Asante Baba

I am humbled often. I need to be. He knows that. The most recent humility began last night in a country church in Hazel, Kentucky surrounded by 11 Wednesday night attendees. It ended by a recollection of 200 displaced, praying, weeping Congolese women on a concrete floor. Beneath a cross. Stones in hand..... and a phrase I heard over and over in their prayers. 

"Asante Baba" 

Translated: Thank you, Father. 

In a Swahili speaking country, there are a few phrases you pick up on in passing. When greeting each other? There is "Jambo." When praying? "Asante Baba." Thank you. Father. Over and over and over in their prayers. In a world full of wars and rape and starvation, they pray:

"Asante Baba." Thank you, Father. 

Where over 60% of the women have been raped and over 20%  die by the age of five. They pray:

"Asante Baba" Thank you, Father. 

Because they prayed mainly in Swahili, I could make out little. But I bowed with them and I prayed with them and I listened to them say over and over - scattered throughout the Swahili......."Asante, Baba"

My mind drifts back to another world. Last night's tiny town church service. Prayers. Listening to the acapella hymns of Thanks being sung in four part harmony, I felt at home. Before the service ended, my dad asked all of us to go around and share what we were thankful for. As I listened, it felt like a cloud of purity came through the room. One by one, person by person, sharing their heart. Some got choked up, a few tears were shed, but every word was spoken from a spirit of genuineness. I always seem to find that here. Gratitude. Real Life. Thankfulness. Genuine, Pure Gratitude.

................ I Find it Most Where There is Least..................

Like in a country church of a small town. Like in a church building in a war-torn. country 

I was in Congo with ALARM June of last year. They had gotten permission from the UN to bus 40 women into a church from each of the five surrounding displacement camps for a trauma healing workshop we were providing. We talked of Hope and Heartache and Healing. The women shared together and prayed together and cried together. 

At the end we had them gather stones from outside of the church. Goma is at the foot of an active volcano, so lava rock is in plenty. They brought their stones inside. 

These women had been traumatized by war and rapes and brutality and poverty and life.  We talked with them about the burdens that life gives us and the heaviness that it causes. I talked to them about Burdens of Anger, Unforgiveness, Hurt, and Shame. 

I asked them to look at the stone they were holding in their hands and told them that we were going to give them an opportunity to place those burdens at the foot of the cross of the Lord. To grieve before Him and lay down their pains.

They did.

A western women would have taken the stone and neatly placed it at the foot of the cross, returning to her seat and, possibly, bowing her head and closing her eyes. Not these women. These women were bruised and burdened. And Beautiful. Beautiful most of all because of something I have never witnessed before. Not to this level. 

In Congo I saw many things I had never witnessed. But there is something in the heart of the people of Congo that I had yet to see and have yet to see again. 

Broken Desperateness. 

These women did not place their stones anywhere. They surrendered them. When I invited them to come and lay their burdens at the foot of the cross at the front of the church......At once, it seemed all 200 of them came to the front and, as if it were rehearsed, knelt down. Praying. Grieving. Crying. Praying some more. We were all so overwhelmed, I think we froze. 

Overwhelmed at their Rawness. Their Vulnerability. Their Genuine need to grieve. Overwhelmed at their Brokenness. Their serenade of quiet prayers together made up a hum of petition to their Father. Their "Baba" and as I walked between them. Kneeling on the concrete floor of the church. Stones in hand. Puddles of tears on the floor. I heard....

over and over and over.

"Asante Baba. Asante Baba. Asante Baba."

Thank you, Father. Thank you, Father. Thank you, Father.

May we be broken. May we be desperate. May we be grateful. 

May we be.....

His, b

.The Door.

Back Home. It grounds me. Where people simply are who they are. Where you go to Wal-mart for a mini high school reunion and instead of getting home late from being stuck in traffic - you run short on time because you have to catch up with all your relatives you see in town. 

Nothing to prove. No one to impress. Nowhere else to be. You cannot re-create what is found in a Small Town and you can never quite find it in the City. I have learned that living Simple and Small is the Grandest and Largest means to live. Period. 

When you have More you want More, and the Larger you live the Smaller you become. Not because you yourself are small - but because comparing begins to creep in and all of a sudden, trying to become "better than" or having "more than" begins to make us feel "less than." Contentment gives way to Desire and we suddenly feel Inadequate. We stop asking ourselves who we are Becoming and begin asking ourselves how we can Arrive - when in reality, we are already there. 

I was in a taxi cab once. Driven by a man from Ghana. I told him I had been to Ghana and, for whatever reason, I asked him "Are you happy here?" 

"Yes, I am happy here." 

"Were you happy in Ghana?"

"Yes, I was happy. But I needed a village." 

"A village.....what do you mean?"

"In the village you do not need the door." 

He went on to tell me that in the villages, everyone has little. One person has what another person has and so there is no need for the door. "The door is to keep someone out" he said. If everyone has the same thing - there is no need for the door, because everyone shares. He then said in "the town" you begin having more, and so you begin wanting more. You then have to have "the door" to keep people out because they want what you have. 

Amazing.

On this day of Thanks - quickly to be overshadowed by the day of Spending - I am brought back to the simplicity of a small town, the genuine spirit of her people, the community of a village, and the need (or un-need) of The Door. 

She was wearing pink.....

She was wearing pink. Bright pink. In the middle of the woods - walking - searching - adventuring. Her pink stood out so brilliantly in her surrounding of nature. Like she didn't fit it. But she did. Fit in. Light shining through the trees. Her hair glistening with each sundrop. Leaves crackling with each tiny step. She was beautiful. As was her surroundings. 

As I lay on my blanket, I watched her.......and I thought: There is something about the woods. Something mystical. Something whimsical. Something dangerous. 

The woods....or the forrest. I always wondered what the difference was. From the country line road in Farmington, KY, it was the "woods" - or the "woods behind the house" to be exact. We would go back there and spend hours. Our own little scavenger hunt of sorts. Me, Jason, Heath. What would we find......in the woods? What escapade would we go on? What perils would we find ourselves in the middle of? What new creeks or hiding places we would come upon in.......

The Woods. The Wilderness.

I watch her and I smirk. She in her new outfit of play clothes bending down to pick up a branch of a tree that is four times her size. "I found it!! We could us this one!!" She is screaming to her parents who are about 30 yards away. It brings me to pause.

Searching.....Adventuring....Scaventure-ing....she found it!! And she was so proud.

I have been drawn lately to look into myself. Past pink play clothes and tiny crunchy steps and into the deeper places of wooded adventure. I am also drawn lately to this verse:

"John grew up and became Strong in Spirit. Then he lived out in the wilderness until he began his public ministry to Israel." Luke 1: 80

The adventure of the wilderness. I went deer hunting with my dad at dusk. Saw a deer. Shot. Thought I hit it. And so we went searching. In the woods. Dark was drawing close, and the darker it got, the deeper I searched, and the faster I walked. In the woods. Me in my camo and boots.....................thinking back to the little one in her pink play clothes. A parallel came to mind. 

Young me. Old me. Little me in pink. Older me in camo. Youthful Innocence. Seasoned Courseness. Can you have both? I think  - yes.

You see, the wilderness is just that. It is wild. It is life's version of coming and going and living and learning and playing and building and running and jumping and loosing and hunting and searching and finding.............life. And finding God. And finding Truth. And Finding, well, yourself. I never knew what that meant really. Finding yourself. Or maybe its not just about Finding Something , maybe its also about Becoming Something. Someone. You. Maybe it's about being settled with the pink and the camo and walking in a wonderful blending of the two. 

It's about picking up something bigger than you are and realizing that it is not of your own strength. Looking at your Father in the distance and saying with a childlike excitement, "I found it!!"

We are the truest versions of ourselves when we walk the closest to our Creator. We shine a little brighter. We walk a little straighter. We seem to loose the need to Prove ourselves and stop the game of Striving and we, slowly, find that walking beside of Him in the Garden becomes the most comfortable of strolls. 

A stroll that, ironically, is surrounded by trees and leaves and thorns and bushes and shelter. It is woody and wonderful..... It is wild. But the comfort comes in knowing that it's His forrest and these are His trees - and you can't see one for the other. But you can:

Walk. Beside. Him. 

Shall we? Walk? I think, yes. 

In Pink Camo, nonetheless : ) Yes. Pink Camo. 

Brave Benjamin

I have come to realize my favorite thing about cooler weather. There are many. The slight bite in the air that causes you to hug yourself a little tighter. Scarfs. The inside warmth of a long run in a cool breeze. Cold nose-tips. The appreciation of how hot tea feels as you sip it slowly. Cuddling. Being able to fog up a window with your breath and then using your finger tip to draw the shape of a heart - then smiling in spite of yourself. Cuddling. The strange security that extra heavy blankets bring in a bed when you are sleeping alone. Cuddling. And .......... 

Fire.

Dancing. Dreaming. Laughing Fire.

It ignites my soul in a different way. Brings me more in touch with the breath of my spirit. Warms me from the inside out. My thoughts dance with it - as does my fingers on the keyboard.

I love it most especially here. In my secrecy of hide-aways. My friend, Danny, always knows where to seat me when I come here in the fall or winter - the table right in front of the Fire.

Fire..........Fire........... Fire...........

I had a rare jewel of an opportunity today. A first. Sitting around a table in a public housing apartment. Me and Claude and Frank and Benjamin and Claude (the older one). Four brave and very strong boys from 7 to 18. They are refugees. Refugees from Congo and Burundi. Their stories of strength and war and refuge and rescue would cause the strongest of us to be broken. But they smile and they laugh and they live and today -

They Drew. Heartache and Hope.

"I cannot draw. I do not know how to draw." Benjamin. Oh, Benjamin. He is a personality rolled up into a little man in the form of a 12 year old. Trying to slyly and quietly leave out of the side door.

Gathered around one small table in one small apartment in the middle of inner city life.......Talking to them about the Hope of healing from the Heartaches they have been through and the promises of God. Reminding them that He was with them in their heartache. Benjamin wanted little part of it. He was uncomfortable and embarrassed and, on more than one occasion, tried to leave. "I cannot draw. I do not know how to draw." He must have tried to leave 5 times. Smiling and smirking each time - but underneath his smile seemed to be something more.

"Benjamin, its ok. Just sit beside of me. Will you sit here. Just be beside me." (I have deceptive tactics. I admit.)

Having just come from a wonderful worship service at MidTown, they were pretty wound up. Marisa had coordinated rides for these families and Cissy had sweetly gone by to pick up some art supplies for us. As I told them stories of the other children I have worked with in Africa and after they watched me draw my own saddest memory - they begin to understand and settle a bit.

I watched as they drew Heart Wounds. Saddest memories. Times that they were most afraid. I watched as they drew:

Guns. Men with Guns. People running away. And I watched as they drew God in their picture. I always have them do this as a reminder that, although He may seem so far away at that moment, He is never further away that our next breath. So they drew Him. Sometimes as a heart. Sometimes as a long-haired person (don't ask me why.... apparently God is a hippy : )

And I watched Benjamin.

"Benjamin. It's ok. Look - I can't draw really well either....just draw whatever is in your mind" Tactic number 2. But I wasn't lying. For someone who does art therapy - I am a lost art. Except when it comes to stick people. I rock at stick people : )

"I need a pencil. A pencil." (All we had were crayons, and he was using as many excuses as he could find)

Finding a pencil in my purse I gave it to him. It quickly broke and this was excuse number 16 to get out of dodge. I gave him a pen. I didn't pressure. Just invited. There is a difference. A beautiful difference. I gave him space and went on to encourage the other boys to draw what Peace or Forgiveness or Love looked like. I watched as they drew Hands Holding. Two men embracing. Hearts. Birds. Rainbows. I smiled.

Looking over at Benjamin again - I was pretty amazed. For some boy who didn't know how to draw, he had suddenly developed a skill. He was drawing a bus and people running away. Running. Away. Faces were sad. Frowns and then he drew

Fire........... Fire.............. Fire

Behind the bus was a tree and the bush and a man who had set a house on Fire. It is a theme in many of the pictures that I see. Fire. It is common place. Three main themes I always see. 1. Burning Houses. 2. Dead Bodies. 3. Guns and Bullets. The stories behind their eyes and behind their smiles and behind Benjamin trying to leave  - speak loudly. He told me his story and then I asked if he could draw what he thought Hope would look like. He went straight to 

it.

Rainbows. Holding Hands. Hearts. Yes, he is quite the artist, Mr. Benjamin.

As I left, he was close by my side. You could tell he was proud of himself - as was I. And I told him so. And as I walked away, I thought that we are not so different. God sitting beside of us. Encouraging. Loving. Listening to us as we make excuses not to deal with our pain. "I can't draw, God. I can't do it. It's too hard. I am not capable. I don't know how." God, in His wisdom.

"Its ok, child, just sit beside of me. Just be beside of me."

Trying to escape. Trying to look away from the very thing we must face head-on in order to find Healing. In order to find Hope. Gently coaxing us - He is there. He is always there. Actually - never further away than our next breath. If we would only -

Breathe.

But we don't. We hold our breath believing somehow that it will go away. Wanting it to just go away. We are blinded by the Fire. Feeling it's heat all around us. Trying to escape out of a side door. Sometimes slyly. Sometimes boldly. Sometimes blindly - we look past the very thing that will bring us relief:

His Hand. On my way to the car - I notice someone holding my own. It is Brave Benjamin. He is a character. The things he has seen in Congo in his short life there will stay with him for years and years. But, much like us, it is in facing them and feeling them and grieving them and reaching out for that hand to hold that will somehow make the fear subside.
I leave and he waves and I wave and I feel my heart become warm. Yeah. Almost like its on.........

Fire : )

Lord God - I thank you for this day of warmth. Of, yet again, learning much more than I teach. Being refined by your own fire much more than I mold. Finding your hand even in blinding flames. Humbled. Again.

I am,
Yours - b