Tag: threshold

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Choctaw Landing

Rumors were buzzing of a tech revolution set to break across the planet. A history-shaping phenomenon spanning nations, sporting a lackluster brand – www.

While the World Wide Web was poised to take the universe by storm, sizable bands of missionaries scattered about remote regions of earth remained for the time being pretty much in the dark. No surprise. Through all of mission history new and curious cutting-edge advances – from transistor radios to laundry softener sheets (this one triggered puzzlement and wonder for Ann at our first furlough) – usually left the developing world sprinting to catch up.

Thus, a snail-mail missive bearing my signature made its leisurely way from Moshi Tanzania to the Colorado offices of International Students, Inc. In it I asked if there might be a place for me to offer some cross-cultural services during our temporary time in the U.S. (I smile now at the qualifying term ‘temporary’). Surprisingly, the response came swiftly.

“Mr. Lout, if you are able, please come by for a visit. . . (furthermore) We have a staff member serving on a university campus in Tulsa, OK. You should be hearing from James Tracy.”

Lord, is this you working?

D-Day for leaving Africa sped our way, a list of priorities getting checked off every few hours:

  • Ministry task handoffs
  • Miscellaneous paperwork
  • Eight-year-old Amy’s hard goodbyes to friends, and to Africa – the only              home she knew
  • A border crossing northward to Kenya.
  • Also, Ann fashioning a full wedding garment. Our firstborn, Julie, would marry not long after our arrival stateside. She and her mother hoped the dress would fit nicely. It did.
  • Receiving sporadic updates on our parent’s health (Ann’s mother, my Father)
  • Graduation Day. An exciting time, watching Scott all capped and gowned make his way across the Rift Valley Academy stage. Mere hours before our plane’s lift-off from Nairobi’s Jomo Kenyatta.

The coming season would usher in a flurry of emotions, all tethered to precious events and people. The receiving of a new son-in-law. The passing of a parent. The reorienting to life in a familiar yet strange land.

For Ann and me, the job of tackling and navigating our larger future would be met in due course. We drew comfort in the assurance of God’s presence and care over us and of our loved ones. He had gone ahead before us in times past and would somehow show his faithfulness yet again.

Taking our assigned seats in the big plane we buckled up, catching the excited buzz of our fellow passengers – home-bound tourists for the most part. I took in a few long breaths. My taut shoulders relaxed. Choctaw, Oklahoma, here we come.

A line in the dictionary offers up a succinct definition: “Either end of an airport runway, critical points of takeoffs and landings”. The word being defined –Threshold.

©2023 Jerry Lout

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A Mirror Dimly

With our first two children now college age and our youngest sprinting toward adolescence, a number of pivotal shifts – threshold moments – lay ahead. Leaving Africa felt surreal. Life as we knew it was soon to radically change.

On some days we felt a faint sense of adventure for some veiled assignment the Lord may have in store. In large part though, truth be told, my bride and I felt like hapless passengers on a rudderless ship bobbing on fog-laden seas. Paul’s words to the faithful at Corinth had become quote-worthy, “We see in a mirror dimly”*.

My flight route out of Tanzania brought me via Europe to the U.S. and on to Oklahoma. On the long journey a string of uncertainties played at my imagination like a gathered company of aircraft hovering above a big airport, each waiting its turn to land. One set of musings circled around again and again.

How grave is my dad’s condition. . . will the radiation protocol rise to the occasion? What actually Is Mesothelioma?

By degrees, March of ’92 chipped away at my emotional reserves. My foremost objective was to accompany Dad to his treatment appointments several days each week.

But then my brief snatches of times with our lovely firstborn brought precious and welcome reprieves. A Tex-Mex luncheon together disclosed news of a romance story underway, and I would meet Julie’s special beau before my trip back home (Tanzania).

In a particularly sacred kind of moment, my aged father tenderly granted a request I gently presented him. In keeping with an ancient biblical practice, he invoked a father to son blessing, leaning forward from his hospital bed. I am forever grateful.

Through our few weeks together, Dad’s treatments appeared to indicate some modest gains in the cancer battle. When we hugged farewell, we each donned a hopeful smile at the prospect of seeing one another in a few months, when the plane bearing my family would again touch down in the United States.

Back in East Africa our weeks and months streamed by. Tying together loose ends, sharing at farewell functions, celebrating our son’s graduation. A myriad body of tasks met us that are common to households transitioning yet again to other locations.

As the days for leaving the beloved continent neared, a moment of past reflection surfaced. The ad that had caught my eye a short while before – I.S.I.  

Was International Students, Inc. to factor in as we bridge the coming divide – our next threshold?

©2023 Jerry Lout                                                                                  *1 Corinthians 13:12

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Bridge Ahead

As with many words, the term threshold has a way of stirring memories – some positive, others less so. An all-time favorite of mine calls up a treasured photo image, captured on, yes, my wedding day. The moment awakens warm feelings, still.

“How about we get a shot of you carrying your new bride across the threshold!”, the photographer offered.

My bride, Ann, and I were IN.

With the pastor’s house adjoining the church parking lot, a momentary mock venue was set.

Calling now to mind a thousand snapshots of us captured through all the years since that December day 1967, none matches the delightful threshold image.

Over time a long string of dates and events have signaled a parade of threshold moments. Many scenes, photographed or not, could carry enchanting captions.

“Hello (smiling)” Jerry meets Ann, 1964

“Yes, I’ll marry you”. (1967)

“Ladies and gentlemen, time to board”. Africa-bound flight. JFK International

“It’s a girl!”  (1972)

“It’s a boy!” (1974)

“A girl!” (1983). . . Nairobi Hospital all

Thresholds.

Transitions mark the lives of us all. Every person forging new – uncharted passageways across life’s landscape – no two points of entry just alike.

Our Africa years stretched into decades. A good two dozen laps around the sun had flown past since we’d pledged our wedding vows and the camera flashed our threshold moment.

The dawn of 1992 would soon lift her ever-stretching sunlight across a very new kind of landscape.

©2023 Jerry Lout

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Subtle Signals

How can three simple letters buried on a page inside a modest publication signal a life-altering shift in a person’s journey – into a future set to unfold some nine thousand miles away? And, in ‘spaces’ unlike any lived in before?

(*correction, ISI is not three letters, only two. One of them just gets more press!)

When big shifts occur in a person’s life, we sometimes find ourselves transported into new and different zones. They could be occupational or geographical or whatever. We might respond to any of these shifts with feelings of excitement, trepidation, enthusiasm or awe. The shift in my case included a physical relocation. My feelings tended to signal puzzlement.

If we could reduce to a single word the big turning points in our lives the term threshold might fit well.

Threshold – a place of beginning, a doorway, or brink.

At the time of spotting the letters, I S I, on the page of the quarterly publication those years ago, I could never have imagined their import. After all, the offices of International Students Inc were sat nestled in the foothills of the Colorado Rockies. My home lay in the foothills of Mt Kilimanjaro.

Beyond the range of my understanding, a hint at an approaching shift with life-altering turns was signaling from that one page of the Evangelical Missions Quarterly lying open atop a small table before me.

Setting the magazine aside, my thoughts pivoted.

Dad had fallen gravely ill in Oklahoma. I had a plane to catch.

©2023 Jerry Lout