Unfortunately, an essay

The character of any essay begun after midnight is dubious, but I enjoyed writing this one so much I thought I’d take the risk of sharing it. This post contains the varied results of an assignment to compile an essay-ish list of “what I like to do," but first, a quote from G.K. Chesterton:

". . . the essay is a typically modern product and is full of the future and the praise of experiment and adventure. In other words, like the whole of modern civilization, it does not know what it is trying to find; and therefore does not find it. . . It is something of a symbol that, for the English schoolboy, an essay is an effort. The whole atmosphere of the thing is full of doubt, experiment and effort. I know not if it is hell, or heaven, or perhaps merely a piece of earth that for ever England; anyhow all this field is paved with bad essays and good intentions. . . The drama or the epic might be called the active life of literature; the sonnet or the ode the contemplative life. The essay is the joke."

What do I like to do? I am tempted to reply that I take great satisfaction in finding myself in my hammock with an open Calvin and Hobbes book and a bowl of frozen mango at midnight. Or that I am never happier than when engaged in pranking some dear friend (bless their heart!) Or that I possess rather a knack for pronouncing rare and unusual Dr. Seuss-invented terms. Methinks these do not quite fit the bill, and that a more respectable list of occupations is in order.

I find pleasure in a great many things which others consider unmitigated work. Indeed, it was one of the delightful peculiarities of my education that I never quite learned how to hate anything which took effort, and I was somehow tricked into enjoying worthwhile pursuits from a young age. These ranged from reading (like a good homeschool girl) to eating spiders (like. . . well nobody I know, except perhaps the Australian Aborigines).  The following essay, if it behaves itself, will constitute an examination of the interests and skills with which I find myself entrusted, and a brief reflection on their implications and possible development.

Knowing how to get dirty (and doing so quite regularly) would hardly be considered a skill or an interest by most people, and I would have to agree. I have come to realize, however, that a great percentage of the population doesn’t have the slightest idea what to do with the outdoors. I like to believe I’m half decent at a handful of the usual boy scout skills (girl scouts don’t do half as many interesting things, I’m convinced), and ever since I almost ran off a cliff at four years old I’ve had an insatiable lust for adventure which has included breaking my leg because of a 75-foot rope swing, jumping from tall cliffs into various bodies of water, and getting Search and Rescue called out for a small climbing expedition that nearly cost my life.

On a slightly tamer note, I grew up amid the verdure of western Washington in a family who dabbled in gardening to the point that our property became rather overrun with raised garden beds. When approximately one hundred and fifty yards of soil, bark, sand, and gravel got dumped on our summer one year, my siblings and I would likely have termed it drowning in gardening. Needless to say, a great deal of character building came our way during those weeks, but there were also the wonders of sprouting green rows and the luscious bowls of tomatoes, raspberries, and handfuls of other produce to make up for the trial of learning how to labor by the sweat of our brows. I have come to love the challenge and saga of gardening, and can achieve reasonable success with a wide range of flowers and vegetables.

The same could be said for my forays into the world of holistic medicine. This highly questionable corner of my life is golden and wonderful on summer afternoons when I dry piles of lemon balm, St. John’s Wort, and nettle, but quite frequently underappreciated by those around me when it means a nasty remedy for some sickness—Dad says the smell alone frightens away the viruses! I take great interest in how our bodies have been designed, and in learning how natural remedies can regain and maintain health. It’s an ongoing process, an unending challenge, and as I consider it, a matter of stewardship.

Neither did I escape the farm-to-table movement sweeping the Northwest, and I have come to possess an insatiable delight in creating a riot for the taste buds. There are few places in which I am more at home than the bustle of a kitchen, whether cooking dinner for my family or designing a formal party for ten couples. There’s absolutely nothing like watching people savor fresh, wholesome food! Ultimately, as every good cook knows, people are the most important part, and hospitality has grown to be a passion of mine. Welcoming people into one’s home for a meal is one of the richest avenues of Christian fellowship and also one of the most effective strategies for evangelism.

Teaching and engaging children has looked slightly different depending on whether I’m taping up a construction-paper model of the solar system with Ella, Caleb, Eli, and a distracting little Pearl, convincing a fiery girl with blonde braids that she will likely survive her scraped knee, or explaining the meaning of forgiveness to a five-year-old. It’s a wild, unpredictable domain I’ve come to relish—all the while facing the personal inadequacy it inevitably brings to the surface.

Several remarkable men and women have modeled for me what it means to really and truly teach—that pursuit of bringing alive the world for a young person and handing them the sharpened tools for a lifetime of fruitfulness. Exploring bug species—as one does when tutoring little boys in science—and fascinating two little girls with the world of Latin conjugations and declensions have given me a taste for something I would love to pursue to a greater degree in future, whether with children of my own someday, or with Iraqi children in a refugee camp next door around the world.

Traveling is in my blood, you could say: new cultures, people, food, habits, topography—it’s a fascinating, humbling thing to live on this planet. My father generally ignored the golfing green, but his alternate hobby, and one in which he indulged quite frequently, was dragging his family from country to country—except we loved every minute of it! This resulted in a general spirit of exploring and discovering. It has taught me to find the adventure in most inconveniences—or to make one out of thin air if it doesn’t readily come to hand. Things I’ve learned? Always ask the locals, take the back roads, and eat whatever’s at the market.

Capturing these moments is another of my passions. Presented with an array of colors, the story of faces, the interplay of light and textures, and the simplicity of daily living that play out before me wherever I am, I take great joy in recording these moments and treating them as a sort of art. I like to think I’m simply giving a certain perspective on a scene—catching and keeping the frame of a moment that will never be the same and might have been otherwise missed.

Among the later patchwork of portrait sessions, a small business selling botanical cards, and the inevitable travel photography, what I came to enjoy most was the photojournalistic challenge of capturing a country—a people—with my lens. Of course, such a thing can never be fully successful. Yet among my most fulfilling days were those spent visiting tiny indigenous churches in dusty Cambodian villages, worshipping among brothers and sisters I’d never met and didn’t understand, playing cars with a skinny boy, and laughing with teenagers over their gleeful attempts at English, then dripping sweat back in my room at night while I translated everything back to the Western world in pictures and stories. A trip to Peru included much the same, along with a visit to the original Wycliffe base deep in the Amazon jungle with a dozen MKs who’d grown up getting into trouble there.

Writing is a pursuit I’ve long relished, yet assumed (even preferred) remain a hobby. Yet recent years have conspired to contradict this intention. Stacks of excellent good books foisted on me in my youth have taken their toll, and somehow I caught the disease of crafting words and sentences. It has come to be one of the things in which I take the greatest delight, yet it still unnerves me.

At the end of this meandering saga, several things remain to be said. I believe people are given certain interests, backgrounds, experiences, and opportunities as a trust. This world is in a state of war, and my fun-loving, daredevil self cannot afford to forget this reality. Along with every other soldier of the King, I’ve been placed on this earth for a reason. Glorifying and enjoying can overlap, but I must pursue both with all my energy and resources.

The range of possibility opened up by this motley assortment of things in which I have some proficiency and in which I take joy appears unpredictable, to say the least. When asked where I could see myself in five years, a dozen answers present themselves. Overarching everything is a passion to see the lost reached with the good news that my King has come in human skin and offered life to broken, hurting sinners.

He’s freed me from the world, this clinging flesh, and my enemy. Now I’m enslaved in His glad service, with all energies enlisted. This could mean attempting to mother the six boys my mother says I deserve. It could mean helping refugees in Greece. It could mean aiding a husband in some position of costly leadership. It could mean teaching elementary school in an Arab country.

What I love doing is no accident, and the unfolding of the coming years will demonstrate the perfect wisdom of my Father. Yet I cannot afford to have a tourist mentality on this journey toward the celestial city. There is a cost to discipleship, a loosing, a letting go, a pruning. May I water faithfully and well, yet hold all interests and desires with an open hand.

Whatever comes of all these strands, I pray and strive to cultivate a single-mindedness in pursuing the one thing that matters most. In the cultivating of my interests, the use of my time, and the exercising of my gifts, I desire to manifest steadiness of perseverance wherever I am placed and to dare in following after the promptings of providence.