Ups and Downs

Well, although the title suggests a scant bit of bi-polarity, I assure you that I am definitely on an up! It gets harder and harder to continue to write consistently as I feel more and more disconnected with my Seattle home, except for the knowledge that all you are out there loving me! I recently came home for just a few days and was so happy to be greeted by many people who even in passing told me they were praying for me.

Sometimes I lay in bed at night in my little apartment, with the coyotes howling and think that all this can't really be real. ME? Living alone in MONTANA? Whose life is this? It just doesn't sound like me, you know? I'll wake up and not know where I am. But I'm glad I'm here, maybe it'll sink in a few years from now.

I'll be honest and say that the time since Christmas and maybe a little bit before had been one of those down times for me. It's like C.S. Lewis says about our relationship with God, the closest we humans can come to consistency is undulation, a constant going up and down, being nearer or farther. There is no way to stay on the mountain top all the time, I don't think we're built for it.

Well anyway, I think after all the settling in and figuring out how to survive I forgot why it was I came in the first place. I was so focused on paying the bills and creating safety that I lost my love of ministry. I don't mean ministry in a churchy way. I mean ministry as the things we do all day long in our every day lives, living a Christian life of Charity, rather than guardedness. Can you imagine being a guarded missionary? Not the best plan. But something happened recently that made me sit up and take notice and remember that first love. The story will sound selfish but that's the way God speaks to us, isn't it? He doesn't get us out of our funk with ideals, but with coming to us where we are.

I've complained a lot about feeling lonely here, there aren't as many people and hardly anyone my age. I've missed hearing "I love you" and being hugged and laughing, as I am learning that humor doesn't translate well across the generational gap. I've felt down and angry that God would send me here where I don't feel loved all the time and socially life is so different from the one I left. I knew I was starting down a slippery-slope to depression, and last time I was there my only hope came from reading or writing out the Word at all times of the day. In the morning before I got out of bed, in the car before I went into work, at my ten minute break, etc. Rather than go back to that place of near despair I knew I should read the Word this way proactively.

The first morning I woke up and did this the Lord spoke to me. I realized that I have been guarded and reluctant to make bonding relationship here for two reasons. One is that I didn't want to become more attached and make it harder to leave or impossible to leave, and secondly that I somehow feared it would make me love home less. Well, I repented and asked the Lord to send me friends, and that I would be faithful in pursuing relationships with those people and be willing to be totally broken up inside when I went home.

When I got to work, barely a half hour later, Donna (our town massage therapist who rents office space in the Realty office I work in) came to me and handed me an envelope. Inside, a certificate for an hour long massage. The "From" line was signed "A friend".

I laid there on that massage table totally ashamed. I had been complaining about how nobody loved me and I didn't have any friends or ones who deeply cared. And here, from "a friend" was a clear message that I am loved, cared for, and that I do have friends here.

I'm noticing more and more how ungrateful I am for the things God gives to me, and also for the people He has brought to me. I have been filled again with a gratitude for this place and these people, and amazing ministry has followed! A new Bible study has formed called Rez Hope, where Jan and Corb are teaching our native people how to "turn it around" and offering Biblical perspectives on finances, marriage, and so many things that are needed. I got to watch the 9 kids that came, we learned John 3:16. That same day I got to give people rides to and from this group, and buy groceries for a mom that had nothing but bread and deer meat left to eat for her and her three kids. We also got to cook a meal for the people who came. I tell you, I could do that all day, every day. As John Maz would say, "I'm living the dream."

Thank you for all your prayers and support. I am so, so, so grateful for all of you and for this glorious Church that God has called His bride! We are the body of Christ, His hand on the Earth. And I am glad glad glad that we're of the same body!

Love to all,
Elanor