Musings from the Ozone

In the hotel where we were staying for a general conference one year, I looked out the window from our 14^th floor room and took in the most breath-taking view of a riverfront landscape that I could ever remember seeing. Being the fall season, a beautiful blue river was surrounded by a brilliant display of golden yellow and Indian red trees. A little city was nestled snug and tight in the hills below a mountain range. It was such a glorious and beautiful day with the sun shining on the water; the rays of the sun caused the ripples of water to sparkle and splash like tiny diamonds. Feeling a rush of admiration for the almighty God who created our world thrilled me, and yet, I also felt deeply relaxed and at peace, for the sight was so restful to look upon.

Before I had gone to look out the window, I had been praying and a strange word came to me in prayer. The word was: DIRECTION-LESS. I wondered why I had thought of such a thing; I knew there was no such word. It reminded me of a time when my daughter , who was only about 6 years old, made up a word for a little paper she handed into her teacher. The made-up word was ‘hypergetic.’  It made sense to my little daughter and the teacher really got a big laugh out of it. She saw that my daughter was highly creative and displayed her great ingenuity when she made up this word. It was supposed to be a combination of hyper-energetic, which by all accounts was the way my little girl was.  I think many words are created by our need to express something, which for all practical purposes, it is at a time when we cannot find a known word available to express our sentiment.  Such was this strange word, direction-less, although I must admit, I didn’t have any need to create such a word. 

As I continued looking out the window, suddenly my eyes became riveted on something far down in front of the view.  Straight down, bright, blinking, blue and red flashing lights of police cars caught my eye, and I wondered what was happening.  I noticed a huge spaghetti junction of roads where two main roads curved over each other, and both were going in totally opposite directions. It appeared that the police  had formed a road block, and all traffic that was heading towards the EAST had to be diverted directly to the opposite direction, heading to the WEST!

ROADBLOCK ….There is something inherently aggravating about roadblocks. While there are a few synonyms for the word roadblock, two important ones are blockade or barrier. The meaning is clear: it is something that prevents our access to a place.

If it were me and I had been forced to go exactly in the opposite direction, perhaps 5 to 10 miles the opposite way, before being allowed on a road which would take me back to my original direction, I don’t think I would like such a hindrance or obstacle very much. I don’t know about you, but I find it difficult at times to be forced off-course. However, many times, our lives are forced  to go in another direction  like that . We are trying hard to achieve something, we go straight forward towards the goal, and suddenly if seems as if every imp and devil in hell comes along to thwart our well laid-out plans. Someone said that "what we focus on determines what we miss and ultimately what we become."

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow wrote, “ Life is real! Life is earnest! And the grave is not its goal; “Dust thou art; to dust returnest,” was not spoken of the soul.  We have good goals when we are serving the Lord, but sometimes the best laid plans go awry and we have to do something else that we didn't intentionally set out to do.  Roadblocks may become your salvation and much depends on how you work around them or accept them in your life.

One of the most important roadblocks of my life happened when we were in our mid-career. We had returned to the states from our missionary term in Uruguay and were newly appointees to the land of Chile, South America. We were so excited, because Chile was experiencing revival and we were felt positive that we were in the will of the Lord to spend another term in South America. We had completed a year of deputation in the states, when suddenly my husband became very ill and had to have an operation. He had contracted a rare disease in Uruguay and had many problems from it. The doctor told him he couldn’t go back to the field for 6 months. Well, we had to obey the mission board and they wouldn’t let us contradict the doctor. They felt we shouldn’t leave for Chile for at least 3 months.

In spite of the roadblock, we were determined to go to Chile and would just wait it out. My oldest son had suffered so much from asthma in Uruguay and the stateside doctor told us that he needed at least 6 months to a year of treatment on growth hormone, for he was not growing properly.  Another roadblock, but we were prepared to leave him with my sister until the proper day when he would be done with the treatment and join us in Chile. Finally, the day came when we were ready to go. We had moved all our stuff into storage to take to Chile. I was literally sweeping out the apartment we had rented and getting ready to give the key back to the landlord.

That evening as I was sweeping out the empty apartment, a man from the church where my father was pastor, came to the apartment and said, “Sis. Teets, we are very sorry, but your father has taken ill at the church and your husband is calling for you to come immediately.” I went to the church full of apprehension. There was my father, lying on a table, having a heart attack. They rushed him to the hospital, but it was getting desperate. The next morning, on September 23, my father was gone from this earth.

This was more than I could bear. My husband and I both were thrown into a quandary. Were we resisting the Lord, trying to have our will to go to the mission field,  when HE …THE LORD GOD…wasn’t in our plans for Chile? Yes, they were spiritual plans. They were good plans, but were they truly the plans the Lord had for us?  We decided to wait patiently, and search the Lord for the answers. Meanwhile, we grieved and cried incessantly for our thwarted plans and the death of my father.  It all seemed so unfair. We had given up our apartment and everything was in storage. We had actually been ready to leave!

The major question that we felt we had to reckon with ,was the last request that my father had made of us before his death.  He had been reading a missionary letter at church just before his heart attack and as he felt ill, he had turned to my husband and asked him to take charge of things. From that moment, he went downstairs and suffered the heart attack. My father had no idea it was his last night on earth. As the pastor of that church he had been faithful to his calling to the very end. He had always anticipated that he would stay in the ministry until his last breath; he had been known to say, he wanted to “die with his boots on.”  God did grant that wish to him and took him out of this life  while he was still working for the Lord and the church.  My husband felt an obligation to this wonderful man of God, and did not take lightly the petition to “take charge of things,” even if it had been a momentarily request.  My husband, prayerfully decided to take the church as an interim pastor, or until we would know exactly what God wanted from us.  We were still weary, emotionally drained from the years on the mission field and from the 2 years of deputation. Taking charge of this church would mean we would have to shift gears and although we would still be in the ministry, we would only be responsible for a local church instead of working with many churches as we had on the mission field.

However, looking backwards twenty years, we have found meaning in our roadblock. We were unable to feel right about going to Chile when so many saints of God were left without a leader in the church which had blessed our family for years.  My mother would need support, and care from the church until things were sorted out.  We felt totally direction-less at that time, because we were forced to look at the immediate needs as priorities. We could not think about any plans for our future, for we couldn’t understand what to do in the present. When we submitted to the barrier, rather than force our way through it, we came to the conclusion that were not giving up on working for God; we would merely stand still until God let us know what we should do next.  We have learned not to ask God ‘why,’ but rather, ask ‘how.’

There are many, many times when we must pause to consider what the consequences will be for our actions. Leaving a child of 15 behind in the states, going to a foreign country with a husband who was still ailing from an operation, leaving a mother who had been deprived of husband and livelihood, we would be going to a country where we had never lived before and on balance between the factions, we had to weigh out the costs of such a move.  We didn’t necessarily feel the call to stay in Jackson and pastor the church, but we could not see our way clear to leave.  We had 4 children!  We had no savings account that would permit us to sit and sulk for a while.  We had to do whatever was best for our family and sometimes the situations feel murky, as if there is no winning option available.  We wanted to feel that everything was going smoothly.  Well, there are times when you have to put feelings on the back shelf and deal with the reality of your choices.  When other members of the family are involved in the decision making, it can be torture to make a decision.  We were mixed up; much worse than many people feel when they encounter a detour or roadblock and do not know when they will arrive at their destination.

We tried to stay cheerful for our children and for the church people.  The church had lost their pastor of 26 years and our children had become nervous about moves.  They had already gone through many moves and upsets in their young lives. Now, with this wily-nilly sort of decision we made, they had to help us pull everything back out of shipping and set up housekeeping again.

We trudged along for a year and a half, missing the feeling we had when we were totally focused and sure of our calling.  When one feels disconnected from their desires and destinations, doubts tend to set in.  When doubts arise, the feeling that you may have missed the will of the Lord can set in also. Although we felt direction-less’at the time, looking back, I realize that we learned some very important lessons.  We learned that directions for each bend in the road are not always pointed out clearly for a Christian.  Walking with God demands that we seek his direction regarding our moves.  We learned that we were still working for God, even if it wasn’t in the capacity of missionary, which we felt was our divine calling!  Thankfully, my husband continued to work for God in the Jackson church as hard as he always had, because after all he was called to work for God, not man. He didn’t complain over his illness, or any of the other hindrances that had been thrown in our way.

How did God finally give us the direction we needed, in order to know we were still missionaries at heart? Although we were ensconced in a small town, we had become known to missions.  The Home Missions department had been looking for someone to come to New York to be the coordinator of the newly formed New York Metro district.  One of the qualifications was that he had to speak Spanish. Since we had gone to language school for a year in Costa Rica, and had served as missionaries for a term in Uruguay, we were already fairly fluent in Spanish. When the home mission’s board called to ask us if we would consider the position, we sought God for direction and suddenly it dawned on us that we didn’t have to forsake our call to missions after all!  It felt as if God was calling us to be missionaries to the whole world within one city!  My husband was appointed to the position as coordinator of the NY Metro District. The challenge was going to be great, but we felt as if new direction from God Himself had come to us;  He  had been preparing us all along for the work that we would do in New York.

When we made the big move, as we call it, to New York, we felt confident from the first that God truly called us to New York, and the hardships of the year 1982 were forgotten when we arrived in 1985.  Had we gone on to Chile, we would never have known the tremendous responsibility and blessing that it has been to work in the vast field of New York.  Many of our friends and family also wondered if we were jumping off the Empire State building as it were, for such a move was a drastic one.   Little did they know that we had passed many tests that God had produced for us through the years.  We had overcome loneliness, foreign languages, poverty, illnesses and many other spiritual qualifications to work in such a capacity.  God had even taken us to a country where there was much European culture.  Uruguay had taught us much about Italians and European Spanish folk.  I was surprised that many words we learned in Uruguay were actually Italian words and when heard them over and over again in New York, we felt quite at home!  Even the Uruguayan pizza was true Italian pizza that we can get on any street corner in New York.

We all run “obstacle” courses from time to time.  We all lose our direction at times and feel lost. We may feel like we are in one of those garden mazes that are so popular in England. Immediately, we see no way out, and wonder why we are being held up in the journey. Death, accidents, illnesses, loss of income and jobs may set us back, even by years, but complaining is not an answer to our troubles and worries. Gratefulness for what is going right in our lives will help us cope with the unforeseen.

As Christians, we need to look at our circumstances much more differently than the world looks at theirs. The carnal man looks at every obstacle as a hindrance to be tackled and sometimes he becomes all the more determined to force his way in, however,  the outcome without the Lord guiding us, can be disastrous.

The disaster of 9/11 as we call it today, took on various meanings. Of course, first of all, it was a horrible disaster, but there were also many little roadblocks that morning which kept thousands or more people saved from the tragedy. A deacon in our church was having a hard time getting to work on that bright, sunny September morning. He commuted daily to the World Trade Center on the Long Island railroad to get to his 72nd floor office, in the south building. He felt like everything conspired to make him late to work that day.

The first literal roadblock was his daughter’s school bus in his driveway. The bus had pulled into his driveway, right behind his car that morning. As he sat in his car, waiting for the school bus to leave, suddenly his daughter forgot her lunch and made the bus driver wait while her mother ran back into the house to get the forgotten lunch box. This brother is a man that is always punctual and being late for work was not his style. Next, because he arrived late to the train station he missed train from the island into the city. When he finally got to the subway station, it was much later than normal. He said he was usually at work at 7:30 AM and by then it was almost 8:30 AM

Finally, the subway train, pulled up to Chamber Street, underneath the Trade Center and he thought it was strange that the doors did not open. Suddenly, the train moved on to the next stop and when he emerged from the subway, he looked up to see the towers burning! He was mesmerized by the sight and in shock, standing there looking and did not believe the buildings would come down. Everyone was yelling at him to leave, as they might come down. He said that God spoke to him telling him to get out of there quickly, as the building was going to come down! He ran 30 city blocks to 14th St. and escaped from the terrible tragedy. He was in shock for nearly a week, but finally he was able to talk of the miraculous way God had protected him that morning from being in his office on the 72nd floor. He was so thankful for all of the obstacles and roadblock that morning1

We need to learn about obstacles, roadblocks, and dead-ends, spiritually speaking. Just because something has been cut out of our life, it does not mean we are actually lost. God will direct thy paths.