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Heidi Turner leads us today on our globalgirl Advent Adventure. I first met with Heidi’s words and heart many years ago through her blog Redemption Junkie. Then, during a holy encounter, several of our online friends got to meet up at Linwood House and actually sit in the same real room for three days and find our Path together. I am so thankful for friendships that can be forged and shaped over time, whether virtually or in close proximity, for a Larger purpose. This story Heidi brings today is so beautiful and full of hope … Thank you, Heidi. You are a beautiful, radiant Light.

From Away
By Heidi Renee Turner

“We’re pretty underwhelming,” the voice on the other end of the phone said.

I reassured him stuff wasn’t what we’re about.

The voice belonged to the director of the Masters program my husband and I were interested in. We were planning to visit the University to see if this was a place we could raise our family. We already knew the program fit our DNA; we had no idea what New Brunswick would be like though.

When we told people we were considering a move to St. Stephen, our Canadian family said people don’t move to New Brunswick, they move from New Brunswick. It’s an area of the world hit hard by progress, the brain drain and muscle drain of the more lucrative western provinces. The oil sands and industry stripped much of the able population from the New Brunswick shores.

One of my mentors in Pennsylvania, upon hearing our plans looked me in the eyes and said: “Oh Heidi, you don’t want to move to New Brunswick. It’s barren.”

As a woman who struggled with infertility for the first nine years of her marriage that word created deep fear in me.

And yet it still called to us. We knew deep within us this was the direction we were supposed to head.

We packed our trusty 20-plus-year-old Volvo station wagon and headed on an East Coast Fall Foliage tour like we could have never dreamed of. It ended with Hurricane Wilma hitting the coast of Maine as we drove up the small two lane highway getting blasted by rain as the logging trucks sped past us.

Just a small town, a tiny University, that, from our perspective, had only existed for about a month, coupled with a sincere welcome, deeply soothed our ministry-trodden souls. This place felt more like home in one weekend than any of the other dozen places I had lived up to this point.

We had no idea how it would happen, but we knew that this was where we were supposed to be.

On our drive home we finally got to see the scenery we had missed on the drive up. Mountains, rivers, ocean, color, blue skies–a place pulsing with life, growth and richness. There was little sign of the scary barrenness we were warned about.

We packed everything we could (only half of what we owned fit into the moving truck) sacrificing many precious possessions. We knocked the dust off our feet and prayed the predicted blizzards would not delay our arrival.

At Home in a Foreign Place

Very early in 2006 we moved into our rented home and landed in a culture more foreign to us than any of our previous moves.

How could it feel so familiar?

Why did it feel like we’ve returned?

In the end these questions didn’t matter.

All we knew was that it felt like home.

In conversation with the locals while we changed our drivers licenses, plates and set up our utilities we found ourselves in similar conversations.

“Turner? Oh, you must be related to the Turners out on Little Ridge?”

“Nope,” we’d answer.

“Oh, then ones out in Oak Bay?”

“No. We’re not related to anyone around here.”

“Then why’d you move here?” they’d ask, the same quizzical looks on their faces.

This Place is Mine

We’d talk about the University, how much we loved the ocean, how warm the people were and how we needed a change. Most of the time the expressions on their faces would deepen, instead of ease. We found the quickest answer in an expression they use for tourists and interlopers: “Oh, you’re from away,” they’d state, as if that explained everything.

From away.

How could that be? I finally found someplace that felt like home. Even more than the place I was born. No, I wasn’t from away, I’d think. This place knows me. This place is mine.

During one of the administrative tasks of changing over documents and registering utilities we ended up at town hall. They had the New Brunswick flag hanging with its white sailed ship and the Provincial motto written in Latin: Spem Reduxit.I wrote those words down on a scrap of paper in my purse and googled it as soon as I returned home. When I found out the meaning, I wept.

Spem Reduxit: Hope Was Restored

That’s why this place felt so much like home.

The local joke is that your family can live here for generations and still be considered “from away.” They only consider those born and bred on the Bay of Fundy as locals.

Last spring I was celebrating with friends at a local tradition called a kitchen party–lots of instruments, singing and laughter. A friend had written a song using the motto. It is deeply moving to me. It’s called New Brunswickers Arise. I leaned over and whispered to one of my professors that I am going to begin calling myself a “New New Brunswicker.” He smiled, shook his head and said: “Oh, you think it’s that easy, eh?”

Last August we finally bought our home here. We are putting down roots. Deep roots. Our family has begun to discuss how we plan to decorate our new home for the holidays. It’s exciting to know that where we decide to put the advent candle wreathe and the Christmas tree will begin a tradition that could continue for the rest of our lives. We are settling in.

And no matter what the locals might think, we are not from away anymore.

Reflect:

One word for today: Nest

Activity: How can you make your space feel more like home? Find one thing that you can do today that makes your space feel more creative and celebratory for this upcoming season. Be creative, be inspired, make your nest your home.

Prayer: God, in this place I dwell, you dwell with me. Help it to feel more like home. Please be at home in me today.

About Heidi:
Heidi Renee Turner is a Redemption Junkie. She longs to find meaning in the pieces other people throw away. She finds life in storytelling, art, good meals and deep conversation. She is slowly working toward her Masters in Ministry at St. Stephens University and she is putting down roots, with her husband Keith of 22 years, 13-year-old daughter, Alinea and 11-year old-son Jacob in St. Stephen, New Brunswick.

Love what my friend Danielle Strickland is up to in Australia. This girl is a freedom fighter. Way to go, Danielle!

Size Matters.

I often pray that things, problems or people would find the right proportion in my life. That they wouldn’t be made larger than they are meant to be, or smaller. I want to see people, situations, issues or things in the right size.

Last night, while decorating stockings with the crew at the Flying Beaver, I had an incident with the glue gun. Now I have a huge burn blister on the tip of my middle left finger. It makes for difficult typing and I was feeling a little sorry for myself tonight, trying to type a few keys on my computer, because it hurt and it’s awkward.

And then I checked a link my friend Tina Francis had passed on. Photographic images of women burnt with acid.

Burn victims.

These women’s lives have been dramatically altered because of an act of “Terrorism that’s personal.” Have a look.

These 12 images are graphic, so please be warned. However, I cannot help but see such courage in their faces. Most women have a love/hate relationship with a camera. We tie so much up in the perception of our own beauty. And yet, these women said yes to being photographed. I love that.

They honor us with their trust–to see them for who they truly are. They honor us with their stories.

My prayer for our world today is that what is huge–like monstrous acts of violence, war, discrimination and abuse–would be seen as such and not diminished, while the blisters on our middle finger would be just that. Little.

It was a Barbara Kingsolver quote that propelled my lovely friend Tonya Sargent to go to the Democratic Republic of the Congo three years ago:

    “If I can’t yet mourn a million people who left this world in a single day, I’ll start with one, and move from there.”
    –Leah, in The Poisonwood Bible

Those Kingsolver-crafted words helped frame Tonya’s visit to the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Once Tonya heard about the war in the Congo, she began to research , connect and raise funds for the women in the Congo. Understandably, her heart was pulling her to this place. When an opportunity came up to go and spend time with the women in the DRC. Tonya wanted to go, but she was also conflicted. “(W)hy waste all that time and money on a trip when I could just send the money as aid to the Congo?”

A wise Congolese friend introduced her to the power of the Gift of Presence.

“(He) explained to me that westerners always want to ‘help’ by either sending money, or going to do a project,” said Tonya. “But if you had a friend who had lost a loved one, you wouldn’t necessarily send them money or ‘do’ something for them, he said, you would just go and be with them, grieve with them. He said the Congolese need people who are willing to come without an agenda and just be with them. They are in mourning. It has not been lost on them that most of the planet knows nothing about their crisis. They need their stories to be heard.”

Tonya then remembered the piercing words (reported by Amnesty International) of Salvatore Bulamuzi, a member of the Lendu community whose entire family had been killed in attacks on the town of Bunia, north-eastern DRC:

“I am convinced now … that the lives of Congolese people no longer mean anything to anybody. Not to those who kill us like flies, our brothers who help kill us or those you call the international community … Even God does not listen to our prayers any more and abandons us.”

These words, crying out to be noticed, stirred Tonya’s heart. She finally recognized that perhaps her very presence would mean something. That going in itself would be a Gift.

A few days before leaving on her trip Tonya wrote: “And so I go, not with any lofty agenda or glamorous project to do. I go to deliver the message that Congolese lives do matter. I go to learn. Yes, I will visit some projects and hospitals and churches, and maybe I will have opportunities to get involved in small ways, but mostly I will just listen. And I will be changed.”

Whenever I think about the Gift of Presence, I always think about Tonya’s story and how she brought the simple, but extravagant gift of her presence to the women of the DRC.

Word for today: with

Activity: Give someone the gift of your Presence today in a meaningful way.

Prayer: Father, thank you for sending Immanuel, God with Us. You gave us the ultimate gift of your Presence.


“All history is, like a woman in labour, concentrating on this single, central event: the coming of the Son of God among us.”
–Walter Wangerin Jr., Preparing for Jesus

Today I want to tell you about a Big Fat kiss from heaven.

Entering into this globalgirl Advent Adventure was a giant leap for me as a writer. My writing is much more a birthing than a typing. I labour over words and ride waves of thoughts that come. Some days it’s a quick birth. Most days it takes a lot of time. So, bringing something from a deep place for every day on this Advent Adventure has been stretching me.

It’s been a daily Ask for manna from heaven—divinely inspired thoughts and ideas to express here—as well as the strength and energy to sustain me on this journey of gathering and writing, while raising a young family, keeping our home together and sustaining a very active interest life.

Two days ago I knew I wanted to write about the Gift of Presence (See Part I here). I had been reading the Advent Conspiracy, a great little book that reminds me that, in Jesus, God gave us his very presence; not stuff.

And whenever I think of the Gift of Presence, I am reminded of a piece Tonya Sargent had written for globalgirlnetwork.com about her journey to the Democratic Republic of the Congo a few years ago.

On Thursday night, while working on the ideas around the Gift of Presence, I pulled up Tonya’s article on my computer screen, along with a second piece she had written to her friends.

Suddenly I found myself staring at a quote—the words that had compelled Tonya to go to the Congo. Words from Leah, a character in Barbara Kingsolver’s novel, the Poisonwood Bible:

    “If I can’t yet mourn a million people who left this world in a single day, I’ll start with one, and move from there.”

It dawned on me that the next morning I would be driving down to Seattle to hear Barbara Kingsolver speak at Third Place Books. And Tonya would be there too.

On my screen I was trying to shape the story with these three voices in it.

And on Friday, there we were: me, Tonya and Barbara Kingsolver, flesh and blood, all in the same room.

An Incarnation of sorts. Our lives somehow beautifully woven and connected, in spite of physical distance and the fact that Barbara Kingsolver had no idea how she was dancing with us.

Only the Heavens could orchestrate something like this.

It was such a simple moment–you might not think too much of it–but for me, it meant a lot. When my thought life and my real life collided in this way, God didn’t just rain down manna, I got a feast. It encouraged me to keep journeying, because Heaven will supply.

And I was reminded of the heavens bursting forth in song announcing the birth of the King:

    “Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace among those whom he favors!’ Luke 2:14 (NRSV)

[Tomorrow, I’ll share Tonya’s story of going to the Congo and what it has to do with the Gift of Presence.]

Two words for today: Look up

Activity: Take a moment, go outside or look through a window … Lift up your eyes to heaven and allow the Spirit of God to speak to you.

Prayer: Thank you for big, fat kisses from heaven that encourage me to keep going on this journey. Lord, please meet with those today who need Your divine encouragement. Help me to see them even as You see them.

The amazing book Advent Conspiracy is traveling everywhere with me these days. I am hooked into every word and idea and I am holding on tightly as Jesus shifts my perspective, yet again.

It’s a simple book with a profound, jaw-dropping, life-changing message: “Christmas changed the world the day Jesus was born in a cold, dark stable. Christmas will change the world again.”

That is, if we are willing to:

  • worship fully
  • spend less
  • give more
  • love all.
  • The video says it pretty clearly. What got me? $US450 billion spent on Christmas each year. But watch it for yourself:

    I’d like to believe this message circles so much wider than the Christmas season. But, for now, our Adventure continues as we open our hearts and listen to the One who came to be present in us, so we may truly be present to others.

    One word for today: Present
    One activity: Be fully present with one person today. Observe yourself in the moment–is it difficult or easy for you to stay present?
    Prayer: Thank you for the gift of your presence, Jesus. You presence shifts everything to Love.

    Check out the Advent Conspiracy site.

    (Idelette’s note:) Today I would like to introduce you to the beautiful, talented and brilliant Jody Fernando. I have yet to meet Jody in person, but I still remember the day we met through the web. For me, she was a Gift from heaven because she answered my heart’s great hope to meet more women who live from a global perspective. I cannot be more thrilled that she is leading us today in this globalgirl Advent adventure:

    THE CRIPPLED BEGGAR
    (Acts 3)
    By Jody Fernando

    ironically,
    your warped body begged by day
    at a gate called Beautiful –
    something you were not.

    most people at the courts
    looked through you –
    never at,
    for fear of ruining the Gate’s name.

    but they looked –
    the disciples of One
    to whom “beautiful” meant
    more than straight anklebones.

    and then you
    walked,
    skipped,
    leapt,
    twirled,
    danced,
    and probably cried
    at the beauty
    of moving
    for the
    very
    first
    time
    in your life.

    Isaiah 53 speaks of Christ as “a scrawny seedling, a scrubby plant in a parched field. There was nothing attractive about him, nothing to cause us to take a second look.” Funny, that’s not quite how I think of Him at Christmas. Maybe it has something to do with the color-coordinated Christmas trees, the idealized nativities, the pristine stars, the beckoning packaging that accompany the season. Christmas here in America carries with it plenty of the beautiful, but not necessarily the kind of beauty that arrived with the first Christmas in Bethlehem.

    Like the beggar from Acts 3, Jesus was born into a life of brokenness. Isaiah continues his description, “He was looked down on and passed over, a man who suffered, who knew pain firsthand. One look at him and people turned away. We looked down on him, thought he was scum.”

    My heart sinks as I see the ways I treat people around me just like this. It is not always the beggar on the street that repulses me nearly as much as the political, philosophical, or moral opponent. My heart easily breaks for the deep-eyed child in the developing world without food, but coldly judges the over-indulged ones without love in so many of our Western homes. It is a yet another mystery of Christ that we are all both broken and beautiful at the same time.

    The Father’s call to us in both Isaiah and Acts redefines our understanding of beauty by giving us eyes to see our life on earth as it really is:

      But the fact is, it was our pains he carried—
      our disfigurements, all the things wrong with us.
      We thought he brought it on himself,
      that God was punishing him for his own failures.
      But it was our sins that did that to him,
      that ripped and tore and crushed him—our sins!
      He took the punishment, and that made us whole.
      Through his bruises we get healed.
      We’re all like sheep who’ve wandered off and gotten lost.
      We’ve all done our own thing, gone our own way.
      And God has piled all our sins, everything we’ve done wrong,
      on him, on him.

    Sometimes, in our longing for the world to be made right, we dismiss the reality that life in the here and now carries all sorts of contradictions with it. May this advent season allow us the freedom to–like the crippled beggar–be touched by the One who makes us beautiful.

    (All Scripture quoted from The Message)

    One word for today: Look
    Activity:
    Spend the day paying special care to look at people, not through them.
    As you encounter people, ask God to help you see their beauty and their brokenness.
    Prayer:
    Lord, give me eyes today to see not only brokenness in the world around me, but also the treasure and mystery of your presence.

    Jody Fernando is a writer and professor working out the realities of life and global perspective in the rural Midwestern US. She loves big skies, thoughtful words, and the giggles of her children. Learn more on her blog on cross-cultural living, The Link Between.

    Six years ago I spent two weeks in a former Communist facility converted to a kind of Sunday School camp about two hours outside of Moscow. I was there for two back-to-back magazine training workshops. Yes, in Russia.

    Today, as I was thinking about Mary–highly pregnant–traveling on a donkey to Bethlehem, I couldn’t help but wonder how uncomfortable she must have been. And so I remembered my Russian training camp.

    Entering Bootcamp
    Perhaps the relieved applause from my fellow Aeroflot passengers upon our safe landing should have warned me that this trip would be different. I was just thrilled to be in Russia and everything in me felt expectant.

    Slowly but surely my expectations of what the two weeks would look like, however, began to unravel.

    I was a tad shocked when I walked into the military bare room where I were to spend the next two weeks. I remember the fluorescent lights and just how low and skinny the beds were. Thin blue and white striped mattresses lay on eight metal cots lined up neatly in the cold room.

    I quickly made my bed, trying to make it a bit more inviting. It also dawned on me that I had brought only one book to read, other than my Bible. I just figured I would be so consumed with the course, I didn’t need much else. I was wrong about needing more reading material.

    I also realized I had packed two weeks of clothes for the wrong season. On the calendar it said July–summer in Europe–but this place was colder than Cape Town in September. It felt like your average Vancouver day in the fall. Maybe even colder. I had packed mostly T’s and jeans and a gray short-sleeved dress.

    It seemed everything around me was gray. Gray skies, gray lifeless buildings, gray interior walls. Very few local smiles.

    Without a Wallet

    To top it off, on the drive to the airport in Vancouver, my wallet had fallen out of my purse. I arrived in Russia with no credit card and no landed immigrant certificate (I needed that to get back into Canada). I had my passport and (thankfully!) my basic cash for the trip in a separate little bag, so I had enough to pay for my course, but not much else.

    And, oh yes, I was eight weeks pregnant.

    Hot showers were available only twice a day: between 6-8am and again from 7-9pm. And even those times were not guaranteed. Every time I stepped into the shower, it was with a prayer.

    At first, the prayer was for hot water. Within a few days, that prayer became a prayer of gratitude for a life at home where I could step into a hot shower any moment of the day.

    I very quickly learned that God had me in that place to teach me about comfort.

    For those two weeks in the Russian countryside, everything in my life that had provided me with a sense of comfort, up until that moment, was suspended.

    Things like warmth
    I really don’t like being cold. It’s one of my things and I joke that I keep the heat in our home on the “Africa” setting. During those two weeks I had to learn that warmth is not a right. It’s a comfort. And I had nothing to complain about, because, really, I still had plenty of clothes to keep me warm, even though I had to layer nearly every piece I had packed every day just to stay warm.

    Things like freedom
    I had to adjust to a pretty rigid schedule during those two weeks. Showers at the same time every day. Breakfast, lunch, dinner at the same time every day. No choices to what I wanted to eat.

    Our course work was highly structured, always starting at the same time, breaks at the same time, ending at the same time. This was a really great stretch for my creative spirit.

    I had to find what freedom meant, within that rigid structure, within myself. In my head and my heart. I had to meet Jesus, who sets us free in the midst of the most limiting of circumstances.

    Things like Access.
    We were in a remote village, very much removed from urban comforts. The nearest town was a beautiful 10-minute walk away, but there was nothing there except for a few homes and a store or two. The town didn’t quite seem awake during any time of the day.

    As for calling home to Canada, I had to go to the little guard house at the front of our complex to make any phone calls. Since I didn’t have a credit card, however, I could only make collect calls. Finding the right number to dial out to Canada with guards who didn’t speak English was a challenge. I had to ask for a lot of help from Irena, our course interpreter.

    How much I had taken for granted in my comfortable Canadian life.

    Finances
    Having very limited money and no way to access more, made me feel extremely vulnerable.

    I found myself in the grayest of grays, in the Desert of my own Discomfort, having to come face to face only with my God of All Comfort. All my basic needs were met, yes, but I had to be stretched and make sense of God outside of my comforts. To find a sense of joy in a very gray moment. And to really search my heart, because I essentially had been a brat, expecting that, of course, God would cover me in earthly comforts as I followed Him.

    The story of Mary shows us something different, however. Mary surrendered her comfort as she set out on that journey to Bethlehem. She waived every pregnant instinct to birth her baby into a safe and secure place. I guess we can say that from the very beginning, Jesus moved Mary out of Comfortable into the discomforting state of the Unknown. Her only real stake: an unshakable trust in the God of Heaven.

    Should we expect any different, then, from our own journey into the Story of Jesus?

    Word for today:
    Gratitude
    Activity for today:
    When you have your hot shower or bath today, at the time of your choosing, remember your freedom and your privilege. As you stand in that moment, what does your heart say to you?
    What comforts do you take for granted? Are you willing to lay these down as you embark on this journey?
    What else are you grateful for?
    Prayer:
    Lord, wherever I may find myself on this journey, I am thankful that You are here with me, speaking with me, teaching me, carrying me and moving me to the place I am meant to go into Your Story.

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