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- Details
- Written by: Alyssa
- Category: Prayer
Have you ever found that answered prayers can be so awkward sometimes? I have. This week.
There’s the awkward sense of surprise that hey, this actually works. God’s up there listening! which is silly because isn’t that the whole point? If it doesn’t change anything, prayer is a pretty lame pastime.
There’s the awkward sense of humility that God took note of what I asked while around the world bombs fell and sirens blared and families cracked and addicts relapsed. I’m sure mine was not the only prayer God answered, but still. I have been heard and I am humbled.
There’s the awkward sense of bewilderment that this is the prayer you chose to just do? Believe me, if I had to prioritize all the requests I make to God, this would not have been number 1. It is in the top 10 for sure, but I am carrying heavier grief and bigger dreams than the hope tied to this prayer my God has answered.
But.
In the surprise and humility and bewilderment, I am so encouraged to keep praying. Because I know God hears all the prayers, and this simple answer gives me confidence that he is working out complex answers too, weaving deep solutions and healing and hope into all the circumstances that I bring before him.
So let me tell you my prayer and its answer.
- Details
- Written by: Alyssa
- Category: Life
Perfect love casts out all fear
How can I tell you this story, when I thought I was already living it, thought I knew it through and through?
If grace is an ocean, we’re all sinking.
And then I discovered as if for the first time that God loves me (and you, there on the other side of the screen) So. Much. This is the most constant thing in my life, and yet I have found it fresher and deeper than ever before, like a fish discovering water. It is the most amazing thing, the most precious thing, the most liberating thing.
And I have, mercifully, been granted a new metaphor.
You see, I had this picture in my mind of my soul as a house, and Jesus had bought the house, and the Holy Spirit had moved in to do some renovations, and the metaphor was that I may be a fixer-upper, but I belong to the King of Kings, and one day I will be a masterpiece, Hallelujah!
This is well and good, except I happen to know that angry cracks run through the foundation of my soul-house, and anxieties flit like cockroaches in my cupboards.
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- Written by: Alyssa
- Category: Life
My baby is about to be two. I have to keep saying it because even though it's there every day in front of my face, it also catches me off guard in particular moments and I am just stunned with the gift of his life. Did you know he's started counting? Sometimes to three, sometimes seven, sometimes twelve. And he holds my hand just for the love of it now, not always because he needs help to balance.
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- Written by: Alyssa
- Category: Nicaragua 2014
This morning we had breakfast at the market - a typical Nica plate of gallo pinto, eggs, tortilla and cheese. It is so filling and tasty! Also we both had breakfast and coffee for the cost of one breakfast at a tourist cafe here. Chalk up one big point for our budget :) Later in the day, of course, we learned that a typical Nica breakfast is actually included in our hostel, so we will be taking advantage of that for the rest of our stay, but we'll probably still do lunch at the market and brace our budget for Managua and whatever Granada holds.
After breakfast we walked all the way down the beach to the bluffs where a big private ex-pat community is built.
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- Written by: Alyssa
- Category: Nicaragua 2014
Today we had breakfast at a hip surfer restaurant called Republika, where bottomless coffee was included with delicious breakfast options including belgian waffles :) We met a family from Texas with a chatty 6 year old daughter named Ryan. We spent a few hours eating and chatting, then did some grocery shopping, played at the park in the town square and came back to the hostel.
Torre played with a kitten that lives here and learned his first Spanish word - gato. I'm not sure if he knows it's a word or if he thinks this cat is just named gato, but it was really cute to watch him so fascinated and affectionate, even though I was stressed it would end badly with a bite or scratch (it never did).
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- Written by: Alyssa
- Category: suffering
Henri Nouwen says that the purest form of prayer is listening. I have been trying to remember to leave more space in my prayers for God to speak, to guide my prayers or to answer my questions, to say what He wants to say.
Recently while praying for someone I love, Job’s wife came to mind. I wondered into the stillness of an open-ended prayer what she had to do with this situation where a person of strong faith is suffering. She is famous for being not the most supportive wife when her husband was afflicted by Satan himself as a test of his faith. As Job mourns the loss of all his children, his vast material wealth and sits in ashes scraping boils with broken pottery, she chimes in with a single line of dialogue:
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- Written by: Alyssa
- Category: Thoughts
I saw an article on facebook this week titled Dear Church, Here's Why People Are REALLY Leaving You. When I read it, I got a big rant that attacks five cliches of the evangelical church: the big productions many services turn into, the alienation caused by "Christianese" lingo, self-absorption, wrong priorities, and lack of genuine love. Fair enough - those things all suck.
But the article made me sad because all the pain that was harnessed into this attack is directed at big-C Church, which I consider myself a part of. The Church includes all Christians around the world and throughout history, and it is so much bigger than the evangelical movement (which, for all its failures, is part of the Church). I am heartbroken on behalf of the Church that we have been so misunderstood and that we have perpetuated the misunderstandings by inviting people to come to church at 10:30 on Sunday morning.
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- Written by: Alyssa
- Category: Nicaragua 2014
Matt got a pretty bad sunburn on our travel day to San Juan Del Sur, so day 8 we took things pretty easy and Matt hid away from the sun. Our hostel offered free breakfast, so we had a nice slow morning there before moving over to Hostel Esperanza right across the street from the beach. We unpacked properly for the first time of our trip, and I went for a walk down the beach while Torre took his afternoon nap. It was so relaxing to wade in the surf, to feel ocean water washing in over my feet while the sand was pulled under my feet back to the sea by the undertow.
The power was out at this time - it seems there may be unofficial rolling blackouts because the receptionist said when it goes out it's usually back on by sunset at 5:30, and so it was. It was the only power outage we experienced for the rest of the week, but it was a reminder that this beautiful country faces serious struggles and lack of infrastructure.
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- Written by: Alyssa
- Category: Nicaragua 2014
Last Monday we traveled from Canada to Nicaragua, and today we traveled from Ometepe to San Juan Del Sur. We have come so far! At the start of our travel day we bought crackers and a coke from a local grocery store, caught the ferry no problem and did not get hustled by any taxi drivers.
Matt and I split a plate of food for $3 from a stand at the beach, we cabbed it to the border of Rivas for $1 each and took a chicken bus to San Juan Del Sur for about $2 each. The bus was so full, but a man gave me a seat with Torre, and Matt got a place next to me, although he soon gave it up to a woman with a toddler when she got on the bus. The other mom and I talked a little bit before she got off, and Torre slept, and before too long we arrived. I was glad to be next to a window and to have our backpacks in the luggage racks above the seats, not stowed under the bus.
Read more: Nicaragua Day 7: Travel from Ometepe Island to San Juan Del Sur
- Details
- Written by: Alyssa
- Category: Parenthood
We enjoyed a very relaxed Sunday in Moyogalpa, where nearly everything was closed, traffic was minimal, and we hadn't planned any tourist activities anyway. We had breakfast at a cafe up the road in a hostel run by a Dutch woman and a chain-smoking rack-of-bones American man with bottles of cough medicine and a big box of kleenex at his table. Torre was busy moving chairs around, climbing and running around while we enjoyed our breakfast and chatted with the owners.
"What brought you to Nicaragua?" I asked.