Ann Voskamp's Blog, page 114
October 22, 2018
When Welcoming the Stranger Changes Your Own World
When Shawn Smucker agreed to meet a Syrian refugee named Mohammed at his local refugee agency in order to write and share his story, neither of them knew they had arrived in each other’s lives just in time. Neither knew the conversations they would have, the ways their families would come together, that this stranger would become a true friend. For all of us wondering how to respond to the refugee crisis we see on the news and in our own backyards, Shawn shares his deeply personal story—and Mohammad’s—to help us consider what it means to truly love our neighbors across cultural, political, and even religious divides. It’s an honor to welcome Shawn to tell his story on the farm’s front porch today…
The stories of other people are always hidden from us at first, waiting in the shadows.
They are tentative, skittish things, these hidden tales, frightened of what might become of them if they step out into the light.
When I first met Mohammad, there were things I never could have guessed about him, things I never could have imagined.
The man rides his motorcycle through the Syrian countryside, his wife and four sons somehow balanced on the bike with him. He has received a tip that his village will soon be bombed. Their combined weight wobbles the motorcycle from side to side, and he shouts at them to hold still, hold still.
The man sits quietly on a friend’s porch, drinking very dark coffee, watching bombs rain down on his village miles away. “That was your house,” he says, then, ten minutes later, “I think that one hit my house.” He takes another sip of coffee. His children play in the yard.
The man walks through the pitch-black Syrian wilderness, his family in a line behind him. He can feel the tension in his wife, the fear in his older boys. Someone ahead shouts, “Get down!” and they all collapse into the dust, holding their breath, trying to keep the baby quiet. There is the taste of dirt. There are rocks digging into his body. There is the sound of his boys, afraid, so far from home.
“Abba,” they whimper. “Abba.”
There are nearly 6,000 miles between Mohammad’s hometown and Lancaster, Pennsylvania. There are dozens of other countries he could have been relocated to. Hundreds of other cities.
Before I even knew him, he called me friend.
Yet somehow he came here, less than a mile from my house, to the area where my ancestors have lived for the last 250 years.
What are the odds of these crossings?
*****
I thank Mohammad through a translator for his willingness to meet me here in a strange country even when he does not know what telling his story might lead to.
“It may very well be that nothing will come of our time together,” I say. “But I would like to help you tell your story.”
The translator echoes my words to Mohammad in his own language, and he smiles and nods and answers in Arabic. My translator smiles and nods again, and turns to me.
“Mohammad says it is impossible for nothing to come of this. He is glad you are willing to hear his story, and no matter what happens, you are friends now. That is all that matters.”
The words catch me off guard. I pause, aware of my own breathing.
I thought this Middle Eastern man would be more skeptical about me. I thought he, a Middle Eastern Muslim, would see me, a white, western, Christian man, as a potential enemy. But he accepts me without reservation, almost instantly. His quick willingness to befriend me puts me off balance.
Friend. I wonder what he thinks when he says that word, and perhaps for the first time ever, I wonder what the word means to me.
Am I a good friend? My life is fairly isolated, dedicated mostly to my wife and children.
Do I know what the word friend means?
I clear my throat, try to think of questions to ask. “Mohammad, can you tell me about your village?” I ask him. “Can you tell me about how you got to the United States?”
Bilal relays the question, and Mohammad looks up at me. He smiles a sad smile.
“I love Syria. No one ever wants to leave their home. But we had no choice.”
*****
When I set out to write Mohammad’s story a year ago, I thought it would perhaps be an action-adventure tale following a Syrian family through bombs and bullets to an inner-city US neighborhood that persecuted them for being Muslim. I thought it might be the tale of how a middle-aged man in search of meaning helped a Syrian family find the American dream.
Instead, something happened inside of me.
My belief that refugees have little to offer was crushed.
My belief that they need my help more than they need my friendship was brought low.
My deep-seated, hidden concern that every Muslim person might be inherently violent or dedicated to the destruction of the West was exposed and found to be false.
The story I planned to write and the story I have actually written are as dissimilar as the relationship I thought I would have with Mohammad and the one I actually have.
When I decided to reach out to Mohammad, when I decided to “help,” I envisioned taking his family food or finding them furniture they needed or emailing him the address of the DMV.
The help I was prepared to offer was help given at arm’s length, aid that would cost me perhaps a tiny bit of time and maybe a few dollars but not much more than that.
But I, not Mohammad, needed more than that. Actually, it turns out we both needed the same thing. We both needed a friend.
*****
Who is my neighbor?
Friendship is such a strange, unexpected thing. It can creep up on you when you least expect it, from the least likely places. I never could have imagined I’d become friends with a Syrian man from 6,000 miles away, a Muslim man whose children call him Abba.
In the last year, Mohammad has changed my life in ways difficult to explain or describe. The coffee, the drives to Philadelphia, the chats on my front porch.
There’s one thing I know for sure.
If you insert me into the story of the good Samaritan, I’m not only the good Samaritan; I’m not only the one who stopped to help.
I’m also the man lying along the side of the road, beaten down.
I’m the one dying from selfishness and hypervigilance and fear.
The role of the good Samaritan, in a role reversal I couldn’t have seen coming, has been taken on by Mohammad.
Before I even knew him, he called me friend.
Shawn Smucker is the author of the novels The Day the Angels Fell and The Edge of Over There. He lives with his wife and six children in Lancaster, Pennsylvania.
Shawn’s new memoir Once We Were Strangers: What Friendship with a Syrian Refugee Taught Me about Loving My Neighbor is a deeply personal story of two fathers hoping for the best, two hearts seeking compassion, two lives changed forever. It’s the story of our moment in history—and the opportunities it gives us to show love and hospitality to the sojourner in our midst.
Read this book and let your own eyes and heart be opened wider.
[ Our humble thanks to Baker for their partnership in today’s devotion ]
The post When Welcoming the Stranger Changes Your Own World appeared first on Ann Voskamp.
October 20, 2018
Only the Good Stuff: Multivitamins for Your Weekend [10.20.18]
Happy, happy, happy weekend!
Some real, down in the bones JOY to celebrate today! Links & stories this week 100% guaranteed to make you smile a mile wide & believe like crazy in a Good God redeeming everything — and that there’s love everywhere & for ((you))!
Serving up only the Good Stuff for you right here:
Shannon @wanderingnotlost_
Shannon @wanderingnotlost_
Shannon @wanderingnotlost_
just captivated by all this wonder right here: glory, glory, glory
how they’re teaching their students about empathy? kinda brilliant
love this! This tiny pizzeria has served over 142,000 slices to the homeless
a college that’s helping single moms pursue their dreams, with help, support, and so much more
“I’ve learned that everyone has their own baggage…and we come here to work through it and build our futures”
The Joy of Overlooking an Offense just, thank you, @ScottyWardSmith
because he believes: life is life
“sometimes when no one is looking and people do the right thing? It kinda shows who they really are”
what this young cancer survivor selflessly did with her ‘Make-a-Wish’?
“I thought, ‘While I have the resources, why not make a difference now?’”
so excited about this new Bible and humbled to be a small part:
The (in)courage Devotional Bible, CSB is an invitation for all women to find their stories within the tapestry of the greatest Story every told–God’s Story of Redemption.
Featuring 312 devotions written by 122 writers from the incourage.me community, each fits within one of ten reading plans that offer themes such as the SCARED BRAVE, BEAUTIFUL BROKENNESS, BETTER TOGETHER and more.
Karl Clifton-Soderstrom
cheering wildly: there’s a new program at this maximum-security prison outside of Chicago.
“I’ve been inside prison for seventeen years and in Stateville for three…but I am learning in class that there’s strength in being vulnerable.”
Justin Gallegos, a runner at Oregon with cerebral palsy, thought he was just finishing another cross country race. Little did he know who was waiting at the end of the finish line…
never, ever give up.
The Justice Conference is one of the largest biblical and social justice platforms, bringing together speakers and artists into gatherings designed to catalyse emerging works of justice around the world. And this farmgirl is just so humbled and grateful to be speaking at these events:
This week, I’ll be on my way to Australia for the Just Women Conference in Sydney and Melbourne. Just Women is an inspiring and beautiful event for woman who are passionate about making a God-shaped response to injustice.
And if you’re in Sydney or Melbourne, I’d love you to join me for an evening as we dig deep into our call to cross-centred hospitality and what this looks like in the face of big, global issues of injustice.
And at the end of next week, on the 27th, I’ll be speaking at The Justice Conference Netherlands in Barneveld, Netherlands. You can get more information on that event here.
always grateful for his teaching: The True Meaning of Success
so who knew!? this is the world’s largest thank you note…
love this! She Shaped Me: 10 Exemplars of Faith
Christian leaders reflect on the women from history who’ve influenced them
she’s sharing some good, good words for those trying to survive in today’s culture
How churches can better serve those who are single
she’s really on to something here: collecting what hospitals discard to help others around the world
Andris Barbans
Andris Barbans
Andris Barbans
come along for a virtual tour of Iceland?… just so beautiful
he opened his ‘house’ to everyone who needed a place to stay during the storm – so much good right here #BeTheGift #TheBrokenWay
Grieving mom brings strangers to tears with this act of kindness
kinda undone: this middle school football team? perfectly executed a most life-changing play…
He shares his story of his life from a criminal to a respected chef – and the power of potential in all of us
Survivor stories: Felicia Sanders on surviving the Charleston church shooting
“I was left here to tell my story to let the world know that God is real, God is real. If I can change a white supremacist’s life, somebody who’s thinking about going to shoot up a school or shoot up a church or shoot anyone, if I can change one or two of their lives, it’ll be worth it.” please don’t miss this one?
Post of the week from these parts here
when life gets a bit dark, try this secret
Stand firmly on the promises of His truth
weelittlehouse
melissag99
How do you live a genuinely abundant life?
In sixty vulnerably stories, the tender invitation of The Way of Abundance moves you through your unspoken broken — into the abundant life.
Pick up your own Way to Abundance & start your journey to the abundant life
on repeat this week: Nobody Loves Me Like You Love Me, Jesus
… there might not be a bone in your body that wants to deal today.
And the kids might be darn grumpy today or you’ll get to church & then it’s somebody else’s kids falling apart & the pastor’s had a hard week & he’s winging it a bit & it’s all falling flatter than he’d care to admit.
And you’re straggling in feeling, honestly, a bit disheveled & bruised from a week that’s got you swinging on the end of a fraying, thin thread of faith alone, and it doesn’t matter if you’re wearing your brokenness bold for the world to see today, or if this is the week you, or anybody else, has it all together & is burying the brokenness under pressed & ironed clothes —
Every single one of us is The Busted who need a space of grace, every single brave, beautiful one of us is The Busted who need a space at the table to feast on great platters of grace & heaping dishes of mercy & brimming pitchers of hope, even for us.
Believe it: Our most meaningful purpose can be found exactly in our most painful brokenness. Brokenness happens in a soul so the power of God can happen in a soul.
By His beautiful, tender love — you are being beautifully, tenderly, made whole — wholly like Him…
So, let it happen, this swinging open of the doors of the sanctuaries, this making the Table longer, this laying out a spread of grace — The Busted who are the Beloved just coming together for a washing of wounds and a communion of refreshment and endless draughts of great grace.
[excerpted from our little Facebook family … come join us each day?]
That’s all for this weekend, friends.
Go slow. Be God-struck. Grant grace. Live Truth.
Give Thanks. Love well. Re – joy, re- joy, ‘re- joys’ again
Share Whatever Is Good.
The post Only the Good Stuff: Multivitamins for Your Weekend [10.20.18] appeared first on Ann Voskamp.
October 19, 2018
How to Make Peace with Daily Bread
There was a time Shannan Martin thought her hair would turn gray in the farmhouse at the end of a long, gravel lane. She believed her job was to pursue safety and comfort. Back then she didn’t know suffering comes with hidden gifts, or that God’s “more” for her family was going to look like “less.” These days, her ordinary, neighborhood life is a mashup of the magic found when we draw a wider circle around who we call “family” and learn to live in meaningful proximity with the people near us. The Ministry of Ordinary Places is a new pair of glasses meant to help us see God’s goodness everywhere. It is an invitation to get low to the earth we stand on and take note; to search for the lonely, the hurting, the overlooked, and wave them in. The abundant life is a collision of surrender and surprise. It will exhaust and exhilarate us, but it will also show us the face of Jesus, lined with laughter, tracked with tears, bold and weary, waiting to set us free. It’s a grace to welcome Shannan to the farm’s front porch today…
It was a typical Tuesday when my neighborhood finally snapped awake.
We’d been restless for a while, walking bleary-eyed through the occasional warmer days, grinning sleep-drunk and grateful before slinking back into hibernation when the sky returned to steel.
Maybe it was the puffy clouds, or the fact that a seventy-degree day in early May in northern Indiana is measured on a weighted scale.
Whatever the case, for the first time in months, everyone seemed to be outside.
Driving back from dropping my son Calvin off at tae kwon do practice, I spotted the two of them running down the sidewalk toward me, my heart surging with a familiar blip of relief.
When one of my adult neighbor-friends steps back into the picture after an extended time away, it’s often under bleak circumstances.
The kids are different.
They chased my van, ponytails whipping, mouths wide, banging on my window before I had even turned off the engine. Their version of catching up was a freight train of crosstalk, a fight against chickadees, nuthatches, and each other for my attention.
They filled me in on everything I’d missed when the world was frozen and quiet: moves, trouble at school, a freshly broken arm. “She broke it last week, and the next day she got popular!” one of them said, gesturing toward her friend’s blue cast, already dingy looking and covered in ink.
After twenty minutes spent catching up, my mind drifted to the pot of stock simmering on my stove top. It was five fifteen, and I had to be somewhere by six. The weeknight shuffle stops for no man, no child, no early crack of spring. The girls ignored my attempt at a polite exit and followed me inside, no invitation necessary. That night, the soup I stirred was extra funky. I wasn’t even sure how to pronounce it, and they were both highly intrigued and more than a little repelled.
We talked about this and that, the two of them as light and giggly as every ten-year-old should be.
Without thinking a thing about it, I opened the fridge to grab another ingredient.
And they both lost their minds.
I’ve seen the show Hoarders before, though not on purpose. It doesn’t strike me as dignified or even as a particularly helpful sociological study. It seems more like a cheap opportunity to use the poor, the estranged, and those suffering with mental illness as entertainment. Just one more way to normalize our own failures. “I’m not that bad.”
It makes my stomach hurt.
Guess what else makes it hurt? Watching two young girls gasp over how much food I have in my fridge. Realizing I am a hoarder in my own socially accepted way.
Generally, when I detect even a shred of discomfort in the air, I do whatever I can to diminish it. Often, the fastest way to diffuse what I perceive as a mounting power imbalance is vigorous defensiveness. I am not better than you. I do not have that much more. I am not wealthy. I am not spoiled. Trust me.
That evening was no different.
I found myself making excuses, which only made matters worse. “I got groceries two days in a row! We needed everything! People eat a lot of food!”
I got groceries.
Two days in a row.
We needed everything.
People eat a lot of food.
Meanwhile, they were still telling short stories about what they usually had in their refrigerators and how they had never seen a fridge that full.
Sometimes the bread I’m sent just isn’t the bread I want.
Not once.
“Maybe they’re that full at a restaurant, but I don’t know . . .” one of them said.
Bearing witness to lack constantly exposes my abundance in ways I find inconvenient and uncomfortable, particularly since I’m inclined to believe, despite all the evidence closing in around me, that I still don’t have enough.
I’m a human. A middle-class, white American. I live in a place where most people struggle and where life leans toward survival.
And I still keep getting it wrong. I keep wanting more and bemoaning what I already have.
God promises daily bread but, I’ll be honest, sometimes I’m tired of bread.
Sometimes the bread I’m sent just isn’t the bread I want. I’d rather have peach cobbler with whipped cream. A chocolate croissant. I’d rather have loaded nachos and, by the way, daily isn’t quite often enough. I’d prefer them by the hour.
I can’t fix economic systems or eradicate an entire history built on the backs of people deemed unworthy of justice.
But as a woman of great privilege, the least I can do in the face of my community’s and this world’s suffering is make peace with my daily bread.
I will remember their context as well as my own.
I will not look only to those who have more as the measure of what I deserve.
I will not lament humble things, nor wish for a harder, grittier life.
I will not exaggerate my position on either end of the spectrum.
I will stare it all down with gratitude, and I will call it good.
Every breath of Jesus and every groaning of His spirit is an invitation to spill it out onto the world that waits, parched and panting. We can’t surrender what we don’t have after all. We are invited to greater generosity, to a looser grip on our money and our things, to a more expansive belief that the earth really is the Lord’s, and everything in it (Ps. 24:1).
I will stare it all down with gratitude, and I will call it good.
As we face a world of hurts, ever more familiar with its contours, may this be our offering—that we never lose our taste for daily bread and that we remain eager to share.
Lord Jesus, send help.
Lord Jesus, make it so.
Shannan Martin, is a speaker and writer who found her voice in the country and her story in the city. Shannan, her jail-chaplain husband, Cory, and their kids, live as grateful neighbors in Goshen, Indiana. Her previous book, Falling Free: Rescued from the Life I Always Wanted, charts her family’s pilgrimage to neighborhood living, away from the self-focused wisdom of the world and toward the topsy-turvy life of God’s more being found in less.
In her newest release, The Ministry of Ordinary Places: Waking Up to God’s Goodness Around You, Shannan dives into the believe that the welfare of our neighbors really does determine our own (Jeremiah 29:7) With transparency, humor, heart-tugging storytelling, and more than a little personal confession, she shows us that no matter where we live or how much we have, as we learn what it is to be with people as Jesus was, we’ll find our very lives.
The post How to Make Peace with Daily Bread appeared first on Ann Voskamp.
October 17, 2018
Traveling a Winding Road from our Suburbs to our Sahara: Going Global as an Ordinary Person
Jeannie Marie exhales possibility to the rest of ordinary us, expectant that Jesus crafted a relational and adventurous role for each of us to find in fulfilling Jesus’ final words to make disciples of all nations. In her new book, Across the Street and Around the World, she gently shows us how to be a beautiful bridge between people of different faiths and cultures. Starting from our own front doors and even reaching across the seas. In this post, you’ll muse along with her, a down-to-earth mother of four living in the suburbs of America, dreaming about how she could make a global difference in places of pain, poverty, and people without access to Jesus. It’s a grace to welcome a passionate, genuine voice for the nations to the farm’s front porch today…
I sat cross-legged on the floor of a Bedouin-style tent, eating couscous and camel with my hands from a common platter alongside North African Arabs.
With the Saharan heat drifting in, my short-term team and I laughed with our Bedouin hosts and talked of this Jesus we followed, who taught that when someone sues you for your shirt, you should say, “Here. Take my coat too.”
Could an ordinary couple with children living in suburban America really do anything of significance globally long-term?
Later, when one of the men on our team failed to find a suitable African burnoose, a traditional hooded cloak, to take home, one of our new Bedouin friends said, “Here. I have two. You can have one of them.”
He grinned and winked, saying, “That’s the kind of thing you told me your Jesus would do.”
In stifling heat and desert sand only a few hours from an al-Qaeda training camp, I was wrapped three times in a mulafa, a long cotton sheet worn by the Muslim women in that area. And I felt freer than I had ever felt in America.
Could I possibly live in some strategic place overseas like this, God? I prayed.
What do I have to do to make that happen? I figured I would just buy a plane ticket and go!
But would I be able to actually live overseas longer than a few weeks? I frowned.
Back home in America, just a week after returning from that cross-cultural vision trip, I gazed out at our perfectly manicured lawn, watching our youngest child play.
A cloudless blue sky and dreamy sun shone down on our four-bedroom home in a master-planned community. Our Phoenix suburb was touted as one of the safest places in America. The smell of summer grilling wafted through the neighborhood, and I could hear the compelling jingle of the ice cream truck making its afternoon rounds.
The Sahara seemed far away and completely unreal.
I pictured my husband, hunched in a swivel chair and crammed into a cubicle at that very moment, fingers poised on the keyboard, staring at a thousand unread emails. I felt the four walls of his cloth-covered cubicle closing in on my soul like a coffin.
What are we doing, Lord? Working to live and living to work, just to have a nice, comfortable life? Surely you have more in mind for our lives as followers of you?
Then I remembered sitting one Sunday in the comfortable, theater-style seats of a church, watching yet another clip of a natural disaster killing thousands overseas, accompanied by pleas for prayers and funds.
It had happened in Pakistan, a country where few Christ followers live and where Westerners can’t easily enter. Muslims in countries like Pakistan live their whole lives without ever experiencing a God who could draw near to them and offer them life here and forever.
The pastor had preached about Peter, the disciple who asked Jesus if he could walk on water and then did it. Jesus had told Peter to follow Him, and Peter dropped his fishing nets and did it. How could I sit there in that comfortable place and do nothing?
I quelled the welling up in my heart as I sat on my back patio.
Could an ordinary couple with children living in suburban America really do anything of significance globally long-term?
My perception of reality created a rather impassable chasm between my suburbs and my Sahara.
My cell phone rang. “You’re late picking me up from my friend’s house!” my daughter said, her voice clearing the global angst from my thoughts.
The immediacy of everyday life crowded my global daydreaming to a faraway space. The welling up of holy dissatisfaction receded as my vision filled with bills, a house payment, the busy activities of four children, and a husband who just laughed when I suggested insane things like moving overseas.
My perception of reality created a rather impassable chasm between my suburbs and my Sahara.
I never could have imagined that, four years later, my husband and I would quit our jobs and sell our house and everything we owned.
Soon after, we would find ourselves living in a bright-green house on the edge of the jungles of India, on the outskirts of a city of a million people.
Our family would land in the middle of a sea of nine million Muslims—the population of the entire state of New Jersey—who had never been introduced to Jesus Christ as the way to God.
You might experience this same restlessness within your own heart as you open yourself up to the world beyond your doorstep.
Often, an experience, a message, a book, the world news, or an interaction with a person from another country fosters a willingness to consider radical engagement with the world in a way you might never have considered before.
This angst often includes a recurring global wondering in the back of your mind, perhaps even unearthing a buried desire to be involved across cultures in a meaningful, spiritual way.
These thoughts prick the soul of what we’ll call an apostolic person. God shapes an apostolic person to pave new paths to cross cultures with the good news of the kingdom of God.
It starts with us—ordinary, regular us—taking one step, then two, and then a hundred small steps in an intentional direction.
We’re meant to discover if we are the kind of genuine, humble Jesus followers whom God might choose to send to be a blessing to the nations. It’s about revisiting the way we think and act to find out if our souls, minds, and actions align with the character—and willingness—of someone who can thrive living in other cultures.
It starts with us—ordinary, regular us—taking one step, then two, and then a hundred small steps in an intentional direction.
We don’t let this spark get swallowed up in diaper-changes, daily drives back and forth to school, or preparing for that presentation at work.
We invite our daughter’s friend at school from India over to play, and then invite their family for dinner.
We connect with the refugee resettlement agency across town to meet a family from Sudan at the airport with signs and smiles.
We fold internationals students from Saudi into our Thanksgiving dinner celebrations.
We take a trip, take classes, and read books about global things.
We pray and stay open.
Someday, we may find ourselves eating chicken liver on a stick, talking to a rickshaw driver, sweat trickling down our back with a child on our hip, talking about this Jesus we know.
It won’t happen overnight.
But it happened to me. And it could happen to you.
Jeannie Marie
is a strategist for an international agency that recruits, trains, and sends people to live overseas. Growing up as an expat in another country, working with refugees in America, and living in India with her husband and four children spurred her to now speak around the country from their home in Arizona, inspiring followers of Jesus to create relational bridges to other faiths and cultures.
In her new book, Across the Street and Around the World: Following Jesus to the Nations in Your Neighborhood…and Beyond, Jeannie inspires ordinary people to cross cultures with courage, confidence, compassion, and spiritual intentionality. Using personal stories and plenty of inspiration, she gently guides us away from common missteps, while offering practical tips, resources, and spiritual lessons for engaging in cross-cultural relationships with love and purpose.
Many Christians experience a stirring in their souls after short mission trips or global conferences, or as they interact with the increasingly diverse sets of people moving into their neighborhoods, workplaces, and schools. But most don’t know how to build intentional relationships with people from different backgrounds. Across the Street and Around the World offers an answer to those Christians wondering, is it possible to engage with people of other cultures right now, in my everyday world—or even beyond?
[Our humble thanks to Thomas Nelson for their partnership in today’s devotion]
The post Traveling a Winding Road from our Suburbs to our Sahara: Going Global as an Ordinary Person appeared first on Ann Voskamp.
October 16, 2018
when life gets a bit dark, try this secret
For thirty spins around the sun, these nine old nanas kept a secret from their men.
They did it in the middle of the night.
When that old ball of sun sunk down low and pulled a cover of dark up over the backside of the world, those nine nanas creaked open their back doors and made a their way through the cracked dark.
They called them Drive-Bys.
They did it because of MaMaw Ruth. I had my own Grandma Ruth; I knew about women named Ruth who make clandestine meetings with grace.
“MaMaw Ruth would read in the paper that someone had died and she didn’t have to know the family,” is what one of the Nine Nanas, Mary Ellen said. “She’d send off one of her special pound cakes. She just wanted to put a little smile on their faces.”
It was a girl’s night for Mary Ellen and her four sisters and their three girlfriends, sitting around a table reminiscing and laughing loud over old times.
“We started thinking about what we could do to make a difference like that. What if we had a million dollars? How would we spend it?’ she said.
Those nine women knew it:
We’re not here to make an impression —- we’re here to make a difference.
All from the new Thanksgiving Collection
The size of our houses, our wallets, our closets, our trophy case and our cheerleading squad doesn’t make any difference compared to the size of our hearts.
And frankly: The positions that we take don’t make a difference like the love that we give.
We may be known for many things but we will be remembered only by one thing: our giving love.
Anyone can have any size of heart they want.
Those Nine Nanas began brainstorming around a kitchen table, and it was one of the sisters who came up with the idea: start doing their own laundry instead of using the dry cleaner. They sat there and came up with a list of scrimping and saving and shaving their lives clean.
“So among the nine of us, we’d put aside about $400 a month.”
Then came part two of the Nine Nana Plan: How do you make a difference? You make a difference — by doing things different.
You can’t make a difference by climbing the exact same ladder everyone else, by living exactly the same as everyone else, by consuming the same, buying the same, striving the same, dreaming the same.
You can’t make a difference until you listen to the world differently than everyone else does.
That’s what those Nine Nanas did — they started leaning in and listening at the local beauty shop or where they picked up their groceries.
And when they heard about a widow or a single mother who was in need, guess who would anonymously pay a utility bill or buy new clothes for the children?
Those Nanas would ferret out where that hurting person lived and send a package with a note that simply read, ‘Somebody loves you’ —- and the love they sent always had to come with one of MaMaw Ruth’s special pound cakes.
In the middle of the darkest night, love is always coming for you.
In the middle of the pitch black night, those Nine Nanas drove slow through neighbourhoods looking for fans stuck in windows.
“That told us that the people who live there? Don’t have air-conditioning,” Mary Ellen said.
‘Or we see that there are no lights on at night, which means there is a good chance their utilities have been turned off. Then we return before the sun came up, like cat burglars, and drop off a little care package.’
For 35 years, these love stealthers have been breaking the dark.
35 years. 9 women. 4 am pitch black. Whipping up MaMaw Ruth’s pound cakes. Sending pound cakes all across the country to people making a difference in their community. Opening up the phone book and sending pound cakes to complete strangers.
35 years of hundreds of pound cakes delivered in the dead of night — and no one being none the wiser.
There are women who do not need to be noticed out on the street corners to have their backs patted — because there are women who know those who work in the dark are the ones shattering the dark in ways those in the spotlights never can.
There are women who work in secret because they know you always make real and giving love in secret.
There are women who don’t let the right hand know what the left hand is doing because hands that move unbeknownst are most known by the Beloved.
That which is done in secret, that which is broken and given in secret, is a practicing communion.
Live eucharist. Practice communion. Taste koinonia.
Mary Ellen didn’t know when her husband started puzzling over the extra mileage on the car. Didn’t know when he started scratching his head over withdrawals from their savings account of not small amounts of cash. Pulled out his highlighter and started charting a path through their confounding bank statements.
Mary Ellen and those Nine Nanas just knew they had to gather their men and ‘fess up’ to what was suspected: an affair of the heart.
It could start a revolution and change the way this world revolves: What if the world focused on affairs of the heart instead of spending our one life on business affairs?
Kiss open wounds. Caress the bruised back of the broken. Embrace suffering because this is how you embrace the broken-hearted Christ.
Frankly, though, the husbands had had it — they wanted in on the eavesdropping and the drive-bys and the night gift-blitzing the town.
They wanted in on writing down addresses and anonymously paying utility bills.
They wanted to deliver a pound cake and press beauty out of the world.
They wanted in on the giving and the getting joy, they wanted in on breaking a thread or two of themselves to weave strength and hope into where the fabric of society was weak and torn, they wanted in on breaking out of the emptiness of themselves and breaking into the fullness of koinonia and community.
Those 9 husbands looked at how their wives were breaking and giving themselves away — and they wanted to break into the happy abundance of all that.
Small gifts of kindness are contagious. Start a joy epidemic.
Sometimes….
Sometimes you just want to break out of yourself and break into the sacred space of the other. And that Sacred Space of the Other you seek is found when you give to the Other.
The Nine Nanas said that:
“This is our way of giving forward.” Mary Ellen nodded. “We want to make sure that happiness happens.”
The way forward —- is always to give forward.
Life happens. And grace happens. Gifts happen. Happiness can happen. Love gives. Live given.
I do this: bake pound cake.
Bake a pound cake and pound out of hopelessness.
Bake a pound cake made in any old kitchen — and bring it out into the dark and pound out of your pitch black and out of yourself and break the isolation.
Taste Koinonia in the middle of the dark.
The sun will rise.
And November is coming!
Maybe in this season, we all just need the gift of Joy… a bit of Hope? To stand together — FOR each other — knowing that an act of kindness, giving it forward, can be more powerful than any sword in starting movements that move us all toward Love. The way forward —- is always to give forward.
(And if you grab a copy of Be The Gift? We’d love to immediately email you a link to a FREE gift of THE WHOLE 12 MONTH *Intentional* Acts of Givenness #BeTheGIFT Calendar to download and print from home or at your local print shop! ( Just let us know that you picked up Be The Gift over here.)
We all only get one life to love well — and being a gift with you gives reviving joy!
The post when life gets a bit dark, try this secret appeared first on Ann Voskamp.
October 15, 2018
How can we have joy no matter what life brings our way?
Walking in joy often feels crazy and like a denial of actual life. Yet Christians are called to “be joyful always” (1 Thess. 5:16). What does this mean, and how is it even possible? Stasi Eldredge invites you to a joy that is defiant in the face of this broken world. This joy does not Pollyannaish-ly ignore life’s heartache; rather, it insists that sorrow and loss do not have the final say. This kind of joy is present to both goodness and grief and interprets them in the light of heaven. With deep vulnerability about her own chronic pain, surprising diagnoses, and relational struggles and loss, Stasi demonstrates how to maintain a posture of holy defiance that neither denies nor diminishes the pain, but instead leans fully into the experience of knowing God’s presence and promise in the middle of whatever life may bring. It’s a grace to welcome Stasi to the farm’s front porch today…
I woke to a white world.
It is mid October now after all and since my home sidles up against the slopes of the Rocky Mountains, I shouldn’t be surprised.
But it was a green and gold world yesterday. Hints too of red and flecks of russet clung to the trees with a defiant resistance against autumn’s wind. My petunias were still blooming. My mums triumphant, their flowers exploding like a colorful firework display.
But not this morning.
To know Him in my waiting, I must not turn my face from my aching.
This morning every previous shade is hidden under a downy blanket of thick chilly wool.
Somewhere nearby school children are cheering. This is the stuff of legend; this first snow beckons one to dive headfirst into it. Sleds and mittens and boots are being pulled out of storage all over town.
This snow is the answer to many people’s – both young and old – prayers. They have been waiting and longing for it with expectant hope. We are teetering on the edge of a drought and last years snowfall was disappointing at best.
And I admit, yes, even my summer heart admits, that it is breathtakingly lovely.
Higher up on our hill, the little grave of my first grandson is covered in the purity that falls from the sky.
We laid his tiny body in the ground two and a half years ago.
The spot is gently tended with love by those who are waiting to know him well, who long to trace his face with their fingers and to hear his laugh and see the light in his eyes that belongs only to him. His resting place is tended as well by deer and their fawns as they graze their way through and passing foxes as they glide by like ghosts.
It is surrounded by birdsong, gentle winds and the guardian of Hope. And now it too is blessed with white.
I have experienced many goodbyes in my life and the older I get the more I have had to say. It would break my heart into shards were I not to know that my goodbyes, though excruciating, are temporary. So I wait.
And I wait with hope.
And I wait with what can sometimes feel like empty hands and an empty heart.
I wait with an attentiveness to the God of Love who alone can meet me in my waiting with a hope that will sustain me.
But I must choose to turn my gaze to Him. I must choose to be present to the reality that though I am surrounded by beauty, I am made for more. To know Him in my waiting, I must not turn my face from my aching.
Presence requires a sort of emptiness allowing for the space to feel, to notice, to be aware, to be attentive to God, to others and to your own soul. Remember, it is into the emptiness that our God came. He filled the void with Light and Life.
When I fill my life with distractions, running from the emptiness of waiting, there is no room for Jesus to come.
Last summer, when all my family was going to be home at once, I decided to surprise them and make a lovely and large dinner. A lot of thought and planning went into it; a lot of preparation. I set the table in a special way. I got out candles and lit them. I lay pretty placemats on the table and a bouquet of wildflowers in the center. I made a special salad – meaning I didn’t merely rip open a bag like I usually do and dump it into a bowl, no, I chopped things. I even prepared a fresh homemade dressing. Making dinner took a lot of time slicing, sautéing, and baking. Oh, the house smelled wonderful.
My sons knew when to be home for dinner. Dinner at our house barring an emergency or an act of God is at 6pm. Has been for all of their lives. They came home with plenty of time to spare but they had been so hungry previously that they’d stopped at Chipotle two hours earlier and eaten a massive burrito. They were still filled to the brim.
Doesn’t it help you stay in the hunger when you know that a feast is coming? The waiting is still hard – but you know it won’t last.
My sons thwarted my plans. They didn’t know I had gone to a lot of extra work; that I was offering not just food but love to them that evening and instead of coming home filled with anticipation, they came with no appetite at all.
They weren’t hungry and though we all joined together at the table, the beautiful, hard won food was barely touched. If I had told them what was coming, they wouldn’t have eaten beforehand.
If they knew a feast had been prepared for them, they would have waited to eat knowing that soon they would be filled. No one in their right mind would drive through McDonalds right before sitting down to a Thanksgiving dinner.
Doesn’t it help you stay in the hunger when you know that a feast is coming? The waiting is still hard – but you know it won’t last.
Dear ones, the waiting is not going to last. But there is no shame in being hungry.
The only way we can wait with any kind of grace and even know the joy that we are exhorted to possess while we do is if we know in the depths of our soul that we will not be waiting forever.
We are going to be filled.
I am learning that it is not in living without pain or emptiness or longing of any kind that I will find joy. It is not. No. It is in His presence that I will know the fullness of joy.
I am learning that it is not in living without pain or emptiness or longing of any kind that I will find joy. It is not. No. It is in His presence that I will know the fullness of joy.
Because God doesn’t merely give us joy. In every season of our lives be they filled with goodness or grief, summer’s blooms or winter’s chill, He gives us Himself. Joy incarnate.
The sky this morning is as white as the world it covers. It has been painted over by an artist who has chosen a new palette wishing to try again. The colors are covered but the scars and the dirt and the dying leaves of earth are now hidden from view as well, their ragged beauty over shadowed by a purity they could not manage themselves.
My world holds scars. There are places in me that feel ragged, others that hold death.
This morning’s snow reminds me yet again that our Jesus covers it all.
He has cleansed it all.
His scars hold all the hope I need.
Though I grieve the end of seasons and mourn the loss of those I love, hating every goodbye I have ever had to say, because of Jesus, I know that a grand and endless “Hello” is coming.
So I can wait for it. I can long for it.
And I can do it with an expectant hope that will not disappoint.
Stasi Eldredge is a New York Times bestselling author, and her books have sold nearly 3 million copies and changed women’s lives all over the world. A teacher and conference speaker, Stasi is the director of the women’s ministry at Ransomed Heart and leads Captivating retreats internationally. Her passion is to see lives transformed by the beauty of the gospel.
Stasi shows readers how to choose a joy that stands against the tides of life’s real and often overwhelming pain. We are called to live. And, miraculously, to live with joy.
We all spend a lot of energy reaching for happiness, but we are never quite able to hang on to it. Real life happens, and our circumstances take us on an emotional rollercoaster ride. So the Bible’s call to “be joyful always” sounds almost crazy—and out of reach. But it doesn’t have to be.
Joy is meant to be ours, a joy that is defiant in the face of this broken world. This joy is not simply happiness on steroids; it’s the unyielding belief that sorrow and loss do not have the final say. It’s the stubborn determination to be present to whatever may come and to interpret both goodness and grief by the light of heaven.
In her latest book Defiant Joy: Taking Hold of Hope, Beauty, and life in a Hurting World, Stasi Eldredge invites us with courage, candor, and tender vulnerability to a place beyond sadness or happiness. She shows us how to maintain a posture of holy defiance that neither denies nor diminishes our pain but dares to live with expectant, unwavering hope.
[ Our humble thanks to Thomas Nelson for their partnership in today’s devotion ]
The post How can we have joy no matter what life brings our way? appeared first on Ann Voskamp.
October 13, 2018
Only the Good Stuff: Multivitamins for Your Weekend [10.13.18]
Happy, happy, happy weekend!
Some real, down in the bones JOY to celebrate today! Links & stories this week 100% guaranteed to make you smile a mile wide & believe like crazy in a Good God redeeming everything — and that there’s love everywhere & for ((you))!
Serving up only the Good Stuff for you right here:
Ash Hughes
Ash Hughes
Ash Hughes
glory: sharing the extraordinary with you right here
and yeah: All Those Books You’ve Bought but Haven’t Read? There’s a Word for That
when life has you wishing you’d hit this red light…
gotta love fascinating new research: New Study Says that by Changing the Air We Breathe, Migraine Attacks Can Be Treated Without Medicine
so who knew? The Art of Canning the Sea
so what do you think? The Perks of a Play-in-the-Mud Educational Philosophy
so much love here: this barber is offering more than a simple hair cut and shave #BeTheGift #TheBrokenWay
Hernandez Binz
Hernandez Binz
Hernandez Binz
he always wanted to paint: now he’s painting with his camera
the whole earth is full of His glory… yes, yes, yes
Why you shouldn’t despise the toils of parenting
“…outside of the word ‘love’, I believe ‘hope’ is the most powerful word in the dictionary”
for every mama who never loses hopes…
beautiful story: this young man interrupts the news and leaves this anchor in tears
“A blessing from the Lord”: Uber Driver stumbles into the gift of a lifetime for her daugheter after picking up an engineering student
it would be a humble grace to meet you at one of these upcoming events?!?
Kinda Undone: Watch Hospital Staff – From Janitors to Surgeons – Line Hallway to Honor Organ Donor in ‘Walk of Respect’
tears here: When a moment changes everything…wise words of hope, healing, and love
When you are going through a lot: don’t miss this right here
Suffering Revealed How Weak I Was: What I learned from Kidney Failure
You’ve got to meet him: Alfred is a hero. After completing the New Testament in his own language, he began making a dangerous journey every week to help a neighboring six language translation project. This is an extraordinary story of perseverance and joy.
“I’m satisfied with my life for the sake of Christ.”
simplyswenkalife / Instagram
marehoops_warriorlife / Instagram
In sixty vulnerably stories, the tender invitation of The Way of Abundance moves you through your unspoken broken — into the abundant life.
Pick up your own Way to Abundance & start your journey to the abundant life
an incredible testimony of being born without limbs: “I learned not to live in self-pity, but to press forward and pursue my goals.”
thanks to Compassion International, she knows she has a purpose, and that God loves her…
on repeat this week: He sees you for what you’re worth…
…in the wait, whatever you lose, don’t lose heart — you never lose what lasts forever. You’ve got to believe it: whatever is being lost momentarily, more is being gained eternally.
In the wait, if you shift the way you see — and see that the wait could make you into the person you’ve been waiting to become.
If you’re waiting on God — do what waiters do: serve.
Break free of your comfort zone and do something, touch someone, give something, help someone, pray for someone, serve someone, #BetheGIFT for someone. You can’t be a world changer until you serve. In serving, you are served a feast of what you’re longing for. Because the One who loves you steadfastly, stood fast at the cross for you, so now stand fast for Him.
“Each of you should use whatever gift he has received to serve others, faithfully administering God’s grace in its various forms… Be generous with the different things God gave you, passing them around so all get in on it: if words, let it be God’s words; if help, let it be God’s hearty help.” 1Peter4:10 NIV, MSG.
[excerpted from our little Facebook family … come join us each day?]
That’s all for this weekend, friends.
Go slow. Be God-struck. Grant grace. Live Truth.
Give Thanks. Love well. Re – joy, re- joy, ‘re- joys’ again
Share Whatever Is Good.
The post Only the Good Stuff: Multivitamins for Your Weekend [10.13.18] appeared first on Ann Voskamp.
October 10, 2018
What We Can Offer to a World Crying Out (and it’s not what you think)
Shannan Martin believes every crumb of ministry begins with attentiveness. When her family moved from their cozy farm to a low-income neighborhood in the city, she knew her lens for beauty and belonging was going to have to change, and it did. Before long, her eye was drawn to crumbling things, flowers poking their hopeful faces through chain-link fencing, neighbors who lived grueling lives and loved her well. Shannan knows the everyday power of suffering and celebrating together, of taking turns being the needy one, and of leaving the front door easy on its hinges. The Ministry of Ordinary Places is an invitation to live as though there is no separation between ministry and ordinary life, committing to our place and our neighbors for the long haul. In a world that tries to crush us with complication and overwhelm, Shannan points us to the simple truth – in learning to be with people as Jesus was, we’ll discover the abundant life. It’s a grace to welcome Shannan to the farm’s front porch today…
“I would totally do it if I had the chance.”
These were the words that tumbled from my mouth when my adult son, Robert, mentioned the parenting class he had been court-ordered to attend on the heels of an entanglement with the law.
I was trying to be encouraging. The learning curve had been sharp in the years since he had come into our family after a lifetime of struggle and trauma.
After his short time in prison, my eyes were opened to the overwhelming list of requirements heaped onto men and women ready to start fresh. My quippy response was meant to support him along the hard road ahead. Nothing more.
The question is, as always, are we paying attention?
But a month later, I got this text from Robert. “Hey mom. I got us signed up for our parenting class. It starts next Tuesday.” (Insert record scratch.) And this is how I accidentally signed up for a ten-week, court-ordered parenting class with my twenty-two-year-old son.
We signed on all the lines, paid our dues, and spent the next ten Tuesdays eating beans and hot dogs, making homemade play dough and paper-bag puppets, reading children’s books together, playing Chutes and Ladders, and attending a carnival.
After dinner, the adults filed into a classroom where we sat together week after week receiving instruction, watching cheesy videos set in the eighties, completing old-school worksheets, and humbling ourselves in necessary ways.
Going in, my hackles were raised. I remembered how embarrassed and defensive I had felt fifteen years ago when I’d had to sit through an all-day driving school after one too many traffic tickets.
This was on a whole new level.
Cory Martin @jailchap
Shannan Martin
Shannan Martin
Most of our group had been deemed by the courts as people who were struggling with parenting.
I could only imagine how that felt. So I’d prepared myself ahead of time to be outraged over the insensitivity of the instructors or the condescending atmosphere.
I even planned to take notes in a small notebook and was ready to bang out an emotional exposé if the situation warranted it.
What I found instead was the surprise of true community, richly diverse and utterly unfussy. It didn’t take long to discover who was shy, who was loud (I’m looking at you, Robert), who was combative, who was timid.
Some stayed pretty checked out. Others of us began dropping small facts about our lives, our stories, and the kids we were raising.
A young woman, exuberant without exception, came to class one evening with her thick, black hair twisted into an elaborate crown atop her head, Dum Dum suckers spaced evenly through the plaits of the braid that held it all in place. She was a charming, comedic Statue of Liberty there in our midst. When a classmate answered a question correctly, she would reach up, remove a sucker from her crown, and toss it to him or her. In the unexpected parade of court-appointed parenting classes, she was our clown and our resident Kiwanian rolled into one, throwing good will around by the fistful.
My assumptions were destroyed as we sat together each week, students of parenting and life.
There was no discussion of the mistakes that had led us there, just the prevailing sense that we were all in it together.
What drew us near was a central force, a shared thread. We were parents with room to grow.
As the world gets more confusing and trickier to navigate, my role as a mom rockets up the chart of significance.
And before I say another word let me be perfectly clear—all women are mothers.
Humanity is crying out to be nurtured.
We are life-givers, each of us, in ways both wild and vast.
Our title as mother isn’t defined by biology or science. It can’t be measured in centimeters or the arc of a curve.
Mothering is the thing all women do, with the small and big kids under our care, the neighbor boys up the street, our students, our grown nieces, the children we can only hold in our hearts, and the ones we don’t even know yet to hope for. What I’m trying to say is that none of us is off the hook here.
Humanity is crying out to be nurtured.
There are dozens of opportunities to do this during any given week, or even daily.
It doesn’t matter where you live, what you look like, how similar or different you feel from those around you.
It doesn’t matter if you work outside or inside the home, or whether you’re in government housing or on a cattle ranch in Oklahoma.
The question is, as always, are we paying attention?
Have we made ourselves available?
The way we spend our love is the way we spend our lives. Do we care enough to love those around us as though we really belong to each other? And can we dare to believe these small gestures of specific care and well-timed warmth are enough to alter the path of mankind?
If we want our world to be better, we have to go out and love the people around us. We need to invite them in, as family.
Mother Teresa famously said, “If you want to bring happiness to the whole world, go home and love your family.” We gobble up her words, plastering them on signs and hand-lettering them onto notecards. We love them because they are beautiful. And profoundly true.
But let’s not forget, this is the same Mother Teresa who reminded us to “draw a wider circle” around who we consider family. Seen under the light of that truth, new meaning emerges.
If we want our world to be better, we have to go out and love the people around us. We need to invite them in, as family.
Beginning to live as though there’s no such thing as other people’s children might be our most critical, significant contribution to the flourishing of our world.
Simply believing this, however, is not enough, and sympathy without action is no more than wasted breath. Mothering is often physical, gut-wrenching work.
What do we believe our kids are owed? To what ends would we go to offer them protection, support, and love?
In the span of God’s wide and rowdy family, we all belong to one another and there is no such thing as other people’s children.
Just this week, I have lost sleep over the heartache of one of my kids. I’ve sent e-mails, searched for outside support, indulged a few unhealthy fantasies involving the vigilante justice of a forty-one-year-old mama with a few bones to pick, and, oh, how I have prayed.
I love my kids. There’s not much I wouldn’t do to make sure their needs are met.
The dreams we have for our children—to know community and freedom, to grow in truth, to be safe and loved—must be available to all.
We are lion-hearted mamas, every one of us, made to roar for the kiddos most closely within our reach.
In the span of God’s wide and rowdy family, we all belong to one another and there is no such thing as other people’s children.
Take a look around. Find someone to nurture.
This is how we’ll rise.
Shannan Martin, is a speaker and writer who found her voice in the country and her story in the city. Shannan, her jail-chaplain husband, Cory, and their kids, live as grateful neighborsin Goshen, Indiana. Her previous book, Falling Free: Rescued from the Life I Always Wanted, charts her family’s pilgrimage to neighborhood living, away from the self-focused wisdom of the world and toward the topsy-turvy life of God’s more being found in less.
In her newest release, The Ministry of Ordinary Places: Waking Up to God’s Goodness Around You, Shannan dives into the believe that the welfare of our neighbors really does determine our own (Jeremiah 29:7) With transparency, humor, heart-tugging storytelling, and more than a little personal confession, she shows us that no matter where we live or how much we have, as we learn what it is to be with people as Jesus was, we’ll find our very lives.
[ Our humble thanks to Thomas Nelson for their partnership in today’s devotion ]
The post What We Can Offer to a World Crying Out (and it’s not what you think) appeared first on Ann Voskamp.
October 8, 2018
A Fix for the Disconnect Between Your Head and Your Heart
The world can feel backwards right now. It feels upside down, if I’m telling the truth. And, as believers, we’re wondering how to do we take what we observe about Jesus and make it true in real life. Hayley Morgan has noticed this, too, and she calls this upside-down backwardness an “integrity gap” and observes that there is a stark difference between Christians knowing something and really deep-down understanding something. There is often a disconnect between our heads and our hearts. It’s a grace to welcome Hayley to the farm’s front porch today…
My husband, Mike, is always finding insightful videos online, and he found a YouTube account called Smarter Every Day.
It all started when his friend Barney, a welder, gave him a gift. Wearing Carhartt jackets in a chilly garage, several friends and coworkers gathered to watch it all unfold. They all wondered what would happen.
You see, Barney had fashioned a bike for his buddy Destin.
He had welded gears to the body and the bars, meaning that the handlebars, although they looked the same, functioned backward.
We’ve all experienced the difficulty of putting our head knowledge into life practice.
The nervous laughter was heady. You could see the steam of their breath as they chuckled and gathered in a circle. Everyone was passing the bike around, swiveling it back and forth as though to do a quick hand-eye coordination test. The men looking on wondered how hard it could be to ride a backward bike. As it turns out—very hard!
Like most of us, Destin knew how to ride a standard bike. He’d learned twenty-five years earlier, in the fading sunlight of an autumn evening. His smile was as bright and wide as the stripe on his 1980s sweatshirt when his six-year-old self finally figured it all out.
We all remember that feeling. Instead of wobbling back and forth, something clicks. We find our balance, and then we glide away forever.
They say some things are “just like riding a bike”—meaning that you never forget.
Now, intellectually, Destin knew how to ride this backward bike. Instead of the standard “turn left, go left” and “turn right, go right,” it should be the opposite.
When he turned the bars to the left, the wheel should go to the right. When he turned the bars to the right, the wheel should go to the left. It’s a simple thing to see and know. He could have spouted off in a quick speech how he was planning to ride this crazy backward bike.
It all sounded easy enough, so Destin hopped on the bike before a crowd of cold, but good-humored onlookers. He sat his rear end on the seat and pushed off. Destin didn’t last two whole seconds before the tire slid out from under him, causing him to plant his foot on the ground for balance, effectively ending the bike ride before it even got started.
Like a six-year-old, Destin tried again.
The second time wasn’t even marginally better. Picture it—a grown man getting on a bike confidently and falling off in a matter of seconds. He was giggling like a child, but inside he was embarrassed and frustrated that his mind was not taking the information it knew and transferring it into something his whole self understood.
Now, isn’t that something we all want to know? Why can’t our brains take something we intellectually know, something that seems easy, and process it into something we just get with our whole selves.
We’ve all experienced the difficulty of putting our head knowledge into life practice. As I was learning about Destin’s difficulty with this backward bike, I deeply identified with his frustration.
How many times in my life had I been confronted with the fact that I knew what I needed to know but still couldn’t make those things happen?
Many people who believe in God get stuck here, finding the rich Christian life out of their grasp. They may hit this point of frustration, but at some point, they relent and settle. One cannot struggle in frustration forever, so they keep God in their heads and tuck away the hope of ever knowing Him in their hearts.
We take the bad news we tell ourselves, we notice it, and then we pull it into alignment with the truth of God.
They intellectually believe in God, but they do not functionally experience His presence or His goodness in their life.
If we get stuck here, we’re giving up before the going gets good.
We’re settling for less of Jesus—and a diminished Jesus is not the true Jesus at all.
It’s not just you or me. There is a dissonance in the life of every believer.
I’ve heard it called an integrity gap or even hypocrisy. In my Christian life, the words integrity and hypocrisy have felt loaded and burdensome. But this idea of an integrity gap is describing what it’s like when our heads and our hearts are not lined up.
The way we move our heads and our hearts into alignment is the same way Destin learned to ride that backwards bike.
It took him more than a year of daily practice to move from the knowledge of how to ride the backwards bike to the understanding to actually do it.
This is the life with Jesus.
In this work, this daily practice, the Spirit is making us more like Christ.
It’s a beautiful practice of taking our thoughts captive and renewing our minds.
And, while these are ancient truths found in Scripture, these practices are not dusty artifacts. This is the work of the Christian life.
We take the bad news we tell ourselves, we notice it, and then we pull it into alignment with the truth of God.
We preach to ourselves.
We tell ourselves the truth.
In this work, this daily practice, the Spirit is making us more like Christ.
We go from getting it intellectually to understanding the truth in our hearts and deep in our bones.
Halellujah, He is good.
Hayley Morgan is a speaker and entrepreneur who reminds women what is true of God and themselves. She is coauthor of the bestselling book Wild & Free and just launched Preach to Yourself, a new message of freedom helping women break the cycle of doubt, take God at His word, and talk back with truth.
It has been said that the eighteen inches from head to heart is the soul’s longest journey. Our head knows the good news is true, but our heart struggles to believe it, and it is in this gap that we battle to believe the promises of God. In Preach to Yourself: When Your Inner Critic Comes Calling, Talk Back with Truth, she tackles it head-on to discover how we can renew our minds to renew our lives. For every woman who struggles with repetitive, negative self-talk, this book will show you how to identify the toxic loops where you get stuck and replace them with the truth of God we can believe with our whole selves.
This is not a “try harder” reprimand, it’s a “believe better” invitation: to take God at His word when He tells you who you are. Come along and learn a simple practice to break free from the lies holding you back, and step forward into the fullness of life God has planned.
[ Our humble thanks to Zondervan for their partnership in today’s devotion ]
The post A Fix for the Disconnect Between Your Head and Your Heart appeared first on Ann Voskamp.
October 6, 2018
Only the Good Stuff: Multivitamins for Your Weekend [10.06.18]
Happy, happy, happy weekend!
Some real, down in the bones JOY to celebrate today! Links & stories this week 100% guaranteed to make you smile a mile wide & believe like crazy in a Good God redeeming everything — and that there’s love everywhere & for ((you))!
Serving up only the Good Stuff for you right here:
Mary Anne Morgan / Peaks Island
Mary Anne Morgan / Peaks Island
Mary Anne Morgan / Peaks Island
no one captures life quite like she does
8-year-old girl becomes a barber, and give back with free haircuts in her community
because we all need a friend…
this blind teen? is planning to compete in his first Ironman Triathalon
he found that doing small things can save lives #BeTheGift #TheBrokenWay
Interview: Adventurous Travel Photographer Reflects on His Most Memorable Images
Marine meets newborn baby for first time…
Seeking my mom tribe: ‘I need to know I’m not in this alone’
this young employee’s selfless compassion has changed lives
The Nester
looking for imperfectionists, cozy minimalists, autumn-appreciators, and crunchy-leaf-lovers!
strangers across the globe – make this one together
Emily Gibson / Mt Shuksan
Emily Gibson / Mt Shuksan
Emily Gibson / Mt Shuksan
parts of her world? Just too beautiful not to share…
can you even?!? sometimes we just need someone to see something in us we can’t see ourselves
it would be a humble grace to meet you at one of these upcoming events?!?
the backwards bike experience: knowledge does not always equal understanding
Fascinating research on our brains
God Will Sustain You a Day at a Time thank you, Vaneetha Rendall Risner
THIS: an immigrant-owned restaurant in DC always has its doors open for those in need
Kinda Undone: a beautiful town that believes that a simple passion done with unconditional love deserves a bit of recognition
she’s giving burn survivors their confidence back
October is coming!
Maybe in this new month, we all just need the gift of Joy… a bit of Hope? To stand together — FOR each other — knowing that an act of kindness, giving it forward, can be more powerful than any sword in starting movements that move us all toward Love.
Want the gift of light breaking into all the broken places, into all the places that feel kinda abandoned? These pages are for you. It’s possible — abundant joy is always possible, especially for you. Break free with the tender beauty of The Broken Way & Be The Gift …
And if you grab a copy of Be The Gift? We will immediately email you a link to a FREE gift of THE WHOLE 12 MONTH *Intentional* Acts of Givenness #BeTheGIFT Calendar to download and print from home or at your local print shop! Just let us know that you ordered Be The Gift over here.
You only get one life to love well.
Pick up Be The Gift & live the life you’ve longed to
What to do when sin starts rising
In sixty vulnerably stories, the tender invitation of The Way of Abundance moves you through your unspoken broken — into the abundant life.
Pick up your own Way to Abundance & start your journey to the abundant life
some wise words spoken by Paul Harvey more than 50 years ago: “If I were the devil…”
on repeat this week: Nobody Loves Me Like You
…so yeah, there’s a whole lot of us who are hurting over broken hearts, God, and we’re broken over hurting bodies & hard decisions & big messes & then go ahead and throw any of the headlines in, & frankly, it’s easy to be just undone around here on earth.
And Your nail scarred hands cup our faces tonight & You point to the Cross,
The Cross that redeems the rejected & remakes the undone,
the Cross that is Your way of mending our broken hearts
by breaking Your heart in two & saying: “Me too.”
No matter how we don’t understand the why of suffering,
we know that the God who went to the Cross,
He knows suffering & He suffers with us. We never suffer alone.
Whatever mess I am in… I can exhale relief: I have a Messiah who meets me in it, won’t leave me in it, and will carry me through it!
There is never, ever, ever anything to ever fear:
Our. God. is. Here.
We never cry alone.
Never, ever alone.
[excerpted from our little Facebook family … come join us each day?]
That’s all for this weekend, friends.
Go slow. Be God-struck. Grant grace. Live Truth.
Give Thanks. Love well. Re – joy, re- joy, ‘re- joys’ again
Share Whatever Is Good.
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