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Wednesday, August 26, 2015

Front Porch Stories

Neighbor kids and adults bike by at all hours in front of the corner house I rent from my roommate.  Sometimes they ride on the sidewalk; sometimes on the street.  A little neighbor girl goes by in her little electric car that can never quite negotiate the tightness of the turn.

Today a little boy wandered down and asked my roommate if she had a kitty cat he could pet.  She did not.  "How about a dog?"  Not that either.  Fortunately other people came by walking their dogs, and he could pet them, and he was pleased.

Meanwhile, our next-door neighbor produced a hose from somewhere amidst the beat-up cars and mountains of stuff surrounding his house.  He handed it to a lean, gray-haired man in a stained T-shirt and a Sherwin Williams cap and warned him, "It'll come out like a fire hose when it turns on."  And the gray-haired man twisted the spout and blasted his bicycle clean.  He rubbed it dry with a rag that he then balled up in his hand.

That older man's name was Dean.  I know that because he parked his bike in front of the porch where my roommate and I were sitting, and called up to us: "Doesn't look like fifteen years old, does it?"

We concurred that it did not, and praised the bike accordingly.  This was enough encouragement to entice Dean to walk up into the hostas at the side of the house, rest his arms on the porch rail, and talk with us for the next two hours.  During those two hours we learned:
  • All about the previous previous owner of the house: his devastating break-up, his fight with cancer, and his eventual death by suicide somewhere in Nebraska.
  • How Dean knew our next-door neighbor from their respective trades as a painter and a floor guy.
  • How Dean met several of his previous girlfriends, and what became of them.  He illustrated these stories with yellowed newspaper cuttings featuring the women in question.
  • The improvements he made on a house down the street in his job as a painter.  These stories were accompanied by pictures as well: a disintegrating packet of realty photos printed off in color.
At one point, Dean asked us how the shower in our basement was working.  I looked at my roommate.  "Shower??"  Here we were, under the impression that the house had nothing but a claw-foot tub until we moved in.  But apparently there was a little shower under the basement stairs where our laundry machines now sit.  Dean used to use it to clean up after a day's work before hanging out with his friends what is now my roommate's house.  "I have a picture with the old owner, right there in the dining room, but I don't have it with me in the truck."

While Dean stood twisting his now-dry rag in his hand and reminisced about days gone by, our little neighbor friend returned.  We still had no dog for him to pet.  But would he like to play with the remote for the LED lights on our porch?  Indeed he would!

He started kindergarten today and his teacher was "Mmmmrs Mmmmmiller" and he couldn't remember the name of his school but he liked it. 

"And do your mom and dad know where you are?"
"They're right there by the silver car," and he pointed a few houses down toward a heavyset lady in a turquoise shirt.

So he scampered around turning our porch lights from red to green to blue and back, and asking at intervals if he was big enough to ride the bike still sitting on our sidewalk; the one that Dean had polished up two hours before.  And Dean kept talking from the hostas, and soon the little boy's mom started yelling for him and he went running back down the street (where he got an earful from his mom and I had to go explain that he had thought his mom could see him and hadn't meant to run away).  And dusk overtook the street, ending another interesting evening on the front porch.

Sunday, August 23, 2015

An eBook by me, for you!

This summer, I've made a deliberate effort to write more. (Hence the birth of this blog.)

The most daunting of all writing projects is a book. Today I'm pleased to share with you my first book!!!

To thank you for your readership, I'm publishing it here, in its entirety, for free!  Yeah!

Here it is, guys. Enjoy.


"This is a horse. A pig is rit here."

"Here is a lamb. You know wat this is and it says"

"A turkey says. And a cow says moo."

Can't wait for this project to take the non-fiction world by storm! New York Times best seller list, here I come! 

Friday, August 21, 2015

Stones of Remembrance: The Post-College-Ish Years

This is the last in my series about my "Stones of Remembrance," the times that God has shown his faithfulness in big ways in my life.   (You can start with these: Part 1 Part 2)  Today I'm wrapping up the series.

Stone 9:  New Perspectives

After undergrad, some friends and I moved into the University Apartments, where we planned to live intentionally among the many international grad students in our complex.  My roommates and I joined a church plant together.  I started my master's in speech therapy.

Those three years were some of the richest in my life, filled with friends, laughter, and fun.  We celebrated Thanksgivings with friends from all over the world, our furniture sitting out on the grass because we had to move it out of our apartment to accommodate five tables of family-style dining.

I thought that if I made friends with people, God would somehow eventually wiggle His way into those friendships.  Actually, though, in spite of the richness of my friendships at that time, there were many people I was close to that I never actually shared God's story with.  (I am still guilty of this, frequently.  But I honestly believe that his is the most important story out there!)

A very practical way that God worked was by providing me an opportunity to take a class called Perspectives, which gave me a better foundation for what international ministry can look like, including the very practical advice to verbally share the gospel, rather than hoping that friendliness will independently lead people to the Lord.  That class also solidified my plan to go to China, rather than just "abroad," because I learned in that class about the geographic locations that have the least exposure to Jesus.

Stone 10:  God's provision: $$$

I didn't like having to raise my own support to teach in China.  Who wants to ask people for money?  But the God provided for my needs for three years through the generosity of friends, family, and churches.  Many of you are reading this here.  Thank you!  My experience with support-raising showed me that God was faithful even in a task that I did NOT want to do.

Stone 11:  China's Christian Millions

The above title is the name of a book, China's Christian Millions, that describes the growth of the church in China in the last several decades.  Briefly, with the establishment of the Communist government in 1949, foreign missionaries were expelled from the country, and China's tiny, fragile Christian population was left to fend for itself.  Watchers of China were shocked when China opened up in the seventies and eighties, as they found that the church had not only survived, but increased!  The rural house church movement grew in spite of significant persecution, especially in the early decades of the Party's governance.

Living for three years in China, I got to see this amazing phenomenon with my own eyes.

I saw it in my first month in China, attending a large registered church in the University district of Beijing, packed full of college students and young professionals lifting their voices in worship songs that I sing too.

I saw it in a conversation with a young Christian woman who believed that the Lord was sending her to the Middle East to share the Father's story with Muslims living there.  She told me, "China has so many people because God wants to use China."  I got goosebumps; I believed her.

I saw it in one of my local friends who was boldly sharing hope with others in her workplace, counseling them through depression and health problems, even as her own job situation was made more complicated by her faith.

I saw it last summer, when I visited China with my American friend, and we sat across the table from two college students who invited us into their morning quiet time.  We all silently read a chapter of John and then each shared an insight.  We prayed together, literally, with all four of our voices lifted at the same time.  They sang a hymn in Chinese.  My friend and I sang "Great is thy Faithfulness."  And then we sang a song together that all of us knew, before getting up from the table to go about our day.  (That hour still comes to mind frequently when I think about all the programming and hierarchy that we try to add to our American Bible studies, and wonder if it muddles the joy of just reading, singing, praying, and learning together.)

The privilege of worshiping God in China, where the unlikeliest of Christian movements has brought millions to salvation, reminded me that God is bigger than we give him credit for; that his arm is not too short to work, and that he is able to do "far above all we can ask or think" (Ephesians 3:20).

Stone 12:  Moving Here

There were several things I prayed for when it was time to move back to America: a job in a city that had an international population and where I knew at least one person (and preferably in Iowa because Iowa is bomb), a household of Christian women to live with, and a church to join.

God provided all of these.  I know he doesn't always give us what we ask for.  But in that case, he did!  :)  He has led me through many transitions in the last ten years, and in each place he has provided what I need.


Well, the mosquitoes have just started nibbling on my face (I'm sitting on the front porch - where else?), so it's time to wrap this up.  Thanks so much for reading here.  What are YOUR stones of remembrance?

Sunday, August 16, 2015

Stones of Remembrance: The College Years

This week I'm writing out my "Stones of Remembrance," the times that God has shown his faithfulness in big ways in my life.  Great is his faithfulness!  (You can start with Stones 1-4, HERE.)

Stone 5: Belize

I was 20.  I heard about a summer mission trip through a mailing at my college, and I decided to sign up.  I went with a team of about 10 American high school and college students to volunteer at an agricultural school for the deaf that was run by a Mennonite colony there.   We replaced a roof, harvested corn, painted benches, and hung out with the older students and staff that were there for the summer.

(IMPORTANT SIDE NOTE: One day I'd like to write more on how my views of short-term missions have changed over the years, and how many times our "paint a building!" "hug an orphan!" model can be counterproductive for the economic and spiritual development of the countries we visit.  But I am a repeat offender of that type of trip, and I can't deny that God has used them in my life.  And I highly recommend the book Toxic Charity for more on this topic.)

Here is what I gained from my first mission trip:
  • A value for foreign missions, and an incipient desire to one day move abroad to do similar work
  • An unforgettable cross-cultural experience
  • The best team experience I've ever had, including some relationships I still have, 11 years later
Stone 6:  Transfer

The same summer, I decided to transfer to the University of Iowa.  Almost on a whim, I filled out an online application and felt immediate peace that the Lord wanted me there.  This was after two years of feeling like I had made the wrong college decision.

I look back on this decision as one of the clearest leadings of the Lord in my life, and it ushered in a few years of steady spiritual growth.

Stone 7:  Cracks in the shell

While at the University of Iowa, I got involved in InterVarsity college ministry.  With the ministry's emphasis on discipleship and outreach, a wonderful thing happened.

Back story - High school Alison was like this: I had a class of only about 30 people, and I was with them for a total of six years in my little private school.  By the end of those six years, I was still scared to talk to like half of those people.  I was once told, at my part-time job, that I was "very good at not talking."

But in college, I got involved in stuff, started reaching out, met other believers, and, hooray!  An extreme introvert became a little less extreme.  (But let's be honest - still pretty good at not talking.)

I know lots of Christians who have stories of dramatic personal change when they give their testimonies of God's work in their lives.  Because I followed God early in life, I don't have any stories of my years in drug rehab or how God saved me from my life of crime.  But what I described above is one of the biggest personal changes I can attribute to God's work in my life.

Stone 8:  China '05

I was 21.  A local church was sending a college team to spend a couple weeks at an English training school in China.  I went along, and the seed was planted: I could see how the needs of China (English, and eternal hope) coincided with my own skills and interests (language, and cross-cultural ministry).  That seed grew into a little tree called "Alison moving to China for three years," but that didn't happen until later.


Stay tuned for Part 3!  What are YOUR stones of remembrance?

Belize 2004

Saturday, August 15, 2015

Stones of Remembrance: The Early Years


 A Bible story from Joshua 4, paraphrased by me:
Hey Israelites, you just crossed a river on dry land.  Don't ever forget!  Have twelve men carry twelve stones on their shoulders and make them into a memorial so that your kids and your kids' kids and your kids' kids' kids will ask you about those rocks, and you can tell them.  "Israel crossed this Jordan River on dry ground, for the Lord your God dried up the waters before you." And everyone on earth will know that the hand of the Lord is mighty.
The ancient Israelites were forgetful.  God did amazing things for them: A rescue from slavery!  Miraculous food from heaven!  A land flowing with milk and honey!  Forgiveness and redemption, again and again!  But when they faced hunger, outside pressure or even their own discontentment, they forgot the Lord's faithfulness and turned away from him.

I wonder if they ever looked at that pile of rocks and told their children how the Lord led them through the desert and finally across the Jordan river, on dry land, toward their promised homes.

Every Christian I have ever met is just as forgetful, and I believe that our forgetfulness steals our joy, saps our gratitude, and weakens our trust in God's goodness.  My next series of blog posts will be a short recounting of the ways God has worked in my life: my own stones of remembrance.


Stone 1:  Salvation

I was four.  My older brother was asking my mom questions about life after death, and she explained the Gospel to him: that all people are sinful and destined for eternal death unless they trust in Christ.  My brother wanted to pray and ask Jesus into his heart.  I wanted to be like my brother, so I did too.

Can a four-year-old understand the Gospel?  Probably not.  But I do remember that day, and I believed in God and Jesus throughout my childhood.  The first memory I have of God is the day I invited him into my heart.

Stone 2:  My parents' prayers

When I was really little, I had to have a minor bladder operation of some sort.  I remember two things: I got a mini chalkboard as a reward (hooray!), and my mom stopped by the church to pray.  We walked into the quiet, stained-glass sanctuary in the middle of a weekday.  The door was open, but I don't remember seeing even the priest there.  And we put down the kneelers and prayed about my bladder. :)

When we were kids, my mom and her friends started a group called Moms in Touch that prayed us all through school and beyond.  My dad led our prayers at the dinner table.  Our whole family knelt by my parents' bed at bedtime and prayed our requests (Mine was usually for my brother to stop bugging me; my little sister usually put in a good word for candy and gum).  I spent most of those family prayer times systematically pulling the stuffing out of the bedspread, so I can't say that they felt really meaningful at the time, but now I look back and thank God that he gave me parents who love him and pray for me.

Stone 3:  Church camp

I was thirteen.  I was going through my several-decades-long awkward phase, and I was way too shy to enjoy youth group or church events.  But for some reason I did go to church camp once, and it changed me!  The emotional crescendo of Christian events was real for me that year; I listened to the speakers and was moved.  They encouraged us to read the Bible and pray, and I did.  From that time on, I read the Bible on my own, with pen in hand.

(I am grateful that I can remember my first reading through the Bible.  When I read through Paul's letters, they were so immediate and conversational that I felt like he was talking to me.  And I remember reading through the Old Testament law and being so fascinated by all the weird regulations that I would try to make my own unleavened bread out of flour, water, and oil).

Thirteen was the age at which my faith became my own.

Stone 4:  Doubt and Deliverance Therefrom

I was nineteen.  I took a college course that called my faith in the Bible into question.  As an illustration of my intellectual turmoil, I remember the day the prof asked the class, "Who thinks it matters if the story of Jonah is fact or fiction?" and I was the only one who raised my hand.  It mattered to me!  If I was going to stake my life on a book, I wanted to know if it was true or false!

After a year or so of doubting God and his word, he restored my confidence.  This was the gift of faith, not a result of having my questions resolved, because I didn't find a fully satisfactory answer to my doubts about the Bible.  (I still think Jonah, for example, reads like it might be fiction.  But I know better than to admit that on a public blog that my Christian friends read...  or do I??)

God's restoration of my faith in him and his word is perhaps the most important thing he has done in my adult life, and I find my faith far more resilient now that it has been tested by doubt.  I've written more about this experience in my post On Faith, Doubt, and Biblical Inerrancy.


The Lord has done great things for us, and we are filled with joy.  -Psalm 126:3
OK, readers, thanks for sticking with me.  Find Part Two here.  What are YOUR stones of remembrance?

Sunday, August 9, 2015

Happy Ameriversary!

There's something about an anniversary that brings out Introspective Alison.

A few days ago, I was leading some of my patients through Orientation Group (a daily review of the Who, What, When, Where, and Why of their lives in brain injury rehab).  Midway through the group, I stared at the date I'd written on the whiteboard and realized: It was an anniversary!

It was August 5, my three year Ameriversary.

I can easily remember that I moved back to America on August 5 because Nostalgic Alison (aided by Procrastinating Alison) kept the receipt for my PEK - CID flight saved on my desktop for years after I'd actually returned.  I blogged about that receipt in this post, which chronicles God's faithfulness to me during my first year back in America.

On my 6-month anniversary of living in Asia, I wrote a little post called Chinaversary.  It was a list of the hard and good things the Lord gave me in my first semester as an English teacher in China, including:
  • Overnight train rides that I thought would never end
  • Eating animals and plants I didn't even know existed
  • The blockage of almost all my favorite websites
  • The 60th birthday of the PRC
  • A brown Christmas
  • Cooking without cheese
  • Baking without butter
  • Carrying on my most valued relationships by Skype and e-mail
  • Teaching 190 sweet, motivated, delightful students
  • Having my assumptions challenged
  • Seeing God's word through fresh eyes (not mine)
  • Being the fastest bicyclist on the street instead of the slowest
  • Joy, purpose, and satisfaction
This week I'm reflecting on some of the hard and good things the Lord has given me in three years back in America, including:
  • Cooking with cheese
  • Baking with butter
  • Being in the same country as my family for my sister's wedding and the birth of my brother's babies.
  • Finding a job
  • Re-learning how to be a speech therapist
  • Finding a church
  • Living in a sweet old Mansion with my friends
  • Breathing clean air, and everything that clean air lets me see: Sunsets, clouds, and stars.
I am so grateful for an easier return than I ever expected, and for the many good things and good people that fill my life here in Iowa.  In reflection, I would say the hardest things about returning to the States are these two:

1)  I am forever split.  The people that I love, the places I want to be, and the person that I am are all divided between two continents.  There are parts of me that emerge only in China; for example, the part of me that gets on a stage to sing songs to a packed house because in the China-fabulous world of being a foreign teacher, part of your job is to entertain.

And there are the people.  I can't just gather up all the people I care about and keep them with me in the same country.

If I'm here, I miss there.  If I'm there, I miss here.

However, even as I have missed people on both sides of the planet, I've also realized:

2)  Life goes on.  When I flew away to China in 2009, all my relationships in America were frozen in time.  The friends I had in 2009 are the friends I thought I would return to in 2012.  But life went on.  People got married, had kids, moved away, moved on.  I moved too; my home base in 2009 was not the town I moved back to.  I was unprepared for how hard it would be to re-join the relationships I still had, and to re-build a social circle to replace the one that had inevitably changed while I was away.  Three years later, this is still hard.

Now that I'm here, my ties in Asia are likewise changing and weakening.  My former students are getting jobs, spreading across the country, getting married, moving on.  If I moved back there, I would have the same challenge as I've had here: build up the friendships that still exist, and then start fresh, building relationships with a brand new bunch.

In spite of these difficulties, the experiencing of living in another place -- really living, not just visiting -- has made both the going and the coming back completely worth it. 

Tuesday, August 4, 2015

What's the Scandal?

I've been thinking about why the undercover Planned Parenthood videos have caused such an outcry.  Certainly it's concerning that the officials in the videos seem to be trying to turn a profit from handing over body parts of aborted babies.  After all, if they were just charging for the expenses incurred in the donation process, why would there be any negotiation - why not just state their expenses?  Why make offhand comments about wanting luxury vehicles?  Why offer to illegally change the surgical procedures of the abortion to keep more baby organs intact?  (I am referring here to the second video, with Dr. Mary Gatter.)

So yes, these things are concerning.  But I don't think they fully explain the gut outrage many people seemed to feel when viewing these videos.  If we were just talking about the poor regulation of pricing for human tissue specimens, I don't think these videos would have caused such an uproar.  What's the real scandal here?

The scandal is this:

Abortion kills humans.  John Piper develops this idea in his article "We know they are killing children. All of us know."  Abortionists know it.  State laws know it (you can be charged with homicide for killing unborn babies in many states).  Expectant mothers know it.  You know it.

You can argue that abortion is the lesser of two evils; that it does kill a human but that the rights and health of the mother are higher priorities, but you cannot argue that abortion does not kill humans.

Descriptions and videos of abortion procedures have always been available if you want them, so the Planned Parenthood videos offer nothing new in the way of convincing us that abortion kills children.  But I think they are scandalous because they remind us that we are killing children, and they remind us in such a callous way that it's hard to ignore.  

Undercover abortion videos taken from the perspective of the mother seeking an abortion usually feature the clinic staff reassuring the mother, providing some basic education about what will happen, and helping her fill out the paperwork.  Clinic staff in those videos use terms like "terminate the pregnancy" - I remember seeing one where the staff awkwardly tried to say that if the "whole pregnancy wasn't removed," then they would have to go in and clean it out.  In our public discourse, we dance around words to help us forget we are killing babies.

But in the recent videos, we see powerful people frankly describing "less crunchy" methods of ending the lives of the tiny babies in the womb.  We see them remark about a "baby boy," not a "male fetus."  We hear their discussion of the head and the lungs and the liver, and suddenly we are reminded: these are humans, and they have value.  All of us know it.

The scandal is this:

Abortion hardens the heart.  Any sin does.  The greed and callousness that can go along with this industry were horrifyingly highlighted in the Kermit Gosnell case of 2013.  Remember him?  According to the grand jury report of his murder trial,
"This case is about a doctor who killed babies and endangered women. What we mean is that he regularly and illegally delivered live, viable babies in the third trimester of pregnancy - and then murdered these newborns by severing their spinal cords with scissors," it states. "The medical practice by which he carried out this business was a filthy fraud in which he overdosed his patients with dangerous drugs, spread venereal disease among them with infected instruments, perforated their wombs and bowels - and, on at least two occasions, caused their deaths." (from the Atlantic article "Why Dr. Kermit Gosnell's Trial Should be a Front Page Story")
How do people get to this point?  Did the Planned Parenthood officials grow up dreaming that one day they could sit at a table and dispassionately discuss the monetary value of an unborn child's head?  Did little Kermit Gosnell plan that one day he would help to usher new lives into the world, only to end them with a scissors to the spinal cord?

Abortion is like any sin.  If you get your first abortion, or perform your first abortion, your conscience might cry out.  But if you do it often enough, your heart will become hard.  Maybe one day you reach the point where all you see are dollar signs and a comfortable retirement.  I don't know.

The scandal is this:

Everyone involved in the abortion industry has blood on their hands.  Everyone.  Providers, consumers, supporters, legislators -- they have blood on their hands.  We know we are killing children. Maybe some people's hearts have hardened, but somewhere along the way, I think we all knew it.

The scandal is this:


I have blood on my hands too.

Want to know one of the most scandalous things Jesus said?
Jesus said to them, “Very truly I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise them up at the last day." (John 6:53-54)
People were very put off by this gruesome statement; Jesus was a lot more appealing before He started talking about drinking blood. Many of His followers left Him then and there.
On hearing it, many of his disciples said, 'This is a hard teaching. Who can accept it?' ... From this time many of his disciples turned back and no longer followed him. (John 6:60, 66)
My sins were paid by the blood of Christ. This is a hard teaching! Who can accept it?
How much more, then, will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself unblemished to God, cleanse our consciences from acts that lead to death, so that we may serve the living God! (Hebrews 9:14)
My conscience was cleansed from acts that lead to death. How? With the blood of Christ.

1 Corinthians 6:20 reminds me that I was "bought with a price."  My sins, no more and no less than even the most prolific abortionist, came with a cost.  The cost was the flesh and blood of my sinless Savior.  I have blood on my hands too.

The scandal is this:

I will worship next to former abortionists in heaven.  I will worship next to providers, consumers, supporters, and legislators who once had blood on their hands, but who have been washed as "white as snow" (Isaiah 1:18).  Even now, in church, I worship next to women who have had abortions and who have been cleansed by the blood of Christ.

Killing babies and bartering for their flesh?  Scandalous sin.  

The death of Jesus for my sins and yours?  Scandalous grace.

Sunday, August 2, 2015

Up, Up, and Away!

I went to the National Balloon Classic in Indianola last Wednesday for Glow Night with my wonderful family.  I had never been!  It was lovely!  The balloons all came meandering up through the sunset in the west and then tried to drop their beanbags on a target in front of a crowd.  Then they all re-inflated in the field at dusk and let us walk among them as they glowed.













I was hooked.  On Saturday morning, some friends and I woke up early and arrived at the balloon field at 5:15 a.m. for "Dawn Patrol."  As you can imagine, it's not safe for balloons to fly at night because they can't see the ground to land.  But they can launch in the dark and land after the sun rises.  We watched these four balloons for about a half hour.  Every so often, one of them would light up for a few seconds.  It was, again, lovely.

The sun rose and my friends and I enjoyed free coffee while we watched the rest of the morning events.  Three large tourism balloons inflated and took off with people who had bought flights.  Then the competition flights began, with the balloons flying from behind us toward the target on the field. 

 












Beautiful!