my heart in a... bottle?!

Picture a crowded home, bustling with activity.  It's almost time to eat, and there's a thousand and one things that have yet to be done.  'Someone take this dish to the table!'  "Why didn't anyone put ice in the glasses!??"  'Can you check the oven... I see smoke!'  It's chaos and all hands are needed on deck!!  However, in the corner we find a completely different scene; a man is telling a story and a woman sits at his feet, hanging on every word.  It's out of place and it almost seems a bit rude.  How can they be in their own little world, so content amidst all the commotion?
Now another story:: same group of people, hosting a dinner in honor of this man; the story teller.  Things are going well, dinner is on the table and everyone is enjoying themselves.  Out comes the same woman, the listener, and she does something outrageous!  She take a bottle of perfume; worth an unbelievable amount of money, and pours it on the story teller's feet.  Within seconds the whole house is drenched in the smell, it's THAT potent.  She let's down her hair; absolutely unacceptable in this society, and uses the long locks to wipe the feet of the story teller!  The group is shocked!  The silence is suffocating; dripping with disapproval and disbelief!
People have various responses to this woman's actions.  Some say she's lazy for not helping her sister with the preparations.  Some say she is wasteful; that the perfume could have been sold and the money given to the poor!  She is labeled excessive, disrespectful.  But the Story Teller's unexpected response is that this woman's actions were RIGHT?!  He said she had chosen the ONLY thing that mattered and that she had her priorities straight!!?  He labeled her actions BEAUTIFUL!!?
This is the lesson I'm in the midst of learning.  The stories are true.. found in the Bible!  The Story Teller is Jesus and 'the listener' is Mary of Bethany, Lazarus and Martha's sister, but I also want it to be me!  I want to be so surrendered that I can sit, contentedly at the feet of Jesus even though I have a million things on my list; even when it seems out of place.  I want to be so captivated by Him that His presence is the ONLY place I want to be!  I want to worship extravagantly even when the world points their fingers at me, labeling me what they will.  I want to be SO in love with Jesus, so absolutely content within His approval of me, that nothing else matters!
Three Monday's ago we sang a song at YWAM worship that I really just didn't like... the chorus says "Here's my heart in a bottle, God.  I break it at your feet, I say I love you."  I didn't like the tune, I didn't get the words.  Why would my heart be in a bottle?!  And why would I break that bottle!!?  Something within me flared up; but I had no idea that it was my own pride.  By the time we left the base I had already forgotten about the song, but God hadn't!  I'm still reading through the Old Testament, but for the next few weeks I kept finding myself in the gospels, reading Mary's stories over and over.  There's so much more to this story, surrender and growth and round two of the audio book "Beautiful Outlaw", but the moral is that I'm falling head over heels in love with Jesus!!  This last Monday when we went to worship, they sang that same song and it had a completely different effect on me.  The words made absolute sense!!  My heart in a bottle is my everything; my hopes, my dreams, my fears.  It's all I have to give... an outrageously expensive perfume, and I'm breaking it at HIS feet in the ultimate act of worship; surrendering my all to Him!!  And just like with Mary, Jesus says 'What she has done is BEAUTIFUL!' and my heart feels so full!
Life is absolutely wonderful when lived through that attitude of surrender and with an overflowing heart!  There's still frustrations and weeds with thorns are still weeds with thorns!  But I have a strength that is not my own and a ridiculous amount of joy, and that makes those weeds seem a lot less intense!  We continue to make progress on that last field, and although we're trying not to get our hopes up, we're pretty sure we'll be finishing up the weed wacking next week!  My shoulder/rib is on the mend, thank you, JESUS, and I'm starting to feel like my old, Rambo-self again!  Which was a good thing because we finally got our wild boar and that is not a challenge to take on if you only have one functioning shoulder!!!  Let me tell you, it was quite the adventure!!  Mr. Bacon got himself all tangled up in one of our neighbors snares and was making quite the ruckus so we went up to investigate.  Only problem is that I got distracted by the baby birds that I rescued the day before and the next thing I know, Derek is no where in site!!  So, Sacagawea that I am, I had to track Derek's path through the jungle and found him just before he took his shot.  After that it got really dark, really fast and it was a wild night of gutting, skinning, cleaning and packaging... all by light of a head lamp and with a little guidance from a you-tube video!  Now we have a freezer full of pork and one more skill to add to our resume!
One last story for the week::  We were on our way home from the grocery store when Derek saw a sign for a yard sale, made a spur of the moment decision to go, and did a maneuver I'm sure he learned from The Fast and the Furious!  Although impressed with his driving skills, I wasn't really in the yard-sailing mood and made my opinion known.  He insisted, though and we wound our way through the neighborhood till we found the right house.  We couldn't see much out on the tables and I quickly said "Oh, looks like they're closing down.."  But Derek was still adamant that we go!  We browsed through the few items they had out and decided to go with the $1 scale!  As we were paying the woman she picked up this wooden carving of Joseph, Mary and Jesus and asked if we'd like it, saying that it was made in Bethlehem!  We both lit up, and started asking if they'd been to Bethlehem, and the next thing we know we're talking about church and then found out they've done YWAM, too!  This woman started sharing her heart with us and telling us about her and her husband and their heart for people battling cancer.  They want to have a place where people can come to heal, whether they've just found out they have cancer, or they're in the stages of fighting it, or they've conquered it, or lost a spouse to it, whatever the case may be.  They have a house here and a house in California and they know they're not supposed to live here but they're not supposed to sell the house, so they're trying to figure out what God has in mind.  Long story short, by the end of our conversation the woman was asking for our email and numbers and scheming on the possibility of us living at their house, almost as care-takers!!  We were absolutely blown away by the whole thing!  Her husband came home just as we were leaving and after she told him the short and sweet of what we'd been talking about he grabbed both our hands and started praying, right there in the front yard!!  It was an incredible experience, and we're so excited to see what might come of it!  AND even if nothing more does come of it, it was a HUGE reminder of the amazing ways God works!  I'm constantly putting God 'in a box' and things like that remind me of how great He is; His ways are not my ways and He can open any door He wants at any time, in the most un-obvious of ways!!  Even just the strong feeling that Derek had, that we HAD to go to THAT yard sale.. that was the Holy Spirit, and I'm so glad he listened!!
All the things that we are experiencing here, whether the daily battle within the fields, or learning about the exotic fruits and vegetables growing all around us, or the 'random' encounters with people that could lead to a whole new world of possibilities, it all just serves to pull us closer to our incredible Savior!  If you take anything at all from this post, I pray that it is a deeper desire to get to know Jesus!  To experience Him in every day life and to be so in awe of Him that you can't help but sit in His presence when everything around you is screaming that there's more important things to do.  To be so in love with Him that you pour out your everything at His feet and live in the joy of hearing Him say that what you've done is BEAUTIFUL!

::beauty in the details::

This is our 54th day in Hawaii!  Practically a life time!  54 days of discovery, adventure, tears, laughter and a decent amount of sweat!  This blog is playing an important role in the journey, because it forces me to reflect on each week before rushing into the next.  The days pile up on each other; combining into a blur of moments.  If not for this blog I would never actually sit down, untangle each day and each adventure and realize how far we've truly come in the past seven days! 

I know I'm starting to sound like a broken record when it comes to our church family here, BUT I can't possibly delve into the week without first saying that they are immensely encouraging, supportive and a tremendous blessing in our lives!!  Being a part of that family is unlike anything I've ever experienced, and absolutely wonderful!  Having that community and fellowship is essential and I'm so thankful that God led us there. 

Another blessing has been Monday morning worship at the YWAM base in town.  There's nothing like a whole hour of worship, surrounded by people from all around the globe, to lift your spirits and prepare you for a new week of jungle life!  Since 'town' is a good 25 minutes away we usually frequent the Costco and Wal-Mart, making for a much shorter work day, which is always a good thing on Monday!!  We were accompanied by our lovely new friend, Leslie, and got the tour of her family's farm afterword, officially making this the best monday EVER!!  I couldn't stop referring to the farm as the Garden of Eden because it's THAT beautiful!  They have coffee trees, which were very nice, but I've seen my fair share of those in the past two months!  What I have NOT seen my fair share of is the loquat, poha, mountain apples and tangors they have growing, and that's just the few I remembered the names of!!  Don't have a clue what those are??  Don't worry!  Neither did Derek and I!  I felt like Charlie in Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory...  "what is THAT?!"  "I can EAT this??!" "You have a pomegranate tree!!!?"  Running from tree to bush to strange little plant... It was positively delightful!  We kept seeds from all the new fruits we tried and are hoping to grow a few of our own exotic fruit trees :)  

We left the 'Garden of Eden' with huge grins our faces and a new determination for working the land right in front of us; turning it into something beautiful!  Little did we realize how vital that determination would be...

The first few days of the week were pretty great, we came to a section of the field that I almost want to label 'breezy' but let's be serious, it's still a jungle!  The bad news is that even in these breezy rows, I only lasted a few hours before my shoulder started protesting.  We discovered Derek can pop my back in if I'm laying in a field or even in the bed of the truck..  very impressive!  After a whole day like this, Derek made an executive decision, taking me off of weed wacking duty until further notice.  Also, we may or may not have driven all the way into town for a much needed Dairy Queen date!  Come on, everyone knows that the chocolate extreme blizzard will remedy almost any pain!  (We also had a few errands to run, so we weren't completely unjustified in using all that gas :)  I spent the next few days pruning, an amazing change of scenery, but a bit of a challenge for the over-analyzing part of me.  Because of the extensive weed population, there's only leaves on the top part of most of the trees.  So, when we cut the old, scraggly branch off, new branches will begin to grow!  Because they don't have to fight the weeds for sunlight and rain, those new branches will be full and produce lots of coffee cherries NEXT harvest!  The dilemma is that if we cut down all the branches that equals NO harvest this year!  So, I ponder and analyze and walk around and around the tree deciding which branches to cut and which to leave.  My shoulder was oh-so-thankful for the break, though!

Speaking of a break, our week was broken up by some adventures in the jungle!  Our neighbor also has a feral pig issue, but he is an expert snare setter and is making a significant dent in their numbers!  The other day he trapped and killed three of them, giving Derek new inspiration for his snares.  Anyway, we were eating dinner after a long day in the fields and we heard a squealing sound!  After a few minutes of this we decided to investigate and took off up the hill; Derek with the 9mm and me with the kitchen knife!  Derek kept telling me to walk quieter, but I couldn't even hear my own footsteps over the sound of my heartbeat!  After all, I was preparing myself for a face-off with a 200 pound boar!!  However, after zoning in on the area the squealing was coming from and slinking through the jungle, all we found was a little, tiny pig that had stumbled upon the neighbors snare!  Label me what you will, but I couldn't let Derek kill it!  Plus, from a logical point of view, it wouldn't have been worth the trouble of skinning, gutting and whatever else you do to feral pigs!  So, the hunt lives on and I've promised Derek that when we DO catch the daddy pig I won't try and reason him out of shooting it because "it might have a family somewhere!"

Back on the farm... my warrior husband kept at it with the weed wacker until Friday at lunch when he admitted that the lower section of that last field was the worst he'd seen yet!!  I couldn't believe it!  We've seen killer vines that will twist around you and your weed wacker till you don't know which way is up or how you'll ever escape!!  We've seen thick, tree-like weeds with roots that must connect to the Earth's core!!  We've battled grass that is so tightly bound together you feel like you're weed wacking through a waist high, bale of HAY that drains your tank of gas in 50 feet!   To hear him say this is the worst he's seen... let's just say I felt a little sick to my stomach!  I traipsed down there with him after lunch and I wish this is the part where I say "he was just kidding!  He finished the whole field and wanted to surprise me!!'  Unfortunately, it was no joke.  We have entered the Amazon!  Absolutely unreal!  I wanted to cry... okay, I still want to cry!  But, we made our way through two rows that afternoon and by God's strength we'll make our ways through the next 20 rows, too!  

I talked to Jesus a LOT this week; between the fire in my shoulder, the high intensity night-trek through the jungle, and an unexpected, final mountain of weeds to tackle!  But I talked to Him about more than the painful/terrifying occurrences, I've been talking to Him about everything!!  During my sweet, sweet time of pruning I listened to the audio-book "Beautiful Outlaw" by John Eldredge and absolutely LOVED it!  I could fill a whole new blog with the things I learned!  Suffice it to say, it made me think about Jesus on a whole new level and love Him more than I ever have before!!  

He knows us so well and this week I was reminded, once again, that He is so present in the details!!  Driving up the slightly extreme terrain we call the 'road', Derek mentioned how he would love to fix it up someday.  The NEXT day, we're heading out and realize someone HAS fixed it!!  It's no highway, but all the big holes have been filled in and patched!  We couldn't believe it!!  And then (this story will hit home for my female friends) we were having some SERIOUS chocolate cravings one day!!  And what do we find at the Post Office the next day?!  A crock-pot FULL of chocolate!!  God works in strange ways!  I'm so thankful that He allowed our Easter package to be detained for so long that we thought it was lost, only to have it arrive at the perfect time!!  

See all that I would have missed if I hadn't thought back on our week!?  There's grand stories in each moment!  There's beauty in the details!

a eulogy, a miracle && a sovereign GOD!

Okay, I have a confession::  I've been stressin' this blog entry all week!  It's silly, I know.  But I'm realizing that people are actually READING this and I guess it's kind of going to my head.  I knew that my Mom would be thankful to have this insight into our jungle life, but I really couldn't imagine it going too far beyond that!  Don't get me wrong; I couldn't be happier to hear that my stories are being read and enjoyed!  I love it!  But I have to keep writing as if I'm simply talking to my Mom.  If I think too much into it, the stories won't flow... I'll start trying too hard and I'll end up spending three hours on a single paragraph!
So, Mom!  Let me tell you about our week :)
We attempted deep sea fishing from a kayak; didn't come away with the marlin we envisioned, but we did have a good laugh about a potential eulogy if we stick with that pass-time:  "as inventive as they were, this couple didn't exactly plan ahead to the part where they actually caught an 800 pound fish and were then dragged around the bay in a kayak because they refused to surrender their $37 fishing pole!  We can't say they didn't have a good ride.. literally!"  On a safer note, Derek has set multiple snares around the property and is, indeed, closing in on a freezer full of ham!
We invited a couple from church over for dinner this last week and had an awesome time!  They weren't completely freaked out by our jungle life style, and I think they were pretty impressed with my toaster oven brownies :)  Knowing that they were coming definitely prompted us to take on some home-improvement jobs that we'd been putting off.  We hauled out two truck loads of trash, which is just the tip of the iceberg!  But it feels so good to have things cleaner and more organized.  Derek took a little drive one morning and came back with the door off of an old fertilizer shed on the property..  I was a little confused, but have learned there's (almost) always a method to his madness :)  Sure enough, a few hours later we had a table!!  I don't know how I ever lived without one until now!  We just never really thought about needing it until we started looking at things through the eyes of potential visitors.
I was VERY thankful that we weren't working in the fields on Wednesday when we experienced an all-time high temperature (since we've been here) 100*!  Derek, ingenious man that he is, got water hooked up right to our 'front door'!  It's not drinkable, but amazing in every other way and oh-so-convenient!  Our garden is rapidly expanding and with these hotter days coming, the water couldn't have arrived at a better time!  Derek also devised a way to hook the hose up to the frame of one of the greenhouses and voila! we have a shower with amazing pressure and I can actually use both hands to shampoo my hair!!  I continue to gain appreciation for the 'little things'; a home made pedicure, complete with pink nail polish!  Or fresh strawberries in my salad!!  Also, not quite such a 'little thing', but I'm grateful for my husband and his extensive back cracking abilities!  He informed me that he's basically a chiropractor, since he's been to so many of them! and I believe it!  I've had some fairly intense pain right between my spine and right shoulder this week.  It's tolerable up until a point where it feels like fire burning in my muscles, and then I have to lay down and Derek is able to pop back in what we're guessing might be a rib with the notion it wants to rearrange itself?!  The good news is; my God is a Healer! and I witnessed that healing power this week.  After a couple days with this pain, I realized I needed to ask other people to start praying for me, and mentioned it an email to my Mom.  About 15 minutes later we were driving in the truck and my little brother messaged me "Hey, how's your shoulder? Test it out right now!"  Without thinking I quickly did a little shrug motion and rotated it up and down and felt.... NOTHING!  I thought I must be losing my mind, and started moving my whole arm up and down- still feeling absolutely nothing!  The pain was gone!  I told Derek and we both started freaking out, I got out of the truck and started swinging my arm around!  There's no words to explain the massive relief I felt!  It was incredible!!  The pain has come back a few times since then, and Derek works his popping magic, but I was able to cut back on the massive amounts of Advil I'd been taking, and I believe with all my heart that God gave me a miracle!  I may not understand why I still feel that fiery pain on occasion, but I do know that God is 100% in control.  That's a huge part of what He's been revealing to me lately.
It all started when I was reading in 1 Samuel.  I came to chapter 16 verse 14 and it says "Now the Spirit of the Lord had departed from Saul, and an evil spirit from the Lord tormented him." And I'm thinking I MUST have read that wrong because I'm fairly sure evil spirit's don't come from God?!  So, I read it again and sure enough, it says 'from the Lord!' So, I keep reading and it mentions it again a few verses later, and then again throughout the next few chapters!  Derek and I were pretty tripped up by this so I called my all-time favorite Bible scholar, my very own Dad!  He walked through it with us, reminding us that God IS sovereign and completely in control.  NOTHING happens outside of His knowledge and allowance, both good and bad.  This can be a really hard concept for me to grasp, but I know it has to do with the incredible fact that God is a gentleman and won't ever FORCE someone to follow Him.  The flip side of that is the fact that if you choose to NOT follow Him, He respects that decision and will let you go your own way, even though He knows what will come of that decision.  We read how Saul had chosen to do his own thing; blatantly disobeying the Lord on multiple occasions.  His actions lead up to this chapter where we find that he's not walking with the Spirit of the Lord anymore and there's an evil spirit tormenting Him.  We know God had the power to stop it, but He doesn't!  God allowed it, because that's the path Saul had chosen!  I'm just barely starting to wrap my mind around this, but what I take away from it, at this point, is that God is so much more powerful than I've ever realized!  This is pretty heavy stuff, and I know it's just the tip of the iceberg.  I may not always understand why certain things happen or why God allows pain, suffering, or even things like the bore beetle eating away at our coffee!!  But to know that God has the final say on every single thing, including forces of evil, is extremely comforting for me as a believer.  To know that He has my best interest in mind, and has a plan that is so beyond what I can imagine, is incredible.  Even when 'bad' happens, I can rest in the knowledge that God will bring good out of it- for those of us who love Him (Romans 8:28).
I have so many thoughts chasing each other around in my head, and I can't write them all out here.  God has really renewed this desire inside of me to KNOW more and to dig into the Bible, His letter to ME and I am experiencing Him on completely new levels!!  It's hard at times, but mostly it's incredible and life changing and I highly recommend it :)  That's what I'm leaving you with...  until next time!

& the adventure continues::

Another week has come and gone, and I have the muscles to prove it!  I made it through...ready for this... three whole rows!  No, not per hour, not per day... that would be my grand total for the week!  I realize I won't be winning any weed wacking competitions at that rate; but these were the hardest rows we've seen yet.  The rows took about four or five hours each, and I was probably only using the wacker for 20-30 minutes of that time!  The rest of the time it's just me and the weeds; navigating through the maze, finding the daddy root, yanking on it from different angles (or sawing it!) till it's out of the ground, getting it to break free from all the other weeds, and then hauling it to the end of the row.  Exhausting, but worth it!  I'm fairly sure my chest actually swells with pride every time we drive past those cleared rows!  We are, quite literally, 'subduing the earth' (Gen 1:28)  But I was mistaken in thinking we only had one more acre to 'subdue'.  It's actually more like two!  Derek is teaching me proper machete technique, so I have a good way to vent any pent up emotions.  Just kidding!  I don't recommend swinging sharp blades when you're angry.  But, I am pretty fierce with the machete!
As much as I continue to learn and grow and surrender each day (and each weed!) to God, I still have a long way to go.  A few days ago I lost sight of the end game, became completely overwhelmed with the forest of weeds I was facing and the whole HOUR and a HALF I had to wait until lunch!  I was hauling heavy piles of weeds UP the hill and the sun was radiating off my body, I could feel the blisters forming on my feet, and I just broke.  Derek asked if I was alright and I barely choked out "I'm just SO done with this!' before turning away really quick so he didn't see me fall apart completely.  Truth is, there was so much sweat dripping down my face, he probably wouldn't have noticed a few tears!  But the crazy part is that, after calling them stupid and overgrown, I just kept hauling those weeds out and after a few more minutes, and a whole bottle of water, my rage passed.  Pretty soon I was laughing and telling Derek how ridiculous it was that I had been mad at the SUN, mad at the weeds, mad at the hill!  As if they were making my life miserable on purpose that day!  The best part is that the next day while reading in the Word, I felt led to Jonah.  Little did I realize that I would be reading about ME again!! At the end of the book I read about Jonah being mad at this little plant! mad at the SUN, mad at everything, mad that God isn't destroying the people of Nineveh!  And usually I think "Sheeeesh!  What a sad, little, angry man!!"  But this time around I'm thinking "Woah, I can totally sympathize with this guy!"  Leave it to God to lead me to, what I'm assuming is, the only place in the Bible where someone is SO mad at a PLANT that he actually says he wishes he was dead?!  Sound familiar, Bethel?!  I love God's sense of humor!  (I also love that He let me wait a day to read that, because I might not have found it so funny right after the fact.)
The good news is that it was a rainy week!  Not to assume that everything is about me, because I'm sure the ground appreciated the moisture too, but I'm fairly positive that was God's way of allowing me a bit of reprieve from the "Battle of the Weeds"!  In the afternoons we'd find things to do around the greenhouse, or mosey down to our favorite coffee shop and research things like private jets and boathouses.  Gotta have dreams!!
On Friday we started our GARDEN!!!  Okay, I need to give Derek credit here... he actually started all the seeds a few weeks ago and has been working on this project during his down time.  But, this was the first day actually dedicated to the garden, and it's coming along quite nicely!  I did learn that I'm not cut out for the life of a shoveler... about 30 minutes and I'm ready to check myself into intensive care!  But in a few months- when we're eating salads and cooking with fresh vegetables- it will be so worth it!
Thanks to one of our neighbors, we now know about a secret trail that wraps around the coastline and pops out at this spot that just happens to be phenomenal for snorkeling and diving off the rocks!  And today we were out in the kayak when all these dolphins started jumping out of the water, doing flips and summersaults, just a few feet away from us!  It was absolutely beautiful!!
We continue to fall in love with this island.. the people, the culture, the crazy plants!  I think I've discovered the all natural, organic version of gorilla glue!  It comes out of this yellow, mustache shaped fruit?! and is the stickiest, white, goo I've ever come across!!  Of course, I had to play with the fruit and rip it up and was then covered in the stickiness for the next 3 hours!
I wish you all the happiest of Easter Sunday's!!  Be blessed in the knowledge that Jesus Christ laid down His life for YOU, battled it out with the Devil for YOU and rose from the dead in glorious victory!!  What an incredibly, wonderful Savior!