Jesus Doesn't Have A Long Distance Carrier

Sometimes when I go to the preschool to pick up Little Man, I’ll find that his teacher has posted a little note about something cute that happened or was said in the classroom that day or the day before. I love reading about the funny things three year olds come up with – they can be hilarious little people!

When I dropped Little Man off this morning, the note posted on the wall involved Little Man himself, as well as another boy I’ll call Buddy. It apparently happened during play time, and it went something like this:

Little Man (handing a pretend phone to his teacher, Ms. A): “Here Ms. A, it’s your mom.”

Ms. A (who has a great sense of humor): “Well, it must be long distance, because she’s in Heaven!”

Buddy: “Well, that’s not too long for Jesus!”

Amen, little buddy, amen.

I just wanted to share that little story with you today, and use it as a little reminder that nothing – nothing – “neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation” could ever, ever separate us from the love of Jesus (Romans 8:38-39).

May the words said during the play of a couple of funny three year olds remind you of the words of our Father and encourage your heart today. Nothing’s too long for Jesus! Wherever you are, whatever your circumstances today, He’s right there with you, and he’s not going anywhere – you can count on that.

Well, That's A New One...

I wanted to have a great well thought-out post for you today, but my usual writing time was replaced by some fun, unexpected frolicking in the snow with my little men! Hopefully I'll get a chance soon to post some pictures of our winter wonderland fun, but until then, I didn't want to leave you hanging with nothing to read (as if reading my blog actually completes something in your life), so I wanted to throw out this thought for you:

I was out microwave looking the other day. We need a new one, but we can't really afford one right now. Can't hurt to look though, right? Well, I had no idea that people's microwaving needs had changed so much lately, but did you know that you can actually purchase a microwave with a one-touch preset button for ice cream?

Yes, I said ice cream. It also has buttons for fresh vegetables, pop corn and beverages, just in case you're one of those boring normal people who uses their microwave for mundane heating tasks.

Hmmm... what's the culinary world coming to? I mean, ice cream?

Changing My Mind Through Tess

Tess has got to be one of the most amazing women I have ever met, and I’d like to think that my life is different because our paths crossed. Here is a little bit of her story. [***note: her name has been changed for the sake of this post]

I believe Tess moved to Atlanta because her mother was ill. After her mother died, her life kind of fell apart. She admits that she made a series of bad decisions that have resulted in a fair share of bad consequences, all of which led her to where she is now.

Her medical records are a mess. She has hepatitis C, congestive heart failure, and peripheral neuropathy (a very painful condition resulting from nerve damage). She has had at least one heart attack and one stroke, is missing a few fingers (perhaps from frostbite?), has only one visible tooth, and has been told at least three times that she wouldn’t make it out of the hospital alive. And yet, she lives.

Each night she uses her broken body to climb up a palette, through a hole, down a ladder and over a fence to sleep here, a place she calls an “abandonminium”:
She shares her place with about 100 other people, and a few hundred more rats. The people, she says, use the bathroom on the floor, and refuse to help one another. The rats, she says, are as big as German Shepherds (we laughed, but she said she wasn’t joking), and will steal food right out of your hands while you’re eating. The people left her for dead twice, and she’s deathly afraid of the rats. And yet, she presses on.

Her prescriptions alone cost over $300 a month, so any money she possibly makes has to go towards meeting that need. Her family is gone, and the world treats her as dispensable. She will spend her day today finding food and what money she can, and tonight she will fight off the cold and the rats to sleep in utter filth.

And yet, she praises God.

The day we met Tess was the day that most of us truly went to church for the first time. Man, can that woman preach! She spoke truth to us about her life and about the Lord like I’ve never heard truth spoken before. Nothing was off limits. All that the Lord had given her to say, she said right then and there.

Choices. Life is all about choices, she told us. Choices, and giving praise to God. She is so thankful for God’s blessings in her life, and freely says that she doesn’t have any business asking Him why things are the way they are for her. With all she goes through every day, she never complains. She never sees God as anything other than the loving, constant companion He is. I think I can say that I’ve never met anyone who seems closer to God than Tess. She is the embodiment of that strength Paul was talking about in Philippians 4:13.
When she finished speaking, every kid in our group lined up to hug her and thank her (that's her with the backpack in the picture). She accepted them with warm arms and a personal word for each and every one. I’ve never seen ministry like that in all the years I’ve worked with youth. It truly was a moment from God.

Tess thanks God that she wakes up every day to live out her task on this Earth teaching the Word of God and preaching His goodness. There is no doubt in her mind that right in that abandonminium is where God wants her to live and minister.

Last Sunday our congregation sang “I’ll Fly Away”, and I thought of Tess. Though she is content to stay here as long as the Lord would ask her to stay, I will rejoice when she finally gets to go home and see Him face to face. No more sickness, no more holes and ladders and fences, no more rats. Just Jesus and an eternal home of her very own. Praise God for what He has in store for all of us!

I returned home to my three bedroom, two bath house with the sights and sounds of Atlanta still bouncing around in my head (and the smells still engrained in my clothes!). All of the stories touched me. All of the people were fascinating, but none compared to Tess. God was amazingly present in her testimony, and to be with her was to be in His presence.

Before Atlanta, I was quick to complain about the squeaky floorboards in my hall or the issues we’re having in our front bathroom. It was nothing for me to carry on about the back deck that needs to be repaired or my fears about the roof that seems to be warping. I whined about eating leftovers and about not having the “right” pair of shoes for that new outfit.

But I came home changed – with a new eye and a new appreciation for how I’ve been blessed. Maybe I don’t have my dream house, and maybe we won’t ever drive the best cars in the parking lot at church. But we are blessed far beyond our needs, and if it was all gone tomorrow Christ would give us the strength to praise Him all the more.

Just like Tess.



See you with something new in a couple of days.

Changing My Mind in Atlanta

I love how some days you can tell where your spouse ate lunch or hung out with kids before coming home (ok, I admit that last one is a little unique to the wives of youth ministers, but I think you know what I mean). The second they walk near it’s obvious –“Mmmm…Subway…”, or “Wow, you went to Becky’s Grille – I can smell the smoke in your hair…”

It doesn’t happen with every place, but there are those certain environments that leave you marinating in their odor for hours. Some people like it, and some people don’t. But apparently enough people like it at Burger King that the restaurant giant is working on the patent for a new cologne. Soon you can pay to smell like you’ve had it your way – flame-broiled and smothered in condiments – without actually having to ingest the calories. Crazy.

Well, I’m proud to say that although I won’t be participating in the BK Au De Toilet anytime soon, my good winter jacket is still sitting in the garage because it reeks of my encounter with Atlanta. It obviously doesn’t smell all that great, but I’m thankful for it all the same, because it is truly the smell of a life-changing experience.

If you’ve ever spent any time working with the homeless population in any city, you know that it is an experience that will assault your senses. The smells are usually the most overwhelming to me. I don’t know what it is or exactly how to describe it, but it’s a heavy, strangely sweet smell that lingers in the air like a slow-moving zeppelin long after they're gone. I admit that at first it’s rather bothersome to me, but after a while you don’t even notice it that much. After a few days you don’t even realize that you’ve taken it on yourself.

The sights are definitely next in line. When you pass by the homeless on the street, you see things that impress you. Layers of clothes, maybe a backpack or a ragged sleeping bag – things that catch your attention and maybe even make you stop and think for a while. When you work with the homeless like we did, what you see leaves an impression for a lifetime.

We stayed at the SafeHouse Outreach, housed in the heart of downtown Atlanta. When we first got there those of us who were new thought our sleeping conditions were a little rough. I literally slept under a bunk bed (you think I'm kidding, but I had the bruises on my head to prove it!).

Then we took a tour of the city and saw where people who don’t even have bunk beds to sleep under lay their heads at night. Doorways and overpasses. Park benches and patches of grass. One guy we came to know sleeps under a trailer in a parking lot. Another sleeps in a chair in the lobby of an overflow shelter riddled with bedbugs and smelling of human waste. It wasn’t pretty.

It can be hard to push past what your nose smells and your eyes see, but when you do, you experience the treasure of a people who know what it’s like to cling to the Lord Jesus. With eager ears we listened to stories of real people with real lives, real pasts and very real futures. We learned that you can have a law degree and still wind up sleeping in the doorway of a church. We learned that a violent and dangerous drug dealer can be redeemed to speak the Word of God to hundreds of people every week who stand in line to call him “pastor” and ask for his guidance. We learned that not everyone on the street chose to be there, and that very few of them can even do anything about it now.

We learned that it’s a whole lot more complicated than “get a job”.

I hope I never forget the names and faces of the people we met. And I hope that I never forget that just because someone doesn’t have a home, it doesn’t mean that they aren’t just as real of a person and child of God as the next man or woman I see, and it doesn’t mean that they might not have a better relationship with the Lord than I do.

I was truly challenged by the faith of the friends we made on the streets of Atlanta. They showed me clearer than anyone ever has before that people who have nothing – literally nothing – but the Lord Jesus in their hearts, can be joyful, content and blessed.

Joyful and blessed. With little on their backs, nothing in their stomach and only the night air over their heads. Truly joyful and blessed. What a challenge this was to the recent call on my heart to learn to be content with what turns out to be a great abundance in my life. Suddenly my mind began to change – what I once saw as “needs” were being redefined as mere wants. I began to see that “need” can be a relative term in our society, and that I should take more care in how I throw that word around.

God was showing me that all anyone truly needs is Jesus. No one spoke that message from Him any clearer than a woman I’ll call Tess.

(to be continued one more time)

If you want to experience some of the sounds of our trip, check out this youtube video of Jimmy Jackson, one of the people we met downtown. He's got a gift of singing the Word!

Changing My Mind Part 2

Ok, as promised, I’m finally back. I don’t know about where you are living, but here it is raining Noah-style. I don’t think it’s ever going to stop! I mean, I know we have to make up for a drought and stuff, but do we have to do it all in one week?

I say all that just to tell you that I stopped by the auto parts store this morning to buy new windshield wipers for the van. As the extremely helpful young man was ringing me up, I started reading a package of windshield treatment wipes on display by the register. The claim made right there on the cover was too good to NOT wind up on the blog, so here it is: “Patented hydrophobic technology”. You can actually make your windshields afraid of water. No doubt.

Which leads me to my next question: If the technical term for rabies is hydrophobia, does using those wipes on your windshield automatically make your van rabid? Are there shots for that?

ANYway… I told you last time that the Lord has been changing the way I look at things, and I suppose that doesn’t preclude windshield treatments, right? Well, on a more serious note, He really has been changing my mind about a lot of things. I can’t even wait to get started telling you all about it, but I think I’ll have to break it up into a few more posts. Don’t worry, though, I’m finally back in my comfy little spot in Panera with my hot tea and muffin (blueberry today), bent on getting a couple of posts pounded out before I leave so you don’t have to wait around on me this time.

I’ll start back in by telling you about that verse that He re-showed me (if you don’t know what I’m talking about, I mentioned it at the end of my last post).

From the very infancy of my spiritual walk, I’ve clung to the words of Philippians 4:13: “I can do all things through him who gives me strength”. Every test in school, every trial in life, I’ve quoted that verse and held tight to all it implied in my heart. God can and will give me the drive and ability to make it through any task set before me. I mean, that’s what it says, right? And then I read it again the other day in context, and He changed my mind.

Contentment has been a theme in my life lately, so maybe that’s why it all struck me differently when I began reading just a few verses before the “famous” one: “…I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances. I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want. I can do everything though him who gives me strength.”

Oh how I am trying to learn that secret Paul! To have the strength to be happy with what I have – no more, no less. It’s a tough struggle for me, and I dare say that I’m not alone in it. And it’s really just as tough on one side of the spectrum as it is on the other. When we’re out of money, I’m all too aware of our needs and worry about how they will be met. When we have more money than we “need” (which doesn’t happen often in my opinion… but I have a feeling He’s going to change my mind about that too), I find myself consumed by my wants and the never-ending pursuit of “more”. It really is a struggle that only He can give me the strength to face. But I’m learning that I don’t call on Him nearly as often as I should in that area of my life.

So that’s where He began to change my mind a few weeks ago – by teaching me that contentment takes spiritual strength. I truly can be content in any and every financial circumstance through Him Who gives me strength. Given my incredible lack of words right now (in quality, not volume – I never have a problem with volume…) it probably doesn’t seem like much of a mental conversion, but it was the beginning of something huge – something that’s definitely not over.

God had a deep message for my heart the day I re-read that verse, but we all know that sometimes words alone just aren’t enough to get the point across. So to make it stick, He took me to Atlanta to see that you truly don’t have to own a thing to be unmistakably rich in this life.

(to be continued)

I'm Still Here!

I'm so sorry it has been so long since my last post - I haven't had a second to write in all the holiday rush. I hope to post in the next couple of days, because I have a lot to share with you! I just wanted everyone to know that I haven't given up on blogging - I've just been burried in the busyness of the end of the year!

I'll be back in a couple of days. Thanks for checking in!