So there I was, on a hot, tropical night on the club patio, techno music blaring, light show twirling over us. Dancing the night away? Not exactly. I was praying. Not in silence, but pretty loudly, so I could be heard over the music. Specifically, I was praying over four women we were talking with, women who we knew were prostitutes, waiting for their next customers. Now that is not a typical experience for me in any way, but surprisingly, it is becoming somewhat normal for them.

Once a week, a handful of ladies from SCORE go out on the streets seeking out prostitutes. They talk with them, hug them, take them personal items, share the gospel and work to build relationships with them. Once a girl is comfortable to give out her phone number, the missionaries invite her to coffee so they can give her an invitation to come to Lily House. Once there, she is safe and off the streets. In addition to gaining a place to live for herself (and her children), she gets training in marketable skills like jewelry making or sewing and in financial management and general education, all while learning about how much Jesus loves her.

During our mission week, there was a table of Lily House jewelry for sale each night, with all profits going towards the salary of the house residents. The jewelry is beautiful and unique, and we shopped with open hearts. One evening, we were encouraged to be sure to wear our purchases, because the Lily House ladies would be joining us for the evening service. To their surprise, they weren’t just back row attendees. They were given a celebration instead, with awards for each celebrating their character attributes, and special recognition for those that had completed a full year at Lily House. A full year off the streets, a full year of respectable employment, a full year of holding their heads high, a full year of living in love and grace. There already was an absence of dry eyes in the room, and then two of them shared their own testimonies.

We sat, weeping in sorrow mixed with joy. Women in that area of the Dominican Republic go into prostitution for a number of reasons, mostly based on flat desperation. Many are pushed into it by their mothers, who are also in the business, or worse yet, their own husbands. Unemployment is rampant in the area, and prostitution, sadly, is a guaranteed money maker. What especially tore at my heart was that the customers aren’t local – those men can’t afford the services. Rather, prostitution is a tourism industry. In practical terms, one customer is as wrong as another, but it seems particularly sad that someone would travel out of his way to that area with the intent of seeking out an experience such as that. It also struck me that to avoid hypocrisy, I needed to be in as much prayer for the customers as I was for the ladies. Amazing, isn’t it, how easily we assign a Yuck scale to sin? Fortunately, God’s grace is even more amazing, and the victory in the testimonies of these ladies was evident.

Ladies of Lily House

So, when your heart is stirred, what do you do next? You should respond the way we should to any need – pray. If you keep a prayer journal, jot an item on your Thursday pages – the night each week the street ministry team goes out. Pray for the women who make it to Lily House, that they’ll accept Christ quickly and find a new start in every area of their lives. Pray for the ones that are too afraid to step out, that they’ll find the courage to walk to what’s freely available. Pray for resources for the staff that runs the house. The next step you might be called to is giving. Donations and sponsorships are welcome, and you may even feel led to put hands and feet to your prayers and grab some girlfriends and take a trip down south and over the sea to visit Lily House yourselves. And finally, grow. Do we feel compassion for these distant women because we can perhaps, in some way, understand a choice made in desperation, and yet scorn our neighbor who seems to revel in their sinful choices? Do we have areas of desperation in our own lives where we’ve come to believe God couldn’t possibly be willing to forgive?

Most of us have probably heard Romans 3:23 at some point, “for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,” but that is an incomplete sentence. The rest is in verse 24, “and all are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.” All means all. It means you and me and hookers and thieves and addicts and hypocrites and inmates and liars and the entire human population. Praise God! So perhaps each night, when we review our day in those moments before sleep, we should ask ourselves, have we hugged a prostitute today? And if you are the one standing in need tonight, please accept a hug from me. He loves you, and there’s nothing He can’t make right. Dios te bendiga! (God bless you!)

I don’t know if you’ve ever been on a mission trip before, but I’m going to be real honest here. I sort of fell into this one. I had the time available and a grant covered most of my expenses, so hey, why not go, right? Besides, my grandparents were career missionaries so it was about time I put a foot on foreign soil in the name of Jesus. Well let me just tell you, no matter how sideways you think you are moving into God’s plan, He is never casual about it, and you will never be the same.

It was an unusual week all the way around. I traveled with a group of about a dozen coworkers and other friends or associates from my company. This alone was a special part of the trip, because while some of us work together daily, we do it by phone, IM, and email, so it was a great opportunity to get to know each other better. And we sure did, with the laughter (snorts) (mine) starting right off the bat.

We went with SCORE International, and I can’t say enough about the amazing work they do there and the thought and care they put into making sure our experience was a good one. The plan was to go out to the villages and cities during the day for service projects, and then regroup for a women’s conference in the evenings. I didn’t really have an image in mind before we left of what the country and people were like, but it was certainly eye opening. While there is extreme poverty in most of the country, the people are far more open to strangers and to talking about God than Americans. Here, we hesitate to use any words that show a blatant belief in sin and consequences. There, if they know you are a Christian and didn’t bother to talk with them about it, they would be offended. We played games with school children, hosted a ladies event for a village (where I shared the devotion I posted earlier), painted a church, and shared testimonies and prayers at a girl’s juvenile detention facility.

All along the way, we asked people how we could pray for them, and it was amazing how few mentioned improving their physical situations, but all asked us to pray for their family members, that they would be saved. Hot, dusty, and sweaty, we’d pray, take pictures, and then get on our air-conditioned bus to go back to our hotel. Scrubbed and refreshed (back in our comfort zone), we’d gather with the other teams for our evening service, with Ginger Millermon as our speaker and singer. If you have a chance to go hear her, do it! The theme of the week was “Rescue”… from idols, self, fear, sin, or anything else we’ve fallen into. And while I was cool again, I can’t say I was entirely comfortable. Each night, God worked on my heart over the contrast between my cushy life with the resources freely available to me and the desperate needs of the people we’d met that day, physical and emotional.

What I’d thought was simply a trip that made sense I came to see as exactly where I needed to be. Amidst all of our luggage, clothes, and ministry items we took to donate, I had also carried along my own broken heart. It’s only been a couple of months since my miscarriage (posted about here) and the sorrow is still sometimes overwhelming. As Ginger shared her own amazing story the last night, she sang several songs, including “Speak Peace To Me”, with the lyrics:

I don’t know how much longer
I can carry this pain
I need You more than ever
To get me through this thing
I’m past the point of breaking
It’s more than I can take
Will you

Speak peace
Speak peace
Speak peace to me
I am weak
Oh, Jesus, speak
Speak peace to me

By that point, I couldn’t do anything but let the tears flow, and when we were invited to kneel in prayer at our seats at the close, I poured out my heart to God and begged Him that if my heart was going to hurt, that He would please use it to make me more aware of the hurt and need in others. If out of something bad He could work the good of becoming less complacent, less arrogant to tell God what was unfair to carry in my life, less lazy to find reasons not to get my hands dirty caring for another’s need, He was welcome to it. And oh, did He speak peace, right by my side at that chair. I’d come to fill needs of the Dominicans, but I was the one who was rescued.

I have much more to say about the trip; about the specific ministries SCORE works out there, what it’s like sticking to a food revolution overseas, and pictures to share, but that’s for other posts. For now, I’ll end with Romans 8:28, “And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.” Believe it, friend, He truly does, but it’s the “love him” part we can so easily fade away from. So that’s the question of the night. Whether you’re on this side of the world or that, whether you’re successful or desperate, healthy or suffering, happy or sad, will you let Him teach you how to truly love Him?

Part of my assignment on my mission trip is to compose a devotional on Psalm 63, “Our One Greatest Need” to be shared on one of our trips to a nearby village. I thought I’d share it here now, and I’ll share much more about the trip when I’m home.
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Psalm 63:1-5 says:

O God, you are my God,
earnestly I seek you;
my soul thirsts for you
my body longs for you
in a dry and weary land
where there is no water.

I have seen you in the sanctuary
and beheld your power and your glory
Because your love is better than life,
my lips will glorify you.
I will praise you as long as I live,
and in your name I will lift up my hands.
My soul will be satisfied as with the richest of foods.
with singing lips my mouth will praise you.

David says specifically “My soul thirsts for you.”  Water is one of the most important needs we have, along with food and shelter.  At some point, each of us experiences thirst.  What makes us thirsty?  A long walk, hot sun, hard work, salty food, or even just waking up in the morning.

We are made to need water.  Our bodies are about 70% water.  Our very blood is 90% water.  If we don’t have enough water to drink each day, we become dehydrated.  We can feel weak, confused, tired, unable to do our work. When we go too long without water we can even faint or die.  So how do we make sure that doesn’t happen?  Our bodies are made to tell us, so when we need more water, we get thirsty.

When we feel that dry, thirsty feeling in our throat, we need to drink some water.  Would we feel thirsty and go fill a cup with water from the ocean?  It’s too salty and would just make us sick instead.  Would we eat more food?  There’s not enough water in the food and it can even make us choke because it’s too hard to swallow when we are thirsty.  Would we drink a soda?  Maybe, because it is a liquid and easy to swallow, but it is sweet, and sweet things make us thirsty again very soon.  The way to truly satisfy our thirst is to drink clean, clear water.  And we must drink that water regularly so we stay healthy and our bodies work like they are supposed to.

God created our physical bodies to need water.  But He didn’t just create our bodies, He also created our hearts and our spirits.  And like our bodies need water, our spirit needs God.  One day, Jesus met a woman at the village well.  It was the middle of the day, and the village women would come to the well very early to get their water so they could take it home to care for their families and their animals.  A woman who came to the well in the hot middle of the day was trying to avoid seeing anyone else.  She might be embarrassed about the way she lived and didn’t want to hear anyone talking about the bad choices that she made.  She was surprised to see Jesus there because getting water was women’s work and men didn’t usually come to the well. 

He asked her if she would give him a drink of water.  She was very surprised, because not only was a man at the well, but he was a man from another town, and people from those two towns did not speak to one another.  Jesus told her if she only know she was talking to God himself, she would ask for living water that would satisfy her soul more than any drinking water could satisfy her  thirst.  She didn’t understand, she thought he would give her some kind of special water so she wouldn’t have to come to the well any more.  When Jesus told her to go get her husband and come back, she said she didn’t have a husband.  Jesus  told her that even though they had never met, he knew that she had had five husbands, and was now living with a man she wasn’t married to.  She was so surprised that he knew about her life!  Her soul had been thirsty for someone to love her, and instead of looking to God, she had one bad relationship after another.  She was so excited to learn who Jesus was and how he could help her that she ran to the village right away to tell everyone what had happened to her.  She even forgot to take her water jar with her!

God wants us to draw close to Him, to talk to Him in prayer and praise Him for His goodness and His love for us.  He loves us so much that He sent His son Jesus to die for our sins so that we can live good, clean lives and go to live with Him in Heaven when we die.  There are so many things in the world that we can turn to hoping it will satisfy the longing of our hearts, like money or relationships, but when we go to those things instead of God, we end up empty and lonely.  Our souls are still thirsty.  He wants us to understand that we are thirsty for His love and His word, and only those things will truly satisfy us.

Back in Psalm 63, verses 6-8 say:

On my bed I remember you;
I think of you through the watches of the night.
Because you are my help,
I sing in the shadow of your wings.
My soul clings to you;
your right hand upholds me.

God wants to be our help.  Like a mother bird, He spreads his wings over us and keeps us safe.  He promises in Jeremiah 29:13 “You will seek Me and find Me when you search for Me with all your heart.”  Let’s seek him that way, with ALL of our heart, and let’s stop looking for the things of this world to satisfy a thirst that only God’s love can quench.

The innovation conference I attended this week was absolutely fascinating. And not necessarily just for those in the banking industry, but for anyone interested in how we think and live in the current age. Two of the speakers covered “traditional” financial topics. One was Steve Forbes, who made some very illuminating connections between our current fiscal state and world history. The other was Frank Abagnale, Jr. (that Frank portrayed in the movie “Catch Me If You Can” by Leonardo DiCaprio) who gave such compelling information about identity theft it was chilling. If you are interested, his website has an amazing amount of free information on the subject of security (scroll down to “Previous Highlights” for a link to a PDF summary of his fraud seminar). His comments on the movie are linked under the main menu, and while I won’t quote them here, they are worth reading and tell a story of radical moral redemption.

The other two speakers focused on innovative thinking and illustrating that how we think about money is as important as how we spend or save it. One was Tom Kelly of IDEO, a company who helps a multitude of industries design products and processes that take into consideration the actual people who will be using them, such as redesigning bank branches for the way today’s customers want to bank or renovating labels for a European baby food line to help parents better understand the fit of a particular product to their baby’s needs. His constant theme was learning to notice the true need in a situation instead of being blinded by “the way we’ve always done it.” The other speaker in this category was Dan Ariely who, after a horrific accident left him in the hospital for 3 years with burns over 70% of his body, began to study psychology focusing on perception vs. reality, such as why nurses felt it better to change his bandages quickly but with more pain for the patient instead of more slowly and less painful to the patient but less distressing to the nurse. Eventually his studies led him into behavioral economics, and it was one of his illustrations that has most gripped me.

Essentially, if we were buying a pen for $15, and right before checkout someone told us a store down the street had the exact same pen for $7, anyone would think that $8 savings was worth walking down the street. However, if we were buying a designer coat for $1015, and we discovered it was $1007 at the store down the street, we would hardly consider it worth the time to walk there and begin our purchase anew. Why? $8 is $8 to our bank account, no matter what product it was saved on. But we attach a completely different feeling to a 53% discount than to one of less than 1%. Put another way, when the contractor for our remodeling project tells us he can get us the granite for just $4000 more overall, we think it over for maybe 15 minutes before deciding it’s worth it. And then we drive to the grocery store and stand in the aisle comparing unit prices on the good canned tomatoes vs. the cheap ones.

Why on earth do we do this? For lots of reasons, but mainly because we often let an emotional feel-good (or, depending on the expenditure, feel-bad) response override clear rational thinking. Or spending. Or eating. I can’t help but apply that to spirituality as well. How often have I acted out decisions I’ve rationalized as “not so bad” or “God will understand”. And then sniffed at the failing in someone else’s life because “sin is sin!” Or congratulated myself for avoiding Big Sin 317 while mismanaging my priorities so that I have to think hard to remember the last time I gave God my silent, undivided attention? I sure am thankful for the grace of God to forgive our failings, and the Holy Spirit’s nudging so that when we do gain awareness, we don’t have to keep making that same mistake, because the consequences of blindly relying on how we feel about our experiences is dangerous. Romans 1:28 says “Since they thought it foolish to acknowledge God, he abandoned them to their foolish thinking and let them do things that should never be done.” Colossians 2:8 further drives home the point; “Don’t let anyone capture you with empty philosophies and high-sounding nonsense that come from human thinking and from the spiritual powers[a] of this world, rather than from Christ.”

Finally, in 2 Peter 3:1, we are encouraged with the words, “This is my second letter to you, dear friends, and in both of them I have tried to stimulate your wholesome thinking and refresh your memory.” Ah, there is the remedy! In His word, we can find clarity for our irrationality and wholesome thinking as guidance for our every decision, monetary or otherwise. Makes me want to go spend some extra time in the scriptures. How about you?

It is desperately late on a Saturday that began with an effort to perfect our master closet organization, veered off for some exterior trim painting, skittered over to the mall and Walmart for a few essentials, and has just wrapped up with me covering six cardboard cubbie boxes in contact paper because I didn’t like their preprinted design. We are so close to listing our house, which is good because I am approaching either the obsessive nitpicking stage or some sort of breakdown.

I don’t suppose it helped my state of clarity to visit Walmart lateish on a Saturday evening either. I fully apologize to the adults of the 1980s if I was ever as disruptive as the free-range teenagers I encountered tonight. Having a headache didn’t help. One of my objectives there was to buy a new pillow in hopes of easing the daily string of headaches I’ve had lately. Which could also, maybe, possibly be related to the hardest hit my forehead has ever had the misfortune to receive from the edge of a desk a few days ago. Not from slamming my head down in frustration, you understand, but from my utter, innate clumsiness while trying to unplug something. I think. Things did go a shade blurry at the time.

I’m in a hurry with everything lately because the year seems to be hurtling towards its end faster than ever. I’ll soon step into a whirlwind of conferences and travel and projects, with a mission trip for good measure. All good things, but even a lot of good things is still a lot, and it has been difficult to continue to make time for what’s truly important. One of the most important undertakings I’ve added to this year is reading through the Bible. While I’m still firmly committed, I am also solidly behind in the particular reading plan I’m following. So while I was working on the closet today, instead of catching up on podcasts of my favorite morning show, I opened my Bible app, set it to audio, and soaked in the blessings of the Psalms and the wisdom of Proverbs.

Those passages are truly rich stuff. I heard reminder after reminder of God’s love for us, His desire for us to boldly proclaim our love for Him, and instructions on how to ignore the pushing and shoving of society elbowing its way into our lives and pursue instead a simpler, purer set of desires that will protect our hearts and prevent us from doing harm to the hearts of others while we’re at it. Proverbs 19:3 says “People ruin their lives by their own foolishness and then are angry at the Lord.” I saw a lot of foolishness tonight (and not just from the teens), but now I wonder what foolishness some of them saw in me. A tired woman who got a little lost in the details today? Someone who still fights against a tendency to be judgmental? Maybe I was fortunate and was viewed with the grace I was running thin on myself. I hope so. Emily Dickinson said “Hope is the thing with feathers that perches in the soul.” I’ve always loved that image. It makes my tomorrows a bit brighter, and my confidence stronger that He will carry me through any obstacle, even when it’s myself. So I’ll end with Psalm 130:7 “7 O Israel, hope in the Lord; for with the Lord there is unfailing love. His redemption overflows.” Amen!

As I mentioned in my last post, while J and I were on vacation, we packed our lunch down to the beach each day.  I had challenged J before we left to consider eating exactly like me for a week, and he accepted.  While he has definitely been on board with the entire Food Revolution, he has only been perhaps 80% as… strict?…. as me, and had recently mentioned he wasn’t as satisfied with his progress as I have been with mine.  Hence the challenge.

Breakfast was a protein shake for each of us.  These are not all created equal, so if you are considering making a shake a part of your eating plan, much label reading is required because they can be very high in sugars.  For that reason I prefer Almased.  By the way, I’m not affiliated with any of the brands I’ll mention here, and I don’t get any freebies (as of yet, but hey, email me!) for mentioning them.  However, since nearly all packaged foods are off my list, it’s noteworthy when I find one with very “clean” ingredients.  Our first stop after check-in was Publix, and we bought all kinds of fresh fruits and vegetables, some Chobani yogurt, Bear Naked granola, cheese, and roasted turkey.  No bread, no ice cream, no cookies, no potato chips, no “food as treats” which is a vastly different shopping list than the last time we were at the beach.

So after the morning protein shake, we packed the cooler with our healthy eats and ate in the breezy shade under the umbrella.  The view certainly added to our enjoyment, but even J reports that not only did he not suffer, but he actually felt less hungry than usual and had the added bonus of discovering he’d actually lost weight on vacation!  Each night we ate dinner out, but it’s pretty easy to eat healthy when seafood choices abound.

I lost a pound or two myself, which was refreshing, because to be honest I’ve stalled out lately.  That’s surprisingly encouraging, because it coincided with not being able to get to Zumba the past few weeks.  How is that encouraging?  Because remember, this isn’t a diet, it’s a radical lifestyle change.  The weight loss is a bonus, but after losing more than 30 pounds, I’m at a point where I can eat as much as I want within my “rules”, and even without exercise I’m holding steady.  Now, I’d love to go down more, so exercise will need to be worked in, but with our shared commute and trying to get the checklist finished to get our house listed, that hasn’t been easy.  Overall, I’m very pleased with the plan and more committed than ever.  I cooked a special dinner tonight in honor of my dad’s birthday, and while the entrée and sides were healthy (lean pork loin with an apple glaze, roasted potatoes, onions, and mushrooms, steamed broccoli with lemon, and sautéed carrots), I don’t usually eat potatoes, I definitely don’t normally eat the french bread, and I certainly don’t eat chocolate cupcakes.  I ate all of them tonight and loved it, because I have declared birthdays are Anything Goes events (mine or immediate family only, or it would really get out of hand), and even with that declaration, while I savor the taste of the “goodies” at that meal, I don’t feel as good after I eat it, and I look forward to going back to my plan.  What a change in me!

That change was on my mind a lot at the beach.  I know how healthy I eat.  I know that I’ve lost 32 pounds.  I know how much better I feel inside and how much more confident I was in a bathing suit than in years past.  But besides J, not another living soul on that beach was aware of any of that.  As much progress as I’ve made, I am still overweight, and it’s likely that’s how I was perceived by the other vacationers.  That would have really bothered me in the past, but this year I threw my shoulders back and held my head high and genuinely did not care what anyone else thought about how I looked.  I didn’t particularly care how they looked either.  When you feel uncomfortable in your own skin, you fixate on that, to the point of comparing yourself to everyone in sight, which causes you to examine them with a rather critical eye as well, and that does not lead anywhere good.  Paul had a lot to say about loving one another in Romans 14, such as “Therefore let us stop passing judgment on one another” (v. 13) and “Let us therefore make every effort to do what leads to peace and to mutual edification” (v. 19) and, most pointedly, “You, then, why do you judge your brother or sister? Or why do you treat them with contempt?” (v. 10).

Interestingly, those teachings came out of a discussion about food!  In Paul’s case, the early church had been complaining that some among them weren’t holy enough because they weren’t as conservative in their food and drink choices.  I have found that for myself, food and holiness have a strong correlation as well, but in my case, it’s not that I care what you eat or drink.  It’s that my own choices created an unfortunate distraction, so that I was more likely to be fixated on someone’s appearance, either critically (to avoid thinking about myself) or in comparison (because I couldn’t stop thinking about myself), rather than trying to understand their heart.  In learning to fuel my body correctly, I’m learning that the burdens some people carry are far less visible than extra pounds, and far heavier to bear.  Food for thought, huh?

A week ago, J and I got up in the early dark, packed our car, and hit the road.  While we were looking forward to our destination in the Florida panhandle, we were also excited about the trip itself. We are good road-trippers; we share the driving evenly, entertain one another through the boring stretches, and just generally enjoy the fun of being together with the world sealed outside the windows.

We arrived in good time to our rental condo and proceeded to have the most lovely, relaxing, enjoyable week we’ve had in years.  The condo, rented from the owners online, was spacious and beautiful in restful yellows, blues, and greens.  The view was as beachfront as it gets.  The weather was perfect, just enough clouds to keep the color of the sea shifting from deep blues to near emerald-green.

Our condo rental included free reservation of beach chairs and an umbrella, so each morning we woke up, had our devotion time out on the balcony, packed up a cooler (more on that in another post) and headed down to the chairs.  We spent hours down there each day, sitting in cool, breezy shade, surrounded by white sugar sand, and captivated by the enormous expanse of wide, tumbling, ever-changing ocean in front of us.  I’ve been fortunate to visit many beaches throughout my life, some several times over, and on every arrival, that first glimpse of the ocean never fails to take my breath away.   I always think of Job 38:11, where God uses the sea itself as He reminds Job of His creative power, saying He alone could have told the ocean “This far and no farther will you come.  Here your proud waves must stop!”.

The first day the sea was calm with gentle swells, and we could wade far out and still see down to our toes in the clear water.  That night, although our weather was clear, there were storms out at sea, and the next day the ocean had taken on a completely different personality.  The red flags flew on the beach warning of dangerous surf, and foamy waves smashed into the sand, driven at an angle by the winds.  We went back into the water but stayed around knee-depth this time, holding hands to keep one another steady and laughing when we were smacked soundly by one particularly powerful wave.  When we weren’t playing in the water, we were watching it, listening to it, and even lulled to sleep by it back under the shade of the umbrella.

One of the things that fascinates me so about the ocean is that it never, ever stops.  It changes by force of tide or storm or season, but it can be counted on to continually put on a show, whether it’s full noon and the beaches are packed or in the darkest night with no one there to appreciate it.  We watched the gulls and the sandpipers, which are special favorites of mine, running along in search of food or simply standing, facing in to the wind to keep their feathers from undue ruffling.  They have learned to adapt to the changing conditions and the occasional soaking from a faster-than-expected wave.  I’m learning that too.  There is a deep sense of peace that comes from facing something so large and acknowledging there is not one single thing I could possibly do to control it.  I can’t ordain the timing of the waves, their strength, or their stopping point on the sand.  I can splash in play along the edges, but I can’t see the world of life I know is lurking in the depths just a little further in.  It makes me aware of how small I am, and how big God is to have created such a thing.

That thought could be rather scary if you see God as a distant, fearsome judge.  Let the words of Zephaniah 3:17 show you a different picture:

For the Lord your God is living among you.
He is a mighty savior.
He will take delight in you with gladness.
With his love, he will calm all your fears.
He will rejoice over you with joyful songs.”

Whatever shore you’re walking along today, may the breeze be gentle and the waters soothing and calm.  But if that’s not where you are, stand strong like the gulls.  Face into the wind and trust Him and one day, you will take your wings and soar over those waters.

If you were in the drugstore parking lot today around noon in the small town where I work, you would perhaps have seen a young-at-heart middle-aged woman with her head thrown back and mouth open wide, beating a hand on the steering wheel.  You may have been inclined to stare at the spectacle or even worry if you should seek medical attention for her.  But you were missing out.

I was sitting in that car having an impromptu hallelujah party along with Nicole C. Mullen singing “Redeemer” with great feeling.  I do actually know how to sing, but you probably wouldn’t have been too impressed today.  I wasn’t worried about phrasing or breath control or even volume, and my voice cracked pretty often, but I was just so freshly struck by the truth of the lyrics I couldn’t sit in my own silence:

“The very same God that spins things in orbit
Runs to the weary, the worn and the weak …
And the same gentle hands that hold me when I’m broken
They conquered death to bring me victory”

I have been broken lately.  Maybe the truth is my brokenness is just more evident than usual.  But what a holy mystery that I can be both broken and victoriously whole in Him.  That He runs to meet our needs.  We are in a time when it’s very acceptable to worship a deity as long as the worship is wreathed in ritual and traditions to satisfy a distant, unseeable god.  Preferably one who doesn’t actually intrude into your life to make any soul-deep changes.  The more exotic the show of observance, the better.

But my God is not remote.  He gets right up in your business.  He knows the plans he has for you and I can guarantee they’re beyond your wildest dreams.  He has taken away the penalty for your sin and He has offered you the opportunity to become who He designed you to be.  Does that sound distant and impersonal to you?  Ah, but the catch is, we must let go.  And we find that so very hard to do, even though what we’re holding on to is nothing more than the brokenness that fills us with sharp edges, mistakes, and regret.

I was probably well primed to do some praising at lunch because I’d already done some worshipping in the morning when I read the daily devotional email I receive with a portion from My Utmost for His Highest by Oswald Chambers.  Part of today’s message dealt directly with the kind of brokenness I’m talking about:

“Jesus Christ says, in effect, Don’t rejoice in successful service, but rejoice because you are rightly related to Me. The snare in Christian work is to rejoice in successful service, to rejoice in the fact that God has used you. You never can measure what God will do through you if you are rightly related to Jesus Christ. Keep your relationship right with Him, then whatever circumstances you are in, and whoever you meet day by day, He is pouring rivers of living water through you, and it is of His mercy that He does not let you know it. When once you are rightly related to God by salvation and sanctification, remember that wherever you are, you are put there by God; and by the reaction of your life on the circumstances around you, you will fulfill God’s purpose, as long as you keep in the light as God is in the light. “

See?  I don’t have to worry about not being enough, because, well, I’m not!  I can’t be!  But if I let  go and allow Him to fill me, He can do such works of grace through me I can hardly conceive of them.  I don’t have to worry about how to act or what to say in a difficult situation, and I don’t have to work to earn kudos from others because I’m so good at being good.  I can simply be, “Filled with his goodness, lost in his love.”  I’d very much like that to be my story, and my song.  Would you like to sing along with me?

I wrote this post last April, on Facebook.  The message for me is still timely, so I’ve given it a brush up to share more publicly here:

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Today would have been my Grandma Jones’ birthday, so in her honor, I have a story about her to share.   I have quite a lot of Grandma stories.  She was a midwife, a missionary, a bookkeeper, a mother, a prayer warrior, a gentle jokester, and an inspiration.  I was so fortunate to have her just across the street as I grew up, my roommate on family trips after my grandpa’s passing, and my encourager and confidante when I was out on my own.

Early in my grown-up life, just after grad school, I went through a big disappointment.  Funny enough, the details of the situation have long since grown fuzzy, although I do remember the general circumstance.  Knowing my heart was heavy, in her typical way Grandma found just the right words of encouragement, copied them out carefully, and tucked them in a card to send my way.  She had a habit of dating her notes, and this one was marked October 23, 1996.  The note brought some comfort, our prayers brought strength, and I managed to sail on into life.

I continued to pursue my career, changing jobs and moving to a different apartment. I had just hit my stride, so I thought, when another particularly crushing disappointment knocked me sideways.  I remember that one with great clarity; a job I wanted desperately and didn’t get.  The memorable part isn’t the unattained job, because the right jobs have come in the time they were meant to.   It was what happened a couple of weeks later while I was still struggling to move past my sadness.  I was meeting with a coworker at the office, and in the process of looking for some papers we needed to go over I lifted up my laptop, and time stood still.  There was Grandma’s note.  There was no “logical” reason it should have been there.  Years had gone by since I had received it.  I lived in a different home, worked at a different job, used a different computer bag.  Yet there it was, right in front of me, with so precisely the words I needed to read, and so powerful a reminder of my Heavenly Father’s love and my Grandma’s heart that I was completely overwhelmed.

I excused myself to try and pull myself together, and then I realized that I owed my startled coworkers an explanation.  So I shared with them; not about the un-won job, but about a Grandma’s compassion and a Savior’s love.  We shared goosebumps and a little hallelujah party.  We all come across snippets of scripture, moments of memory… flashes of inspiration, bits and pieces of whatever we’ve filed away in our hearts throughout life.  But I am completely confident this was a direct message from God and Grandma, who had taken up residence in Heaven not too long after she originally sent me the note.  I’m certain of the divine intention, because it didn’t just turn up again a “few years” after I received it.  It showed up under my laptop on October 23, 2002.   Six years to the day after Grandma first wrote the note.  Perfect timing, to remind me of His perfect peace.

Grandma’s note, in her handwriting with the date in the upper right corner.

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I’ve gone through much bigger sorrows since I first read that note, including the loss of loved ones both long-cherished and so briefly known.  I am glad to say the message has not faded, but is more timely and true than ever.  No matter our circumstance, He understands.

J and I are working pretty hard evenings and weekends to get our house ready to list, and in the midst of the work I have become very aware of the spiritual analogy.  Once I began viewing the house as I imagine a potential buyer would, our nice, comfortable home has transformed into a to-do list filled with things like light fixture updates, fresh paint here and there, and multiple small-scale upgrades.  Assuredly, those projects did not sprout up overnight, but with a busy schedule and a lot of life changes over the years, we just didn’t notice them or, probably in most cases, just got used to them.

It’s easy to target a specific event, such as a house showing, and put in the preparation and time to make it perfect.  Much harder to maintain every nook and surface to constant perfection.  And certainly, much higher priority tasks work their way into our days.  But how easy it is to think that if something has escaped our focus until now, we can fix it in secret and no one else has ever noticed it.  We often walk, or sprint, through our days with tunnel vision, even when the tasks of the day are good and noble.  I must accept the likely fact that everyone who’s walked through the door has noticed the same things I’m now seeing through new eyes.  As Mom told me repeatedly when I was little, “Someone is always watching you.”  In those days, she was reminding me to behave in public because it was always possible that the stranger on the street was actually a patient of my dad’s who had perhaps seen my picture in his office and knew who I represented.  Misbehavior wouldn’t reflect well on me or my family, and so it wasn’t tolerated.  I didn’t always succeed without correction, but I learned early that even a careless comment can have a lasting impact.

My home improvement project of the day was to make something pleasant out of an empty bedroom.  I didn’t have a spare bedroom suite, so I needed to transform the room into something else, creating big impact from a small budget.  I opted to create a proper craft room, and it has turned out well enough that I regret not setting up the room that way from the beginning.  Today I needed a fair number of decorative odds and ends to finish it off, so I was in and out of several stores all day.  One sizeable store was pretty busy, so there were several checkout lanes open when I went up to pay.  I headed to the shortest line, but I still had to wait behind a few others, so I had time to watch the cashier.  I saw her tags and realized she was actually the customer service manager, helping out at the registers due to the particularly busy day.

Now I’ve had a long history of teaching and working with customer service, from a number of angles, so I was intrigued.  The store itself has a great reputation, and I was about to be taken care of by one of their designated leaders so I was ready for an exceptional experience.  It was certainly memorable, but not particularly pleasant.  She didn’t once make eye contact with me or even greet me.  Instead, she plonked the “Lane Closed” sign on the counter behind me and rang up my items with grim determination, periodically calling (yelling) over several lanes to the cashier who needed her to key approval on a return, saying, “I’ll be there in a minute, I can’t get away yet.”  When another employee approached, they had a detailed conversation about the scheduling problems of the day, with the cashier/manager saying over my head “Everyone needs me but I can’t get away, and I have to leave in 5 minute or I’ll be in overtime.”  Now, all of those things were probably true.  But her words and attitude all gave the uniform impression that I, as a customer, was a serious inconvenience at that moment.  Trying to keep a positive attitude, I offered to wait while she took care of the other cashier.  Still without looking at me, she declined saying unconvincingly “I’d hate to make you wait”, finished my transaction, and handed me the receipt while already walking away, saying in a rapid monotone “Thankyouandhaveagreatday”, words that had the ring of rote memorization, with no true wish of goodwill.

It wasn’t a horrible experience, but it wasn’t a good one, either, and in no way did I feel like a valued customer.  In fact, if I didn’t need my items to get on with my project today, I would have been strongly tempted to walk away empty-handed.  I did consider sending an email to the store, giving them chapter and verse on the hallmarks of customer service (basically “make your customer feel like your top priority, and keep your back office issues in the back office”), but I decided to take it as a personal lesson instead.  I’ve been through some tough stuff myself lately, and I really do understand that personal circumstances can so overwhelm you that it’s difficult to focus on the task at hand.  I appreciate the grace that’s been extended to me, and it has been a reminder to do the same for others.  Perhaps this girl is spectacular 364 days out of the year.  However, today wasn’t that day, so the other part of the lesson is confirmation that my mother was right.  Someone is always watching you.

How can we possibly bear up under such pressure, when we have these feet of clay?  We can’t.  He can.  The key is to let Him make us ready ahead of time.  Instead of a rushed struggle to spiff it up, stand up straight, do it right once I realize eyes are upon me, I must train, practice, study, and maintain as I go, nourishing myself on His word.  I must grow in maturity, not toddle with the same baby steps year after year.  If I’ve allowed Him to stock me full of grace, it’s the most likely thing to spill out under pressure.  If I publicly state that I’m a Christian, I’ve identified myself as His child, and I represent him everywhere I go.  I want to do that job well, not because I fear punishment if I don’t, but because as was true when I was a child, I love my Father, and I want others to hold him in the highest respect as well.  I like 2 Corinthians 5:20 in the Message translation:

God has given us the task of telling everyone what he is doing. We’re Christ’s representatives. God uses us to persuade men and women to drop their differences and enter into God’s work of making things right between them. We’re speaking for Christ himself now: Become friends with God; he’s already a friend with you.

I’ve blogged about the topic of Customer Service before, but I think the lesson is slightly different this time.  Then, my awareness was accomplishing the task itself: Loving one another.  Today, I was reminded of the importance of how we approach the task; mindfully, and with a soberness along with our smiles.  The forgiveness of our sins is a matter of great rejoicing, but I think we do well to remember that the Great Commission is serious business.  We can live for Christ joyfully, but we cannot do it casually.  May we stay sharp and focused, ready and willing to serve, remembering that this earthly experience is temporary, a fleeting moment in light of the Eternity to come.