pilgrimage | Elaine Olsen

a wave of empty

August 17, 2009

“So keep up your courage, men, for I have faith in God that it will happen just as he told me. Nevertheless, we must run aground on some island.” (Acts 27:25-26).

One of the best pieces of advice I’ve ever received came from a counselor during a time of great personal crisis nearly fourteen years ago. It went something like this…

Elaine, you spend a great deal of your time trying to “out swim” the waves that are chasing you. You expend your valuable energy in trying to reach the shore before they have the opportunity to consume you. Sometimes you make it; sometimes you don’t. How much better would it be if you stopped swimming, anchored your feet into the sand, and turned to face the wave … head on and with the full confidence that your survival has already been written in the history books?

Facing the wave. That’s where I am today. Actually, where I am is in an upstairs bedroom where two beds are stripped of their linens and where closets are mostly bare. The trophies remain … the bookshelf filled with yesteryear’s reads, and the dust all the more; but what I notice most about this room this morning is not the remnants left behind. What I’m most keenly aware of is its emptiness. The silence. The incredible void that fills this place because two young men are no longer making this room the place where they lay their heads at night.

My tears have mostly dried, and the exhaustion has nearly subsided; for the most part, I’m ready to “get on with the gettin’ on.” But before I do, before I have clarity about “what’s next” for me and for those of us left behind, I want to spend some time this week “facing the wave” and allowing the full force of change to hit me squarely in the heart, therefore requiring me to grapple with some questions that are worthy of more than my casual acknowledgment.

Questions that arrive because routine has been stripped away and because there is now ample time and space to formulate some answers, out loud and before God in a way that wouldn’t have been possible a week ago. A week ago, I was still walking through this parental obedience of “letting go” with the objects of that “letting go” still shadowing my every move. Today, the shadows are removed. They are gone, casting their depth on the campuses of two universities that are just out of my reach.

Truly, I’m fine with the distance between us. It is part of their “becoming”; it’s part of mine. All of us are searching for the “next thing”—the next step in this journey called faith. And while their search leads them along different paths than mine, one thread remains constant for us all. Change has arrived, and when change comes, we can do one of two things with it. We can fight it, or we can bend to it … bow to it, turn to it and allow the full force behind its pulse to hit us where we stand and to shape us accordingly.

I choose to turn and face the wave this day, knowing that regardless of the “hit” my survival has already been written in the history books.

Some days … some seasons … our ships, like the Apostle Paul’s, get the “go ahead” from God to run aground. Our safety isn’t in question. We may feel as if it is; after all, the waves are high and the surge is certain. We may have lost all hope of being saved from the storm; but even there, our God comes to us in the dark of the night and reminds us that not one of us will be lost. We live with the assurance that our lives will be spared. But our ships? Our comfortable and our familiar?

Well, sometimes they know the splintering and breakage of an intentional island, placed in our paths on purpose and with the sole intention of stripping us down to the basics. The island is never intended to destroy us but, rather, to save us. Without it, we are at risk of succumbing to the treacherous battering from a sea’s fury whose relentless passion has sent more than a few ships to a watery and forgotten grave.

With the island, we get reprieve. A fresh start. A place of beginning again; of rebuilding and renewal and re-examination of a life that will continue down a new path, yet one with the same destination in mind.

Home to God.

He will use many routes to get us there, all manner of detours and obstacles to accomplish our arrival. We may not always welcome the change … the “stripping down” and painful emptiness that calls for our contemplation and our maturation. But to deny its reality is to delay its intentional good. And God is after our good; not for goodness’ sake, but for his sake. For his plan. For his perfected end that gloriously welcomes and includes our “becoming” as part of the determined process.

Perhaps this day the waves are fiercely and desperately chasing you from behind. Your ship is hanging by a thread and your efforts at “lightening the load” are doing little to quell the fury. Your “frantic and frenzy” at trying to “out swim” the inevitable embrace of the waves in order to reach the safety of the shore has worn you out and your exhaustion is complete.

Would you be willing to pause, to stop where you are, to dig your heels deeply into the soil beneath your weary feet and then to courageously, turn and face the wave? Sometimes a ship has to be willing to be broken in order for a life to be saved. It maybe your ship … your life. It maybe the life of someone you dearly love. Either way, the willingness to invite the “stripping down” of the waves is the beginning of the “building up” of a new way of doing life with Jesus.

Thus, keep up your courage, friends, and I will keep up mine. I have all the confidence in my God to lead us as we go and to bring us safely home, just as he has said. Our God is ever faithful. He will do it.

Even so, do it today, Lord Jesus. As always…

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a seventh birthday celebration

August 5, 2009

Today, my daughter celebrates her birthday. She is seven. Yesterday she was six.

It’s been an interesting “watch” … this observing her as she navigates her thoughts about growing a year older. For months, she’s been planning her birthday festivities and adding to her “gift list”. A couple of days ago, I caught her staring at herself in the mirror. When I asked her what she was doing, she simply replied, “I’m seeing if I look any older.”

Miss Amelia has longed for seven ever since she turned six. It’s the way of her young heart … looking forward and hoping that with this birthday will come more maturity, more responsibility, more being the grown-up she sees in her older family members. It’s hard being the caboose of the family some days. She wants to catch up to the rest of us; she seems to think she’s missing out on something by being the youngest.

Being seven, to Amelia, seems a whole lot better than staying six. But for all of the reasons she could articulate behind her desire to see this day arrive, there’s still a part of her that longs to remain a child. I saw a glimpse of it yesterday.

Amelia closed the door to our bedroom (always a good indication that she is up to something, perhaps even trying to hide something). When I opened the door, she quickly turned off the television. I asked her what she was watching. She was hesitant and then softly said, “A baby show, Mom, and I didn’t want anyone to know. Seven-year-olds don’t watch baby shows.” I nodded my understanding and then left her to her internal wrangling regarding the issue.

Somewhere between six and seven comes a struggle—a season of clarification between our baby days and our moving on to maturity. Biblically speaking, the number seven is a number representing completeness and perfection:

*God’s seventh day rest after six-days of creation (Genesis 1-2:4);
*Seventh year sabbatical rest of the land (Lev. 25:2-7);
*Feast of Tabernacles and Passover lasted seven days (Judges 14:12, 17);
*Pharoah’s dream regarding the land / seven good years, seven famine years (Genesis 41:1-36);
*Seven churches in Revelation (Revelation 2-3);
*Forgiveness requirements = 70 x 7 (Matthew 18:21-22).

And while I’m not obsessed with the numeric aspect of Scripture, I do think there is something to this “seven”. At the least, it intrigues me, especially as I walk through this day with my daughter and see her wrestling with the issue. She wants to grow up, yet there remains her inclination, a smaller preference for her former days.

As is goes with Amelia, so it goes with my own heart. To get to “seven”—my completion, my perfection and my final end—I’ve got to move past “six.” I think I’ve been stuck on “six” for a long season. I think we all could echo the same. Days when we desire to know the fullness of what our Father has intended for us to be, yet days when we can’t seem to get past the “baby” in us.

As Christians on pilgrimage to a better country, there is a sacred tension we walk between the celebration of our seven and the seemingly interminability of our six. We long for the arrival of the party, for the recognition of our completion, yet we’re caught in our current status of growth. These six years that belong to us—the lifespan between our birth and our death—seem long and laborious most days. When we look in the mirror, we see the witness of a six-year season that hasn’t always been kind but that is more than willing to carve its wrinkled remembrance. Like my daughter, we are looking for signs of growth indicating that our “seven” stands ready on the horizon and that our maturity has warranted our participation in the celebration.

The party is not long off, friends. Soon, each of us will move from our six to our seven. We will sit with our Host, look back over the scenes of our lives and, together with him, call it done, completed … a perfection that’s been worth the six years’ collection of steps to get there.

And if today’s celebration in my family is any indication of what our “seven” is going to be like, then there will be cake and presents a plenty, a song or two sung in our honor, and lots of wishes come true.

May you, each one, know this day that seven is on its way. The six we now journey is preparing our hearts for the seven that is soon to arrive. I look forward to sharing the party with you. As always,

Paz para el viaje (peace for the journey)…

June 28, 2009

Hey Blogland! Instead of getting Elaine’s daily dose of “Peace for the Journey,” I’m afraid today’s entry comes from her 20-year-old son, Nick. I know, I know…in no way can I match my mom’s conciseness, clarity, and writing panache, but I’ll give it my best shot (And I won’t hold it against you if you stop reading now and check out someone else’s blog…)

I recently returned from a 10-day mission trip to the South American nation of Bolivia. Twelve of us went through an organization named Curamericas and were led by a bilingual 22-year-old volunteer named Andrew Herrera. A majority of our time in Bolivia was spent in the village of Tacachia, nestled cozily in the Andes Mountains about 35 miles from the capital city of La Paz. We worked at the Kory Wawanaca Children’s Home, an orphanage with 18 children and several staff members. I had the unique privilege of having this be a “return” trip to Bolivia, as I went last year with a group from our church.

Our team of twelve set out on a Tuesday at 3 p.m. with plans calling for us to arrive in La Paz the next day at 6:00 a.m. It seems that nothing ever goes according to plan, though. We missed a connection flight in Miami and then had to change our plans on the fly in Miami. As an occasionally hotheaded 20-year-old, I grew frustrated and impatient very quickly, and worried a lot about our new travel plans. Long story short, we did some South American globetrotting the next day and went through Venezuela, Peru, and finally reached La Paz at 12:45 a.m. on Thursday morning after 35 straight hours of travel (that’s the southern tip of the U.S., the northern tip of South America, the western tip of South America, and the highest capital city in the world for those of you keeping track…not too bad, eh?).

Already God had taught me a basic lesson in Christian living: I had to trust Him, and realize that everything was in His hands.

Exodus 33: 12-18

Moses said to the Lord, “You have been telling me, ‘Lead these people,’ but you have not let me know whom you will send with me. You have said, ‘I know you by name and you have found favor with me.’ If you are pleased with me, teach me your ways so I may know you and continue to find favor with you. Remember that this nation is your people.

The Lord replied, “My presence will go with you, and I will give you rest.”
Then Moses said to him, “If your presence does not go with us, do not send us up from here. How will anyone know that you are pleased with me and with your people unless you go with us? What else will distinguish me and your people from all the other people on the face of the earth?”

And the Lord said to Moses, “I will do the very thing you have asked, because I am pleased with you and I know you by name.”

Then Moses said, “Now show me your glory.”

In the days leading up to our trip, this passage from Exodus was a daily prayer and inspiration for me. Countless times during our trip, it would come to mind as a source of comfort. I always ended my prayers by echoing Moses, “Now show me your glory.”

There were two definitive moments when I witnessed the glory of God in Tacachia—two “passing-by” moments. Sure, the entire experience was glorious, but two were the kind of glory that I’m sure Moses witnessed there on Sinai with the Lord. These two have seared themselves into my memory and will not soon be forgotten.

The first came during a Sunday lunch at the orphanage. 10-year-old Roy, who was an avid chess player, had brought his set out and was looking for an American to play against. He had already done battle with Frank Ferrell, an adult on our team, earlier in the week; Frank had been victorious, but not without some difficulty. By the grace of God, I knew enough Spanish to help set up the first contest between the two; neither was very knowledgeable of the other’s language.

I was able to then witness the rematch on Sunday, sitting next to Roy and being able to translate somewhat for both parties. The match was a tight and silent one, with both players extremely focused on the task at hand. With a pair of brilliant moves, however, Roy was able to checkmate Frank and claim victory. Here were two people (completely polar opposities) from different age groups, neither speaking the other’s language who were bound only by a common knowledge and love for the game. Sensing Roy’s excitement, I leaned over to Frank and said, “tell him ‘buen hecho’” (Good job, well done…). Frank tapped Roy, who was walking away, on the shoulder and said, “Roy…Buen hecho.”

And as he walked away, the grin that exploded across Roy’s face was, without a doubt, the most vivid and radiant smile I have ever seen.

The second “passing-by” moment came at our departure from the orphanage, a morning that was one of the most difficult mornings I have ever experienced. My week of getting to know the 18 kids at the orphanage was over; I bonded with all of them, but to a higher degree with some. I enjoyed a special bond with 13-year-old Miguel, in part because I saw so much of myself in him. He, like me, was the oldest of four siblings, had an avid interest in athletics, and a penchant for sarcasm at times. We talked one night about how much I enjoyed being at the orphanage and getting to know Miguel and his family. The most enduring image I will take from Tacachia, and the one that tells me that God worked through us in this trip occurred during our tearful goodbyes (there were some tears, and some floods).

My last goodbyes were Miguel and Roy, who were standing around the monkeybars. I told them I really enjoyed meeting them and would miss them. Roy asked if I was going to return with such a pleading look on his face, and I said I hoped that I would. Miguel was silent as his and Roy’s eyes began to fill with tears. I looked in Miguel’s eyes and said, “Somos hermanos. Dios te bendiga” (We are brothers. God bless you.). We got in the cars and pulled out, but not without me taking one last glance at Miguel and Roy, still standing next to the monkeybars with their heads down; spasms of heartache at telling these kids goodbye have bothered me ever since.

For the days leading up to and during the trip I, like Moses, had been pleading with God in my prayers, “If your presence does not go with us, do not send us up from here. How will anyone know that you are pleased with me and with your people unless you go with us? What else will distinguish me and your people from all the other people on the face of the earth?”

Only the presence of God can bring out those two images. Only the presence of God can help one overcome language and altitude and attitude barriers to serve Him. Only with the presence of God can we, like Moses, witness the glory of God.

I truly feel at home in Tacachia, and hope to return there again next year to further strengthen the bonds I’ve formed this year, as well as to cultivate new ones. This trip, as is most often the case, stands as proof that yes, God worked THROUGH me. But he worked so much more IN me, and for that I am eternally grateful.

In the days since returning from the orphanage, Relient K’s song “I’m Taking You with Me” has been running through my head. My heartfelt pledge since returning to the United States is found in these lyrics:

“If home is where the heart is then my home is where you are;
But it’s getting oh so hard to spend these days without my heart.
So I’m taking you with me anywhere that I
Could ever wanna be for the rest of my life.
I want you there with me, and If there ever comes a time
When I should have to leave, I hope you know that I,
I’m taking you with me.”

So may you, blog readers, go with the presence of God, may you witness His glory, and may you take Him with you wherever you go.

Paz para el viaje (peace for the journey)

~ Nick

Where the Heart Is…

June 23, 2009

I sensed my son’s immediate discomfort with the statement spoken to him by a local parishioner while waiting in the check-out line at Wal-Mart:

“Sure bet you’re glad to be back home.”

Nicholas squirmed for a gracious response.

“Yes, sir. It’s good to be home.”

Even as he spoke it, I felt the painful cut that seared his heart with more clarified precision than that of a sharpened knife. The words weren’t intended to hurt, but they did. They reminded my son of everything he’s been trying to process since returning home from Bolivia.

If home is where the heart is, then my son’s home (at least for the “right now”) resides somewhere in the remote mountainous village of Tacachia, Bolivia. He spent the better part of a week walking its soil and tending to its harvest–a harvest that exceeded the fruit of the land to include the fruit of relationships.

The Kory Wawanaka Children’s Home (an orphanage sustained through the Methodist Church of Bolivia) houses nineteen orphaned children, ranging in ages from three to thirteen. When Nick first visited their community last year, the orphanage had four residents. Newly licensed for operation, the home has experienced strong growth in every way during the past twelve months.

It was especially meaningful for Nick to witness the growth of the past year. The “pulse” behind the work there is strong and evident, stirring his heart for further involvement.

“I want to go back, mom. And not just for a week. I want to stay longer next time.”

Next time.

My heart can barely get around these past “two times.” Still and yet, I listened to him pour his heart out over cheeseburgers and fries during a mother and son outing. I knew it was coming, this unwrapping of his feelings. Even as his emotions welled with the “telling”, mine welled with the listening.

God is moving Nick’s heart in a new direction. The shaping that’s taking place is what I’ve prayed for his entire life. In fact, I’ve prayed that prayer for all of my children over the years.

That they would, each one, know early on in their lives what God would have for them. That they would walk in their calling in their twenties rather than waiting until their forties to figure it all out. That they wouldn’t spend their days wondering about what they were supposed to be doing but rather would spend them knowing that whatever they were doing, they were doing so with an eternal purpose in mind. A kingdom purpose.

That they would find God, sense God, believe God, and know God in the everyday and mundane of a life that doesn’t always make sense but that is content to walk hand in hand with One who possesses perfect sense and understanding for the road ahead.

That they would listen to the promptings of God’s Spirit within and not brush it off as a momentary whim or selfish fancy. That they would, in fact, trust in the truth they’ve been given as children of the Most High God. A truth that tells them God is living and active and moving on their behalf and that because of this “constant working” they shouldn’t be surprised when he shows up on the scene of their lives, prompting them to keep in step with his leading.

God is faithfully answering those prayers for Nick. I heard it in his words and saw it in his eyes as we shared a table and bared our hearts to one another. And while Nick has always imagined his life to be headed in a certain direction, God is asking him to imagine bigger. To dream better; to see beyond his raw capabilities and to, instead, take hold of his sacredly bestowed giftings.

That kind of living, friends, is where it’s at. God has planted his own seeds of promise within our lives. When we begin to see those seeds harvest toward kingdom gain, then our hearts, like my son’s, welcome the growth of a new soil. In fact, our souls can’t help but cry out for it. For the untilled lands of an untouched country that is completely and “holy” surrendered to the idea of God’s unlimited possibilities.

As we connect with that kind of “heart-stirring”—when we begin to see our lives framed within the context of a greater good rather than within the parameters we’ve so carefully and comfortably created for ourselves—then we walk our part in the Great Commission. We walk our callings; no matter the location; no matter our age; no matter if we have the credentials or the education to go alongside.

We simply and profoundly walk our faith with all the confidence of heaven as our guide. We don’t worry about the particulars. The details belong to God. But the steps?

Well, they are ours to journey, whether here or abroad. When walked with the Creator, every step moves us closer to him … to heaven, where the final proclamation of our earthly life will resound in perfect unison with perfect wisdom…

“Yes Sir, it’s good to be home.”

No tears; no pain; no more wondering about our callings. Just rest for our hearts in the place where they were always intended to land.

Home.

By the grace of God I’ll get there; by his grace so will Nick, so will my other children. So will you. Thus, I pray…

Thank you, Father, for meeting us in this day. For showing up on foreign soil to till our hearts for kingdom purpose. For allowing us the “wrestling” of some things that further shape our understanding about how you intend for our lives to live. Give us the courage to “work the thing out” before you, with you, depending on you so that because of you, we come to a greater place of obedience to you. Use our pain to teach us Father, even when it hurts and our preferences call out for its burial. Meet us in those deep places; stir us all the more, and keep us to the pilgrimage of a final grace that will walk us home and welcome us fully. Amen.

PS: I’m in the mountains this week; the picture above stands as my witness. Nick has promised me a post regarding his own thoughts about his trip. I hope to have it by week’s end, along with some pictures. Shalom.

A Fine Child

June 10, 2009

“Now a man of the house of Levi married a Levite woman, and she became pregnant and gave birth to a son. When she saw that he was a fine child, she hid him for three months. But when she could hide him no longer, she got a papyrus basket for him and coated it with tar and pitch. Then she placed the child in it and put it among the reeds along the bank of the Nile. His sister stood at a distance to see what would happen to him.” (Exodus 2:1-4).

The Nile is a difficult “letting go.” A hard release. A gut-wrenching surrender.

It was for Moses’ parents. It is for me.

Tonight I stand on the riverbank of the Nile and watch my son from a distance as he boards a plane at Raleigh-Durham International Airport, heading toward the mountainous regions of Bolivia. He will spend ten days at an orphanage, tilling the land, repairing the chicken coops, working on latrines, and playing a pick-up game of soccer on every occasion.

He will bathe little; sleep even less. Stomach Bolivian delicacies and try his best to speak the language he’s been intensely studying as his college minor. He’ll make me proud, of that I am sure. Others will love him, of that I am more certain.

And while all of this makes my heart smile with gratitude for the man he is becoming, there is a pang of sadness for me. Not because I desire to keep Nick to myself, but rather because I won’t be alongside to watch the unfolding of this “fine child” before the eyes of others. Moments and memories that I’d like to scrapbook for myself will be given as a remembrance to those who stand further down the river’s bank, eagerly awaiting his arrival and anticipating his participation in their lives.

I see the bigger picture; it’s been growing in me for a long season. God has amply supplied me with a series of “letting go’s” that continue to shape my heart for sacred surrender. They always make me cry, and I’ve never shied away from their wet. I simply allow the tears a spacious place to land in order to water the growth of my tender soil … my fragile soul. I pray them not to be too much, but rather just enough to seed my pain with some purpose.

It’s a good prayer to pray, especially because our “letting go’s” are going to arrive. It is the way of a forward journey, regardless of our willingness to stand still and not move one moment beyond this one. How much better would it be to allow our moments of “needful release” to birth in us a sacred shaping that will serve a better end—both ours and God’s.

Moses’ parents understood this better than most. They were commended for their faithful release and duly memorialized for it in the Hebrews “hall of faith”:

“By faith Moses’ parents hid him for three months after he was born, because they saw that he was not an ordinary child, and they were not afraid of the king’s edict.” (Hebrews 11:23).

By faith, they hid their son. By faith, they released their son. By faith, they watched their son from a distance. By faith, they understood that their son was no ordinary child, but rather a “fine child” destined for a better end than that of most of his contemporaries.

By faith, we should equally trust our Father with the release of our children to the River Nile.

They’re all “fine.” Special and beautiful and worthy of the nod of heaven. Like Moses’ parents, from the moment they’re born, we hide them. Shelter them beneath our wings because we understand that while heaven has marked them with eternity, hell has marked them otherwise. For destruction—as ordinary, expendable, unremarkable, and worthy of the nothing more than a swift slaughter simply because they carry the bloodlines of a King.

But three months passes quickly. Eighteen years for most of us. For a few of us, a painful and difficult less. For a few of us, a painful and struggling more. Still and yet, there comes for all of us a moment at the river’s edge. A time of release when we must find our peace at a distance and trust that Father God has something bigger and something beyond us that awaits our children on the other side of our hard surrender.

We may not see his wisdom in it all; rarely do we catch a full glimpse of our children’s forever. But occasionally we have an inkling—a heavenly whisper reminding us that, indeed, there is a wisdom that exceeds understanding. A “more” that is coming because of our willingness to “let go” and “let God.”

Tonight, I “let go” again of the son I dearly love. It won’t be the last time my heart is called upon to make such a surrender. But I do so in the spirit and strength of my spiritual ancestors who better understood the painful trust of a difficult release. Thus, I speak these words of release to my Nick as he flies the night sky and as I try to find him there, amidst the stars and dark that separates our flesh…

Go with God this night, my son. Sail the Nile with all the trust of heaven to guide you, shape you, strengthen you, and mold you into the man that God has intended for you to be. I will be keeping watch, but my arms aren’t long enough to catch you this time. God has orchestrated events accordingly. He means for me to stand on the riverbank while you engage with the wild and wet of a river that calls for your participation. You are a fine child, and you were meant for more than my arms. You were meant for the world. Embrace it, and it will embrace you. It’s time that others discover the wealth of who you are.

And just in case they don’t, if for some reason they reach any other conclusion, you can be certain that I’ll be waiting at the river’s edge to welcome you home and to remind you of just how extraordinary you truly are. I love you, Nick. I’ll see you on the other side of your river’s ride.

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