Nose Up
“I know how to fly a kite. This will be easy,” I say as we look over the flyer dropped in our mailbox, inviting us to the local “Drakiada”, or kite flying day. Any opportunity to get out and meet other families and connect with our local community was priority for us as we labored to adapt and integrate into our Czech village. The seasonal festivals and activities aimed at families were the perfect convenience. Cari and I rifle through the several dozen Rubbermaid totes stacked in our garage, filled with everything from winter clothing to future birthday gifts and home décor which never managed to fit into our cozy but closet-less Czech home. We locate the kites, still packaged in their plastic sleeves and stapled tagboard tops from the rack of the Walmart shelf. I can’t quite remember if they were Mickey Mouse or Cars themed, but it was something so typically kitsch and…Walmart. You know, one of those $1.97 jobs you pick up in the seasonal aisle.
On the day of the Drakiada we make our way down to the public field with our young ones in tow. The sky is filled with magnificent and elegant flying contraptions. Multi-colored polygons, dragons and birds of prey with wingspans wide and flowing. Not a one of them constructed of plastic or from the shelf of a toy store. Mothers stand over babies and tots in strollers, while children at their sides watch intently as fathers hold tightly the riggings of their soaring airships, masterfully manipulating turns and loops to the delight of the young ones. I peer down at our plastic-sleeved budget “kites” as a sick feeling in my stomach rises and beckons me to turn around and go home. But we’ve already done the hard work of getting all of our own kids bundled, shoed and out the door to fly kites and meet the neighbors, so we’re going to do what we set out to do.
We awkwardly assume a free patch of grass in the field, far enough away not to cross any kite lines and start unwrapping Mickey and Lightning McQueen. A moment to see how the small jumble of pieces work, and I slide the plastic sticks into their positions, tie on the tails, and secure the string to the riveted holes. The design very roughly resembles that of a miniature stealth bomber with a not very stealth paint job. The kids seem amused, so that’s good. It’s at this transition point I realize that flying a kite, however easy I remembered it, is not nearly THAT easy. We can all likely recall that feeling of holding onto the string as a kite soars high overhead, but I admittedly kind of forgot about the part that goes before; Launching the kite, and getting it to STAY in the air.
I recruit one of the kids to be my “launcher” and unwind a relatively generous amount of string. I do my best to explain how this operation is going to work, “When I say ‘Go!’ throw the kite up. Okay sweetie?” I back up and position myself to run. “Go!” I holler, and my child gives the kite a nudge as it falls anticlimactically to the ground. Since my child is only about 4’ tall and obviously thoroughly confused about the whole operation, this is going to be trickier than anticipated. I resolve to run and snap the line taut just as soon as it leaves her hand this time. “Go!” I pivot to a sprint and the kite briefly makes an upward thrust, but darts directly back to the ground and I drag it for a good ten to fifteen feet before I realize the resistance is coming from scraping along the sod rather than the wind. We repeat the operation a handful of unsuccessful times before, by some twist of fate, the wind catches it at the right moment and the kite zips upward instead of down. I let out line as fast as the wind will allow. The kite takes some dips and turns as I yank on the string to get the nose pointed upward again. The kite swoons and crashes toward the earth before swirling and rising upward again and again. I hand the line off to one of the kids, and repeat the process again with the next kite.
It seems the older we get, the more we find ourselves recovering memories. That’s not to say that the memories ever disappeared, it’s just a matter of having the occasion to catalyze their recollection. We experience a thing or situation and reverberations from a time past in which we encountered a very similar situation surface. Mark Twain captured the sensation well when he is reputed to have said, “History doesn’t repeat itself, but it does often rhyme.”
16 years of vocational ministry isn’t a long run yet in the scheme of life, but I’ll confess that the dips and swoons remain rather uncomfortable. I wish we could be more…elegant, yet it just doesn’t seem to be the way this kite is built. We weren’t made to be self-sufficient soaring airships. We were made to be Christ-dependent, humbled vessels fueled by faith. As long as the nose stays directed upward we fly just fine, and when we orient elsewhere we initiate a dive, yet we’re confident in the one holding all the strings. I’m thankful for his masterful hand, guiding and directing, applying grace that overcomes our frequent distractions, and taking us to heights and depths at his good pleasure. Keep your nose up dear friends!
We would appreciate your prayers on our behalf in the next few weeks. This week I will be flying out to ABWE headquarters for some key meetings to solidify our ministry direction for the season ahead. In the meantime we are so looking forward to seeing many of you in person over the next several months of furlough ministry. Please expect to be contacted soon as we work out a travel schedule that squares with a host of other commitments. Furlough becomes more and more challenging with a house full of teenagers, which entails a more rigid school and work schedule. A very real need for our family right now is transportation. We have invested in a vehicle, but a single vehicle is proving insufficient for all of our travel and logistical needs. Please also pray for the arrival of our container, which was shipped in mid-June, but has been held up due to our freight forwarding company not submitting customs paperwork or actually brokering the logistics they were contracted for. Those logistics now fall squarely on our shoulders and are proving costly and time consuming. We are simultaneously trying to get refunded money they were paid for a job they didn’t do, while patching together a new set of forwarders and brokers ourselves. It’s a story for another day, and a stressful one, so we would appreciate your prayers.
