I'm all cozied up at the Starnes' tonight, because sometimes I just need to remember what it feels like to be part of a family in a house full of people...so I get in my car and come here for a night or so. I've spent the day working on various to-do list items, and now the house is quiet and all the littles are in bed. I went out and got some wood, started a fire, brewed a cup of peppermint tea, and sat down with a new book. I finished Wobegon earlier today. I left home yesterday knowing I'd probably finish it so I tossed the next book in my purse just for good measure. There's always reading to be done. I'm about a fifth of the way through now, and I am absolutely convinced you need to read this book. It is a collection of essays, compiled by Hope Through Healing Hands, and it was given to me at the Mobilizing Medical Missions conference last weekend when I attended a seminar on Healthy Timing and Spacing of Pregnancy in the Developing World. The essays are written by men and women from vast and varied callings, occupations, and places in the world--all uniting under one banner: Worldwide Maternal and Infant Health. Jim Wallis, Jenny Allen, Natalie Grant, Tony Campolo, Rachel Held Evans, Jennifer Nettles, Jimmy Carter, Desmond Tutu...the list approaches fifty unique voices and writing styles. As a future midwife, I have a unique calling into the world of maternal and infant health, but I believe each of us is called to care about this issue, no matter our other unique callings or occupations. One of my greatest passions is teaching & mobilizing. I have this constant nagging voice that says you can help a few--maybe a thousand--but if instead you teach & mobilize a few--a thousand--to teach a few, a thousand more...the impact will be a million-fold. So when I read David Steven's essay "Transforming the World," I got so excited. He and one nurse convinced a few local Kenyan volunteers to become Community Health Leaders. They were then each asked to recruit 7 volunteers to be trained under them, to go into the villages (each volunteer covered 100 huts) and encourage every household to change FIVE behavioral health practices (build a latrine, eliminate standing water, immunize their children, space their pregnancies, and have a source of clean water). The organization now reaches a million people through local volunteer efforts and has SINGLEHANDEDLY eliminated many of the preventable diseases Dr. Stevens was treating in his mission hospital just five years ago. You guys. We do not have to be paralyzed by the needs in the world. Get your feet wet Upstream, roll in the mud a little Downstream--we need people of all kinds in both places. The one place we are forbidden by God is the place of indifference. When the earthquake stuck Haiti in 2010, hundreds of thousands of people were killed and 1.5 million people were made homeless. The downstream people raced around Port-au-Prince in all sorts of fashion and many others flew in from all ends of the earth. And they did what they could to help injured people strewn all over Port. And the upstreamers sat at home or in their university offices and determined that the earthquake DIDN’T really kill people and make them homeless. They determined that bad construction, faulty zoning, widespread corruption, and a feudal land owning system were the culprits. We have such immense resources at our disposal, and I'm not merely talking financial/tangible resources. We have educated minds; the ability to make choices; encouragement and support systems that enable us to keep going when the going gets tough. These are intangible resources that people in developing nations often go without. Most of the time, they want to help their own people--they are plenty motivated. If we can teach them how, and give them the resources to do it, they will. They're humans just like us--what they lack is not character, stamina, willpower, or diligence. Many times, they simply lack the knowledge (education) of how to improve their conditions; many other times, they lack adequate tangible resources. To illustrate this point, I'll share an excerpt from Jenni Allen: I have a good friend named FeeFee in Haiti. She pops popcorn every day for her kids. I pop popcorn for my kids when they come home from school. She pops popcorn and sells it bag by bag for her kids to be able to go to school. FeeFee's kids don't need sponsorship. She's taking are of them. What FeeFee needs is not for us to come in and rescue her with our money. That we have an opportunity to be a part of sustainable and worthwhile solutions excites me. However, when I think of all the different sorts of lives I could live in the next 70 years, there is one that seems to keep threatening to wrap its tangly tentacles around my soul: The Life of Comfort, with The {The Illusion of} Safety. Pretty soon, I'll be making a decent living. I'll have a lot of options regarding how I do life. My prayer is that I never settle into comfort and that when I do, God will make me uncomfortable very quickly. Comfort is my idol, and it's a subtle one.
But extravagant love isn't usually very comfortable. It looks a lot like loving enemies and risking humiliation and embracing the fact that the world is NOT safe and that my life is not more valuable than my neighbor's. I saw Bob Goff a few times last weekend, and he kept reminding us: "You don't save people to Jesus. Jesus saves people to Jesus." THAT is freeing me. Jesus saves people. Period. All my little boxes of safety and comfort and saying the right things at the right times--I can be free from all of that. I don't have to worry. I'm asked to love extravagantly, sacrificially, and then wait for Jesus Christ Himself to open blind eyes and soften hard hearts. And so, I am free to live on mission and to make a dent in the preventable problems plaguing our kind. So are you. I think if we start with Mothers (and I believe every woman, childless or childbearing, has a Mother's heart), we'll watch a world of healing unfold begin to grow...igniting Life.
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I thought about writing on here last night. But the things I wanted to say still felt too fresh and vulnerable to send out into the World, so instead I sat quietly on my bed and penned some things in the Leather Book. It’s a good book, that one. A safe place for all my words that don’t quite make sense, yet. And sometimes when I read back through its pages, the once-nonsensical words become sensible and I can see how the whole puzzle was put together. But a lot of times, they still feel like untethered and unfound pieces of a 5,000 piece jigsaw that will only be completed when the Kingdom Comes...and maybe not even then. They sound desperate and angry and like...Psalms. “Oh Lord, I am having such a hard time. Where are you? Can you hear me? Please send help.” Was that not the frequent cry of the Psalmist? Of Job? of Joseph? Of the Israelites? Moses? Paul? Those of us who weep are in good company. So now that all my heart-words are safe in that Book over there on my dresser, I can come here and share a bit publicly. I feel safe, here, typing into my OmmWriter--the click-click-click typewriter sound of the keys playing as these letters flow. The candles are lit: the ambiance under which I both write and shower. I guess that makes sense--both writing and showering are cleansing acts of self-therapy, and so it’s fitting to have both tasks backlit by the same light source. Writing/Showering by candlelight. Same/Same. The flames are a continuous reminder that it only takes one little light to fight back Darkness. Flickers of hope are many. And yet, I am in a Sad Spot. I’m not quite sure how long it’s been, but I’ve been on the verge of tears throughout my days lately. Not tears like the weeping kind--though there have been those--but the kind of tears that roll silently down flushed cheeks. The kind that get you all choked up so that you can only talk in a whisper and even then mostly just say “i can’t talk about it.” I’m not sure why The Sadness is here, but I’m guessing it’s a combination of things. The Holiday season is holy and beautiful, but it’s also Hard for many. The air is thin with excitement and bustle and decorations and gifts, and under all thinness--just beneath the surface--I can feel the thick air of Sadness...Loss...Regret...Despair. The thin layer of sparkle and shine feels so fragile, like it could burst at any second and we’d all find ourselves down on our knees with our faces buried into tear-soaked carpeting--longing...missing...reminiscing on Years Past...on What Could Have Been...on What Could Be...on What Was. I sit in church and listen to Pastor talk about how Advent prepares our hearts for the coming of Christ, and I feel all these people next to and beside and behind and in front of me--and all those I carry in my heart by the minute--buckling under the weight of the burdens they carry, desperate as they wait in Hope for the coming of the King whose "yoke is easy and burden is light." And I think to myself...well, come He did. And there the Jews stood with their heavy burdens and He told them if they wanted to follow Him they’d have to pick up crosses. And here we are, 2,000 years later, and the burdens sure as heck don’t seem any lighter and we’re walking around with our backs breaking and hearts crushed because life entails more Loss than any of us can really bear. The refugees are still running from reigns of terror, and heads are still rolling, and families are still fighting and breaking, and people are still getting shot, and wars are still raging, and breakups are still happening, and there is still estrangement between mothers and daughters, and we still have hard hearts and refuse to self-reflect, and the people He came to save are still outright rejecting Him, and WE’RE ALL STILL PRETTY DARN SAD, SO WHAT GIVES? It’s been a few weeks now since I wrote a Very Sad Letter. I write a lot of letters, to a lot of people, but once in while life brings occasion for a Necessary Letter, and those are always really hard. They’re the letters that feel like a punch in the gut when I write them, and every time I reread them, and when I hand them to their Reader. I’ve written very few in my twenty-two years, and they’ve all been written for different reasons and at different times, but the effect is always the same. Sadness. Loss. Brokenness. This one, in particular, was a real kicker. It stemmed from a choice I needed to make about who I would declare King over my life: God or Myself. Submit my will to His or choose my will above all else? It’s a decision we all need to make, in every situation and many times a day, but sometimes it has very tangible and clear consequences. This was one of those times. Obedience is not easy, and I’m not sure God ever said it would be. And there’s always the question of whether I’m actually walking in Obedience, but I think most of the time all I can ask of myself is do whatever it seems the Next Right Thing is and then continue to walk forward in that decision. With many decisions like this one, Sadness is a natural consequence. I’m never sure how long it will last, but I’m always strangely thankful for its presence. Sadness is a good companion, albeit a teary one. It reminds me that I am capable of feeling loss--and therefore capable of feeling Love. It gives me a place to reminisce on Happier Times and realize that whatever, whoever, I lost is worth my emotional energy. It invites me to slow down and sit with my feelings, instead of trying to analyze and explain them away. It's stubborn and tells me it's here to stay for a while, so I might as well serve it a cup of hot tea and invite it in by the fire. Sadness is sort of cozy--like a heavy blanket wrapping me up on the couch while snow falls outside the windows. But Sad Seasons are hard for me. They make me resent myself. “This is not Jordan! The real Jordan is bubbly and happy and chipper and always always hopeful. Eternally hopeful. The real Jordan smiles without faking it and speaks articulately and processes verbally and digs deeply. The real Jordan knows All Shall be Well and All Shall be Well and All Manner of Things Shall be Well and so she flits around and offers long bear hugs and kneads cinnamon roll dough...happily!” And yet I’m reminded that this is all me...all of me. I’m sometimes hopeless. I cry a lot. I like curling up under covers. I only like talking to people half the time. Maybe forty percent of the time. I’m good at socializing for two hours, max. I write a lot and think a lot and write more. And I sleep nine hours a night. I don’t do well with change, and I don’t do well in cities. I have a desperate need to be fully known and be loved in and FOR my fullness. I let people’s stories break my heart, and I usually fall quickly and deeply into friendships and relationships when I want them badly enough. Other times, it takes months to break out of my shell and decide to maybe try new friendship on for size. I’m terrified of being run away from. I live in two spectrums: showing people all of myself or being a shell of me. I like spending all day getting ready to put on a fancy dress and then changing into sweats within three hours of zipping it up. In essence, Sad Seasons are hard because I don't like feeling so burdened, and I don't like not being able to answer the WHY?? and WHEN??? questions. Thinkers need their questions answered, and the more I learn and know and ask, the more questions I have, and there are less answers of which I'm sure. But then, maybe, we acquire less and less of a need for cognitive closure the more we grow. Maybe true growth, in so many areas, means less answers. Maybe as we grow, the necessity for specific answers becomes reduced--we begin to realize how small we really are and how great, big, mysterious, and magical the world really is (Paraphrase of a Tim Kressin caption). Just a tangential thought. These seasons also make me quiet, and thoughtful, which isn’t usually a very good combination for a deeply analytical verbal processor. I’m told being analytical is one of my defense mechanisms, and maybe it is. I sometimes think that if I can just think and process and critique my way through something, I won’t have to bow to my feelings or listen to what they’re telling me to do. Using my brain feels much safer and wiser than using my heart. Usually, I use my heart first and then my brain comes later, and the decisions my brain makes make my heart Sad. Usually peaceful, but Sad. And so, all this has got me thinking long and often about those for whom the Holiday Season is hard, and sad. A friend whose daddy died earlier this year posted a picture of she and her parents on Instagram tonight, and I felt like someone punched the world in the stomach. How is she supposed to spend CHRISTMAS without her DADDY?!? And my cousins and sweet Aunnie are spending yet another Christmas without my Uncle Greg, and there is dysfunction on both sides of my family, and many in my extended family do not know Jesus, and both my own daddy’s parents are now dead, and there are refugees who don’t even have a country to call home, let alone a roof over their head, who are giving birth in tents in the snow, and it just seems that a lot of people are feeling a lot of Darkness these days. But then there’s the Christmas music. That speaks of sleigh rides through pure white snow; of families gathered cozy 'round chestnut-roasting fires; of bundling up with the one you love when it’s cold outside; of building snowmen named Frosty and believing in a reindeer with a red nose. And through all the thinly veiled happily heart-swelling music, there is an underlying note that says all is not yet Right, but we are waiting...desperately waiting...for Someone to come make it so. And there’s this one ancient carol that sings O ye beneath life's crushing load, and I weep.
I look at my candles, flickering here in the dark, illuminating the room where I sit in my Sadness, and I remember that a King has come and is coming. He’s a King who invites us to rest, because His yoke is easy and His burden is light. It is because He said it is. He’s a King who didn’t come and Fix All Our Sadness but instead experienced it with us so He could say: “I get it. I feel your pain, and I took on your death for you. I am working, and I am making all things new. And I am coming back.” And so, though our forms bend low beneath life’s crushing loads; though we toil slowly and unendingly with painful steps; the golden hour is near. We can rest in our Sadness in the midst of our waiting, because the Angels are singing. Our King has come and is coming back and so we wait in hope. Because Hope is all we have when the world turns dark and we long for the Light to return to our chilly bones and weary souls. We must continue to carry the torch--to hold fast to the flickering flames of the miracles in our every day lives. The singular warm and radiant flames dance and whisper He's come; He's coming; He's coming back soon. Light the first Advent candle and hold onto the Hope--the Hope that's been held and carried by forms bent low for thousands of years. We are being held. And so, even still, we wait... & our Faith and Hope will carry us through. |
hey, i'm jordan.wife to one, mama to four, bible-believing christian. Archives
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