Our God is faithful, and our God wants us to trust Him.

Since coming home in early June I have not been keeping my blog like I had been for the previous 14 months.  I think this has partially lead to my feeling like I’ve lost the past two months, like they are unaccounted for.  I know that I have been keeping busy with construction projects, and that those projects are helping me towards my goal of reentering the mission field sometime in 2014; but I don’t want to lose this time, I don’t want it to go by without me taking the time to reflect on it.  

I have been getting up around 8AM, and travelling to Renton, mostly, to work on a rental property.  When I toured the place six weeks ago it was the most rundown structure I had ever been inside.  The homeowner initially passed on hiring me, but eventually he came around to bringing me on full-time.  I have been remiss to share the timing around which all of this occurred, and so here it is:

Since arriving back home I have had work six days a week, with many of those days being for twelve hours.  I had completed the drain system at my neighbor’s house, and was serving at a workday for All Saints when I found that I had been withholding my tithe for some reason.  That day, I put my tithe in the offering box at church, and felt all at once lighter.  It is so easy to distrust that God will provide.  Two hours later I received a text from the property owner in Renton, a message which since then has resulted in 130 hours of work.  Our God is faithful, and our God wants us to trust Him.  

Our God is faithful, and our God wants us to trust him.

When I began this blog I was a carpenter moving to Albania to be a missionary.  Now I am a carpenter again.  My future, like everyone’s future, is under construction with every breath.  Today I sent an email to a missionary in Thessaloniki whom I would like to apprentice under.  I tried to outline my idea for service under him succinctly.  That said, I am quite nervous to hear his response.  I am trying to imagine how I might respond to the opening volley of communication from a stranger in the States; an unknown entity asking for time, guidance, and energy, all of which are dear and even more dear to missionaries while they are abroad.

Before putting a chalk line on the floor, a carpenter must first make two crow’s feet with his pencil; one at either end.  I have placed my crow’s foot here in an email.  I am waiting for my efforts to be mirrored by a man I have never met who has no reason to believe I am sincere, or dependable, honest, or motivated.  If he will offer a deep mark at his end of the floor, I can begin walking out the long, red-dust saturated braid between us.  Then it will be for God to pull it tight, the Holy Spirit to clear its path, and Jesus to give the thin rope a snap.  

Until then, I am a man who’s saw is powered, with a sharp blade, looking for a swath to open in a smooth ripping of my fibrous reality.  Open the door God, this is your son knocking.

When I was first an employee of Carlisle Classic Homes I can remember telling Alex, one of the Project Managers there, that I loved demolition.  “Don’t let Rob hear you say that,” he warned.  The inference was that if the owner of the company were to find out that I enjoyed demolishing parts of structures as much as I do, that I would soon find myself busy doing nothing else.  The phase of construction most populated with griping men tends to be the demolition phase.  I still love it.

I am currently helping to renovate what had been a den for needle drug users in the city of Renton.  One of four units, the apartment is the most run down structure I have ever been inside.  I say that having spent the last year of my life in Albania; the second poorest nation in Europe.  The human’s ability to destroy would be a fascinatingly complex study.  People who do not check themselves are to their domiciles like sea water to the iron hull of a ship without zincs welded to it.  We can ruin everything simply by being around it, entirely unintentionally.

For me this project has offered a chance to participate in the healing of something, but also to be creative.  I have won the apartment owner’s trust, and so when I come up with a solution to one conundrum or another, he gets excited rather than defensive about moving forward.  His excitement has me excited, so its a pleasant atmosphere for building.  I should say that since arriving home I have been provided work as often as I have needed it.  God’s provision is a joy to witness.

As my 30s pass in what feels like little more than an extended dream, I sometimes pine over the fact that I do not have any children.  My sister’s four kids have been in town for six weeks, and three of them are returning with their mother back to Arizona in two days time.  Noah will be staying on until Sunday.  Having four little people around our family home has been good in so many ways. I am going to miss them more than I have in the past, I feel.

My sister’s children are terrific kids, and I might have thought her experience was unique were it not for the recent family reunion.  A week and a half ago I was on the Washington coast, meeting my cousin Mark’s youngest child for the first time.  Charlotte is perchance the happiest child I have ever seen.  For her life is delight, delight, delight.  Most of our family met Charlotte for the first time at the reunion.  In every instance her joy was contagious.  

I am certain that her energy has rubbed off on the rest of her immediate family.  Mark and Alexis seem very happy.  I celebrate the joy these people bring with them as they enter the world.  One day I hope to have my own little joys running around, screaming as they chase eachother, getting into everything, reconfiguring my sleep.  I was thankful not to have children as I entered the mission field.  The time is wrong, and I need to find a wife first besides.  So, for now, it is enough that my sister has kids and that nearly all of my married friends at church have or are having children.  God’s plan and timing are perfect.

Last Sunday, during the opening church announcements, my friend Susan said that I needed to be at the coming church work day.  “Since you’re the only one who really knows what he’s doing.”  Later in the week I received an email and a phone call from one of our pastors, confirming my invitation.  In order to be an effective volunteer, I needed to plan for what tools I might need.  I also needed to plan for something else; every carpenter needs his apprentice.

I had not worked with Noah for a few weeks, and he readily joined my father and I for our outing to All Saints.  My sister informed me that he had been up since 6AM to ask if it was time to go yet.  His enthusiasm for work did not diminish as the day progressed, but grew stronger.  Noah is a rarely delightful 10 year old.  Today we demolished a fence, cut down a tree, took out a basketball hoop, and removed a stand-alone 8×8 treated post.

Afterword, we with my father took a trip across town to Red Mill Burger at Interbay.  The three of us went after our top-of-the-line fast food with hardly a thought for chewing or conversation.  After a few focused minutes we were once again fueled and ready for work, which was good.  We still needed to stop by my jobsite in Ballard to pick up a truck-load of salvaged kindling from last week’s project.

At the end of our load-up, Lorna commented to me as to how good of a worker Noah was.  Between Lorna and the crew at church, about a dozen people got to witness what a boy who is becoming a young man looks like; what a young person can do if he chooses to engage life with a willingness and a positive outlook.  These tasks, when performed with all of the energy we have, take on new importance and have the ability to shape who we will be.

I have been keeping busy these days by performing work for a woman in Ballard named Lorna.  Lorna and I met a few weeks ago while I was building my mother’s porch swing in secret.  I was painting the swing, working with my shirt off, when I heard a call over the fence from the house next door.  A woman in her later years stood on her second floor deck and called down questions to me; questions like: what kind of work do I do, and would I be interested in doing some work for her?

What was sure to be two days of deck repair has since turned into about two weeks of solid work.  Over the course of that time, I’ve really gotten to know a man named Kam Johnson better.  Kam is my Dunn Lumber salesman.  Dunn is the place that people who know construction go to for their building materials in Seattle.  Kam borrowed a truck from his friend, to come to my job site, on his day off, to deliver building materials, free of charge.  He has a great spirit, and is a strong, conscientious, and generous man.  Kam always has a smile and a hug ready for me, and I expect our friendship to be a constant in my life.

The day after Kam came by, I had an official delivery from Dunn.  This time it was a driver named Scott.  As we worked to unload the fence boards, Scott alluded to some time of military service.  He mentioned a time window which precluded his involvement in either of our most recent foreign invasions.  “Did you serve in Iraq 1?”  I asked.  “Nope,” he replied, “Kosovo.”  At that I stopped and considered the odds; that I, a person who has been invited to serve on behalf of the Church in Kosovo would encounter a veteran of that conflict on my job site in Seattle.

I do not encounter God with any more frequency than anyone else does.  I do not live amongst more miracles than the average person.  Because I am looking with expectation for the ways in which God is at work in my world, sometimes I get a flicker of light on the periphery of my vision field.  On Wednesday I was able to spot one of the millions of miracles that transpired in that single moment in time.  God had sent a messenger disguised as a man.

I have always anticipated family gatherings with my father’s side of the family (Hughes) with more excitement than with those put on by my mother’s side of the family (Elder).  I grew up under the critical eyes of my mother’s parents, her brothers and their wives.  Time with my mother’s family was usually good time, but I found it to be predictable, typical, invented; a replay of a previous encounter.  Time with my father’s side of the family was always vacation time; exciting, exotic, rich.

This most recent family reunion was full, full, full of time with family, and I think the proximity we shared brought to light the scuffs, dings, and dirty under carriages of our previously immaculate seeming, chrome-plated, vacation hot-rods.  It could also be that as I get older I am privy to more information than before, or that I have new eyes from which to see my family.  I never realized just how insatiable the American is when it comes to the critique of what he or she is consuming.  The person who has everything doesn’t have it all until they’ve told you why what they do have isn’t enough.

So, why have I thought that my father’s side of the family had everything in meetings past?  How many of us have been dating people at a distance, seeing each-other only on the weekends, coming to find that it isn’t so difficult to put on your best shining face for a few hours at a time?  Living with family is tough, and the facsimile is far easier.  My mother’s side of the family has literally been where I am at every turn, and when things were not turning.  My last name is Hughes, but I am more an Elder than I knew.  I owe the Elder Family a life debt.

My grandparents dedicated their lives to the Southern Baptist Church.  My father’s father was a minister and a person who specialized in “church building.”  This involved all aspects of pastoral life; from foundation to maintenance.  Laying down the first footprints of a building to visiting the newly born and the dying, speaking in front of congregations to securing the roof over their very heads; all of these were activities set to fill his life of service.  Ross’s wife Pauline was his complement in every regard.  Her life was devoted principally to her husband and to the raising of children, the singing of hymns, the discipling of young women, and volunteering to better her community.

They had four children, of which my father is one.  Those four children combined to have seven offspring, from which there are currently 13 great-grandchildren to Ross and Pauline.  The family has members living on both the east and west coast, and the southwest.  If it weren’t for family reunions every two years, the Hughes family cousins would not be able to pick each other out of a police line-up, much less have a descent level of rapport and knowledge of each-other’s history.

Getting together has become increasingly problematic as the time has passed since the death of my father’s parents.  The family is in a time of transition where connections are and feel less concrete.  It is a delight to see the faces of those who loved us as children, and to meet the children of their children.  However, the perpetuation of these get-togethers is increasingly in doubt.  For now, I hope to focus on the beauty behind the idea of making family a priority worth celebrating at any cost.  So much of our culture in America has its roots in the freedom from the confines of family.  Running counter to this model is an exercise in optimism and the collective will of a family dispersed.

It was stressful for me to try and get the swing in place by the proper time.  In reality, I needed to be hiding in the bushes with the piece when my mother and sister pulled out of the driveway if we were going to have the installation completed by the time they got back.  The packing up of and getting things home took four hours instead of the two I had scheduled for.  Seattle afternoon traffic is a living example of what is not working in America.

Upon arriving, my father and I worked on installation for about two hours before deciding that good enough was good enough.  The swing was roughly in place, and that would have to do.  The swing turned out to be precisely where my mother wanted it when she saw it for the first time.  Although we did not have the final decorations in place on the first night, the idea and intention were clear.  It soon became a comfortable draw for family members to enjoy at any time of day.

Since Friday, my nephew Noah has made the porch-swing his bed.  By Tuesday, when my brother-in-law Daniel arrived from Tucson, the swing had become a centerpiece for family time.  My uncle Norman once explained the satisfaction of building to me in this way: he said “at the end of the day, you’ve made something.  There it is; sit on it, stand on it, touch it.”  And he was right.

I have been told that my choosing to collect Starbucks mugs from around the world is proof that I am a nerd, or someone who at the very least lacks the ability to discern what is and is not cool.  I was a collector at a young age, being able at age nine to claim ownership of every He-Man action figure there was.  When my father brought me home a mug from Chicago some years ago, the fire was lit, and now I am a collector again.  In a train station in Warsaw was a Starbucks Coffee.

Now I had a predicament.  I had purchased two mugs in Brussels, and two more in Budapest.  With these additional eight, there would be no way for me to avoid a 50 euro surcharge on every upcoming flight.  I either needed to find a way to ship twelve mugs home from Warsaw, or donate them to the local homeless population.  UPS wanted over 300 dollars and only offered a next-day service.  At the Polish Post Office, I was given less expensive shipping options.  When the woman giving me service asked how long I wanted the shipping to take I replied “as long as possible.”  

I returned home just under a month later and my package had not arrived.  When another month had gone by, I simply assumed that somewhere between the cities of Warsaw and Sumner, a post office worker had had the good fortune to inherit some colorful ceramics.  The surprise at the package’s final delivery was a delight not only for myself, but for the nephews aswell.