a beautiful nightmare

i guess the vacation got to my head or something.   we're a few weeks past new year's and a whole new round of birthdays is starting, both of which tend to make us think of newness, happiness, beginnings, life and all manner of fun and frivolity.

we had spend a month learning about Noah and that section's theme of God keeping His promises.  it was fantastic, and we all had a blast.  if the kids spent any time at all thinking about the hundreds or thousands of people who were washed away by the rising waters, that all stopped the second i mentioned a 600-year-old guy building a boat, or doing anything, really. that alone is fairly distracting; when you add the chaotic zoological menagerie Noah and his family catered to for that entire year, i should be grateful they even retained "God Keeps His Promises."  we galloped like horses, stomped like elephants, roared like lions and tigers and bears, oh my- we did it all.  we sang "Arky, Arky" (which every child needs to know.  is this a "Northerner" thing?!?  only 2 adults i polled from church knew the song).  we had so much fun wondering if Noah had freshwater fishbowls on the ark, that we didn't really bring up the homes and pets and people and wildlife that didn't make it.

i was still a thinking a week behind when i waltzed into church this afternoon to prepare some coloring pages for all 17,000 children, flipped open the manual and saw the story for this week.

oh goodie.

instead of sticking with Abraham, we were jumping ahead a few centuries, right into Egypt, a land filled with slaves and sin, and about to be filled with frogs, bugs, brimstone and death.

i chose different coloring pages- happy pages- to photocopy.

i got all the story picture cards in order.

i wondered for 90 minutes how on earth to tell the story without causing too much trauma. this story didn't have any 600 year old people OR giant boats. 

we were doing mostly alright for almost half the time. 

entire river turning into blood? eww, but we moved on.

frogs? icky, but not too bad.

bugs? eh, not a problem.

boils? gross, but 4 year olds can't quite fathom it, so it passed right over their heads.

then all the fluffy cute animals died. bam. the Egyptians had lost their water supply, now they'd lost their meat, too. the kids didn't get that, either.  so i told them the truth: every time you eat a burger, someone lost a cow for that deliciousness.  no more burgers for the Egyptians.

thunder and hailstorms. locusts. darkness. three days of a darkness so dark you could feel it.

each time, Moses and Aaron went to Pharaoh and asked him to let God's people go.  
each time, Pharaoh said, "No."

every. blasted. time.

the kids had sobered enough by this point to hear the whole deal with Plague #10. 

about the fluffy white sheepie. about killing it.  about painting the door frame with its blood.  i am SO GLAD we no longer live in a culture where this wouldn't have sounded altogether creepy and gross and sad. 

but it is.  it's creepy AND gross AND sad.

it's to save the firstborns.

God was going to save the firstborn Israelites (all of them, really).  the firstborn Egyptians weren't so lucky.

the kids didn't really understand the word "firstborn."  so i told them the truth.  the oldest boy in every family.

bam.

there were a few firstborn sons in the classroom. at least half the class had older brothers.  there were tears- legit, wet, crocodile tears- welling up in those eyes.  one child covered his face with his hands and fell forward to hide his reaction to the idea of his older brother dying.

i couldn't help feeling it, too.  i've got a brother.  my sister has a firstborn kid that i saw last week and played in the snow with and worked puzzles with.

we ended the night with awards and badges for all the verses they've said, so i think they recovered. possibly better than i did.

…

this year instead of returning with my friends to India, i have remained here.  but my thoughts and prayers are still with them now, and i remembered one of the experienced from last year that got my attention.

it was a sunday morning after a 12-hour drive through bouncy, bumpy unpaved "roads" in a car with fewer seats than people.  the end of the trek landed us in a hotel with fewer beds than people, no hot water but lots of cold water on the floor and walls and pipes and…

anyway, we woke up and sipped the chai tea the hotel guy brought from the seller across the street, so we were looking down on him from the second story window as he conversed with a large crowd of folks, probably all about the white people that came to town.  then Lynn and i looked a little past him to the empty lot.  oh boy.  i was not quite awake enough for that. this is a small excerpt from what i wrote about it later.

***

the first morning in the hotel in Ongol i woke up to a surprise.  apparently on weekends, Indians like to chill before another work week and do most of their hanging out on Sundays, and their hanging out usually involves eating more meat than weekdays. some things are the same over there. :)

well, this hotel was one street behind a main street, so our windows overlooked the back of the market stalls that sell meat, especially lamb and chicken.

i would just like to state that i didn’t immediately appreciate the eye-opening insight to the Passover celebration, especially that early on a morning…but i did several cups of chai tea later.

it’s not clean.  it certainly isn’t pretty. it is not a part of our sanitized culture.  i wonder if we lost some of the beautiful hugeness of his sacrifice because we got rid of some of the ugliness.

the idea of hosting a cute little lamb in your house for a week and then turning it into lamb chops is one thing, especially after the kids have named it, petted it, played with it.

the idea that God Incarnate would willingly become that lamb and live among us, seeing the cross in His future for 33 years takes “sacrifice” to a whole new level.

***

i did not particularly enjoy making small people cry.

but the fact remains that without the sheep's sacrifice, Israel was doomed to slavery.

and without Jesus' sacrifice so are we.

it's a terrible bedtime story. 

but the good-ness is so good only because the bad-ness is so, so bad.

the best-est, most beautiful nightmare.

when the children get over the buggy nightmare, my hope is that maybe they'll hold on to just enough of the terror of the plagues to make the coming salvation that much sweeter.

my other hope is that big people do, too.  i know that all too often i forget some things.  it's easy to remember that i'm saved.  it's not always easy to remember what i've been saved from. i take the salvation almost for granted and neglect the cost that i didn't have to pay. it's happier, but it cheapens the happiness.  it's prettier, but it's not the truth. the truth is that all of humanity was on the edge of a thousand-foot cliff, about to fall into a rocky barren firepit. then we were hauled back at the last instant by our only hope. take away the cliff and firepit and all you've got left is a walk in the park that Jesus gives up an afternoon to join you for.

without the plagues, the Israelites would've given up even earlier or not even left their taskmasters. they would have made all the bricks Pharaoh wanted, as long as they got their cucumbers (seriously, where were their priorities?!?!).

we closed out story time, transitioned to snack time and after the Nilla Wafers we sang another classic, "My God is So Big"- and said a prayer of thanks. thanks for being so big, so strong and so mighty that there's nothing our God cannot do.  so big and so strong that he can turn rivers to blood, dirt into bugs, horror into hope and death into deliverance.

sweetest dreams, friends.

(just remember to check for frogs!)

a shameless plug and a case of taken identity

every time, it seems, that a new person finds out how old i am, something happens to their faces.  first, the surprise, because reality is about a decade ahead of their guesses (no, i'm really not kidding).  then the surprise melts away to reveal a sympathy or stupidity masked in humor or faked jealousy.  somehow, they think being treated like a high school student is something to envy.  really, people?  as if i'm not aware of what my face looks like, or how old i am, or how most people talk about high school students.  trust me, i'm fully aware. but thank you anyway for your opinions and judgements and comments.

anyone who doubts me, ask for Charter's security camera from this morning. because i've finally gotten a different internet service, i returned the modem to the store and thus severed my last physical tie to the place, excepting the inevitable bombardment of junk mail in my future.  the lady was incredibly nice, to her credit.  until.  there's always an "until."  as soon as i showed my photo ID (driver's license), there was the "Awww, that's so nice."  and then her voice changed half an octave up.  my favorite part of the sequence: when she starts calling me "sweetheart."  yeah, that happened again. 

now that the ranting is over, i will say that once or twice it has come in handy, to be able to play dumb when i've made an honest mistake and let someone else who knows how to fix it.  and then there are the times when the other person made the mistake, talks down to me and then turns red in the face when i show them the other side of my ID, where there is a copy of my nursing license, state seal and everything.  it's very rewarding, and almost makes the irritation of their judging worthwhile. 

this past spring at the prompting of a friend, i began using some health supplements to see if this "Plexus" stuff could do for me what it seems to have done for others.  if 100% of the testimonies are even 50% true, then this is the closest product i've seen to a cure for, like, everything.  kinda ridiculous.

but glory be, i have been very blessed by it.  the quality of my sleep has increased dramatically, as has my energy.  my migraines have been almost entirely eliminated.  my hormones and appetite have leveled and my skin is completely clear.  like i said- ridiculous. 

so now i have officially joined the Plexus crew as an "Ambassador," and have my own website and access to zillions of other people's testimonies of how Plexus has changed their lives and how everyone in the world should try it.  you can search testimonies categorized by illness, even.

(so if you want relief from headaches, tiredness, insomnia, hypertension, high cholesterol, diabetes, hypo- or hyperthyroidism, obesity, acne, IBS/IBD, chronic fatigue syndrome, or anything else, click here for 60 risk-free days: http://shopmyplexus.com/evangelinewebb/  ) i really think it could help you, and if it doesn't, i really want to know.

but as much as i love Plexus, there's been something nagging at me.  it might seem insignificant to many, which is okay.

it's my identity.

what people see when they look at my oddly juvenile-looking face (and then recover). 

a really cool pastor once quoted someone i've forgotten by saying that we are living out our eulogies.  right now, what we say and do and believe and act on are what other people are going to remember about us when we're gone. 

i had a "Jesus moment" a few years ago after a particularly lousy shift at work.   everything had seemed to go well- until they didn't.  a few things went wrong, i made a few mistakes (non-lethal… nobody died; i'm not even sure any patient realized anything at all) and then there were some false assumptions made about me, and a few complaints and comments behind my back- and it all landed on me at once.  hand-delivered by a rather biased person.  i drove home almost in tears and sat in the car for almost an hour.  i promised myself that i would not allow this kind of down-in-the-dumps attitude inside the apartment, so i didn't.  it was in that parking spot that i realized the root of the problem, and it changed a whole lot about my life, my career, my goals.

i realized that morning that this is exactly what happens when you misplace your identity.

like this:  what do you say when you meet someone for the first time and they ask you to tell them about yourself?  I usually say something along the lines of, "Well, my name is ____, and i'm a night shift cardiac/NICU nurse at the local hospital."  if they want more, i'll tell them what i do in my spare time, like reading, writing this silly blog, arts and crafts out the wazoo, visiting my family out-of-state, etc.   it's only after all that when things like mission trips, teaching the kids at church, my devotions, and  time spent with other church members come into the conversation. 

i'd made my primary identity my nursing license. a job that is completely dependent on myself: my skills, my labor, my knowledge, my earned respect from others because of two stupid letters after my name.

that was my problem, and one i'm still working on.  the first… the very, very first thing i said about myself was that i was a nurse.  yeah, i am.  i work (at least) 40 hours most weeks, i love my job, i love my coworkers, i love my patients and their families.  it takes a lot of time and effort and planning.  there are good days and bad days and every sort of day in between. but what's really most important about me?  definitely not nursing. 

when i'm in my coffin and tossed into a grave, that's not all i want on that tombstone, or said in my eulogy. 

it's not nursing.

it's also not Plexus.

it's Jesus, people.

it's just Jesus.

what good have i done if i treated your heart attack or your neonate, got you whole family to take Plexus stuff that cured your diabetes and gave you energy to run a marathon… if your soul is not regenerated and winds up burning for eternity?  i'd love to help your physical body as much as my training allows, but i have a bigger goal in mind.  i want impact lives on a deeper level.  i want my primary identity to have nothing to do with me or what i've done, because all of it is going to turn into dirt sooner or later.  no matter how old this face appears to be, eventually it will look like dirt. 

everything Jesus did will last throughout eternity.  the souls He's saved will never grow old or die.  there are no hospitals in heaven.  there are no banks or stores.  there is no need for photo ID because what Jesus did was take our screwed-up identities and replace them with His.  whatever we achieve during our days on earth now has His name and face attached to it.  we are HIS ambassadors, proclaiming HIM with everything we do.  and all this is because later on at the entrance to heaven, we will not be showing our license to get it.  we'll be showing His. 

it's completely unfair, but it's unfair in our favor. 

there's a little section on my Plexus website that i have not filled out yet.  it's the place where i can write my Plexus "testimony" or story, and share with the world how my life has changed for the better since taking Plexus.  part of me feels horribly guilty because even after one or two requests to share my spiritual testimony, i still have not been able to.  i'm working on it- really, and i think it will probably happen soon.  but i think i want that to happen first.  Jesus changed my life more than a healthy diet ever could. it's a much better story, too.  i'm not going to brag on some vitamins and minerals before i brag on the only Person who makes this life meaningful.  i'm not going to testify to the powers of natural supplements more than i will of the all-powerful Creator of nature.  Plexus, Hobby Lobby, Barnes and Noble, the hospital- none of these will have their logo engraved on my headstone (i hope).  i don't need their seal of approval.  i have the only seal i need. 

what i do NOT want is for the only thing that is known about me to be that i take a supplement and am striving to be healthy. big deal.  this is the identity that Jesus took anyway.  i take care of it because this body has His name on it.  i'm glad He's given me this way to be healthy, and if it helps you in your health goals, too, then i'd love to partner with you and go through it by your side.

but let's do it for Jesus, please. 

let's make His name be heard farther and wider and louder and stronger than any other.

let's carry His ID and show it every single chance we get, tell our story of what He's done and how He has a fix for every need, hole, wrinkle, and rip in your life- and how He can swap out that temporal life for His eternal one.  these benefits are the worthwhile ones!! 

With or without your Plexus Pink Drink, let's start living our eulogies the way our King has called us to, flashing those nifty IDs every chance we get!!!