Fire Drill

It's the middle of the night. You're tucked under your blankets blissfully unaware of the surrounding world, when you're suddenly woken by the shrill shriek of the fire alarm and the smell of smoke. With your eyes still blurry and your heart pounding, what do you do?

Do you crawl out the window? Call the fire department? Run for the kids? Or do you lie paralyzed as the haze grows thicker?

When I was younger, my parents used to have fire drills. They were awesome. Mostly because it involved crawling out of a second floor window on a special rope ladder. My parents had a plan. They knew who was responsible for grabbing which kids, and when we were older, we knew where we were supposed to meet outside the house. Fortunately, we never had to use that knowledge, and the only time the fire alarm went off was when the chimney fell over onto it, or someone burnt something on the stove. The point is, however, that we were ready.

The same principle underlies the training I've had to complete as a nurse. I train repeatedly for emergency situations, and when they happen, after the initial moment of brain-stopping panic, I know what to do.

If we can apply these principles to physical emergencies, I wonder why we so often overlook such planning for other aspects of our lives. Tragedies occur everyday. We can't, anyone of us, think that we will escape them. And yet, how often do we sit down and think of what we will do when the worst happens? I'm not talking about preparing for a zombie apocalypse and hoarding canned food. Honestly, I'm not even talking about preparing for a true apocalypse. I'm talking about those normal, yet life-changing tragedies: a death or hurt or loss that changes the structure of your life. What do you do when you can't see to take the next step because your eyes are stinging with tears? What is your emergency strategy?

The thing about the rope ladder from the second floor is that the first time down, you're terrified. By the second time, you know it will hold. And on the third, you're seeing how much you can make it swing...well, maybe not. Still, it's an exercise in building faith. The middle of the night with a house on fire is not the best time to discover whether or not the ladder will hold. It's best to make the decision to act before the problem ever arises.

So run your fire drills. Practice your faith. Make sure you know where your ladder lies, so when you need it the most, you won't be paralyzed in a smoke-filled room.


DANIEL 3

Thinking Like Origami

I've taken up a new hobby. As you can probably guess from the title of this post, I'm attempting origami. I say attempting because there is, apparently, a lot more to origami than I had originally guessed. I just wanted to fold paper into awesome flowers and turtles. Then I learned, you have to have the right paper, along with--and who would've guessed it--the ability to understand what the arrows and lines on the instructions mean. So I asked a friend who recommended a book that explains the arrows and lines and has pictures for every bit of folding. Exactly what I needed.

Here's the thing about origami. You spend a lot of time folding paper only to then unfold it again, because you want the creases there so the paper will bend at the correct place later. And I had an aha! moment. How many times in life do we go through situations where we are forced to "fold" and we can't for the life of us say afterward why it was so necessary that we had to do that. Perhaps, if you're like me, you even spend some time asking God that same question...but then maybe, say, ten years later, you suddenly discover that being able to fold in that way is very important to your new situation. I can't tell you exactly what it will be. Maybe you had to leave something behind, or take something along that you didn't want. Maybe you had to say goodbye to someone. Whatever the case may be, I can't help but think that we are a lot like origami.

We have to, first of all, be the right kind of paper. A paper that can be folded without tearing, that can hold a crease without forgetting...and, of course, it helps to be colorful, too. And we have to be paying attention to the right kind of instructions. If you don't understand the basics, you can't jump into complicated designs. It just doesn't work that way. Trust me. I've tried this and several mutilated pieces of paper will attest to the fact. Last of all, we have to practice. Nobody gets anything right the first time. Unless they're one of those absolutely perfect people who can play fifteen instruments and speak twenty languages...definitely not me.

The wonderful thing about God is that when we fail to fold correctly the first time, he just smooths it over and gives it another go. Sometimes, I think I've been stuck on the same fold for months before I finally understand which way I'm supposed to be going. But God is patient, and he has the right instructions. He wrote the right instructions in a way that me and you and everyone on the planet can understand them. So this week, I'm going to practice folding.

Enough

What is enough? Coming directly after the holiday season this may be a little difficult to answer. Well, who am I kidding? It's always difficult to answer, isn't it? It's always hard to decide how much is just enough and not too much, trying to balance a life of comfort with moderation, if you even want to bother with that sort of thing.

Enough means different things for different people. Enough for people in America is undoubtedly different than the enough of people in, say, Africa. We buy filters for tap water because it's not pure enough. A majority of people in the world don't have water that's actually safe to drink. So enough differs based on what you're used to, where you grew up, how much you're used to having. Or does it?

I recently came across a Hebrew word that I've absolutely fallen in love with. It's dayenu (דַּיֵּנוּ ), which means, roughly but beautifully translated "it would have been enough for us". 

So, as the new year begins, I ask myself what would have been enough? Ransom from darkness and death? Eternal, faithful love? Certainly those seem to fit the bill. On top of these, I also find myself enjoying clean drinking water, a job where I get paid for the work I do, life in a country where women are allowed to vote and drive, clean clothes, hot water, good food. Sometimes it's hard to see that none of those things even register on the scale of "enough" because it's already been topped out. I have so much more than enough. Why do I ever think I need more? I'm not saying it's bad to have things, or even to like purified water. But those should not be the things we are relying on to be enough for us, to make us happy or safe or content. Even if I lose everything that I can lose, including hot water (which would probably be the worst struggle to be honest), I would still have more than enough. More than I would ever have thought to ask for on my own. And realizing that, I can be content...at least, until my brain distracts me again with trivial nonsense.

And my God will supply every need of yours according to his riches in glory in Christ Jesus.
Philippians 4:19