The Long and Barfy Road

Don’t you just hate when someone else’s selfishness gets in the way of your own? I get so annoyed when others get to act on their fleshly impulses while I have to overcome mine. A godly saint would praise God for the opportunity to grow in godliness and to serve selflessly, but I just groan. It is downright painful to give when I prefer to receive ministry.

There. I said it.

What triggered this was a trip to the beach over the weekend. Sounds like fun, right? Well, I was the unwilling participant. After we just returned from Guatemala, my ds and ddil arrived from Canada with visions of a long weekend at the beach with us as a family. It is always fun at the beach – if only it weren’t such a long and barfy road to get there and back.

The beach is only “this” far on the map, but with all the mountains and curves, it takes a full seven hours unless you fly. It’s one thing to suffer “for the gospel” when going out to a village to do something worthwhile, but somehow I can’t make myself do it as willingly for something that should be enjoyable. Being in a vehicle with seven sunburned family members being pushed into each other for seven hours…Face it - it’s character building.

Arriving home after such a nauseating drive, there is the car to be unloaded, fishy smelling laundry to be washed and hung out on the clothesline, supper to be fixed, and of course the mandatory trip to the tienda for milk, eggs, and bread. That’s the moment when I want to collapse. Everything in me wants to give up, but I am not allowed. (Others did.)

That night I was the last one to bed, and the next morning I was almost the first one up. (Dh was the first responder to the alarm clock.) After getting ds off to school (speaking of sacrifices – poor kid!), I spent some nice quality time alone with the Lord and got my heart straightened out. It’s all good.

Again I have love, grace, and joy to conquer the challenges of having three grown kids home when it’s technically not the holidays any more, and home schooling and other responsibilities face me. My question for you: how do you continue with life while you have houseguests? Any tips? Suggestions?

IRL* "For the gospel"...it's an all-inclusive deal.

The Discomfort of Comfort

Much as I like to think of myself as a woman who enjoys pleasure in moderation, a glance at my blog clearly exposes a woman of extremes. I love, love, love what I love, and I abhor, detest, hate what I don’t love. The pathetic reality is that 25 years of living without most American-style creature comforts has not cured me of my wimpy ways.

People back home have it all wrong if they think I am some rough and ready jungle woman. One phrase that makes me cringe is, “Oh, I could never do what you do….” As if I just love being uncomfortable.

Who actually enjoys discomfort?

Only by the grace of God do I occasionally do without my creature comforts. It’s one thing to serve with all my heart, but when it involves an aching back, somehow I find myself recoiling.

One quick trip to an Indian village last week and my flesh cried out like the spoiled baby apparently I am. I am addicted to being pleasantly comfortable. I am ashamed of myself. After all this time, I still want what I want, when I want it, and with a La-Z-boy recliner while you’re at it, please.

Our little adventure was an assault on my senses. About an hour into the journey, strong gas fumes started filling the inside of the Suburban, with or without open windows. That was not fun. During the showing of the Jesus film, I was thoroughly distracted by the smell of smoky clothing from cooking fires, body odors, and cloth diapers that needed to be changed. Again, the curse of an astute sniffer.

My taste buds, on the other hand, had no complaints. The children might beg to differ, but I thought even the eggs scrambled with onion and green beans were delicious. Add salsa and fresh corn tortillas—and anything is fabulous. However, my ears grumbled inwardly after hours and hours of listening to ranchero-style music on the bus for many hours on the way home. It was all I could do to not scream out “STOP! Enough already!” (How long could you handle listening to this?)

The worst assault was on my physical body. Sleeping on a hard floor, reading, trying to relax, having devotions on a wooden pew bench, and waiting on a concrete slab for the car’s problem to be diagnosed—well, let’s just say that I was not overindulged in the comfort department. It wasn’t overly comfy being banged around on the bus either, having one fellow passenger poke me with her elbow, and another stab my foot with her umbrella as we were thrashed with the twists and turns of the road.

I used to laugh at the stories short-term teams relate when they come down, but on some unconscious level I think I felt I had already paid my dues, that I was somehow entitled to take it easy from here on out. Not so.

Maybe I get some credit for not complaining (I know my three children sure won some points with me for their flexibility without grumbling!), but I know I didn’t earn high marks overall. I pity my dh, who will have to go back with a mechanic to fix and retrieve our Suburban.

From the (ridiculous) comfort of my cushy couch, I have pondered my dubious “suffering. “ Truly it was no sacrifice at all. In contrast, anyone in the village we visited who comes to Christ must pay a fine to the town, an amount equivalent to a full year’s salary. They sacrifice one year of labor (in a rather uncomfortable place, imho*) – just for choosing to follow Christ. Can you imagine?

IRL*Forsaking all to follow Jesus is more than words to an upbeat song.

[*see Jamie-Jo Speak in sidebar]

Utterly Defiled and Contaminated

I seem to be on a roll. The toilet roll, that is. After last week’s post I had another incident. Of course I learned my lesson to check carefully which restroom I entered, but I’m figuring maybe I should give up using public facilities altogether.

On Sunday I got locked inside a nasty bathroom stall. I could NOT get out, and to my hyperactive nose, it smelled bad. Thankfully a df* was there to patiently talk me through the process of sliding backwards under the door face first. Even though she was laughing at me, her presence was nonetheless reassuring in a humiliating sort of way. Thankfully no one else witnessed my wallowing on the filthy floor.

Utterly defiled and contaminated, I rushed to the sink to wash as much of my arms as possible, only to realize why the toilet was not flushing properly: there was no water! If laughter is good medicine, surely I laughed enough to counter any icky germs I encountered on my way under and out before I found and slathered the hand sanitizer all over myself.

After all these years of meticulously instructing my children the art of flushing, opening doors, and doing all manner of business in public bathrooms without touching ANYTHING, this whole episode strikes me as extremely ironic.

Plumbing problems and bathroom scenes seem to be a recurring theme for 2011. Dh* is still pulling up muck from a hole in our bathroom floor, bucket by bucket, to clean it out every week or so. Someday soon, hopefully, it will be running and draining properly, but for now it remains a stinky issue.

Meanwhile I am occupied with a semiannual prayer letter announcing all our happy news, and trying to minimize all the pesky problems. Two biggest personal items are the grandchild we are expecting in November (yee-haw!) and the upcoming wedding in August. Yes, it looks like I am to be a MOG* again for the third time in four years. That’s another recurring theme. A future theme will hopefully involve the arrival of many grandchildren. Life is sweet.

Since no “Ask Jamie Jo” questions were submitted this month, I’ll ask one of my own. My question for you is regarding prayer updates, newsletters, and websites:

Do you ever wonder if anyone reads them?

What do people prefer, electronic letters or ones with a postage stamp?

I seem to get a lot of traffic on my Facebook page (friends wondering what silly predicament I will face next), but my ministry blog gets little to no traffic. Monthly prayer updates generate almost no response unless there is a crisis of some sort. In fact, I skipped two months of writing, and no one seemed to notice. I’m sure correspondence is important, but I wonder if people aren’t bombarded with too many emails these days. What do you think?

IRL* The times are changing, but I don’t know which way the winds are blowing.

El Stinko

Life literally stinks sometimes. Is that a revelation to you? This past week has been one of the granddaddy stinko weeks of all times for me.

After one of my earlier posts about how average I am, just one of the crowd in so many ways, I must admit one exceptional feature I possess that is not always a blessing. My sense of smell is amazingly acute. This can prove helpful when there is a gas leak or something burning. The family teases that I can predict the milk is going sour two days in advance.

This “gift” is not so welcome when diapers (obviously) need changing and baby’s mother is oblivious or smelling-impaired. My sense of smell is likewise not appreciated when rain dampens the neighbor’s barnyard within spitting distance of our carport, and the breeze sends the odor wafting in my kitchen window.

Being pregnant proved a gagful experience for me living in a foreign land with unfamiliar scents assaulting my nose daily. The worst was walking by certain walls formerly used as a public urinal. Maybe some of you can relate?

Body odors remain a challenge. Now that our hottest month has arrived I struggle to ignore the smelly people I encounter in close quarters like on buses. Sadly I have a reputation among my children’s friends who have been known to purposely shower before coming to my house for a movie night or to practice in the chime choir I direct. I’ve got to work on ignoring my nose.

This week was a nightmare with nasty plumbing disasters galore. You can see photos on my personal blog lest you think I am exaggerating. The worst was when our ecological waterless composting toilet malfunctioned, and the liquid matter had to be drained bucket by bucket. While the hatch was opened, the entire house stank to high heaven (as we say in Texas). We opened windows, turned on fans, lit candles, and sprayed air freshener, but still it was disgustingly rank.

To make matters worse, when we attempted to wash the towels and rugs that had gotten soiled in the process of handling that crisis, the washing machine didn’t drain properly, and instead of going out, somehow got rerouted and nasty water started gurgling up through the bathroom sink and tub. Gray water reeks almost as bad as black water.

Oh, I’m killing myself retelling it. What is my purpose? Partly I am shamelessly begging for sympathy. Say it all together now: “Poor Jamie Jo!” Then again, I have pledged to share the good, the bad, and the ugly here. This week it just happens to be stinky AND ugly.

IRL*Meanwhile my prayer is that my life would be a sweet aroma and not a stench in the nostrils of God.

My Old Restless Companion

In the early years our visas only lasted six months at a stretch. We made the dreaded border runs twice a year to renew them. The absurd thing is I actually enjoyed those journeys, especially the trips to Texas, which allowed me a visit to Stuff-Mart* to restock on things we needed and frivolous items we simply preferred.

On our last official “border run,” we were bummed to only receive sixty days instead of the usual six months on our visas. No way could we pack up however-many-kids-we-had-at-the-time and run back to the Rio Grande every eight weeks, even if the children managed to outgrow their clothes that fast! We finally switched over to more permanent resident status.

That’s when I noticed that my coping mechanisms seemed to only last about five months; after that, I became antsy and ready to plan a trip of some sort.

In fact, I would hit a downright slump twice a year right on schedule. I would wake up in a funk with no logical explanation. Once I figured it out, I just laughed over it, and then went on with living cross-culturally with no escape in sight.

Today, things are different once again. The three remaining children at home are Mexican-born, and therefore need no visas. That’s nice. I’ve learned to cope with Mexican living, the good with the bad, year-round. More or less. Some days I still get overwhelmed with the noise and stench interesting smells.

I was doing fine, pondering our lovely summer in the States—a time of blissful invisibility while some wounds healed over. I was enjoying our first week of home schooling, hosting a young teacher while she looks for housing, and honestly feeling content. Then one morning I woke up with my old restless companion, and I felt a funk coming on. This is way too soon to start feeling that again.

All I can say is that life has become too routine, too predictable. My old norm (especially when there were seven children living at home) was high-stress, crazy, and anything BUT predictable. I had no time to even think about contentment or lack of it. Now I find myself on auto pilot. Life seems too easy somehow. I’m not sure I like it this way.

How ungrateful can I be? God has blessed me with every good and perfect gift, and I am momentarily discontented. After what I said (and thought) last week in my blog post about “those” kinds of missionaries, I can honestly see the potential to become a snarky, bored missionary if I’m not careful. Yikes. Pardon me while I run back to the true Source of all contentment.

IRL*Striving to restore my old sense of adventure, minus my old restless companion.