An Anchor to our Soul.

I feel most like myself here.

The thought came to me from seemingly out of nowhere. The words raced through my mind, but I am unsure of what they actually meant.  

I’ve had that thought before over the years, but I’ve never examined it fully.  This time I slow down, I hold it up to the light, looking at the different facets, the pieces of my heart and soul that feel missing when I am not here.  

What does it mean to feel most like myself? 
If I am not wholly me in other places, who am I?   

I’ve always believed that wherever you go, there you are.  I thought you would take all of you when you leave a place.  I never knew that a part of you might get stuck or decide not to come or be tied so tightly to a community that you don’t bring all of yourself to the new place. 

If I had known, could I have prepared? 
If I had known, could I have figured it out? 
Could I have somehow packed more of me?  

And if I left pieces of me behind, what part have I been living with for these last months?  The portion of me that feels deeply known, valued, seen, and respected are the parts that have been left behind.  

The remainder feels untethered, floating, waiting to be seen and to be known and to have a history and most of all to feel at home.  I’ve been here, in this new place physically, but perhaps not completely. 

What does it take to make a life whole?  What does it take to make a soul whole?  How can I mostly feel like myself no matter where I go?  

The words come to me suddenly as though they have been waiting for me to ask the question,

“We have this hope as an anchor to the soul”. 

Hebrews 6:19

And what is an anchor, but something that grounds an object?  Something that is used to moor a vessel to the sea bottom.  

And so, when I feel unmoored, I can anchor myself to the One hope that is unchanging, never-ending, never giving up, and always available.  

Even if I don’t feel like myself, Jesus is always Himself.  And He always gives of Himself no matter where we are physically or emotionally.  He is the anchor of our soul. 

Although our lives and our addresses and our circumstances may change, He will never change.  He provides the stability we desperately need.  We can anchor ourselves to Him.  We can attach our souls to Him, the only one who knows us better than we know ourselves.  He created us after all.   

Today, may we choose to lift our eyes from our circumstances.  May we choose to trust Jesus as the hope and anchor of our lives.  And may we experience the grounding and mooring that only He can provide.    

When Your Volunteers Won’t Volunteer.

You’ve heard the old adage, 20% of the people do 80% of the work. 

If that’s true, why can it sometimes feel as if just 10% of the people are doing 100% of the work?  You desperately need volunteers in order to grow your ministry, but you can’t seem to get anyone to step up, help out, or see the need.  You find yourself frustrated with people’s lack of generosity, apparent blindness to the need, and lack of engagement around the mission.  

What would it take for you to make a change, see people in your church step into new roles, engage wholeheartedly, and serve alongside you?  Here are three things you might be missing.

1 – You’re just looking for warm bodies.

No one wants to simply be a cog in the wheel.  People want to be valued, known, and know that they are filling a vital need, towards a mission that’s greater than them.  They want to know that the work they are doing and the time they will invest is worth it.  They want to know they aren’t just filling a role that anyone could do just by breathing.  

Get to know your potential volunteers.  Take someone to coffee or lunch. Ask to make a quick visit to their home for a conversation.  Find out what they are good at, passionate about, and gifted in, and help them see exactly where their skills line up with the need.

And then, when they show up, make sure that they feel seen, needed, and appreciated. 

2 – Your expectations are unclear.

Every organization has rules, policies, guidelines, and expectations.  It’s an expected and understood part of life. From the post office to your child’s school to even social media platforms, you interact with policies and expectations on a daily basis. It helps to know the rules.

If your expectations for your volunteers are unclear, or if you are unsure about what you are asking them to do, it will be hard for them to say yes.  

Said another way, if it’s murky to you, imagine how unclear it will feel to them. 

Decide what you are going to ask of your volunteers.  What is their job description, how often will they be asked to serve, how much training is needed, and how long are they being asked to commit?  

Getting clear on this will help you make your “ask” and help your volunteers give their “yes”.            

3 – You haven’t communicated the “why” behind the ask.    

Your desperation for volunteers is not a compelling reason to join you. 

People want to feel as though the work they are doing matters.  They need to know something will be worthy of their time.  They want to work towards something that will last. There should be a reason they are giving up their valuable time.

If you can’t articulate the “why” behind your ministry, it’s unlikely your volunteers will be able to do it.  

Put some time and effort into creating your one sentence “why”. 

Why should your volunteers care?  Why should they continue showing up?  Why should they say yes to you and no to other things?  What is God doing in your midst?  How can what they are doing make a tangible impact?  What is the one thing you hope happens because they showed up to serve?  

None of these things is a silver bullet or will be the one thing that will change everything.  However, if you begin to see your volunteers as more than simply filling in the slots, creating clarity around expectations, and communicating the “why” behind each role,  you will be that much closer to creating an engaged volunteer culture.  One that’s compelling and worth calling your volunteers to be part of something greater than themselves.

Discovering What God is Doing -Together.

The mystical, mysterious practice of discovering what God is doing next in a particular people at a particular time has been one of the most joyful, difficult, and thrilling moments. 

Standing outside of a current situation, looking at all the pieces of a particular part of an organization and asking the questions, “What is God doing?  What should happen next?  Where do we need to position all these pieces so that we can take the next step of faithfulness?” is unlike anything else.  The process starts out full of hope and anticipation, feels muddy and messy and slow in the middle, and then just when you think it might never happen, the end result comes into view. And it’s more beautiful and just right than you could have ever imagined. It may not be what you’ve imagined, but you have been part of partnering with God to co-create His vision.  That’s what makes it just right.    

I have two favorite approaches to the process.

1 – The, “Why did you say yes? ” Question

After you gather the right people in the room, I ask the question, “How did you end up here in this room today?  Why did you say yes to being part of this process?”

The answers might be surprising but can do the work of setting the tone for the group.  It increases the group’s commitment to the process and to each other right from the start.  When others begin to hear the “why” of those in the circle, when they can resonate and connect with some of what they are hearing, it begins to remove barriers, reminds us that we are all on the same team, and begins to build the relational web that will be needed to bear the weight of the process.   

2 – Introduce the Prayer of Indifference.  And then actually pray it each time you gather.  

It’s been hugely important to acknowledge that as individuals we each walk into the room carrying our own hopes and dreams and baggage around the particular topic.  Perhaps we have already decided that the best course of action and are very glad someone finally became wise enough to ask us.  Or we have come ready to share the myriad of ways that this ministry has hurt us in the past and come ready to finally have our say.  Perhaps we have been part of another organization that has done things the “correct” way and we want to see those changes instituted.  Whatever it is, we all come through the door carrying our own “stuff” – Our own feelings, expectations, hopes, and dreams.

Ruth Haley Barton’s book Pursuing God’s Will Together: A Discernment Practice deeply impacted my approach and it’s from her that I have borrowed the Prayer of Indifference.  As she says,

“The prayer of indifference expresses the fact that we have come to a place where we want God’s will—nothing more, nothing less, nothing else.  It means we want God’s will more than our own personal comfort or safety, more than ego-gratification or wanting to look good in the eyes of others, more than our own pleasure or preference, more than whatever it is we think we want. It is a state of wide openness to God in which we are free from undue attachments and have the capacity to relinquish whatever might keep us from choosing for God and for love in the world.  It is a prayer in which we abandon ourselves to God.”

Ruth Haley Barton

Barton goes on to describe Mary’s prayer in Luke 1:38 as a Prayer of Indifference. When the angel came to tell Mary that she would become the mother to the savior of the world, Mary responds, “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be done to me according to your word.” Likewise, Jesus sets aside his own wants, fears, and desires when he prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane the ultimate prayer of indifference, “Not my will but yours be done”.

When your group can earnestly and honestly, before God, pray this prayer together, the work of discerning what God is doing is that much more beautiful.

It certainly isn’t easy.  However, it is worth it. 

Each time I’ve been a part of this process, I am reminded that God has even more invested in our ministry than we do.  That His ways are not our ways and that He really can do anything – far more than we could ever imagine or guess or request in our wildest dreams.

Trusting the tiny drops.

I lean towards being an all-or-nothing type of person. 

It’s mostly a mind game for me but often find myself thinking that if I can’t do something 100% that I shouldn’t waste time doing it.  Which, for some people, might be true.  If you are in medical school becoming a neurosurgeon or a gymnast training for the Olympics, if you can’t go in 100%, perhaps you are on the wrong path. 

However, as a regular person, living an ordinary life, I’m learning to be ok with the concept that a little bit of something is better than none.

I’ve seen this play out in homeschooling time after time.  My natural inclination is to create elaborate lesson plans or find intricate printables with endless supplies.  Lately, though, I’ve been amazed that just a little bit of something each day (or at least more days than not!) can actually make a huge difference.  We might work on a new concept for 5-10 minutes and then put it away until the next day.  And, then work on it again and again and again.  And then, suddenly we’ve gone miles by taking very tiny steps.  This is how we’ve learned the alphabet and letter sounds, how we’ve learned the Lord’s Prayer and Psalm 23.  It’s how we are working on Australian history and our marine biology unit.  Just little tiny drips in the bucket, consistently, and over time, those dops fill up the bucket!

I wonder how this idea might also be true in other parts of our lives?  In our spiritual lives?  A project or something we wanted to learn?  Parenting and working on manners or character? Maybe a fitness goal or a health milestone? 

When I was pastoring, often people would come to me discouraged that they hadn’t learned all that they thought they should have about the Bible or that they hadn’t read enough scripture that day or week.  I used to tell them, “A little bit of the Bible is better than none of the Bible”.  While reading the entire bible in three months is an amazing goal, if you can’t get it done and so you quit, it’s not the best goal.  A little bit of reading the scriptures when you think you have no time is better than skipping the life-giving nourishment that’s on offer.  And, when the little drips add up, before long, you will have read more than expected or gone further than you hoped you could have.

I have a friend who says, “Most people overestimate what can be done in one month and underestimate what can be done over the course of a year”. I know it’s true of me.  I forget what can be accomplished in me, through me, and in the people around me with just a little bit at a time. 

So, take a deep breath. Keep on putting one foot in front of the next.  Don’t stop reading the scriptures with your coffee for 10 minutes, practicing a few letter sounds with your preschooler, memorizing a psalm half a verse at a time with your first grader, or exercising for 15 minutes even when you hoped for an hour.  

May we trust that God will take the little bits we offer up consistently and faithfully over many days and weeks and months.  And that He will use those little drips and drops to fill the bucket to overflowing. 

Weakness into Strength.

What if Paul is right and Christ’s strength, the same strength that overcame death and conquered the grave really is made perfect in our weakness? 

And He said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for My strength is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore most gladly I will rather boast in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me. Therefore I take pleasure in infirmities, in reproaches, in needs, in persecutions, in distresses, for Christ’s sake. For when I am weak, then I am strong. 2 Corinthians 12:9-10

I’ve always had a love-hate relationship with this particular verse.  I don’t really want to acknowledge my weaknesses. Even though, they are so often the very things I can’t stop thinking about.  Paul wants to boast in his infirmities, his lack, his weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest on him.  I want to cover up anything that looks less than or makes me feel less than so that others don’t have the opportunity to judge me. 

Really, though, are people noticing and judging me, or are they just trying to make it through their own day?  Is it just me who stands before me as judge and jury?  The one who finds myself wanting and lacking?  

For as long as I can remember, my deepest fear is to be found to be defective, to be deficient, or to be caught being or doing wrong.  When Paul starts to glorify his limitations and his weaknesses, is it any wonder that I start to get a bit queasy?  And yet, the way of the cross has always been one that doesn’t make sense.  It’s one that feels upside down and backward and even a bit nonsensical to us. But, we know that God’s ways are not our ways.  And so, knowing this, I give Paul’s words a second glance.

What would it look like to lean into this way of living?  What would it look like to not cover up our weaknesses or limits or to search for ways to push through, but instead to embrace our God-given capacities, capabilities, and yes, even our limits?  What if Paul is right and Christ’s strength, the same strength that overcame death and conquered the grave really is made perfect in our weakness?  What if we miss out on that strength, because we are too busy hiding, covering our tracks, and wishing away the places we perceive ourselves to be less than. What if we are robbing ourselves and those around us of the opportunity to practice seeing each other through God’s eyes? 

My grace is sufficient for you. 

My strength is made perfect in weakness.

Today, I will choose to listen to the words of Paul.  I choose to practice saying those words over the places where I feel less than enough.  And allow God’s grace (that which we don’t deserve) to come and fill the gaps in the places where I feel most weak.  The places where I am learning to say, I don’t have enough strength of my own, Lord meet me here.

For when I am weak, then I am strong.  Only God can take something like weakness and turn it into anything that looks like strength. 

May we move towards appreciating the gifts of our weaknesses and in turn, find our strength in the enough-ness of Christ. 

It’s only a year.

“It’s only a year!  We can do anything for a year!”

Three months into our year in Sydney, these words reverberate in my mind.  In hindsight, a year sounded so short.  In the grand scheme of our lives, it is nothing, just a blip on the radar.  And yet, when the sun rises and sets daily and you wake up 365 times in order to see said year through to completion, I have discovered it doesn’t feel like “nothing”.  It still very much feels like we are living.  It feels like these days are real and that these memories will be real.  And the hard still feels hard and if I am being honest, sometimes a bit unending.

365 days mean a lot of coffee being brewed at home, it means an entire grade for my oldest to learn at home.  It means my husband will spend his days acclimating to a new job with a new work environment and culture – from home.  It means we will visit our beloved playground hundreds of times – sometimes twice a day.  It means at least 1000 meals and snacks and drinks will be prepped and handed out and mostly enjoyed around our table.  

What I didn’t realize and couldn’t have known was how easy it would be to feel unsettled and transient.  I didn’t know what it would actually feel like to desire to put down roots and yet feel the need to hold back.  To feel both at home and homesick.  Home in that this is where we are living – this is where our little family calls “home” each day.  This apartment with two bedrooms and two bathrooms (which is glorious and by the way might ruin me for the future!) is where the legos and strollers and our clothes are right now.  And yet, not home, because it’s not quite ours.  

We didn’t pick out the furniture, have a combination washer and dryer (hello, most inefficient appliance ever!), and are using the almost too well-loved frying pans that were here upon arrival.  And because we are here for only a year, I have resisted hanging anything on the walls.

When I think of making our home homier, my mind immediately wonders how we will get rid of that particular item at the end of the year – will I sell it on Facebook marketplace, just throw it away (which sounds so wasteful!), pawn it off to a friend we haven’t yet met, or hope that a charity shop will come to take it away?  

I’m sure so many people have done this before and I am just a click away from blog after blog after blog of advice.  But, not one of those writers could have told me how I would actually feel in the midst of a year that seemed as though it might fly by, and yet now feels as though each day is taking all the time in the world.  No other person or writer could have prepared me for what it feels like to have left home and created another home for a short season during a global pandemic with the city locked down.    

And yet, a year is 365 days more than nothing.  It’s still a real season of our life and memories my kids will have and that we will have for the rest of our lives.  And I wonder if it’s actually worth putting something on the walls…because, yes, it’s only a year.  And yes, we can make do with anything for a year.  But, now that we are here, do we really want to?   

Chasing God.

If I ever feel discouraged, or as though God is far off, I remember the way that He met the two of us through a series of extraordinary circumstances.  And remember, as Paul tells us in Ephesians 3, that God can do anything you know.  Far more than we can hope or imagine or request or dream in our wildest dreams.  

Have you ever thought you were chasing God, but once you get close, you realize it was actually Him doing the chasing? 

That is really the only way to explain how I came to be sitting in the stairwell of a hostel in Barcelona at 3am while a pastor from Brazil explained what it was like to be filled with the Holy Spirit. 

I grew up attending church, but never really remember hearing much about the Holy Spirit.  I’m sure He was there, the pastors probably even talked about Him.  But, it wasn’t until college that I would learn enough to want to learn more. 

When my college pastor preached about the Holy Spirit, I felt as though I was waking up from a deep sleep.  My faith felt more alive, more real than before and I wanted to understand and experience the gifts of the Spirit.  My friend Jessie and I asked question after question of our pastor over Chick -Fil – A sandwiches and fries.  I was most intrigued by speaking in tongues, probably because it seemed the weirdest, least in my own control, and outside of anything I had ever experienced.  

The summer of our junior year of college, Jessie accepted an internship in Bordeaux, France and we found ourselves scheming to travel. First to Barcelona and then make our way to Bordeaux as she started her summer internship.  We stayed in a hostel in Barcelona and several days into our trip we met two different travelers – Fabio and Leandro.  Fabio was from Brazil and Leandro from Venezuela and we spent a couple of days exploring Barcelona with our new friends. While walking and talking our way over the city, we learned Fabio was a pastor and Leandro was an atheist. One afternoon we sat in a park sharing our stories of faith and God and His love with Leaandro. I wonder if he ever thinks of that day and if it made an impact on his view of God.

Later that evening, after discovering that Fabio was a pastor, we brought him the same questions that swirled in our minds about the Holy Spirit and particularly about the gift of tongues.  The three of us sat huddled in the stairwell of the hostel leaning in as Fabio said in as many ways as he could, “the words are in your heart and in your mouth.  Just open your mouth and speak”.  With heads and hearts still spinning from trying to understand and dissect the gifts of the Spirit, Jessie and I fell into our bunk beds at about 3am. We missed our alarm the next morning and literally ran out the door with our suitcases for our train to Bordeaux.  We made it (barely!) and spent the train ride comparing notes, reading the Bible, searching for clues, and marveling that we had unexpectedly met someone like Fabio.

Did we ever speak in tongues or not? That’s not really the point of this story.  The point is that I thought I was chasing God.  I thought I was closing in on Him, learning more, growing closer.  And then, in His kindness and His goodness and His sovereignty, Jessie and I booked two twin beds in the same room at the same hostel that a charismatic pastor from Brazil would be staying.  And in that moment, in the stairwell, I realized that it was God who had been chasing me this entire time.  Only God could orchestrate something so perfectly – that he could use someone from another country to meet us on holiday to share something more of God’s heart with us.  

If I ever feel discouraged, or as though God is far off, I remember the way that He met the two of us through a series of extraordinary circumstances.  And remember, as Paul tells us in Ephesians 3, that God can do anything you know.  Far more than we can hope or imagine or request or dream in our wildest dreams.  

Still Little.

It must have happened right under my nose because you grow every day and yet every day feels the same.  And yet, hundreds of the same every-days must mean that nothing stays the same.

August 4, 2021
Sydney, Australia

Luke.

I looked into your eyes and caught my breath.  

In one moment I see you as a baby, a toddler, a five-year-old, and then the young man you are growing into.  

You have freckles now.  When did that happen?  

It must have happened right under my nose because you grow every day and yet every day feels the same.  And yet, hundreds of the same every-days must mean that nothing stays the same.

I pray you stay sweet and kind and compassionate. 

Just the other day, you explained to Chloe that you would both get married and wouldn’t live in the same house any longer.  You were so calm and patient and matter-of-fact about it.

I pray you would come to know God.  To love him with your whole heart and to see the world through His eyes.  

I pray that you could see yourself through my eyes.  Through God’s eyes.

And then the moment passed. 

You put on your headphones, turned on Boxcar Children and you snuggled up next to me on the couch.  Still little.  Still small.  And yet, every day a little older.

The Whole Earth is Full of His Glory

The content expresses the author’s experiences of witnessing God’s work around the world, from Nepal to Kolkata, and the decision to move to Sydney. They reflect on moments where they felt God’s clear guidance and the beauty of experiencing God’s glory in different places. The author cherishes the opportunity to show their children the vastness of God’s world.

Isaiah 6:3
“Holy, holy, holy is the Lord Almighty; the whole earth is full of his glory.”

Psalm 24:1-2
The earth is the Lord’s and all that is in it, the world, and those who live in it;
for he has founded it on the seas, and established it on the rivers.

There have been hundreds of moments that have led us to where we are today.  So many little moments and experiences and opportunities that lead us to step confidently through the door that God was opening.  And it didn’t feel forced, but it also felt as though God had so clearly swung wide the door that to not go would have felt disobedient.  

That time during worship at a conference where the Lord whispered to me, “The entire earth is mine. It’s more than what you’ve seen with your eyes.  I am going to show you more of my earth”.  

The time I backpacked into the foothills of the Himalayas and gave out radios so the Nosu people could hear stories about Jesus come across the radio waves.  In the days before our trip, God gave me a  picture of people from every nation bowing down and worshiping God – including the faces of the Nosu people.  And I clearly heard, “If you don’t go, who will”?

When my parents decided to take their 7 and 13-year-olds to the U.K. for the first time. Even as a 13-year-old, I remember stepping out of the train station in Bath, staring in wonder at how small everything seemed compared to the United States, and feeling as though I might be seeing the world as it truly was for the first time.

I remember volunteering at one of Mother Teresa’s homes for the sick and dying in Kolkata, singing the same worship song over the ladies there that nearly 10 years later I would sing over my own children at bedtime.  I saw true poverty in Kolkata for the first time and heard the Lord whisper, “Even this is mine”. 

That time God gave me a prophetic word for our guide in Germany. I nervously prayed with her and was suddenly filled with a tangible sense of God’s joy and pleasure as a woman I didn’t really know, heard that she was known and loved and had not been forgotten by God. I marveled that God was at work halfway across the world and I got to be a part of it. 

From across the United States to Jamaica to Mexico, from Nicaragua to Uganda, to China, from Great Britain and Ireland to Germany, Australia, Switzerland, from Spain to India and Costa Rica, I have learned that God is at work all over the earth.  As the Psalmist says, “The earth is the Lord’s and everything in it”.  We don’t go to bring God to these places, but we do get the joy of bearing witness to what God is doing in these corners of the world.  

It might sound different, it might smell different, it might even feel different.  But the beauty of our Father is that he is Lord over all, always at work, redeeming, creating, and breathing life into unexpected places.  And we get to witness it.

And so, when the opportunity came for us to move to Sydney, Australia for a season, it felt as though for many years, God had been laying the foundation for the decision to be “yes!”.

It felt like God was breathing life into our family’s value of travel and adventure and that we were about to be able to show our kids that God’s world is bigger than we can see as never before.  And when we saw the Pacific Ocean for the first time at the famous Bondi Beach, the kids danced with joyful abandon and Psalmist’s words came to mind, “The whole earth is full of your glory, Lord”.  

Choose to Dance

Originally Written July 2021
Sydney, Australia Lockdown

We’ve been learning about native Australian birds and their names.  There’s the Australian Ibis, with their long curved beaks, ready to steal your food at any moment.  There’s the Magpie Lark with its black and white coloring; we’ve seen some Lorikeets, with bright colors flashing in the trees, and the Cock-a-too, with their shrieks sounding an alarm as they soar overhead. 

And then, there are the brolgas.  I thought they were cranes, and they are, but specifically, they are Brolgas.  They are most known for their elaborate, energetic courtship dances and once they find their mate, they stay paired for life.

This month, I’ve been walking along the harbor and passing a fountain, with statues of dancing brolgas.  And it made me wonder a bit about the fact that there are brolgas dancing right on through lockdown.  (Both the statues and the real ones in the wild!)  And what is dancing, but a type of celebration?  We dance at weddings because we are celebrating the bride and groom.  We dance in our living rooms with our kids because it’s pure joy.  Many cultures (outside of America)  dance in worship.  King David danced before the Lord so much so that his wife told him to stop being so undignified.  And yet, he kept right on dancing.  

And here, in the midst of the hard, we get to choose to dance as a way of resistance.  We get to choose joy and celebration in the midst of the grim and depressing news headlines.  Despite the growing covid numbers, the lockdown extensions, and the disappointment, we get to dance.  And perhaps dancing looks different for each one of us.  Some of us are toe-tappers, some are county line dancers who know all the steps, still, others love partner dances, and some can abandon their entire bodies to the dance – swaying and swinging and twirling to the beat.  It doesn’t matter what it looks like, it just matters that you do it.  

In the midst of a world that feels crazy, that feels like the walls are closing in, and like Covid might have the last word, the brolgas are dancing. 

And we get to join them if we will only step out and try.