One long blog about Seattle...

Hi all,
Where do I even begin to describe the last few days. It has been the most exciting, scary, disappointing, weird, and overall exhausting four days I’ve had in a while. As many of you know, I enjoy telling stories so I’m sorry if you’re a “get to the point” person because you’ll lose the full narrative if I cut it short. Remember Jesus taught in parables and even if my story isn’t much of a parable, I still believe in the power of personal stories so here we go…

Monday
I got in to Seattle and it was lovely. No rain, just sunshine, not even very cold. I checked in to my FABULOUS (and terribly expensive) hotel and decided to go check in for the conference. The ladies in the “office” explained that we have little “mailboxes” (a file folder in a box) with our name on it that the school directors can leave messages for us. I checked mine and I had four messages already.
I got back to my room to peruse the informational packet and the messages I got. The four messages were all offers of interviews, two with schools in Turkey, one with a school in Dubai and one with a school in Poland. Hmm…
Anyway, I start looking through the list of schools who were coming and I noticed something…of the 14 schools I wanted to interview with, only four were actually coming. Yikes. I sort of panicked but not enough to be in full freak out mode. Then I started looking at the vacancy list. Now I really started to panic. The elementary openings dramatically shrank. Supposedly the final list was going to be given out Monday night at the orientation session, but it was not looking good at all. I tried to get my mind off the desolate situation by walking downtown to find some munchies.
Now you have to understand, I grew up in San Diego. I’ve been to Los Angeles and San Francisco. I’ve been to Rome and Hong Kong and the Philippines. I thought I had seen it all. But I had never been to Seattle. As I was walking down the street with my “I know where I’m going so don’t bug me” face, a man with purple hair and a black trenchcoat starts prancing after me yelling in a sing-song way, “Green scarf lady! Green scarf lady!” I merged immediately with a larger group, hid my scarf as best I could and managed to escape whatever the “green scarf lady” guy wanted. I passed 10 street musicians with varying levels of talent (kazoo man had tough competition with the four string quartet) and at least 12 homeless people wanting handouts or screaming at anyone who came near them. I had lunch at Pike’s Peak Market and wandered back to my hotel still fairly depressed.
That night at the orientation session they handed out the final vacancy list. Now panic hit full-swing. I had four interview options. Only four. No new interview invites from directors either. I came back to my hotel room and cried and cried. It was awful. I kept reading through Psalm 42 and 43 and crying out to God to intervene, to do something big. I had spent all this money to come, had put myself out there and now there were hardly any jobs to be had. I slept well that night mostly due to exhaustion and the bazillion thread cotton sheets that I paid way too much for. .

Tuesday
It’s hard to explain how competitive the interview sign-up session is. They have tables set up around the edges of two rooms and you wait in line to hopefully get an interview with a director. I was really nervous. I’ve never been that nervous in my life. I started lining up 35 minutes before they opened the doors and I was still 10th in line. As soon as the doors opened I started looking for the schools I wanted to interview with. Germany…not there. Spain…not there. Greece…no openings. Switzerland…director was late. It was only 3 minutes in and I literally had no options left. In desperation, I signed up an interview with the school from Poland which I hadn’t researched at all. I also got an interview with a school in Norway that had a surprise elementary opening. I finally got in line when Switzerland’s director showed up but I was the 15th person to line up and by the time I got there, she had no more interview times and quite obviously showed no interest in me. I had 2 ½ hours to set up interviews and here I was done in less than 15 minutes. I briefly considered just signing up to interview with random people, but every time I would walk toward the table, it was literally like hitting a glass wall. I couldn’t walk past. I just couldn’t.
I went back to my hotel room not really knowing what to do for the next three hours before my first interview. I researched the two schools as much as I could and got excited about them. They were small schools, but high quality and had a lot of things going for them.
I went to my first interview with Linda from Norway. She looked like Judi Dench, motherly, slightly disheveled and was very calm and reassuring. The interview went well and Norway had LOTS of perks: high salary, good benefits, beautiful town, wonderful school, etc. From there I went to my interview with Poland. The director had showed lots of interest and was excited to talk with me. Turns out, he had started several initiatives that my school is in the midst of as well so he was surprised by my experience. I spent the rest of the afternoon going to school presentations including Norway’s and Poland’s and I met several people who I was basically competing with for the same jobs.
That night was the social so I got all dressed up and went downstairs where I met several other candidates who were fun and friendly (including one teacher from Phoenix who lives in Aventura Apartments in Avondale! How random is that!). Anyway, besides the killer cheese platters (you literally couldn’t get any appetizers without accidentally throwing them across the room. I was hit by flying olives, pickles, crackers and cheese and threw a few things myself because the tongs were so faulty). I spent most of the time chatting with four ladies who were really funny but after an hour we decided it was time to “work the room”…and we all ended up within 30 seconds back at the cheese patter. All the directors were in their own little world and weren’t really into talking business. I made an attempt to talk to Linda from Norway, but within 20 seconds I basically knew I didn’t have the job. She gave lots of reassurances that I would probably get a job, but very obviously wanted to move on and talk to other people. The director from Poland who had been so interested completely ignored me.
I gave away my drink ticket (I felt so dumb, I thought it was for a door prize at first and then when I asked for Smirnoff Ice the bartender said, “Oh we’re not serving hard alcohol” and I felt like a drunk) and made my way back to my room and just sat there. My hope was dangling by a very thin thread that was fraying in all directions. Once again I went to bed emotionally exhausted from the highs and the lows of the day.

Wednesday
I woke up knowing that today I was going to find out one way or another if I had a job or not. I tried to take it easy, going to the gym, leisurely taking a shower and finally going down to my mailbox. Sure enough there were two notes for me. I took them and like a junior higher made my way to the bathroom and opened them up. As I had guessed, they were both rejection letters. “Nice to meet you…not a match with our school…good luck…” and that was it. My fair was over.
It was my worst fear coming true. I had gone all this way in faith, trusting that even though things didn’t look good at all that God would show up and do something. I spent the next several hours trying to work out in my head what I was feeling, trying to keep my negative emotions in check and figure out what I was supposed to do next. As I was riding in the elevator to check my mailbox, I ran into one of the ladies from the night before, Amy. Turns out that all four ladies I talked to got job offers. Then came that awkward moment when she turned to me and said, “So how ‘bout you?” She was so excited and I didn’t want to ruin her moment so I said something lame about neither interview working out. I could see that she felt bad, but I didn’t want her to be apologizing for being excited so I asked her about her new school and what she was looking forward to.
Later that afternoon, I spoke with Mary Harding, the assistant director for the agency I’m registered with and she gave me lots of good advice on what to do next and said I should keep in touch with her since invariably someone backs out at the last minute and leaves schools in a bind.
A few hours later I came back to the candidates lounge to use the computer to check in for my flight and did some fabulous eavesdropping (so bad, I know, but hey, if you’re going to be speaking that loudly…). In the center of the room, was the guy who had gotten offered 3 elementary positions, including the Norway one I really wanted. It was so difficult to listen to him. Granted, he was very confident and charismatic the kind of person you automatically gravitate toward, but he was arrogant and annoying. He actually asked a director from Dubai (a VERY conservative Middle Eastern country) if he was able to bring girls back to his school apartment to have sex or if that wasn’t allowed. Can you imagine asking that in an interview?!?! Not only that, he kept talking about how nice “Cathy, the Norway director was”. I wanted to scream, “Her name isn’t Cathy, you idiot! It’s Linda!!!”
Needless to say, it was a lesson in self-control, but also dealing with the seeming unfairness in life. I had to combat my own arrogance when faced with his. You know what it sounds like…”I’m so much nicer than him, I would have been so much better for that job, I…I…I”. But it’s not about me, is it?

Thursday
Nothing too exciting. I spent $14.00 on French pastries, packed up and left for the airport. In yet another awkward social situation of my life, I was sitting at the airport waiting for four hours for my flight and just happened to sit behind two of the ladies who ran the fair. I don’t know if they recognized me or not but they did not talk with me which was good, because I didn’t really want to talk about the fair.
Now I’m trying to sort through what happened and what I’ve learned from it all. My mom has been a great sounding board as far as giving advice, but also offering perspective as well. She’s also very discerning. She claims she’s not a prophet, but here’s the crazy thing…Tuesday night, she walked into the living room, looked at my dad and said, “Someone just took Rachel’s job. I think someone just took Rachel’s job, but they’ll back out.” My mom was kind of freaked out because she didn't know where it came from. Whether it was my mom being a protective parent and hoping for the best or if it truly was my mom hearing God’s voice (due to her track record, I’m leaning toward the latter one), I know Seattle has meaning.
So here’s my thoughts so far:

• I went for it. Most people never even try for the dream God has given them. Usually they stay put and complain about how much they dislike where they are. But I went for it and I’m still going for it. I’m not giving up and I’m not going to get stuck in a pity party for myself although it is very tempting.
• I should have been more prepared for the attack. I have never been so spiritually attacked since I pledged money toward the Seize the Moment campaign. My emotions were all over the place. At times, my shield of faith was just barely there, made of soggy cardboard. It was evident but not really effective.
• I know I was supposed to go to Seattle. I don’t know why. I don’t know what will come from it, if one of the jobs I interviewed with will come back open or if it’s just a lesson in obedience for me. Even though it seems like I just wasted a month’s worth of rent, I know God had me at this place and time for a reason, if only to learn to trust Him when it makes no sense.
  

Acts

If you haven't realized this yet, I just want you to know God is doing a BIG thing right now in the lives of His people and His churches. Read any major blog of any major church and there is this common theme of reading God's Word, listening to His voice and living out the book of Acts.

As an example, my mom called tonight to share what Pastor Leo preached about this morning. It was near identical to the sermon I heard this morning. God's speaking to His leaders and thank goodness, they are listening. Here's the story that Leo shared this morning that blew my socks off!

San Diego is a big military town so Mission Valley Christian Fellowship has always been involved in supporting the troops at home, providing for families and what not. So one particular soldier, I don't know his name so I'm going to call him Bryan for narrative's sake, but his wife is Hispanic and only speaks Spanish. Bryan's been praying for his wife's salvation for some time and has taken his wife to several churches around San Diego. Her biggest complaint has always been that she can't understand the preachers because her English is poor.

Finally, Bryan brought his wife last Sunday to MVCF because the church has a reputation of being so supportive of the military families. Now you have to understand, Leo is just Leo. He's loud, he talks fast and furious, he gets on random tangents and using tons of idioms and sayings. And somehow in the midst of all of this, God works wonders. Well, Bryan and his wife sat through the service and at the end, Bryan's wife went up to pray to accept the Lord. She went straight to the ONE prayer team couple that speaks fluent Spanish.

When Bryan was asking his wife what was different about Leo's sermon, she said, "Because he was preaching in Spanish." Bryan was stunned. Leo preached the whole sermon in English. The Holy Spirit had literally translated the Word of God for this woman so when she heard the Word being preached, it was in HER language.

4All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues[a] as the Spirit enabled them.
5Now there were staying in Jerusalem God-fearing Jews from every nation under heaven. 6When they heard this sound, a crowd came together in bewilderment, because each one heard them speaking in his own language. 7Utterly amazed, they asked: "Are not all these men who are speaking Galileans? 8Then how is it that each of us hears them in his own native language? 9Parthians, Medes and Elamites; residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, 10Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya near Cyrene; visitors from Rome 11(both Jews and converts to Judaism Cretans and Arabs—we hear them declaring the wonders of God in our own tongues!" 12Amazed and perplexed, they asked one another, "What does this mean?"
Acts 2:4-12

Stuck

That pretty much describes how I was feeling this weekend. I got sick very suddenly this past week and by Friday I was diagnosed with walking pneumonia. So I've spent the last two days sleeping and hanging around my apartment doing basically nothing. It's a bit depressing after a while.
So this Sunday is the first Sunday I've actually spent not at a church. So I thought I'd listen to one of Perry Noble's sermons online since I'm a big fan of his blog.
Funny enough his sermon series is "Stuck". It's amazing! Click here to listen to it.
Here are my notes:

• God’s pursuit is bigger than my circumstances.
  Judges 6:11-13--Gideon was threshing wheat in a winepress. Basically, he was throwing wheat up in a hole and hoping that the chafe would be sifted out somehow. It was useless, meaningless activity. Why was he doing this? Because of fear and uncertainty.
  
  “I found God.” I was never aware God was lost. You really found God? Where was he? Was he behind your couch? We don’t find God. God finds us.
• God’s plan is bigger than my imagination.
  God’s plans never really make sense.
  Don’t tell me who you are. Tell me who you are becoming.
• God’s power is bigger than my excuses.
  Gideon replied, "But, Lord!" Whenever God asks us to do something amazing, we’re obsessed with our “buts”.
  We all have a “but”. Some people’s “buts” are big and some people’s “buts” are small.
  
  When God calls you to do something great for Him, it’s never so we can be safer. It’s so we can be more dangerous. God’s not concerned with our comfort, He’s concerned with His glory.
  Sometimes we just have no idea who we’re talking to. We forget who God is.
• God’s promise is bigger than my problem.
  When God calls us to do big things, He never asks us to do it alone. He says that He will always be with us.
  God’s will is not a safe place, but it’s the right place.

God's right there yah dummy!

Yes, that's what I would have said to Aaron after reading Exodus 32:1-5.

1 When the people saw how long it was taking Moses to come back down the mountain, they gathered around Aaron. “Come on,” they said, “make us some gods who can lead us. We don’t know what happened to this fellow Moses, who brought us here from the land of Egypt.”
2 So Aaron said, “Take the gold rings from the ears of your wives and sons and daughters, and bring them to me.”
3 All the people took the gold rings from their ears and brought them to Aaron. 4 Then Aaron took the gold, melted it down, and molded it into the shape of a calf. When the people saw it, they exclaimed, “O Israel, these are the gods who brought you out of the land of Egypt!”
5 Aaron saw how excited the people were, so he built an altar in front of the calf. Then he announced, “Tomorrow will be a festival to the Lord!”

Observations:

1. Everything started when the Israelites wanted events to happen in their timing, not God's timing.
2. The Israelites forgot everything they had just seen, heard and experienced. They had made a covenant with the Lord and had heard His voice and had seen His glory! And still, they grew weary of waiting and decided to find the "next big high".
3. The Israelites went straight for leadership. Aaron was clearly cornered into showing results and instead of being faithful, he took the most comfortable way out: replicate the gods of Egypt.
4. The most cringe-inducing part for me is when Aaron gets caught up in the excitement and decides to capitalize on his new-found popularity by building an altar. How many times have I seen leaders in the Church, young and old, get caught up in some emotional response, forget to seek God's voice and just plug ahead with some program or project. It's embarrassing to be left at the end with the debris of poor decisions.
5. Although Aaron built the altar, Exodus 32 goes on to say the people was struck with a plague because "they worshipped the calf that Aaron had made". When it comes down to it, we are each responsible for our own spiritual health. Even when leaders make poor decisions, we are to constantly seek God's guidance and truth.

Action steps for me:

• I need to be constantly in God's Word and listening for His voice. Otherwise, I'm toast.
• As a leader, I need to be discerning about what I say and do. I don't want to end up being an Aaron.

Happy Birthday Christian!

Today is my brother's 22nd birthday which makes me feel old. It seems just like yesterday I was 22. In fact, I think I've started my quarter-life crisis a few months ahead of schedule.
Anyhoo, below is a tribute to my big little brother on his "best birthday ever"!

He likes playing rugby...which as you can see has some side affects...mostly on my mother's sanity.

He likes kids...even if he claims he'll never be a teacher. He spent several weeks in Russia, loving on these boys at an orphanage. Face it, he's a kid magnet.

Yes, that's him under the mascot head with his friend Lionel. Lionel and he would take turns being the mascot. Lionel was more cute and cuddly. Christian made small children cry.

Allowable, but not God's best

As part of our Home Team, we read the passage Matthew 19 where Jesus was confronted by the Pharisees who tried to bait Jesus with a controversial subject at the time: divorce. The Pharisees were hoping Jesus would cater to one side and then the people who ascribed to the other side of the debate would get angry.

But Jesus threw them a curveball. He didn't pander to either side. He went back to the original intent of marriage: one man, one woman, together as one to glorify God. He then explained that while divorce was allowed by Moses, it was because people had "hard hearts". It was allowable, but not the best God had intended.

Then we looked at 1 Corinthians 6:12 where Paul addresses the Corinthians who were pulling the line, "Well, I'm saved so I can do anything and get forgiven, right?" Paul very strongly responds by saying, "'Everything is permissable for me' but not everything is beneficial."

Our conversation led to what are things that our culture, even our Christian culture says is allowable, but is not God's best for us.

My example was that I have to be gone for four days to go to this recruiting fair in Seattle. According to my district's policy, I'm not able to take more than 3 discretionary days off in a row. This was a problem. I had several people tell me, "Oh, just call in and say you're sick the last day." or "Say it was something else, nobody will know."

But the truth was I would know. I would know lying was wrong. It wasn't ethical even if "everyone does it". No matter how much I would rationalize (or as Pastor Greg says tell myself "rational lies") or blame my district's policy, I would know and everyone else I talked to about the situation would know that I had lied. What kind of blessing from God would I forfeit if I deliberately said, "You know God, you said you'd take care of me, but I think I know better so I'm just going to fake being sick so I don't lose pay,"?

I didn't lie. I put in for four days. I talked with my administrator quite honestly. And guess what? God took care of me. My administrator cleared me for the fourth day. I won't lose pay. God honored my faithfulness and the fact that I took a stand and said, "Yes," to integrity even though Christian friends and colleagues had said, "No biggie."

So my question is what have you accepted as "allowable" that is not really God's best?

• Is it fudging on your taxes because God knows you really can't afford to pay it all?
• Is it not being honest with that friend because maybe he or she won't like me if I speak the truth?
• Is it laughing at that off-color, racist or sexist joke just to fit in? Is it making the joke just to feel accepted?

In this morning's service, this verse was read and it really resonated with me. It's from Psalm 25:21:

May integrity and uprightness protect me, because my hope is in You.

Is your hope really in Him and His ability to take care of you?

Things that excite me!

1. Jesus! No this is not the spontaneous Sunday School answer. Jesus really is exciting! Reading through Matthew has been wonderful. It's like meeting up with an old friend at a coffee shop and kicking yourself for letting the friendship go for so long.
2. Pastors who tell it like it is! If you have never read any posts of Perry Noble or Steve Furtick, I would highly recommend you read this one and this one. These guys love Jesus and have a passion for reaching the lost.
3. Bones! I started my anatomy unit last week and dang it, I just love studying the human body! My students just finished their bone project where they had to meticulously draw to scale the skeleton of one of their group members. I was really picky too. I had one kid redraw the clavicle 13 times. (The clavicle is also known as your collarbone by the way). In the end though, the projects look great!
4. Fresh and Easy market! One just came to my neck of the woods and I love it. It has everything I need for cheap AND they have constant samples which made me a loyal customer from day one.
5. My microwave's normal again! My hometeam gals got to hear my story of how my nacho chips caught on fire in my microwave last week. The strange thing is that my chips, cheese and plate were not burned at all. In fact, they tasted normal (well, I didn't taste the plate, but there were no burn marks). It wouldn't have been so weird had I not just read Exodus 3!

Some of my favorite things...

So I have this reputation for liking off-beat things that everyone else just goes, "Where did you ever find that?" But nevertheless thought I'd share the things that keep me entertained.

1. Top Gear: What can I say? It's a car show for people who like cars and people like me who like to pretend I know anything about cars. Anyway, it's just really funny. My favorite episode is the Caravaning Trip.

2. Once: The movie is okay (it's rated R for the language, but the story is actually realistic), still the music is what makes it worthwhile.

3. Persepolis: A French-language cartoon memoir of a young girl growing up in Iran? Does it get any better than this!

Flannelgraph Heroes

I don't remember the Bible saying anything about Jesus being a member of the Bee Gees.

Being a PK(pastor's kid) for 21 years, I heard all the major Bible stories and then some over and over and over again. An aura always seemed to surround Biblical characters as if they always knew what to do and if they didn't, they listened to what God said. My flannelgraph view of Moses, Jacob, Joseph and Abraham had been basically unchanged since elementary school when our church really did use cut out pieces of flannel to represent different Bible characters.

This is the first time in my life that I've actually read through the Bible instead of taking a little here, a little there, do a subject study on this, read a section of that, etc. And I've been stunned by my own naive view of these people I've known about my whole life. Here's what I've found:

• Flannelgraph Moses: A little scared at times, but basically a nice guy who did what God said and then messed it up in the desert.
  
• Reality: Moses was a pain in the behind! He argued and complained with God over stupid things ("What if they don't like me? What if they think I'm a liar? I don't like speaking in front of people."), doubted God's promises, got fed up as a leader and wanted to bail out. In fact, when you actually read the whole parting of the Red Sea account, Moses has very little to do with anything! It's God, God, God, God! Moses was just kind of standing there.


• Flannelgraph Abraham: Faithful, old guy who got a kid after a while, almost killed his kid, but didn't and has a song about him that's similar to the Hokey Pokey but you praise the Lord instead of "that's what it's all about".
• Reality: Abraham messed things up too! He lied about his relationship to his wife...twice! He gave in to his wife's poor idea about Hagar and then gave in to her again when Sarah complained about Hagar. Yes, he showed great faith, but at other times you wonder where his heart was.
• Flannelgraph Joseph: A nice kid, who had mean brothers. He got sold into slavery in Egypt, ran away from a horny woman, got put in prison anyway, interpreted a bunch of dreams and then became the (almost) King of Egypt. He forgave his brothers and gave them stuff.
• Reality: Joseph rocks my world! Of all the Patriachs (does he even count? I'm not sure why everyone leaves Joseph out), he's the one I'd want to be like the most. He shows constant integrity, faithfulness and passion amid struggle after struggle. When his brothers come to Egypt, he doesn't just give them a group hug and cry a lot. He tests their motives. He throws one brother in jail and demands that the rest bring Benjamin. Then he plants his own silver cup in Benjamin's bag as yet another test of his brothers' sincerity. It takes Judah sobbing at Joseph's feet, offering to take Benjamin's place before Joseph let's himself known.

So what did I learn from this?

1. You have to read the Bible. Let me say it another way. YOU have to read the Bible. Not the pastor who tells you what it says. Not the VeggieTales version with dancing cucumbers and singing grapes. YOU have to read it yourself. You have to read the BIBLE. Not a commentary. Not a Bible study. The BIBLE itself. Otherwise, you're just getting flannelgraph heroes, not the real deal.
2. God uses whomever He wants to bring Himself glory. Right about the second time Moses was complaining, I would have kicked him off the mountain and started looking elsewhere. It's interesting to think that sometimes God uses us in spite of us. I'd like to be the kind of person, like Joseph, who God works through.