The Choice

Today I got up and fed people cold cereal and other various assortment of unhealthy breakfast foods. Later I fried bacon like a short order cook from the local diner and once again filled hungry tummies for the second time of the day.

Really I was doing what I loved. Cooking and interacting with people, but in one awful moment I found myself hating it. I was tired. Physically tired and emotionally tired of just trying to be beyond perfect.

Nights of sleep had been robbed of me by my own admonition, because I had to lay awake going over the game plan in my mind of how I was going to accomplish my over the top expectations.

Stolen from me was God's perfect peace, because without realizing it I began working for man instead of God.

Each day I have a choice. Please others or God. Ultimately in fulfilling responsibilities given to me, washing dishes, babying sitting children, feeding hungry people, hanging out with some awesome girls; I can either serve God or those around me.

When I work for those around me I do my job and try to be something I'm not. Sometimes I cut corners and hope no one will notice.

I work for God and in His strength I do all I'm asked to do with excitement, because its the responsibilities God has placed before me at this time. Even if no one notices I do it all, because I know God is noticing.

Either I leave my day discouraged, because I failed miserably at my own expectations or I leave my day in awe of God's faithfulness to use a character like myself for His glory.

No matter the task given to us there is a choice given to us of whom we are going to serve and glorify in our day. Is it not so much simpler to work for one God rather then the hoards of people we think we should please perfectly?

Choose either to use yourself all by yourself and or let God use you all by Himself. Is there really a choice?

"If you and I are to be used in our sphere as D. L. Moody was used in his, we must put all that we have and all that we are in the hands of God, for Him to use as He will. " 

R.A. Torrey

Disclaimer: Thoughts inspired by a sermon delivered by my brother several years ago. It stuck in my brain and never left, thanks big bro :)

The Mark of Canada

I went on a journey that took me over miles of the northern part of our great country. Then after a few fierce questions from a stern faced border guard I was across the bolder in another land. Perhaps it didn't look any different at first then my homeland, but the culture would leave a bigger imprint on my life then I ever could have imagined. Not a day goes by where Canada doesn't drift across my brain. Sweeping my mind back to a time that was quite all bliss, but very extraordinary just the same. I think it was the team too that left a mark upon my life never to be removed. Let me tell you why.

Every other sentence has to have the word "eh" in it and when I'm not saying "eh" I'm thinking it. I must confess that I desperately try to talk in a Northern accent, but it just won't come out. Instead I find myself talking as if I wondered over from England and lost my way back home. Ahem.

I chop up salad and remember chopping up salad so many times for our meals while in Canada. We were a bit over ambitious in the vegetable shopping and so the veggies were plentiful at each meal. Interestingly enough the chocolate chip cookies ran out before the veggies did.

Whenever I crave a spot of tea I remember late night tea parties and how we managed to solve the worlds problems while sipping tea out of disgraceful paper cups. Well maybe we just solved a few of the world's problems or maybe more our own personal pet peeves about certain situations. Cough. Cough.

Carrots. You simply would not believe how amusing carrots can be. How they ever made you dissolve into gales of laughter? Have you only stopped laughing because your sides hurt? Really I'm being honest carrots are simply the most hilarious things ever. Yes, I did come back in my right mind from Canada.

Libraries are great place for parties you know and the more rumbustious and annoying you are the better.  Whoever said libraries were only for quietness, so you could whisper sweet nothings was quite wrong.

There are so many more moments of amusement we enjoyed on our trip, but I'm afraid if I shared them all on here, I really would appear to have lost my mind in its entirety. I think I would bore you to tears if I went on a long exposition about re fried beans and Black Widows.  Let's just say we had a good time, a very good time.

bikers and red faces

Please don't ask me how it happens, but inevitably it seems embarrassing moments follow me around like college students chasing after free food. I love my friends words  that have become my personal motto, "embarrassment is a choice". Some how though when your face is an unnatural color of red its hard to convince people your not embarrassed.

Really its just the sun and the fact that my skin is pale so sometimes it is just red. Arguing with someone that your not embarrassed can make the situation even more embarrassing, so sometimes its best to just laugh uproariously as if you meant to do that silly deed on purpose. Everyone always enjoys a clown. The downfall of that endeavor sometimes is that everyone becomes embarrassed for you when you should be embarrassed yourself, but I digress.

The other day I was babysitting two very adorable children. Their mother and I were in need of some coffee and nourishment because even the most adorable of children can cause enough action to put their care takers in need of a triple shot of espresso. I was doing my best at keeping the children controlled I mean happily entertained when the little girl decides to make friends with the leather clad biker.

Naturally the biker is quite taken by the attention of this delightful creature and makes several comments about this to me. Smiling I nod my head and I keep nodding my head as the biker tells me how cute she is just her mom. I'm still smiling and agreeing with him when suddenly I'm filled with horror as I realize the child's mother is across the room and the remark is directed to me. Sputtering I hastily point out that the child does not belong to me and gesture frantically told her mother. The biker just smiles and insists that he was talking to me. Air conditioning has probably made the room cold enough to be a walk in refrigerate, but I'm feeling quite warm and feel relieved when the said man heads off on his bike.

How is it one day people ask me when I'm going to graduate from high school and the next day they ask me about my children? Such a silly unsure world we live in. Sometimes I'm not sure if I produce embarrassing moments or the people around me do.

Me blame shift? Never!

Ministry: What it is.

Emptiness, I never knew that it smelled, but when I walked into the dorm that hadn’t been occupied for three months I knew what emptiness smelled liked. Staleness reeked the room as much as the echoes of bare rooms rocketed about the empty dorm. It’s a weird feeling to be in place that you don’t really feel like you belong, yet is to be your home. College graduates do not make their home in cold dorm rooms, no they go into the world and make their path. 

Apparently I missed that memo, because this fall I’m moving back into a college dorm as if I never walked the stage with diploma in hand three months ago. I’m not doing it to take classes and no in case you were wondering I wasn’t failed either. In fact homework and I will probably keeping a nice distance from each other for quite a while.  Instead I will be busy in the kitchen cooking meals and focusing on spending time with the girls as an assistant dean.

When I was asked to stay at the school and work after graduation. Thousands of thoughts raced through my mind. Maybe that was why it took over four months for me to give a honest answer. Seriously some how you expect that when you have graduated from college that you will go far from the college and do great things. Cooking meals and supervising homework laden girls in the same school you just graduated from really doesn’t seem all that spectacular.

What if  I were to tell you though I was going abroad. Going to a college in China to be their cook and to live in a college dorm and mentor the girls. Wouldn’t that sound wonderful? Would you not think that was a good and noble ministry? I know I would, so why is it when the ministry comes to you in a very unexpected and seemingly most unexpected way do you question if it really is a ministry?

Some how I have this impression in my mind that ministry must be different and exotic then anything I have ever done before. I forget that ministry is the first person you see in the morning, even if it is your mother. Ministry is the way you live life. Ministry is building up those around you serving them as Christ so humbly did for us.

For me ministry will be feeding hungry people and hopefully keeping them from having food poisoning. Ministry for me will be encouraging girls in their walk with the Lord as they fight the insane jungle of college life. Probably this is not the ministry you were called too. No your ministry is described quite differently then mine because God called you to it not me. God is equipping you for your unique ministry just like He is going to give me the power to do whatever comes my way.

Please do not tell me I’m doing this job because I was  too scared  to do anything else. The closer I get to my first day the more terrified I become. Really being put in two positions of responsibility is the most daunting thing in the world to me.

God’s grace will carry me. Just like it did my freshmen year when I nearly quit at Christmas break. Grace brought me back for a second year when I didn’t want too and Grace took me through my senior year. When I knew I had to yes to this job, but wasn’t sure if I could God removed the fear and gave peace.

Adventures are awaiting me and I’m following the God who has taken me through all the adventures before. 

What the North did to Me

One week ago I stood under the darkened sky in the backwoods of Canada taking the crisp air of our last night in the North. Stars twinkled over a tiny village of 600 people. Beautiful were the stars, but the lives of many of the village people were anything but beautiful. Ugly and harsh seemed was the world of these people.

 Tonight as I sit in my comfortable air conditioned living room I wonder about the little girl with the spunky smile. She was the one who told me how her mother almost killed herself with a shotgun. Those words smoothly spilled off her lips as if she was telling me her favorite color.  When  darkness began to fall I asked if maybe she should go home so her mother wouldn’t worry. No she told me it didn’t matter because her mother was drinking and she never went home when her mother was drunk and no she wouldn’t go to her father’s either because likely he would be just as drunk. Young, but not too young to manage her own accommodations for the night. Old enough to know that she better stay away from her parents when they were drinking for her own safety.

The little child knew so much, yet seemed so astounded when I told her how God had actually made man out of dirt. I wonder if when she is around her intoxicated parents if she will remember there is a great and powerful God who loves her more than anything else? Will she remember the American who hugged her tight and listened to her stories?

The next morning we packed our embarrassment of American riches into our cars. Onto the dirt road we drove leaving the little tiny village in the dust. Maybe all of my belongings made it out of the village, but a piece of my heart didn’t. Part of me broke when I journeyed North, never to be put together the same way again.

How can you sleep at night when you know there are children with silver toothed smiles who are cowering under their blankets trying to shut out frightful dreams? How do you go to church and fellowship with other believers when you know there is a lonely missionary couple longing for the sweet fellowship of other believers? How do you pick up the phone and talk to your parents when you know so many children are begging for their parents to love them?

Fix it. Do something. Give money. Write letters. Do anything. Try and do everything you possible can to make the lives of these people better, but you can’t do everything.

God will be there when those children can’t sleep at night because of unspeakable nightmares. God is there with the missionary couple who watch the fruit grow all too slowly. God is there when a drunken parent slaps their child.

I want to do everything, but in the end I have to trust God knowing He is the one who can and will do everything. Difficult….yes, but there is no other way but to trust in the One who is control.

A few days showed me things I never knew and it showed me how to trust God like never before.