in hell) are you talking to us this way? To me! Yikes, you’re looking at me! … My Bible is vibrating in my hands, my buns are vibrating on this chair. … I could almost clap to the rhythm, you know. It’s broken-record preaching (with record-breaking volume) like I’ve never heard it before. … Really, now, even without that microphone you’d be rock-concert volume. I bet people out there across the water on the key can hear you. I wonder what they’re doing out there on the key. That’s where they do the swim-with-dolphins tour. Dolphins. Dolphin jewelry. My necklace is stuck in the sweat on my neck.

Enough of my random internal dialogue. He finally revved up for the invitation. We stood, our buns still quivering from the vibrating plastic chairs. We stood. And stood. And stood. Then, yikes, could it get any worse?

Yes, it could. Faithful Brother #1 comes over to motion and then try to push me forward. Literally, pushing on my back. He wanted me to go down to accept the Lord. I resisted. “Soy Christiana.” (I’m a Christian.)

He didn’t relent. He went for reinforcements. Faithful Sister #2. “Don’t you want to accept the Lord?” I resisted. “Soy Christiana.”

Enter Faithful Brother #3. His persuasion powers were a little stronger. Mentioning my husband, my children, my work, my sickness, my life, my whatever else—all would be better if I’d accept the Lord. “Soy Christiana.” No matter how hard you push on my back, I’m not going!

Enter Faithful Brother #4. (I’m not making this up.) He motioned toward the front and pushed as well. Accept the Lord! … Now I was thinking, Okay, which move will prolong this situation (read: torture)?
1) Keep resisting.
2) Relent, go forward, let them give me the Lord (again).
3) Run out. … But wait, I can’t. I’m utterly lost (physically, that is, not spiritually, um, I think). I have no idea which barbed wires to duck back under, which roots to stumble over to get back home.

About this time Faithful Brother #4, who isn’t in the least put off by “Soy Christiana,” begins telling me that I can have more. I might have Jesus, but I can have more, if I’ll just go forward. That’s when Option #4 hit me: Play dumb. “Lo siento. No entiendo mucho.” (“I’m sorry. I don’t understand much.”)

Whew! No reinforcements. But wait, now the preacher’s yelling at me, pointing at me, motioning for me to come down front, so sure that I’ll be okay if I just accept Jesus. Holy cow! When’s this gonna end! Oh, I know, I’ll just pray. With my eyes closed. So I’m not only dumb, I’m blind. Nobody can get me now!

Well, the story’s too long already. I’ll wrap it up (hopefully faster than the loud guy did). Basically, nobody got me. The preacher hollered into the microphone just inches from the singed ears of two poor fellows who did go forward for prayer. More yelling at us. Then, finally, we wandered out, while yell-singing and shaking hands. The twenty minute trek back home in the dark was tranquil, due not to five kids darting around but to temporary deafness.

Now that you think I’m a most judgmental, most resisting, most horrible, unaccepting, critical, woman, let me share a “Top Ten” of what I learned:
1) God is gracious and merciful to accept all of our feeble attempts at worship and obedience and ambassadorship. (Be gracious, too, Jenny.)
2) God has a sense of humor. (Laugh, Jenny.)
3) God’s sense of humor might sometimes be rather mischievous. (Laugh more, Jenny.)
4) God’s people are all so different. (Accept them, Jenny.)
5) Different is usually just different, not better or worse, regardless of my opinion. (Embrace the differences, Jenny.)
6) Never, ever assume that you know just what someone else needs. Or what you need, for that matter. (Trust God to, Jenny.)
7) Sometimes people who love you might do things with your best interest at heart. (See their hearts’ intent, Jenny.)
8) Sometimes those things might land you in an uncomfortable spot. (Grow in it, Jenny.)
9) What works for you might not work for someone else. And the opposite: What works for someone else might not work for you. (Be open, Jenny.)
10) Carrying earplugs in your pocket is smart if you’re headed to a rock concert or to a Honduran iglesia (church), or if you think you might have to play deaf and dumb. (Keep listening, Jenny.)

No holy cows actually played into this true story. Well, except maybe for the ones wandering the roads within hollering distance.

Being Chicken of Chickens

2006-04-04T23:52:00.000-04:00

Chickens roam everywhere here in Roatan. Live ones. And the funny thing is, people kill them regularly and eat them. I didn’t know they did that with chickens! You know, real ones with feathers. Mine have always come in Styrofoam and plastic with “preparation instruction” stickers. Or cottony fluffy with a mechanical sounding churp and an Easter tag. The other day when I was boiling a “whole chicken,” I admit that I squealed and ran away when two skinny-fingered looking feet popped up to the top of the pot.

The other day I saw a real one get shot and run herself smack into a pile of dirt, where she killed over head first. My island friend Milady said that when she was a little girl, her mother would say just before leaving for the day, “By the time I get back, I want that chicken over there and that chicken there cooked up for supper.” So even as a little girl, she had to catch ‘em, chop off their heads, drain ‘em, pluck ‘em and cook ‘em. After a while Milady figured out the easiest way to catch a chicken—to fish for it. Put some bait on a hook and throw it out in the yard, then reel the chicken in.

All the chickens around make me think of my mama’s chickens. And her chicken yard.

Uh! That chicken yard. I hated it as a child. Pure hated it. I never understood my mama’s fascination with keeping a stinky, messy pen of proud chickens. When I had to feed and water them and collect their eggs, I always managed to step in all their poop as I ran through there scared … as a chicken. I did have reason to be afraid, though, I found out later. I came home from school one day and saw my Mama lying on the couch, swelling up from the spur her mean little rooster had given her. She was even carted off to the hospital later that day for an IV.

My mama also kept the most obnoxious little guinea hens whose favorite thing was to chase each other around the house, screaming their heads off all the while. They’d go in circles all day long. Nearly drive you nuts. Recently she bought herself some more guineas for her Louisiana coup. “I just love ’em. But the most awful thing, Jenny, their little heads look just like little snake heads, I can’t hardly stand to look at ‘em,” she told me. But she’s hoping they’ll grow out of that.

Well, all but one of them. She watched it kick its last few breaths when her dog Abbey knocked its box off the dryer and its neck got broken. Then she washed it in the washing machine. … By accident, of course. Lying inside some folds of tissue, waiting patiently in the laundry room for a proper burial, it accidentally got scooped up with the towels. And it didn’t come out looking like one of those cottony soft, Easter-tagged ones would. She picked out an eye here, a wing there … A tedious task, I’m sure.

Here’s a funny story from her journal involving our dog and her chickens:

June 11, 1985 We’ve been having Chinese Chicken Torture. We’re trying to teach Peaches not to harm the chickens. Every afternoon we get Basko, the smallest chicken, out, tie a long piece of twine around its leg so it can’t run away and then let Peaches sniff and watch it. If she makes one aggressive move ‘we beat the living daylights out of her.’ Well, I think it’s working. This morning one of the chickens got out. Peaches watched it, followed it around, sniffed it a few times, and then came back to the gallery, laid down and went to sleep.

“… how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings …” (Matthew 23:37).

Long Live the Hands!

2006-03-29T23:59:00.000-04:00

When I was a little girl, my mama’s family felt more like a pride of lions or a herd of elephants than “extended family,” which has a rather detached ring to it. Her parents, my Mawmaw and Pawpaw, had four children: Bonnie, Laurie, Mary (my mom) and Drinnon. And those four siblings herded their families together--for holidays, for birthdays, for vacations (every winter in Colorado and every summer in Florida), and for no good reason other than that’s what families are supposed do (especially families who love and need each other). As a little girl, all seemed right and beautiful and long-lasting.

Then, around the time half us grandchildren were either graduated or about to, all four families fell apart. Fragmenting through divorce or death. All in a matter of about five years. Dysfunctional is too dispassionate a word. As a young woman, all seemed wrong and tainted and ephemeral. Later, all just seemed lost or forgotten.

Until last week.

Last week each of us got a call that Aunt Laurie had died suddenly. And each of us turned toward home, on planes or on roads, to come together again. To come together.

We talked about the abuses. The betrayals. The tragedies. The mutual failures and disappointments and guilt. We talked about 12-year-old Paul finding his dad in the driveway with a self-inflicted gunshot through his chest, his mother with a blood stain right over her heart where she’d cradled Don’s head. We talked about Laurie bashing little Jeff’s head against the metal dashboard of their Chevrolet, resulting in a broken nose and stitches in his head, all to keep him from seeing into the open doors of a Bourbon Street bar. We talked about the irrational rage our Pawpaw had, which drove him to give almost all of us unjust spankings. Pawpaw yanked Josh out of the lake to spank him, wet and squealing on the barge. Five-year-old Owen wedged himself under a truck tire after his spanking, moaning “Oh, somebody just run over me,” lifting his face pleadingly to the falling rain.

We talked about the eccentric and the preposterous. We talked about Laurie’s paranoid schizophrenic moments when she’d do crazy things—like hitting Jeff over the head with a skillet or smearing dog poop on her hairdresser’s car, or yelling at a whole slew of ski instructors, “I hope ever one ‘a you is impotent tonight!” We talked about two teenaged grandchildren being interrogated for murder, and one little grandchild being made to ski with chicken pox. Unreasonable accusations and drug tests. Citizen’s arrests and impromptu court sessions in the middle of the night. Twelve hour treks under the stars, lost and alone in the woods, below freezing. Marriage annulments from impotent Tennessee Methodist preachers.

We talked about our family’s love, its acceptance, and its fortitude. As well as its comical. The time two grandchildren lined up all the little goldfish along the side of the tub, wrapped up in toilet paper to dry. The time another grandchild woke to find lunch ladies cramming a doughnut in his mouth. Or the time the boy-scout camp nurse suffocated a tick out of the back of one grandchild’s head with Vaseline. The time the oldest and youngest grandchildren crossed paths, hardly recognizing each other, at a gas station. Two “weirdoes,” they said, dressed in black with Mohawks or rocker hair. Children pumping frogs full of water with their Daddy’s syringes; scrambling out of ditch water so leeches wouldn’t suck their blood out; hiding from a burglar in soft, damp laundry. A sister so mean she could skin you like an orange, yet who was precious beyond realization. Aunt Laurie.

We eulogized Aunt Laurie. We remembered her servant heart, her peacemaking, her intelligence, her strength, her latter years’ happiness and freedom, her generosity, her love for each of us, her trust in God. We eulogized not only her, though. We eulogized each other through sharing past memories as well as future hopes. We extended grace. We embraced, clung to each other, practically moaning, “Oh, Aunt Mary, I love your bones” or “Yes, Drinnon, you were a good brother.” “Now that I’ve found you, I won't ever lose you again,” or “You’re my family,” raspy through tears.

We confessed we’d taken each other for granted, like electricity. Then the lights went out. And we all scrambled in the darkness, to draw together in mourning’s candlelight. And now I’m aglow with the love of family. God gave us to each other. And even though it’s a mixed bag, it’s a lavishly loving, fragile yet resilient gift. Even though we all carry scars and thousands of unmentioned hurts, we carry love, which covers over the multitude of it all.

We each march--or dance, or dawdle, or swagger--to the beat of our own drummers. Yet somehow our beats create something harmonious. A strange harmony we make with our Hands, I think. The Hands. The descendants of Edward Arlon Hand and Farris Modisette Hand. The Hand clan. “We’re HANDS!” we triumphantly proclaimed, with hands thrust high, while the dirt was being piled high over Aunt Laurie’s grave.

Now, as a woman nearing middle age, all sometimes seems wrong and tainted and ephemeral--like the unexpected loss of Aunt Laurie. But I know in my heart that it is also altogether right and beautiful and long-lasting.

Long live the Hands!

What's up with "Keep Listening"?

2006-03-22T03:08:00.000-04:00

It’s striking me a bit ironic that I have a blog entitled “Keep Listening,” in which I describe myself as someone who is listening, yet in which I’m actually the only one doing all the talking. Ironic, maybe even contradictory. But it fits with how my friend Jeana graciously describes me. She emailed me:

I really like all the things about you that seem to contradict. There's just nobody like you. … You’re so full of paradoxes and surprises. You don't really fit into any "categories." I wouldn’t initially have pegged you for someone who would do spur of the moment things, or who would be into rock climbing, or dred locks. It's fun. I never know what you will do or say next. And initially you came across as so calm and steady (which you are); but typically that personality tends to be more predictable.

So here’s a post to explain more of my passion around the words “Keep Listening,” even though this blog is all about my sharing!

When a baby believer friend shares with me that she smokes pot, the Voice is there whispering, “Keep Listening.”

When my gorgeous, always vivacious friend tells me tearfully that her husband has been unfaithful to her, the Voice is there whispering, “Keep Listening.”

When the wind weaves through the palms, and through my hair, It whispers again, “Keep Listening.”

A friend asserts that she will not influence her children with religion, that when they’re 18 they can decide for themselves; and the Voice is there whispering, “Keep Listening.”

A friend glows during her account of how the Lord has worked in her heart through this year; and the Voice whispers, “Keep listening.”

A friend shares about her son’s heart-wrenching ordeal with drugs and arrests; and the Voice whispers, “Keep listening.”

When the words of a song strum my heart chords, loosening their tightness, the Voice is there whispering, “Keep Listening.”

A friend proudly sporting a new playboy bunny navel ring reminisces dreamily about a star-filled night on a Harley outside Las Vegas; and It is there whispering, “Keep Listening.”

When the stillness of the underwater ocean suspends me entirely, when it arrests me and engulfs me, the Voice is there whispering, “Keep Listening.”

When my husband talks out frustrations from the day, It whispers, “Keep Listening.”

When a friend shares with me that years ago she stood on a bridge ready to end it all, the Voice is there whispering, “Keep Listening.”

When a child stutters and stumbles through a really long, mostly incomprehensible story, It whispers, “Keep Listening.”

When I can understand precious little of the tearful sighs a Spanish neighbor is confessing in her native tongue, the Voice is there whispering, “Keep Listening.”

And when I heed that gentle, loving Voice, it’s then that I usually begin to understand precious more of others' native tongues. Their heart languages. Over time (sometimes) the language barriers erode away. I learn their language, I learn to love it, and I learn to speak it. So that over time, the Voice begins to whisper here and there, “Now share.”

Sometimes. Sometimes that friend keeps talking. And talking. She never genuinely stops to listen herself. (Or to herself.) But maybe that’s unimportant, regarding my purpose in her life. Maybe my purpose is to listen for this season, while someone else gets to speak to her in the next season.

Nobody’s perfect. My friends could tell you there are plenty of times when I bounce off their mid-thought story to blurt out my own story, which turns out to have little or no connection or relevance. Plenty of times I’m too impatient, too self-centered, too busy, too judgmental, too preacherly, too know-it-all. Other times I start feeling guilt, like I haven’t stood up for truth, I haven’t spoken out as I ought to--I've been listening too much.

But just this past week I received an email from a friend who said that at least sometimes, yes, sometimes, I do pay attention to the Voice of the Lord to Keep Listening. And it is, after all, just what I should do. Here’s what she said:

I remember when I was first dipping my foot in His waters and you and I went out to Starbucks. I told you then that I smoked pot. I remember your lack of acknowledgement. That actually meant a lot to me. I didn't feel like I wasn't good enough to be a Christian, or even your friend. It was never an issue between us and it naturally stopped along the way. I can't even imagine doing it now. I can't even tell you when it happened. Actually, I do remember when I was convicted. That is another story though.

Maybe it’s the sheer volume of minutes God has kept listening to me throughout my life. He’s still listening—even to this! (Cool, He’s interested in what I have to say! He’s enthralled with this full-of-contradictions mystery of a woman He’s created!) When I think of the listening log God has with me, listening to others feels like a privilege, as if God is giving me the opportunity to experience being more like Him. Allowing me to be his Ear.

So, thanks for listening. It’s so nice to be heard.

Trees of Roatan

2006-03-22T02:53:00.000-04:00

Roatan has some great trees. Aside from the dozen different varieties of palm and coconut trees, and the amazing assortment of fruit and nut bearing trees—the banana, mango, lime, cashew-fruit, pineapple, tamarindo, orange, guava, and almond, to name a few. Aside from all those trees, there’s the “magic cow” which our island friend Alson tells us is great for rubbing on insect bites under a cool shower.

And there’s the “gumba limba,” which our beautifully black friend Alson tells us is named for us white-skinned people. The gumba limba has a reddish bark that’s always peeling to reveal new green skin. So, we don’t have green skin beneath, but we’re definitely a reddening, peeling variety of people!

But my favorite right now is the Father Tree (my personal name). But not just any Father Tree. One in particular. When you’re on the road to the beach, you wind around and around and finally up over a summit. That’s where this tree is, right there on the side of the road, framing your first view of the blue ocean below. Its limbs create a perfect canopy overhead. Like a father holding out a blanket overhead as a makeshift umbrella for his children. I love this Father Tree, grand and strong and good. Standing beneath it, I feel small and childlike and loved.

The picture does it no justice.

Hungry, anybody?

2006-03-22T02:38:00.000-04:00

Here's that beautiful red snapper, in my husband's ... um, not-so-competent, fish-butchering hand. ... Clint's not that small, by the way. That snapper's a big 'un.

Fish and Loaves in Roatan

2006-03-20T21:52:00.000-04:00

Clint bought a HUGE whole red snapper the other day and finally got out under the house with all the kids (ours and the neighbors) to cut it up. He doesn’t remember any lessons he received as a boy from his fisherman dad. It was hacked to death. Its eyes, about the size of half-dollar coins, were stabbed again and again by the boys. Its fins and tail were flapped and sailed around in the air with sound effects.

A Bulgarian/Italian friend of mine said the head and tail (cabeza y cola) are excellent for soup. I’m not sure my pot would even hold them. And if so, not sure my stomach could hold them afterwards. So I walked them down the hill to Iris (the neighbor boys’ mom). I found her out behind her house washing clothes by hand and hanging them on the barbed wire fence. Her little daughter Yesli was playing in the dirt (not far from the place where every morning, when I’m reading my Bible in the hammock on our porch, I see her sons aim their pee from the porch when they first wake up). Anyway, she was glad to have the head, tail, fins and lots of meat still on the body from which Clint sliced our filets.

She invited me in to see her husband, who lay on a single mattress behind a sheet hung to separate it from the other double mattress. (All SEVEN of them share those two beds at night!) He was covered in sores, some were scabbed, some still bulging under the skin, cyst-like, swelling his face and back. I showed her my chicken pox scars and asked her if that’s what it was. She said yes and something about it being better to get them when you’re young. I’m wondering, though, if mumps or measles or the like might leave similar scars, as these bumps looked very different from Andrew’s chicken pox a few years back.

They’ve been to the doctor and were told there’s nothing they can do for him. He just needs to wash frequently. Last week I’d sent some pain reliever/fever reducer (aka Aleve) down with Danis when he’d told me his dad had a fever and headache. So I had Eder run down some more today when she told me it had at least helped him to feel better. I know he worked last week when he was sick, as Danis said, “No trabaja, no dinero.” (Update: He’s well now. Thank you, Lord.)

I LOVE this family. Iris sent Andrew and Jacob up with hot tortillas after I’d taken the fish down. (Fish and loaves.) Her tortillas look store-bought compared to mine. But I’ve learned from Milady, another island friend, that I can get some really healthy, ugly-looking ones by adding wheat flour and steamed, finely diced vegetables (zucchini, carrots, garlic, onion, green beans, etc.). One of those in the mornings with a big glass of water and I’m set until lunch.

Roatan: March '06

2006-03-20T21:43:00.000-04:00

High on a hill in Sandy Bay, we wake to a view of blue sky, blue and aqua ocean, huge palms and colorful jungle foliage below us. To get to our house, you can park down the hill and walk up about 100 wood/dirt/rock stair steps or park up the hill and walk down about 60. Gives new meaning to “breathtaking view.” Without a car again, we get to walk the 100 steps down to the side road, then another long walk down to the main road to catch a taxi. Ha! And I used to try for a close parking space at Walmart!

Here's another "what to expect while on the island" list:

• An old man standing by the roadside, keeping the drizzle off his head with a huge, draping banana leaf umbrella.

• A doctor walking down the side of the street with his stethoscope stuck in his white coat pocket. Don’t know that I’ve ever seen my doctor walking down Main Street.

• Young girl standing on the roadside with a cup, plate and fork, only scraps left. Probably she’d walked across the street to give a grandmother lunch, then was waiting to return the dishes across the street again. My friend Merlin (in her 60’s) carries breakfast, lunch and dinner like that to her mother every day.

• Waking up to realize your EYE has been bitten in the night. Having a friend reply to you, “Oh yeah, my husband and I were waking up with so many spider bites across our backs that we had to spray.”

• Half a dozen different school uniforms. For the public, for the private bilingual, for the Methodist, the Episcopal, the Church of God, etc.

• When the Church of God school lets out in Coxen Hole, a man walks out right to the bumper of your car (on a too-narrow, two way road) to put out a huge sandwich board “stop” sign, until every last uniformed child has moped or darted or zigzagged or skipped in whatever direction outside the schoolhouse door, which is a foot or so from the road. Five minutes later, after that last straggler, he moves the sign.
• Absolutely nothing suspicious about two young men funneling gas into the car behind the grocery store using half a coke bottle and jug.
• Match stick popsicle sticks. Clint’s only alternative for ice cube popsicles. Hey, you can cool down and light the gas stove at the same time.
• Ingenious toys by the boys’ neighbor friend Ariel (a boy): A broken broom handle, strap from a broken sandal, rubber bands and piece of rug make … a slingslot. A block of wood, two big nails, six little ones and four coke bottle tops make … a car.
• Seeing stars out the window while you’re lying in bed.
• Walking down the town of West End and a someone saying to Jacob from across the street, “Hey Jacob, remember me?” Jacob makes lots of friends, island wide.
• One of the sweetest little moments in my life: From the bedroom I heard the sound of the knife hitting the chopping block and of Clint’s falsetto voice straining to hit the melody of “You’re Beautiful” by James Blunt. Fresh chopped basil, fresh sliced red snapper filets, butter, fresh snapped green beans, pasta. When Clint decides to, he can be quite the singing chef.
• Imagine a conversation like this: “How much do you weigh?” “Weigh?” “Yes, how much do you weigh?” “Books?” “No, how much do you weigh?” “Books for school?” “No.” “How much do my books for school weigh?” “No, how much do you weigh?” “OH! How much do I weigh! … I don’t know exactly.” So, who’s who in this conversation? My neighbor is the one asking me how much I weigh, in Spanish. I’m the stupid one asking about books and school. A confusion of terms (libro vs. libra).

• Neighboring landowners deciding to burn their jungle beside us. It’s been so bad the cops came by to find out who owned the property (wow, the cops came out) and Clint got out with a water hose. Basically, workers cut (with those huge machetes) most of the brush last week, let it dry out some, then set fire to it and let it creep up the hill. So, we’ve had all the windows closed to keep the gray ash layer that’s all over everything to a minimum. That makes things HOT!

• Experiencing an island women’s prayer meeting. All the women, dressed in white (even hats with white veils), preached and prayed and praised LOUDLY after the HIV/Aids educational speech.

• Asking Clint to pick up from town a chicken to boil. Next thing I know, whole chicken feet, which too much resemble skinny, pink fingers, float up to the top of my boiling pot. I squeal and retreat, to the entertainment of the visiting island kids.

Roatan: From the Majestic to the Icky

2006-03-18T00:35:00.000-04:00

More of my unusual, funny, beautiful and icky observations from the island of Roatan (from last December):

• Feathers still stuck on the eggs.

• Hearing, “The police are afraid to …” We hear it often: they’re afraid to go out to the east end to apprehend a prison escapee, to go after a known thief, to do this or that, anything involving possibly armed and dangerous suspects. They just stay away, I guess, and wait for the less dangerous scenarios. Such as the report that children are harvesting lobsters off the reef. Then they’re out right away to beat the kids and take them in wet and barefoot for an overnight jail stay.

• Alas, lice! Only the boys, thank goodness. Really, I’m amazed we made it as long as we did. (Don’t worry, the local farmacia carries the treatment, so we won’t be bringing them home to share for Christmas!) … Everyone (well, all white and black islanders) says, “Oh, it’s the Spanish kids. They all have lice. Keep ‘em away from your kids.” Well, those are the very kids my kids are closest with. I can’t just send ‘em home. Brings new understanding to the verses about Jesus actually touching the lepers.

• Jacob looking like a cancer victim. Clint “buzzed” him with dull, standard-issue school scissors, the only ones we brought to the island. Choppy is an understatement. I’ve cleaned it up twice since then, though, so he looks a little less sickly.

• Cutting the corners of milk cartons open.

• Purple mountains majesty. Even in Honduras. They’re rising in the distance across the ocean on a clear day, like low-lying clouds. The mainland of Honduras.

• A resort on my jog route offering a “Worm Welcome.” Sounds tasty. The welcome here is always warm, too.

• A big smile and “Alo!” from Nadia at the park. She and her husband are from Tegucigalpa (the capital), making authentic Honduran cuisine at an outdoor kitchen in the park to sell to tourists. She’s a glowing, cheerful, beautiful Spanish woman, but she cried today when she spoke of her six- and eight-year-old boy and girl who are still in Teguc. Pray they become able to support themselves here and bring their kids over as well.

So, that's the last of my "back issue" lists. Darn. Now I gotta start coming up with something fresh!

Roatan: This is My Life

2006-03-16T18:49:00.000-04:00

What you’d probably get used to if you were here in Roatan (from November of last year):

• Hearing gunshots, even just outside our open-air church. “You get used to hearing gunshots” was a consolation comment at women’s Bible study. When some see suspicious people hanging around outside near their homes, they’ll just fire warning shots.

• Salt that won’t shake out … from that huge Morton’s salt can! Moist!

• Yaco and Andi. Now it’s not just the Spanish kids who call ‘em that. They refer to themselves that way!

• Crunch, crunch. The sound our taxi made one night when passing a gathering of about 20-30 crabs in the road.

• Cucarachas so big they stand about an inch off the ground.

• Someone stopping to pee in your yard, having thought they’d found a private spot.

• I’m not sure what’s worse: finding a live roach in your bed, or finding his body parts (his hairy legs).

• Tourists stopping to take pictures of two blonde Texas boys playing at the beach. (Or emaciated old drunks trying to get them to unbury themselves, nearly falling onto them while worrying over their safety.)

• Mayan feet. Beautiful, brown and square. Toes spread wide, worn on ancient Mayan paths.

• Crabs coming in the holes in screen doors (if your house isn’t on stilts) or climbing up the screen to hang just above your head. Meanwhile, you’re trying to close the door but it keeps hitting on something. You look up. Oh, ick! A crab!

• Clint leaving the house in shorts and running shoes with his t-shirt in a little ziplock bag, to run to the park along the beach in the rain.

• Tasting weird stuff. Like some roasted (read: burned), ground maize concoction from Danis’ mom. A hot cocoa looking powder he told me his mom made that I was to mix in boiling milk. From reading in a Mayan history book I have, I think it was actually an ancient Mayan “foaming chocolate” drink, made with cacao beans and maize flour mixed in water. I spewed and kept sputtering until it was completely out of my mouth. As close as I can imagine to licking ashes from last night’s campfire. Glad I waited until after Danis had left to try it.

• Honduran after-dinner mints? Halls Menthol imitations called “Euka Ice.” Stock up and you’re set for your next cold.

• “Limeade berries,” Jacob calls ‘em, in abundance in wild growth beside us.

• Underwear trees. Money doesn’t grow on trees here, but apparently underwear does on wash days.

• Sly little monkeys. Literally. The monkeys in the park. Once one unzipped a tourist’s backpack, swiped a wad of $20’s mostly (totaling around $500), ran up a tree, threw all but one bill down which he’d casually tear a bite off and spit out. Quite funny!

While balancing a plate of burritos and salad from a restaurant on the beach and kayaking out to a buoy where Clint, the boys and friends were waiting to snorkel, I said to myself, “This is my life!” … There are those wonderful moments, as well as those other moments. Paradise this side of eternity is still something shy of paradise, especially during rainy season. We’ve been drying out the last few days, though, glad for a reprieve from the downpour.

Speaking Shark

2006-03-15T23:53:00.000-04:00

I heard Jacob say today, “Oh, Andrew, tell him to get off me. I don’t speak shark.”

“Shark, get off Jacob.”

“No, you have to say it in shark; he doesn’t understand.”

“Ra, roo-roo, ra, roo, ruh.”

“Oh, thanks, Andrew.”

(Now that we're back in Roatan, I finally gave them the blow-up shark I bought on clearance and hid from them a while back. They were in their bedroom.)

More Splashes of Roatan

2006-03-15T23:44:00.000-04:00

The funny, the yummy, the creepy, the needy, the blessed (and hopefully the not too boring) from Roatan (back in October):

• Two Words: RAINY SEASON. … Wet is relative. There's the wet when walking through a drizzle to and from the grocery store, which is totally normal. Then there's the drenched wet when that drizzle turns into a blowing downpour. Or the dank feeling the entire house always has. But, for those of us who’ve grown up mostly insulated from creation by shoe leather, cotton-polyester, glass, metal, plastic, HVAC, etc. there is something beautiful about getting wet in the rain. It’s a gift, connecting with creation. It makes me laugh like a child again.

• Hey, who knew Roatan had a surf, or that we could hear it! Cause? North Wind. Wilma. And Beta. (Hurricanes/tropical storms). An exciting change for the boys from the usual mostly flat ocean here.

• The Goose-Goat thing? FROGS! Who knew that beautiful lily pond out front would be full of ‘em. Interesting green ones, one of which rode our hammock blowing in the north wind all day. (I’m still not determined there’s not a goat in cahoots with ‘em.)

• We hear “Temptation Island” was filmed here, but we’re thinking of it more as “Exercise Island,” without a car, that is. Maybe it’s off-setting the Duo Duos (read below).

• The incognito security guard Flores doesn’t actually live below us. He just shows up at dusk and leaves at sunrise. So what’s downstairs? A brand (spankin’) new washer/dryer, which the grounds keeper Melvin (pronounced Mel-bean en Espanol) gave us the key for. Ed’s Laundry—drop off and pick up—was nice, but having our own again is even better.

• Did I say “picking around bugs in the sugar bowl”? Oh, a little extra protein never hurt anybody! They pour from the box into boiling water with the macaroni, too.

• Death by “Duo Duo!” What, you ask? Two wafers, cracker-like, with a thin sliver of chocolate between. Great frozen. Light, not too sweet, highly addictive. Sold by the sleeve for 18 lemps ($1). We might be in trouble come December, trying to squeeze back into the winter clothes we’ve outgrown.

• Sneaky island dogs who try to swing around the flank and bite your ankles. Turning around and faking counterattack doesn’t faze ‘em much. They make sure I’m really awake during my morning jog.

• My (Jenny’s) first offer to buy pot from Carmon, an old, shriveled, shirtless West End man. (So I’ve led a pretty sheltered life.) I said “No, thanks,” by the way. I got to talk with him longer when the boys and I were stuck inside a small grocery store with him, waiting for the downpour to die down before running back home with our bags. Interesting fellow with eyes that seem to betray a woundedness inside.

• ANTS—on the laptop keyboard, in the crevices of your camera, crawling up your calves, in the microwave (they take quite a long time to die in there when you get tired of trying to chase them with a paper towel and decide to zap ‘em first, then swipe ‘em up), inside the refrigerator (they just slow down or pretend to be dead in there). Super fast too.

• Weekly Friday night sleepovers with four extra boys. Our old neighbor boys. That’s six boys sharing two twin beds and lined-up pillows. Noisy JOY!

• After hurricane Wilma: Clint changing a tourist’s tire with an angry, macho little crab prancing around his feet; Clint lined up beside a dozen other islanders, dragging a damaged boat from the water with rusty tin, leftover nail-spiked wood from demolished docks, downed trees, trash and dead ocean life under his feet.

• Singing in a church with three walls of open windows with the rain pouring down so hard you can hardly hear yourself. Wow! Talk about creation praising the Lord. His presence and His praise was huge.

• The boys’ weekly fishing with two friends and their Honduran nanny Milady (a beautiful woman, sweet friend). Down a grassy, treed pathway which opens out to a palapa (gazebo) and black-gray iron-shore all around. Wild and dangerous and beautiful. A flat piece of rock extends across to touch the water, which laps up occasionally across it, dark blue, clear, beautiful ocean water. There are deeper places near the iron-shore hills that create little pools of ocean water. In these pools the boys hold their caught fish captive. The very same fish we see around the reefs when we’re scuba diving. One with bright blue spots, a pink one with a spikey top fin that stings, one with multicolored stripes (I need to learn names). The first fish caught is cut up and used as bait for the rest. “Fishing poles” are twine rolled around an empty water bottle. The boys love it. Out in the distance to the left you can see the east end of the island jutting around and out into the ocean. Two humps of islands out in the distance to the right. Breathtaking. Oh, and after the walk back to Milady’s house, carrying fish by their tails or gouged through the gill with a knife or cradled in their palms, they get to eat them fried. (It’s weird how hard it is for me to see them being picked up out of the water or gasping over on their sides when they’ve gotten in a shallow part of the captive pool or slapping onto the prickly iron-shore when they were dropped, but it was nothing to pick their flesh out for the boys once cooked (whole). O what fun, though. Thank you, Lord.

• Lice! Yikes. We haven’t caught ‘em yet, but I feel it’s just a matter of time. Too many friends, both young and old, have them.

• “I’m Dreaming of a White Christmas” drifting through the palms. Apparently, Musicano Christiano Honduran-style doesn’t just mean “Amazing Grace” but also means all Christmas songs, referencing Jesus or not. Melvin (grounds keeper) began playing it rather loudly outside during his work (shortly after I shared with him that we’re Christians, too). Yes, I am dreaming of a white Christmas (back in TX maybe).

• Carmen (neighbor friend here in West End) singing the good ol’ hymns. I sensed the Lord telling me to go outside on my porch steps and sing with her. Oh, that was a hard one. But what a blessing, singing “What a Friend We Have in Jesus” island-style. She’s so lonely, single mother to four girls, remember? Shared with me the day we sang together that earlier in life she was gonna commit suicide. Said she was standing on a bridge over a lake on the mainland, ready to go, but she felt the Lord’s hands on her shoulders. He said, “No, Carmen, this isn’t my way, baby.” Thank you, Lord! What a friend we have in you. … She brought me limes that night from her trees. Pray for her as you feel led, please, and her four girls.

• Alas! No more beach volleyball. Due to Hurricane Wilma, all the courts were wiped out. For now, anyway.

Splashes of Roatan

2006-03-14T20:16:00.000-04:00

These were highlights from our first day and night back on the island of Roatan last October:

• Coming down the metal stairs from the airplane into WARM, HEAVY, WET air.

• Pulling down the covers, checking under the pillows for any insect hideouts. Finding two. One baby spider, so tiny she got swiped into my side of the sheets when I tried to brush her out. And one not-so-baby roach under Clint’s pillow. Surprisingly, Clint, who’s notorious for his fast reflexes in volleyball but his slow reflexes in bug catching, caught the thing and smushed him in a bed of toilet paper. Not sure which was better, the lizard hideout from our last trip or the spider/roach duo. At any rate, our sheets match and have no holes (more than we could say last time). Still no mattress cover, but hey, everything really is new in this house (unlike the torn-down-and-rebuilt-in-a-different-location “new” of the other place), so it’s more palatable (and for close to the same price).

• Taxis, thumbing with friends or walking (trying to make it without a car).

• Winding roads absent of signals, but with a newly painted yellow center stripe (they’re proud of that stripe).

• A huge election crowd gathered at the Coxen Hole gas station (a Central American political phenomenon, I think).

• Gritty, grassy, muddy flip-flops.

• Sweat and bug spray. We’ve been told mosquitoes are on the rise.

• Chickens everywhere (with their annoying roosters). They were all pecking around the cemetery that’s next door to us this morning.

• What? A bungalow with real central a/c? It’s amazing, but true. We’re surrounded by hot pinks, lime greens, tangy oranges, and numerous shades of Caribbean blue in our “Caribbean style” bungalow here in West End. Andrew said last night that he likes this house “as much as (but not more than) our house with the pool.” No baking sheet or pan anywhere to be found, no mixing bowl (glad I brought that Tupperware), and only one not-so-all-purpose butcher knife, BUT, WE HAVE HOT WATER! Meaning, not just in the shower from a rigged thing that once blew sparks and smoked. Real hot water this time.

• Wincing every time Clint, or the boys who’ve inherited his heavy feet, get up and stomp around. Why? The security guard lives below us, though I haven’t seen hide nor hair of him since our move-in last night.

• A weird nocturnal goose-goat thing outside making LOUD noises. It starts out sounding like a flock of hyper, mad geese honk-honking. After about 45 seconds it dies out again as a lone goat, bleating its lungs out. Last night I kept talking about it, imitating the goat-like end-sounds and said finally, “Well, that noise is gonna be hard to get used to.” “Almost as bad as the goat in this bed next to me,” replied Clint.

• Click. … Click. These little Sunbeam grey air freshener looking things plugged into each room. They CLICK about every four seconds. I’d have ripped them out, had I not discovered they’re some sort of electronic insect repellant thingy.

• A quick smack on the cheek from Iris and big hugs from her five children, all our old neighbors. A beautiful crop of corn growing on the hillside between their house and our old one. The little garden they’d had before had already produced melons, Iris told me. Danis’ dad and the kids went into the corn and got five ears. The dad wanted Jacob to help him shuck, which only showed how citified we are. Shortly after, we had hot, fresh corn, grown both so sweet and salty it needed nothing added, as well as a glass of Coke, fetched fresh and cold from the pulperia down the road by one of the kids.

• Great-grandmother Mercyl (who owns the property we’re renting) hanging one elbow over her balcony with her equally beautiful and old sister, ending her comments with honey or darlin’ (island English).

• Listening to Carmen, a neighbor and property caretaker who still had the pink rollers I’d seen in her hair from earlier in the day (6 hours later), tell me how she ended up as a single mom to four daughters when her youngest was only nine months old. That youngest, now eleven, finally came up to fetch her mama for dinner, using the same sing-songy island English her mama enchanted me with. … Lord, give me more ears for this woman, or more heart, more hands, more words, more whatever you know will bless her. You’re in control here. We can’t do anything. Forgive me for forgetting this.

• An islander pedaling by on a bike excited to see Clint because maybe they can pair up to take on the best in two-man sand volleyball.

• Clint, as he’s on the porch about to walk for some breakfast, saying with a relaxed smile, “It’s good to be here.” “Here in this bungalow or in Roatan?” I asked. “In Roatan, and in this bungalow.” Yes, it is. For all of us.

• Picking around bugs in the sugar bowl.

• Aqua, oval glass wind-chimes, clinking in the wind on our porch.

The weird goose-goat is still out there tonight. I think there’s a few actually. Mating, fighting, who knows. And the clicking inside too. The traffic, cars and their loud Latin radios, too. But hey, no complaints. We sensed the Lord was showing us it was time to be back. And it feels strangely like we’re home again. Home wherever He is.

Fourth Installment: Roatan "Things to Expect"

2006-03-13T19:24:00.000-04:00

From June of last year, another list of things we found peculiar or unique to island living:

1) Coolers (ice chests) tied with ropes on people's backs or bicycles, sometimes with bags of ice cream cones strapped on. A traveling Seven-Eleven.
2) Ole fashioned bottle drinks. There's one fountain drink machine on the island, that we know of.
3) Parrots everywhere. On people's shoulders walking down the street, in cages, perched on a branch in a restaurant.
4) People saying this is not the US (mainly when you want fast service or answers or want to know details of what you’re paying for or what you should expect). (This is Clint's addition.)
5) Rolling lines on the TV screen.
6) Not thinking it's that surprising to open the dental floss and find a baby grasshopper hiding inside.
7) People speaking English, but you have NO idea what they're saying. It’s sing-songy and beautiful, but GREEK to you.
8) Really good apple-flavored suckers for only 3 Lempira each (that's about 15 cents).
9) Hummingbirds that nearly crash into you on the front porch.
10) Clint saying "es muy expensivo" when there's no such a word in Espanol ("muy carro" would be correct).
11) Cats and dogs missing parts of their tails or ears, lost in their wee years to crabs.
12) Island speed bumps--huge nautical rope draped across the road.
13) American t-shirts obviously received not bought, else lots of people here have been to elementary schools, or have been "property of" high schools, or part of such-and-such church's children's department. Also, people wearing t-shirts with English graphics that they obviously can't read. Like a man innocently sporting on his chest, "My next husband will be rich," or our neighbor Danis (a boy) wearing, "Polo Girls Co." or "My world revolves around CHEERLEADING!"
14) Sand combers--people with orange plastic rakes, combing the sand on the beach, on the road, outside their shops.

The boys just came up with soot smeared all over their bodies. They had fun with the neighbors, drawing things on themselves from Iris' outdoor, wood-burning oven until they were completely covered.

It seems that every night now Danis takes the fourth seat and while they’re eating, I’m getting a bowl of food ready to walk down the hill to his mom. Este noche, though, her husband came out of the dark when I called at the porch. He asked me to wait, then appeared with his wife Iris, limping. She’d been cut by a piece of glass, pretty badly, in the heel. They must have known that yesterday I “doctored” Danis’ ankle when he got a pretty deep gash, because they seemed to understand and wait when I walked back to the house and return with peroxide, antibiotic ointment and band-aids. They had it wrapped in a dirty rag, but had it exposed and on the porch rail ready for me to tend to when I returned.

Well, all I can say is the doctoring opened a door. Honestly, it felt like “washing her feet.” Such a privilege. Afterwards I asked her as best I could in Spanish if I could pray with her. I put my hand on her foot and prayed for her. Wonderful thing is, she prayed aloud at the same time. “Gracias, Senor. …” Then we just talked, en Espanol. Her youngest, Yesli, listened and warmed up to me, too. I told her about our being here, that we might live in Roatan if God abierta la puerta (opens the door) and gives mi esposo trabajo (Clint work). She said Danis is sad when he can’t come up to be with us, and he’s heartbroken that we’ll be going back north. I told her I’d asked God for friends for the boys and that he’d answered with her children.

Jacob ended our conversation when he came to get me to put him to bed. He just wanted me at our house, really. It was funny. He missed me. So, back at the house when I put the boys to bed, I got Danis to come into their room with me and pray. More “Gracias, Senor.” So precious.

Third Installment: Roatan "Things to Expect"

2006-03-11T12:15:00.000-04:00

Having been back on the island now for two weeks, I'm just getting my first internet fix. Ahh! So, here's another "Things to Expect" if you're living on the island of Roatan. Again it's from our first extended stay on the island. A few more of these and then I'll try to post something current.

1) A microwave that might partially pop popcorn. You've got a better chance if you turn off all fans and lights and the window-unit a/c.
2) At the grocery store:
a) Hands that feel like you've been at the state fair all day--after just one isle. (Thank you, inventers of hand sanitizer!)
b) Dead roaches, on occasion, on the grocery store floor.
c) Things for sale individually that say "not for individual sale" in the states (like what you would buy from Sam's in bulk) or things like band-aids sold not by the box, but by the band-aid.
3) Mangoes falling from overhanging trees into the road just in front of the car.
4) Crabs running sideways across the road, lit up in our headlights at night.
5) Iguanas sunning on the road (dead and alive). But NO other carcasses on the road, which is amazing! Even dogs and cats, not just three-year-olds, understand the rules of the road here.
6) NO five-second rule! If it falls to the ground, you better not even think about eating it. It's covered in sand, at the very least.
7) Frequent, unexplained, sometimes island-wide power outages. Sometimes for hours.
8) The expression: "Running from Mr. Reco." (RECO: Roatan Electric Co.) People don't run their A/C's because they're "running from Mr. Reco." We're not running (utilities included in our rent for now!).
9) Plastic straight-backed chairs, same style but in different colors, all over the island. The company definitely has a monopoly. Only thing comfortable is a hammock.
10) Women and kids riding sidesaddle on the front of a bicycle that's FLYING down the hills and around turns or being pumped SLOWLY up those hills and turns.
11) Andrew (my nine-year-old) getting his first kiss from a girl! Her name is Rita, and she's definitely the alpha female from her tribe here on the island. ... She's a dolphin!
12) Seeing your mom, who's visiting for the week, mount and ride a water buffalo bareback in the ocean!
13) Tropical storm Adrian, which brought only a 10 minute sprinkle, a few water spouts, winds, and a tiny pink, furry sea creature struggling up out of the ocean. A worn out, skinny, soaked kitten. Aka Adriana (for the storm that brought her). She's dried out now, no longer pink but white with a few grey patches, has really big ears and really long legs, and is getting a fat tummy. Every time Andrew comes out of the ocean, he puts his shirt in his lap and puts her on top of the shirt. Jacob's mostly seen carrying her around the stomach, all legs dangling, which she permits.

Last night I walked down to our neighbor's house to collect Andrew and Jacob. (The neighbors who only speak Spanish.) Danis (the oldest son) grabbed a chair (one of those plastic ones) and positioned it on the porch for me to sit down. So, Danis' mom Iris and I sat on the porch while the boys entertained us. First Jacob came out dancing and laughing with their dad's work clothes and hat over his clothes, then Andrew came out in a nice island dress. This had everybody in an uproar. Then Ariel (a boy) came out completely covered, dancing around, and fooled me pretty good into thinking it was Jacob again. Next they came out of the house with baby chickens in their hands. (And I thought chickens only lived outside people's houses!)

About that time Iris decided she'd add some sticks to the outdoor oven fire and pop us some old fashioned popcorn in a huge pot. Even though much of it was burned, it was amazingly good (Andrew said better than microwave). With no place to really wash hands before popcorn, after chickens, we just ate. And drank the agua, which Danis told me was purified. Check out pictures on the website to see where the boys ended up after the popcorn--under the house in makeshift, childsized hammocks made from sacks. Needless to say, we showered 'em up well before bed.

Second Installment: Roatan's "What to Expect" List

2006-02-24T01:29:00.000-04:00

Last Friday morning we sensed "the door" we were waiting for to head back to Roatan swing open. Moments later (literally) began the whirlwind of packing and preparing for another three months in our "second home." (Don't read that as "luxurious other house on a tropical island." We rent and make due with whatever God provides in a place that, strangely enough, feels like home.)

My hubby and oldest son left within two days. I and my youngest will follow this Saturday. So, with Roatan on my mind, and suitcases on my floor, I thought I'd put up another of my old "what to expect when visiting" lists, written last year during our first extended stay.

1. The smell of burn piles, burning anywhere, everywhere, any time.
2. The whack-whack sound of a machete hitting the ground--Honduras' version of the lawnmower and weed-whacker.
3. Steam coming off your ice cream.
4. Our Honduran neighbors doing charades to get us to understand.
5. Swiping sand out of your bed everyday, no matter how clean you are when you get in.
6. Freddy the lizard outside the house. A bright (almost neon) green lizard with a bluish head. (Story behind him: We had a lizard who lived outside our breakfast table window whom we called Freddy. He always seemed to join us for lunch (on his side of the window). We like to think Freddy sneaked over with us in one of our suitcases.)

7. Our boys and the neighbor boys (Spanish speaking only) singing LOUDLY to Seeds CD (cool songs that are simply verses from the Bible, to aid memorization). The neighbor boys have no idea what they're singing. Sounds like karaoke gone bad, but still a joy to our ears.
8. "Chenny … Chenny" The way those neighbor boys say my name.
9. Excellent, fresh mixed greens from the hydroponic (or something like that) farm here, where they grow their lettuces in a mineral-infused water solution only.
10. People (foreigners) so eaten up by insects they look contagious.
11. Loving Ed's Laundry! We drop it off and pick it up, nicely done, neatly folded, about three hours later. About $3.25 a load.
12. Tipping. Tipping the grocery bagger, tipping the gas attendant, tipping this guide or that … tipping.
13. Andrew's prayer: "And I praise you for creating Texas for my cousins to live in and for creating Honduras for us to live in."

14. The boys learning those important play phrases, like "No mas!" ... With their Spanish-speak-only friends, they throw rocks to get cashew fruit from the trees. (A cashew nut, by the way, is attached to the top of its cashew fruit. The nut, I found out after the fact, can burn you if you haven't roasted it first. I cut into it and ate it, then started feeling this weird sensation on my fingers and mouth. They peeled for quite a few days.) Anyway, the boys get fruit from trees, pick up sticks for burning in the neighbor's outdoor oven, rake, in general "trabajan afuerra," work outside, or play hard outside, with the neighbor boys.
15. The boys coming in drenched with sweat and covered in dirt, even in their hair sometimes, and always another scratch or scrape. It's amazing how their friends always come up in the exact same clothes, spotless, expect for dirty fingernails. They must wonder why mine take numerous showers and go through so many clothes.

16. Daily time on the beach. Kayaking, snuba diving, sea grass fights, burying each other, learning volleyball. Even a ride on a water buffalo on the beach and into the ocean. He went for a swim with them on his back, sat down in the water and had the boys sliding off his bad and climbing back on.
17. Movie night for about seven kids (ours plus neighbors), all crammed into our one little air conditioned bedroom.
18. Serious volleyball with island friends, like "Black Boy." Seriously. After his father, and his father's father. His real name is Alson but he doesn't answer to it. He's, as you might have guessed, a big black guy. An open-arms friend.
19. Meeting so many people just as crazy or more crazy than you are, who've chosen to live here, who share so many of the same struggles and joys of island living.