Urgency of the Hour

I was sitting on my couch at 7:58pm on a Sunday night recently when I heard semi-auto shots in rapid succession.

The next morning, my heart sank as I realized a human had seriously injured other people just around the corner. I'm not the type that could even kill an animal, and this was people we are talking about.

3 weeks before this, a random murder happened that took the daddy of one of my students. They had just gotten to the USA 4 months before this. This victim had sat in my office.

Over Christmas break, I fled south to be with family for Christmas. A friend messaged me to say that our mutual friend was moving out of state before I would be back. Again, my heart dropped. I have the Good News in her language, and I hadn't gotten around to having the perfect time to share it with her.

I got home, and luckily she'd stayed in town one more week. That last time I had with her, we went shopping like normal, to the laundromat and I made sure she had a functioning link to the Story. My last memory is of her watching the link as I left. Within a week, she is living hours away.

This week, I saw the Free Burma Rangers movie with war scenes from Burma and Iraq, followed by an Alice practice drill at school the next day. This is prepping for an intruder at school.

God is looking for people who are not afraid to step up and into hard situations because He wants others that He loves to know Him, too.

Most of the time, there are no bullet ridden cars around. It's called loving the person in front of me. It's defending a child. It's helping a family. It's being a friend. It's normal stuff that anyone could do. But it's being intentional with where I put myself.

Most of my world has little contact with Jesus followers because they are not going out intentionally even though this city is known for churches. Churches who have heard about volunteer opportunities and aren't willing to step up to the plate. I'm not talking about any certain denomination here. It's across the board...

For some reason, there is this big fat lie that floats around the pews that people who go out have to be special, called, holy people. It's like a friend said recently, the stories of missionary people sound super amazing in church, but get them in your home, and you hear it's not all glorious. Sometimes I am shocked that God would use even me with my issues. But I struggle to talk about my issues cause I am supposed to be a good person.

This lie has to be replaced with a bit of the truth. Everyone is called. From Genesis 12 on, the heart of the Father is clear. The blessings we have are given for one reason. To be a blessing to all ppl. It's not just the Great Commission. It's practically the concept of the whole Bible. If you believe the cross was necessary for your sins, what about everyone else's?

Do you have to travel across the world? No. Travel is one of the best experiences ever, but across the street is just as ripe an opportunity as I observed my neighbor going on a "witch Hunt" with a 2x4 after an argument at their house where a car took off.

Let the bullets remind you of the urgency. God doesn't give the spirit of fear, but power, love and a sound mind. 99% of the time, you likely won't be dealing with guns, but with people. Love them well.

Embracing the Color

Years ago, at the Bible School in Arkansas, we all had to introduce ourselves with our personality color. Mine is not the perfect Mennonite shade for females, to put it simply. And the journey of embracing my color (who God made me to be) began.

Over the years, God met me on this, and even sent the color of butterflies to me that He wanted for me, not what I wanted. But as I looked at them sitting literally on my bare toes in Thailand, I couldn't argue.

Culture dictates so much in our lives. That's a global problem. Are we going to rise above what they say, and do what God created us to?

For example, you should be married by 22 according to culture. Are you going to wait for marriage to start your life, or get on it now? I'm closer to 22x2 then the original digit, and still single. But I know that the opportunity to speak into the lives of the children and adults around me is exponentially greater than the amount of lives I would have touched if I had gotten married at 21.75 years. I chose to embrace the story God has, and make the best of it. It's been beyond anything my wild imagination could possibly come up with!

I'm not bashing marriage, and if that is the story God has for you, I am sure it will be just as good.

Whether you are 17.95 years old, or 22, 35 or 95, are you asking God what He had in mind for you, and working with Him to develop the giftings and character He has placed in you?

Do you know what your personality is on the Disc or Myers Briggs test? Are you self aware enough to know what your response is to different personalities?

Do you know what your spiritual gifts are? You can study Ephesians 4, Romans 12, or 1 Corinthians 12. There are also tests online.

Gary Thomas talks about the way we relate to God in Sacred Pathways. Not all of us hear from God the same way. Are you aware of how He speaks to you?

What are your interests and hobbies? Development of those can bring a lot of glory to God.

Think about your story until now. What are significant themes? Sometimes God uses our painful pieces to connect with others. Once I felt like God really wanted me to talk about the dark suicidal thoughts I struggled with a decade before this in a camp on the other side of the world. What I didn't know was that a girl had attempted suicide the year before that sat in my class. A few years later, I was visiting Asia again, but was hours away from this village when I ran into a man from there that told me she was now married and had a child. God might have redemption stories like this one for you.

My prayers for all of us is that we embrace the story God has for us. Accepting our personality, culture, giftings, hard pieces, and what ever our story hands us is one of the best ways we give God glory as we let Him use all of it.

You may not be the same color as I am, but are you accepting the color you are?

Hospitality: An Act of Love

Henri Nouwen, in his book, Reaching Out, refers to this space as hospitality. “Hospitality,” he says, “means primarily the creation of a free space where the stranger can enter and become a friend instead of an enemy. Hospitality is not to change people, but to offer them space where change can take place…It is not a method of making our God and our way into the criteria of happiness, but the opening of an opportunity to others to find their God and their way.” ... quote from Velvet Ashes blog. https://velvetashes.com/hospitality-as-sacred-space-the-grove-sacred-spaces/?fbclid=IwAR2Z8oQXtsYroq_UuC0R0zCcGpBW5h7laUa-vrHUOpqQT9aqAk8BacJVcbA

For Christmas, a colleague gave me a small plaque that says, “Do all things with great love.” I’m sure it sprang from a rich conversation we had. But moving forward into a new year, I am challenged to be more intentional about loving people well.

Another quote that has inspired me over the years, and still grabs me is this: “The most artistic thing we can do is love others.”

As a single woman, actual hospitality is a unique experience. Hosting and entertaining as one instead of several can be complicated, but it can be done. And it comes with a blessing. I was richly awed by the way our conversation touched my own heart as we savored a moment around the table. We don't just dump into others, but they also usually give back to us. We don't do it for that reason, but blessing others does pay forward and may just come full circle.

The hospitality that Henri talked about isn't always just the typical invite someone over type. It's being a friend anywhere.

So what are some bottom line essential pieces of being hospitable?
-confidentiality
-refusal to gossip
-being comfortable with your own story
-walking with the Spirit
-don't judge

It helps to educate ourselves about hearts and emotions, but if we can process our own story well, we can offer understanding in a far better way than all the wisdom of the world could teach us.

Someone said that people don't care what you know till they know how much you care about them. The foundation has to be love. Sometimes it's mixing hard truth with love, but always love. Do everything with love.

By-products of love include redemption, and healing. Love heals trauma. Medicine can't touch a heart, but love can.

We can't love on our own. But if we build our lives on the greatest commandment of loving God first, and then our neighbors, we will have the strength to be what God wants us to be.

Faith of a Grinch

Faith isn't really faith till it's believing in the dark. When the fog closes in, and almost pushes the air out of your lungs, and you still believe like Job. “Though He slay me, yet will I trust Him.”

It's saying Hallelujah and Praise the Lord long before the answer comes. It's believing He is good, He is involved and He cares enough to even be working behind my back for something amazing yet to come.

It's celebrating Christmas when you feel like being a Grinch.

It's holding on to hope for a situation when you would rather let go and never become tethered to this whatever it is again.

It's saying Thank you for all the hard things because you believe that hardness can not last longer then Eternal joy and life. Thank you for the hard days as much as the good days.

I observed some illustrations from the candle holder nativity set I have. In front, I'd set a candle as a symbol of my own life and surrender to His story. It burned out long before any other candle. Just like that, the real Story of course Christmas has been around much longer than I have and will continue to draw people to God long after I am gone. My short lived life and all the hard things of it are but small moments in light of Eternity. Does any of the drama even matter in light of the eternal?The last of the 3 candles to burn out of the Nativity set was the central part of the story. Jesus, Mary and Joseph. It's hard to stay Grinchish when you realize that the Story this nativity set symbolizes happened in ordinary, unassuming ways, yet it was powerful enough to save the whole world when the time was right. All the ordinary things I might grumble about may just be the route that leads to something extraordinary. If this Central Story of the Bible is an example for the way God normally works, we are in good company.

So if life has handed you a set of circumstances that makes you feel like being a grumpy Grinch, choose faith anyway. Choose to praise anyway. Choose to cling to hope in spite of you name it. It seems God gets more glory from the bedraggled Grinch who chooses to believe then from the prosperous choir members who sing His praise regularly.

Go ahead... Believe Him anyway.

You see, the Story didn't end with Christmas. It continued to Easter, and still isn't finished. But let's take a look at that very bad day when Jesus died on the Cross. God called it Good Friday, but I doubt the people who were there would have thought anything was good about it. The light went out, and there was utter darkness that day. But it was Good, really Good. The story wasn't over. What happened in the dark, was what changed the world forever. If there never would have been a really dark day, there never would have been a transforming burst of Light. We would be stuck in perpetual hopelessness.

Back to Christmas. We celebrate it in the winter, the darkest and coldest time of the year. We turn on the lights to remember that in the darkest hour, after 400 years of darkness, the Light came. Jesus didn't come in a time that was merry and bright. He came when times were hard to illuminate the darkness.

So celebrate anyway. The way to Merry and Bright started in the dark.

Body Guards

When you need security agents in life, what do you run to? When you are weak and vulnerable and broken, how do you cope?

I’ve noticed there are some similarities between the honor/shame culture of other religious world views that have crept in and taken an unspoken presence among us in the pews. We believe we are totally changed when Jesus saves us at the beginning but somewhere we forget the sanctification process in our life formula. We are brow beat into looking right and acting above reproach on the outside cause we never fully wrestled with the whole “changing from glory to glory” process that continues till we die. We acknowledge we are human, yet we have no room for human error.

The masks, coping mechanisms and self protection stuff we turn to probably have as many variables as there are humans. Some cut others down while others play the really nice personality. 

Mine has been “busy doing good things” till I could vomit. Sometimes I wish someone would just tell me I’ve done enough. I don’t need to do anything anymore to prove my worth. Truth is, I don’t. But in a world of masks where everyone is rushing around trying to prove something, lies run more rampant then truth does. Not that it changes the truth, but in a world where people believe more lies then truth, it’s infinitely harder to believe truth.

But the spaces to process and be real are so few for those of us who have done so much good that we are put on a pedestal and not allowed to admit our humanity. The people pleaser inside knows what others expect, and so I die inside trying to please them all, and keep the masks in place. The vibes I pick up tell me that I am not alone in this. My style of it might be very different then yours, but every single of our relationships is affected in some way by our “isms.”

Even if I included a lot of questions for discussion on this blog, and honestly do welcome insights and conversation, I am afraid that there will be an odd silence, cause this is one of the “Annah” or “GringI” things in our culture that they have a word for in Asia, but English somehow has no term for. The term contains a bit of fear, shame, people pleasing, won’t talk about it to your face, or let you see how upset it makes me type of situation. We have these kinds of circumstances, but we don’t have a term for it that I know of.

So while the problem happens in relationships and we learn how to deal with it by being in relationships, let’s just talk about this a little.

Did you notice our prayer meetings center around sick people and safe topics? How do you break the ice? I’m not suggesting we tell all to everyone, but let’s keep it real with a group. I read recently that you should have at least 5 friends who will be there no matter what.

Have you noticed that it seems just a bit easier to say things as they are if conversation contributors are all male? Men just say it how it is. And they tend to not have connection drama. I don’t know for sure why this is, but I am willing to speculate. Men gossip for free, women don’t. When I have worked in a mostly male environment, I tend to be more knowledgeable about the community then when I don’t. Maybe that’s just happenstance, but I reflect back over 3 entirely different work experiences where most co-workers were men, there was less drama and better relationships in general. (and free information) Why is this? I think this thing of women being quiet has turned us ladies into sneaking cats who hunt mice so we can tease other cats with our catch. If you know anything about cat and dog theology, you know anything feline isn’t a good thing. I got bit by gossip a long time ago, and ever since have avoided anyone who has a hint of the smell of gossip. I will be honest, I didn’t connect with a whole bunch of my regular contacts anymore because too many of my own relationships used to center around this. So is gossip the main reason I struggle to connect and be real with people? No, but I think something in whatever the motive(s) is that women do this “mice hunting” thing, there is a root for this thing of not being open, vulnerable and authentic. Gender differences aside in relationships, it’s an interesting thing to observe how we complement and antagonize each other as men and women. I think the real root is found in the first few chapters of Genesis. We aren't who we were created to be.

A teacher once said that we learn more through suffering than through happiness. I pushed back at that, but the longer time goes on, the more I have to agree. Take an honest look at your life. When did you grow the most, and what were the circumstances surrounding it?

So if we all exponentially grow more through pain, why don't we support each other better through it, and acknowledge that we all need to tried by fire and floods to become real saints?

So what would it look like to have a right perspective on continuing sanctification?
What if we took all our suffering and affliction as a light weight lifting exercise so we could become even more gloriously handsome?
What if we just embraced the process of our beautification?
What if we found a deep enough security in Christ that we weren’t flustered by the messiness of our own redemption in remodeling mode?
How we answer those questions will direct us in how real we are when we are burned out, struggling or in over our heads in a trial. I believe the God who loves us while we are still in our sins, loves us through the whole process. When I believe His love, the rest of my life falls into proper perspective.

Regardless of what all the potential causes are that keep us from connection and being soul authentic with each other, let's not forget that we are in a battle. Together we are stronger, and the enemy knows that. Don't let him use anything to destroy you.

We could continue this conversation and add all our fears and failures, but the moral of the story is to get offline, off whatever life stage you act on, and be real with your people around you. It's a messy but worthwhile learning curve to live without body guards.

My current reading list: 
Undefended by Daniel Bush
The Gifts of Imperfection by Brene Brown
Some thoughts in this blog should be credited to these authors.
Other credit goes to the friends who are brave enough to discuss these topics.
The journey is not over...

God in Ordinary Places

I wondered if I was crazy for going to the local grocery store in the last hour before closing. After all, this is the place where I get bad vibes over and over in broad daylight. It's the one place where multiple stories could be told about, in the almost weekly trips there with my friend E and her son. The 3 of us are a motley Crew of a story all our own. We keep going cause she likes their kind of bottled water. Can you tell we have plenty of our own quirks?:) Anyway, skipping a lot of colorful stories about how the cashier or some other people from the hood have treated us, here I was, heading into the place where I am most aware of the spiritual battle going on at a later hour then normal, and I see a few shady characters lurking around in the parking lot. I grab a close spot, and make a beeline for the door, avoiding the crazy guy standing close to the front. I do my shopping and walk out, and do a double take when I see another woman praying for the crazy man. The street smart girl in me is reminded that it's better to be spirit smart. And my heart is warmed that good things do happen in this place that I personally would like to avoid. Except I have this friend that likes their bottled water, and occasionally they have a really, really good sale...

Sometimes He shows up by playing a song in a place that would strike a raw chord in itself, but on top of that, He arranges circumstances so the people and situations I am surrounded by in the moment also speak to me in a very deep way. I couldn't cry in the moment, but the tears of healing flowed later.

Another time, it was supposed to be just me doing this thing. But it ended up being an introduction to someone who would blow my mind with his connections to a government official in a country on the other side of the world. Pretty sure God smiled.

How have you seen God show up in your ordinary places? Tell me about it...

How do you remember the moments that make you feel secure cause you know He is in control? The last 2 examples I mentioned were so profound that I will not be able to forget. But what about the grocery store? I can create a memorial by writing about it, or drawing something.

Why have I been blessed with these amazing opportunities to see Him at work? Sometimes I want to think it's because of something I did, or the fact that I am part of a prayer class. But like a thought I recently read on a blog, (Velvet Ashes) it's not our prayers that make God move. God moves out of His own good will, in spite of my prayers. The audacity to think I can manipulate God is utterly absurd.

So why should we keep praying? I'm planning to stay in it for the relationship. I think that's why He sticks with us through our selfish requesting as well.

It's a continuous walk with Him. I deal with distraction and busyness. Throwing a blanket over my head helps me to stay focused in prayer. What do you do to stay on task?

For the busyness part, praying can happen anywhere. My Cleaning job, washing dishes, walking the halls at school from one class to another or to the office can all be turned into a moment of talking with God, even if I am not literally kneeling. I can also think of other aspects of my life where it would be impossible to pray at the same time. What works for you?

Whether God shows Himself in my life or not is His choice. But it is my choice whether I pursue His Face enough to know Him and His heart.

I've decided it's worthwhile to lean in. And I'm finding He is right there beside me, ready to talk at the drop of a hat.

Metanoia: Transformation

Bags you weren't even aware of have been weighing you down right along with the gaping tangled mess of a very heavy suitcase that you keep dragging for one reason...you don't have the stamina for processing it's content. The long black train describes your journey into nowhere, and you have lost your bearings to the point of having no idea who you are or what you are about.

You understand what the lady in the line for best ice cream in the world means when she talked about the way people spit at her dad when he came home from Vietnam. In a certain sense, the country that spends more on dog food for 1 dog than what the average refugees have in their food budget for a month, and on top of that, have such overwhelming variety in the cereal aisle that the chefs at General Mills, Kellogg's, and all the other fruit loops out there constantly need to continue creating new kinds simply to satisfy first world hunger problems. This country, basically doesn't care what you have seen elsewhere. This culture doesn’t care what you saw, or how it affected you. So sorting the bags can become something you don’t touch, cause you are simply surviving.

One of the rules in the first world is "You must be happy, and if you are not, please don't overwhelm us with it." That means anyone grieving anything has to be careful how they process. So whatever hard things life throws at you, you can apply metanoia. But go ahead and get deep into the pain of whatever it is, before I continue.

All that sad, hard, messy tangle can be turned in for the joy of the Lord. There's nothing He won't accept as a trade. He gives grace, peace, joy, and sets the vibes you give off back to loving ones.

It's the breakthroughs at the climax of the journey that keep us going. It’s sunrise after darkness. And it’s coming if it hasn’t already!  No matter the challenges you are facing or have faced, there is joy, hope and rest. But good chance is, it doesn’t come without a struggle.

It’s metanoia. That’s Greek for a journey that changes your heart, soul, mind or way of life. A spiritual conversion. If it weren’t for the bags, or the uprooting of moving overseas, or to a new community, would metanoia even happen? It takes dry, harsh, arid environments for some of us to find breakthroughs. While we may never call some events good in our lives, we can become grateful for the things we learned through it. Metanoia.

Crisis has a way of opening the door to transformation. We can't choose what happens, but we can choose our response. When I want to grow from it, instead of being bitter, redemption can come.

The Japanese repair broken porcelain with gold. They believe it just adds beauty and value to the piece. Look at this process of metanoia as adding beauty to your life. It's God redeeming your broken story with gold.

No matter if you want it or not, God isn't stopped by anything in His pursuit of us.
https://youtu.be/ygcyxpvo0zI

The only thing holding us back from metanoia is ourselves. Let down your guard with God. He's up to a lot of good!