Naomi Reed's Blog, page 3

Easter Saturday

It’s a hard day, Easter Saturday. It can feel like it makes no sense to any of us. Why did it have to be that awful? Why was there so much pain and weeping and mockery? Was there no other, easier, way? And what sort of ending is it that after all of that, Jesus’ body was taken down and wrapped in spices, because it was going to rot. Today at our house on Easter Saturday, we’re making a puzzle. It’s all in pieces at the moment and it makes no sense at all. Nothing fits together and we can’t see how it will end up, ever. Except that we have the picture on the box. And the picture on the box reminds us that there was something bigger than anybody (back then, or even today), could comprehend or imagine. The tomb was found empty and the body wasn’t there. It had no need of spices because it wasn’t going to rot. Jesus rose from the dead. The story wasn’t over then, and it’s still not over, today.

 

Palm Sunday

We visited Jerusalem in 2013 and we spent weeks walking down narrow laneways and cobblestone streets, imagining what it might have looked like, 2,000 years earlier… especially on that first Palm Sunday – when Jesus rode through the streets on a donkey and he was suddenly surrounded by branches and coats and noise and praise and anticipation! Imagine being there on that day, and hearing the crowd cry out in praise and expectation and wonder, at the sight of the Son of David – and then joining in the singing because something so wonderful was happening, that if the people didn’t praise him, the rocks themselves would cry out! (Luke 19:40) It’s an amazing thought, but even better than that, is the chance to sit here on this Palm Sunday – on these familiar streets, with these familiar noises and stories, and these enduring promises that Jesus will come again and make all things new… and feeling the same awe and wonder, because we have the chance to sing and say thank you, today.

Christmas 2014… the impossible

This morning, I read Luke 1, again.

The angel promised Mary a child, a Saviour, and she said, “How can this be?” … as if the answer was going to be simple.

The angel replied, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you and the power of the Most High will overshadow you… so the holy one to be born will be called the Son of God.”

What did Mary think then? Did she start to question… with her eyes wide, wondering what he meant?

But before she had a chance to say anything, the angel said to Mary that her relative Elizabeth would bear a child in her old age… “For nothing is impossible with God.”

And that’s where the conversation turned, it would seem… for Mary, and for all of us.

For me, I tend to acknowledge that nothing is impossible with God and then I go back to dealing within the realm of the possible. I give lip service to the concept that God can do anything, whenever he likes, and then I operate within the laws of the natural world, for good reason. Sometimes, when the impossible would directly benefit the people I love, for example the removal of certain rogue cells or cancer mutations, then I pray for it, fervently.

But what about when the impossible would lead to temporary shame or disgrace, or even fierce rejection by those that we love? What then? Would we want the impossible then? Would we pray fervently for the plans of God, or the mercy of his savior, then? Would we hold out our hands in delight, and say to God, “Oh, yes please. Let it be to me, just as you’ve said.”

This morning, I read Luke 1, again… and I thought about shame and ridicule… and the moments of disgrace that we’ve all lived through and I was quiet again, remembering that God’s heart was so large for his people and his viewpoint so enormous, that he gave his only Son, to bring about the impossible, and deal with our shame and disgrace forever, so that we could be part of his kingdom forever. It’s amazing.

Next week, I’m booked to present ‘Mary Remembers’ at a women’s prison in Sydney. Please pray that the message of God’s grace and forgiveness would be impossibly clear, even within our shame and disgrace… because the promise of a son to Mary was the promise of redemption, for every single one of us.

With love at Christmas from Naomi

September 2014… a red brick house

In July this year, I was up to my tenth and final story for the Interserve book. That was exciting! My plan was to interview people who had served overseas and then returned to a cross-cultural ministry in their home country. So I left my winter coat at home in Australia, and the boys and I flew to London for a northern summer. Two days later, I got off a bus and found myself at the Headington shops, Oxford. I took a picture straight away. There were pretty white houses on either side of the street, with sloping brown roves, and tiny chimneys, and flowers in window boxes. Joe and Rebecca (not their real names) lived in one of the pretty white houses around the next corner. At first, as I approached their house, it looked so quaint and British that I was unsure I was in the right place. It was a long way from the manholes in Bishkek or the jungle in Orissa. So I peered in through their front window before I rang the doorbell, just in case, and I saw elephants on cushions and Pakistani carpets, and then I went back to the doorstep and pressed the doorbell, happily.

The interview was lovely. Joe and Rebecca kept passing me tea and cake, and we talked about what it means to return to one’s home country and find the same joy, the same need and the same opportunities, as they had previously found in Pakistan. It was very encouraging. At some point in the afternoon, though, I started to wish that I could be IN the story, as well as writing it. It was probably a combination of having just interviewed ten amazing people, and stories of God at work around the world, and the fruit and joy of that service… and I do seem to have an ongoing tendency to question the place where I am and the opportunities we have, as a family. Should we move somewhere?

After three hours of interviewing and tea-drinking, Rebecca asked me if I wanted to go for a walk. I said that I did. Together, we walked back past the Headington shops and turned right at the next intersection and found ourselves in a quiet cul-de-sac. We stopped in front of a red brick house with flowers in the front garden and white trim around the windows. It was a very pretty house, but you wouldn’t have looked twice, if you hadn’t known.

“This is where CS Lewis lived for thirty years and wrote the Narnia series,” said Rebecca.

I was immediately desperate to see inside. A man came out and invited us in. I almost tiptoed. I sat down at the desk where CS Lewis typed. I leaned on my elbows and looked out the window, and was sure I could see fauns and dancing trees and beavers in the woods behind his house. Then I touched his black typewriter, and we both walked back outside and through the woods that had inspired the series. Along the way, we talked about the man who had influenced Christian thought, in the 21st century, more than any other. We even visited the church where his gravestone stood. It was simple and unadorned and hardly noticeable. CS Lewis had gone. He’d finished his work.

Two weeks later, I caught the plane back to Australia with the boys, and sat down at my own desk, with my own laptop, and my own view, and my own story and calling, for now.

Thankful.

 

Easter 2014… blessed

Today, there are photos on my facebook news feed… lots of photos, with descriptions of how ‘blessed’ we are. God has ‘blessed’ us with dinners out and comfortable homes and good jobs and current health and relaxing holidays… and we’re thankful.

I agree, I’m thankful too… I’m thankful to God for my family – for Darren and the boys, and a hot shower, and a whole day to sit in this comfortable home and write this next book.

But it worries me, the use of this word. If I say that God has ‘blessed’ me (with these good things, for which I’m grateful)… what will I say on the hard days… on the days when there’s no sunshine, and no comfortable home, and no time to write this next book?

What will we all say when the pain comes back, and we lose that job opportunity, and we can’t get out of the wheelchair, and the doctor phones with the scan results, and we weep over our children, and we can’t remember the last time we didn’t feel fear?

We’re blessed because we’re loved. We’re blessed because Jesus chose the nails. We’re blessed because he walked out of the tomb. We’re blessed because we’re forgiven. We’re blessed, today, because we can know God, and be loved by him.

“Blessed are all those who take refuge in him.” (Psalm 2:12)

April 2014… reasons to stare

They say it’s rude to stare, generally, unless it’s done very discreetly… or unless your profession demands it.

I learnt to stare at university. It was 1986 and we were sitting in a physiotherapy tutorial group. The lecturer said, “Now, observe his scapula. Watch it very carefully. Notice the exact point that the inferior angle begins to move, as the gleno-humeral joint abducts the arm.” Then we stared in hospitals. “The patient is in pain post operatively… so keep an eye on her face as she gets out of bed for the first time.” Then we stared in rehab centres. “Watch his gait carefully and notice whether he has too much lateral horizontal pelvic shift during stance phase. Perhaps he has weak gluts, or a tight iliopsoas?” Staring was a necessary part of the profession – it was the way to diagnose and treat. And then it wasn’t long before I was watching people everywhere, mostly subconsciously, on trains and at the supermarket – noticing leg length discrepancies and weak quads and tight calves and hypermobile thumbs, all without even thinking about it.

Then, in 1993, Darren and I moved to Nepal, and the staring began again, in a different way. Everybody said that the key to cross-cultural adjustment was observation. “Notice everything,” they said. “Every single day, watch the way people greet each other, and communicate, and enjoy their meals, and use their right hand to pass things… then copy them.” We tried to. We didn’t want to offend. I particularly noticed the way my Nepali friends walked to the bazaar, avoiding buffalo and goats, and somehow managing to climb in and out of tuk-tuks, without tripping over extra sari folds. I copied them… and the staring went on for years, although we were distracted in the middle of it, by our three sons. We stared at them too – they were so tiny, and dimpled, and we couldn’t keep our eyes off them. Besides, we needed to figure out how to parent them, and raise them. We didn’t have a clue, so we watched the way our Nepali friends parented their babies – the way they wrapped them, and burped them, and fed them, and carried them in a sling to the water tap. Having little idea ourselves, we copied them, carefully.

But watching and paying attention to people is more than diagnosing and treating and copying. Paying deliberate attention teaches us to love. In 1998, while we were back in Sydney, I did a counseling course. The trainer said, “Watch people’s faces very carefully. Show them care and empathy, listen to them deliberately… concentrate.” He smiled. “And you will understand pain, and tears, and hope.” So I began to watch my friend’s faces more carefully, although discreetly, and I sat with their pain and grief and surprise. I shared my own tears, and quiet hope, and I learnt to appreciate the people who could sit with me, also, and listen.

Perhaps it helped, all that extra watching, because some years later, we were back in Nepal and I started to write. I sat in the middle of our seventh monsoon in Dhulikhel and I wrote about seasons of life, and the questions I had, and the struggles we shared, and the answers we clung to. But I realized I was missing detail. The faces in my stories were clear (and so was their pain, and the way they moved their scapulas), but I couldn’t see the tiny bits in between that would make the stories come alive. I needed to begin watching again, through a different lens, deliberately, to see the colours on the Dhulikhel mountains, and the shine on the paddy fields, and the smell of the turmeric in my pressure cooker. I needed to pay attention to the stories that walked past our window every day, and actually see their jewellery and painted nails and worn chappals. And then, I needed to put the details into beautiful words, so that the reader could see and smell them too.

Yesterday, I caught a train to the city and I read a book along the way, ‘An Actor’s Craft’. Lately, I’ve been turning my stories into performances on stage, in churches and at conventions, and I’ve been figuring out how to act. So I opened my book at the introduction and the author told me what to do, “Watch people,” he said. “Develop a keen fascination for the human condition. Notice the way people move and behave and communicate and breathe when they’re angry. Find out their story… and what makes them come alive… and then live it.” It was a new thing, I thought. Suddenly, I wasn’t watching people to write down their story, or to describe it, or diagnose it, or analyse it, but to embody it, to actually move inside their story, physically, until I could genuinely live it… and show the audience what it means to be human, with surprise and insight and truthfulness.

It’s time to stare again, I decided, so I glanced up and noticed the lady opposite me. She moved her sunglasses further back on her head, and prepared to leave the carriage. She seemed confident, content, she breathed well. She was not angry. Her eyes were calm and her bag was full. But then, whoops, her knee gave way.

Perhaps she needs some quads exercises?

April 2014… Reasons to stare

They say it’s rude to stare, generally, unless it’s done very discreetly… or unless your profession demands it.

I learnt to stare at university. It was 1986 and we were sitting in a physiotherapy tutorial group. The lecturer said, “Now, observe his scapula. Watch it very carefully. Notice the exact point that the inferior angle begins to move, as the gleno-humeral joint abducts the arm.” Then we stared in hospitals. “The patient is in pain post operatively… so keep an eye on her face as she gets out of bed for the first time.” Then we stared in rehab centres. “Watch his gait carefully and notice whether he has too much lateral horizontal pelvic shift during stance phase. Perhaps he has weak gluts, or a tight iliopsoas?” Staring was a necessary part of the profession – it was the way to diagnose and treat. And then it wasn’t long before I was watching people everywhere, mostly subconsciously, on trains and at the supermarket – noticing leg length discrepancies and weak quads and tight calves and hypermobile thumbs, all without even thinking about it.

Then, in 1993, Darren and I moved to Nepal, and the staring began again, in a different way. Everybody said that the key to cross-cultural adjustment was observation. “Notice everything,” they said. “Every single day, watch the way people greet each other, and communicate, and enjoy their meals, and use their right hand to pass things… then copy them.” We tried to. We didn’t want to offend. I particularly noticed the way my Nepali friends walked to the bazaar, avoiding buffalo and goats, and somehow managing to climb in and out of tuk-tuks, without tripping over extra sari folds. I copied them… and the staring went on for years, although we were distracted in the middle of it, by our three sons. We stared at them too – they were so tiny, and dimpled, and we couldn’t keep our eyes off them. Besides, we needed to figure out how to parent them, and raise them. We didn’t have a clue, so we watched the way our Nepali friends parented their babies – the way they wrapped them, and burped them, and fed them, and carried them in a sling to the water tap. Having little idea ourselves, we copied them, carefully.

But watching and paying attention to people is more than diagnosing and treating and copying. Paying deliberate attention teaches us to love. In 1998, while we were back in Sydney, I did a counseling course. The trainer said, “Watch people’s faces very carefully. Show them care and empathy, listen to them deliberately… concentrate.” He smiled. “And you will understand pain, and tears, and hope.” So I began to watch my friend’s faces more carefully, although discreetly, and I sat with their pain and grief and surprise. I shared my own tears, and quiet hope, and I learnt to appreciate the people who could sit with me, also, and listen.

Perhaps it helped, all that extra watching, because some years later, we were back in Nepal and I started to write. I sat in the middle of our seventh monsoon in Dhulikhel and I wrote about seasons of life, and the questions I had, and the struggles we shared, and the answers we clung to. But I realized I was missing detail. The faces in my stories were clear (and so was their pain, and the way they moved their scapulas), but I couldn’t see the tiny bits in between that would make the stories come alive. I needed to begin watching again, through a different lens, deliberately, to see the colours on the Dhulikhel mountains, and the shine on the paddy fields, and the smell of the turmeric in my pressure cooker. I needed to pay attention to the stories that walked past our window every day, and actually see their jewellery and painted nails and worn chappals. And then, I needed to put the details into beautiful words, so that the reader could see and smell them too.

Yesterday, I caught a train to the city and I read a book along the way, ‘An Actor’s Craft’. Lately, I’ve been turning my stories into performances on stage, in churches and at conventions, and I’ve been figuring out how to act. So I opened my book at the introduction and the author told me what to do, “Watch people,” he said. “Develop a keen fascination for the human condition. Notice the way people move and behave and communicate and breathe when they’re angry. Find out their story… and what makes them come alive… and then live it.” It was a new thing, I thought. Suddenly, I wasn’t watching people to write down their story, or to describe it, or diagnose it, or analyse it, but to embody it, to actually move inside their story, physically, until I could genuinely live it… and show the audience what it means to be human, with surprise and insight and truthfulness.

It’s time to stare again, I decided, so I glanced up and noticed the lady opposite me. She moved her sunglasses further back on her head, and prepared to leave the carriage. She seemed confident, content, she breathed well. She was not angry. Her eyes were calm and her bag was full. But then, whoops, her knee gave way.

Perhaps she needs some quads exercises?

December 2013… wrinkles

My facebook page is full of ads for Botox and anti-wrinkle treatment at the moment. When I first saw them popping up in my newsfeed, alongside the get-fit-quick ads, I thought, how do they know? Why are they suddenly targeting my face? And then I laughed and realized. Of course they know. For starters, they know that I’m 45… and they know about mid-life crises and they have access to all the photos on my facebook page! Of course they know, and of course they want to sell me something, quickly, to convince me that I need to do something as soon as possible, before it’s too late, to transform my face and look like a 27 year-old again. Ha.

Just between you and me, there are two things that facebook doesn’t know. It doesn’t know that I don’t want to be 27 again. I had enough fun the first time around. And secondly (and much more importantly), facebook doesn’t know that the people I most respect in my life are worn. They’re worn and lined and broken. They’ve got marks and lines all over them, good marks – the marks of a life lived with intense joy and pain and poverty and leprosy and smokey wood fires and honest disappointment and contagious laughter… and unshakeable hope – the kind of hope that gets them up, every morning, because God has never turned his back on them, or on us.

And in the years to come, I want to be more like them. I want my face to reflect my stories, more and more. I want my stories written all over my face (all those years of wide-eyed wonder, and brokenness and grief, and ridiculous laughter, and undeserved love, and unshakeable hope in what’s to come) – I want them written all over my face, as much as in my books.

And I want to read your stories, too.

So to remind me, I’m posting this photo of our dear friend. She’s Raju’s mum and I think she’s gorgeous.

November 2013… the chocolate brownie

This week we had a pretend competition for the last chocolate brownie. If you’ve never done this, you should. Your friends are all chatting and the brownie is sitting on a plate by itself, and everyone wants it, and everyone thinks they deserve it, and then you have to bid for it. Who deserves it the most? Well, that’s how it was for us, except that in our case, the brownie was merely in our imaginations – gooey and rich and unbelievably moist. Who would get it if we did have one? So we shared our stories. That’s when I realized I wasn’t going to win, this week. Nothing bad happened. Stevie finished the HSC, we went out to dinner to celebrate, I had two speaking engagements in Tamworth and they were both wonderful, and the Jacarandas are in full bloom, and what could be better than that? But I had to think of something.

So I told my friends that I set the car alarm off three times this week. It was true. The first time was when I was parked outside a busy church. I had given my talk inside the church and lots of people chatted to me afterwards, and then I walked to the car, feeling relaxed and happy. I put my radio mic and books down beside the car, and my key in the keyhole. That’s when the car started wailing, LOUDLY… echoing all the way down the street and back into the church.

“NO!” I said to the car, “It’s me, shhh, I’m not a thief, we’re friends, be quiet!”

But the car didn’t listen. It kept wailing. So I panicked. I opened and closed the doors. I poked my head against the dashboard, looking for turn-off switches. There weren’t any. I should tell you at this point, that the car is second-hand and we have only just purchased it recently (in case you’re thinking I’m an idiot). We’ve also never owned a car alarm before. So then I started moving more slowly, deliberately, worrying that the people in the church might be thinking I was stealing the car. I put the calm show on for about three seconds, and then I panicked again. I tried all the doors again, the car still wailing. Then I jumped into the driver’s seat and put the key in the ignition. The alarm stopped. Everything was very quiet. I shrunk into my seat. Then I drove off and met Darren and that should have been the end of the story, except that I managed to set the car alarm off another two times, this week.

Our friends liked the story. They laughed at the right bits and they were sympathetic. But I didn’t get the brownie. Sometimes we simply don’t deserve it. Our friends are carrying different burdens to the ones we’re carrying. They have pain and worries that are more wearisome than ours, this week. So we sit and listen. We hug them and pray for them and then we vie with them for the last brownie… because we know that it’s a shared life. There are funerals and failures and fires and celebratory dinners and Jacarandas and wonderful weekends in Tamworth, and sometimes it’s all mixed up together. There are days when the burden is heavy and we can hardly manage a cup of tea. There are other days when we wish we had never used that tone of voice, or choice of words, because it added to the pain and brokenness. And there are other days when we laugh at ourselves, and our car alarms, and our hopeless vulnerability. I know that in years gone by, I’ve had more reasons to have the brownie. I’ve lived through war and evacuations and five miscarriages and grief and fear and misunderstanding. And I know that I’ll feel that level of pain and distress again, perhaps sooner than I think. And so will we all, in this shared life. And when we do feel it again, our friends will drop by. They’ll sit and listen and hug us… and cry real tears and groan silently, because they know they’ve been there too… and then they’ll hand over the brownie, quietly and gently, with hope in their eyes, because they know, and we know, that it was never about the brownie, in the first place.

“Carry each other’s burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ.” (Gal 6:2)

August 2013… the Zookeeper

I usually try and warn Darren in advance. “I have a new idea,” I say, smiling.

“Really?” he says, waiting.

“And I think it might be good,” I say, still smiling. “It might even work!”

Then he looks at me, interested, so I add in a qualifying comment, “But then again, it might not work.” And we both laugh, remembering all the other ideas.

My latest big idea happened in April. I was contacted by someone in Moree and she asked me if I could run drama workshops and evening performances, in the north-west, with an aim to present the gospel to non-church families. I said yes! Then she wanted to know if I could bring a team with me, and whether we could incorporate music and story into the drama performances, involving up to 80 children in each place?

I said yes again. I would love to. So I sat at our laptop for a fortnight, and I hardly moved. I watched the ideas and the story seep out beneath my fingertips. I knew that the story began in a wide open valley, with rich pasture and wild flowers and mountain peaks. And I could see the animals in the valley – the slithering lizards and swaying elephants and swinging monkeys and leggy giraffes and brown bears and kangaroos and even the prickly old tree porcupine. The whole of the valley was an open-plain zoo. But the best thing about the zoo was the Zookeeper. He loved the animals. He’d chosen each of them, and every day he would walk with them and talk with them and feed them with his own hand, reminding them they could play wherever they wanted in the valley. But the one place they couldn’t play was on the other side of the sparkling river, in the dark forest.

By the end of the fortnight, I had the complete idea and the script and the team. We were all excited. Mel started thinking about masks and costumes and craft ideas. Sam began working on the scripts for teenagers. Bruce started working on the lyrics and song ideas. I practiced the script with our sons, and anyone else who walked through our front door. They all liked it. Soon, I wondered whether the idea would work as a picture book, or an enhanced CD, or a package for kids clubs, and schools, and family services. There were so many possibilities. What about puppets and screen shots and flyers and a Disney movie?

On Sunday, we’re presenting The Zookeeper for the first time at Winmalee Presbyterian Church, 9am on the 1st September. I’m a bit nervous. What if it doesn’t work? What if the kids don’t respond well? What if we forget our lines? What if I’m kidding myself? So last night, I sat in church and I worried a bit. I prayed. I tried to remember whose message it was. And then this morning I went for a run and I listened to a song by Martina McBride. “God is great, but sometimes life ain’t good, and when I pray it doesn’t always turn out like I think it should. But I do it anyway … yeah, I do it anyway…”

And I remembered that it’s God who defines whether something ‘works’, or not, and whether an idea is good or not. Everything comes from him, and his definitions aren’t mine. His plans aren’t mine. He sees further ahead than I do. It’s true that we may not produce the picture book, or the enhanced CD. We may not even make it as far as Moree. But that’s okay, because today, what matters is that we’re faithful to him, with the small thing in front of us. So we will learn these lines for Sunday, and we will enjoy the music and the puppets. And we’ll pray that someone, somewhere, hears the message and knows deeply what it means to be loved by the Zookeeper.