Joy from ashes

HOPE…

This is the gift I was given the day that an electrical fire devastated our house (the dwelling that has served as this nomadic family’s home base for the past thirteen years…”our extravagant gift from God” as we call it).  It happened on November 28^th, 2012, fifteen minutes after David left the house for the day (the rest of us were at work and school).  That night after the boys had gone to sleep and we processed this event as a couple, I told David that I did not feel one ounce of despair.  Hope was my buoy, given as a pure gift, as far as I could discern.

The ashes have all settled now, our salvageable items have been removed, the “tearing down to the studs” (before the re-build) has begun.  We are told that it will take a minimum of six months to re-construct our house.  We have experienced a rich community of fellowship and love here in Spokane (from our neighbors, the public schools where our children attend, our church, and from friends across the globe).  We have been lavishly loved by people providing beds, toothbrushes, clothes, dressers, telephones, dishes, pillows, salt, sugar, firewood (when the furnace went out at our rental home)…and a thousand other little things that I never realized were making my everyday life very comfortable and convenient.  Many other dear people have given us hours of their time, organizing stuff, delivering furniture, cleaning sooty but recoverable items, transporting our children, caring for our pets while we looked for a suitable rental, choosing and hemming curtains to cover our windows at the rental, putting together a tool box for us (which has come in very handy with assembling new tables for our rental).  We know also that countless others have prayed for us through this event, and we feel so richly blessed.  We count ourselves some of the most fortunate people on earth; our lives are truly abundant.  We are finding that JOY also comes from ashes.

THE NEXT STEP…

Now we are mostly settled and looking forward to a different kind of celebration of the birth of our Savior this year (not quite sure how it is going to look but thankful to be together as a family, with Grandpa and Grandma Beine here too).  We already have tickets to return to Nepal on February 2^nd, 2013.  Do we keep that plan and leave the house re-building to the watchful eye of somebody else, or do we alter our plans for the Nepal stint this year?  Prior to our fire, I (Kimberly) was already feeling a profound exhaustion in my soul and was seeking a way to slow the pace of our lives just slightly.  Now, I am feeling that keeping the plan to return to Nepal in February may be my pathway to collapse.  David is highly motivated to keep our original plans, as our Chepang project is drawing to a close and he would like to properly archive the work we have done, so that we can pass the baton well, to those who come next to serve the Chepang people.  Not to mention that we feel we may need some closure (emotionally and psychologically) on our Tansen time.  We have already scheduled a sabbatical (where we will stay in the U.S.) for 2014, and after that we do not anticipate our eldest son returning to Nepal (he will be preparing to forge his own path in life).  Also, the team in Tansen, Nepal is in transition; very soon the community of foreign servants there will be almost entirely new to us.  So, it does seem like a good idea for us to go to Nepal in 2013.  We would like to make this decision by the end of this year; it will greatly affect the future of the college student who already has a plane ticket to go with us (to guide the boys in their school work while in Nepal).  So, we ask ourselves, “What is our next step?”

I feel quite confidently that this house fire is part of our story,that God is using to direct us along the path that we should tread.  In our current exhaustion, that path does not appear clear to us.  Please pray that we would discern His good plan and press on in the direction that would delight our Master.  Thank you for your precious friendship!  You are a thread in the beautiful tapestry of our lives that God is weaving.

Kimberly, for all the Beines