Hunting for Unity

Ladies (and gentlemen you might be able to help too), I need some advice. My husband and I are VERY different. Have any of you struggled with this?  Better yet, has anyone found the cure??

This weekend, Mary McDonald and I had a CVM booth at the Global Missions Health Conference where some 2,500 medical professionals from all over joined to plan our strategy for changing the world. Seriously, at one point, I looked down our aisle of the exhibit hall and saw dozens of conversations going on between people who want to use medicine to transform lives, to save lives, and to bring Life. I was awe-struck to experience so much power for good in one place. Worshipping with thousands of voices on-fire for Christ was so incredible that a 60 year-old veterinarian friend of ours said "Hurry, I don't want to miss one song!" as if he were a 16 year-old girl at a Justin Bieber concert.

These two sweet ladies came all the way from Korea just for the conference! 

As veterinarians, it was our first time to join this meeting of world changers, but our differences in species preference did not stop us from making all sorts of neat connections. Like a medical surplus supplies company who plans to hook us up with some donated medical supply for our missionaries, or a company that makes hand-crank rough-terrain wheelchairs who I'm hooking up with my friends at Kupenda for disabled children in Africa.

Nanse nearly blew a gasket just reading our sign!

We also made some great friends, like this vet tech who's been studying Mongolia for decades, and looking for an organization just like ours for almost as long. Nanse-->CVM-->Mongolia = God at work!

A Kenya Relief booth had drawings for banana-leaf art handmade by one of their workers in Africa. When I got the call that I'd won this one-of-a-kind piece, I was a little hesitant to accept it, since I'm still holding out hope that we won't always be a "House Divided."  But maybe that's not the right attitude...

You see I'm struggling with division, dissension, let's be honest--selfishness, because it's hunting season. It feels like it may always be hunting season from here on out. I haven't asked when it ends, as snide remarks seep out of me as involuntarily as Carbon Dioxide whenever the topic is broached. And even if it does end, I predict it will return to haunt me annually. No matter how many times the deer population is "controlled" it's never enough. Reminiscent of our yearly trips to Mexico to spay and neuter dogs and cats, which would provoke questions about the success of our surgeries if we had to keep returning to sterilize the pet population again... Wait a minute! Vet friends, we could start a deer sterilization clinic!! Have any of you castrated a buck?

Okay, I get it, there's more to hunting than just population control. But don't expect me to understand why my husband lathers himself in deer urine, leaves the house hours before he would even consider setting his alarm for anything else, and goes to sit in a tree alone from dawn till dusk without making a sound, to participate in a "sport" where only one of the opponents knows he's playing. If you ask me, bow hunting's not more sportsmanlike, it would only be sportsmanlike if they both only used what God gave them; antlers vs. opposable thumbs.

What I do need to understand, however, is how to support this madness. Or at least how to stay happily married in spite of it. Suggestions?  Here's what I've tried:

• Telling him how it makes me feel when projects are left undone around the house while he's playing in the woods
• Sarcasm and bitterness
• Suggesting an alternating-year hunting schedule so we can take turns resenting each other
• More snide remarks
• Resignation
• Getting up to make him coffee and lunch at 5am

As always, it looks like Jesus had it right, and He's just giving me yet another opportunity to practice...

"With humility of mind regard one another as more important than yourselves; do not merely look out for your own personal interests, but also for the interests of others. Have this attitude in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus" -Philippians 2:4-5

Fortunately, my uncle gave us tickets to the UofL basketball game this Friday, so if I can't get him out of camo, at least I can get him into some Cardinal Red!

From a Yellow Fuzzy Ball to a Big Orange One

Since Angie brought home this beauty on Sunday, naming her the Runner-up for her division of the Jefferson County Middle School Tennis league, we've been transitioning to basketball. Meaning she played, 5 tennis matches from Friday-Sunday, and then her first basketball game Monday. Busy, busy!

Angie's not quite ready to devote her life to tennis {sigh}, so she wanted to join the basketball team. After a few practices that seemed to be growing longer each day, there was a Parent Meeting, where they informed us that our sixth graders would be conditioning from 3:30-5pm and practicing from 5-7pm Monday through Friday. Note the italics, yes they're sixth graders, not professional athletes. Don't pull out your calculator, I already did the math = 17.5 hours of practice per week. This was a stark contrast to the middle school tennis season where there was one single practice, which was rained out before it began. It was also a contrast to my college sports days where hours like that were reserved for preseason two-a-days. We discussed it, slept on it, prayed about it, considered the insanity of not seeing our child between the hours of 7am and 7pm Monday-Friday, and called the coach to quit. However, we didn't get very far. As there are only 5 girls on the team, it turns out we have quite a bit of pull, since our child's participation is vital to their season. It's also possible the athletic director saw a lawsuit coming. So they cut practices down to 6 hours/week. Intense, but manageable. 

Which one of these is not like the other? (Hint: Pink)

At the same parents' meeting they asked us parents if we wanted the kids shoes to match, to which of course none of us responded, because we couldn't care less, and we didn't have time as the kids were all screaming "YES!" in unison like their lives depended on it. So, to appease the kids without startling the parents after the sticker-shock of the uniform price tags we'd just seen, the coaches told us they'd do a fundraiser. "Okay, whatev, if you're paying for them my kid can wear moon boots to games," we thought.

Until we got an email two days later with this picture:

...and this price tag - $80 (marked down from $129)! Apparently, the fundraiser consisted of sending the parents an email to solicit the funds for these stylin' Nikes. (My 11 year-old does not need more expensive shoes than I've ever worn in my life!)

After many teachable moments with Ange about sponsor children, homeless ministries, missionaries, and ways we choose to use our money to help others, our kiddo remains the only poor ostracized sixth grader with $7 shoes from Wal-Mart. I'm sure this is building character, not resentment, right?

 

We were shocked to learn that they charge $5 to get into middle school girls' basketball games, Jon actually asked, "Even for parents?" to which the ticket lady's snarky glance silently replied, "Who else would be here?!" And don't expect popcorn. But if you really want to get back to the basics this is the place to be. I'm pretty sure there were more "double dribbles" than single dribbles, and possibly more air balls than bank shots.

Angie shooting free throws; look at the height she can get in her $7 sneakers!

Speaking of height, check out the refs they're hiring these days! You'd think they could afford some full-size dudes as steep as the price of admission is running.

I snapped approximately 759 shots of this mini-fella.  #obsessedwiththecuteness

The game got off to a slow start, no scoring in the first quarter. But after the opposing team hit a three to warm-up the scoreboard, we answered with an uncontested 31 points. Final score: 31-3! Don't worry we played our entire bench, there are only 5 of them...we have no bench.

Morals of the story friends -- if the coach wants your child to play 17 bazillion hours of bball a week and wear shoes that cost more than the space station you don't have to give in. However, if your kid wants to be a referee at the age of the 3, you should let him, 'cause it might just make some parent's day!

The Last of The Firsts...

There are a lot of things we've missed in Angie's life.  A lot of firsts.  I'm a big fan of celebrations, occasions, dressing up, anything special; so firsts are kind of a big deal to me.

We'll never get to see little baby Angie experiencing all those firsts. Until this moment, I'm not sure I've ever even pictured her as an infant.  Man, I bet she was cuuuuute! We missed her take her first steps toddling around barefoot in the Bolivian sand. No one will ever know what her first word was. We can't even be sure which language it was in, Quechua or Spanish. And maybe most regrettably, we weren't there to witness her first little sin. Not a moment you other parents probably put in the scrapbook, but one that could have saved us a lot of heartache, if we'd been there to correct her gently and train her up with consistency.

But God has been more than fair to us. Even though we came into her life seven years in progress, we've never missed a birthday. God so generously put all three of us in the same place for her very first Christmas celebration, her third day at the orphanage Talita Cumi. I glowed at her first ballet recital, cheered at her first basketball game, and relished her first tennis match. I took pictures of her, and Ruby's, first sight of those much anticipated white flakes falling from the sky we take for granted, snow.  And it was my ears that captured her first sentence in English.

I have nothing to complain about, we couldn't have asked for more firsts as late in the game as we came in. But now I see, as we approach the end of our first year in the States, that the frequency of those novel moments is dwindling. I'm charging up the camera for Halloween and Thanksgiving, as I'm actively pursuing more squeals of surprise and delight. 

You've probably noticed I'm head over heels in love with autumn! But Angie can only press so many leaves with me before that gets old. So, yesterday I created a first. I remember her saying once, probably after seeing it in a movie, that she wanted to jump in a pile of leaves. When she got home from school, I was raking our front yard into a mini mountain. However, it turns out 11 is too old (or cool) to jump in leaf piles. Well, it's a good thing Ruby is not 11 yet!

We broke the ice by tossing Ruby's ball in and laughing--with her, not at her, of course-- as she rooted around for it blindly. 

But after a few minutes of that we were both submerged. And after a few more minutes I was wondering why I don't create play for us more often. It takes intentionality to put down what's easy and invent fun, it takes humility to keep trying when she rejects my attempts, and it takes some sacrifice to be buried in a pile of filthy leaves and let your child throw the dog's ball at you. But, really what do I have going that's more important than bonding with my tweenager? 

Our hour of carefree romping, didn't solve all our problems, we still had a doozy of a fight this morning, but it gave us a little firmer foundation to recover to. Thank you to you moms who always inspire me with your ingenious ideas. And to you tired moms, like me, the squeals of pure joy are worth a little effort. Someone please remind me of that next week when I forget...

The School-Visit Rockstar Tour

Juggling, that's what we women do, right?

From late August through October my balancing act looks something like this:

• Get the kiddo into a showering/bus-catching/homework-finishing/sports-playing/bed-timing routine
• Pack, unpack, repack, lose things as I...
• Drive 5,268-ish miles
• Watch as many of Angie's tennis matches as I can between miles
• Visit 9 university campuses
• Maintain an intermittently short and long-distance steamy relationship with my main man as I come and go from the home base
• Speak to and challenge 216 veterinary students to live out the call God has for their lives
• Attempt to find the perfect Fro-Yo combo with their fabulous student leaders, equipping them to serve their Christian Veterinary Fellowship groups well
• Celebrate my husband's birthday non-stop for a week against his will
• Encourage and appreciate 28 faculty advisers in college towns around the Southeast
• Keep up with the laundry because it's the one chore Jon hates
• Follow-up with each of those 200 plus contacts to make sure we're serving them as well as we can be
• Praise the Lord for the fall colors as the trees shed their gorgeous leaves
• Coordinate over 30 speakers for two of our Real Life Real Impact weekends coming up
• Vacation with the family to Ft. Walton Beach to visit my 95 year-old great uncle
• Cherish each and every story from the amazing students God allows me to mobilize...

It's been an incredible ride these past couple months working with student ministry, here are the beautiful leaders of the student groups I serve.

Auburn University

Tuskegee University

University of Tennessee

University of Georgia

Mississippi State University

Morehead State at Asbury's Mission Farm

University of Florida

Thank you Jon, Bulo, and Bula for all your help with Angie.  And thank you to each of you who is part of our team to make these campus ministries a reality around the Southeast. It's such a privilege to get to use my profession to guide others in using theirs for Christ. To partner with us check out Abounding and look for more details about the school visit tour in my next prayer letter...

Cheating At Any Age

Last week, while the in-laws were in town for Jon's birthday and we were bracing ourselves for the barrage of after school homework, I got a call from Angie's science teacher. Yep, if you muttered "Uh-oh" under your breath you were right. She was very nice and matter of fact (contrary to all of Angie's claims that she's basically a goon) when she told me that Angie had cheated on her science test. No, not glancing at her neighbor's paper, but you know, just using a study guide. Subtle. 

My alarm has been rising consistently as she's begun to venture beyond the "normal" mischief Jon and I remember from our childhood. The week before when she flipped us the bird for the first time, I asked Jon if he'd still be alive if he'd tried such a thing in his house. And I definitely don't remember my parents getting a call from my teachers about cheating. Probably partly because if I ever did commit such a crime, I likely wasn't as blatant about it. But what I also recognized in the aftermath of the call when we asked Angie why she cheated, and she said like it was the most obvious thing in the world, "because I didn't know the answers," was that I never had nearly the temptation to cheat that she must fight all the time.

From the stories about her peers and their homework habits, and Jon's recounting of the Open House he attended while I was out of town, where pretty much no other parents from Angie's classes bothered to show up, I gather that maybe she's not surrounded by the most hardworking, motivated, or responsible classmates. The teacher herself mentioned that other kids were cheating on the same test. But my real empathy comes from knowing that Angie likely goes into most tests and assignments in a state of confusion and (no matter how much we prepare) unpreparedness that I never experienced.

Then, yesterday, God granted me a further glimpse into her reality. Wednesday is the day we pray that Angie's homework load is lighter than two hours, since we have small group in the evening. Instead she came home with a normal-sized assignment that I could manage, albeit with slight incredulity that she has no textbook or even notes to use for finding the answers, but is just expected to Google all the information. The whopper, however, was the 5-paragraph essay she was expected to write on her own personal culture, with a nod to how one's culture affects their perspective on life, etc.

After struggling to get the truth about when she really found out about this paper and where were all the parts she was supposed to have already written, I vented about the preposterousness of such a task. And then I texted Jon, only half-jokingly, "Would you think less of me if I wrote Angie's essay for her?" I reasoned that I could pull out my hair for roughly 3-6 hours dictating how to spell every word, and correcting each attempt at sentence structure, after not-so gently leading her toward each thought to make up those sentences. Or I could spend ~20 minutes typing up 5 paragraphs (5 sentences each!) with plenty of spelling and grammatical errors (that would have been the hardest part), and we could get on with our lives. Of course I would get Angie's input about what she wanted to say and all, but come on teachers, really?! All the other parents are writing these too, right?  Oh, it was so tempting...

And in that instant I was, again, for the zillionth time, reminded not to judge. Why can I not remember this one simple lesson, without constant examples in my own life. Someday, I pray I'll have enough experience, wisdom, humility, and understanding to react with grace instead of judgment when I get those calls, or that finger, or that look and tone of voice (you know the ones I'm talking about). But until then, I've thrown Angie under the bus a bit here, in case any of you are in the same boat and need that gentle reminder that we're all just playing the cards we're dealt, and some of us have been given a better hand than others.

But for the grace of God go I...

YOLO

This morning, Jon teasingly invited Ruby to go to work with him. She wagged her tail. I responded by promising to take her on a run if she stayed home with me. She wagged her tail. Jon made a counter offer. To which I reminded her that she would miss her run if she went for a car ride with Daddy. She looked contemplative, torn, a little confused, but continued to wag her tail. Jon said in a Ruby voice, "Oh well, it will still be the best day ever."

It's a running joke in our home that for Ruby every day is the best day ever. We laugh about it, because maybe it's her little pea brain that lets her live every day to the fullest, maybe it's her failure to understand time in the way we humans see it, or maybe she's just the only one of us who really gets it. In every pant of her tongue and wag of her tail she exudes YOLO ("You Only Live Once" for those of you over the age of 16, without texting teenage children). 

I'd been impressed by her optimism before, but this morning when she continued to view life through such rose colored glasses in spite of such disappointment, I was in awe.

My recurring epiphany that joy is not contingent on one's circumstances appropriately resurfaces today, as it would be the 29th birthday of my dear cousin Kevin. Before his life was cut short ten days ago, Kevin, like Ruby was contagious in his happiness. It seems his outlook on life was to not waste time on the unnecessary, but to capture every moment and make it more beautiful.

Team Spears running the Crater Lake Rim Half Marathon.

As his Facebook page fills with tributes, I wish he had heard all the good he brought into the world.

 "I will forever remember the feeling of you laughing while you had me in a hug."

"Kevin was genuine before all else - he had a way of loving and accepting himself that helped me and others to do the same."

"During your short time in this reality you made lasting impressions of an old soul on many great people. I am inspired to continue living and working to create a world you would be proud of." 

"Once, years ago, Kevin stole my journal and wrote down poems for me - ones that he had memorized and kept close to his heart. Timeless as always, deep and meaningful, these words he gifted me are too beautiful to keep to myself. The last line he wrote, "written in love by Kevin Spears". But what didn't he do in love?"

"As I look at this photo, I realize I have never seen you without a smile, living life to the 

fullest each and every day."

"My dear, sweet li'l bro and best friend passed away suddenly yesterday. I had just talked to him on the phone for an hour right before it happened. For that, I feel so blessed. In that last conversation, he sounded so happy and full of love and passion for life."

Enjoying God's creation with Kevin.

Not a moment of Kevin's life was in vain if he inspired those of us who continue on, to do so with a smile. We will be better people for having loved him.

Habits of Happiness

Uncomfortably Comfortable

Through the open windows, the sweet morning sounds of the sparrows, the cicadas, and the passing train ride in on the fresh cool breeze. It is glorious, and I am oh so content. 

Did you catch the key words there? Open windows. Cool breeze. IT'S FALL!!! 

Maybe not officially as the calendar goes, but if we can't wear white anymore, and the kids are back in school, and the pumpkins are beginning to reclaim their prominent position in everything commercial, then it's fall enough for me. And it's my first fall in four years! That's right people, I haven't been in the US for this leaf-changing, cinnamon-scented, chilly-enough-for-a-jacket season since 2008! Oh, how I've missed it...

But now that we've opened up the house, and the temperature has dropped to the 60's for two nights in a row, and Angie's settling into middle school, I'm beginning to worry I'm getting a little too comfortable in this first world.

I started to get concerned when we visited Bolivia a few weeks ago. The weather wasn't nearly as miserably hot as it could have been in August, which rarely obeys the norms for the last "month of winter" that it really is, and usually creeps back into the mid-high 90s. We stayed in the guest room of some missionary friends' lovely home, so we really lacked nothing of consequence. But the buzzing mosquitoes, public transportation, smokey air, shortage of fancy plumbing, and sharing a bed with my daughter instead of my husband started to make me dream of home...

Now that we're back in the states, where autumn will soon paint the trees with the oranges and reds it has saved all year for such a time as this, and even the most humble home has so many luxuries, instead of feeling guilty about having too much, I've decided to feel grateful.

Grateful that this year I can ask the tap for cold or hot water, and it will oblige.

Thankful for the softness of clothes, sheets, and towels fresh from the dryer.

Relieved that I can flush my toilet paper.

Appreciative that I have candy corn, chocolate chips, ranch dressing, Papa John's, Chick-fil-a, and Target at my fingertips.

So glad that opportunities abound for Angie to follow in her mama's footsteps and play tennis to her heart's content.

Giddy because it's football season and my team rocks, even if I'm too cheap to buy tickets to the games now.

Content with the home we can make our own, because it is.

Overjoyed that family surrounds us in all directions.

Many of you have asked how the trip to Bolivia was for Angie. She did great. She enjoyed the things she'd missed, and was ready to return to her new home in Kentucky when our visit was over. Her weakest moment came right after we'd stopped by her old school and her friends had been so ecstatic to see her. 

"I wish we could live in Bolivia again," she thought out loud as we walked back to the house.

"No, you'd miss your grandparents, your cousins, snow, tennis, and you can barely speak Spanish anymore." I teased her. 

"Well, I wish we could have both. Like if Bolivia and the United States were side by side," she motioned with her hands just how close she desired them to be.

Don't we all wish we could have the best of both worlds. I'd prefer the changing seasons of the North mixed with the simplicity of South America. I'd choose the impossible combination of U.S. efficiency and the Latin priority of relationships. I would move all my friends and family from both continents to the same city. And I'd merge my ministries so I could take veterinary students from Santa Cruz, Bolivia and Auburn, Alabama to treat chickens together at an orphanage.

But in the meantime, since life is not a smorgasbord to order from a la carte, I'll choose to focus on all the beauty God gives me every day whether in the colors of the leaves, or the kindness of His people.