How to pray when life is hard

We prayed for nearly a year for our missionary colleague who died just over two weeks ago, as he struggled with the ups and downs of cancer. Our prayers strayed wildly between two possible outcomes of this: that God would heal him or that God would take him home to heaven. Of course our hearts were more in the first prayer than the second, but we prayed them both nonetheless, knowing that obedience was important.

Only a week or so before our colleague passed away I was reading a portion of Timothy Keller's book, Prayer. I mustn't have been near my computer, because I typed all of the below quotes on my iPhone. I think they're worth sharing now, for while that particular situation is now resolved (we know the answer to our prayer) and now we pray for his family and the witness he left behind, while we live on this aching earth we're going to continue to encounter people dying. More and more as we age.

A quick aside about the witness our colleague left behind. There were two parts to his funeral. The public part was all in Japanese and there were something like 60 Japanese teenagers there. They were friends and soccer team-mates of our colleague's two younger sons. The gospel was clearly proclaimed. We continue to pray for these seeds that were sown in a way that never would have been possible if God had answered our prayer for our colleague's healing here on this earth.

Nevertheless, it is good to know how to pray in these situations. Keller sheds some light on the situation by looking at Augustine's teaching on prayer:

Even the most godly Christian can't be sure what to ask for when we are enduring difficulties and suffering. "Tribulations . . . may do us good . . . and yet because they are hard and painful . . . we pray . . . that they may be removed from us." Should we pray, then, for a change in circumstances or just for strength to endure them? Augustine points to Jesus' own prayer in Gethsemane, which was perfectly balanced between honest desire . . . and submission to God" p. 87, 88.

And further on, he makes some startling statements about prayer: 

Augustine . . . "argues that not only can we grow in prayer in spite of these difficulties but because of them. He concludes his letter [to a young widow who'd lost almost everything in the sacking of Rome in 410AD] by asking his friend, "Now what makes this work [of prayer] specially suitable to widows but their bereaved and desolate condition?" Should a widow not, he asked, "commit her widowhood, so to speak, to her God as her shield in continual and most fervent prayer?" What a remarkable statement. Her sufferings were her "shield"—they defended her from the illusion of self-sufficiency and blindness that harden the heart, and they opened the way for the rich, passionate prayer life that could bring peace in any circumstance. He calls her to embrace the situation and learn to pray" p 88.

Most of us aren't widows, but shouldn't we too turn our griefs, our sufferings, into a shield, one that helps us pray all the more fervently and protects us from going astray in our own strength?

Saturday's Finals

Time is racing fast these days and I've just realised that I haven't written about the Track and Field finals on Saturday. 

Final straight of the 400m for our middle son.

Discus is hard to photograph without a telescopic lens. We were behind
two fences.

It was a gorgeous day, sunny and very warm (upper 20Cs) at least for these Tokyoites who've been freezing for what seems like ever-so-long. So warm we had to be careful not to get sunburnt and many were retreating to the trees scattered around the track. We sat under umbrellas a lot of the day as there was no roof on the stands. 

It was a 12-hour day for me, a bit longer for the team who left earlier than I did. I left, with a car-full of people at 7.30am and got home at 7.30pm. Of course we stopped for dinner on-base at the American fast food court. I enjoyed Subway (the chain is in Japan, but none close to our house).

I get really nervous about wrestling, but generally haven't with track and field. Maybe because my boys haven't had super lofty goals. However this time one of them did. 

Before the 400m and 100m of our middle son, I was just as nervous as I am at wrestling. But he did really well. He ran or threw personal best scores for all his events, even the relay team he was in ran a team-best. And he got three top-eight finishes too, which meant ribbon awards at the end of the day in 400m (5th), 4x400m (3rd), and discus (4th). He wasn't completely happy, his goals were higher than that, especially for the 100m (in which he came 10th out of about 100 runners from eight schools). But I was happy.

Finishing the 1,600m in first place surprised us all.

Our youngest son's overall placings weren't spectacular, which we expected, because he's competing against boys up to about 16 years of age—if they're in middle school, grades 6 to 8, they can compete. This seems grossly unfair from the perspective of an Aussie where athletics is conducted in one-year age groups. However he did produce an exciting finish in his 1,600m heat. He's pretty new at this event and didn't pace himself quite right, however he pulled out an amazing finish in which he closed a gap of about 60m in the last lap to win the race by about three metres. That went some way toward making up for the disappointment in not getting PRs or great placings.

Not too many years ago I was a "never wear pink"
gal. I'm reformed!

I'm really happy that our middle son placed in his events. This is something his brother hasn't managed to do in track and field, so this is "his" thing. I want each of my boys to find what they're passionate about. Seeing them achieve in those areas is very satisfying.

So now we have about four months of no sport on Saturday. I'm looking forward to some nice sleep-ins. But not looking forward to having to motivate my sporty boys to get out and get some exercise of their own volition. Strangely, they usually don't naturally take the initiate yet in that area. But if they don't, they get unhappy and restless. Hopefully they'll start to recognise that about themselves and take initiative more often these summer holidays.

I loved seeing these two younger siblings in the wider CAJ family
 have a wonderful time playing under the trees behind the stands.
You can't see it clearly, but there are soft "friends" placed in the tree.

Mind your own business

This cafe is in our neighbourhood. Anyone

sitting there is easily see by anyone on

the walkway that runs the length of the 

shop. It's a place where lots of people 

associated with our school go. It's a great

place to meet people as it's right next to train

station, but if I want privacy, I don't go here, 

though usually people are usually sensitive 

enough not to butt in.

I read the phrase "mind your own business" a few weeks back and it's been echoing around my head. Helpfully echoing through my head.

So when I heard English spoken in the train last week, I looked up and noted another CAJ family a bit further down the train carriage. There were a number of people between us so there wasn't a clear sightline. However what I heard was a mum struggling emotionally with one of her kids, so I "minded my own business" and didn't rush up to say hi.

And applying the other way too, for example, most times it isn't your business why I chose to not go to something. Most times we're not obligated to state our reasoning or excuse to anyone, however I'm a little prone to telling people my reasoning even if they don't ask. That's not always helpful to my emotional health.

Of course I don't want to use this to isolate myself or others, but it's a boundary issue, isn't it? An issue we need to be aware of in our own lives, as well as respecting other people's boundaries. Caring for others sometimes means not asking. Caring for ourselves sometimes means not explaining.

Here's where I read it:

“Here’s the rule: To keep out of trouble mostly all you need to do is mind your own business. If a woman tells you she is starting study in a particular area or a new job, don’t feel that it is your place to question that choice of hers. It isn’t. If you are wondering why Miss X isn’t yet married, remind yourself that there is no rule that we have to get married by a particular age, or indeed, at all, and say nothing. Similarly, if you are wondering why a particular couple only have one or two children, or seven, or none at all, again remind yourself that this is something that is their concern and not yours. Godly womanhood can be expressed in a thousand different ways and we need not worry ourselves with other people’s business.

From here: https://www.eternitynews.com.au/culture/twitter-thread-attacks-sexism-in-churches/

Nature refreshes

Through these trees you can just glimpse a river (which isn't
 that pretty, it's banks are reinforced with concrete)
and a train platform.

Someone said to me today, "You look tired. Are you okay?"

Same tree, swivelled a little to the left to capture the context. This is a busy
place. The building is a medical university. Just beyond the tree on the same
side of the road as the tree is the entrance to another train station. Lots of
people move through this area every day. It's a delight to have these
enormous trees brighten the journey.

I feel tired. There's a lot of reasons for that, it's normal at this stage in the school-year cycle for us, but of course we've had grief in the last couple of months to deal with. At the OMF prayer meeting I went to today a counsellor talked about building resiliency in ourselves and in others. One of the things she mentioned was taking time to appreciate nature.

On my way home from the meeting (a four-train journey), I stopped for a moment to appreciate the beauty depicted in these photos. I didn't get the best photos. I was dragging a heavy suitcase and not inclined to muck around with getting the perfect position to snap a shot.

I feel a bit refreshed by seeing these, taking a photo, and now posting them for you to see. Not to mention, admitting my sadness and fatigue to you here, which apparently is another way of building resilience and coping with distress.

Hopefully I'll be able to get back to writing here on a regular basis. I've found it difficult to do that in the last 10 days.

Cross-cultural sporting experience

Here's a post I wrote in May 2011, yep, six years ago, when we first began attending inter-school track and field competitions in Tokyo with our eldest son:

Yesterday we spent all day at our 11 y.o.'s track meet. Throughout the day I couldn't help remember...those years when I was a participant, not a spectator at such events. And also on the differences between the way Americans seem to do school sport and the Australian way.

Australian schools, in my experience, generally have three different streams of sport going at school. 

1. They have PE classes during school time, the number of which varies from school to school. This is compulsory for much of one's school career, or it was for me.
2. Once a week they have an afternoon dedicated to sport or some other non-curricular activity. There is a mixture of interschool team sports as well as within-school options like Ten Pin bowling, cricket, netball, soccer etc. During that time I even participated in activities like chess, film appreciation (really - that is the first and last time I saw "Psycho"!) and Tai Chi. These options generally change every term, four times a year.
3. Our high school had four different annual events that directly related in interschool events. They were the swimming carnival, athletics carnival (which involved track and field), cross country and ball games (the latter comprising of team events like captain ball, tunnel ball etc.). Each of these were all-school events where classes were cancelled, the first two being all day or day-and-a-half events. They were conducted as competitions between school "houses". A great deal of school spirit was involved in each these events, though many fellow teenagers chose to just be physically present, rather than spirited! These events, especially the first three, were primarily concerned with choosing the best athletes to represent the school in later regional events.

Our experience here within the international school arena in Japan is quite different. I don't know about other schools, but this is my understanding of CAJ's system.

1. PE classes extend from Kindergarten through to Year 12. And more frequently than we (that is my husband and I) had in state schools in Australia.
2. The elementary school has an annual Field Day. This is relatively non-competitive and encouraging event. It has no long-term goal such as selecting the fastest or highest or strongest for inter-school competition. Middle and high school have no such event. No swimming carnivals or all-school cross country events.
3. The international schools have interschool competitions in various sports organised during out-of-school hours. These sports include basketball, volleyball, soccer, cross-country, track, field hockey and wrestling. They have three seasons - "fall", winter and spring. 

Here are some things I find strange about the system we find ourselves in:

• The number three (above) competitions are totally extra curricular. You only "go out" for them if you want. The teams are selected from those who try out. I find this particularly strange for athletics - how do you know that you have the best athletes representing your school? How do you even know if you have your athletes doing their best events. 
• No weekly sports afternoons. If you want to pursue a sport you do it in your own time. This makes it hard if you are struggling to achieve academically or struggling to get homework completed. Though I do remember that my high school inter school sports teams did sometimes have after school training.
• They train very hard. High school teams train five days a week for two to three hours each day during their season. Middle school teams at CAJ are limited to three times a week. Even that was a lot when it was basketball training and it started at 6.30am! Consider that a number of students travel for over half an hour or an hour to get to or from school and there is a lot expected of those who take on sport.
• It has taken a while, but early on terms like "Varsity" and "Junior varsity" were very confusing. For those who don't know. Varsity is the school's best team. Junior varsity is like the B team.
• There are no age levels in the cross-country and athletics events. So our 11 y.o. was competing against all middle schoolers - some of whom are 14 or 15 years old (and looked it). Same for high school.
• Finally on the comparison front, I don't ever remember driving for two and a half hours to go to a simple inter-school event. We did that yesterday to watch our son run and throw. It was only 36 km, but very orderly Tokyo traffic includes hundreds of traffic lights in that short distance.

Whoa, this is already a long post. My thoughts yesterday didn't just encompass the above. You see, I was a runner. I even was a part of Little Athletics club for a few years.

My thoughts yesterday roamed into sympathy for the longer distance runners (400m and above). Been there, done that. In sympathy for the hurdles runners who slammed into hurdles. I never did like that form of the sport. I flinched as people jumped over the high jump. I remembered how I used to "eat up" the track when I ran and how that feeling suddenly began to fade at around 14 years of age. That was a strange feeling. I remembered running in a school relay race against Cathy Freeman (famous Australian Olympian now). My claim to reflected fame!

At the end I remind myself that it is just different, not wrong. Another thing to get used to that is not particularly a Japanese cultural difference, but because we're in Japan and have our kids at an international school, that will be what we have to work with for the next X number of years.

Since that time we've gotten much more used to the way it's done here. But I still field questions like: "What sport did you go out for in high school?" Just yesterday I had a conversation with a Japanese man about how he did javelin, yes, just javelin, for about seven years during school and uni. That's how they do it in Japan. Each country has a different philosophy of education and it's good to remember, when we start to compare and contrast the systems, that no single system is the "right" system, there are good things to be found in them all.

Contrast within Tokyo

I've told you in previous blog posts that we live out of the main centre of Tokyo. It's a 30 to 45 min train ride to the nearest "big smoke" or big city centre in Tokyo. Yes, our address is still Tokyo, but we're definitely not inner city, in fact our little corner of Tokyo is really quiet. We have no major roads nearby and we don't live close enough to the train line to get that noise nor to major shopping centres. Because I work from home most of the time it's easy to forget that we live in the midst of a huge metropolis. But every now and then I'm reminded.

Yesterday I had meetings at two major (and famous) centres in Tokyo: Akihabara (electric city fame) and Shibuya (mega intersection crossing and Hachiko-the-faithful-dog statue).

I got lost in both places. 

At Akihabara I was to have a Japan Harvest meeting with a writer and my boss. I walked up and down a couple of flights of stairs before taking the wrong exit and ended up walking half-way around the shopping district that surrounds the busy station before I found the coffee shop where our meeting was scheduled to be held. And it was right next to an exit! The station wasn't super busy, by Tokyo standards, because I was there right before shops opened at 10am. But there still were plenty of people.

A small glimpse of the road crossing. Here are some better photos.

Not, however, as many as I encountered a couple of hours later at Shibuya. Here I was to meet a couple of ladies for lunch and to learn a Bible story together. One of them suggested we meet at the "Hachiko exit". It completely missed me that this is where the famous dog's statue is. However it seems that no one else had. As the Japanese phrase goes: "even cats and rice ladles" were there on this public holiday. Apparently visiting this place is one of the top 10 things to do in Tokyo! I've lived here nearly 10 years and never done it.

I didn't take a photo of the statue, I would have had to battle with the four-deep crowd that was already doing so. Located at that same exit is the famous Shibuya crossing that you often see depicting downtown Tokyo. There were lots of tourists around walking across with their phones held high to record the experience. Plus I think I saw at least three or four film crews there. Check out this 90 second video:

Here's a 9-minute documentary called "24 hours at Shibuya's Hachiko Scramble (I think the stat is wrong about how many people cross in one 45 sec crossing, though).

Yes, I crossed twice, as we searched for a place to have lunch where we could linger and not have to wait to get in. There were people standing in the middle of the crossing waiting for friends to take a photo of them. Generally being someone who avoids crowds, it wasn't great fun. There is a reason we haven't gone to view this spectacle of crowded city living.

Coming back home was a relief. Here's a main road I crossed on my way home from our local station.

Don't insult your readers

I would wager that most of us do not sit up all night thinking of ways to treat our readers like they’re stupid. Yet, it is a common problem, especially with newer writers who are still learning the craft. All of us can slip into these nasty habits, if we aren’t mindful. (from here)

I love this article. It's written primarily from a serious, fiction-writing perspective, but it has some good points for all of us who write, and more of us are writing than ever before with social media. 

This is one to keep in mind:

Don't use punctuation and font as props. 

Especially be careful about exclamation points, ellipses, bold and italics fonts. Strengthen your writing before you use these as crutches to prop up your writing.