Greetings from Thailand!
It has been a wild few months. We experienced multiple floods---one being the worst in our city's history, multiple weddings, and multiple funerals.
We feel emotionally tired.
I can't remember where I first heard it, but my Mom reminded me that life happens not so much in mountains and valleys, but in parallel tracks. Joy and sorrow traveling together.
No matter what major events crash into our lives, we still have at the same time our regular responsibilities and work.
Dishes need done. We still drive to work in the morning and come home in the evening. Laundry, cooking, school, homework, it all goes on and on.
Chiang Mai experienced two separate floods. The second, being the largest in our city's history. Our own home was flooded, cleaned up, and then flooded again and worse than the first time.
But we were fortunate compared to many of our neighbors.
Many people had several feet of water fill their homes and destroy much of their possessions.
The city is still cleaning up and recovering. Faithful Heart donated food, cleaning supplies, and sent out some crews to help clean up. Our Thai church did a great job of serving their neighbors and helping people in a time of crisis.
Some days we were the helpers, and other days we were the helped. It was humbling and made us so grateful for the love of friends.
Shortly after the floods, I was asked to participate in a wedding for a couple from our church.
This Saturday I will give the message at a wedding for one of our staff at Faithful Heart, Ploy.
We are all excited for her to begin this new adventure.
In between the weddings, tragedy struck the Grace International School community.
The younger son of the superintendent was killed in a motorcycle accident. His name was Jon. He was a senior, and a very kind hearted young man. He spent his last day helping another foundation here clean up from the flood.
This week, another family from the school lost their estranged father to suicide.
What do we do with all that?
How should we feel?
In the past two weeks at Faithful Heart, in addition to our flood efforts, we have helped with an abandoned baby at a local hospital, taken all our kids ice skating, and had our annual interviews with all our boys.
One thing living in Asia has taught me is to be strong like bamboo, not like cement.
Bend and flex with life's trials, rather than crack and break.
As a follower of Jesus, it is an opportunity to bring everything to Him.
To say, in effect, I cannot carry all of this. I cannot process it all.
The joys and the sorrows are sometimes just too much and too many to deal with.
There is an old word we don't use much anymore.
It's providence.
Providence is the idea that everything that is happening is somehow within God's scope and plan for good. This is most helpful, when it is most difficult.
It is precisely when life seems brutal and terrible that we need to have hope for good.
But it is also for the good things in life too, not only the funerals, but the weddings.
Because good that is in vain is not much good.
Providence puts everything into the frame, into perspective. It may not make sense, it may not be complete, but it is the possibility of a vision of a good future.
I have been using a prayer guide I got from a local Jesuit spiritual retreat center here in Chiang Mai. It is from St. Ignatius and its called the Daily Examen.
Let me share some parts that have been especially helpful for me these past months:
"God's creative plan gently and infallibly reveals itself more authentically in the external events of our lives than in what we construe through our own discernments. God enters into the very act of our creative struggle--like a mother in childbirth, or like artists bringing forth their labor of love. For the most part our struggle is not with God but with expectations of ourselves and of others. ..
...the other approach is to do whatever is possible to change the situation, but to avoid dwelling on expectations. We watch and wait for events to unfold in God's creative time. When we notice something that needs our response or intervention, we should plan and act accordingly. The events are there for us to shape, events that will need our energy...
...Do I watch and wait with Christian hope? Do I believe that God is laboring for me in and through my difficulties? Do I practice the sacrament of the present moment? A person of faith in God always sees him acting behind happenings which bewilder our senses. We must be active in all that the present moment demands of us, but in everything else remain passive and abandoned and do nothing but peacefully await the promptings of God. The daily schedule, doing what needs to be done, brings with it its only healing power."
So in the midst of weddings, funerals, and floods, we look for God's good plan. We wait in Christian hope and expectation. But we limit our expectations of others and circumstances.
We do what we can, and leave the rest to Him.
We remain in the present moment, ready to do what is needed.
We trust that God is laboring for us and we wait peacefully.
We continue the daily work He has called us to, and find healing there as well.
We are all experience our own version of weddings, funerals, and floods.
Life is hard.
But God is good.
May we wait for Him in hope.
Love,
Matt, Audrey, Ezra, and Sienna
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