Look into the sun as the new days rise

For at least this past year, I've been wanting to try and put into words the beginning of a dream and how that dream became a reality. I'm not the best writer and I know that shouldn't matter but I always let it get in the way of me writing anything. The other struggle for me is that I have a lot of input in my life and not a lot of output. I love gathering information, thoughts, pictures, stories of purpose. But the thing is this, they're starting to get all muddled and I'm forgetting what their purpose was in the first place. And I really don't want to forget. I don't want to forget what my and my husband's dream was and how suddenly we've found ourselves doing a little bit of what we were made to do. So with this written piece of transition, this blog will take on a different purpose. 

Our house now is serving as a space for sabbaticals and rest for people involved in the never-ending work of the Gospel. These are people who have been sent out by a local church to places that they were made for. Thailand, The Philippines, Tibet, Tunisia, Uganda, Minneapolis, England, India. They live among the people, using their skills and gifts. Some are videographers and writers, some teach English, some are counselors, therapists, chiropractors and doctors, some run hostels and hotels, some start businesses with and for the people, some sit and listen--ever learning and being humbled. But what they all have in common, and what I have in common with them, is the Gospel. Someone came along and told us, or better yet showed us that we can stop trying so hard to save ourselves. That all the self compassion and love and forgiveness and patience and grace and mercy and...
It only goes so far. We don't have to play God anymore.

Back in the spring of 2006, Ben and I went to Papua New Guinea for the purpose of encouraging the workers there. We always knew we wanted to be involved with missions we just didn't know in what capacity. That trip planted the seed of living a life of hospitality. Having grown up in what is fondly titled here in America: the evangelical church, we were accustomed to looking-up-to (idolizing) missionaries, or whom we now call workers. But what ends up happening, and what I am guilty of, is we disassociate ourselves by putting them on a pedestal, holding them higher and higher as we romanticize what we say we could never do ourselves. In a relationship like that, if you can call it one, you've lost any sense of equality and when the workers come back from many times what has been a life-changing and often traumatic experience, where are we the church then?

Now I admit, I've tried living in the stage of apathy and complaining about the church. It was real fun at first. I got to point my finger and blame away all my pain and discomfort. I got to pretend that what I said and did didn't have an effect on other people. But since I believed in Jesus and all this redemption and making all things new, I couldn't pretend for very long. In Scripture, the church is described as the bride of Christ. And there are multiple stories throughout the Bible describing that bride. It's adulterous, complaining, fickle, short-sided, wandering, boisterous, self-serving, prideful...but wait. I'm a part of this "bride of Christ." There was no question for me of whether or not i was. And in that moment, my heart broke a little and I felt ashamed. I am that person. The Church is that person. But the story of the Gospel is that Jesus is the groom. Full of scandal and paradox, He is always the groom marrying the adulterous. How could I leave a God like that? (Lord help my unbelief)

All of this inner, personal landscape stuff was happening while we were remodeling this house; Ben's and my local church had crumbled to the ground leaving a dust cloud full of bitterness, jaded hearts, and doubt; our housemates got a divorce; and i lost a friend of 17 years. Lets just say I had taken to eating in bed and watching a lot of Netflix (in bed). 

Thankfully, Jesus is full of compassion and without fail is always redeeming us. For the better. The Lord literally brought everything together for us to keep this house. I'm not kidding. He brought people forward that wanted to help financially, and everyone involved in the negotiations had the same intentions. Our local church The Well, is practically a revolving door of people that work overseas. Ben and I had already been involved in this very healing community for about two years when we went to one of the pastors with our dream. And it very quickly became a reality. If there's anything that I've been learning lately as a believer in Jesus, is that he is so light! When Scripture says that his burden is light, it is! It's so light it's not even a burden. It's a gift. It only becomes a burden when I get my nervous, anxious, controlling fingers and short-sided eyes in His goodwill and mess it all up. So now comes the daily (or can I say hourly? minutely? ) practice (and discipline) of trusting. 

Cue Dayn and Mandi and Wylder Arnold. They were a part of The Well for a long time and have been living in Chiang Mai,Thailand for the past two years. I'll let them tell a little bit of their story, but it has been pure joy to have them here. They've lived downstairs since the end of August (we keep a strict upstairs/downstairs policy j/k), while sharing our upstairs kitchen and laundry room. To have them share a little bit of their hearts with us, and ours with them, has been such a reward. There is a quote from Wendell Berry's The Long-Legged House that comes to mind:

A community is the mental and spiritual condition of knowing that the place is shared, and that the people who share the place define and limit the possibilities of each other's lives. It is the knowledge that people have of each other, their concern for each other, their trust in each other, the freedom with which they come and go among themselves.

I can think of no better way to describe the last four months. 

Hi there, we are the Dandi Arnolds, Dayn, Mandi & Wylder Arnold. We've been privileged to be the downstairs roomies of Ben, Janell & Luke for the last three and a half months now. Before we tell too much about ourselves, we just want to express a hearty "thank you" to our hosts for so graciously inviting us to occupy their basement living space, and for putting up with frequent bouts of nighttime crying (usually our son) and the occasional earthy aroma of dirty diapers (also usually our son.) And a special thanks for loving on our little boy like he was family. He will surely miss the three of you when we leave, as will we.

We moved to Thailand in 2012 to help start a team with Pioneers. Our team's goal was to use media to tell the stories of what the Lord is doing in the far reaches of the globe in order to glorify God and mobilize His people to pray, give or go serve the unreached peoples of S.E. Asia. I (Dayn) am a videographer, and my work involved visiting with teams of Pioneers workers, doing video interviews with workers and locals, and shooting a lot of footage of locals and environments in S.E. Asian countries. This is a good example of one of the pieces I did for our team.

After serving with our team in Thailand for the last two and a half years, and having gone through a lot of life changes (most notably, the birth of our son Wylder. Yes, he was born in Thailand. No, he doesn't get dual citizenship, and yes, we know we've shot his chances of becoming president of the United States. Sorry, buddy.) We were in need of a bit of rest and renewal, and reconnection with our supporters, friends and families. We also were about to switch sending organizations from Pioneers to YWAM and knew that being back in the States would be the best place for us to work on making the switch. Mandi's family lives in Michigan, so we headed there in June and stayed with her parents for a few months. In the middle of the summer we started looking for a place to stay in Portland. My (Dayn's) parents live in Bend, OR, and my siblings and their families all live in the greater Portland area, but none of them really have the space for a small family to come and live with them for an extended period. We continued praying and exploring and were becoming discouraged that there were few, if any options which would not only provide a place to stay, but would also be a place where we could have a little bit of space to breathe a little as a family. And then, BAM! Out of nowhere we get word of a couple who have a home that they're specifically wanting to use for folks like us which has a basement we can have to ourselves with the perfect amount of room for our little family in a convenient location. We honestly couldn't believe how well the Lord had coordinated everything for us.

At the time we didn't yet know Ben, Janell or Luke, as they had started going to our church, The Well, just before we had left for Thailand in 2012. We had a number of mutual friends who spoke very highly of them, and they seemed very excited to share their space with us. So on August 23 we landed in Portland, picked up the car my father was loaning to us, and headed to what would be our new home for the next three months. Honestly, within the first few minutes of spending time with our new house mates, we were even more convinced that the Lord had divinely appointed our time living with them. Personalities clicked and we quickly felt like we were staying with old friends.

In some ways, our last few years have paralleled the last few years Janell described above. We have experienced a lot of pain and heartache living away from friends and family, experienced the growing pains of the Lord chipping away at our own pride and selfishness, and experienced the disappointment that can come with expectations (sometimes unknown or unvoiced) which are completely different from the reality of a new life. But throughout two or three years of being stretched and molded into the people He created us to be, one thing had been constant: He is faithful. He is faithful to provide everything we could possibly need, even a place to stay for a few months which has blossomed into some dear friendships we hadn't expected to make. The Lord has been so good to us, and we are grateful that so often His goodness is manifested in relationships with people He loves. The Lord provided Ben and Janell's home, not just because we needed a place to stay, but because He wanted us to know and love our housemates.

So again, we are humbly grateful to our gracious hosts who, despite all the ways that a young family (as in our son is young, not that Mandi and I are young) can disrupt lovely things like sleep and quiet time, included us as new members of the family and never treated us like tenants. The Lord has provided, and it is good.