thoughts on "stress"

I love it when, even in the midst of leading a Bible study, God puts some pieces together in a whole new way.

This past Sunday morning during our normal youth Bible study, we were talking about dealing with stress and the things that cause stress. I had already planned and prepared, but in the midst of sharing some Scripture, God showed me a really cool connection that has really stuck with me.

1 Peter 5:7 says, "Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you." There are some things that I care about that others don't care about like I do (e.g. my wife doesn't care about my baseball card collection, some old books I've held onto, or my large collection of baseball caps). It's okay, but knowing her love of yard sales, I don't trust her with these things. In this verse, God assures us that he is trustworthy... he truly cares about us and the things we care about (the things that cause us stress). Because he cares about our cares like we do, we can feel confident to trust him with them, to "cast our anxiety on him."

Add that to this verse: Matthew 6:33, "But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well." It seems that God is also saying that he wants to change our focus. He wants to make sure that our priority is him and his kingdom, and, as a result, the other things we care about will be taken care of, too. He wants us to replace our worry with another activity--pursuing him. It seems that he is saying, "I want you to care most about the things I care most about."

Which I think leads to this muddled, but insightful, principle related to the stress in our lives: God cares about what I care about, but he also wants me to care about what he cares about. This is the heart of deep relationships--interconnectedness. Shared priorities. Mutual concerns. Loving one another.


(By the way, Amy really does care about the things I care the most about... I just like giving her a hard time about how much she likes getting rid of things in yard sales.)

I thought this looked fun...

China Travel Itinerary

I don't know what you're going to do with your October, but here's most of mine...

October
9th-- leave home at 11:15am, through Detriot and Tokyo
10th-- arrive in Beijing at 9:35pm (Beijing Traders Hotel)
11th-- visit Summer Palace and Great Wall (Juyongguan section)
12th-- visit Tian An Men Square and the Forbidden City, fly to Nanjing (Manderin Garden Hotel)
13th-- meet our daughter, Kate!!!
14th-- civil affairs office for registration
15th-- train to Suzhou (Kate's birthplace), visit Humble Administrator's Garden and Panmen Scenic Area (Holiday Inn Youlian Suzhou)
16th-- visit Tong Li Town, the water county and Suzhou Embroidery Institute
17th-- visit Suzhou Children's Welfare Institute (SWI) and Lingering Garden, back to Nanjing (Manderin Garden Hotel)
18th-- visit Ming Dynasty Emporers' Tombs
19th-- visit Qin Huai River
20th-- fly to Guangzhou (White Swan Hotel), medical check-up, fill out forms for US consulate, get Kate's passport
21st-- guide helps complete consulate documents
22nd-- oath ceremony
23rd-- leave Guangzhou at 8:20am, through Tokyo and Detroit, arrive home at 4:25PM

"Grab a Corner"

If you've been following my blog for a while, you know I changed the web address. It used to include my last name, so for a little extra anonymity out in cyberspace, I recently changed it to http://www.grabacorner.blogspot.com/. I suppose it's about time I give a little explanation of the new title.

Early on in my dating relationship with Amy, I remember actually uttering the phrase, "I don't need anyone." I knew I liked being around people, and it wasn't much fun if you didn't have friends or family. But I thought that a sign of my inner strength and fortitude was that I felt that my fulfillment as a human being was not dependant on any other person. (Surprisingly, she didn't dump me immediately for my naive foolishness.) What I grew to realize was, instead of it being an indication of weakness, the need for other people is a fundamental part of the way God created me to be human. In interdependency, there is strength.

Let me see if I can explain. Check out this list. These are but a few of the things I feel that God has called me to do in life:

• Be a faithful husband, loving Amy sacrificially ("as Christ loved the church," Eph. 5:25)
• Raise all three of my children to love God and nurture in them a desire to have a relationship with Him
• Adopt and care for our precious daughter... provide her with a loving family.
• Be fully engaged in God's Word and let it live within me
• Have a meaningful prayer life that connects my heart with the heart of God
• Lead youth, their families, and our church to join God in the mission of reclaiming the world for Himself
• Come alongside teenagers to lead them on the journey of becoming fully-developed disciples of Jesus
• Actively worship God in a way that brings him honor and joy
• Serve the people of my community and my world in meaningful and restorative ways
• Share the story of my Savior with other people
• "Act justly, love mercy and to walk humbly with my God," Micah 6:8

Now, looking at this list, how many of these things do you think I can actually accomplish by myself? None. I can try, but I will be much more successful in being all that God has intended for me to be as I depend on other people helping me. Case in point: since God did not speak to me from the sky or drop a Bible in my lap, if it were not for other people, I would not be a follower of Jesus today. I needed others to point me to God, and I still need them today.

That's why I love the story in Mark 2 of the paralytic man and his friends. Here's this man, paralyzed, who is unable to help himself. Maybe if he could get to Jesus to heal him, but he could never get there unaided. So I can imagine in my mind the scene, this man's friends saying to one another, "We can do something about our friend's disability. We can carry him to Jesus." Not only was this man unable to help himself, but none of his friends by themselves could get him to Jesus either. So by the time they rounded up four of them, I can hear the first call out to the other three, "Hey, grab a corner. We'll get him to Jesus." The rest of the story goes on to tell about them being undeterred by the crowd and lowering the paralyzed man down in front of Jesus through the ceiling by pulling aside the roofing of the house Jesus was at. It says in verse five, "When Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytic, 'Son, your sins are forgiven.'" Then it says Jesus healed him and the paralytic man got up from his mat and could walk.

There's a lot that God wants me to do, but I need help. So I guess that's what I want my blog to be about. In the variety of things I write about-- adoption, youth ministry, changing the world--I want to invite you to jump on with me. Go ahead. Let's go. Grab a corner.

highlight videos

A couple highlight videos from youth trips this summer...

a different kind of trip

We found out last weekend that we got our official Travel Approval to go to China, and a couple days later got back our passports with their Chinese visas (above, on left). But we were disappointed to learn that the US Consulate did not have any available openings until October 21st to schedule us for the finalization of the adoption on the American side of things. I guess this is what should be expected when you are working with bureaucracies from two different countries!

So we will be traveling to China on October 9th. But this isn't my first trip to China.

I first traveled to China in the summer of 1997 (see visa at top, right side) when, along with five other college students (Shawn, Sharon, Qny, Momi and Angie), I spent five weeks in Yangshuo, Guangxi (near Guilin). We traveled through Hong Kong and southern China by boat, train, airplane, bus, taxi, bicycle and foot. We saw breathtaking landscapes filled with limestone mountains and terraced rice fields, picturesque towns with pagodas and ancestral shrines, and amazing cities with skyscrapers that climb to the sky. We spent our time with a school full of kids (mostly around 13 and 14 years old). We learned Chinese and taught English. We played basketball and ping pong and learned tai chi and mahjong. We snacked on "sheep-on-a-stick" at roadside vendors, dined on some odd-looking pizza at "americanized" cafes while they showed movies (like an "edited" version of Braveheart), and accepted invitations to traditional Chinese meals (where I was first introduced to beer... "Gan Bei"!). We tubed down the Li Jiang and bicycled to Moon Hill. We haggled in the marketplaces and took lots of pictures. We danced and laughed at birthday celebrations and wept, hugged and set off firecrackers at good-byes. The most amazing part for me was answering the girl who asked, "Teach me how to pray," and hearing my closest friend, Cook (pictured below), tell me that he believed. It was an awesome trip, and I can't imagine what my life would have been without it.

Now 11 years later, I will be going on my second trip to China. Like before, I expect to see a lot of amazing sights and experience meaningful moments. But this trip will be a very different kind of trip. Two weeks instead of five. Through Beijing instead of Hong Kong. Probably pretty comfortable accommodations throughout. Again, I will be there with five others with me... but they'll be my family members Amy, Ben, Will, Mimi (my mother-in-law) and Kate. But the purpose of this trip is to adopt my daughter! We will arrive in Beijing, meet our agency workers, adjust to the new time zone and then meet our daughter in her home province of Jiangsu. We have to spend a week together with her there according to the Chinese guidelines of international adoption. Then we will go to Guangzhuo to the US Consulate to swear on oath that we will take care of her and raise her well. We are so excited to finally be with this little girl that we have planned for and prayed for for so many years.

I can't wait to return to such a beautiful and wonderful country that I have grown to love dearly. Though this is an extremely different kind of trip, I'm not sure this journey would have happened if it weren't for the impact of my first trip to China.