By request, I decided to re-post this blog specifically for this weekend and next week. As most of you know, there are a handful of powerful opportunities over the next week to learn more about how to get involved in the needs of Africa. From Falling Whistles presentations, Dry Tears talks, and LABOR OF LOVE. I have posted all of them on my page and would encourage you to check it out.
Speaking for myself, I cannot close my eyes to it all any longer believing that I cannot make a difference. Below is a blog I wrote upon my recent return from Congo. I would be honored for you to take the time to read it - and join me in the fight. Much Love - b
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What do you do when you look darkness in the eye? What is our natural reaction? Ill tell you. We look away. We look very far away. Why? It makes us feel uncomfortable. It makes us feel uneasy….even disturbed. I have only been back home from Congo a few days – and I can easily say that, on many levels, I have looked darkness in the eye. From that deep gaze have come many thoughts and questions. Many of which I will not share – some of which I will. The most important one is this: What am I to do with all of this? I think over my experiences – the stories shared, the sights seen, the tears cried – and I ask Him: What would you have me to do with this? I think about the child soldier at the orphanage asking me in his broken English if I would be his “father” (wishing to ask me to be his mother, but getting his words mixed up), I think about the mother I sat with whose baby was literally snatched from her by the rebels as she ran away from her village, I think about the hollow eyes of the little 6 year old boy who had witnessed something so tragic that he has disengaged from reality around him, I think about the 60% of women in the Congo who have been raped……the women trying to give us their children……the refugees (IDPs) in the camps whose food supplies have been cut in half. Darkness. Heaviness. Twisted as it is - this is their normal. Though their trials overwhelm me, I am equally amazed at their strength….at their smiles. Their joyful worship. I recall the children at the refugee camp who had gathered plastic bags to wrap around and around, tying it with strings to eventually form a home-aid soccer ball. Resilience. The widows who have 6-7 children of their own (and taking care of 2-3 other orphans) who have started their own business of selling flour made from tree roots so all of them may eat each day. Persistence. I think about the laughter of the girls at the orphanage after showing them how to blow bubbles and then to chase them. Joy. I think about the smiles on the faces of the refugee women as they left the conference after learning - for the first time - how to begin healing from their heart wounds. And then I remember back to the first few days…..the feeling I had of smallness. Feeling so small compared to the size of their pain and questioning if I could make a difference at all. It was so much bigger than I was. SO much bigger than I was. I think about these things: seeing their faces, remembering their stories – and I ask Him: Lord, what do I do with it all?
This is my answer…
I will do something. Some Thing. There is much I cannot do. I cannot stop the violence, violation, starvation, or government corruption. But I will not let that stop what I Can do: Some Thing. I will see the fact that I am here and they are there as a responsibility – and now that I know - I am even more responsible. I will resist the temptation to place my knowledge in a target bag and cram it under the bed, pretending that these things don’t go on, just because it makes me uncomfortable - even disturbed. Yes, I am tempted – but not tempted enough. “I don’t see how you can do it….how you can hear that….how you can help.” I hear that often. My answer: If they can go through it – survive it – how can I not? How can I not merely sit with them in it for a little while, grieve for them, pray for them, give them just the seeds of healing? No, I will not feel small. I will feel ….I will Feel. I will be courageous enough to sit with it in prayer, asking how God may make baskets of bread out of the tiny loaves I hand Him. That may be as small as sponsoring an orphan to make sure (first and foremost) they will live and die knowing the Lord as their Savior – and then being fed and clothed along the way Home; or large enough as developing a trauma counseling curriculum to be used with the War-Torn Children of Africa. Regardless – I will do something. I ask you to courageously join me. We all have our gifts to be used in different ways to make some sort of difference. But may we not see the gravity of the problem as a means to tuck our gifts away in the “it won’t make a difference” corner. Because it will. It simply will.
He teaches me….In the strangest ways He teaches me. For example, let’s just say in a 3 year old autistic little Kenyan boy who sat next to me on the plane ride home, after 2 weeks of Wonderful Weariness and being used by the Lord more than I deserve to be. My mind racing trying to wrap my head around what I have witnessed and heard. Realizing that maybe the problem is that my head is getting in the way. He and I are looking out the window at the beautiful clouds, seemingly hovering at 20,000 feet above the ground, and he starts to repeat something that sounded oh so familiar to my heart. Something that I seem to have been repeating to myself in the few weeks before - over and over again in my head. Something profound. Looking at the universe outside the small window of plastic, he started saying this: “It is bigger than we are……It is bigger than we are….It is ….It is….bigger than we are.”
Eyes glazed over with the feeling of disbelief and the beginning of tears. I looked at him and knew….God speaking through the mouth of a babe. “Yes,” I said, “Yes, it is.” I looked away and I smiled a little. Wanting to look up in the sky – as if I were actually closer to Him up there – to say, “Thank You. It IS so much bigger than we are, isn’t it?…..the heavens. The Heaven. And so is Life - SO much bigger than we are, but the beauty is that so are You. And Y O U are in the middle of it all. Not on the outside looking in. Not sitting in your rocking chair shaking your head in disbelief. No – you are not us….but you are IN us. WITH us….through our tears, through our violation, through our orphaned journey, through our loss….you are not hiding. You are in the midst. And the hope of Heaven (especially for these hurting ones) is Bigger than it all. So maybe the question is not, where are you in all of this? I know, now, where you are: You are on the battlefield. Maybe the question is, ‘Where are we?’”
Friday, August 29, 2008
Thursday, August 21, 2008
She Took My Hand
She took my hand as we walked in the middle of the dry creek, trees shading us from the sun. "How will I know?" she asked. I paused. "I want to build a zoo when I grow up, Aunt B, how will I know if God wants me to?"
"Well, we just pray and ask God to help us make the best decisions we know how to make, we ask wise Godly people for advice, read His word......and we just try to do what we think God would want us to do."
"Do you think He will want me to build a zoo?"
"I don't know, darlin"
Haley (8) and I were taking a moment to just talk in between shots of our professional family pictures today. Those sweet precious moments that you want to frame in a picture....wishing them to come alive with a blink of the eye 20 years from now.
"But how will I know what He wants? How will I KNOW for sure."
Funny how they ask us questions we have not the answers to- looking at us as if we have them all. H O N E S T Y .... it's beautiful. It's hurtful. It's confusing. It's right.
"Sometimes we don't. Sometimes we pray, and we read, and we talk to others to help us make good decisions, but sometimes we don't know for sure. We just have to make our decisions based on what we think is most pleasing to Him, but sometimes we don't know for sure. Either way, He's there to help us."
Then it came......"Well will you help me? Will you help me find out?" That precious girl. The running saying in our family is that we all want to be Haley when we grow up. Her heart....oh, her heart.
"Yes, baby, I will help you."
This is my birthday week. 36 on Thursday. Last year at this time, I remembering saying a prayer to God and surrendering the last part of my dreams to Him. Knowing that much of what I had dreamed for had been lost - knowing that what I thought I could not live without, I may be forced to find a way to. Also knowing that surrender and sacrifice were the purest forms of Love. The last of my dreams.....my dreams. MY dreams: Those things we wish for ourselves and our lives and our futures. Painting the picture in our minds of what we feel we must have to be happy, and rarely even considering actually handing the paintbrush over to the One who Creates Best.
I have learned this: Its simply not about us. Its not about you. Its not about me. Its about Him. Those things we fret and fear and ring our hands in worry over in attempts to make the perfect decision are often not those things we should be fretting over at all. Maybe what we should most be contemplating is how we can look more and more like Him as we awaken each morning, as opposed to how we can twist and turn life to make it look more as we wish it to be. Maybe those things we fret over are actually one event in a lifetime of events that ultimately lead us to His feet. Maybe we simply don't know .... and maybe.....thats ok. For in not knowing, what we ultimately realize is that door number one and door number two can lead us to the same place: closer to His heart - just different journeys. And isn't becoming closer to His heart what He most desires anyway?
"The greatest commandment....love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your might."
We walked back to where everyone was standing. She quickly lost her blank stare of "turning wheels" and replaced it with a smile after joining her sister and her cousin.
As she ran to them, I thought, "Sometimes distractions are a sweet perspective."
Sometimes we just don't know the definite answers. And sometimes that's ok. And, just maybe, if we allow building a zoo (or not building a zoo) to lead us closer to His heart ...... then, maybe, that's all we need to know : )
"Well, we just pray and ask God to help us make the best decisions we know how to make, we ask wise Godly people for advice, read His word......and we just try to do what we think God would want us to do."
"Do you think He will want me to build a zoo?"
"I don't know, darlin"
Haley (8) and I were taking a moment to just talk in between shots of our professional family pictures today. Those sweet precious moments that you want to frame in a picture....wishing them to come alive with a blink of the eye 20 years from now.
"But how will I know what He wants? How will I KNOW for sure."
Funny how they ask us questions we have not the answers to- looking at us as if we have them all. H O N E S T Y .... it's beautiful. It's hurtful. It's confusing. It's right.
"Sometimes we don't. Sometimes we pray, and we read, and we talk to others to help us make good decisions, but sometimes we don't know for sure. We just have to make our decisions based on what we think is most pleasing to Him, but sometimes we don't know for sure. Either way, He's there to help us."
Then it came......"Well will you help me? Will you help me find out?" That precious girl. The running saying in our family is that we all want to be Haley when we grow up. Her heart....oh, her heart.
"Yes, baby, I will help you."
This is my birthday week. 36 on Thursday. Last year at this time, I remembering saying a prayer to God and surrendering the last part of my dreams to Him. Knowing that much of what I had dreamed for had been lost - knowing that what I thought I could not live without, I may be forced to find a way to. Also knowing that surrender and sacrifice were the purest forms of Love. The last of my dreams.....my dreams. MY dreams: Those things we wish for ourselves and our lives and our futures. Painting the picture in our minds of what we feel we must have to be happy, and rarely even considering actually handing the paintbrush over to the One who Creates Best.
I have learned this: Its simply not about us. Its not about you. Its not about me. Its about Him. Those things we fret and fear and ring our hands in worry over in attempts to make the perfect decision are often not those things we should be fretting over at all. Maybe what we should most be contemplating is how we can look more and more like Him as we awaken each morning, as opposed to how we can twist and turn life to make it look more as we wish it to be. Maybe those things we fret over are actually one event in a lifetime of events that ultimately lead us to His feet. Maybe we simply don't know .... and maybe.....thats ok. For in not knowing, what we ultimately realize is that door number one and door number two can lead us to the same place: closer to His heart - just different journeys. And isn't becoming closer to His heart what He most desires anyway?
"The greatest commandment....love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your might."
We walked back to where everyone was standing. She quickly lost her blank stare of "turning wheels" and replaced it with a smile after joining her sister and her cousin.
As she ran to them, I thought, "Sometimes distractions are a sweet perspective."
Sometimes we just don't know the definite answers. And sometimes that's ok. And, just maybe, if we allow building a zoo (or not building a zoo) to lead us closer to His heart ...... then, maybe, that's all we need to know : )
Sunday, August 3, 2008
Racing the Run
Funny how so many revelations come on my runs. I have started to call it "escaping into my think tank". Me. My shoes. Centennial Park - and God. We make a good team, I think. Long day at work ended w/ a 3 mile run at sunset. Refreshment to the mind. Lap one, I pass the stage and hear the actors practicing for the upcoming "Shakespeare in the Park". I hear,
"Good Ladies, let us depart.....This has been a wondrous evening!"
My mind goes back to the conversation last night with my sister who was trying to teach me to use my new blackberry. I am fighting it. Holding on to authenticity to the death. The sounds of Shakespeare intertwined with thoughts of PDAs don't mix in my mind. Two worlds colliding. Whatever happened to the marriage of the quill with the ink soaking into the paper of papyrus. Oh, to live in those days. I am longing for Walden's Pond lately..... escaping Chaos .... searching for Simplicity.
I continue running along with my thoughts as I pass an African American couple holding hands, laughing in the shadow of love. Her perfume overshadows my sweat, and I am thankful. Yet, admittedly, a bit envious. Envious of the "couple-ship" before me. The obvious love.
"I wonder.....what would it be like to be you right now?"
I run on - lost in Bebo Norman. Thinking about tears and why we are so afraid of them. I pass a homeless man in a wheelchair. Lame. He has pushed himself as far as possible to the sidewalk without touching the concrete. He and his tainted legs. He looks at me running past him as if to say,
"I wonder.....what would it be like to be you right now?"
I close my eyes for a few seconds to blink back the tears, almost - no, truly - feeling guilty for unknowingly flaunting my abilities in front of him. My heart hurts. Yet I run on.
Hearing the songs of music from "Dancing in the Park" in the background now. The pink sunset falls as a canvas for the backdrop of the Parthenon. Beautiful. I come up upon three precious grey haired ladies almost leaning into each other as if mesmerized. Standing. Silently. So still. As if the young people dancing before them are an aroma they are breathing in. As if to say,
"I wonder.....what would it be like to be your right now?"
Still running, my mind starts to look around at what is before me. A man with a dog looking at the ducks in the water...wondering what it would be like to have fins on his feet. The duck looking back at the dog wondering what it would be like to have such a beautiful coat. The water looking at the land wondering what it would be like to feel the grass growing up from its roots. The grass looking at the water wondering what if feels like to be fluid.
The push. The pull. The ebb. The flow.
The Cancer of Comparison. Surrounding us. Eating at us. Natural as it may be - it still kills.
A captivating man said recently, "When you are the most YOU - you become the person you were created most to be. It is then that we begin to FIT in our own SPOT.....The only way to break out of other people's lives it to go to God and ask Him who we are"
I agree. It is by comparing the fingerprints God has placed on us with others, wishing to be more like someone else, wanting to be better than, bigger than, skinnier than, richer than, or just as good as......that we actually begin to disrespect His creation. There is only one me. There is only one you. There will never ever in the history of the universe be, nor has there ever been another you. Be that person. Find that person. Live in that person to the death.
And I wonder. What would it be like if we starting only comparing ourselves to the person we saw in the mirror each day? Having our only wish as becoming the best version of that person we can be. The only goal of simply becoming more LIKE Him.....for the purpose of being used more BY Him.....having the hopes of only pleasing HIM. No one else. Just Him. Being healthy because we encompass His spirit. Being financially stable to be used of His service. Feeling pretty because He sees us as such. Measuring success merely by how well we are living His purpose. What would happen if our only measuring stick was the Cross and our only Mirror was His eyes? My, how tall we would stand! Not out of our own glory - but out of His Grace. Unique in our one-of- a kind mold. Separate and apart in our own extinct shadow. We are one. We are only.
Train whistles overhead as I return to my car. God appropriately seems to seal many of my "thought journeys" with a train whistle. He is awesome like that.
Drenched with the sweat of humidity. Needing a cool breeze, I reach for my key to turn on the car. Oh, yeah - no AC. I smile. And I think of Paul.
"I have learned in whatever situation I am in - to be content."
I have learned. Funny, he didn't say I have discovered. Nor was he hit on the head with an apple falling from a tree in Centennial Park. He learned. Day by day. Week by week. Year by year....He l e a r n e d contentment. Refusing to compare himself to others. Refusing to live in discontentment or in want. He learned. Priceless.
Lord - teach us. Help us to refuse to compare ourselves to anyone other than the unique creation you have made within us. Remind us to look into no one else's eyes for our worth save that of your own. And may we look deeply. And may we be filled.
For we are, uniquely, Yours.....
b
"Good Ladies, let us depart.....This has been a wondrous evening!"
My mind goes back to the conversation last night with my sister who was trying to teach me to use my new blackberry. I am fighting it. Holding on to authenticity to the death. The sounds of Shakespeare intertwined with thoughts of PDAs don't mix in my mind. Two worlds colliding. Whatever happened to the marriage of the quill with the ink soaking into the paper of papyrus. Oh, to live in those days. I am longing for Walden's Pond lately..... escaping Chaos .... searching for Simplicity.
I continue running along with my thoughts as I pass an African American couple holding hands, laughing in the shadow of love. Her perfume overshadows my sweat, and I am thankful. Yet, admittedly, a bit envious. Envious of the "couple-ship" before me. The obvious love.
"I wonder.....what would it be like to be you right now?"
I run on - lost in Bebo Norman. Thinking about tears and why we are so afraid of them. I pass a homeless man in a wheelchair. Lame. He has pushed himself as far as possible to the sidewalk without touching the concrete. He and his tainted legs. He looks at me running past him as if to say,
"I wonder.....what would it be like to be you right now?"
I close my eyes for a few seconds to blink back the tears, almost - no, truly - feeling guilty for unknowingly flaunting my abilities in front of him. My heart hurts. Yet I run on.
Hearing the songs of music from "Dancing in the Park" in the background now. The pink sunset falls as a canvas for the backdrop of the Parthenon. Beautiful. I come up upon three precious grey haired ladies almost leaning into each other as if mesmerized. Standing. Silently. So still. As if the young people dancing before them are an aroma they are breathing in. As if to say,
"I wonder.....what would it be like to be your right now?"
Still running, my mind starts to look around at what is before me. A man with a dog looking at the ducks in the water...wondering what it would be like to have fins on his feet. The duck looking back at the dog wondering what it would be like to have such a beautiful coat. The water looking at the land wondering what it would be like to feel the grass growing up from its roots. The grass looking at the water wondering what if feels like to be fluid.
The push. The pull. The ebb. The flow.
The Cancer of Comparison. Surrounding us. Eating at us. Natural as it may be - it still kills.
A captivating man said recently, "When you are the most YOU - you become the person you were created most to be. It is then that we begin to FIT in our own SPOT.....The only way to break out of other people's lives it to go to God and ask Him who we are"
I agree. It is by comparing the fingerprints God has placed on us with others, wishing to be more like someone else, wanting to be better than, bigger than, skinnier than, richer than, or just as good as......that we actually begin to disrespect His creation. There is only one me. There is only one you. There will never ever in the history of the universe be, nor has there ever been another you. Be that person. Find that person. Live in that person to the death.
And I wonder. What would it be like if we starting only comparing ourselves to the person we saw in the mirror each day? Having our only wish as becoming the best version of that person we can be. The only goal of simply becoming more LIKE Him.....for the purpose of being used more BY Him.....having the hopes of only pleasing HIM. No one else. Just Him. Being healthy because we encompass His spirit. Being financially stable to be used of His service. Feeling pretty because He sees us as such. Measuring success merely by how well we are living His purpose. What would happen if our only measuring stick was the Cross and our only Mirror was His eyes? My, how tall we would stand! Not out of our own glory - but out of His Grace. Unique in our one-of- a kind mold. Separate and apart in our own extinct shadow. We are one. We are only.
Train whistles overhead as I return to my car. God appropriately seems to seal many of my "thought journeys" with a train whistle. He is awesome like that.
Drenched with the sweat of humidity. Needing a cool breeze, I reach for my key to turn on the car. Oh, yeah - no AC. I smile. And I think of Paul.
"I have learned in whatever situation I am in - to be content."
I have learned. Funny, he didn't say I have discovered. Nor was he hit on the head with an apple falling from a tree in Centennial Park. He learned. Day by day. Week by week. Year by year....He l e a r n e d contentment. Refusing to compare himself to others. Refusing to live in discontentment or in want. He learned. Priceless.
Lord - teach us. Help us to refuse to compare ourselves to anyone other than the unique creation you have made within us. Remind us to look into no one else's eyes for our worth save that of your own. And may we look deeply. And may we be filled.
For we are, uniquely, Yours.....
b
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