Acting and Reacting

Scene change occurred yesterday.  One that I’ve been waiting for so impatiently!  My inner OCD displayed flagrantly as I checked and checked and checked the Russian post tracking number as my package went from Moscow to NYC.  Even when the information stopped displaying as my letter of invitation worked its way across the United States.

Just before I left for lunch yesterday the call from reception came.  “Kris, could you come here a minute?”  

And there it was.  A Russian package with my name on it and my official Letter of Invitation in it. 

Suddenly it all became so real.  

Up to that point, honestly, everything was done by faith based on a phone call, some e-mails and a promise.

I am amazed, and very humbled, by the trust I feel placed on me.  

It’s funny, sort of, that I would be so taken aback by it.  I have invested in the same thing time and again.  I don’t even think twice about giving to missionaries of all kinds.  I have encouraged them to stretch and live their dreams.  I considered it a privilege to invest in the countries of their calling through them.

Now people are investing in Russia through me and it’s catching me off guard.

They can trust me, it’s true.  I really am going to take what I’m given and use it to do something good in a faraway place.  I really am going to Russia to teach children and share the goodness of God with them and their families.  I am compelled to say that out loud as if to convince myself of a truth others see.

I expect to learn a lot, too.  Much more than I expect to teach.   Maybe that’s why I’m so humbled by the generosity of my friends and co-workers.  I don’t see myself as someone with much to give.  I see my struggles, inadequacies, small-mindedness.  I wear a mask of self-confidence always fearful it will slip and the audience will see the real me.

 

I spent some generous, quality time with my kids last week-end.  We had planned a trip for many months and now that I’m heading over the ocean its importance was magnified.  Walking among the plane displays of the EAA, I watched my kids playing like kids with my grandkids.  We laughed and smiled and learned some things, too.  

Later we were joined by others of my “kids” where the laughing and playing continued.  Another milestone shared. I sat beside a graceful friend as we watched the city mouse and country mouse story played across generations.  Cultures blending in common understanding that we’re all in this together. 

One conversation in particular rings in my ears.  “You’re an inspiration to us.”  Said one young man whose life, unwittingly, inspires mine.  His friend nods in complicity.

I?  Inspire them?  That’s crazy.  In the mirror I see a woman who has slowly, tortoislly, crawled from one rung below poverty to one above and below and above and below over and again.  I see myself treading water in seas of aloneness in waves of almost.  

These young people around me, they inspire me.  Their dedication to God and each other.  Their steady moving forward beyond my generation’s achievements.  Their love for ministry.  Encompassing others, even people like me, they give and take and grow.  Their actions draw from me reactions propelling us both to reach farther. 

This is what I love.  This Shakespearian replaying that all the world’s a stage and we are merely players.  Stage right and stage left designed by a Master Director writing our life script.

Two more steps to get me from here to there.  The visa.  The plane ticket.  

I am excited to see what He has written into the next Act of this play.  Curious to see who will share this stage with me and who is in my balcony.  

So quickly and so slowly this scene unfolds. 

 To order a copy of A Book of Pages About Crossing Bridges or a Friend Named Jesus, 

please visit my website:  Writer's Pages

Facebook:  Author Kris A. Newman

Ready if You Are!

When I was a teen looking at my future with rose-colored glasses anticipating the perfect life I might have living happily-ever-after, I pictured a little house with a little picket fence and a little dog and the breeze blowing the curtains on a summer day while I cooked Sunday dinner for my handsome husband, all my children and grandchildren.  I would be a teacher and a writer. I imagined how peaceful life would be with nary a care in the world.  

Although there are some notably missing elements, I really expected I had finally gotten to the settled season.   I have a little house in a little town down the street from my son and his family who randomly come to my house.  Although he doesn’t live with me, my other son has a room to call his own here.   I have a great job with a lawyer who I really like.  We work in an area of law that doesn’t make my heart sad.  Life has a certain gentle ebb and flow to it.  

 But real life has a way of happening and changing our expectations.  Funny, though, no matter how much real life we are given, dreams die hard.  

I don’t know who taught me to follow my dreams.  I don’t know if it was when I talked of being a teacher and was given all of the younger cousins to babysit and subject to my teaching skills?  Or when a teacher told me I was a good writer – not like my peers – something else – and I should do something with it.  

Here I am all these years later still dreaming of being a teacher and a writer and finding every excuse I can to give life to those dreams.

I have the blog, obviously, and two books published with more rambling around in my mind waiting for the right time.  I get regular assignments to interview amazing, interesting people for a polished magazine in the Chippewa Valley.  I am a writer.  That dream grows easily when it is fed.

The teaching dream is a little trickier to answer.  It requires someone in authority to recognize the abilities that lie beneath the surface.   Someone has to give me a classroom, students, opportunity.  

I have taught.  Middle School, mostly, but other things, too.  In a classroom, no less.  Certified by the School of Tomorrow and reminded by past students that I teach well, I jump at every chance to stretch those teaching talents.  And my students, now rather grown, tell me I was a good teacher and they remind me of things I taught them.  

But it isn’t one of those professions I have figured how to manage while paying a mortgage and driving a car.  So I set it aside and work for lawyers.

Somewhere along the line God gave me another dream.  To work in a foreign country, to bring grace to a culture where He had become a tradition.  Russia rose to the top of the list for many reasons.  I went there once for a month.  I reveled in the history, culture, bustle of Moscow.  Many times I have found myself wistful of Moscow.  Not with rose-colored glasses, but with a heavy heart seeing the impossibility of going again.  I have read Tolstoy and Tergenev and Pasternak to appease my dream.  

Funny how the picture I once painted of my ideal future is so static, unchanging, settled.  My life has been anything but still.  Given my own choices, I have gone from here to there.   Milwaukee, Minneapolis, Thorp.   I have gone from working with attorneys to teaching in a private school setting back to lawyers, back to teaching, back to lawyers.  

When I look at my path, even I think I’m awfully impulsive from the outside.  

Following me on the inside is a little less chaotic, however.  Certain things are unchanged – I want to be a writer and a teacher.  I want my life to have relevance.  I want to be the change I want to see in the world.  I want to overcome evil with good.

A call recently from a friend has led me down an unexpected, seemingly sudden path.  “I have a proposition for you.”  

 

The offer is to teach in Moscow.  For two years.  In Moscow.  Teaching.  I still can’t quite believe the adventure could be mine.  I will have a classroom of 16 students from 9 different countries.  They speak many languages and come from many different cultures.  Thankfully they all speak English.  I can live in an apartment about 10 minutes from the school. 

I will also work with American missionaries.  They don’t know I have followed their progress and struggles through prayer since my last visit to Moscow 11 years ago.  No doubt they, like I, thought the dream of working in Moscow was far behind me.  But God, apparently, had other plans.

So, here I am following this path as far as it will take me. 

I have talked with everyone who would tether me if I were unrealistically cloud dreaming.  I keep hearing the same phrases from them:  “I think it will be a great experience for you.  I have a good feeling about this.”

I have applied to have my passport renewed.  “We will have this back to you by Friday.”

I know the list of documents and things I need to gather to continue the paperwork. I know my flight options.  I know how much I will need to raise to supplement my small teacher’s salary.  Pastor has offered to bring the need before the church in September. 

And the list keeps growing.  Target date to be onsite is mid-October.

Every time I say, “Ok, God, if this happens then I’ll know I need to stay.  The doors are closed.”

But instead of THIS happening, it’s always THAT and the doors keep opening.  

You can share this adventure with me, if you like, though prayer or finances.  I will be selling my books to help fund this trip, of course.   If you want to know more, just ask.  I will do my best to come down from the clouds to answer you coherently.  

Thanks, God.  A teacher in Moscow – now that will give me something to write about!

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To order a copy of A Book of Pages About Crossing Bridges or a Friend Named Jesus,
 please visit my website:  Writer's Pages
Facebook:  Author Kris A. Newman

Still Walking in the Light

I posted this piece originally about two years ago - when I still lived in the little apartment next door to church.  I don't walk to church anymore, but I do still walk a lot and sometimes when it's very bright out and it has snowed.... I can picture the morning written about below.

Since I have many new readers, I thought I would post it again.  I hope you enjoy it.

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I live so close to my church that I walk to church – snow, rain, cold – I walk. I really couldn’t park much closer than I live so there is no point in driving. Mostly, I enjoy it. It gives me a little space to put away home and get my mind ready for church. I love church, by the way, which you already know if you know me at all.


The sky was so intensely blue, the sun so intensely bright and the snow so intensely white that it actually hurt my eyes. I was teared up and struggling to see where to place my feet as I walked. Maybe you have walked in a light as bright, too? Well, this is how my writer’s eyes lived the moment….

My eyes are tired. They are puffy and dark and small and full of unbidden tears. The brightness of the sun makes me look away and down. Instinct tells me it’s too bright! I can’t see before me. I can’t open my eyes. Not only the sun is bright, but the snow reflects that light and throws snowflakes at me formed on the wind. They dart at me like tiny daggers pushing me back.

I want to shield myself from the brilliance, do something to stop the burning. I should have just stayed inside, tucked away, in my dark, quiet, space.

But I need to go to church.

I can’t stay where I am if I’m going to grow. I need to be fed by the community that is church.

I need some iron to brush against me and rough off the edges. I need some gentle voices to fill the empty places. I need to have someone touch me, hug me, tell me they are glad I’m here! I need someone to pull away the aloneness and give me value.

I need to tell someone they make me smile, to give encouragement to someone else, to let them hear me pray, to sing, to share the joy He brings.

I understand the sharpness of the light. I know the scientific implications. My mind is wrapped around it.

I know why I must leave my little apartment behind and get through it.

But recognizing and living are two different things. No one can walk through the light for me. No one can clean the burn – only my tears can clear my vision. No one can keep walking for me. I must see where I need to be and I must do what it takes to get there.

Walking through the brilliance, I see His majesty at a whole new level.

The Life-Light blazed out of the darkness; the darkness couldn't put it out. John 1:5, The Message

 

To order a copy of A Book of Pages About Crossing Bridges or a Friend Named Jesus,

 please visit my website:  Writer's Pages

Facebook:  Author Kris A. Newman