Attitudes & Emotions

An Inheritance

When I was a young woman, I imagined my life would include a husband, two or three girls, a suburban home, and a white picket fence. When I married my husband, I amended that to having a pastor as a husband, a couple girls, and a series of parsonages throughout our lifetime. By the time our second son was born, I knew I wouldn’t have the girls or the series of parsonages. We had already lived in eight homes and none of them were the traditional parsonage.

During our marriage, we have lived in a total of 21 homes on three continents. Our pastoring expanded from one small congregation to serving in many churches. We’ve stayed in many homes, hotels, and guesthouses.

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Battle Against Fear

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Crashing like a tsunami wave, choking like tough kudzu vines, or seeping in like fumes through the cracks; fear comes. Whether young or old, home or overseas, rich or poor, healthy or ill none of us is exempt from fear.

All kinds of situations can open the door to fear. A scary diagnosis can seemingly wipe out every support we trusted in. Rumors of political unrest can tie us up with fear. Our own doubts fill our heart insidiously with fear.

After the door is open, then our thoughts become frantic. We make unnecessary contingency plans. We fight phantoms all day. Resources for our important activities become exhausted, and we find ourselves irritable with others. We examine ourselves minutely trying to understand why this is happening to us. The result–Isolation on Terror Island.

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Love That Builds

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It’s almost Valentine’s Day, the day we celebrate love. So it’s a good time to think about our husband and our home. At Valentine’s Day we usually think about romance, gifts, or special meals. But instead, let’s look at the atmosphere of our home. Is it a peaceful, joyful, welcoming place for our husband? What can we do to make it a refuge and a place full of love? If Valentine’s Day is about gifts of love, this could be the best gift of all.

Proverbs 14:1 tells us, “The wise woman builds her house, but with her own hands the foolish one tears hers down.”

There are many ways we can build our home. When we dust and clean and declutter, we make our home pleasant. When we cook nutritious and appetizing meals, we make our home satisfying. But we can do more than chores to build our home. The attitudes we practice affect the atmosphere.

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Belongings

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Once again it’s time for a major change. For the last 13 years we have been living in the US and spending four months each year in SE Asia. It has been getting clearer and clearer that we are to switch that pattern. We will live in SE Asia and spend three to four months each year in the US.

This means our selling our house. The hardest part of this change for me was giving up this house. I have enjoyed it so much. It is a nice home, full of great memories. We have lived in it longer than anywhere we have ever lived.

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Releasing the Creative Spark

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I remember the day I made a great personal discovery. It was 1972, and we were living in Papua New Guinea. I was lying on the bed feeling dead — emotionally, physically, spiritually. And yet half an hour later I was completely free of those symptoms and flew around the house packing boxes and tending to all the details of the next move out to the village.

What had lifted the depression and changed my paralyzed form into an energetic organizer? This is what happened:

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