If I were the man at the pool

What if I was the man by the pool of Bethesda? (John 5)

Laying there for 38 years. There's nobody to help me get into the pool. The only proximal hope that I will be healed. And even that is far away when your community decides the distance is too far to travel. That act of moving me from this grounded mat to the life-restoring pool is too big a burden for them to shoulder. They have all moved on to baking bread, bathing infants, and bringing wares to sell at market. The longer I bake here in the sun, the lighter the burden feels for them. Amazing what time can do. For many, it heals. For others, it commits the pain. Time only heals wounds when they've got healthy people injecting antibodies of community into the pain of another. This replaces the pain with moments of joy. But, for some of us, it only replaces our pain with more recent pain.

So, where does that leave me?

I know. It leaves me stranded on this island of a mat, longing for the life of the waters. Yet, the waters remain a mirage to me, while a reality to others. I hear the cheers of others as they are lowered into the pools and raised with sores healed and limbs moving. I hear the jubilation of family members who thought the prison doors of a stroke would remain forever locked.

Here I lie. 

The scuffles of the poor and lame have become a cadence of hopelessness to me, Until, that is, the swirling fog of dust settles to reveal feet standing at my eye's level. Someone stops. The cadence of passing strangers halts. For me. They halt for me. Certainly I will be asked to move while someone else is brought to water's edge.

A voice.

Eyes.

Both speaking to me. 

"Do you want to be healed?"

I'm not even sure I know. I've resigned to the plane of hopelessness for so long that sitting upright in healing expectancy...I can't even visualize it.

"Get up, take your bed, and walk." 

After this man, those eyes, that offer to be healed, I found myself rolling up my mat. As if I have been transfixed by his presence. I pick up the mat that has held my life in its straw. I actively tell my mind how to move my toes. Movement has been archived for 38 years. 38 years is close to life expectancy for me, but I have very little to expect from life.

Until now.

I put one foot in front of the other; cautious at the potential betrayal of my healing. For so long I have seen and heard victory for others. I have abandoned the idea that victory was for me. My body seems to be the object of other people's gratitude. I've heard it, "I am grateful that my body has not failed me  like that man's on the. mat."

But not today.

Today is victory! It's my turn for victory!

My walking pace quickens as if my synapses have woken and am remembering how to walk. I swing my head around to thank the man and he is gone.

No name.

He simply healed me and went about his day. He restored my body. He restored my life.

I want to know about this man that require me to walk in my healing and nothing else.

How Obligation can be a Generosity Thing

***I'm guest blogging today over at JacksonWu.org. ***


I've been thinking on the concept of obligation for a few months now. For most of us Americans the idea of being obligated to someone makes us want to flash mob Times Square while singing, "You Don't Own Me."

But since moving to China in 2003 I've learned that obligation doesn't bind me with shackles, it binds me with mutual generosity.

Go over there and tell me what you think. It's not an easy pill to swallow, trust me. The night my now husband and I had the "Determine The Relationship," talk, I quickly responded with, "Just because we are dating now, don't think that means I want to see you everyday."

I get it, friends. I totally get the panic that can come with being obligated.

And with that, I appropriately leave you the last chorus of Lesley Gore's song:

I don't tell you what to say
I don't tell you what to do
So just let me be myself
That's all I ask of you

I'm young and I love to be young
I'm free and I love to be free
To live my life the way I want
To say and do whatever I please

And don't tell me what to do
Oh,…

HOW MOMS MAKE DISCIPLES IN ALL NATIONS

I have had the honor of getting to write an article for the July issue of Global Missiology. This journal has worked with many groundbreaking thinkers that are pushing forward the conversation of missions and I'm thrilled to be a part of this edition.

I was asked to write an article peeling back the realities of a mom's role in the Great Commission. As a believer, a mom of 5 kids still has an integral role in the working out of Jesus' words to go to the nations and teach them to obey. This is a passion of mine because too often I see moms who are frustrated, bitter, resentful, and about to impale something. Hopefully we can bring some balance and health back to the expectations for moms. 

I attempted to begin the conversation HERE.

God gives us WAY more than we can handle

This morning I found myself simultaneously cooking 4 meals. Lunch for the husband and 2 kids, dinner for seven, chocolate granola bars for tomorrow's sale, lunch for our 20 person church. At one moment, my son asked me a question about his math problem and my daughter couldn't remember how to spell cylinder. While none of these things are monstrously stressful, the overwhelming few minutes of multi-tasking led me to a common motherhood mantra:

"God doesn't give me more than I can bear."

I whispered this "truth" to myself a few times as I stirred the peanut butter. Then I caught myself. I was comforting my mind with what feels like to be a Biblical truth but in fact is just a cute saying. While it might give me comfort in a moment, the truth is that it's not actually in the Bible. And if it's not in the Bible, I probably shouldn't be holding onto it with tight-fisted hope.

My hypothesis is that people are thinking of the verse that says,

"God will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear." (excerpt from 1 Cor. 10:13)

There is an important difference between the reading of these two verses.  The second verse is a glorious promise that we will never be crushed by temptation. God is faithful and will always provide a way of escape. He never leaves his children strangled by temptation.

In contrast, if we give into the idea that God doesn't give us more than we can bear, then when things get overwhelming we will look to eliminate tasks or people rather than introduce the strength of the Lord.  We will throw our arms up in the air to surrender and decide that never again are we having people over for dinner on a Tuesday night. Inadequacy and stress will capture our minds and we will forge our own defeat. At this point it's
important to frame inadequacy not as a defeat, but rather a rally call for the Lord to resume control.

Motherhood is a prime time to feel relentlessly self-sufficient. Rarely in a day does someone come up from behind you and offer to fold that laundry while you sip tea. Most of our day is wrapped in self-sufficient tasks that require us to man up. While our tasks require independence, the placement of our heart requires just the opposite. Our hearts need to lean into dependence on a Redeemer who has already claimed victory over every ridiculous sin our minds can think of.

God absolutely gives me more than I can handle. He gives us 5 children, homeschooling, cooking, working, being a wife, tragedies, broken arms, cultural missteps, frustrating land lords, and people who cut in line.

Feeling like we are sinking reveals that we have been swimming on our own for too long. The Lord wants to give us WAY more than we can handle so that we can see him show off, not just just show up. We need to treat God as not just our superhero that swoops down to save us in the nick of time. Instead, God is a King who has sent out an edict that says, "Don't worry, I've got this."

And that's a promise worth holding onto.

Our Corners

Corners.

They're inherently defined, small, and cozy.

Sometimes they're dusty, war torn, and full of last week's hash browns.

I've struggled with this blog corner for some time now (allowing the last post date to be the screaming confessor of this). I've struggled because it doesn't feel big enough or viral enough to keep writing. If I could just come up with some ultimate "Let it Go" parody that would go viral...again. Or if I could write something witty about how moms need to stop worrying about perfection, but start worrying about eating GMOs, then someone somewhere would say I'm awesome.

And if I'm honest, I spend many wasted minutes of my day trying to figure out how to get others to think I'm awesome.

Or at least interesting.

Or even just ridiculous.

I've been craving adjectives.

These last few months I've spent looking to my left and to my right. Really looking into my people and I've come to see that I've bought into the lie that I NEED to be noticed by the masses in order to have value. Andy Crouch at Christianity Today is spot on when he says that in the West we have evolved into a 'fame culture.' A culture where ministry success is weighted according to high attendance and large Twitter followings. We've created a place where name dropping and conference hoarding have become the litmus test for whether or not we are accepted into certain communities.

This is a shame.

A shame because there are shy, introverted, non-social media people who are crushing it for Jesus. But somehow it doesn't seem like enough unless you document it along the way. No longer is getting honor from the Lord enough. We need a collective pat on the back in order to feel validated in our ministries and lives.

This makes the philosophical part of me panic. Once we as a Christian culture start taking our cues on success from numbers and popularity, we begin making hasty decisions. When we feel like we've gotta hurry up or get left behind, there becomes very little room for long-suffering and endurance. Anonymity and service look like traits belonging to the outed kid on the dodgeball team. But over and over again, this is what Jesus was doing.

He was picking up the towel to scrap the junk off the disciples' feet.

He was turning his head and healing unpopular, outcasted women.

He picked a rag tag group of men to call friends.

And yet here we are as a culture.

I don't know what this will mean for writing here. For me, I'm turning off the comments and the followers tab. It's a self-imposed fence to keep out my ego.

We've each been given a corner. Big people, little people, angry people, flighty people, hurting people, dying people. People who need my adjective to be: humble, fierce person of prayer, gracious, loyal, full of faith.

I am to be faithful to my little corner. You are to be faithful to yours.

 Let's let that be enough for today.

4 things I learned by leaving social media for Lent

I’m not a normal subscriber to fasting for Lent. I’ve done it a few times, tossing out a token chocolate fast for good measure. This year, I decided to give up Facebook and Instagram for these 40 days. I had been feeling the strangle of social media for several months and decided there needed to be an untangling. A colon cleansing of sorts. 

I was thinking this through and trying to avoid it altogether when I was skyping with my best friend and she told me she was going to give up social media for Lent. I almost feigned a bad Skype connection so that I didn’t have to admit to her that I was thinking of doing the same thing. Now I had that blasted thing called accountability.

I learned a lot about my character and about owning my own junk these past 40 days. Blaming social media was replaced by naming my own misshaped desires and insufficient heart.

1. Social Media isn’t evil, but my heart can be.

    While social media can become a vacuum for productivity, sometimes we forget just where the problem lies. 

      

      With us.

     

      Squarely with us.

      

      If I am choosing to scrape through Facebook instead of making dinner, then I’m choosing indulgence over responsibility.

      Jeremiah 17 reminds us that, “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desparately sick…

      A sick heart needs healing, not to my ignoring it by bandaging it with social media trivialities. But again, it’s not social media's fault. The apple wasn’t at fault in the garden. It was Eve’s deciding that God wasn’t enough that was her heart’s deception. I think there’s similar danger in our social media addictions. 

   2. Social media has exposed my desire to be known

One of the most vulnerable things I’ve learned was just how much I crave being known by people. I’ve struggled a lot with loneliness these last two years. Living overseas is isolating. But giving up social media made me realize that most of my loneliness was not a craving for community, but rather a craving for people to pay attention to me. I wanted someone to notice that I wasn’t at that birthday party and be sad because of it. This was especially apparent for the first week of the fast. I replaced my Facebook "quick looks," with email "quick looks."

It’s been good to separate loneliness from attention craving. I now understand that when I start to sense loneliness, I need to be sure it’s labeled correctly for my own heart’s sake.

3.   Social media reminds us of our need for community

I was grieved several times when I missed big events in my friends’ lives. I had several friends who would periodically send me emails to update me on things like: this person’s dad just had a heart attack; our adoption was denied; our adoption went through; I leave for South Sudan today. I missed getting to tell them I was praying for them or ask them how that doctor’s appointment went.

As long as it does not become an unhealthy dependency, our need for people is from the Lord. I Cor. 12 tells us that, “For in one Spirit we were ALL baptized into ONE body…” One functioning, synchronized body of Christ.

My natural disposition is to do it by myself.

My natural disposition is to get stressed out, overwhelmed, and void of joy.

I should not be surprised at the cause and effect.

I need community and I’m thankful to the Lord that we have social media that allows me to see that first birthday party of the friend’s daughter whom I’ve yet to hold. While social media can take us tempt us to avoid face to face interactions, it also allows to remain connected that is unprecedented in history.

4.   When we categorize social media as merely a time drain, we strip it’s ability for good.

We Americans like categories. Democrat/Republican; liberal/conservative; pro-life/pro-choice. When we slip social media into the “waste of time” file, we discount all the good things that can be done with it. Plenty of organizations are using it for advocacy and raising money for great causes. I’ve seen families decide to adopt because of a video they saw or article they read off Facebook. I’ve learned how to be better mom through blogs and articles found online. Redeeming social media is key-using it to move forward Christianly things in a progressive and gracious manner. God knew we’d have this push and pull with social media as we sit here in 2014. Let’s let it revolutionize the world instead of feeding our gluttonous hearts.

The pile of nastiness that can be dumped in and around our hearts can be overwhelming. But I know that tomorrow morning, new mercies are offered to me by the most generous of all Fathers. Thank you Jesus that I don’t have to muster up these heart changes on my own.

My First Magazine Article Published!

Hey guys!

My first magazine article was published today and I'm pumped. This whole magazine article thing could get addictive. You sit down, write, edit, and only self-doubt for a page or two of a Word document. It's bliss.

This online publication is fantastically encouraging, especially to women who are involved in overseas work. It's clean, beautiful, and symmetrically laid out. I have issues with symmetry.

I wrote about how the neediness of Mary Magdalene makes me panic. Here's the first little bit:


Mary Magdalene freaks me out. Her underlying, desperate neediness with Jesus can be unnerving. When I read her stories I picture a pasty, scrawny seventh-grader pathetically eager to join the kickball game at recess.


The rest can be found here. 


Check it out and while you're at it, browse the rest of the site. It really is that good. 

Making Promises can be Destructive

Ten years ago, I finished up my time working with junior high and high school girls at a church. As wonderful as that job was for me, I discovered that I had picked up one rather destructive habit. My pattern of ministry was filled with promising a coffee date or taking a girl out to dinner and never actually following through on that invitation. My intention was pure. I wanted each and every girl to feel loved and wanted. I wanted to show them that despite their fathers being gone 80% of the year, I wanted to see them smile. With those motives, I opened my mouth and promised to meet with scores of young women. Many of them I followed up on, but sadly, many of them were left as empty promises.

Several years after leaving that job, I discovered this pattern of ministry that had grown in me. Somehow by telling someone that I'd love to get coffee with them felt like I had fulfilled loving them simply because I had extended the invitation. As I look back, the invitations that remained unmet, probably left those girls uttering the words, "Typical."

That makes me cringe just typing that. Just thinking how many girls rolled their eyes after I extended a bouncy invitation to meet them "sometime" for dinner.

This habit has taken years to unravel. It started as my kids began to understand what it meant to promise something. I would promise to play dolls and get caught up in doing dishes instead. Or I would promise to take them for ice cream and then tell them it would have to wait for another day, I was sorting laundry.

I got tired of weaving into them a distrust for promises. 

I started changing my vocabulary first. I began saying "maybe" and "we are thinking about..." a little more often. I kept my mouth shut unless I knew I could open my calender right there and scribble down a time to do that activity or meet with that person. 

This habit has been hard to break and I will say that at times I slip back into offering my time with a closed fist. But more and more I am realizing the damaging effect this has not only on my family, but my community. As believers, we need to follow through because it's gives an accurate picture of God's faithfulness to his children. By touting our promises and not following through, we are building into others that God is a manipulator or even worse, a liar.

When he says things like, "I, I am he who comforts you," a hurting person needs to trust in that even if they don't understand it.

When God reminds us, "I have put my words in your mouth and covered you in the shadow of my hand," a frightened little girl needs to know that shaded darkness won't make her afraid.

I want my kids to understand that when God says, "For all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God," that it doesn't God tolerates them, but adopts them into his family.

I hear people despair when they talk of wanting authentic community. But I also hear people promise to have someone over for dinner or invite them out to coffee and never follow through. Community isn't built on empty promises of intimacy.

 It's built on sitting across the table from someone and entering the messy.

 It's built on sitting Indian style on the carpet and actually doing the puzzle with your 4-year old. 

It's built on inviting your neighbors over for dinner, even if there's play-dough scattered on the kitchen table.

Intimacy is kept by following through. If we wait for the perfect timing to follow through we will never do it. Let us not fool ourselves into believing that the simple invitation is an act of love. It is not. The act of love comes by sacrificing your own time because that other person is worth it.

Focusing in on Best Things

I have said several times on this little space that 2013 is my year of boundaries. I'm attempting to shave away good things so as to have a larger space for best things.

This post on Desiring God walks us through some litmus tests on deciding whether or not to take on something new. 

It goes on to say this:

"Questions are mental machetes God gives us to slash through the overgrowth of the world’s demands on us. We are not to uncritically take a new obligation on. We must test it against what we want to become. So we must ask obligations questions like  

Why should I do this?

Why now? 

What is it promising me? 

What kingdom end will it accomplish?

Will it fragment my focus on my primary callings?

Why does it feel so emotionally compelling to me?"

 
It's easy to think that our motives are pure when we say "yes" to something. For me, asking that last question about emotional compelling is a big one. I have found that many times my yes is a subtle luring of the affections of others. When this is my motivation, that means that my reward is given to me by men on this earth and in this life. That makes void the greater, more fulfilling reward that the Lord promises me from him. Working overseas like we do can be a dangerous calling for the heart.

We can:

--see people as projects simply so that we have something to report.

--invite ourselves into situations simply so that we can tell others that we were there when...

--allow our egos to inflate when people praise our sacrifices.

--feel like we are more important than we actually are.

--look down on the national people that we work with as if they need our constant influx of wisdom and knowledge.

Asking these questions laid out above is crucial to our hearts. It allows our humility to become a committed part of our hearts rather than a platitude said during prayer time.

Asking these questions very quickly becomes not just a way to become less busy, but a way to check our hearts as we submit our daily tasks to our Father.

Love Does-My Take on Things

I cringe when I start out to write a book review. I now personally understand the doubt, angst, joy, tears, and struggle that come with putting into words what your brain is still trying to make sense of. But because this book is gaining traction in America, I felt like chiming might be helpful as we process together what our lives should look like as followers of Jesus. *Minor spoiler alert. This is long, but I'd LOVE feedback on this.

I've only had one cup of coffee today, so I'm gonna keep this discussion at 3 strong points and 3 points of caution.


Here's where I thought he nailed it:

1. Love is messy. Many times as believers we can spin our wheels driving from one Christian event to another. Being a part of the world is messy and even scary at times. Bob Goff challenged me to make that phone call or invite that one person over for dinner that gets overlooked in most social circles. Throw yourself into the ring. You might get banged up but at least your playing.

2. Love demands sacrifice. To say we want to love someone will demand of us to give money away and say no to things that we would rather be doing. Love requires us to cash in when we say we want to bring dinner over or baby-sit for a neighbor. Bob tells stories of getting on a plane to fly to Uganda and aid in the rescuing of young boys from jail. He didn't sit back and pray for so long that his passion about it faded. He acted.

3. Love is dangerous. There are days, sometimes hours, that will require us to do irrational things for the sake of love. On a yearly basis, my father reminds me that if anything ever happened to us as a family, he'd be on a plane within 24 hours. Impulsive, irrational love. Like Jesus letting Judas play on his team with the other disciples. That was a dangerous call, but for the time, it was also incredibly loving. There are times we are called to include the Judas' or to give our brand new cars away to a single mom. Glorious, dangerous love.


Here's where I need to offer caution. (By 3 points, I actually meant 4. We're working on a curve today. Remember the bit about coffee?)


1. Love doesn't always have a large bank roll or important friends. Goff clearly has a few extra pennies to spare and more than a few friends who can make things happen. In most of his adventures, the focus is on spontaneity. Getting on a plane to London because your 10-year old says she wants to go isn't inherently Christian. It's just a really fun thing to do and it also requires quite a bit of liquid income.

It might sound ludicrous for him to just call up John Ashcroft like he did, but let's keep in mind he was also the Counsel for Uganda. It's not like I'M calling up John Ashcroft to come over and play checkers. Goff has connections, so let's not make decisions that in the same light, but without the same amount of money or friendship connections. I get nervous that people will try to emulate his spontaneity, but not have the resources to be able to bail them out when bad things happen.


2. Love does need knowledge of what the Lord is like. One of the chapters talks about his "Bible doing," instead of a "Bible study." I get where he's going with this; let's do more action and less learning and sitting. I did feel like he became a bit patronizing to studying the Bible though. If we are just sitting around with our Bibles in our laps talking about good things we should be doing, how do can we know that what we're doing is actually the heart of God?

We need to know what brings him glory, what makes him angry, how it is that he shows patience. I can learn to do good things by simply going to a Rotary Club meeting or watching Dr. Phil. The heart of God is what motivates us to action and sustains us when we're weary.



3. Love being given and love needing to be received are sometimes different.  Towards the end of the book, he briefly mentions that the Ugandan government was simply taking too long to give them approval for their school, so they went ahead and built it anyway. While this might look bold and radical to an American reader, red flags were immediately raised in my mind. Too often I see Americans coming overseas and assuming what they are doing is most helpful. They skip over doing research or interviewing and just assume the ministry they are offering is just what these people are needing. Overseas, Americans already have a reputation for coming in like a linebacker into a quilting club. We knock people over and tear things apart all because we just wanted to make a difference. I appreciate the heart to help. (Just this past week I linked a great video about thinking we're being helpful. It's a parody on Toms Shoes. It's funny and fantastic. Here's the link)

We have to be wise and usually slow. Governments work slowly. Local authorities work slowly. Sometimes the government and the person in charge are two totally separate entities. It takes time to figure these things out. Training and equipping ourselves before we jump into a project will lead to a ministry that will stay for the long term. Burning bridges simply because we want to see our ministry "succeed" is arrogant and imperialistic.

4. Love can also mean common sense. Goff is clearly an adrenaline junkie. I felt like so many of his stories were just ones of him having whimsical fun and then challenging us to live our lives like that. But Scripture also very clearly tells us that there are wise and unwise ways of doing things.

I fear a 19-year old guy getting a hold of this book and then consequently dropping out of school to live in the jungles of Peru, building wells. He would have no training and no resources, but he would living life to the fullest and somehow that's to be commended. There are absolutely times that the Lord calls us to things that make little earthly sense. But I would say that most often, he puts people in our lives and training in our paths so that we can be the most effective witnesses possible. Let's not forsake those so that we can post, "You Only Live Once!" on your FB photos from Peru.

There seems to be a wave of adrenaline seeking Christians who aren't thinking about getting trained or how to humbly enter a place asking more questions than giving answers. This kind of zealousness is scary. Action is important, crucial even. Adventure is temporary. The adrenaline does wear off and if we're going to be in a place to make a long-term impact, we have to intimately know the God who sent us in the first place.

Reflecting on a Living Hope

 

**The eery part of this post is that I wrote it about two weeks ago and set it to post today...the same day that the Boston Marathon bombers were brought to justice. 

What does it mean to be born again to a living hope?

What is a living hope?

A hope that isn’t confined to death and discouragement. 

A hope that is not victim to evil usurpation.   

Immovable and defined by the only one who has the power to define a promise like that. God. If God grants that hope is living, He has to be able to cash that in when we despair. We have to sit back and trust that when he says “Living Hope,” he means it and will do whatever is needed to assure that his hope does not fade.

Our inheritance is also alive. 

Alive in the sense that there will be no corruption or perishing when we obtain it in heaven. However heaven looks, we can be assured that God will command all things to life. 

Death will have no inroad. 

Despair will not be considered. 

Defilement will find no place. 

Life will rule the day. 

Life will define all our relationships. 

Life will be defined by goodness. 

Words spoken will be put together with letters of hope and joy. Pauses in our days will be filled with a silent worship, not devising schemes of revenge. Anger will be held at bay. Racisim will never occur to the minds of a people who are surrendered to a living hope. These bouts of corruption are out of place in a kingdom that God creates. A infalliable place where both joy and worship work symmetrically together to give us a peaceful place to exist for all of eternity. If nothing else, this should give us hope. 

It should make us stop when we are anxious about work and find gladness in our future grace. This type of promise should allow us to breathe deeply when we find ourselves broken and depleted of all goodness.

Life here doesn’t make sense. On many levels. We end our day with more questions than answers. With feeling more discouraged than alive.

But there will come a day. A day that we will be able to express a joy in God that we can’t seem to grasp here on this earth and for this time.

But there will come a day.  A day when no orphan will wander around looking for arms to curl up into.

But there will come a day. A day when we can look around at our brothers and sisters around the world and not reject others on account of cultural differences, but rejoice in the creative design of our Father. 

It's in these things that we can get up each morning and proclaim that God is good. Not because of our desire to escape this world, but because we understand that hope is obtainable. Goodness is an option. 

God has prepared a place. 

**It is this very hope that will bring us to pray for not only the victim's families, but the bombers' families too. Hope is not reserved for those whom WE deem fit. That's the Lord's job.

It's Gonna Rain and Grace in a Chinese Computer Store

For the last few months, it's been much easier (and if I'm honest, much more comfortable) to put on complaining, frustration, resentment, and judgement. 

The people in the apartment below us have been drilling non-stop 8 am-6 pm everyday. 

Our electricity goes out several times an hour.

We currently have no hot water. 

On Monday, I will be getting in a taxi, a bus, an airplane, and a subway to simply pick up my daughter's ADHD medicine. 

You see, complaining is easy. And sometimes it seems justified, especially living overseas. Usually  my complaining comes because I am comparing my life here to what things would look like in the States (or at least as I've contrived them in my head.)

In America:

 People don't destroy and then rebuild their apartments while others are still living there. 

You don't share electricity with the local grocery store.

There is always hot water.

I drive through at CVS and pick up medicine in my air-conditioned car. 

You see where this is going. God's words to "Put on...compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, patience, love, peace, thankfulness..." don't give me an out because of where I'm living or what situation I find myself floundering in. Paul asks of us to purposefully put these things on because he knows that if we don't, we will pick up the nearest pair of comfortable jeans in the form of complaining and ungratefulness. Those are secure friends that justify our desires and lusts of every sort. This has to be a conscience act of putting on holiness. 

It's gonna rain. Let's just all own this together. It's gonna rain. Life is going to splash you in the face, dizzying our focus and crippling our ability to stand upright. It's going to swipe at us from the side, buckling our faith in goodness. The rains will slowly fall for so long that we no longer understand what it looks like to be dry. And we become accustomed to being so bound in our own lives that freedom simply becomes wishful thinking.

 

I picture putting on the clothes of holiness as these umbrellas. Pauses of grace and allow us to keep walking from rainstorm to drizzle to fog to typhoon. When we put on thankfulness, we hear our kids asking why God made water instead of complaining that it's not hot. When we wake up and find peace, we can light a candle and allow the family to eat like frontiers instead of sighing about the electricity again.  

Pauses of grace.

They allow us to breathe.

They give us a moment to wipe our ragged, tired, wet hair out of our eyes so that we can see what's ahead instead of habitually putting one foot in front of the other. 

They remind us that gray clouds do eventually blow through and it's in those moments that we find ourselves even more grateful for the soft touches of the sun.

They allow us to look heavenward and remind us that we aren't forgotten down here. That in wearing compassionate hearts and patient words, we are among holy moments.

The rain is a guarantee, the pauses of grace are the gift.

 

One moment of grace happened yesterday as we were shopping for a computer cord. As this song came on...I paused. Wondering why on earth Chris Tomlin was playing in a Chinese computer store, I smiled. Hubs and I thanked God for the 3-minute moment of remembering that grace will find us, we just have to be willing to see.

Follow Jesus. Be Yourself. Love Others.

I took the Grip Berkman personality profile a few weeks ago. On a scale that measured sympathy and warmth, I received a 2.

2.

Out of 100.

When I first read that I thought, "Perfect. Two of the characteristics of both a Christian and a female and I scored a 2."

Snap.

My husband and I started processing me failing the score in niceness. He assured me that I'm not a monster, but that I could manage to show a little feminine emotion every once in awhile. Imagine a husband saying that I should actually show more emotion. I've struggled with this for a long time because I am just not a sweet person. I don't see myself as mean (but I could be wrong on that too), but I've never been labeled as 'sweet'. I have friends who are just plain sweet and I'm sure I drive them all crazy.

They do things like hold your hand and scrunch up their eyebrows when you tell them you've had a bad day.

They call you precious and use doilies.

They have tea parties with their daughters and patiently braid their hair, all the time humming the theme song to "Little House on the Prairie." These kinds of people absolutely blow my mind.

I simply cannot muster that type of sweetness. There are times that I've actually doubted my walk with the Lord because I don't seem to fit into most things geared towards woman.

I'd rather be watching the football game than in the kitchen talking about manicures.

But one of the things I'm realizing is that this is straight up the way God has made me. Now, what I do with that is a different thing. I can choose to isolate myself and allow the cynical side to tear people down. I can smirk at the MOPS moms meeting right outside my office when they wear sparkly overalls. I can walk into a women's conference and not learn a single thing because I'm too busy making fun of the speakers.

Unfortunately, all of these things have happened before.

The flip side to my non-emotion is that I can be fairly objective and direct when needed. I don't panic in an emergency and I don't usually cater to peer pressure. Certainly I have tons of things to learn still, but I think as I get older, I am beginning to understand that apart from the fruits of the spirit and things commanded in Scripture, there is a lot of flex area the Lord has given us in terms of personalities. There are differences in personality that don't necessarily mean one of them is the most godly.

I'm not sure the point of all of this. It's sunny outside and I'm avoiding doing things like cooking dinner. I want to tell the women out there that they might not want to vote for Sarah Palin or cook gluten-free. Maybe 56 pairs of Tom's shoes isn't for you. Being a trendy Christian doesn't make you a godlier woman. It just makes you trendy.

God created you with a uniqueness that this world needs. Allow yourself to be transformed by the Word, but not by what you think other people are expecting you to be. The tricky part is when there are personalities that need refining. I don't want this post to be a license for us to tell others, "Stick it. This is just how I am!" We need remain humble, teachable, and thankful that God created us each individually.


Follow Jesus.

Be yourself.

Love others.

When God Turns Your Head-Sometimes Whiplash is Involved-Guest blogger, Carrie.

 If you've ever had God throw a huge detour sign in your path that caused a bit of whiplash and confusion, please take the time to read this. Carrie and her family lived in China for 6 years when their world seemed to come crashing down before them. Journey with her as she agreed to open her closet and let us take a peek inside. Some of the clothes are strewn across the floor, others folded neatly, and yet a few are tattered and torn beyond recognition. 

1.      Give us a brief description of how you ended up back in the States.

Wow, where do I begin and how do I make it brief!?  The simple answer is that we knew God was leading us back to the states.  We were shocked by it, especially my husband, who later told me that he thought he would be buried in Asia.  We spent a total of 6 years and 2 months in Asia in the same city, and saw some amazing things while there.  But, the last 2 years we were in Asia were incredibly tense and stressful on many different levels.   By the end, we could see that, as painful as it was, God was shutting the door to that chapter of our lives and that the work we had done was at a point where it was okay to leave.  This was definitely the hardest choice that we have ever made.  It terrified us because we knew that it would completely change our lives from that point on, and we wanted to make sure it was the right choice.  But, when it came down to it, my daughter and I were not handling living there well, my son’s health was struggling, and a change needed to happen for other reasons as well.  

My daughter had two different personalities—one for inside the house where she felt safe and one for outside where she was in an almost constant state of debilitating fear.  I was still grieving a baby we lost through miscarriage and many other hurts that I had not dealt with over the last few years, so I was not in a good place to help her overcome the immense difficulty she was having living there.  Although we (me and Eliana) were not the only deciding factors in our choice to come home, we knew as we were preparing to leave the last two months there that Eliana was one of the main reasons God had led us to come home.  Titus has also been able to get the healthcare that he needed, which has been a huge blessing.  We knew that God wanted us to be in a healthy place, and unfortunately, we weren’t getting there in the isolated location we were living in.  We needed a support system around us.

2.      What was the most difficult part of the transition?

The thing about this transition that we are finding the most difficult is that it is not over yet.  When you make this type of big move at this stage of your life, you find yourself in a very unique situation, which isolates you from most peers around you.  We are not the same people we were when we left, and even though we are in our thirties with three kids, we often feel like we are in our twenties and just starting out.  We moved overseas 3 years after we were married, so we mostly learned all about being “adults” while living in Asia.  Since our return, we bought our first car, delivered our first baby in America, started to keep a tighter budget (third world living is much cheaper!), and have begun the search for our first house.  When we explain this to others, we often get puzzled looks.  We’ve also found that there are different times where it hits us that we are not going back.  Around the 1 month mark, which is usually when we would be heading back after a vacation, and then again around the 6 month mark, which is when we moved back after the last time we lived in the states.  When I wasn’t packing up our bags to travel to another country to deliver Moriah, it hit me too, since my other two were both delivered in Thailand away from our Asian home.  So, I guess we are finding that the transition is a unique process that is apparently very long and we aren’t finished with yet! Maybe I should answer these questions again in 6 months to see if any of the answers have changed! 

3.      How have you seen fingerprints of God in all of this?

He’s been all over the place, which has been amazing and so comforting.  He really has been our anchor through this stormy journey.  The first fingerprint we saw was not long after we made the decision to move back home.  We did not have any job possibilities for Vip and didn’t know what he would do exactly.  We had been praying about it and continued to do so, and soon after the decision was made he was offered a job.  A home was provided for us to rent at a greatly reduced rate for the first year.  We were able to find 2 cars under the budget we had set.  (it was easy to stay under budget when one of them was given to us!)  We have also seen God move in the life of our oldest daughter specifically.  The first few months were really difficult for Eliana.  A friend even remarked to me that she almost seemed to be traumatized. 

 This momma definitely spent a lot of time in prayer for her little girl!  I wondered if we would ever be able to leave her in childcare or put her in school when the time came, but we are now at the point that she looks forward to going to church and playing with other children at the playground, even when it is crowded.  We still have some progress to make, but this is such a huge answer to prayer.  We have also felt God’s presence as we have been able to worship with other believers in our own heart language again. 

4.      What has been the most difficult part?

We miss our friends, local and foreign, who are still over there.  You form pretty close bonds with those you are around when you live overseas.  They were our other family for the 6 years we lived in Asia, and leaving that fellowship, even though most of us lived in different cities, was the hardest part.  We are still working on meeting people and making friends here, so there is a void.  The long transition is a weary process as well.          

5.      What would you tell others as they watch their world get turned upside down?

Hold on.  Don’t be afraid to let God do what He needs to do to heal you.  Hebrews 12:12-13 was the passage God gave me that released me to come home.  “Therefore, strengthen the hands that are weak and the knees that are feeble, and make straight paths for your feet, so that the limb which is lame may not be put out of joint, but rather be healed.”  Somewhere along the way, Vip and I had believed the lie that it was holier to stay where we were than to actually do what God was telling us to do.  We had to open ourselves up to the idea that He might have only led us to Asia for a season, not our whole lives.  We learned that performing righteous acts that we choose does not make it okay to ignore what God is asking you to do.  

I think I began to see that the story God was writing for us didn’t have a period at the end but rather a comma.  We came to embrace the truth we found in Hebrews 12 that God wants us healthy and able bodied so that He can use us.  If we are hurt, He wants us to come to a place where we can heal.  This will look different for different people and situations.  It might be that they need to just start praying and reading their Bibles again.  It might mean that they need to seek out a friend or mentor they can talk to.  Or, it might mean making a big change like we did.  But, the bottom line is that you have to seek God, the ultimate source for all healing, comfort, peace, direction, and blessing.  Do not rush yourself either.  As I said earlier, this transition has been a long process that we aren’t even out of completely even though we are 7 months into it.  I find myself just getting depressed and frustrated when I look at how much farther I have to go and think about how I thought I would be farther along by now.  

God has the timetable, so don’t worry about setting one for yourself.  Your life’s story won’t be punctuated with a period until you are with God in Heaven.  One other thing that I would share is that if you are married, the struggle of one belongs to both of you.  I have no shame (now!) in saying that the struggles were mainly mine, but my husband took these struggles on himself too.  He did not tell me to suck it up and deal with it so he could stay and do what he wanted to do.  He took on my burdens and his children’s burdens, sought Father as to how they needed to be dealt with, and then lead us through it all.  I am so thankful for His support and compassion for us.  If he hadn’t done that, I don’t know where we would be, but I know it would not be a pretty place.   

    

And, because I like practical advice, here are few tangible things that helped us as we were going through the beginning stages of this journey.   

·        Whenever possible, I have praise music playing.  I made playlists that reminded me of God’s nearness, sovereignty, peace, and love, and we listened to them A LOT.  This just served as a tangible and constant reminder that God was still there and at work.    

·        Keep a thankful list.  We actually began this when we moved to Asia and were in the throes of culture shock.  When I get lazy and don’t keep it up, I can tell the habit of complaining and giving in to depression and self pity is so much easier!  Look for the blessings all around you and record them.  Do it with your children and your husband too.  It’s been a huge blessing to us.  We even had a list hanging on the wall in our apartment and I have a small notebook I often carry around with me. 

·        Don’t be ashamed.  I didn’t pour out my heart to everyone around me, but I did have two sweet friends as well as my husband that I was able to share with.  They were safe to talk to, prayed with me and for me, cried with me, and are still a tremendous blessing in my life. 

·        It will be tempting to numb yourself to the pain (my two standard techniques are too much entertainment or food, but it could be a host of other things as well).  Don’t give in to that temptation.  Do the hard work of working through whatever is going on and don’t ignore it.  The problems will just get worse if you ignore them.