Made it through March!

One of the primary roles of a parent, teacher, or adult leader seems often to be reminding. Don’t forget . . . be sure to . . . did you remember . . . ? Nagging aside, this is also God’s role, and the role of God’s people. This Easter season, we look back with gratitude and look forward with great hope. Looking at the past steadies us as we realize that nearly every major organization in our life is in transition. 

- We remember that one year ago this season, we told our three older kids about their new baby brother, who, in utero, reached the size of their easter eggs. And we told them that, because of various complications, he might not make it to birth. Now, we celebrate this new little life, with all his added charm and challenge. 

- We celebrate resurrection, but we're still on this side of the fall. As we anticipated Easter, we learned of the sudden death of one of my uncles, a sweet and wise man, deeply connected to his community as a teacher and pastor. Please join us in celebrating his first Easter face to face with Jesus, and grieving our first Easter without him. 

- We remember gratefully the years CAJ students have been able to travel to Thailand to connect with local schools. My first year to chaperon this trip was in 2006, Ryan’s first year was in 2009. The Thai girl we have had the privilege of supporting through her years of school is now in university nursing school! We’re so grateful for CAJ’s years of connection to this little city in Chiang Rai. 

- We look back gratefully on our years at our church, Kurume Bible Fellowship. This is a transitional season for our church. We pray for a renewed sense of vision and purpose for our community as we search for a new pastor. Despite the inevitable mess of transition, we hosted more than 90 neighborhood kids yesterday at an Easter outreach event! 

- We look back on so many years of connection to CAJ; my grandfather was part of the original founding team, and my aunt was a member of the first graduating class. A year ago, I was asked to join the school’s Board of Councilors, taking on yet another point of connection to this school. We look forward to a new season at this school, and anticipate new ways to deepen connections to our local town, our city and this country. 

- We also look back gratefully at our years at our local Japanese schools. A few weeks ago, the school year wrapped up for the two bigger kids, and next week the new year begins, with V entering preschool! She is by far the most excited about the prospect of starting school. This school too is in a time of extreme transition; please join us in praying for the many new teachers. 

Lots of transitions, and we know God isn't surprised by any of them. Through every change, he remains faithful. 

Fairly February

In which we throw beans to scare away the monsters and attempt Lent with the three year old. 

A year ago, I wrote about how our bedtime story reading was interrupted by the chilling wail of our neighbor, screaming “out, out, out” at each of her windows. The start of February is a “good luck” festival here. The mantra is “monsters out, luck in!” For most families, it means kids make cute monster masks out of paper maché and grocery stores carry special deals on dried soy beans (which are thrown to appease and scare off the monsters, and left overs are snacked on). Every store runs a popular “everyone wears monster underwear” song on repeat for a few weeks. This year, our son in first grade brought home some notes from a class discussion in which students discussed how to get rid of the “monsters” of forgetting their homework and sleeping in and telling lies. A more useful and creative application of the mantra than I had seen before. Certainly, there is a social morality to Japanese culture.  

And isn’t it timely to contrast this “good luck” festival, when the following week, Valentines and the start of Lent fall on just the same day. This year, we’re attempting a lent remembrance with our kids. Advent has become a regular part of the kids lives, and certainly Easter has gotten mention, but its tricky to talk about abstaining with a three year old: “You mean I don’t get to watch TV because of Jesus?” and the like. Lent has been tricky for us in recent years; as many parents of young kids might relate to, my husband says that this phase of life is perpetual lent - constant giving up of time-wasters, excess and indulgence for the sake of the small kids who want to be read to. 

This year, we focused this season around prayer, giving and stopping. Each week we plan something or someone specific to pray for, something to give and something to stop. A week seems to be a reasonable time frame for the littles to keep track of, and the variety has helped offset the “Jesus doesn’t like screens” narrative. Unlike other seasons of the Christian calendar, this season gets absolutely no press in Japan, other than the occasional easter bunny themed chocolate box. Even our church, which is struggling to regain footing after our pastor suddenly quit, has made no mention of the season. The fact that it’s just something we’re doing with our little family reminds me of how isolated we are in some ways, despite the fantastic and diverse community we have surrounding us. 

My primary prayer for this month is for wisdom, as parents and as a friend. Specifically for our baby: we’ve met with so many doctors and we have some possible treatment paths laid out for him, but the next few months will be a time of intense decision making, about a lot of things that will shape the boy’s future and his body. Please pray for wisdom for us as we parent this little one.

Likewise, wisdom for our church. As I mentioned, we lost our pastor, who abruptly decided to leave the position about six months ago, after only one year. We feel the lack of a pastoral figure in our lives acutely, although the church’s leadership team is working valiantly to keep moving forward with a clarified vision. Please pray for wisdom for our leadership team, and for us as worshippers and members. 

I have also been asked to sit on the board of CAJ as an alumni representative. Please pray for wisdom as I step into this new position at CAJ. 

In less than two weeks, Ryan will travel to Thailand with the senior class at CAJ. Thanks to the extreme generosity of a relative, I will have a helper staying with us in Ryan's absence, which I am very grateful for. Please pray for traveling mercies for them, as well as a blessed and meaningful experience. Once again, students are partnering with a local Thai school to rebuild buildings, play with Elementary students, and learn more about serving in a cross cultural context. 

General January

New Years meal with neighborhood friends

Does the holiday season seem like a distant blur to you? To be honest, it was a fantastic holiday for us. We invested in our kids, our little family, and in experiences. And we rested. Thanks to the incredible generosity of family, we went to a beautiful place by the ocean and were able to gift each kid with an outing: big rambling parks, ferris wheel, and an aquarium. Slowing down, revisiting the closest relationships, and resetting priorities for the new year are the best gifts we could dream up.

This month marks a full circle – one year ago next week, we first thought we were losing this little boy who is now drooling up at the fan, laying on my lap as I write. And we continued to live the question – will he make it to today? How about tomorrow? Now he’s laughing and kicking, wrestling with his favorite pacifier. We’re grateful to so many of you who walked through those days with us.

Now we look ahead. I’ve asked for prayer many times for choosing which of the many opportunities to commit to and which to let go. It’s a daily balance, isn’t it? Several things had to go on hold during this year, especially things that were primarily hosted or facilitated by me. We’ve re-started two of the groups, one meets in our house and another in a friends house.

Recent student shop project

For one group, the focus is praying for our kids; we’re considering introducing a book reading and parenting conversation in addition to the prayer time. This group began long before I became a mom, but I’m currently heading it up. I’m so thankful for the group of praying women who gather; we need each other, and we’re grateful to grow together in this season. Please pray for this group! Being moms of young kids, it is hard to find a time when everyone is healthy and able to attend! We meet again next Monday.

For another group, the focus is playing in English. We also chat, and create a safe, welcoming space for moms and kids; most of these families have been meeting for nearly five years. Please pray for these women and their kids as they visit each week.

This is Spiritual Life Emphasis week at CAJ. Please pray for the couple who is speaking, and for students and staff as they listen and engage. This week is also the start of the second semester for CAJ; it’s a full spring ahead with a full set of classes, trips and the core of the senior’s projects. Like the US, Tokyo has also had a particularly bad flu season. We’re so thankful to be healthy, but two classes have shut down at our Japanese preschool and one class at our Japanese elementary school, in addition to many kids and teachers sick at CAJ.

This week marks the 70^th anniversary of my family’s presence in Japan. My grandparents and aunt arrived by cargo ship just after World War II, and some members of my family have been here ever since. It’s humbling and challenging to be part of such a legacy!

Happy New Year

Happy New Year!
Love, Ryan, Nelle Caitlin, Ezra, Luna, Vera, Jude

Noel in November?

Well, to be honest, I think the Christmas decorations were already up by the time I posted our October update. Christmas sneaks earlier every year, seems like. 

This month revolved around hospitals, vaccinations, consultations, rehabilitation (although really, “habilitation” seems more apt - he's not really "re" anything), with some mashed potatoes and spiced apple cider, a few pine cones and candles squeezed in between. And suddenly, it’s advent! But, just for a moment, I’ll pause and speak gratitude into a rainy evening.  

- Thank you to each of you who thought of us in the past week with our baby’s most recent hearing check. We’re grateful for the 50 decibels and louder that he can hear, and look forward in hope to his next hearing check at six months. We’re thankful for each of you who sent a quick comment with encouragement and love. Truly, we could not weather these days without our cloud of witnesses. 

- In a season where our church is suddenly without a pastor, we’re so grateful for many wise, creative voices who speak Truth into our community: God is faithful, beyond our controlling fears, God delights in diversity, and spreading out his people throughout the globe; at every moment, God reminds us: your technology, human cooperation, innovation and careful planning will never get you nearer to me. God strains toward humanity with an awesome intensity, while humans gesture limply back. Of all the world’s religions, Christianity is the one where God comes down rather than demanding that humans toil up. 

- We’re grateful for the deep roots of this city. For thanksgiving, we invited neighbors for their first taste of American style thanksgiving food - mashed potatoes served next to rice balls wrapped in seaweed and sweet bean desserts (better double the sugar, the husband said, they’re Americans). These friends pre-date many of the existing roads in our city. Their family goes back, “oh maybe to about the Meiji Era, you know 1870s or so”, on this same land. It’s humbling to be the newcomer, and we will always be foreign. We’re grateful for a small spot in this place with a deep and intricate heritage. 

- We’re grateful for a return to a new kind of normal, which allows our days to take on their rhythms and patterns: bike commutes, laundry, lunch boxes, walking the dog, chatting with neighbors. That friend who watches my three year old so I can sit over a cup of coffee with a friend in a tough season. And who let me watch her two year old so she can sit with a friend in a difficult marriage. 

- I’m grateful for support networks for moms and kids in this community, two in particular, and that I am able to begin attending them again after a long season of bed rest and hospitalization. For the woman who met me in the park with a curiosity about prayer, who also - of course - used to work at the hospital for children with disabilities, where we now go often. Grateful that we ran into each other enough times walking on the river and playing in the park that we just had to become friends. 

- We’re grateful - am I allowed to say this out loud? - to live in a country with an intact social welfare system, where we can rely on our city network to help support our new life with a child with disabilities. Gratitude, not politics. 

- Grateful for the generosity of a sweet relative which allowed us to get away for a few moments, just to sit over a steaming bowl of uninterrupted ramen. 

- And grateful now to begin advent with our kids; watch them anticipate the season, the stories and music; watch them wreak havoc on the decorations - the patient advent cast who travel daily around the house, enacting various plots and scenarios. Thankful they're made of sturdy wood! 

October overview

First walk to the park

Is it just us, or is your fall also so overwhelming, so unavoidably overscheduled? Back in July, August - well, March if I’m honest - we thought this was just a phase, this feeling of being underwater. If we could just make it through this appointment or make it past that event, we would breath easy again. Now, the waves seem to have become our norm. Two sermons carried me through this month.

Birthday campout!

Here are some of the snapshots: getting used to our new son, born missing his hands and feet - who’s doctors evaluated at the highest level of disability Japan registers. Sending my mother back to America after three months of constant help and cheer. School sports festivals. Pastors quitting our church. Celebrating the birthdays of two of our kids - so grateful they have made it to ages 7 and 5 (is she really only just 5?). Sitting with friends as they said goodbye for now to their beloved and only son - just 7 years old - after years of struggling with leukemia; his mother grateful to “hold him all the way home.”  

Sports Day!

So maybe you can see that the verses in Psalm 91 carried all their usual comfort and confusion, presented by a friend in a sermon this month. “Because you have made the Lord your dwelling place. . . . no evil shall be allowed to befall you” (v 9). We struggle alongside our boy of 7, asking why another boy, just his age, had his cells stop growing right and instead grow into life-robbing cancer? To ask with our girls who love babies why this little brother’s hands and feet didn’t grow quite right, even though “fearfully and wonderfully made”? (Psalm 139:14) We look at Jesus. Where else is there left to look? God did not spare his only son, so we too hold ours with open hands. 

Sushi with Grammy!

The second sermon, spoken in another country, by another wise friend, pointed us to Jesus in Mark 6. What parent can’t relate to a moment like this: “Then, because so many people were coming and going that they did not even have a chance to eat, he said to them, “Come with me by yourselves to a quiet place and get some rest (v 31). But even that didn’t work because everyone raced on ahead of them and crowded to their “quiet place” to greet them as they arrived. And then this command, one of my favorite, and also one I find most confusing: “You give them something to eat” (v 37 emphasis mine). Just when I congratulate myself on having remembered to actually bring my own lunch - I won’t be beholden to anyone else; I’ve got myself covered, thank you very much - Jesus says, good, can you also make space for those 5,000 men and their families at your picnic blanket? Thanks. The pastor reminded us, Jesus isn’t so interested in what you have or don’t have. In fact, the less there is of you, the more there is of Jesus.  

Passport photo attempts

We’re never prepared for what comes at us in life. But preparedness isn’t the goal, its rather open handed, honest reliance. The bread will last through each of those 5,000 hungry families. 

Please pray with us for our friends as they adjust back to being a family of five on earth and one in heaven. And for us as we adjust to being a family of six, minus a few fingers and toes. 

Please pray for our community. We’re so grateful for the steady leadership at Christian Academy, seeing the school through a season of growth and transition. And for our church. After one year of ministry, our pastor suddenly decided to move on to other work. We are reeling a bit, but grateful to see that worship continues; the church is the members, and those who continue to invest and attend every week. Please pray for the leadership team as they work to strengthen the vision of the church in the search for a new pastor. 

A certain September

I have to smile looking back at what I wrote last month; feels like looking back at a childhood fear of a two wheeled bike or an elementary school crush. “Our limits teach us the fear of the Lord.” (Wilkin, None Like Him, 25) Oh, little did we know. 

First, he’s here! Our baby boy, our village child - safely carried by an endless stream of prayers, meals, child care and support - arrived one month early on the morning of September 5. He was born at our local hospital, but was transferred (in a massive, terrifying and amazing baby ambulance) soon after birth to the larger hospital. He stayed in the neonatal care unit for a little over two weeks, and came home three days ago. 

We named him Jude Aizen 愛善 (eye-zen). For the doxology at the end of the book of Jude: “To him who is able to keep you from stumbling and to present you before his glorious presence without fault and with great joy— to the only God our Savior be glory, majesty, power and authority, through Jesus Christ our Lord, before all ages, now and forevermore! Amen.” Aizen because it connects to the Japanese name of our oldest, and the two kanji together mean agape love. (Plus, one of his uncles pointed out that eizen are crampons for ice climbing - see below for the whole new layer of meaning)

We knew this pregnancy was different from the start, and - although we were not prepared for how different he would be - we have begun to process what it will all mean. For reasons we do not yet (and may never) know, Jude was born without fully formed hands or feet. The rest of him (brain and core organs) seems ok, after a first round of testing. It looks something like the effects of amniotic band syndrome, although doctors do not think that is what he has. Doctors also don’t seem to think it had anything to do with the hematoma that I had for most of this pregnancy, although there may be a correlation. 

Although this is all about our new baby, there is lots more going on in our lives and community; students heading out all over Japan for a week of leadership training, Kids Club outreach is reaching a growing number of neighborhood friends, new moms attending moms and kids play time at another neighborhood church. 

Thank you to each of you who have celebrated, grieved and brought food (physical, psychological, metaphorical) to us throughout this entire season. We rest in agape love, and remain confident that our God is able to keep even this boy from falling. Your presence mean so much to us. I will do my best to reply to each of you!