Marta's Meanderings

Chapter One
I sailed into the community center just in time to take my Lunch Around the World class to China. I hated to be late, but my daughter Anastasia had forgotten part of her school project. “Oh, honey,” I’d said when she called from the school office. “Can’t it wait until tomorrow? I’m just leaving for work.” I tried not to wallow in it, but sometimes the logistics of being a single mom were pretty exhausting.
“Mom,” she whispered, “it’s a diorama of a cow’s habitat, and I forgot the cow.”
I remembered seeing the small plastic cow grazing next to Anastasia’s cereal bowl at breakfast, but how it had meandered into the dishwasher was anyone’s guess. I gave it a quick rinse under the faucet and let it air dry on the ride to school. From there I high-tailed it to the community center.
Though it wasn’t the most challenging part of my work week, this Monday noon to two o’clock class got me home before my daughter, which in the dictionary of my life, made it the best kind of gig. Sometimes I even had time for a cup of tea before her school bus came rolling down the street. Who knew a cup of tea could be the most decadent part of your day.
I plopped my supplies on the kitchen counter and jumped right in “In Chinese cooking, it’s important to balance colors as well as contrasts in tastes and textures.”
“Take a deep breath, honey,” one of my favorite students said. Her name was Ethel and she had bright orange lips and I Love Lucy hair. “We’re not going anywhere.”
A man with white hair and matching eyebrows started singing “On a Slow Boat to China.” A couple of the women giggled. I took that deep breath.
“Yum cha is one of the best ways to experience this,” I continued. “Literally yum cha means “drinking tea,” but it actually encompasses both the tea drinking and the eating of dim sum, a wide range of light dishes served in small portions.”
“Yum-yum,” a man named Tom said. His thick glasses were smudged with fingerprints, and he was wearing a T-shirt that said Tune in Tomorrow for a Different Shirt.
“Let’s hope,” I said. “In any case, dim sum has many translations: ‘small eats,’ of course, but also ‘heart’s delight,’ ‘to touch your heart,’ and even ‘small piece of heart.’ I’ve often wondered if Janis Joplin decided to sing the song she made famous after a dim sum experience.”
Last night when I was planning my lesson, this had seemed like a brilliant and totally original cross-cultural connection, but everybody just nodded politely.
We made dumplings and pot stickers and mini spring rolls, and then we moved on to fortune cookies. Custard tarts or even mango pudding would have been more culturally accurate, but fortune cookies were always a crowd pleaser. I explained that the crispy, sage-laced cookies had actually been invented in San Francisco, and tried to justify my choice by adding that the original inspiration for fortune cookies possibly dated back to the thirteenth century, when Chinese soldiers slipped rice paper messages into mooncakes to help coordinate their defense against Mongolian invaders.
Last night Anastasia had helped me cut small strips of white paper to write the fortunes on. And because the cookies had to be wrapped around the paper as soon as they came out of the oven while they were still pliable, I’d bought packages of white cotton gloves at CVS and handed out one to each person. The single gloves kept the students’ hands from burning and were less awkward than potholders would have been.
They also made the class look like aging Michael Jackson impersonators. A couple of the women started to sing “Beat It” while they stirred the batter, and then everybody else joined in. There wasn’t a decent singer in the group, but some of them could still remember how to moonwalk.
After we finished packing up some to take home, we’d each placed one of our cookies in a big bamboo salad bowl. There’d been more giggling as we passed the bowl around the long, wobbly wooden table and took turns choosing a cookie and reading the fortune, written by an anonymous classmate, out loud.
“The time is right to make new friends.”
“A great adventure is in your near future.”
“A tall dark-haired man will come into your life.”
“You will step on the soil of many countries, so don’t forget to pack clean socks.”
“The one you love is closer than you think,” Ethel read. Her black velour sweat suit was dusted with flour.
“Oo-ooh,” the two friends taking the class with her said. One of them elbowed her.
The fortune cookies were a hit. So what if my students seemed more interested in the food than its cultural origins. I wondered if they’d still have signed up if I’d shortened the name of the class from Lunch Around the World to just plain Lunch. My class had been growing all session, and not a single person had asked for a refund. In this economy, everybody was cutting everything, and even community center classes weren’t immune. The best way to stay off the chopping block was to keep your classes full and your students happy.
I reached over and picked up the final fortune cookie, then looked at my watch. “Oops,” I said. “Looks like we’re out of time.” I stood and smiled at the group. “Okay, everybody, that’s it for today.” I nodded at the takeout cartons I’d talked the guy at the Imperial Dragon into donating to the cause. “Don’t forget your cookies, and remember, next week we’ll be lunching in Mexico.” I took care to pronounce it Mehico.
“Tacos?” T-shirt Tom asked.
“You’ll have to wait and see-eee,” I said, mostly because I hadn’t begun to think about next week. Surviving this one was enough of a challenge.
“Not even a hint?” a woman named Donna said.
I shook my head and smiled some more.
They took their time saying thanks and see you next week, as they grabbed their takeout boxes by the metal handles and headed out the door. A few even offered to help me pack up, but I said I was all set. It was faster to do it myself.
As I gave the counters a final scrub, I reviewed today’s class in my head. Overall, I thought it had gone well, but I still didn’t understand why the Janis Joplin reference had fallen flat.
I put the sponge down, picked up a wooden spoon, and got ready to belt out “Piece of My Heart.”
When I opened my mouth, a chill danced the full length of my spine. I looked up. A man was standing just outside the doorway. He had dark, wavy hair cascading almost to his shoulders and pale, freckled skin. He was tall and a little too thin. His long fingers gripped the doorframe, as if a strong wind might blow him back down the hallway.
He was wearing faded jeans and the deep green embroidered Guatemalan shirt I’d given my husband just before he abandoned us seven years ago.
No. Way.
Excerpted from Seven Year Switch by Claire Cook.
Copyright © 2010 CLAIRE COOK. All rights reserved.
Published by VOICE, an imprint of Hyperion.

Zonderkidz (April 9, 2010)

David C. Cook (July 1, 2010)

The call to lead


Do you ever look around you and wonder where all the female worship leaders are? I don’t know about you, but I predominantly see men leading worship. In many cases this is because women have not been encouraged to step into any church leadership roles. But amidst this reality is one thing that excites me more than anything:Through all the arguments for and against women in leadership roles, we see in the Bible that God does use women to lead His people in worship.


The book of Exodus tells us about the life of Miriam. We don’t know too much about Miriam, but we do know she was a prophetess and one of the leaders of Israel alongside her brother Aaron (they both led under the authority of Moses). She was also a worshipper. In Exodus 15:20–21, after God had parted

the Red Sea and the Israelites had escaped the Egyptians, it says, “Then Miriam the prophetess, Aaron’s sister, took a tambourine in her hand, and all the women followed her, with tambourines and dancing. Miriam sang to them: ‘Sing to the LORD, for he is highly exalted. The horse and its rider he has hurled into the sea.’”


The word sing in Hebrew used here is shiru, which is a masculine, plural command. This means that Miriam is addressing men and women in verse 21. The natural reading of the Hebrew is that Miriam leads a group of women who become her backing vocalists (so to speak) as she leads the whole community in worship. Some might question that she actually led them in worship because it says she sang to them.


But throughout the Psalms, we see the psalmists write songs like this, encouraging others to worship God (Psalm 30:4, Psalm 33:1–3). The psalmists wrote songs to God, about God, and to the Israelites encouraging them to worship God, just as many worship songs do today.


Miriam’s response to what God had done was to worship Him and then encourage the people of Israel to worship Him with her. At the end of the day, a worship leader is a passionate worshipper who through their voice and instrument encourages others to worship God as they seek to worship Him themselves. And this is what Miriam did. She was a worshipper whom God used to lead His people in worship for His glory.


So now that we know that God does use women to lead worship, the question is whether He is calling you to lead. Here are some general questions you might want to ask yourself to begin the process of finding your answer.


Are you a passionate worshipper?


The most obvious and important question is, do you love to worship God? More than anything a worship leader must be a worshipper. Genuine worshippers are people who are just as passionate about pouring out their praise to God when they are on their own as when they are at church. As Mike Pilavachi, leader of Soul Survivor Ministries in the UK, always says, “You can’t lead people somewhere you haven’t been yourself.” Our first passion must always be to worship God, and it’s only out of our passion to worship Him that He will call us to lead others.


Do you have the practical skills required to lead worship?


Another important factor is skill. Can you sing in tune? Are you musical? You don’t have to have an incredible voice to lead worship, but if you can’t sing in tune, leading sung worship might not be your

gift. Not everyone who starts out leading worship has a fantastic voice or is an incredible musician (and not all worship leaders lead on an instrument), but if you’re called to lead worship, usually those in leadership over you will see your potential, and it will be clear to them that you are someone to invest in.


Have others confirmed that you are called to lead worship?


If you are called to lead worship, usually those around you will be in agreement. But if leading worship is something that you’re passionate about and you have not been encouraged to step out in it yet, ask your pastor, ask your friends, ask those around you who will be honest with you. Make sure you aren’t just asking your mother though! Mine thinks I should try out for Australian Idol, and although I am so grateful that she totally believes in me, I know full well that I am not gifted enough to do well in a competition like that! You’ve got to trust that if you are called to lead worship and it’s the right time for you to step out, those around you will encourage you to do so.


Are you being given opportunities to lead worship?


If you are called to lead worship, opportunities will arise for you to do so. I never had to try to push doors open myself—God opened them in His timing. First, I began singing backing vocals at church. Then I led worship in my small group for a season. Later I began coleading at church, and after six months of coleading, I finally began leading on my own. I know it might seem more appealing to just start leading up front at church straightaway, but the journey that God took me on totally prepared me for what was

ahead. Leading a band, trying to remember the lyrics, melody, and chords for the songs, and arranging the band are all pretty tough sometimes, especially while trying to listen to the Holy Spirit and follow where He is leading. I would not have been ready to lead on my own at church if I had been thrown into it without all those years of worshipping on my own and leading in small groups. So value every opportunity given to you, because every opportunity enables you to learn and grow.


You may not be able to fully answer all these questions yet, but if you feel passionate about leading worship, keep worshipping God. Keep growing in the practical aspects of leading worship, and trust that He will give you confirmation and will open the doors for you to lead if that is something He has created you to do.

“Silly boy,” Chester Dahl chided himself as he thrust deeper inside the dead girl he’d picked up in the ghetto after leaving work. He called her Ethyl and she had been pretty. She’d told him she was eighteen and had just arrived in town from Madison. No family or any ties to Milwaukee. Just the clothes on her back and a few meager crumbs of meth in her pocket. She’d asked him if he wanted to party. Sure, why not, he’d said. The party hadn’t lasted long. For her at least. For him it was still a major rager.

David C. Cook; New edition (July 1, 2010)

A Toddler’s Tale

These are rebellious people, deceitful children, children unwilling to listen to the LORD’s instruction. (Isa. 30:9)


Who hasn’t viewed an irate toddler in a store, yelling at the top of his tiny lungs, demanding the object of his heart’s desire? In the mind of that boy, he needs the candy, the toy, the bag, the box, or whatever. In

his mind, what he wants is what he needs.


Recently, I found myself in the grocery store at the end of a long day, needing to pick up milk on my way home from work. I was tired, distracted, and just wanted to be home. It turns out I wasn’t the only unhappy person in that store. A couple of aisles over, a little girl began keening loudly. I admit, grocery stores are incubators of human nature that I find irresistible, so—milk temporarily forgotten—I walked over to observe.


Usually I’m most interested in how the adult in the situation deals with the child. Believe me, over the years I’ve seen a variety of styles—some that have made me smile and some that have made me cringe. This time, however, I was focused on the child. This two-year-old was gesturing desperately, fingers extended, at some object just out of reach. The important thing to me wasn’t what she was looking at, but rather how she was seeing it. In her mind, the object wasn’t a mere want—it had become a need. When her mother denied it to her, she became absolutely bereft, carrying on in a way only a despondent, denied toddler can.


As I made my way to the dairy section, through the checkout line, and back into my car, I kept thinking about how this kind of behavior is typical of small children. But I had to ask myself—do we ever really get over that?


Fast-forward into adulthood and you’ll find the same thing: wants masquerading as needs. When we were two, we cried out to a parent to fill our heartfelt desires; as adults we endeavor to fill them ourselves. Once a desire has been categorized as a need, we’re pretty resourceful at finding a way to fill it—even when our methods are addictive, damaging, or hurtful. In our current credit-card-toting, get-it-now-but-pay-for-it-later society, we’re about as happy with the words no and not now as that bawling two-year-old.


Add to that our concept of “rights.” Once we’ve identified a desire as a need, we tend to demand the right to fill that need. Deep down, we seem to acknowledge that a desire doesn’t quite meet the level of a basic need. Desires can be selfish, but a need is always a moral necessity. Once our desire gets translated into a need, it becomes a necessity in our lives; we’re pretty militant about getting that newly defined need met.


This leads me to a question: Are you ready to take a deep, hard look at your own self-identified needs? I’ve found generally people haven’t really done any sort of intentional, directed work in this area. Mainly, they have a vaguely articulated sense of what they consider needs in their lives. Sometimes the only true way to determine how you really look at a particular aspect of your life—as a desire or as a need—is through your behaviors and your willingness or unwillingness to change. We’re willing to change, postpone, modify, or even relinquish a desire; we tend to take an over-my-dead-body approach to anything we think is a need.


Lest you think this book is only going to be about what you think or I think, I want to establish the overriding theme we’ll be using, which doesn’t come from you or me. The theme of this book comes from Jesus, speaking to a crowd of people very much like us, with desires and needs and a difficult time differentiating between the two. They were just as apt to run after desires masquerading as needs. In Matthew 6:31–33, Jesus said, “So do not worry, saying ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.” Even if we don’t have a good handle on what our needs are, God does. And not only is He God, He’s also our Father. And as a father, He’s generous. He knows our needs, and He has a plan to supply them—and much more as well.


Background Noise

Have you ever experienced the sheer relief that silence brings? There are days, with two rambunctious boys in my house, when the noise reaches an incredible decibel. Now don’t get me wrong, I love to be

right there in the mix with them. But there’s something about the calm and serenity silence brings. There are times silence is just what my jangled senses need to be still and hear God.


In some ways, all of the excessities of life come with their own noise. They fill up our lives but leave no room for silence and contemplation, for rest and relief. God, when He fills us up, does so through a whisper, through the breath of the Spirit. A little of God goes a lot further than a great deal of anything else. King David put it this way in Psalm 84:10: “Better is one day in your courts than a thousand elsewhere.” When we feed on God, we diminish our compulsion to binge on anything else. Just as a toddler must trust a parent to know how to supply true needs, we, as children of God, must look to our heavenly Father to do the same. Our challenge is to approach God, our Father, with the faith and trust of a child.


The Bottom Line from Job

There is a story in the Old Testament book of Job about a man who faced this question of what is a desire and what is a need. This man, Job, is literally stripped of all of the things that made up his life. It is not an easy book to read or understand, but it’s very instructive in determining desires verses needs.


At the beginning of the book God and Satan have a discussion about Job, and God agrees to allow Satan to test Job’s commitment to God. In the first test, God allows Satan to take away all of Job’s possessions, including his children, but doesn’t allow him to harm Job physically. In the course of a single day, all of Job’s livestock, sheep, camels, servants, and children are killed or taken away from him. At the end of this single day, Job still praises God.


Not to be deterred, Satan comes again and this time asks to remove Job’s health from him. God agrees but says Satan may not take his life. Satan promptly strikes Job with painful boils from head to foot.


God establishes the bottom line with Satan where Job is concerned. Throughout the book of Job, no matter what else happens to him, Job has his physical needs met enough for him to continue to live. Job’s desires for understanding, vindication, relief, and restoration have to wait. With nearly everything taken away from him, it becomes clearer to see what constitutes a true need. In our own lives, we need that kind of clarity.


Unraveling Needs and Wants

It can be very difficult to determine what you consider a desire and a need in your life. When asked, you may give what you think should be the right answer instead of the truth. You may admit, reluctantly, that you don’t really need your morning coffee. However, when faced with the choice of being late to work because the line at the Starbucks is eight cars deep or going without your morning beverage … well … “It’s just work.” You may concede that your late-night snack of cookies and ice cream is not really a need, but you’ll leave your house at 9:47 at night with a coat over your pajamas to drive to the store in

order to replenish your Ben & Jerry’s.


Desires are things you want; you can do without them, but you still want them. Life goes on in their absence, but having them would certainly enhance it. Needs, however, have a greater sense of urgency.

A desire deferred is inconvenient, even uncomfortable, but a need denied is depravation. So, how can we trust that what we define as a need is really a need? And how can we be honest about what category our perceived needs actually fall into?


It’s difficult for us to put ourselves in Job’s position because of the extreme devastation of what Job initially experiences. So let’s go for something a little bit easier. I’d like you to take a moment and think about life on a desert island. I’m not really thinking of the Swiss Family Robinson type of island. If you’ve seen the movie Castaway with Tom Hanks, this is the picture I’m working toward. I want you to picture yourself stranded on a desert island, in the middle of nowhere, with very few resources. You need to survive—yes, survival is a bona fide need. So, what do you need to survive? (Because you’re on the planet, assume you’ve got something to breathe so you can move past that most primal need of life, oxygen.) Write down your top three needs:


What I would need in order to survive

1.

2.

3.


If I were to answer this question myself, I’d say water, food, and shelter are my primary needs. Actually, these are pretty much what Jesus mentioned in the Matthew 6 passage. He put it as what to eat, what to drink, and what to wear. (Clothing is really a form of shelter, so I’m going to accept the similarity.) Those are pretty basic. In fact, outside of this prosperous nation of ours, a good deal of the human population spends a large portion of their time and energy searching after these basic needs. Go too long without water and you die of thirst. Go too long without food and you die of hunger. Go too long without shelter and you die of exposure. Needs can be determined by how essential they are to sustaining life.


Ahhhh, there’s the dilemma, isn’t it? When we consider what is essential to life, we aren’t always talking about physical life, are we? We have an emotional, relational, and spiritual life to go with this physical one. So, go back and relabel your needs list as “My Physical Needs.”


Now, I want you to come up with at least three needs under each of the other categories.


My Emotional Needs:

1.

2.

3.


My Relational Needs:

1.

2.

3.


My Spiritual Needs:

1.

2.

3.



Under emotional needs, you might have such things as optimism, hope, joy. Relational needs might include things like acceptance, affirmation, forgiveness. And for spiritual needs, perhaps you listed things like faith, trust, praise. I share these with you not to say that these are definitive answers, but to give you an idea of the types of things you could choose. Again, I find that many people have never done this type of inventory, let alone put intentional thought into dealing with these types of questions.


Going back to our desert-island exercise, we’ve already established what our physical needs are, but, as Jesus said in Luke 4:4, referencing Deuteronomy 8:3, “Man does not live on bread alone.” So, let’s say you’ve got your physical needs taken care of. You’ve got food to eat, water to drink, and shelter from the elements. What other three things would you personally want (or desire) to survive on that island?


What I would want in order to survive:

1.

2.

3.


After thinking about it myself, here’s what I’d want: a Bible, a purpose, and a chance of escape. Even though we’ve categorized these as wants (or desires), they’re still pretty important. I doubt any of you

would seriously put lattes and ice cream on this list. When reduced to choices of these kinds, those behaviors are pretty easy to label.


Short of being stranded on a desert island or experiencing a Jobtype catastrophe, it can be difficult to stop long enough to make sense of our busy lives. That’s what this book is designed to help you do. In the next chapter, we’re going to start by looking at the most common ways I’ve seen over my twenty-five years in counseling that people try to fill themselves up. These ways all have a similar “if some is good, more is better” deception, leading to compulsive, impulsive behavior.


Next, we’re going to begin to identify our real needs because every person who engages in excessive behavior has a true need at the core of that behavior. By discovering what those core needs are, we can detach the power of the need from the excess of the behavior and begin meeting the need in a positive, healing way. Finally, we’ll look at the gifts God gives us to meet our true needs. We’ll bring the words of Jesus from Matthew 6 full circle and learn how to live with our needs fulfilled as we seek His kingdom and His righteousness.