Kicking and Screaming

Trust! Totally along for the ride!

We can totally rest in His shade!

Some of you will be surprised at this, others of you will not, but kicking and screaming is kind of my M.O.  Now before you start to remind of times that this was evident, I must say I've gotten much better..... externally.  Internally, me and the Lord go round and round.

Today my devo was about Jonah.  (Have I mentioned I'm doing a fabulous devo by Kelly Minter!?) Oh, I have?  My bad.  Jonah kind of gets a bad rap, but I feel for him and maybe relate to him a little bit. I'm human, alright?! Geez! I may or may not grumble at God occasionally when His ways just don't make sense to me or His timing is OFF! I'm restLESS more often than I just rest in His presence.

A statement in my devo I highlighted was, "Surrender is about the will; trust is about the heart."

Total Surrender, Total Trust, Total Freedom!

I'm much better about the surrender part than I am the trust part.  He says, "Go and do there."  And I'll go and do THERE, but I kick and scream all the way.  I'm obedient, but my heart's not so much in it. Or He says, "Sit and wait here."  (My LEAST favorite!) And I'll do it, I'm obedient, but inwardly (and sometimes outwardly too!) It's arms folded, brow furrowed, and lip out!  Then it turns out for my good or somebody else's good and all the sudden my heart's in it! ha! One day I hope to get surrender, obedience, heart, & attitude right all in the same day!

I'm sure it's hard to imagine me doing any of this (ha!), but maybe you can envision your children doing it, "Go clean your room, please," or "One more bite of your vegetables, please," and they may submit, but the sighing and stomping and eye rolling all scream, "I'm doing this, but my heart is NOT in it and I do NOT trust that this is for my good!"

I also highlighted, "He is calling me not merely to seek an answer FROM Him, but seek an answer WITH Him.  To TRUST Him during the process of exploring His heart for my life's decisions, not just to throw my hands up in resignation, sighing, Thy Will Be Done!" (Story of my life!)

In the end she had us examine Psalm 121:  And it made me laugh at my lack of trust and lack of ability to just rest in whatever place it is that He has me at the moment!

You can read it for yourself, but this was how my head translated it:

Where does my help come from?
Oh.. Just the Maker of Heaven and Earth.

He won't even let my foot slip!
He doesn't take breaks.

(The actual vs part of that says He who watches over you will not slumber! One time I was camping in the Massai Mara.  Where the BIG cats roam! A couple of Massai Warriors were hosting us and had committed to stand watch over our campsite while we slept! The next morning ginormous paw prints were found very, very close to my tent.  When asked if they saw them and how they scared them away, they said, "Oh we got tired and went home to sleep!" Hahahah! Thankful my God doesn't slumber! )

He watches over me.

He won't even let my foot slip!

He SHADES me.
No harm will become me!
He doesn't just watch over my physical well being, but MY LIFE!
My coming and going both NOW and FOREVER!

It's been so hot lately the SHADED part really stuck out to me.  I mean, it's not super important that I don't break a sweat, but to Him it is, He cares if I'm hot, He wants to SHADE me!

The sun will not harm you.

The actual vs. says the sun nor the moon will harm me.

He who watches over you will
not slumber. 

My mind immediately went to my FB timeline, it seems everyone in my life has babies and is at the beach! (Earlier this week, a friend asked me if all the babies in my life make my womb ache!?  Ha! I laughed inside and out as I thought about the nap I was going to take later that day!) I do LOVE the babies that fill my FB feed!  I see the sun screen photos, the sun hats, the little chunk taking a beach nap under her tent, the life jackets, the out stretched arms there to catch them coming off the slide and I think what a perfect picture of how much I can trust God and how much He loves me and cares for me and how the kicking and screaming is totally unnecessary because I can totally trust the one who shades me, protects me, is there to catch me, keeps me afloat, and won't even let my foot slip!

Roommates, Re-purposing, & Restoring!

So, I'm sitting in my room trying to be a good little Christian and do my devo, it's a great study by Kelly Minter.  She's written 3, this is my 3rd, but she's working on a 4th, she told me herself, we're close personal friends via twitter! (There may be more than one tangent today as I've had some albuterol!) I keep re-reading the same line over and over because of the racket going on upstairs. Hammers and hollars and furniture being slid from one place to another by my roommate. Not to mention the toxic yet, somewhat pleasing aroma of some sort of aerosol paint or glue that is wafting through the rafters down here.  Here's a pic of our living room today if you come next week, everything will likely be different and not just the positioning, she may very well re-cover it all or find a bathtub to repupose into our new coffee table.

 Seriously she has a problem, this this will be the 3rd time this chair has been recovered in the last 18 months. 

I won't complain because I practically live here for free and it actually always looks like a page out of a magazine in here (except today with all the man tools out!) 

Oh and see this? 

 I bet you guessed it'd be a great planter?  That's what Lowes thought too, silly ya'll, slap some glass on top of this baby and you have a bedside table.  She seriously has a problem.  If it's not hammer and nails up there she's practicing the cello. Evidently repurposing is all the new rage. I totally don't get it.  I googled repurposing & here's what I got:

So, now how are you going to get
up there to hang stuff on it!?

You just ruined a perfectly good
dress shirt?! Were you in a jam where you
lost your pants, but had this handy?

It's pretty much MY goal to keep
things from growing in my toilet!  I mean
isn't this what toilet bowl cleaners are for?

And when I googled repurposed
this was among the images. So
re-purpose your manequins!
Dear Roommate, this is not a good
idea! 

                            

Where was I? Oh, yeah, I was trying to do my devo, it was on weaknesses tonight so I considered skipping it figuring it wouldn't be applicable to me, but I thought maybe I could learn something about helping others with their weaknesses so I honed in my focus and plowed thru it. The key verses were II Corinthians 12 - all about Paul's thorn in the flesh 

vs. 7  Therefore, in order to keep me from becoming conceited, I was given a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan to torment me.... my grace is sufficient for you for my power is made perfect in weakness.....vs10 That is why, for Christ's sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties.  For when I am weak, then I am strong. 

(One of tonight's questions was, Why do you think Paul didn't tell us what his thorn was?) My initial answer, which I took the time to write down was, "I got no idea!" But then I thought about it and I guessed and said, "Well, he probably wasn't proud of it and he probably didn't want to be judged!"  Curious though, why do YOU think he didn't tell us?  

And the next focus vs was Genesis 50:20:  Which I got excited about because I knew it was about Joseph and Pastor Jeremy is doing a series about Joseph and Moses this month called MoJo. It's good with the exception of the songs he makes up and proceeds to sing! Sorry, Genesis 50:20:  Joseph is talking to his brothers who stripped him, threw him in a pit, sold him to the Egyptians, and told their father he was dead. They're back to apologize (sort of) and he tells them, Look don't sweat it. 

"You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives!"  

Boom! Did you catch that?  God repurposed all the crap that had happened to Joseph.  The betrayal by his family, his time in prison, AND he restored his dreams! Same thing with Paul, the Bible says that thorn in his flesh was a messenger from Satan to torment him, but God said, Don't sweat it, my grace is sufficient!

One of my supporters and friends, Shirley, was abused in every way imaginable as a child by someone in her family and it nearly destroyed her.  Today she is serving the Lord, serving others as a therapist, and writing a book about her childhood so that others can be helped by her story of overcoming and triumph.  Boom! "Messenger from Satan sent to torment" and "steal, kill, and destroy" Shirley; God is repurposing what was "meant for evil and to harm to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives!"  

I met with a friend just this week, who for years, had been secretly been involved in a homosexual relationship, full knowing that this was sin and not what God had intended for her life.  She finally walked away from the relationship and most people are none the wiser so she could never speak of it again & just be done with it. But she said, "at this point, I don't care who knows, if it could help someone!" She's already identified some people that are headed down the path she was on and is going to share her story with them! Boom! Take that tormenter!  God is repurposing what you meant to destroy her life and ministry, to provide more opportunities to minister and more people will be freed! 

So, it appears my roommate isn't the only one who LOVES to re-purpose and re-store, seems the Lord loves to do this too! Whatever has happened to us, whatever we've done, no matter how horrific, He can re-purpose it for our good and His kingdom and He can restore things in the worst of conditions to something so beautiful that it's previous state is unrecognizable! Thanking God I'm repurposed and restored!

See, He can totally take care of your baggage!
Repurposed & Restored

Lessons Learned from the Field: #1 God is Not Different. EVER. ANYWHERE :Nicaragua

"Ummm.. it was different."  was the response I got when I asked a couple about their trip to Africa.  I nodded and tried to mask a slight grin. That was their nice way of saying, "It was rough. We didn't really like it!"  Missions definitely isn't for everybody! Well, let me rephrase that, international missions definitely isn't for everybody.  Missions, indeed, is for EVERYBODY! I have to give it to them though, It's different, definitely DIFFERENT!

El Salvador, Kenya, Haiti, Paris, India, Pennsylvania, they're different. The language is different, the smells are different, laws, and roads, and modes of transportation, their pace of life and concept of time are different. And the food?!  Oh it's different all right.  One of the worst mistakes you can make is ordering a cheeseburger in another country! It may look like a good'ole American cheeseburger in the photo and maybe even when it comes out on your plate, if you're lucky! But!!! It will NOT taste like a good ole'American cheeseburger. The bread will have a different texture, the cheese will be bitter or just different, did they make this ketchup with sugar? and what on earth did they season that meat with?! I kid you not, it's the WRONG way to go! It's DIFFERENT! You wouldn't order the sushi at a Mexican restaurant would you? Then don't order a burger in Congo! The traffic, the greetings, the customs, oh and let's not forget the bathroom situation! Different, different, different and TOO different!  

So how do international missionaries do it?  How do they live in the lands of DIFFERENT without crying to come home? (Secret: They DO cry for home sometimes, they just can't put that in their newsletter, it wouldn't be prudent!)  First of all, international missionaries are different, bless their hearts. But different or not, we all crave familiarity, that's why when you ask a missionary what you can send them they order things like, Velvetta cheese, Nestles Chocolate Chips, Tide Detergent, Dr. Pepper, Twizzlers, and normal flavored potato chips.  What's a normal flavored potato chip you ask?  Well, it's NOT Seaweed flavored or Crab Curry. (Yes, I'm serious!) 

My first longer term international trip was to El Salvador. A nation that will forever have my heart!  About 3 months in I went with my Salvadorean friends to Nicaragua to minister.  The honeymoon period had ended, different was no longer as exciting as much as it was TERRIBLE!  I sat in a long Spanish service that night. Annoyed with every Spanish word they spoke, dreading what might be served to me for dinner, longing for the comforts of home, ENGLISH, AC, a toilet, a REAL cheeseburger.... mid-angry, whiney thoughts the room got quiet and still. (This is unusual in the Latin culture, as everyone is typically fanning, children crawl the floors, the older kids come in and out frequently, people show up hours into the service and they're just a charismatic people!)  The stillness had my attention. Something familiar gripped my heart in the silence, then a slow chorus of Hallelujahbroke out just like we'd sing it at home. Like this:

So in the middle of this hot, 4 hour long service, in a little church in Nicaragua is where I learned lesson #1 which is probably the most important lesson on this list and definitely the most sustaining one.

God is NOT different. EVER.  ANYWHERE.  His Spirit wafted into that really hot room like a cool breeze. People silently worshiped or wept, some swayed softly, other stood completely still with relief on their faces.  It was the same presence of God I had felt as a child at church, at Ambassador Conference Center as a youth camper, at Central Bible College in MO, everywhere I'd ever been.

  When He said, I AM, He was telling the truth HE IS! He IS ever present, He IS ever faithful, He IS all knowing, He IS good!  He'll meet you anywhere and everywhere, He does not change, He is not different, no matter what, no matter where.  So, how do missionaries do it, the danger, the different languages, the different foods, the different cultures, the bathroom situations? The answer:  He IS.  GOD is NOT different. EVER. ANYWHERE. 

10 Things I've Learned on the Mission Field

While speaking at a church a few weeks ago the pastor asked me to teach an adult Sunday School Class of about 50+ people. 

(For the record, I really like it when pastors let me / trust me to share with their people not just from the platform, but over a meal, in Sunday School, youth service, kid's church!) 

The night before God had me make this list so I shared it with them and I'm glad I did.  I'm going to share all 10 things with you in this post, but over the next few weeks, I'll write about each one specifically.  So if it doesn't make sense right now, wait for it.  I hope you enjoy the "series" and maybe even get something out of it, but I'm writing it more for myself, so I don't ever forget the things God has shown me from His beautiful people and their fascinating cultures around the world. 

1. God is not different, ever, anywhere.
2. Ministry = Dirty
3. The church is NOT a building.
4. It takes a village.
5. More is NOT better.
6. Community is more than a buzz word.
7. You do not have to have anything to give.
8. The heart of God is a better director than any conference.
9. Contentment is found in the will of God.
10. It's ALWAYS about the one. 

Tales from the Road: Part I That's What I Call A Successful 7 min Window

For those of you unfamiliar with the missionary itineration process, let me give you a run down.  We are given a budget and then the task of raising said budget by asking (hounding) our friends and families and speaking at churches that will have us.

Soapbox:  #thingsthatmakememad It takes an average of 5 points of contact to get a pastor to respond yea or nay.

1. In person (Give me a call at the church when I have my calendar in front of me)
2. Follow up phone call (He's in a meeting if you give me your info he'll call you back)
3. Follow up e-mail ... not sure if you got my message(s)
4. Handwritten letter with enclosed pledge form just for kicks
5. FB message or wall post to both pastor AND his WIFE  (Most of the time you will get a yea or nay shortly after the #5 action, the "why now?" is not a mystery.

DISCLAIMER:  All pastors are not like the above mentioned pastors and we missionaries salute YOU Randy Carter, Beaver Morgan, Mark Kirkpatrick, Brian Ross, Dan Doty, Rick Seaton, Scott Dobbins, Wes Bell, Nick Serban, Aaron Allison,  and Billy Meek just to name a FEW!!! **This was NOT an all inclusive list, please continue your support!

So, as you can imagine the excitement & relief & gratitude of when you DO book a service! (Okay, so, maybe you can't, but when your next meal AND the opportunity to fulfill the call of God on your life depends on it, you get pretty giddy about the booking!)

So, we get the service, it could be a 2 minute window, a 5-10 minute window or an invitation to preach the whole service. We're not too particular about what we're asked to do, we're just happy to be there! BUT we do want to be able to communicate our passion for the Lord, what work we're doing on the field, our gratitude for your help, and our need for your continued prayer and financial support! AND NOT GO OVER! Sometimes we hit a homerun and other times we become the reason it takes 5 points of contact for a pastor to respond to a missionary!

I'm going to tell you about the latter before I tell you about my homerun.

The good people at Destiny Church in Columbia, TN lead by good friends Beaver (Steven) & Shannon Morgan gave me the 5-10 min window. Love these guys! The whole church is Amazing! They've been GREAT supporters since day 1 when they first planted the church! Mostly I just wanted to say, "Thank you!" and let them know a little about what I'd been doing on the field. I somehow got off on a tangent about composting where I said "Poop" excessively and then I tried to describe eating Ballut (a filipino delicacy which is a partially developed DUCK fetus!) Apparently what I said was,

"As a missionary I've eaten goat, termites, and "PARTIALLY DEVELOPED FETUS!" needless to say I'm pretty sure that's all they remember from that day! #EpicFAIL #whentheDUCKisVERYimportant

Incidentally, this is the SAME church where just a few years ago I got up and told them, "As a missionary I'm very involved in human trafficking events!"  #whenthewordANTIisveryimportant

Lucky for me they're good people and support me in spite of me!

Now, for the good stuff, for the HOMERUN of all missionary windows!

I was recently at Northside AOG with Pastor Randy Carter! Who was the very FIRST pastor to begin to support me monthly from only ONE point of contact!  Yes and Amen! He gave me a 7 minute window (and a Saturday night cookout, a Sunday School class, and Kid's church!) Something about making missionaries work for their money!

I gave my 7 min window without incident. And the offering was GREAT, but what made it a homerun?

2 ladies in the lobby made it a homerun.

Lady #1 approaches in tears.  "Thank you so much for what you said today.  That part of the service was just for me! Thank you for saying God can redeem our past, I needed that; It was so anointed!"

Lady #2 approaches NOT in tears. "I just wanted to let you know that if you did stand up comedy, I'd buy those tickets!"

And THAT my friends is a successful 7 minute window for MBK!

What are you hiding? Spanx, but what else?

You have Spanx, right?  Don't lie.  Sara Blakely, "the Spanx lady," is a BILLIONAIRE!  (Seriously, look it up!)   So,  you, my friend own a pair of Spanx.

I should probably dedicate this entry to my mother as she she is the one who so graciously and repeatedly informs me of my need for Spanx.

Congratulations mom! You're now in the same category as Joan Rivers! Joan's life advice on her birthday last week was, "Scout for men at funerals and invest in Spanx!" I'm personally surprised you opted for Spanx over surgery!  Oh, and Oprah endorsed them as her favorite product! (I'm not sure she's great advertisement for Spanx, but I'll keep my commentary about Oprah to a minimum b/c I think the secret service breaks down your door if you speak ill of her!)

You don't know what Spanx are?  (you're a man aren't you?)

I asked my female friends how to describe them today and I got this:

"Like Spandex shorts that suck all your fat in... in turn making it spill out the top and bottom ;)"

"A sausage encasing."

"They minimize mom-butt."

"A tourniquet that successfully cuts off your blood flow and airways for the duration of a wedding, night on the town, or class reunion."

Still a bit unclear, (or a little TOO clear!) No worries I have photos!

 This was the most appropriate, oddly enough the women who model for Spanx don't NEED Spanx and are seductively smiling in all the photos taken of them.  No one SMILES, much less SEDUCTIVELY smiles while wearing Spanx. Unless you count the constant thought of "I so wish someone would come and take these off of me!" as seductive! Anyway, this is not a porn site so you get the midsection of this poor woman, who evidently Spanx don't really work for!

Oh and in my search I found something that made me happy, happy, happy! - Spanx for men!!!! Oh dear Lord! Men, the only thing that could be more unattractive than finding out you wear Spanx is that you have a cat!

After speaking a church a few week's ago, I got convicted afterwards while driving home, I mean I wasn't being real with those people I was hiding something! Spanx under that dress! I began to think about II Tim 3:5 and how it talks all the bad things that will happen in the last days, people will become lovers of themselves, of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, without love, unforgiving, slanderous, without self control, brutal, not lovers of good, treacherous, rash, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God and HAVE  A FORM of GODLINESS, but deny its power!  Have NOTHING to do with such people! Stay with me here, translation:  In the last days people will wear Spanx, they will have a FORM of Skinny, but deny its power.  It was so overwhelming I had to pull over and take them off!

The truth is, I'll still wear Spanx, because more of the truth is, most of my dresses won't fit without them, but I'd rather not HAVE to wear them. I'd rather not have to HIDE them. In other words, I'd rather just be fit and skinny! Hmm...

My devo, "No Other Gods," by Kelly Minter, (which, BTW, is AMAZING!) spurred this whole thing on today with her posting a journal entry about hiding things. So thank HER that you can't get these moments of your life back that you spent reading! I'll end with her entry in hopes that the Lord will speak to you too about not having to hide things anymore!

Kelly's journal entry:

"I'm moving so this means I've been cleaning out my house and finding pockets where I've been hiding things. You know, the ceremony of shoving things into closets when people come over.  This is one way to clean.... I'm guilty of doing this to Jesus.  He showed me this while I was cleaning one day (in a loving way).  He pointed to the corners of my closets and underneath my bed.  He said, "I see this, and you know it's there too though I think you've almost forgotten about it by now, it is still collecting major dust and is just totally useless.  It's taking up space.  You have the illusion that it is still offering you something, or you have the hope that one day it will be of use to you.  Come on, let's go clean it up." We've been cleaning up my life together for a few years now. I no longer have to close off doors to the people in my life anymore.  I can invite them in.  Most important, I have invited Jesus into every room.  I always imagined Him coming in and saying with an authoritative voice, "There's no room for Me here! When I come back this better be clean!" (Hello moms everywhere!) Well, like a typical child, with that kind of relationship with God, I just lived my life hiding the things I was supposed to get rid of and created the illusion that I had cleaned up! Fortunately, this isn't the way He works.  Jesus gets His hands dirty.  He comes in and helps us clean."

So let Jesus help you clean up what you're hiding, we don't want just a form of godliness, a Spanx facade! I don't want to just look fit, I want to be fit! I don't want to just appear Christlike, hiding what is unlike Him, I want to BE Christlike! Lots of cleaning (AND working out!) to do!

I'll close with the words of a great missionary to Nicaragua,
"You don't need more of Jesus, He's already giving you ALL of Himself! You just need less of everything else!" -Ken Doutt

#thingsilearnedatchurch

I'm baaaaack! After a bout with pneumonia and a couple months on the road, I'm back to my basement dwelling and back to blogging.  I fully intend to blogument my wonderful time at the beach, all the different churches I got to go to, and the wonders that are my niece and nephew, but today I'm just going to start out with my first Sunday back to North Point Church - East Sunshine Campus! 

We had a guest speaker today (oh wait! My bulletin says "Special" speaker!) ha! some pac north wester named Jeffrey Portmann, (my pastor is from Seattle so we're used to foreigners.)  The title of his message was, JUST JUMP.  Funny because after speaking the last umpteen weeks in a row I was pretty excited to JUST SIT this morning! I'm what you might call a "tough crowd!"

*Side note:  A few weeks ago I had a FB convo with some of my pastor friends that went something like this:  PF:  Have you read the book Radical?  Me:  I read part of it.  PF:  Oh yeah?  Why didn't you finish it?  Me:  Umm.... it was a little too, well, RADICAL for me! He "lol'd" my comment, but others raised eyebrows. Evidently this wasn't an expected response from "ME," at least not the college ME so I had to think about who is ME?

 The college ME had a missionary mentor slash vietnam vet who often "rallied" the troops by saying, "Are you willing to die for Jesus!?" To which I would lead the charge of saying, "YES!!!!!!!!!!!!" (The rest of the story is he then chastised us for complaining about our constant meals of beans and rice by saying, "You wouldn't die for Jesus, you won't even eat this bean for Jesus!") I'm realizing now that the older that I get the less RADICAL I'm willing to be.  I used to hate speaking to adults, youth and young adults will willing follow to the hardest places of the earth without questioning, and in Braveheart fashion too. "Adults" have to check their calendars, put it in the budget, get vaccines, and need a plug in for their C-pap machine! They're practical and safe and there's nothing Braveheart about a C-pap machine! As I begin to fall into this "not so Braveheart" category, I justify it by saying, well Lord, I AM 36 years old. (Yeah, yeah, I've been admitting that more lately although the official answer is 29!!!!) But is it OKAY? To become practical and less RADICAL in my "old age!"??? I mean the things I need, desire, and EXPECT God to do for me are still RADICAL! Hmm? Sounds like an unbalanced relationship!

The "Special" speaker said, Just Jump! 

Not foolishly or aimlessly (I guess practicality and vaccines are okay) He said, moments of solitude with God bring clarity. Better put more of those on my calendar bc some things are honestly unclear at the moment. 

Take courage, because Jesus has extra.  (Less liquid courage more Jesus courage!) check.

Peter's faith wasn't putting the 1st leg over it was putting the 2nd leg over! Touche'! I've become a keep one foot in boat and test the water kind of gal! Just Jump! (The college ME went head first!)

Even though Peter DID just jump, when He got to Jesus,  "Jesus didn't chest bump him and say good job man!" He said, "Oh ye of little faith! Why did you doubt?!" Oh goodness, I don't want to be one who starts out in strong faith, who JUST JUMPS and then gets distracted or overwhelmed by the storm! Note to self: FIX YOUR EYES ON JESUS! 

Random fact from the NW guy:  "The quickest way to put out a fire is to separate the coals!" Huddle up with life giving friends! (I took this literally &  had 2 lunches today with some of my best life giving friends, the first with Amy Luke and the 2nd with Lorena Holleman!) so CHECK! (For those of you concerned about my waistline, cough, MOM, I only ATE lunch ONCE!) 

Last thing on my note card today:  To go somewhere you've never been before you have to go past the place you normally stop! (Anybody know where my Radical book is?  I guess I need to finish it because I stopped there!) 

#thingsIlearnedatchurch