megan jean writes a blog

2011-06-07T10:17:00.001-07:00

One thing that is hard to do when you are moving away to another country in one week is grocery shop.

On Friday we made our prayer cards. We're just waiting to receive them in the mail, and then we're sending them out (email me if you want one- it can be a regular card or a magnet). By the way, if you ever feel like submitting yourself to a little torture? Please take a prayer card photo. Perhaps it's just my vanity speaking, but knowing that the smile i'm flashing may be plastered on someone's fridge for the next several years wasn't the thrilling experience you may imagine it to be. Not to mention my strange habit of fake smiling. Even if i start the photo laughing, by the time the time the flash goes off my bottom molars are somehow showing. They never show the rest of the time. I am one of those top-only smilers. If it's genuine, my upper lip will disappear and my gums will be revealed in all of their glory. Yet when it's time for a staged photo, the upper lip is drawn and my bottom teeth get their fair share of the limelight. It looks very forced and I don't understand it in the least. I'm not doing it on purpose, really. Please believe me.

You may be wondering why I wrote this little blog today, and I am sorry that I don't have an answer for you. I guess I just wanted to say hello. Nothing is new in my life other than what you would expect with the past news I have revealed: Ready to move to Mexico, and an expanding middle that makes it hard to reach my shoes the way I used to.

The New

2011-05-10T16:33:00.001-07:00

I may still write here every once in awhile, but mostly i'll be writing at our new website. Nate and I are leaving for Chihuahua, Mexico in a month. We are sending all of our belongings down there this Friday, with a church group Nate has joined.

Also: I am pregnant with a baby girl who, despite being an average size everywhere else, has extraordinarily long legs.

More to come.

The Third.

2010-12-10T13:44:00.001-08:00

Mexico with New Tribes in June of 2011 (did you get the joke that the sentence sounds like Clue.)

It’s a wonderfully exciting story how it all came about, but now the reality of the situation is causing me to fret.

For example. We got asked to go because they needed an English teacher, and Nate is going to be one this spring. Usually they ask for at least a year of experience, but they wanted us anyway. Part of our application includes a "teaching assesment form." Someone has to watch Nate be a teacher before they will even consider our application. And (perhaps this was obvious) he hasn’t taught yet, because he is still in school. We're planning on his internship's host teacher doing it.

He'll be done with his internship at the end of May. If the assesment is completed at the end of his internship, and we leave in June, that leaves 0 days to tell anyone that we are NTM Missionaries. We won’t be official until we are actually moving to Mexico.

It’s easy to say that I trust God with the abstract. For example, I can say that I am dependent on God to raise support. That’s easy because:

1. I don’t know how to raise support
2. I don’t know exactly how much we need to survive
3. We don’t know very many people, so
4. It’s too big for me to wrap my head around.

Of course God can take care of that. But when it’s a specific problem, I start to mind.

How could I not trust him to raise support in a short amount of time, if I was trusting him to raise it anyway? Or better yet, am I trusting him with the majors if the small things ruin my faith? Or am i just avoiding the big things because they are too big, and calling it "trust?"

Uncle Peter told us a story once. When he and Terry were in missionary training with New Tribes, at one point all they had in their fridge was a can of frozen juice…and it was from the free food pantry. With absolutely no money, Uncle Peter stared into the fridge, thinking “I am a fool for bringing my family into this situation.” But someone came to their door with $40 for groceries later that night.

Uncle Peter's story made my heart feel like exploding because they went on to plant a growing, thriving church in the middle of the jungle. Both Nate and I felt so encouraged after hearing it. God knows exactly what we need when we need it, and he will provide just that. We were excited about the prospect of having stories like that ourselves one day. If we are willing to just jump out into nothing, trusting that the Lord provides, we can watch him prove himself faithful.

Now I have the choice to trust him or not. Dependence is not just a state of being. It's something I actively choose in the face of circumstance. To borrow Nate’s favorite phrasing, “it’s not easy, but it’s simple.”

Today the Second.

2010-12-09T11:49:00.001-08:00

Our apartment is getting inspected today. Luckily Nate remembered, so we had time to make sure that everything was in good order. Nate suggested that I make cookies to bribe the inspectors (in the fashion of his mother, who successfully bribed Mexican border patrol with candy bars.) Unfortunately the suggestion came a mere 45 minutes before I had to leave for work.

We are moving at the end of the semester.

Nate was placed in Kellogg, Idaho for his student teaching internship. Kellogg is about two and a half hours away from where we live right now, but moving is a good thing.

Kellogg is actually right next to Pinehurst, the Miller hometown.

Main Street in Pinehurst is arranged in this fashion:

House 1 Nate’s Aunt Terry and Uncle Peter
House 2 Nate’s Aunt Debbie and Uncle Scott
Building 3 The Church
House 4 The Parsonage
House 5 Nate’s Brother Aaron
House 6 Nate’s sister Tammi

Nate’s parents, other siblings, grandparents, and other Aunts/Uncles all live close by too.

Our home church has kindly offered to let us live in the parsonage for the five months we’ll be around before leaving for Mexico.

The classic dread often associated with living in close quarters with your in-laws is justified in some cases, but in mine it’s definitely not. I am more than a little giddy about being this close to Nate’s family, and will have to restrain myself severely before I end up at Aaron’s house every night in order to play with the children.

Today.

2010-12-08T13:59:00.000-08:00

Nate learned something this semester.

He learned that in order to teach young people how to think critically, they must write. A lot.

The creeping realization that this applied to me was a little disheartening. The reason I don’t write is because it takes too much thought… too much critical thought (ha). I find myself writing a few sentences about whatever, I can’t figure out how to make my point, and I leave it.

It’s amazing how much time I spend doing nothing. Going nowhere with my thoughts. Recycling through old truths I know instead of inspecting more and going deeper.

Hmm. Maybe it’s time I stopped that. I talked to Kees about a month ago, and he mentioned that if we were really to follow though with all of our convictions and be a disciple of Christ, we may make other people uncomfortable. Remembering that, I reflected this morning that living like that would certianly make me uncomfortable.

I’m thinking lately about how much time I waste and how little of my brain I use. How much of my day is seeking entertainment. I’ve had a little self-righteous thing going for awhile because I don’t watch TV. But what’s the difference if I’m gliding through books soley for their entertainment value and to seek the end of the plot? What’s the difference if I spend 4 hours of my day making apple butter because I find that amusing? It’s still seeking to please myself.

So anyway. I’m convicted about the lack of discipline over my own mind. And I am reminded that submission to the Lord’s will is a choice. Of course it’s easy for me to submit about the large things or hard things. Yes, I will go to Mexico. Yes Lord, I need you in order to be the wife you want me to be. But my everyday routine, that comforts me in it’s familiarity? No.