I'll Be Home for Christmas!

I'll be home for Christmas

You can count on me

 Please have snow and mistletoe

And presents on the tree

This year I am receiving the best Christmas gift (other than Jesus) that I have ever received, a plane ticket home!! My holiday vacation is not very long, less than two weeks, but it will be well worth it. I fly out on Saturday and would appreciate your prayers as I have a lower back injury that is aggravated by prolonged sitting. Also, this will be my first time flying solo internationally :) 

It's been five months since I first arrived in Indonesia and I definitely haven't been able to spend as much time as what I had planned taking photos. However, I thought this would be a good opportunity to just share a little bit of what I've experienced and seen. 

Sunrise at Borobudur Temple, Jogja, Indonesia

Borobudur Temple

Worker in a silver factory

Lunch on the street

Everything, everything, is Hello Kitty, even in the taxis

Window looking out from the Old City Hall in Batavia

Sunset at Pramadan Temple, Jogja, Indonesia

Nasi Goreng, the most popular dish of Indonesia. This meal was under a dollar.

Tatoo artist at night market, Jogja, Indonesia

Dishes on the street

Street vendor

Transportation

Woman grating coconut in a courtyard

Blind man in the market

Typical squatting position

Sunset at Pramadan Temple, Jogja, Indonesia

Working Out Flaws

I'm a perfectionist.

I use to say that with a bit a pride. It meant I was detail oriented and a high achiever. Good right?

Sometimes. Maybe.

I've come to learn my perfectionism extends beyond results and achievements. It effects the way I think, feel, and act. Never has that been more apparent then in the last six months of my life.

Everyday my perfectionism comes out in my teaching. On the surface level it means a document must  be in the same font with the same indents or an answer key must be neat without mistakes. Deeper down, it means I fight the feeling of failure and not measuring up.

This school year has been a struggle. I want to be the perfect teacher. I want to know my content inside and out. I want to reach every student's needs. I want to connect with the students outside of the math content and build relationships. I want to have no mistakes on my exams or worksheets. I want to have meaningful activities for my students. I want my students to like me. I want to teach in a way that my students are engaged, excited to learn. I want parents and coworkers to think I'm knowledgable. I want to know the answer to every question, especially the questions I assign for homework. I want to help students be the best they can be. I want to be the perfect teacher.

I can't. I never will be.

Oh, I have tried. I have tried really hard. Yet, I can't reach my expectations, my goal. I have felt like a failure at the end of almost every day. The standards of my administration or fellow co-workers don't seem to matter, I didn't reach my standards. This has left me stressed, insecure, even discouraged.

I'm a perfectionists.

No longer is there any pride in this statement for me, rather there is weight. The weight of my expectations and the fear of failure that accompanies them. My perfectionism is more of a hindrance than a help. Not a strength, but a weakness. I remember back in college when I received my first B I thought to myself, I have officially conquered my perfectionism! That was only the beginning. Here in Indonesia I have felt the Lord working on this flaw and its painful.

Often we think after overcoming a struggle or a trial at one point in our life we can check it off the list. We've learned our lesson, right? Not always. In my life, God seems to come back time and time again to work out my flaws, those struggles that are at the root of who I am. It's a process.

Here in Indonesia, there is a process of decorating textiles through printing in wax known as "batik." To begin, a design is drawn onto the cloth. Next, wax is applied to the cloth following the design by either using a cooper stamp or a wax pen. The cloth is then dyed coloring the whole cloth except for the waxed areas. The cloth is then waxed again to hold the color of the first dye to some additional portions of the cloth. A second dye is then completed dying all but the waxed areas of the cloth. The wax is then removed with hot water, scraping, and sponging. Depending on the design, this process of waxing, dying, and removing wax is repeated multiple times.

This is how God works on us. He has a design a plan of what he wants us to be. We are "created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness" (Ephesians 4:24). God wants to work out our flaws, he wants to make us like Christ. To work out our flaws we may have to be waxed, dyed, and scraped many times. At various stages we may not even resemble the final product. In the middle of the wax being scraped off it may be painful or time consuming. However, we have a promise from God that he will complete what he has started. Philippians 1:6 says, "he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus." We are his workmanship.

So maybe I learned how to let go of homework in college, but the Lord is again at work on my perfectionism. Gently he has reminded me how he longs to set me free of this. In 2nd Corinthians, the apostle Paul talks about a weakness, a thorn in his flesh. When he prays to the Lord to take it away God responds saying, "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness." Paul then comes to this conclusion, "Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong." 

I am not the perfect teacher. I can't always meet my own standards or other's standards. I am weak. However, I feel as if the Lord is saying, "Karissa, my grace is sufficient for you." My value is not in my performance as a teacher, it is in Christ. Being a perfectionist it is not hard for me to see my weakness, but the question is will I allow Christ to be my strength? Will I allow his power to fill the gaps I have, will I allow his grace to be all that I need? Can I exchange my own expectations, the performance I place my value on, for Christ's glory? I want to say yes. I want to delight in my weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and difficulties so that he is glorified. I want it to be about him and not about me.

Working conditions.

Design stage.

Wax

Copper stamps.

Dye 

Working conditions.

Finished product

Finished product.

Lombok

This last October I had an opportunity to visit one of Indonesia's many islands, Lombok.  There are so many interesting things you can do in Lombok, however I spent my two days just hanging out at the resort by the pool and taking pictures of beautiful sunsets. Maybe someday I will go back and book some tours...

Sacrifice

It is loud. It is busy. Blood, warm and fresh, pools on the ground around bare feet. Children push to the front, standing on the fence, straining to get a better view of the slaughtering. The men's hands move methodically, quickly stripping each animal of its hide before moving on. The bull chewing cud in the corner is next, restrained with ropes its life is brought to an end. Its blood poured out. This is the courtyard of the mosque, the sacrifices of the Muslim holiday Idul Adha. It is how Muslim's remember Abraham's willingness to sacrifice his only son, Ishmael (not biblically accurate).

Seeing the sacrifices in the courtyard of the masque for Idul Adha made me think about the sacrifices in the OT temple. I've always had this picture in my mind of the OT temple being sort of like St Paul's Cathedral in London -- big, open, clean, quiet, beautiful. I mean after all, the supplies used to build the temple were cedar, pine, bronze, and gold. Carvings and engravings of cherubim, palm trees, open flowers, lions, and wreaths decorated the walls and doors. There were even pillars with tops shaped like lilies surrounded by pomegranates. Everything was made of gold: sprinkling bowls, wick trimmers, lamps, tongs . . . everything (1 Kings 5-7). However, I think the temple was much more like the mosque I visited for Idul Adha and much less like St Paul's Cathedral. 

At Idul Adha it took at least half a dozen men to hold the ropes for a single bull to be slaughtered. On the day Solomon dedicated the temple there were twenty-two thousand cattle and a hundred and twenty thousand sheep and goats sacrificed as fellowship offerings (1 Kings 8:62)! It must have taken hundreds of men slaughtering from sunrise to sunset to accomplish the offerings that day. The temple must have been a hoppin' place with all the sacrifices made on a daily basis. It must have been loud and dirty. With animal sacrifices there would have been no way to avoid the stench of blood and dung.  Blood -- it must have been everywhere! In the tabernacle, the temple's precursor, blood was sprinkled on the sides of the altar, blood was sprinkled in front of the curtain, blood was put on the horns of the altar, and blood was poured out at the base of the altar (Leviticus 3-7). When Aaron and his sons were ordained they had blood put on their ear lobes, thumbs, big toes, and garments (Leviticus 8). So much for the starched white robes of holiness I imagined!

Women, in the same courtyard as slaughtering were cutting up the meat to sell or give to the needy. Really sanitary right? 

While the courtyard of the OT temple may have been messy, there was a place set apart from the chaos and the noise. This place was known as the Inner Sanctuary or Holy of Holies. There the Ark of the Covenant was kept and only the high priests entered once a year (Hebrews 9:7).  I saw this idea at the mosque as well. Through a doorway from the courtyard was a place set aside for prayer, a place of cleanliness, quietness, and beauty. 

A sacrifice is a chilling event to watch. What moves and cries out in one moment has no breath in the next. After visiting the mosque at Idul Adha, I can no longer read the scriptures about sacrifices the same way. A sacrifice is messy, awful, and such a high, high payment. One life given for another. Christ came to be a sacrifice, my sacrifice. Hebrews 10:10 says, "We have been made holy through the sacrifice of the body of Jesus Christ once for all." Willingly, out of love for us, Christ suffered the brutality of crucifixion. He endured a flogging so severe he medically should have been at the point of collapse or death. He was then forced to carry his own cross and was nailed to it until death. This sacrifice was horrific and bloody. 

Today is Thanksgiving and I am first of all thankful for Christ's sacrifice on my behalf. The animal sacrifices were never designed to remove sin, but rather to remind us of our sin and the debt we owe (Hebrews 10:3-4). My sin, offensive to a righteous God, had payment. It was not a clean or quick payment, it was barbarous. His life for my life. His breath for my breath. His blood for my freedom. I am SO thankful. I owe him EVERYTHING! I needed this reminder today, to be once again awakened to just how great a price Christ paid for me. 

Lord, help me grasp just how much you have done for me. Make the gravity of Christ's sacrifice fresh in my mind. Do not let me become accustomed to it. Do not let me take it for granted. Remind me oh Lord, that you took my place that it may spur me on to live radically for you. Amen.

Below are some pictures of more localized cultural customs being mixed in with Idul Adha:

Bare feet . . . Indonesia.

We talked with these girls for an hour or more.

Mountain of food, given to the poor

Supposedly, these were baskets full of sticks that symbolized fertility or something...?

Everyone racing to get their stick of fertility, haha, I really don't know what the sticks were for but everyone wanted one!