Oh My Word!

Look at all this stuff!

Nelly moved away with five big bags and a guitar. Looks like we've got a little more than that!

The container comes tomorrow and we'll be only too pleased to see this stuff loaded.

We've got a household's worth of furnishings and a big garage's worth of tools. I pack libraries of books for home ed while Byron packs things like chainsaws and generators.

Well, hats off to The Borden Boys who have worked non-stop for three weeks. Now we just need a home in Africa to un-pack it all in :-)

Pack Master

Thursday night we got home close to eleven after dinner out with friends. Though we had been packing all day, Byron's pack fever was running high and he went straight into hauling things out to the bins down on the street. He was carrying out our bedside table to the designated give-away spot by the dumpster where we found it years ago in the first place.

But I was in the living room with Nelly. There she was with her belongings strewn from one end of the room to the other, a look of desperation on her face. Jenelle has been here three years. But Thursday night was her final one in Portugal. She's in the States now, getting ready for the next venture in following God.

There was too much stuff to fit into her bags. Moving with what you can take on a plane is always a challenge.

"I need a strategy," she kind of whimpered.

I looked at the bits and pieces of her material life and said, "You need Pack Master!"

So Byron's fervor was focused onto Nelly's goods and the fact that they needed to be on a plane in a few short hours. For the next couple of hours he dazzled Jenelle with his energy and brilliance as the king of all packers.

We took Miss Nelly to the plane Friday morning at dawn. The contents of her world were cleverly squeezed into Byron's amazing carry-all black duffel bags. He asked the man at the BA counter to please wave one bag and though the guy was a bit taken aback by this bold request, he did allow one big honker to go free.

Nelly and her stuff got to Baltimore safe and sound. She wrote to say her parents were in awe of the pack job.

I wasn't surprised at all. The boy is no stranger to this task. When it comes to packing, no one else even comes close.

Kids' Films and Comfort Food

We're all at what feels like the thin edge of our strength now in this packing up thing. I think that if the container came tomorrow we'd be happy to leave behind whatever we haven't yet packed. But the container comes next Tuesday and we will likely be working right up till the last minute.

We've gotten rid of so much, but it's still more than we've moved before. When Byron and I left California 100 years ago, oh no, it was only 22 years ago.... Anyway, when we left there we didn't own much. When we packed up in Africa in 2000, we didn't own much that was worth keeping. Now it makes more sense to take what we already have than to try to re-purchase it in Tanzania.

But we're all weary of this work.

Two things have helped. Heather has been watching The Sandlot. Sandlot is one of our family's very favorite films, and we're not even baseball fans! Just hearing the dialogue as the rest of us pack in different parts of the house has been keeping us laughing. We all ran into the sitting room to watch the scene when Squints kisses the very hot lifeguard. "This magic moment, when your lips are close to mine!" Oh my word. We love this film.

And then there's PB&J. Heather's friend asked me to make her a peanut butter and jam sandwich today. It looked so good when I got it done that I made one for myself, though to be honest, I wasn't really hungry. I can't think of the last time I ate peanut butter with jam. It's divine. It made me happy to eat it on that fresh whole wheat bread I picked up at the bakery today. Heavenly.

Little joys that keep us sane. I'm thankful for these.

Headship, Partnership and Bringing Out the Best

What is headship and submission? What is partnership in marriage, and what is Biblical?

Ha! If anyone thinks I can answer all those questions then I'm very sorry to disappoint. This will just be some refections, mainly inspired by how much I admire Byron.

I sat with Deb Hirsch recently (amazing Aussie who blessed our staff conference with her wisdom and wit and hard hitting/gently delivered truth.) We were talking about marriage and maleness, femaleness, headship, submission and all that.

It sounds to me as if her experience has been very similar to mine in that she is married to a very secure male who has never felt the need to impose leadership over her. But both Deb and I recognized that there is something there to that headship thing that we both feel is right and neither of us feel repulsed by it or rebellious toward it.

The secret seems to be in the partnership. "There can never be healthy headship until there has been healthy partnership," she said. Unless a man and woman come together as equals before God, unless they both recognize the other's worth and know deeply that they need the other, the headship thing will never work. Imposed headship can't, by definition, ever really be healthy.

It strikes me that it's just like elders and leaders. When there is spiritual authority along with functional servant leadership, you have an elder. It's almost innate. Positional leadership almost never cuts the mustard when things get down to the real stuff.

I could go on. My mind is really working through this stuff as I do the chores of packing up our house. But what it's all leading me to think about it how really wonderful Byron is.

There were a collection of reasons that led us to leave Africa in 1999. Seems you have to have quite a significant grouping of things coming together before you uproot your family and throw them all into the unknown. But one of the MAJOR PLAYERS on that list of reasons was this:

Byron wanted to go somewhere where I would blossom. He wanted to see me grow in my giftings. He wanted to see me walk into the calling God had for me that was not being realized in the wilderness of those quiet Loita Hills.

You can't possibly know how at home Byron is in Africa unless you have seen him there. You can't possibly fathom what it meant for him to walk away.

But I know.

In these last six years in Europe I have found out a lot about myself. I have become something much closer to the one God was dreaming of when he was weaving me together. Africa taught me many things and there is a strength she revealed in me that I would never have known I had. But Europe brought out a whole new set of facets. I wasn't even aware of them, really. Not in the way Byron was. He was dreaming God's dreams for me while I was not.

And yes, Europe has been good for Byron as well. But as he works so hard preparing to head back to Africa, I swear I can see the color returning to his cheeks.

Today I've been hanging the laundry on the line in the Portuguese summer sun. And all the while I've been marveling. That boy! That boy that God gave me, he's been nudging me toward my true self. He's been setting me free, calling me out, cheering me on. And think of it! He left a job and a place he loved in order to help pry open more of the heart of me.

I don't know if I've seen much of that modeled anywhere.

I think this is headship at its very best.

August 14th

Today is our 24th wedding anniversary!

Here we are on our honeymoon in Mexico. I was 19. Byron was much OLDER and MORE MATURE at 22 :-) I have baby fat on my cheeks. Over the years since then, my face has grown thinner, ( and the baby fat has moved to my other cheeks!)

My sister told me one time, "You know it's completely abnormal how happy you and Byron are."

Maybe so.

I just know that life together is a gift and an endless adventure. And I'm pretty sure that we are, in fact, "stealing fire from heaven."

Miss Elise

Elise is a friend of our family. She's 18. She came into our family a couple of years ago. I just heard her newest song on her myspace. It's so beautiful. It's called Be Still and Know. When I think of the girl I met two years ago and the woman I know now, I feel like crying.

Check out Elise's song @ www.myspace.com/elisewitek

Ps Elise is the one Jesse often gigs with in Santa Barbara.

Possessions

We have way too much stuff.

Sorting junk and packing books all day has me tired out. But the actual throwing stuff away is very freeing.

I want to ruthlessly weed through our junk. I wish we carried less along with us. Look at young Byron arriving at boarding school in Kenya with his one trunk and his one suitcase. Wouldn't that be nice if we got it down to just that each?

We always say you need a major move or a house fire every five years :-) And while I would never wish a house fire on anyone, I have to admit, there are perks. I wrote the following almost 14 years ago, a little while after our home burned to the ground.

'Ungrateful'

One morning I was stripped
Every precious and useless thing ripped from me

Naked on the slope I felt at last
Clean and light and shining

But people pitied that pathetic purity
and drawing from their own burdens
they gathered enough weight to bury me

The shimmering release was short-lived
and once again I am
far too heavily laden

Wild Prayer

Just in from staff conference in Holland where we had our minds blown by the lovely Al and Deb Hirsch. Their message was simple: the centrality of Christ above all else, the call to never slow down or settle as we follow his wild lead and radical freedom in Him.

They blew us all away. In the days ahead, I will post some of my notes from our times together but tonight I will just post this prayer by Sir Francis Drake. I found it just now as I was sitting here on my porch in the last light of this summer day. Drake was an English naval hero and he lived 1540-1596. His prayer captures the spirit of our week together. Funny that... his capturing our week 500 years ago :-)

Disturb us, Lord, when we are too well pleased with ourselves,
When our dreams have come true
Because we have dreamed too little,
When we arrived safely
Because we sailed too close to the shore.

Disturb us, Lord, when
With the abundance of things we possess
We have lost our thirst
For the waters of life;
Having fallen in love with life,
We have ceased to dream of eternity
And in our efforts to build a new earth,
We have allowed our vision
Of the new Heaven to dim.

Disturb us, Lord, to dare more boldly,
To venture on wider seas
Where storms will show your mastery;
Where losing sight of land,
We shall find the stars.
We ask You to push back
The horizons of our hopes;
And to push into the future
In strength, courage, hope, and love.

The Men in My Life

Just the other day it was me and Byron and three little boys. (A baby sister among us was some kind of pink phantom person hovering in the future realm of our family.)

But I looked around recently and saw all these men! Apparently, little boys grow up into those. They bring strong arms snuggling me when I’m feeling a little sad, goodnight kisses on my forehead, deep, jovial voices coaxing me out of my somber reprimands when their ventures push my (already very generous) boundaries, and songs that make me laugh or cry.

They are good to me. They’re my friends and comrades, my brothers in arms. They make pleasant company. Look how pleased Heather and I are to be surrounded by them.