Help and Light

God graciously gave me a hint to steer me in the right direction. And HERE begins the good part, that part that I've been waiting to get to. The very reason that I began this whole story back in the summer last year was so that I could lead up to this.

My pastor preached a sermon from Ephesians 3 one Sunday night, and one phrase from verse 17 particularly caught my attention: "That Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith." Pastor said he hoped everyone present could say that Christ was dwelling in their hearts, and he went on to say that the Holy Spirit comes in to dwell with every believer at the moment of salvation. I knew that; I believe that, but a new thought struck me.

"If the Holy Spirit indwells me, what kind of house does He find it? Does He feel welcome and at home here?"

I had the realization that no, indeed He does not. I had a vision of the Holy Spirit shuffled away in some dark corner of the house, while I reigned supreme over my life, not even affording Him the slightest courtesy or the barest hospitality. In the little nook under the stairs where I had pushed Him, He was not "in my way" as I bustled about, cleaning here and there, making plans here and there, and taking action on this project or that project, all without consulting Him or even taking time to converse with Him.

How wrong!

If a delegation of ambassadors or dignitaries arrived at my door, I knew how I would treat them. I would dress my best, welcome them graciously, and lay myself out to attend to their slightest wishes. I would be alert to the smallest hints as to how I could better serve them. I would listen to their conversation and be sparing with how much I talked about myself. I would not complain at the length of time they stayed or question the things they wanted to do. I would be at their disposal. They would have the best seats, the best food, and every comfort I could provide for them. Their smallest wish would be granted.

I realized that I needed to get things right with God. He bought me--He redeemed me--He indwelt me--He blessed me with His glorious presence--and I had treated him this way in return.

Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you? (1 Cor 3:16)

What? Know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own? For ye are bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God's. (1 Cor. 6:19-20)

I got on my knees before God and asked His forgiveness. I said that from now on, I would give Him complete control. I would attend to His slightest wishes. I would take my orders from Him instead of the other way around. I would be shuffled aside into the obscurity of the little nook under the stairs, if He so chose. I surrendered to Him the deed and the key to the house. From now on, He would be the owner.

And do you know what? He accepted it. He didn't treat me like I had treated Him, either. He didn't forget about me in the corner under the stairs, but with the tenderest acceptance and love, drew me out by the hand and gave me a role to participate in the work that He was doing. Furthermore, He set to work, calmly ordering the house back from the sloppy chaos I had left, expertly putting things back to a state of peace and orderliness.

I was amazed at His patience. How did He wait so patiently, knowing exactly what needed to be done, yet allowing me to go on alone, not forcing His way into the picture, but waiting to be invited?

I was amazed at His forgiveness. It was a shame and an offense...an atrocity...an abomination... that the Holy Spirit of God should ever have been so rudely treated, so shoved into a corner, so shut out and marginalized, so dishonored and disrespected. But He forgave me. How I praise Him for His mercy!

Thus I began the adventure of learning how to walk in this new way, yielding to the Holy Spirit's leadership in my life. But the battle wasn't over.

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Get Up Early: Skirmish #2

So then I had this bright idea.

For every day that I didn't get up in time to have my devotions, I would fast the whole day.

"Mwa-ha-ha," I thought gleefully to myself. "This'll teach me!" I do love food, and I was sure that even the bare threat of going without it would be enough to get me up in the morning. However, just to make sure I knew I wasn't bluffing, I made myself the rule that I had to get up on the first ring of the alarm (no hitting snooze). I wrote in my journal that day, "I'm tired of the defeat that sees me, day after day, succumbing to the sleep-god. I can't not learn this."

I admit that I really thought I wouldn't have to carry out my threat on myself. But the second day, I was already fasting. I knew it would take a whole day of fasting to hurt badly enough to be effective, because fasting for one meal, or even two, is so easy for me that it would have no impact on my sleep-ridden brain's reasoning power. That day, I ruthlessly carried out my threat, determined to drive the knife blade into the flesh and kill it till it was dead. I sniffed deliberately whenever there were any food odors to be smelled--and there were some good ones. I deliberately looked at food items so that I could tell myself, "See? You could have had that if you hadn't done that this morning."

But even still, I was thinking I undoubtedly wouldn't have to do it a second time, once the flesh saw I meant business.

Ha.

By the time seven days had passed, I had fasted four of them. After two weeks had passed with me eating only about every other day, I was hungry, thin, and extremely irritable.

I decided it was time to reevaluate. I felt like I could starve myself to death before I would ever give up sleep. I evidently loved sleep much more than I loved food.

Also, I realized that I was fasting in the strength of the flesh. I was wielding a crowbar against myself to try to move myself, but it was about as effective as a tree trying to pull itself up by the roots. No matter how resolved I was, if I was operating in the flesh to try to destroy the flesh, the flesh would wimp out at the last minute and not carry out its threat against itself. And I felt like the more I fought against myself, the more I weakened myself and made myself unfit to continue to fight.

What made things even worse was that when I did get up to pray, my prayer times were duller than ever. Somehow, I just couldn't connect with God. What was wrong with me?

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Get up Early: My Custer's Last Stand

The third aspect of my assignment was to do my devotions first, at the beginning of the day. I never failed to do my devotions, but I did them at night. And it was here that my flesh put up a determined, all-or-nothing fight to not yield. My flesh was NOT going to sacrifice those precious moments of sleep if it could help it.

I must add, by the way, that I had been feeling like I should do this since at least 2006, so this was a long-running struggle going much farther back than the other two assignments. And I found that no matter what I did, I simply could not prevail against myself.

I would go to bed with the best of intentions of getting up early the next day, but sleep would totally erase them from my brain, and by the time the alarm clock rang, the only thing I could think of was indulging in as much sleep as possible before I absolutely had to get up and go to work.

This made me sad, because it was like God would whisper to me, "Do you love sleep that much more than you love me?" I could get up to go to work, but I could not get up to make my appointment with my Savior. I could get up at, say, 3 am if I was going on a trip, but I could not get up at 6 to meet with Jesus. I could get up consistently every day at 6 if I had to be at work by 7, but if my work schedule changed and I didn't have to get there until 9, suddenly I "couldn't" get up at 6 anymore.

The flesh had declared its intentions. No surrender! This is not going to happen.
The spirit declared its intentions. Oh, yes, you are going to do this, and I'm going to fight until I succeed.

And so, the battle raged. And raged. And raged.

One of the early skirmishes involved a plan where I determined to fill out an "Accountability Sheet" that I invented for myself. I set myself a period of one month in which I answered nine questions:

1. What time did you go to bed last night?
2. What time did you get up this morning?
3. Was your alarm set?
4. What did you read in the Bible today?
5. Did you pray today?
6. What time did you leave Edith's? (At the time I was spending the night with an elderly neighbor)
7. Account for the time you spent today. What did you get done?
8. Was there anything else you should have gotten done?
9. Was there anything you did that you shouldn't have done? (In other words, did you waste any time?)

I did this faithfully for an entire month, and I was trying really, really hard to improve. In my mind's eye, I saw a graph of my bed times and waking up times, with a gently descending line that settled on a sensible bedtime and arising time and then fixed there for the rest of the month. My goal was to go to bed at 10 and get up at 6.

When the month was over, I plotted my actual points on a graph in my journal. Here is the graph.

Chaos! I was dismayed. And this was when I was trying. I would hate to see what it was before that. Still undaunted, however, I determined that the fight must go on. "Now I see where I am and how far I have to go," I said to myself. "So I'll do it for another month, and surely I'll see some improvement."

Here is the second month's chart.

Still chaos! Sure, my bedtime evened out. But that was not the point. The point was to work on my waking up time. The point was to arrive to a state where love for God could get me up out of a warm, comfortable bed, to go kneel on a cold, hard floor in prayer, because God was that worth it to me. The point was to achieve self-discipline and go by the rules I had set for myself, not by the frenzy of emotion that the moment of the alarm clock's ring produced in me. The point was to love God more than I loved sleep. Funny how every night before I went to sleep, I could convince myself that finally, today, my love for God was going to be enough to get me up, but every morning when the alarm clock rang, I couldn't think of anything but, "Just give me a few more minutes." And those few minutes inevitably lasted until the moment where I panicked and said to myself, "There's no way I'll be able to get ready and get to work on time if I don't get up." No time now for a quiet hour of stillness before the King of Kings. Now that hour was used up and I barely had time to shower and dress for work.

So that skirmish left me pretty much where I was before. Many more skirmishes were to come.

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Previous Post: Learn to Pray
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Learn to Pray

Oh, prayer is a hard one. I had so many ups and downs with this. I still have so far to go. But I can look back and see that I've learned a few lessons, which I will share here.

The flesh does not like to pray, but the Spirit does. In order to pray effectively, I must be walking in the Spirit. Never mind what the flesh wants. It's supposed to die anyway.

The point is not to "say prayers," the point is to connect with God. Be still on Him and wait on Him until you have truly visited the throne room and conversed with the King of Kings.

One of my biggest hindrances to prayer was a line of reasoning something like this: "I'm not successful at prayer, so prayer doesn't do any good, so why bother to do it at all?" But this reasoning is first faithless, and second inaccurate. The Bible says our prayers DO do good. By the way, we are commanded to pray, so the "Why bother" comment is invalidated just by that alone.

Another big hindrance to prayer was this line of reasoning: "God is going to do whatever he wants. Things will be the same if I pray as they will be if I don't pray, so why bother?" God taught me big time that this is not true. Whenever I prayed, things happened! Whenever I didn't pray, things didn't happen. It was almost as if God was deliberately withholding the answer until I asked. An illustration of this helped me to understand. I work in a preschool, and it is important to teach the kids to use language, so if they point at something and go "uuuh," we know perfectly clearly what they are asking for, but we say, "Use your words," and wait to give it to them until they ask. Also--it's free to pray, and you just might get what you ask God for, so you really have nothing to lose if you pray; you can only stand to gain.

I learned that body position had a great deal to do with whether or not I would get very far in prayer. Lying in bed, it only took about 3 minutes of prayer to put me to sleep. Kneeling beside the bed, I got a little farther, but pretty soon my head would be pillowed peacefully on my arms and I would be asleep, only to wake up an hour later feeling very stiff and uncomfortable. Standing up--Ah! There's a sleep prevention technique! So at different times I have had to give myself a rule that I have to stand up and not so much as touch my bed. It wards off sleepiness, all right!

Probably my biggest hindrance to prayer was a wandering mind. If I "think" my prayers, it's only a minute before my mind is zinging all over the place into random thoughts that have nothing to do with prayer. Before two sentences are out, I have already forgotten I was praying. Then I catch myself five minutes later thinking about, say, a kayak going down a waterfall, and I realize, "Oops! I was praying! Let me get back to that. Where was I?" I resume my prayers, say a sentence or two, and again, my mind is off in another direction and I have forgotten I was even praying. Do you know how frustrating and prayer killing it is for this to happen over and over again, every two sentences, every day of your life? So two solutions have saved me. One is praying out loud. However, in our small house, it is difficult to have the privacy to do this, so I often take prayer walks, where I can pour out my heart to the Lord in verbalized prayer. Solution two: Write my prayers and enjoy the ability to have silent prayer AND instant focus. An hour of prayer suddenly becomes easy when I'm writing. Of course, I can write slower than I can think, so I can't say as much in an hour as I probably could if I was praying silently, but given that my silent prayer is interrupted by a million random intrusions and I give up after about five minutes, I know I'm getting a lot farther with the written version.

So prayer is coming along. Not perfect yet, but getting somewhere.

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Previous Post: Depend on God
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Valentine's party

Today I had several girls over to my house for a Valentine's party, complete with chocolate cake, roses, and of course, conversation hearts. (By the way--yuck! they've changed the recipe for those things and...bleck.)

The purpose of the party was to express to them the love of Jesus and ignite their hearts with a love for Him. The Lord really helped me to do that as I talked to them. I could see them listening intently, they got quiet, and one of them told me afterward she appreciated it.

We also got to do lots of other fun stuff, like go outside to see the chickens, feed grass to our neighbor's horses, swing on our backyard swing, and decorate heart-shaped sachets, which we then filled with potpourri. 

Tomorrow I'll try to get back to our regular story! But I just had to break in here with a little current news flash. :-)

Depend on God

These three pursuits, depend on God, pray, and do my devotions early, all occurred simultaneously, yet seemed distinct at the time I was going through them. Therefore, rather than treating all three together and progressing chronologically, I'm going to treat each one individually in order to bring out the facets that stood out from each one. So forgive me if we jump around in time a bit in the next few posts.

As I said, I was willing to learn to depend on God. Willing, but clueless.

So I said, "God, it sure would help if I could at least come to feel like I needed to depend on you." And God happily obliged me by introducing a set of circumstances into my life that were designed to be above my capabilities, outside the range of possibility for me, more difficult than I could handle.

Hel-LO, trials!

"Humph," I thought. "I didn't mean to ask for that."

It started out pretty mild. Things like being uncommonly annoyed at doing the dishes, and having to depend on God for the cheerfulness that I had always taken for granted. When I asked for cheerfulness, I would receive it, but before, it had always been automatically dispensed. Therefore, I had taken the credit for my habitual good humor to myself. I didn't realize how many ways God supplied me with blessings!

Things went along and I have to admit I almost forgot I was supposed to be working on this area of dependence on God. But every so often, a situation would crop up that was beyond me, and I would remember, and try to be a good, docile learner, and get better at this whole dependence thing.

Then came a job opportunity, and I took it without thinking. I was already working two other jobs, but I needed some extra money, and this seemed perfect. However, I didn't consult God about it. I just took it.

The day I was driving in the car to my first day on the job, the Lord convicted me about it. "You didn't find out if this was my will or not, did you? In fact, you didn't even consult me. You didn't wait on me. This was not what I asked you to do, was it?"

I had to admit, "No, it wasn't."

And that job, which was supposed to be a simple, quick project of four months, stretched into seven months of spectacular failure, in which I blew deadlines, frustrated my boss, and fell behind at every step of the way. It wasn't for lack of trying. It wasn't even for lack of aptitude for the position. It was simply and purely a personal fault: I couldn't produce the self-discipline necessary to actually put in working hours and work on the project.

It was around this time that I came to a certain realization: "Me trying is the same as me not trying." It happened this way: All throughout my life, I knew there were certain things I did well (piano, spelling, crochet, etc.) and certain things I did not do so well (swimming, being organized, staying focused, etc.). However, with anything I did not do very well, I always comforted myself by saying, "Well, you're not really trying. If you ever once tried, you would be as good as anyone else at it."

Three specific cases disrupted this idea. First, at work they had a weight-loss contest. Everyone would get weighed once a month for four or five months, and whoever lost the greatest percentage of their body weight would win an ipod or a wii. So I decided to join them. I could afford to lose 15-18 pounds, according to my body mass index, and for the first time in my life, I started to try to lose weight. Always before, I had stayed pretty constantly trim without trying. Well, my weight at the end of the contest was only one pound less than my weight at the beginning, and that was only because I had happened to skip breakfast that morning. So much for trying to lose weight. Me trying (to lose weight) was the same as me not trying.

Second, I stared an accountability sheet where for a month, I would record my bedtime and my waking up time. The idea was to try to get to bed earlier and wake up earlier, and see progress over time. Ha. At the end of the month, the only thing my chart showed was chaos. So I tried another month. Perhaps this time, the graph would show steady improvement and progress. Nope. I was all over the map. So much for trying to dictate to myself my bedtime. Me trying (to get up early) was the same as me not trying.

Third, I encountered the above-described difficulties in my job. I tried, and tried and tried and tried and tried and tried. Oh, how I pushed! Oh, how I tried to govern myself! Oh, how I tried rewards and punishments. Nothing worked. I continued on in the same rut of failure for all seven months. Me trying (to make myself work) was the same as me not trying.

It was this that got me thinking. "In my flesh, I really can't do anything by myself. If God doesn't come through for me, I'm sunk." (Remember what I had asked God earlier? How I had wanted to feel like I was dependent? He got me there all right! I just didn't know how painful it would be.)

I also did a word study in Scripture on the word nothing.

John 15:4    Jesus said, "Without me, ye can do nothing."
Gal 6:3        If a man think himself to be something, when he is nothing, he deceiveth himself.
John 6:63    The flesh profiteth nothing.
1 Co. 9:16   I have nothing to glory of.
John 3:27    A man can receive nothing except it be given him from heaven.
John 5:30    I can of mine own self do nothing.
John 11:49  Ye know nothing at all.
1 Tim 6:7    For we brought nothing into this world, and it is certain we can carry nothing out.

It hit me for the first time in my life that I am nothing. Apart from God, I can do nothing. God is the great everything. And only as far as I am found in Him and receive things from Him will I ever do anything.

NOW I was on the way to true dependence on God.

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A Triple Milestone in Sight

After spending about a year to learn how to open up my mouth and speak, God sent me on another quest which would take at least a year. This time, it was really a three-fold assignment that would all relate to one common theme, though I wouldn't see how all three tied together until later.

First, depend on God. Learn to rely solely on Him. Don't live as though I were an independent, autonomous creature, but instead, one that needs God for every breath, every step, every day of my life.

Second, learn to pray. Not just "say prayers," but pray, mighty, faith-filled prayers that connect with God.

Third, put God first in my day by doing my devotions in the morning.

The first assignment, Depend on God, I accepted unquestioningly. "Sure, God. I'll be glad to depend on you. I don't really know how, but I'll be glad to try." I then proceeded to try to work up some good "dependent" feelings. (Haha... must've made God laugh.) Overall, I realized that for all practical purposes, I lived without reference to God, existing without consulting him or feeling that I needed to consult him. I had my own ideas, made my own plans, and went through the day by myself. It didn't enter my head to depend on God most of the time. Of course, if I was embarking on a major step or had a weighty decision before me, I would pray "for direction," but even that was sort of a token gesture.

The second assignment, Pray, was somewhat more difficult. The truth is, I didn't really like to pray. I wasn't good at prayer. My mind always wandered. But I knew it was a good thing to do, and I knew I would need to do it sooner or later, and I had been meaning to study it anyway, so I accepted the assignment.

The third assignment involved getting up early. And that meant sacrificing sleep. Now, I love sleep. I don't think you understand. I LOVE sleep. Wait, I don't think you get it. I really, really love sleep. At sleepover parties when I was a kid, while all the other little girls were talking and giggling and watching movies into the wee hours of the morning, I happily snuggled down in my sleeping bag at 9:00, wondering how they could possibly make such a sacrifice for each other's sake to stay up so late. I, at any rate, was going to enjoy myself at this party, and that meant going to sleep. Sleep, for me, was (still is!) the ultimate indulgence. Therefore, my entire being revolted from this assignment with everything that was in me. And oh, what a battle raged!

The Master Professor, however, remained unperturbed. He knew how to teach me the right lessons in the right order. His teaching techniques were absolutely effective. He had infinite resources at his disposal. He was sure of His own success with his pupil, though I was not at all sure of it.

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One milestone reached

So God had me where I was obediently witnessing. It was great! I knew it was a huge milestone. It was also a shocking, sobering realization to look back on my previous condition and realize, "Wow! I could never have been a missionary without learning this! Thank you, God, for teaching me that."

I wrote extensively in my journal about the lessons I had learned, started a girl's Bible Study on the theme of "Open Up Your Mouth and Speak," and prepared a document containing the essential message I had learned. I excitedly started witnessing! Whereas in 2008, I had only led three people to Christ, in 2009, I had the privilege of praying with 18 people who wished to receive Christ.

The Master Professor had elegantly and skillfully achieved his goal. He is the type of teacher who never gives up until learning actually takes place. He is also the kind of teacher who moves His pupil right along to the next lesson as soon as the first has been mastered.

Learning to open up my mouth and speak was hard. The new lessons that replaced that one were harder. But these, too, would eventually lead to me looking back and saying, "Wow! I could never have been a missionary without learning this!"

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Previous Post: Torn Apart by My Own Perverseness
First Post: Tutored under the Master Professor

This is my first post

I have been wanting to do this, and a day off work gives me the perfect excuse to start.

May the Lord Jesus Christ be honored here.

Torn Apart By My Own Perverseness

Looking back, it's curious to view that phone call with my piano teacher. In one sense, it marked a turning point for the better. That victory began a gradual process that resulted in subsequent witnessing opportunities becoming easier. I had less and less fear until I was able to open up my mouth and speak without a struggle, without a flutter, mentioning the truths of the gospel message just as naturally as I would bring up any other conversation topic.

But that achievement came at a great price.

You see, every time I would be prompted to witness, I still refused to obey. It was a persistent, steadfast rebellion that trumped all my best pep talks and all my good intentions. I was in a cycle: I prayed for souls and desired them to be saved, I was faced with a witnessing opportunity and turned it down, and then I was filled with remorse and vowed to actually witness the next time.

God was very patient with me through all this.

In the midst of it all, however, I was still largely living by the flesh and not walking by faith, and therefore I was not finding the strength to obey, because I was looking to myself for it rather than accessing grace, which is the only thing that can actually empower obedience. Therefore, I experienced a lot of conflicting emotions, and all the sweet richness of love that I had experienced with my Savior seemed like it was threatening to evaporate as a consequence of my disobedience.

A pang of dread shot through my heart as the warmth and passion and delight of the love in my heart started to fade. The thought of losing the sweetest love in the world suddenly made me realize how much it meant to me. Oh, take out my eyes, destroy all my possessions, and leave me hungry every day--but don't take that! I prayed internally. But even this was not motivation enough to make the flesh do what the flesh did not want to do, because the flesh cannot and will not please God.

The next few witnessing opportunities came along, and I failed them. Flunked them. Kept quiet. Didn't obey God. And in the same measure, I began to lose that delightful, romantic, adventurous LOVE that I had experienced for the past few months. "Noooooooooo," I thought. "Why am I doing this?" And yet there the facts stood. I was not loving God, but He continued to love me. 

A few days later, I flunked yet another opportunity. I was afraid that I wouldn't get another opportunity. I figured that if I didn't ever obey, I would just be left to my own devices and live a miserable, mediocre life. I believe that a lot of the condemnation I was experiencing at this time was coming from the enemy, who kicks a person when they're down. "You're not worthy of God's love. Why should He continue to work with you?" The worst part about it was that he attributed these types of statements to God, and I took the bait and believed I was hearing from God.

But God, who is faithful, merciful, and patient, ultimately triumphed.

He gave me another opportunity, and gave me the strength to witness.

Then he gave me another, and I witnessed again.

And again.

And along the way, a few more failures crept back in, but FINALLY, the pattern was changing.

Finally, I have some obedience in my life in this area. Thus the Lord saw me safely through the crisis until He saw His will formed in me. But the Master Professor was far from finished with His pupil.

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Jump Off A Cliff

Real life always jolts me out of the dream worlds I create for myself. In my dream world, I am the perfect witness, always going about the Lord's business and always saying just the right thing at the right time.

So I was driving along the highway, heading home from a road trip, and it was just me and the Lord. I was disappointed in myself, because that weekend, I had met with my former piano teacher with the express purpose of giving her the gospel, and I had kept my mouth shut. I KNEW that God had opened the doors for the encounter to take place, and I KNEW that I was supposed to witness to her. In an hour-long conversation, I never once brought up the real issue. I skirted it and evaded it, waiting for "the right moment," telling myself it just "wasn't right yet," and saying, "Just a little more small talk." And then it was time to go, and it was too late.

I was kicking myself. All my pep talks to myself had done no good. I could have had this glorious testimony of how I opened up my mouth to speak, and now I didn't even know when I would see her again. We lived 13 hours apart. Why had I blown it? I was so discouraged I wanted to cry. I felt like God would never be able to use me. With this track record, I thought I would probably never speak up. Going into the meeting with her, I had prayed so hard and wanted it so hard. The fact that I didn't speak made me doubt whether I ever would, since I couldn’t imagine praying harder or desiring more strongly that souls would be saved. Afterwards, the Lord prompted me to call her up and say it on the phone, but I repressed that feeling, too.

All this was going through my mind as my rental car skimmed along the highway. The Lord brought into my mind a picture, a memory, of a day when I was about 12 and we went to a place we called "The Pools." It was a beautiful mountain stream that spilled from one deep, round pool to another. You could slide down little waterfalls into the pools or jump off a high rock into the biggest pool. My 12-year-old self was a little afraid to jump off the rock, but my cousin did it so many times and obviously enjoyed herself so much that I finally worked up the courage to do it. I walked up to the edge and was ready to jump, but I lost my nerve. I backed up and tried again, but stopped myself again at the last moment. I returned to the "safe ground" and felt better, regained my courage, and tried again. When I finally jumped, the feeling was so exhilarating that I burst up out of the water with a shout of pure delight, and then I did it over and over again.

Jumping off the rock is like picking up the phone and calling your piano teacher, the Lord whispered to me.

"Ohhhh!" I thought. The wheels of my mind started turning and things started clicking. "What I really wanted to do was speak to her," I thought. "Soulwinning is the thing above all others that I really want to begin to do. But just like I wanted to jump off the rock and didn't at first, something is keeping me back from soulwinning. What is it, Lord? What gives? I don't think it's fear. I don't think I'm afraid to witness. I know how to share the gospel. I'm not afraid I won't know what to say. So what is keeping me from it?"

And in his most excellent teaching style, perfectly suited and tailored to individual little me, he proposed an exercise which would reveal the answer.

"Ask yourself this question," he proposed. "Ask yourself, 'Would I pick up the phone and call her right now?'"

I asked myself the question, phone in hand. Immediately, an excuse came into my mind. "I don't have free cell phone minutes right now, so it's not a good time."

"Now," the Lord guided me, "weigh that excuse in the balance. Weigh the pennies it will cost you to make the phone call against the value of her eternal soul."

"Oh." I thought. "Right. What will the phone call cost? Not even close to five dollars. So that excuse goes out the window."

"Ask yourself again," the Lord said.

"Okay. The question remains before me. Would I pick up the phone and call my teacher?" Immediately, an excuse came to my mind. "You're driving, and it's not a good idea to talk on the phone while you're driving. Besides, you don't even know if it's legal to drive and talk on the phone in this state."

I weighed that excuse in the balance. I had already talked to Mom twice on the phone. I simply put it on speakerphone on my lap and had no inconvenience at all. I also knew that if the phone rang again, I would not hesitate to answer it and talk to whoever called. So that excuse had to go out the window, too.

Now, Rebekah," I said to myself, "The question still stands. Would you pick up the phone and call your teacher right now?" Immediately, an excuse came to my mind. "She might not pick up."

"Rebekah!" I scolded myself. "It’s shameful how instantly you come up with excuses. I think this one must be the stupidest of all. If she doesn't pick up, then it lets you off the hook from having to talk to her, so what's the point of making an excuse that would accomplish the same objective?" And I tossed that excuse out the window.

"The question, therefore, still stands before you, weightier than ever. Will you call your teacher right now?" Immediately, an excuse came to mind. "She might not listen."

"Notice," I exclaimed to myself, "How readily you come up with excuses! Immediately they spring to your mind. Now this one doesn't even merit much consideration. Long ago I had it settled that there is no such thing as speaking the gospel in vain. Whether she listens is not the point. The point is, WILL YOU call her?"

This process went on for probably 6 or 7 excuses, all of which turned out to be stupid, false fronts, smoke screens, or bluffs. Finally, the excuses stopped coming. I even hunted around for another excuse and couldn't find one. (The scary thing is, up until that day, a single one of those excuses would have sufficed to defeat me. I would have simply accepted it as a good reason without any evaluation at all.)

When the flow of excuses stopped, I faced a sobering reality. "Rebekah, will you call your teacher? Because if the answer is no, you’ll have to face up to the fact that it stems exclusively from fear. You are afraid to do it."

Now, you have to understand my background regarding fear. I prided myself on being fearless. I considered it as repulsive and despicable to be afraid, and "fear" was practically a dirty word in my vocabulary, (except for fear of God, which I allowed). As a kid, I would rack my brain to try to think of anything I was afraid of, and come up empty, and that made me glad. So here, to admit to fear in myself was unthinkable. I could not be afraid—I must prove I was unafraid. Therefore, I had to answer yes, that I would call her. God had cleverly trapped me. He did it so deftly, so elegantly. He had me exactly where he wanted me by playing on his intimate knowledge of me.

Okay, get a grip, Rebekah. You’re going to call her, I thought. It was like walking right up to the edge of that rock at the pools and planning to jump. Suddenly, I was breathing hard, my heart was beating faster, my legs were trembling, my mind was racing. (Wow, I really am afraid, I realized.) I cried out to God for His help. I called on Him for His aid, His strength, words to say to her, calmness in my voice. As I prayed, I started to cry, tears of anguish and love for the state of my piano teacher's soul. And then, when I had finished praying, I took a deep breath, calmly opened my phone, and dialed her number. It rang one, two, three, four, five times. Then the answering machine picked up. I hung up without leaving a message.

I went through all that agony, just to do that. It really wasn’t that hard. And after I was off the phone, even though I hadn't even talked to her, I was filled with overwhelming, amazing joy. I was laughing, crying with joy at the fact that I had been victorious through the power of God. I was thanking God for his good work, for helping me, for guiding me. I was so elated. It was just like the jubilation I experienced after I faced the rock and jumped off into the water.

That experience marked a turning point in my journey—for better—and for worse.

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Open Up Your Mouth and Speak

God couldn't have been more clear about my life purpose. "Open up your mouth and speak the message of the gospel to lost souls you meet."

THAT was the point it all hinged on. I thought I was a missionary when I was in Spain--I claimed to be one--I lived like a Christian--I was active in church--I passed out tracts--I visited the hospital--I did Bible studies--I led the choir--I looked for ways to do ministry. But when it came to that one thing, my lips were sealed. Down in the core of my being, I was profoundly unwilling to do one thing: activate my vocal chords for the advancement of God's kingdom.

Why?

Why would I balk at that? It should have been so simple. I talked freely and easily about anything else. Small talk, sports, politics, TV, movies, music, ideas, relationships, all came to my lips unhindered and poured out in a fluent stream as I tried to be friendly to people I met and strike up conversations "that could lead to spiritual things." I would even consciously try to coax the conversation around to making the perfect setup for linking into the gospel--where just one phrase would transition us as naturally as can be into talking about the Lord. Let's say you're talking about gardening. You say something like "Have you ever thought of the world as a garden, with people growing in it?" so that they can make a comment along those lines, which you will respond with, "It reminds me of Jesus's parable of the sower. Have you ever heard that parable?" Then you can take it from there (depending on their responses) and use that parable to explain the gospel message or ask them what kind of ground they think they are.

I got lots of these opportunities. I failed to take up any of them. The Lord would drop a perfect situation into my lap, as perfect a setup as I could wish, where all I had to do was insert that one key phrase and go from there. And every time, I would toss that phrase away and select something else, something safe, something trite or flippant or lighthearted, that would steer me away from the "danger zone" I had approached so closely.

Why, though? That was so stupid. I knew it was stupid. I would berate myself for it afterwards. Opportunities to rescue people's precious souls, just thrown out.

God called me to open up my mouth and speak, but something was stopping me. I didn't really even know what it was.

One day, he very cleverly trapped me in a real-life situation to show me exactly what the problem was.

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Previous Post: ...The Reason We Live

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...The Reason We Live

The other breakthrough was equally a gift, a revelation. All at once God revealed my life purpose to me. I had an unmistakable and growing sense of a calling of God on my life. All at once verses seemed to be leaping out of the Scriptures to teach me that God was calling me to do something.

Now, it's not like I had never heard of being called before. I had often said, "I'm called to missions." But down at the root of it, it was nothing more than a regurgitation of the proper-sounding phrasing. Deep below all the layers of Christianese, I had to admit that I had practically called myself to missions. It was what I wanted to do, and while I don't doubt the Lord's role in giving me a heart for missions, I took the bit in my teeth and ran off without consulting God, assuming that he MUST accept that as my life calling. Wasn't that rare? Wasn't that admirable? Didn't he have few enough people signing up for the foreign field?

It was verses like Galatians 1:15-16 that pulled me up short.

But when it pleased God,
who separated me from my mother's womb,
and called me by his grace,
to reveal his Son in me,
that I might preach him among the heathen;
immediately I conferred not with flesh and blood.

I thought, "Wow, God will do this WHEN IT PLEASES HIM." It was a paradigm-shifting thought, one that also revealed how wrong my view of God had been. I had been treating him like my tool--I was using His blessing to get where I hoped to go--when all along I was really supposed to be His tool, one that He could pick up and use or lay aside, at His pleasure.

When Ananias came to Paul, he said to him, "The God of our fathers hath chosen thee, that thou shouldest know his will, and see that Just One, and shouldest hear the voice of his mouth. For thou shalt be his witness unto all men of what thou hast seen and heard" (Acts 22:14-15). Paul later said that Christ "counted me faithful, putting me into the ministry" (1 Tim 1:12). He further stated, "But as we were allowed of God to be put in trust with the Gospel, even so we speak; not as pleasing men, but God, which trieth our hearts" (1 Th 2:4).

God said to Jeremiah, "Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee; and before thou camest forth out of the womb I sanctified thee, and I ordained thee a prophet unto the nations." (Jer. 1:5)

The Holy Ghost said to the early church, "Separate me Barnabas and Saul for the work whereunto I have called them." (Acts 13:2)

But it was Isaiah's words that hit me the hardest and the most personally. "Listen, O isles, unto me; and hearken, ye people, from far; The LORD hath called me from the womb; from the bowels of my mother hath he made mention of my name. And he hath made my mouth like a sharp sword; in the shadow of his hand hath he hid me, and made me a polished shaft; in his quiver hath he hid me; and said unto me, Thou art my servant, O Israel, in whom I will be glorified. [...] And now, saith the LORD that formed me from the womb to be his servant, to bring Jacob again to him, Though Israel be not gathered, yet shall I be glorious in the eyes of the LORD, and my God shall be my strength. And he said, It is a light thing that thou shouldest be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob, and to restore the preserved of Israel: I will also give thee for a light to the Gentiles, that thou mayest be my salvation unto the end of the earth." (Is. 49:1-3, 5-6)

God called me. He showed me that He had a purpose for me. And He even showed me what that purpose was. It was something so simple, so plain-sounding when you put it into words, so elementary. But at the same time, it was so profound, and struck so sharply at the root of who I was, and where I was, that it took it a year to sink in and become a part of my life.

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To Love Our God...

The two breakthroughs both developed simultaneously and were somewhat linked to each other, so I can't say which happened first or if one caused the other. Instead, both were causes and stimulants for what followed after.

One of these breakthroughs was a gift of love. Jesus revealed Himself to me in such a mighty, intimate, tender, breathtaking way that I fell in love with Him. Of course, I had always loved Jesus in a childish, "Jesus loves me" way. But now, I fell IN LOVE with Him, complete with stomach jiggles and a sparkle in my eye and heavy, pulsing breathing and an intense desire to be with Him, contemplate Him, and know Him more. (If you scroll through my xanga archives, you can see a post expressing this, though it was written months after this first happened. I kept half-expecting the emotions would fade and the strong feelings would go away, but they did nothing but increase.)

This pure, fervent, strong love stole upon my heart and captured me. I cannot describe it as anything other than a gift, because it was all initiated by Him. He courted me and won my heart as no earthly lover has ever done with a mortal maiden, and I was pleased to discover myself vanquished by such an inimitable Treasure.

It was especially precious because I had just walked away from a human love that God asked me to give up for His sake. How it hurt to give up that person no one can know who has not walked through the same thing. How long it hurt, too, and how often the wound opened freshly upon some remembrance, some contact, some association--I was not prepared for, though I endeavored to keep all this well concealed.

Thus it was that, loving Jesus, I began to feel that it had indeed been worthwhile and needful for me to follow God in surrender to not go right back to the mission field. If I had missed this--oh, that would be unthinkable.

And the Master Professor smiled as He saw His pupil beginning to learn and understand His ways.

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Pursuit of God

“As the hart panteth after the water brooks, so panteth my soul after thee, O God. My soul thirsteth for God, for the living God.” Psalm 42:1-2

“O God, thou art my God: early will I seek thee: my soul thirsteth for thee, my flesh longeth for thee in a dry and thirsty land, where no water is.” Psalm 63:1

“My soul longeth, yea, even fainteth for the courts of the LORD: my heart and my flesh crieth out for the living God.” Psalm 84:2

At the beginning of my return from Spain, one thing was very clear. I was not to "push" my way forward or manipulate circumstances so that I could go back as soon as possible. Indeed, I felt quite forbidden to even go on mission trips. God closed the door to one fun-sounding mission opportunity after another, from accompanying my sister to Mexico to visiting the Philippines with our church to going to Nepal with a Nepalese friend of mine who invited me to go with her for a month. It was SO hard to turn down all these things and say, "I'm not going," not only because I really wanted to go, but also because no one would understand it. They would think I was losing my heart for missions or something. How could they see that I was flying in the face of my own desire?

All I knew was that the door to go back was closed for now. I realized God had other things in mind that were more important to work on. It was not pursuit of a life-calling to missions, it was something else. God had the answer, and in pursuing Him, all would eventually become clear. Clinging to all the light I had, I started a Word document called "Pursuit of God."

I wrote the first entry in the car on the 6-hour drive home from the airport. It said,

I have several goals for this new period of my life. First, I hope to become supremely obedient to God. I want obedience to be a priority, where I don’t delay, I don’t question, and I don’t try to get out of doing what I know God wants me to do. I have been failing in this area too much lately, and I see my heart as very hard and unpliable and unyielded to God’s will.

Second, in looking at my life right now, I see that there really isn’t anything worthwhile that I’m really good at. Sure I have skills…sure I’m good at things, but in terms of an overarching skill that defines me, that I can say, “I do this, and I’ve studied it, and I know how to do it, and I’m really good at it,” I can’t point to anything. Look at my degree—I majored in communications, yet I don’t know that I could get a job at a newspaper and be a reporter (or get into any field in communications, for that matter). If there was one thing I wish I could say I was really good at, it would be leading people to Christ. I want to excel in it. I want to become experienced, an expert, a fisher of men. I want to study it, pursue it, and become very, very good at it, so that after I die, people will look back at my life and say, “You know, there was one main thing about Rebekah: she was always leading people to Christ, and she was good at it, too.”

To do that, it brings me to the third goal: I want to pray. I want to pray, not just wimpy prayers, but mighty, faith-filled prayers that connect with God. I want to pray, not just short prayers, but be able to spend hours on my knees with God. I want to pray, not once in a while when I think about it, but every day, as a matter of habit and discipline. I want to pray, not just to see my needs met and my requests answered, but to draw closer to God and communicate with him and learn His heart. I want to pray, not starting off well for a month and then slacking off, but continuing faithful in prayer as something that will characterize the rest of my life.

God is saying, “Get more of me! Want more of me! Fight for more of me! There is SO much more to me! Pursue me! Desire me! Push through obstacles to get to me!”

I didn't know it at the time, but two key breakthroughs were to appear in the coming months.

Keep Reading: To Love Our God...

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Tutored Under the Master Professor

Where I was, where He led me, and perhaps an inkling of where I'm going.

Part 1. Following the Lamb wherever He leads

It all started back when God did the unthinkable. I had just returned from Spain, excited to go back and throw my life into God's service there, and He shut the door.

"I want you to die to your desire to go to the mission field," He said.

"What?" I responded, taken aback. "You can't mean that."

"Yes. In fact, I want you to move back home, be there for your brothers and sisters, and work so that you can contribute to providing for the needs of the family."

"I can't believe you would do this to me, God," I protested. "When your word says the laborers are few, and I'm over here waving my hand in the air, saying, 'Pick me! Pick me!'---what's up with that, Lord?"

"Nevertheless, I'm asking you to give that up. Will you place it in my hands, trust me with it, and die even to this?"

I gulped. Being a missionary was the only thing I had ever wanted to do. And working, being Miss Career Woman, was the last thing I ever wanted to do. How could God take my most precious, most treasured desire and say, "Thanks, but no thanks"? It made no sense.

God reminded me that I claimed I would die for the cause of Christ. "If you are you willing to make the ultimate sacrifice for my sake, then shouldn't you be willing to make a much smaller one?" And with this and many other persuasions, He gently led me to the place where I was willing to sacrifice even this. With tears, I laid it on the altar where it could be consumed by God's holy flame. I released it.

Thus it was that I found myself, in the summer of 2008, a college graduate in my 20s, still living in my parents' house, teaching three piano students, and feeling like the whole world would look on my life as a sad waste of potential.

Far from it... God had many things in mind, which I had yet to discover.


This is the first post in this series.
Next Post: Pursuit of God

The Most Productive Day Of My Life

Unsurpassed as of 7/7/13. I did all this in one day.

• Made breakfast
• Took the dogs out, fed them, etc.
• Planted two rows of corn
• Memorized 2 Corinthians 5:1-3
• Spent a couple of hours online
• Made a pot of chai tea
• Talked to Rosie on the phone quite a long time
• Practiced piano and memorized first three pages of Brahms’s Rhapsody, something I have not been able to do with any piece for a long time, yet the memorization was almost effortless today.
• Cleaned the bathtub, shower curtain, bathroom sink, & mirror
• Went through the hall closet, found receipt book, organized stuff in boxes & put them all back neatly, put all the coats back (they had been in James’ room for 2 weeks)
• Vacuumed living room, dining room, kitchen, bathroom, & laundry room
• Went through boxes in the attic, got out summer clothes, put back winter clothes
• Organized my closet, put winter shoes in boxes, got out summer shoes
• Returned to attic all odds & ends (like the embossing heat tool for stamping) that belonged there
• Took care of all the piles of paper sitting around in my room
• Got my top mirror dresser drawer cleaned out (***YAY!***) from all the junk it had accumulated over about 2 years
• Dusted top of bookshelves & re-did it with my Spain towel on top
• Organized music books from 3 different locations into one neat spot with bookends
• Read a chapter of Created to Be His Help Meet
• Emailed Rosie about 30 pictures of recent things we have been doing
• Picked grass and pet our neighbor’s horses
• Made dinner
• Took care of dogs
• Fed fish

Stubborn, Stupid, and Crazy me

On Saturday I got up with a plan: I wanted to climb a mountain here in the Malaga area that I had read about on the internet.



MOST people, to get to the top, ride a Teleferry.



Slight hitch: The teleferry is closed from Jan 1-Feb 15. But no worries!

If I couldn't go up the teleferry, I could go up the trail. I have two good sturdy legs that could carry me. Sure, it would take more than the 15 minutes for the teleferry ride, but hey...it was going to be worth the effort!

Slight hitch: I didn't know exactly where it was, and I couldn't get anyone to go with me. But no worries!

After getting onto the wrong bus, changing to a train, and finally getting to the right town, I got off, full of anticipation.

Slight hitch: It was already 5:00 pm. But no worries!

After asking a lot of people and walking a long, long way, I finally made it to the trail. I started ascending, enjoying myself immensely.



Slight hitch: I got onto what looked like a trail and wasn't. Before I knew it, I found myself in the middle of nowhere. But no worries!

Where I lost the trail:


Looking up:


I was picking my way through unforgivably prickly bushes, climbing straight up what must have been the steepest side of the mountain. "But I think I can make it up this way," I thought to myself. So, breathing heavily, with my heart beating in my ears, resting every 3 steps, I started making it up that way.

Slight hitch: There were cactuses and thistles everywhere. But no worries!



I just wouldn't use my hands to help me climb. So there.

Slight hitch: There were unsettlingly large animal tracks about, and unexplained rustlings of the bushes in various parts. But no worries!



I kept seeing what I thought would be a path just a little above me, but when I would get there, I would find out that it wasn't. I finally made it to a patch of stones. I had seen it from below before losing the trail, and it was because of this that I thought there would be a trail farther up.



I started climbing up the stones, grateful to be free from the bushes.

Slight hitch: The stones were small and loose, and for every step I advanced, I slid back half a step. But no worries!

The stones ended, the bushes surrounded me again, and huffing and puffing and with great effort, I made it to the top.

Slight hitch: A man dressed in black with his arms crossed was standing in the middle of the path to the top. But no worries!

He was a security guard. He launched into a lecture in Spanish on how I shouldn't have come up that way, looked at me, saw that I was a foreigner, and started trying to speak German with me. I replied in Spanish that I spoke Spanish or English. "Oh, you speak a little Spanish?" he said (in Spanish). Then he began to talk to me in very simplified Spanish, roughly translated thus: "Do you know the word DOG? Woof woof, bow wow, Grrrr," he said. "Yes," I replied. He continued, "Four (One-two-three-four) DOGS. Big. Grrrr. Dogs catch you. Head--off. Face--off. Arm--off. You--hurt. Me--can do nothing." I smiled and apologized as profusely as I could in my best Spanish for having come up that way, and explained that I had lost my way and gotten onto something that I thought was a trail but wasn't. "You--I think--Crazy," he said, shaking his head. "Well... is it closed?" I asked. "Can I at least go up to the outlook spot and look around?" "All right. I guess you can go up and take a look," he replied, in normal Spanish this time. "But don't be long."

No one else was up there, and I went up for a look. The view was SPECTACULAR! The day was so clear, I could see the coast of Africa across the Mediterranean, Gibraltar, and the Sierra Nevada mountains in the other direction.



Slight hitch: The sun was already setting. But no worries!



I went back and asked the security guard how to get down on the correct trail. He pointed to a narrow, winding road that started off in the opposite direction and wound around a long, long way. "That way," he said. "It's very long. I have no idea how many kilometers. You would have to walk a long way. It would be better to use a car." (You can see a bit of this road in the above picture at the left.)

Slight hitch: I didn't have a car. But no worries!

However, there was a wide tire-track dirt path that led straight towards where I wanted to go. "And how about this way?" I asked. "Well, you can go that way, too," he said. "But it's more dangerous." "Dangerous in what way? Danger of falling? Danger of thieves? Danger of animals?" I inquired. "Yeah, danger of animals and of stepping wrong and twisting your ankle," he replied. "Well, I'm not afraid of those things," I said. I thanked him and headed off on the more direct route, already slightly concerned about losing my daylight and preferring to get down quickly and go home as soon as possible on the train.

As soon as I was out of his sight, I started going as quickly as I could, running at times, speedwalking at others, thinking, "Hey, it's downhill from here!" However, at every switchback, the trail got narrower. I was a little concerned at this, but kept going. The trail kept getting narrower. Once I thought it had disappeared completely, but I backtracked and found it again.

Then I got to a place where I could not go any farther. The trail, which had been just a faint dirt track, finally dwindled away completely and I was left standing on the top of a cliff with no way to get down. Perhaps I could have made a rock-climbing expedition out of it if there had been enough light, but there wasn't. So that's what he meant by twisting my ankle.

Where I found myself (approximately)


I was left with no other option but to climb all the way back up to the top (which was quite a ways) and descend by the long road the security guard had showed me.

It was already getting dark by that time.


By the time I got back to the top, it was darker.


I snuck past the security guard without him seeing me (he was in the building with the radio on loud), snuck past his dog without it barking, and started down the long road, accompanied by a thin sliver of a crescent moon. Three cars passed me. I made it safely back to the train station and got home about 10pm, tired, thirsty, and satisfied. HAPPY ENDING!!! Yay!!!

Morocco Trip: Train to Rabat

At midnight last night, I have officially been here for a week! I’ve done so much, it’s amazing. It feels like longer than a week.

I had to teach school in the morning, so I ate a yummy breakfast of cherries and then caught a taxi. I told the driver where the subdivision was, what it was called, what road to take, and showed him on the map, but he didn’t really know where it was, and I was fuzzy on how to get to the school once I got into the neighborhood. We did get to the general vicinity, but I couldn’t figure out how to get to the school, because it is sort of hidden down a side street in the middle of a bunch of newly-constructed buildings that look almost identical. I was thinking that I could do it, but I couldn’t, so I just got out of the taxi once I got as close as I could, paid the driver, went to a teleboutique, and called Mr. B. The person working there was a woman, which was unusual, but nice for me, and she gave directions of where we were to Mr. B's secretary.

He came to pick me up, and while I waited, I sat with the woman and showed her pictures of my family. (That photo album I put together before this trip has been great! I’ve showed it to just about every person I’ve met, and it’s a great conversation starter.) She didn’t speak a word of any language besides Arabic, and I didn’t speak Arabic, so we tried to talk to each other without too much success. However, when Mr. B got there, she gave me a big hug goodbye and the Moroccan kisses on the cheeks, and I felt like I had made a friend.

My time at the school was not that great. I taught from 10:30 to 11:45 and basically let the kids walk all over me. It was not good. (We were playing mafia and looking at pictures on my computer.) I left feeling blah. It was a waste of my time and theirs to cater to their whims that way. L I guess I learned about what NOT to do. These aren’t Verity kids.

When I got home, I had to pack, and Marie and I left for the train station at about 2:00. We walked the mile or so to get there, with Marie carrying a backpack and me pulling my small carry-on suitcase. If wheels could talk, these wheels sure could tell you a story! They’ve been to China, the Dominican Republic, all over America, and now, here they were, bumping over the dusty Moroccan streets and sidewalks.

We met Adair at the train station, bought our tickets to Rabat, and departed at 3:00. We had bought first class tickets in order to be assured of getting a seat, which I guess can be a problem, plus, the air conditioning is supposed to work better in first class. However, it wasn’t working at all in our compartment, and we were all stifling hot. (That was the first time I had actually felt uncomfortably hot.) Finally I walked down the train and into a different car. I found a compartment that was completely empty, and the A/C worked, so we all moved. It was over 100 degrees that day, the sun was beating down on the train, and no air was moving inside, so the A/C helped a lot.

We arrived in Rabat around 6:15 and met up with F and her 3 friends. We went to their friend’s house and sat around for a while. We looked for a soccer game to watch on TV, but we couldn’t find one, despite her’s 5 satellite dishes with about 400 channels each. Then we found out that the game we wanted to watch was not until tomorrow.

For dinner, we went to an Assyrian restaurant. The falafel was the best I had ever had, and the pita and hummus were delicious. But the most fascinating, interesting, intriguing part was the smoking. They have these huge smoking pipes (about 1 ½ inches in diameter) that are connected to a pot on a stand that burns little coals. The tubes collect the smoke, and the people suck it in through a silver mouthpiece. Then they exhale a huge cloud of smoke. Needless to say, none of our group tried that.

I didn’t get any pictures, because I had accidentally left the memory stick for my camera back at our apartment in Fez. That was stupid.

Keep Reading: Tour of Rabat
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Start at the Beginning: The Journey Begins

Morocco Trip: Tour of the Medina

This was one of my most interesting days yet! I learned so much and had such a great time! I learned what they do with olive pits, how many streets are in the Fez medina, how they tan leather, and a whole variety of other things.

Daniel came over for breakfast this morning. We’ve sort of adopted him. We ate fruit, bread, and yogurt. I wasn’t feeling very well, but I felt better as the day went on.

At 8:30, the three of us walked to McDonalds to meet Adair, who was going with us on a tour of the medina! I made everyone late by forgetting to dump pictures to my computer until the last minute, and then when I got my computer up, the scanner & camera wizard would not pop up, so I had to do it manually, which I don’t like, because it names the files all wrong.

Anyway! We caught two separate taxis and went to the medina where we made our way to a travel agency where we had a tour guide lined up. We had to wait for him to come, so Adair and I walked to a café where she got crepes with honey and I got water. I started counting how many donkeys/mules/horses I saw. Yesterday I did it, too, and I saw about 14, so I wanted to see if I would break my record.

Our tour guide came, and he led us into the maze of streets that is the Medina. The medina, or old town of Fez, is walled, and only accessible through certain gates. It is home to 500,000 people, it contains 9,000 small streets, and there are an estimated 7,000 donkeys inside.

The streets are either lined with shops or the walls of houses. Where there are shops, the street is a little wider, but when you have house walls on either side, you can stretch out your arms and touch both walls.

Mohammed was the name of our tour guide. Dressed in a light blue t-shirt that said “Gulf Shores,” he looked almost like a tourist himself, and apologized for not wearing his djallabah. He said he didn’t have any prior notice, so he had to come as he was when he got the call. He showed us tubs of camel’s meat in fat, sheep’s heads that people eat for breakfast, and chickens from the countryside that taste better than ones from the city.

After the first few turns, I gave up trying to maintain a sense of direction, and just embraced the feeling of “lost in the medina, but not lost, because the guide was born here.” We came to one place where there is a huge public wood-fire oven, where all the Moroccan families bring their bread to be baked. Like a big kiln, it held hundreds of loaves at a time, and a man stood at the small opening, constantly putting in new loaves, flipping them, and taking them out. It was a little dark door that I would never have seen if I was by myself, so it was nice to be shown these places by a guide.

At another place, he stopped and let us watch a man hand sewing a djallabah. It was beautiful material with beads and lovely trim. Moroccans are artisans, and the men do extremely fine work. It’s all men that do it, even the sewing.

We went into a spice shop, where the lady also sold essential oils and different interesting things. We visited a cloth “factory” where they had four huge floor-sized looms set up. A man was working at one of them, and he doesn’t use a pattern or any type of design. He just makes it up out of his own creativity, weaving cotton, wool, or silk into the cotton warp. He can make a 2 x 4 yard piece of cloth in 2 days. The fabric in there was beautiful. I thought about getting some, but waited until I got to see the rest of the tour and decided I would come back if I wanted to buy something.

Then we went to the leather tannery. That was interesting! I had always heard that tanning leather was stinky, and it was, but it was fascinating to watch. The work is done in a lot of big vats of all different colored dyes that we looked down on from a balcony. It’s really indescribable unless you’ve seen it. The guy there told us all about how it’s done, from the messy pelts they receive from the slaughterhouse to the beautiful leather items they make. It gets washed in plain water and then soaked in lime for several days. This makes it easy to remove all the hair, which is scraped off. Then the leather goes in a water/pigeon poop/and something else bath to make it soft and supple and thicker. From there it is dyed, which also takes several days, and somewhere along the road it is washed again in a washing machine with water to clean it and remove the smell.

We also saw the guys making shoes from the leather. It was so interesting to watch, because you could see them at all different stages of the process.

I bought a belt at the little store there. I also saw a really nice bag and a “poufy” (footstool/cushion), but I didn’t get them because they were too much money. The poufy was 350 dh and the bag was 600 dh. I can always go back if I want to, though. I love my belt! It reminds me of a saddle in its color, shape of the buckle, and just general characteristics. It was 150 dh…gulp…but I think I should have bartered with a counter offer instead of just taking his asking price.

We left the leather tannery and walked to a beautifully ornate building where they sell carpets. The place was huge, and the proprietor spoke perfect English. He led us up three flights of stairs, past one intricate carpet after another, and into a room where four women were seated at a frame, using colored merino wool to create a huge carpet. The woman closest to us was moving so fast, her hands were a blur.

Marie, Adair and I got the opportunity to sit down with them on the bench, and we got to participate in making a few knots. We would take a strand of wool and wrap it around two strands of the carpet warp in a way that made a latch hook knot. Then we had to break off the wool at the right length to create an even pile. It was difficult to do it in a smooth, consistent motion like they did. Their skill and speed was amazing, yet the guy said that this would be a lower-quality rug, since 4 people were working on it. Usually, he said, one lady will make a rug from start to finish at her home, and therefore the tension and pile will be perfectly consistent.

Then we went downstairs and were served mint tea while they rolled out lots of carpets for us to buy. The smallest ones (4 x 6 feet) were about $250, while the largest were thousands of dollars. I kept asking interested questions because I was curious about learning more, solely for information, but think I led the guy to believe I wanted to buy something. I had a hard time convincing him I was not. I just couldn’t justify putting hundreds of dollars on the floor.

From there we went to lunch. We ate at a very upscale restaurant where the entrees were 140-200 dh each. It was good though! I had pastilla, a sort of meat pie that had powdered sugar on top—very odd combination, but quite tasty. The meat in the pie was pigeon meat. I don’t think I’ve ever tasted pigeon before.

Then we went to the ceramics factory. My camera battery had died at the restaurant (sadly enough), so I didn’t get to take any pictures, but it was fascinating, nonetheless. [Pictures shown here are from a subsequent visit to a different ceramics factory.] A man showed us every step of the process, from the chunks of rock-like gray clay, to the tubs of water where they soften it, to the people who shape it into tiles, to the kilns, to the painters, back to the kilns, and then to their other uses. Some of the tiles are chipped into amazingly precise mosaic pieces that are then fitted together and made into tables, fountains, walls, and many other things. Stairs, floors, pillars—everything is mosaic here.

We also got to see a man at the pottery wheel. He was a master of his craft! Effortlessly, he shaped a tajine pot before our eyes. Then, just as easily, without measuring, he made a perfectly fitting lid. He made a candlestick and a beautiful fluted bowl with equal dexterity, then lumped them all on top of each other and squished them, causing me to gasp with surprise. But it was only a demonstration. The guy unobtrusively put out a little money dish at the end, so I gave him 10 dh, my only coin.

Then we saw someone putting mosaic tiles together. The mosaic is assembled upside down on a perfectly flat floor, and then it is ringed or bordered with an iron band to keep it all in. Concrete is spread on top to set it, it dries for a few days, and voilà! A tabletop is made. The fact that the mosaics are assembled upside down is amazing, though, because some of them have intricate color patterns and multiple pieces of the same shape but different color. The person’s memory would have to be very good in order to trust that it was perfect. Once the concrete is poured, it’s stuck, mistakes and all. I never saw a mistake in any mosaic, ever.

The kiln is heated to 900° the first time and 1200° the second time. They use olive pits and cedar wood for fuel. They obtain the olive pits (and all the other dry waste products of the olives after they’re squeezed) from people who make olive oil. Resourceful, isn’t it?

Then we went into their shop, where I bought 2 beautiful bowls for 700 dh. Gulp. That was over $80.

So that sums up my tour of the medina. I saw 54 donkeys today!

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