Though I rise on the wings of the morning
And settle beyond the sea
I will not be moved or shaken
Even there your hand will guide me

Tropical Smoothie Cafe was open; they took my order at the curb. I’ve been safer at home for six weeks and it was a relief to do something less-safe, away from home. I risked a curb-side order and a chit-chat with the cashier (she saw my hat and we talked about running), then I settled my smoothie into the cup holder and just started driving.

I think I went to Kansas. I never saw a state-line sign, but after taking a back road I ended up in a little town off historic Rt. 66 where the water tower informed me that I wasn’t in Missouri anymore.

Lori left a book of quotes here that I’ve been looking through this week — old homespun wisdom; a quiet look on life. This one from “Author Unknown” has become what I’m holding onto for these weeks and months keeping the boys.

We have been so anxious to give our children what we didn’t have that we have neglected to give them what we did have.

Kansas. Roots. Church potlucks and the benevolence room. Memorizing verses from John for my beloved third-grade Bible class teacher (her name was Emily and her eyes sparkled. I would have done anything for her.)

I thought about a lot of things on that drive. Our neighbors and friends. Grandparent-like love from older folks in our church. Little League. Quilting class. Our garden in the back yard. Bicycle rides. 4-H meetings. The State Fair and the air show. I thought about learning how to shuffle cards, and about hours and hours of play with all of us together. I thought about the turtledoves, and… and everything.

I love my childhood. I’m grateful for what Dad and Mom gave us, that we had a safe home, a place where there was both discipline and love, and that they cared about our character and who we would become. I’m so grateful for a foundation of faith, and for the hymns and psalms and stories and all the books we read together and the time we spent at home around our Bibles and all the ways they modeled their trust in God. They were the real deal, and our life was the real deal. And still those are the things that carry me through.

And now I’m looking at these boys, wondering how to pass any of that along to them and feeling at a loss. I’m not a community; I’m not a whole way of life. But on the other hand I am responsible to pass along as much of what I did have as I can. This is my task, my duty, and I can try. I will try. I am trying.

These little men, these good men.

I know I went to Kansas.

Dear God, these little lives
holding the seeds of everything…
every thing done with your love
might grow into some greatness
of character, or become some sure hope
or be simply a brief memory
that wakes old happiness one day
when life seems suffering, pain
I know those days will come
and when they do
what will these lives hold on to?
Make us faithful planters
of the good we have to sow —
all the grace that made us grow
with all our faith in you.

Dear God, give each his roots.

Easter weekend. Jennifer boiled eggs and we sat around the table and decorated them together. I watched Asunduse’s and Kalju’s Good Friday services online yesterday and hope to join tomorrow’s too.

Chris was telling me earlier about having talked with the worship leader from their church who also grew up in a ministry family. He said that this is the first year that the holiday is going to be ‘normal’ for him. This year he gets to be with his family and have a sit-down meal at home together; he gets to focus on what it is we’re celebrating instead of the activity of putting together the service for everyone else.

It reminds me of how Passover was celebrated as individual families, how the remembrance of being the delivered people was very close, very personal to each small unit. And here we are this year… Instead of gathering in our megachurches and not-so-mega churches, we’re gathering as small groups again, as families, remembering that we’re people who are delivered and people who will fully live out the deliverance.

This has to be the best Easter. With everything going on, though there’s death and suffering and uncertainty wherever we turn, we know that God is the God who turns exactly these kinds of things into life and human thriving and security, more solid than any before. And we’re the people in whom that happens. As Christians, when we gave ourselves to him we promised to let him to do in us the same thing he did in Jesus; we promised ourselves to that pattern. And he also promised to be faithful to the pattern, faithful to take sufferings and endings, and to bring about resurrections of all kinds until finally the great resurrection of all.

That’s what he does, it’s who he is. And this is who we are: his resurrection people.

John 14

Praise God, from Whom all blessings flow;
Praise Him, all creatures here below;
Praise Him above, ye heav’nly host;
Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost;

For we will rise again.

This is your mercy, this is your will
This is the way you reach the emptiness you fill
This is your love to me, this is your life to me
This is your will

Though you are hidden into the night
Though I am waiting for heaven to shine your light
This is your love to me, this is your life to me
This is your will

This is your goodness, I will believe
This is the path to go, your blessings to receive
This is your love to me, this is your life to me
This is your will

Barrett asked for our old songs so I pulled them up from the archive today. I found this one there too, uploaded 7 years ago, it said. Funny how things come back around.

While life isn’t going to plan, every day there are all these little moments: swinging in the hammock together in the park, putting up tents in the back yard, reading books aloud, singing quietly (and loudly), blaster wars with the whole family… it’s love to me and life to me.

Not my plan, and I’m deeply grateful.

Thank You for dear ones,
for love all around;
Thank You for leading me
where I should go.
Thank You for comfort
when fears could abound;
Thank You for making it
well with my soul.

Take it all on faith
There’s a higher thought, there’s a higher way
There’s a greater strength at work here for today
Take it all on faith

Take it all in hope
There’s a friend to lead you down your weary road
And someday you will find yourself at home
Take it all in hope

Take it all as love
There is more waiting for you than you can dream of
In the middle of it all you are enough
Take it all as love

Schools are closed and I’m keeping the boys. I feel like the idea is that Americans are all just freaking out and fighting over toilet paper, but like everywhere else, the closer you get to the average family and the longer this goes on, the more complicated the situation is becoming.

I’m working through feelings while watching my plans fade. I think what I’m supposed to be learning is that they’re only plans. Either God isn’t in them and they would have eventually fallen through for something else anyway, or he is in them and he’ll work them out in the end no matter how far off track things appear.

We make our plans; God directs our steps.

For now, these are hours and days with a few of my favorite people, and what would I trade them for?

Each new day I chose to love
And this is where love brought me
Somehow still I have enough —
This is how love keeps me

All the things we wish for
Like hope and belonging and laughter and life
All the things we need, all the things we can’t find…

Each new day I choose to love
And though I don’t have anything
Everything is mine

Friday was warm and sunny. Mom and I went hiking at the nature preserve.

We walked single-file down the trails and talked about a lot of things: about life lately, about people and how they’re doing. We talked about family.

We crossed the creek over a fallen log, and somehow as we went along the little graveyard in Blodgett came up. Pappa is buried there; Thea too. That’s where Mamma will be buried, and Dad and Mom as well, someday.

That put me at ease somehow, knowing where they’ll be, knowing that when the time comes I won’t have to leave them with strangers, that there’s a plan and eventually a rest-place with our people. “Dad and I have eight plots there, you know. And Nancy has four,” Mom told me.

I didn’t know.

It put me further at ease, not knowing how things are going to turn out or where I’ll go, to think that I might also have a place there someday if needed. I’ve been knocking on doors, praying about opportunities, but nothing’s opened clearly, they way things do when God is in them. I’ve been frustrated, a little scared, a lot repentant, and still it’s quiet and there’s no answer. But when I thought of the graveyard in Blodgett I did feel some peace knowing that even if none of my dreams come true, even if I lose all my teeth and my body falls apart and no one will marry me and I have no home and no family and die alone of some horrible disease somewhere, that even if all that were to actually happen, as long as I live loving God himself and keep getting back up and looking for ways to grow his kingdom, I might still have one of those humble little plots in the end, and my body can be planted to rest with people who’ve loved well until we all rise again. We can meet Jesus together, and what a good company.

Saturday I filled in at the Studio. Donna had made these tiny little clay heart beads and I wanted to buy one to keep clumps from forming in my mini sugar bowl. I couldn’t find a price so I texted and asked about them. Please take what you want! she answered. And I was so happy, so happy at the exchange, so happy that my work was letting them be with their families for the day and also feeling appreciated and loved, and now whenever I get to the bottom of the sugar and see the little heart I’ll remember Donna — beautiful and creative and generous and kind. There are still people like that.

Sunday before I left for late service I came across a clip of a panel of third culture kids all grown up. They talked about how the way they were raised effected them in good ways and difficult ways, and I thought about how wonderful it would be to have friends who understood what that thing was and is and always will be. I thought about the greater community of missionaries and about all the people in the world who know what it means to try to live for God between cultures and peoples and competing agendas in the general whirlwind of the fringe.

The missionary from American Samoa spoke on Sunday. “There are places in the South Pacific that we paddle past in our canoes that have never heard about Jesus,” he said. And he teared up a little telling about someone who donated pallets of Bibles, how when someone there is given one they disappear to begin reading it right away. So many there have never heard the simple story of God and His People. And I just wondered what in the world we’re doing and what in the world I’m doing, but at the same time knowing that it’s God’s project and he moves all the willing ones everywhere in the world he needs them to go.

At the nature preserve, on Friday, Mom and I crossed back at the real bridge farther up the creek before heading home. We stopped, watched a little waterfall, thanked God aloud for good things we don’t deserve, and heartily amen-ed.

I’m not technically on the payroll at the studio, so my wages come in labelled envelopes. So far my name has been printed differently every time:

J-A-I-M-I-E

J-A-M-I-E

J-A-M-I

My “Jaime” is an unusual spelling, I get it, but it’s surprised me that, given our history together, they still don’t know my name. I mean, they know it, but it’s like they know the name, not my name.

So I’ve been thinking about that, and why, or if, it matters at all. And then that idea has broken off into so many other ideas…

Anyway, the reason Dad and Mom decided to spell it the way they did is that J-A-I-M-E means “I love” (j’aime). They’ve always been clear about that; not that they held it over my head or anything, but they wanted me to know. I actually can’t remember a time I didn’t know; I’ve always had that fixed point to show the kind of person I’m supposed to be, no matter how well (or not) I’ve done at living up to it.

“Jaime” is so bound to me I can’t imagine having any other name, or any other spelling, or any other meaning to give shape to everything. Trying to think of being “Jaimie” or “Jamie” or “Jami” makes me feel really weird. It makes me feel like a stranger, a stranger to myself.

Because what does “Jami” mean? If that was my name my whole life would have unfolded in completely different ways because I would have made choices to live out some other identity, some other meaning. I’d be someone else.

The point of writing this isn’t exactly about my name, it’ll get spelled however it gets spelled, but it’s made me really wonder about how Jesus honestly feels about the way we use his name, and if there’s a real connection to his identity when we say “Jesus” and think about “Jesus” and praise “Jesus”.

“What are you doing to tell people the gospel of Jesus?” “We pray this all in Jesus’ name…” “Jesus died on the cross to save us from our sins.” “We believe in the naaaaame of Jeeesuus…”

We say it and whisper it and talk about it and sing it, but it’s not just a name or The Name, it’s his name. It belongs to him. I wish I could get into his head and feel it, to feel the weight of having that name, that name clearly given to him for a reason: an identity, a word to live by and live up to and carry his whole life. For me it’s “I love,” but for him?

Yeshua means “to rescue.”

There’s something to live with.

Every small thing he did he would know that he was supposed to be setting things right. Going through the market? “Rescue.” Hard day of building work? “Rescue.” Family time on the Sabbath? “Rescue.” Heading to the city for the festival? “Rescue.” In every place, on every day… If he consciously built his life around his name the way I know I’m supposed to be building my life around mine, he knew.

Every day. Every place. Every small thing.

So that’s what I’ve been thinking about. About names. I’ve been thinking about my name and what it means, about Jesus’ name and what it means, and also about our identity and being “Jesus-people” and all tied up with who he is. I’ve been wondering if he feels strange that we’ve been his friends for so long but don’t always connect “Jesus” with who he is — as if when we say his name and use it there’s a sort of misspelling that goes on. And I’ve been wondering how “love” can be part of “to rescue”.

“To rescue.”

There’s something to live with.

I’m sorting everything. Several boxes went to the friendship center on Thursday, and some things I put in the half-barrel and burned in the yard. The rule: if it could make someone else happy or be useful it should be donated; if it’s personal and too precious to rot in a landfill then I let it go in the fire.

I’ve gotten rid of a lot of things that I’ve picked up here and there. They were nice things, good things, but I was saving them for a life different from the one that’s turned out to be. I guess that makes them mistakes.

My journals I’ll keep, and I’ve sorted all the meaningful letters and best-of travel memories into envelopes and labelled them. Those are staying in my hope chest. The rest I’m narrowing down to what I want in my new home — wherever that is — the things that reflect who I’ll be as I’m living there, and, maybe, some better thing I still can become.

I’ll hold on to some parts of my roots too, since some of the past things also point me forward. Kind Pappa’s white handkerchief. Grandad’s quality pajamas. The blessing cross-stitch Mom made when I was born. The blanket and bear that dried many little-girl tears. My 4-H smocking sampler. My Haapsalu shawl from Triin.

I’ve kept one shelf-worth of books. I’m currently thinking through my favorite pieces of wall art, trying to narrow it down to the significant ones. Beautiful isn’t enough, they have to either ground me or call me somewhere higher.

It’s hard. Deciding is hard. I don’t like it.

Then why?

Because I want to keep living. Because I want to take only the best ahead. Because the good that’s already been isn’t worth holding on to at the expense of the good that still could be.

I didn’t set goals for the year — figured it was better to think through what I hope for and include the beginnings in the day. Sort of… first-fruits.

So I got up early
and started Iiris’ Finnish Bible-reading program — a good one to finish.
I blow-dried my hair
then spent time outside in the sun and was quiet.
Geoff and I hiked the nature preserve;
we talked about things that matter to us and built ideas.
I started culling what I own to the bones
so that when it’s time to move I can go.
I pet the new cat.
I completed the book I’ve been reading. Agreed and disagreed.
Wrote a letter to Barrett and got it ready to mail
and we skyped with Canon (happy birthday…)
Took a few minutes and pulled the guitar out
and sang a few songs about things that I care about.
I sat at the table with the family and we ate together
and everyone got along.

A good beginning.