Telling stories and being heard

I've had more time to write this week than I've had for some time. It's been lovely. One of the things I've been writing is my regular column about writing for the upcoming Japan Harvest magazine. But the topic is convicting: stories. I'm passionate about telling true stories, but, like many people who write non-fiction, I often fail to use them. Stories often aren't as direct and take up more space. It also takes attention to notice some stories. Others, like my hair-braiding story, told here just are begging to be shared.

So, I feel compelled to write a blog post this afternoon, but am struggling to find a story to share with you, because as an editor so much of the time I'm working with other people's stories and not having experiences that can be told...but it's good to struggle sometimes. Here are some stories from the last couple of weeks that I hope you find encouraging:

Talent Show

On Tuesday evening we went to the school's Senior Talent Show. This has been a tradition for many years, but of course this tradition has been interrupted in the last couple of years. It's a fundraiser put on by the senior class in preparation for their overseas ministry trip in March. It is usually a mixture of fun and serious acts, but there are also a reasonable number of acts that just make the parents and teachers feel old because they are based around current pop culture that we're not familiar with. 

I did enjoy most of the evening, but it did go on a little too long (2 hr 40 min). Or perhaps I'm just getting old and unused to going out in the evening? I have to admit to still feeling a little exhausted by large groups of people.

It was fun to have one extra senior staying at our house that evening because he lives far away, and to chat with our son and his friend the next morning . . . but they're tired. I keep reminding myself that I was the same way at the same age and that it's just for a limited time. This will be all over in less than four months!

The importance of people-focus

Twice in the last few days I've had unexpected conversations with team members. Members of teams I manage. The teams I work with are quite task-focused—we're teams with specific outcome objectives: publishing a magazine and social media posts (for the purpose of mobilising for mission in Japan). So, I'm not sure I do a great job at caring for the people in my teams because I spend a lot of my time taking care of many tasks with deadlines. I often measure how I'm going in my job with how many tasks I've been able to tick off my list. Because both teams work remotely, I often go weeks without talking to any team members directly. We communicate a lot via text, email, and other online tools. 

So, spontaneous opportunities this week to connect (via video calls) with two team members who are struggling in different ways was unusual, but also good. 

I also led an online prayer meeting with about half the magazine team and it was good to not just pray for magazine matters, but to pray for one another and the things that are on our hearts and minds also. I felt heard and I hope they felt heard too.

Being heard

Last week I had another online prayer meeting with some expat mums in (or with a recent connection to) Japan who have kids with special needs—various needs, various ages. I'm new to their group, but I already had met most of the mums in other contexts. I'm starting to feel like these are "my people", and I find myself telling them things that few other people know. 

Recently I've found that what we've dealt with as parents over the last few years in terms of mental health and neurodiversity has meant I've found it harder to connect closely with many people. There is an experiential gap, one that's hard to define. People who don't have an experience with such parenting challenges can find it hard to understand, or simply don't want to, and I feel constrained in what I feel I can share with them. I wrote a bit about this with a great deal of emotion, back in October. There is great power in feeling like you're understood, and that people want to hear about what you're deeply struggling with. I'm so thankful I was "found" by one of these ladies last year and welcomed into their midst.

It's hard to literally see hills from our location
in Tokyo (Mt Fuji is visible from certain 
points, but not our house). This is a view
of mountains from a wrestling venue back
in December, a place I'll be returning to
next month for a Track and Field meet.

I lift my eyes to the hills

At the magazine prayer meeting I'd decided to help us focus by listening to a song based on Psalm 121, which starts, "I lift up my eyes to the hills. From where does my help come? My help comes from the Lord, who made heaven and earth". 

Most of the team, it turns out, are labouring under some heavy burdens, so this was indeed God going before and leading me to use this psalm and song in our time together. Maybe this song will help you as you struggle with something today too: Psalm 121 (I Lift My Eyes) Lyric Video • Kristyn Getty • Jordan Kauflin • Matt Merker

Pondering COVID's impact on life and ministry

One of my jobs with our mission's social media is to come up with media posts, especially the text-parts. That sounds easier than it sometimes is. Our goal is to raise awareness of the need of the gospel in Japan and getting people more involved, which is a bit different to how most of us use our personal social media accounts. I guess it's a close relative to "marketing".

We use a monthly theme to help fuel our creativity. Some themes are easier than others. Next month's theme is "How COVID has impacted life and ministry in Japan". That sounds like a good theme . . . but how did we find engaging content for that? 

Our team met early last week and brainstormed. One of my ideas was to do a short survey of our missionaries. But putting feet on that is harder than I thought. This afternoon I found some space to think about what I'd actually ask people. I shifted some ideas into a draft survey format, and then I have moved away to other things (like this). 

That is my usual way of operating with creative things: it's how I write, and edit, as well as work on tasks like this. Letting an idea drift around in my brain while I do other things is a brilliant way to find my way forward. I hate it when someone asks me to do "live editing" at a meeting. I prefer to read something and let it sit for a while before I do anything with it, and even when I do start to work on it, I want to do it without an audience, I want to play around with ideas in my head (and on the screen) before I decide anything. Actually, it's how I do shopping too. I hate shopping with (most) other people, I need space to think about options and decisions.

But anyway, what do I ask missionaries about how COVID has impacted their life and ministry?

My own ministry hasn't been majorly impacted by COVID. I worked from home and online for years before everyone else was doing it. The biggest impacts COVID had were more personal things like the inability to travel to see family in Australia (and them unable to come here) and watching my boys suffer as they lost opportunities and had to deal with online classes. 

Wearing masks hasn't been my favourite thing, but I've been able to avoid much of that as I work at home. 

Emotional distress probably rates fairly highly too. We've just passed the two-year anniversary since one of our young friends lost her battle with depression and died by suicide. We've had our own mental health battle in our own household during the pandemic and because I was isolated from good person-to-person contact with people for months at a time, I've found it difficult at times to find ways to interact with others and know how to talk about my own struggles. I wonder if I've gotten worse at "small talk".

Life is getting back close to normal now, though attendance in-person at our church is still lower than it was pre-pandemic. And we are still wearing masks indoors and in crowded public spaces in Japan. There is talk that next month the government recommendation for wearing masks will be lifted, but we wonder what that will look like. Life in Japan is very influenced by not causing discomfort for other people, and will not wearing masks create problems?

I can identify some positives that came about due to COVID: regular walking and talking with David. And the acquisition of a stand mixer (given it by a missionary who had to leave). Also, the increased tendency of people to have some meetings online and thus meaning less time is taken up with travel, even some opportunities to meet online with folk who we'd never otherwise have done so because we all live so far from one another.

But back to my question: What would you like to know about how COVID has impacted life and ministry for missionaries? If you are a missionary, what would you like others to know?

Too much

This week has definitely shot back to the unavoidable reality that we are moving out of our house and actually out of the country (and jobs, even if temporarily) in just five months. That takes a fair bit of planning and decision-making on top of our regular work. We're starting to feel the strain already.

Downtown on Tuesday I had a team
meeting in a cafe off this atrium with an
impressive ceiling.

I sat down with a friend/colleague on Tuesday and she asked me lots of questions like:

• when will you finish your Japan work
• who will take over the work that you're doing now
• what do you have between now and then, what's important and what can be left
• when will you move out of your house
• where will you stay before you fly
• when will you fly
• where will you live in Australia
• when will you begin doing deputation
• who can help you find accommodation and transport in Australia
• when will you take holidays

Phew...it's a lot. And there are a lot of decisions within the above decisions. For example, moving out involves thousands of decisions. This decision tree illustrates that.

Did I mention that we're still doing all our current work? This week that's included working on a particularly intense phase of two magazine issues, as well as the regular social media work I do for OMF. I know of at least two people who have been slightly frustrated with me (at work) for various reasons this week, something I hate, but have to acknowledge that I'm not perfect and that my work is likely to suffer at times like this. I'm thankful that we're just about to head into a weekend and can take a break. Also, that the school now has a four-day weekend (called "Winter Break"), so I can get a bit more sleep in the next few days, which I'm sure will help.

But what is probably good to do at the end of this busy, working week is to look back at Psalm 103, like I did in early January. God's love and compassion for us is great (verses 11, 13, 14, 17). And it's not dependent on how much we do, or how good we are.

And be reminded of these timeless words from Romans:

 Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword?  No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.  For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers,  neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord (Rom. 8:35, 37–39 NIV).

Good memories, no regrets

Is another wrestling post warranted? I do want to document that my youngest son was crowned Far East Champion of the 215 lb weight class on Wednesday. He wrestled very well and none of his opponents could find much of a chink in his armour. 

It wasn't our first rodeo, as you may know. We went to Korea to watch our eldest son compete in the same competition six years ago. Each of their journeys was quite different. Our eldest did a lot of off-season wrestling in non-school clubs, and also had a two-year rival who he had wrestled many times and not always won (though his rival didn't beat him during our son's senior year, he did make him work hard for the victories), so when they faced off in the semifinal and again in the final, the result was definitely unknown. 

Our youngest son hasn't been able to do anywhere near the same amount of wrestling during his high school years, for various reasons, including injury and a pandemic. He has spent a lot of time in the gym, though, building up strength and body mass. At the start of the tournament he was also unbeaten so far in the season, but it's also not his greatest passion, so in some ways the stakes didn't feel as high. 

Although no one told my body that. I had the same physiological reactions: lost sleep, messed up digestion, raised heart rate, general shakiness and difficulty concentrating. When I'm at a wrestling tournament, I can't read (and I'm a reading addict), nor can I even feasibly play a game; we tried to play Scrabble on the second day, but struggled. Two nights of waking at 2am and not really falling deeply back to sleep, plus two days of sitting in a noisy gym, really did a number on me. I was glad to not have an international flight and then travel on trains back from the airport like I did six years ago, but it's been hard to get back to work these last couple of days.

One way to tell that you're at a gym

hosting a wrestling tournament...

you find this on the back of the toilet

cubicle door.

It was fun to go away with David, even if it was for two days of wrestling! We enjoyed doing this together, and shared passions are important as you move towards a time when your kids all leave home. We made great memories and I have no regrets. Oh, and it was fabulous being able to support our son like this.

One fun memory centres around hair. Our son's hair is now wavy and long (below his shoulders), definitely tricky for wrestling, where you can't use anything but hairbands and product to secure it. His brothers have always kept their hair short, so we've never dealt with this before. I've never had much to do with my boys’ hair, actually! But on Monday one of the first things our son said to me when we saw him was, "Can you braid my hair?" Wow! I've had short hair for nearly 12 years and I can't actually remember if I've ever braided someone else's hair . . . I wasn't that kinda girl. 

Neither of us had a comb and my first go at it was straight after he'd warmed up, so he was sweaty! We didn't have hairspray and only two hair-ties, so it got messy pretty quickly after he helped a teammate warm up for a match (they use their heads quite a lot). He wanted me to redo it then, but we weren't sure when his first match would be, and I was already shaky. Braiding hair with shaky hands isn't recommended. 

I was particularly nervous that I'd get partway done and he'd be called up for his match. There's no waiting if you're called. It's something that new wrestlers (and their parents) have to learn about a tournament: there's no timetable, you simply wait for your name to be called, and it can be excruciating (and hard to figure out when to eat). Once you're called, you've got to hoof it to register that you're present and ready to go, with all the gear you need (in your wrestling singlet and shoes and warm-up clothes, plus a water bottle and headgear). This tournament was well organised and had wrestlers waiting "on deck" about three bouts ahead. A bout can last 20 seconds or over six minutes, but they don't tolerate delays.

In any case, I couldn't see myself doing a decent job of braiding his hair in that situation, so I went for a "first aid" solution. My networking came in handy: I knew the mum of one of the female wrestlers, so I went to find her and ask if her team (which had several girls with long hair) had any hairspray. She went right to work and found a girl quickly who dug around in her bag, pulling out not just hairspray but something that looked like mascara. It had a wand that you pull across the top of hair that is "done" to glue those flyaways down—I had to ask her how to use it. Her coach, who I also know, was sitting nearby quietly laughing as I explained how I only had boys and needed help here. She was great!

Well, it worked, and he made it through his first match without distracting hair in his face. Then we had time, and I had another go at braiding it and did slightly better.

The next morning when we met in the gym (our room wasn't near the team), I had a third go, before his final. This time I brought a comb I'd snaffled from our hotel bathroom and handed him some "action" hairspray that I'd bought the night before at the mall near the hotel, and instructed him on how to use it. Our boys haven't grown up with sisters, and he was only six when I cut my hair short . . . there are some things they just don't know!

It's a good thing the braiding was for practical purposes, not aesthetics, but I was pleased that because I was present I could do this one thing for him. In fact the whole couple of days was very much about being wholly present for our son (and his teammates). It was a joy to have the flexibility to do that.

Oh, and giving my sweaty son a shaky hug after he'd won gold was a highlight too. And he didn't pick me up, like he did his coaches!

These moments when we get to intensely invest in our kids are soon going to get more difficult to find. I'm treasuring them.

How did you even get into wrestling to begin with, and other questions

Last week I wrote that hoped this week would be better, especially that I could get some traction on my work. I'm pleased to say that that has indeed been the case. I'm on my fourth straight day without any meetings or other external distractions and I'm also in good health, which is a great help.

There's no avoiding it: this is going to be a "wrestling" post. But if you keep reading, you'll find out why we're so interested in wrestling and how we got into the sport initially. If you were following my blog back in 2015–2017 you would have seen a lot of these during this time of year. Feb 2017 was really a pinnacle as we watched our eldest son go undefeated in his senior year. There has been less wrestling for our family since then, for various reasons, including a pandemic, but we're now coming to the pinnacle of our youngest son's high school wrestling career.

Current events

Saturday was a huge day, as predicted, but a good one. We got up at 4 a.m., and I joined my husband as he drove the team two hours to Yokosuka, the US Naval Base south of Yokohama. We got on base very smoothly (not to be taken for granted; it's kinda like entering another country via immigration, except there are more guns and rules about what you can do on the "inside"). It was too cold to linger outside, so we entered the gym and sat in there for 11 hours, with teams from 11 other schools. The actual tournament went for about nine of those . . . continuously! It's an acquired taste. It says something about us that we weren't bored! Although I did try to lie down for a while on the hard bleachers, it didn't last long when one of our team was called up to wrestle and how could you not watch and shout encouragement?

Our son didn't meet his first opponent until around noon, so there was a lot of nervous tension up till then (at least he and I had nervous tension). And, to be honest, that tension continued much of the day as he had not previously wrestled any of his three opponents, so it was a bit hard to know how hard they'd be. Great result in the end, though—he came through undefeated and won gold. We were elated, but pretty bleary by then. The adrenaline (and dinner) helped us get through the last couple of hours on the road to get home.

Thankfully last Sunday was a quiet day and by the time Monday came around I was almost good to go! And now it's Friday again. This weekend looks different: tomorrow, for the first time in three weeks we don't have to put an alarm on, as there's nowhere to go. 

This Sunday, however, we'll leave from school around noon with the wrestling team and our bags. We're going to the "big" three-day tournament called "Far East Wrestling Tournament", the final tournament of the season. It includes US military schools from the whole region (just Japan and Korea from what I can tell), as well as the three international schools from Tokyo with wrestling programs (us!). That's around 15 schools and probably over 150 wrestlers. When our eldest was a Senior we also went to this tournament, except it was a bit more complicated, as it was a couple of hours south of Seoul in Korea!

David and I are only going to the first two days. But we'll stay the two nights locally in a hotel, which will save a lot of driving and time, and hopefully help us cope with the nine-hour days in the gym. But it will be so good to be there cheering our team on, especially spending time focusing on our youngest son, who has more often than not just had to tag along as we did things with his eldest brother. He'd been dragged along to wrestling meets for several years before he ever got to officially do it himself. It's great to have the flexibility to invest some time in his life alone this season.

Why have you gotten so involved in wrestling?

I did have to admit to a small group of missionaries that I met on Monday that "we're a bit nutty". It truly is still a bit hard to explain our passion for wrestling, although it's probably better framed as "we're passionate about supporting our boys in their sporting choices". That generally makes more sense to people. It's not easy as parents to forge relationships with teenage boys, and we've been very thankful that wrestling has been one way to connect with two of them. We've spent so many hours attending meets, but even more talking about it!

Wrestling is also something of a family sport. It's reasonably common to see multiple wrestlers in the same family (parent and child, and siblings). One family from another school who we've met many times over the years has four children; all of them have wrestled at school! It makes it easier if everyone is doing the same sport, that's for sure! But it's also true that kids are different and not all enjoy it. That's been true in our family. Our middle son had a couple of goes at the sport, but for a few reasons really couldn't commit to it.

How did you get into wrestling to start with? (something Australians particularly ponder)

An Australian friend asked us this last month. The story is pretty simple, really. At our school there are only two inter-school sports for middle and high school boys in the winter season: basketball and wrestling. Our eldest son tried basketball in his first year of middle school and he didn't particularly enjoy it. During PE that year one of the teachers did a single period introducing the 6th graders to wrestling and in that short time caught our son's attention. 

He took up wrestling in 7th grade and was hooked by the end of that season. He's not strayed far from wrestling ever since. In fact he's still wrestling at 23. He's part of a private wrestling club near where he lives and has twice competed in the Australian Nationals as an adult. Last year he won silver (which I always have to temper with the understanding that this is an extremely minor sport in Australia, until we introduced him to this club in Brisbane, we knew no one involved in the sport in our home country).

Is it right to feel proud about sporting success?

This is a question our eldest asked on Wednesday when someone he doesn't know mentioned his achievement as a senior. We were watching our school duel with another school on their live feed and there were two commentators hosting the event. We're pretty sure that the guy who mentioned our son was a wrestler when our son won Far East in 2017.

I'd been pondering that question too as I posted videos and photos from Saturday on my social media and received lots of congratulations and "likes". It's pretty clear to me, though, that there are a lot of factors that go into a sporting success like our son had on the weekend. So many things we have no control over: 

• They are actually holding tournaments again. If he'd been a senior in 2021 or 2022, he never would have had this chance! 
• Physical and mental health are things that we have a little bit of control over, but not as much as we'd like to think, mostly it's a gift. You may not realise it, but it takes a lot of mental strength to persevere at wrestling, and even more to succeed. It takes years to learn and when you're out on the mat, there's nowhere to hide.
• We've learned the hard way that the US Department of Defense requires very little to cancel sporting events. More than once in our 12 years of involvement in wrestling, a forecast of snow has shut whole bases down and cancelled tournaments. 
• Our guys are natural athletes. There's no mistaking that they've worked very hard (our youngest's muscle definition is something to behold!), but they also have a certain level of gifting for the sport of wrestling, that's not something they've achieved on their own, though they've certainly capitalised on it. 
• We've also had the opportunity to send our boys to a school where there's good opportunities for sport, that is definitely not a given when you are a missionary.

So yes, I'm proud and very happy that my son has put a lot of effort into this sport and is seeing some nice rewards just now. But there's also a lot there that there's no reason to be proud of, just thankful.

Flashbacks

I've been writing about wrestling as long as we've been involved in the sport. In 2014, when our eldest was a 9th grader, I wrote this in a blog post:

So, I remain an enthusiastic supporter.  Good thing too, because despite this season being nearly over (one more tournament for our son), it looks like we're in this for the duration. Our youngest wants to join the team as soon as he can, which could mean I'll be watching wrestling live for the next 10 years!

Yep, that has happened! Though this is our last year as parents, and therefore the deep, gut-wrenching involvement that means you commit to spending 15-hour days doing this are nearly over. 

 Here's something else I wrote about the sport in that blog post that you might not realise: 

For a combat-type sport, it really is interesting to behold how non-aggressive it is. Even while wrestling, there generally isn't nastiness, the best wrestlers are well controlled in their actions. They really approach it in a "gentlemanly" type way, with handshakes all round and even the occasional hug between wrestlers. Sometimes the coaches shout in protest about a call the ref made, but generally it isn't too major. And there's generally no nastiness (at least that I've heard) from the supporters in the stands.

If you've gotten this far you might be interested in reading one more thing. At the end of our eldest son's high school wrestling career, I wrote a blog post reflecting on wrestling and the season that had just past: https://mmuser.blogspot.com/2017/02/reflections-on-wrestling-this-season.html

Off my game, but seizing the day

It's been a weird week and I haven't been able to settle well to work that needs deeper concentration. The main thing to blame is my schedule. I started the week exhausted from Saturday when I helped run a wrestling tournament (and continued straight on to dinner across town with friends), and end the week nervous about the really long day tomorrow at another tournament a long way from home. In the middle of the week was a day hanging out with missionary women and a funeral of a church member, plus a mid-week wrestling event, all on different days. Add to that two other days with meetings, but not even long meetings! 

All that is enough to throw me off my game. I can sandwich some work in-between other things as well as the next woman, but I find that writing and editing longer or more difficult pieces of writing, takes more concentration and doesn't squeeze well between other things. So I generally chunk my schedule to help me work that way (ideally, two or three whole days in a week without any external events), but it just hasn't happened this week. Oh, and I've been struggling with headaches on and off too, which never helps concentration.

Next week looks better . . . I hope it lives up to that expectation.

But for now I want to tell you a little bit about the funeral. We arrived at church on Sunday to the news of a sudden death the night before of a 65-year-old church member who has quietly served his community and church for decades. He was not obviously Japanese, having American heritage, but his heart was clearly centred on Japan. He was born here and spent most of his life here teaching English. He served the church by simultaneously translating one of the services each week into English in his little booth at the back of the sanctuary, as well as proofreading the bilingual PowerPoint presentation. So many people have been blessed by his service over the years! His Japanese wife and mother-in-law were clearly distraught at the funeral yesterday. He hadn't been ill and died while doing something he loved: watching sumo at home.

It was a small funeral, which surprised us. But we were glad to be present, at this beautiful Christian, Japanese funeral, representing some of the many people who have been served by this humble, behind-the-scenes guy. There are so many funerals that I haven't been able to attend in the last few years, usually because of family responsibilities and distance. I'm sure there were some who wanted to be present at this one, but couldn't.

It's only the second funeral in Japan that my husband or I have attended. Before we came to Japan we were told about Japanese funerals, in particular, about the very strict dress code and the need to own "funeral clothes." It's all black, except the men get to wear white shirts with their black tie and women can/should wear pearls (but no other jewellery except wedding rings). I own very little black (and no pearls), as it just drains my already pale face of all life. And almost none of the black clothes I have are "winter weight". My heart's desire was to honour this man and his family, and not to draw attention by my foreign-ness and what I was wearing or not wearing.

Thankfully I managed to do that, all while not getting frostbite! But let's just say I was wearing a lot of layers under the appropriate black externals!

The service was very different to the Buddhist one I attended many years ago, indeed it was very similar to a worship service. I was taken by surprise by the open coffin where we were guided to lay flowers after the service, but as we aren't close to the family, we didn't stay long after the main service. To learn more about Japanese funerals check out this article I edited a while back.

It's sobering to think that this man was only about 15 years older than us. Truly, a funeral is a good place to get a reality check in our busy lives. I'm always grateful for my husband, but this was a good reminder to seize the day as often as I can.

The fairly spontaneous dinner we went to last Saturday was very much a case of "seizing the day". It wasn't wise, at the end of an exhausting all-day event, but it was a rare opportunity for three families who get along well to get together. And we had fun. I'm really glad we went. Taking time to appreciate those we love is so important. For those of us who have no family in-country it's even more important to invest time in friendships nearby. Just this week we've heard of an expat whose cancer journey has taken an unexpected turn, and another family we know whose overseas journey seems to have come to an end (they aren't returning from home assignment, though continuing to work with a mission). Seizing time with friends that God has given you to walk with this current week, month, year, is important in this life where things can change so quickly.

I'm a frail field flower

Looking back after more than a dozen years of life with kids at this international school in Japan, I know that January has a habit of going from zero to 100 km/h almost instantaneously. I never feel ready. In fact it was quite discouraging to get to Monday this week (when school started back and I started taking work more seriously again) to find myself already tired.

It hasn't been exactly 100 km/h all week, in fact after a busy start to the week, I've been able to sit quietly at my desk for three days just catching up on work here. It's been challenging, but not impossible.

At the same time, though, I've had a rash of decisions to make about future commitments, starting with this Saturday: Will I commit to being at school by 7.30 to help set up for a wrestling tournament, followed by meeting friends for dinner that evening? Will I also commit to help providing food for the tournament refs and coaches, which means buying stuff on Friday? As I considered those questions, I took into consideration that I'd already committed to providing home baked goods for another event at school on Monday, goods that I won't have the time to make on the weekend, so will have to do it on Friday. And that I expect to be back at my desk working on Monday morning, as well as lead a meeting in the afternoon. Yep, 100 km/h is just around the corner.

And that's just one instance.

There have been a few other smaller and bigger commitments for the coming couple of months that I've thought about this week. Yep, the stuff that can easily get me into trouble by saying too many yeses. That's where it starts. Each yes seems small, but they quickly get out of control and by then, if you mean what you say when you say "yes", you just can't stop the train.

Frail field flowers in October

If you've read my first blog post for 2023, you'll realise that we're facing up to a big year, one that will probably get crazy busy. I've been searching for a passage of scripture to try to anchor myself as I head into this and I've found Psalm 103. I've pasted it below in its entirety for you. There are lots of nuggets in it to ponder. Just now I'm leaning into these phrases: "Your youth is renewed like the eagle’s" (v. 5 NIV) and "As a father has compassion on his children, so the Lord has compassion on those who fear him; for he knows how we are formed, he remembers that we are dust. The life of mortals is like grass, they flourish like a flower of the field; the wind blows over it and it is gone, and its place remembers it no more" (vv. 13–16).

God remembers that we don't have much in reserve, that we are pretty frail, not only that but he has compassion on us (the sort of compassion that us parents have for our kids, that makes us weak in the stomach when something goes wrong for them that we want to fix). On top of all that he also has the power to renew our strength. What great truths these are, and worthy of leaning in to when the future looks overwhelming!

               Praise the Lord, my soul;

    all my inmost being, praise his holy name.
 Praise the Lord, my soul,
    and forget not all his benefits—

who forgives all your sins
    and heals all your diseases,
 who redeems your life from the pit
    and crowns you with love and compassion,
 who satisfies your desires with good things
    so that your youth is renewed like the eagle’s.

 The Lord works righteousness
    and justice for all the oppressed.

 He made known his ways to Moses,
    his deeds to the people of Israel:
 The Lord is compassionate and gracious,
    slow to anger, abounding in love.
 He will not always accuse,
    nor will he harbor his anger forever;
 he does not treat us as our sins deserve
    or repay us according to our iniquities.
 For as high as the heavens are above the earth,
    so great is his love for those who fear him;
 as far as the east is from the west,
    so far has he removed our transgressions from us.

 As a father has compassion on his children,
    so the Lord has compassion on those who fear him;
 for he knows how we are formed,
    he remembers that we are dust.
 The life of mortals is like grass,
    they flourish like a flower of the field;
 the wind blows over it and it is gone,
    and its place remembers it no more.
 But from everlasting to everlasting
    the Lord’s love is with those who fear him,
    and his righteousness with their children’s children—
 with those who keep his covenant
    and remember to obey his precepts.

 The Lord has established his throne in heaven,
    and his kingdom rules over all.

 Praise the Lord, you his angels,
    you mighty ones who do his bidding,
    who obey his word.
 Praise the Lord, all his heavenly hosts,
    you his servants who do his will.
 Praise the Lord, all his works
    everywhere in his dominion.

Praise the Lord, my soul. (Psalm 103, NIV)