Timing. Even More Perfect Than We Thought.

It is possible to be outside of God's will and inside it at the same time.

What I mean by that is that something can be right, but not right now. We can get out of order by refusing to listen to the Holy Spirit and taking for ourselves right now what God has prepared to give us later, in His perfect timing. I am the worst at jumping the gun on God's timing.

Think about Adam and Eve.* Classic, classic mistake. Creator God came down every day to walk through Eden with them in the cool of the evening. They would literally walk and talk with God Himself. Don't you know they had amazing conversations? Can you imagine learning how everything works firsthand from the One whose infinite wisdom had breathed those things into existence? Adam and Eve weren't created knowing everything, otherwise, there would have been no temptation in the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. But God knew that the wrong knowledge, or knowledge given in the wrong order would destroy them. It was part of His plan to reveal to them everything they needed to know in a way that would continue to deepen and strengthen the relationship He had with these firstborn of creation. They were inherently dependent on Him to teach them in a similar way to how a newborn child is dependent on its parents.

Like every human being after them, Adam and Eve were susceptible to doubt and pride. Maybe God was holding out on them, they thought. Maybe there was some really amazing stuff He wasn't telling them because He didn't want them to be too much like Him. Now isn't that ironic when you think about it? How could they begin to think the very God who had crafted them in His image, the imago dei, would want to keep them from becoming like Him? Here is a perfect example of the way Satan is able to twist logic in human understanding.

So in the greatest act of betrayal in human history man and woman took the forbidden fruit, ate it and suddenly realized they knew more than they ever wanted to. In fact, they knew more than they were capable of synthesizing.

The most beautiful part of the story of creation is the story of redemption that follows it. Adam and Eve did not escape the consequences of their actions. They began a process of spiritual and physical death, they set a burden upon humanity and creation and took upon themselves a life of pain, work and unfulfilled longing. In essence, they reaped what they had sown. But God had no intention of throwing them to the wayside. He had destined them for an incredible knowledge of Himself that would lead to a beautiful relationship and He was not to be thwarted. He had already set in motion the most intricate and glorious plan of redemption so they might be restored to the knowledge and perfection He'd designed them for. For man and woman the journey to that end goal got a lot more complex and painful, but they had not fallen from the reach of grace. Grace would redeem them still.

Now my story doesn't register on nearly such an epic a scale. I'm not setting the tone for humanity. BUT this archetype points to a truth about stepping outside of God's timing. Sin–and make no mistake, usurping God's timing is sin–does not take us outside of the reach of grace. We may not have disqualified ourselves from reaching the end goal, but we have probably introduced a level of heartache and difficulty that did not need to be there. And we've also opened ourselves up to the attack of the enemy. These are the very things God wants to help us avoid.

God does not vindictively snatch away what our heart desires when we get life out of order, but He often needs to reshape our desire so that it can fit within the context of His will, His good, perfect and pleasing will. Why? because, whether we see it or not, His will is what is BEST. God always has His glory in mind and our best interest always rests inside what best displays His glory. An unwillingness to wait or work through the proper process reveals that we are not yet capable of handling, or even fully enjoying, what He wants to give us. These are tough, painful truths to walk through the process of learning, but they certainly make the prospect of grace even more saturated with hope.





*Please know I'm not suggesting this is the only or primary theme of the story of the fall. But I think this is one lesson among many we can glean from what happened in the garden. As always, I'm happy to share with you more fully where I get this from Scripture.

Restless Upon Returning

Yes, I am getting things a little out of order, but so it goes. Here are some thoughts from the moment and we will return to reflections on Africa shortly.

Back in Virginia feels like a million miles from everything and yet right in the center of where I ought to be.

Coming back reminds me of all the details yet to be worked out. Even my apartment seems to reflect this. It's perfectly functional exactly the way it is, but there are pieces still missing. So I refinish furniture and buy things to hang on the wall in what I long ago discovered to be a coping mechanism. When I can't sort life out I rearrange and clean and tweak what I can. At least my living space can look like my life has some sort of congruity.

And that's where I am. Sorting. Trying to figure out which pieces do and don't fit. What needs to be reworked, taken away or added. It's the inevitable by-product of change. Let's be honest. We all know I can get too far inside my own head. I get in there and wander around for a while and end up totally lost. Whenever I start to write more than normal you can safely bet that's what is going on. I'm wandering around again and trying to write my way out of it.

Goodbyes have the strange effect of producing restlessness. I hate them. HATE them. There have been too many in the past few weeks. What's strange is that I actually enjoy change. I like the freshness, the promise of adventure and having something new to discover. If only there were a way to solve the age-old cliche dilemma and have my cake and eat it too.

But life is full of goodbyes. That's the way it works, right? You can't cling to all that is new and old at one time or your hands get too full and you end up holding nothing at all.

I read a story today about missionary James Calvert. He went as a missionary to the cannibals of Fiji and while on the way the captain of the ship he and his coworkers traveled on tried to convince him to abandon the mission and return home. "You will lose your life," the captain said, " and the lives of those with you if you go among such savages." Undaunted, Calvert replied, "We died before we came here."

I can't help thinking that is exactly the point. We are always dying to something. What matters is choosing the right thing to die to. I love the beautiful simplicity of that. When you own nothing, there is nothing to hold you back from fulfilling the calling placed before you. This is exactly where God wants us to find ourselves, totally, completely, irrevocably dead. He reminds us that to die to ourselves is to live to Christ. It's why we nail ourselves to the cross daily in order to understand all the fullness of life. In other words, to be unafraid to say goodbye is to be wonderfully free to say hello.

Funny how much sense this doesn't make until you come on the other side of it. But from this side of the shore it makes perfect sense to have taken that route. This restlessness is nothing more than learning to put a little more of myself to death so that new growth can spring forth.

From the Pearl of Africa: The Power of Presence

Short term missions has its challenges. One of the themes of difficulty discussed much in my world lately is the propensity to abandon relationship for action.

There's a lot of pressure placed on short termers. First, you have to prove you're going to accomplish something viable in order to raise support. Second, you're spending a lot of money to spend a little time somewhere and you want to walk away able to pinpoint a discernible impact..."what I did mattered." Third, once you get home, you need to prove to people who invested time, prayer energy and money into the mission that their resources were not wasted.

None of this is necessarily a bad thing. But we need to look at it in context. Western American context says that time and energy are wasted if there are not visible, tangible results. We are goal oriented. We set goals, and once the goal is set there is pressure to meet it because we are also result oriented. Often we consider the result to be the measure of the person. Why? What you DO is often equated with who you ARE. i.e. "I do a lot for God. I am a good Christian."

I know that when I get home from a short term mission trip I had better be able to pony up some numbers. Numbers of people who made decisions. Numbers of literature distributed. It often doesn't matter what the numbers are, as long as I can neatly summarize in two sentences an entire month of blood, sweat and tears so that you know it was "amazing" and that we accomplished something.

Don't mistake my words for bitterness. This is not a diatribe. I am not bashing our culture. There is significant value in being able to quantify what has happened, of using data to help determine the effectiveness of what we are doing. But it is not the only way to measure results. We are in danger, as a church culture, of depending too heavily on data as an evidence of change. But growth cannot always be measured empirically.

What I learned in Uganda was the power of presence. Our team had work to do, and we did it, a lot of it. But we also had people to be with, to share life with for a few hours, a few days and a few weeks. Relationships are the heart of ministry in Africa. Actually, relationships are just the heart of ministry. Period. I have been the first to forget that. Sometimes time spent trying to learn a few words in a new language, or holding the hand of a child, or watching soccer with a church member, or eating with co-laborers is the most productive thing you can do. Time spent with people, knowing people and investing in people is immeasurably important.

My boss at Liberty, the incredibly wise Dr. Fanning, reminded me when I got home that we will never know the fullness of the impact of our time. God uses our genuine, messy servanthood to reap a harvest of righteousness that we can't begin to imagine.

We have numbers, don't get me wrong. We're excited about the visible work that we saw God accomplish and the very tangible ways we were able to serve. And we're excited to share those things with you. But at the end of our trip we left Uganda. The people we spent our time with remain. If we truly invested in their lives and they in ours, both of us walk away better equipped for what God brings in the future. The results of that are beyond what we can measure in numbers. They are the stuff of the Kingdom.

From the Pearl of Africa: first thoughts and what I learned about myself

These prosaic summaries are always one part reminiscing, one part therapy. I can't decide if it's more like looking at a photograph or an inkblot. Maybe it doesn't matter; the image in both is Africa.

If you know me at all it's no secret that I am a characteristically complex person. Nothing is simple. Once in a while out of the internal complexity pieces connect and something makes sense. Most of the time I feel like I'm blindly punching my way through the fog until I happen upon that rare spark of illumination. To me, life is like trying to find a thesis statement, a hinge pin that an argument can center around, the sentence that makes all the other sentences coherent. Time in Africa usually has the effect of making remarkably clear the road before me. It took some time this go round.

One of the things I struggle with most in life is finding a fit. It's a confusing place to live in ministry world when you are a young woman. Some people encourage you to take a leadership role, others say take a back seat, you're just here to support, or "get married already!" Honestly, I don't know what to do with that. I cannot be less of who I am, but I also can't be more.

My first couple weeks in Africa were especially frustrating on this front.
A. Every international mission trip I've been on before this one I went as a videographer with a specific task to accomplish. While I've been wanting to be out from behind the camera for a long time, I admit, it was a pretty good security blanket.
B. I am not an entertainer. I just don't have the personality to be a front woman, and since much of what we were doing required holding the attention of an audience of high schoolers, I felt totally ill equipped.
C. I'm a woman. Taking a leadership role in church ministry time in the African culture wasn't much of an option. And really, the couple times it was required of me I felt incredibly uncomfortable.
All of this added up to a lot of frustration early on. There's nothing quite as humbling as feeling like you have nothing to contribute to a task that weighs heavily on your heart. Meanwhile I stood by and watched Pedro admirably handle quite a workload of preparing lessons, messages and seminars, Andrew patiently wrangle a mass of children all day long and Hillary graciously maneuver through anything that was thrown her way.

It was in studying with Pedro in preparation for one of those lessons that I realized something about myself I had never seen before . . . I was inadvertently doing exactly the sort of thing I love the most. Time searching, time studying, pooling our collective resources and dialoguing, all for a common purpose, each of us finding a way to help the other better function within their gifting. One thing I have is the ability to collect, synthesize and share information on a relational level (I love you Jenny Spencer for helping me see this!) I realized that for me, having information or understanding or whatever is completely useless if it can't be shared. I was learning so much from the people I was working with and feeling like I couldn't contribute anything in return. But the truth is that there is more than one way to contribute. Sure, I can lead a devotional or coordinate a discipleship training. But I can also help guide people in the truths God has shown to me, help them communicate with each other and connect in areas of service. I can pray while you preach and ask questions so we can figure out answers.

There is no reason to complicate my life by trying to force it to be simple. Where and how I am needed will not always look the same. I will never be able to fit myself into a neatly identifiable box and that's a dang good thing. Better to be (and here's the dreaded word) flexible. Better to bring to the table whatever is needed and not need to insist on bringing what I'd prefer.

So there is photograph/inkblot/lightbulb from Africa number one.

Maybe we'll take the porch swing with us.

Rough surfaces of worn off finish replace what used to be a glossy luster. The chains are starting to show signs of rust around the edges. Tiny spider webs have multiplied in the corners. But this front porch swing is still one of my favorite places in the world. That weeping cherry tree was tiny when we moved here in August of 2000, now it completely blocks the view to the road from where I sit. I love the shade that keeps this spot ten degrees cooler. And I love feeling like I'm alone. Of course it's not really private at all. I am sitting in my front yard and I know my next door neighbor Tony is right behind me tending to his banana trees.

Tony's trees are from Puerto Rico, his homeland. Every Fall when the weather turns cool he bundles them in burlap and puts them in the basement. Every Spring, after the last frost, he brings them back out again and plants them in the sun. They are a few inches bigger than last year. Sometimes I come out and work in the yard just because Tony is working in his. Everybody loves that guy. Tony is the one who always has some new family or friends living with him. A few months ago our across-the-street neighbor from Columbia (the country, not CTown) lost his job. Tony helped him make the house payment for several months but the house got repossessed anyway and they moved out while I was in Africa. I wish I had been here to help.

The guy behind us-he's new since I left for school, and I don't know his name-always mows our back yard. I can't figure out if he really likes to mow or if he's just a nice guy. He mows it like three times a week though, so he's probably OCD and can't stand things to be uneven. He never mows the Tobin's yard, which seems strange since he can actually see more of their yard than ours from his back deck. The Tobin's are the only neighbors who have lived here longer than we have. She teaches with my mom at Zion and both of their girls went to school there. I remember when the girls were still in middle school and they would have slumber parties and try to roll our yard. It usually only took about five minutes to clean up the toilet paper.

Good memories from this front porch swing. I love having my quiet time here; there's something about being outside in the world God created, it's easier to be with him. I've discovered amazing things about him from this very spot at sunrise, midday and after the stars have taken over the sky. Almost breaks my heart to see this house go. Almost.

This house is the longest my family has lived anywhere. By the time my parents move out at the end of the month it will have been almost exactly ten years. To most people in Columbia, TN that seems like nothing. But I've moved 18 times so it matters to me. If I were to call any place on this earth home, this would be it. Funny thing about home though, it moves with you. All the memories from here will come with me after the last box is packed in the truck and the keys have been handed over to the new owners. I haven't just lived here, I've lived here. The experiences we truly live come with us, they become part of us. And I've become who I am because of the experiences and the people of this place, because of the times on this front porch swing.