I Blew It

I had the perfect chance, but I checked out instead.

I got the usual small talk questions as I sat across the table from my coworker while we supervised the adolescents on our unit.  "Are you married? Do you have kids (statements usually coupled with follow up phrases like, ‘Really?  You’re too pretty to be single,’ or, ‘Oh, usually when you meet young, Caucasian females who seem to have it all together, they’re married.’  Thankfully, this guy just let it go).

“So, are you planning on doing this job for a while?” he asked.

“Not forever,” I responded.  “I'll be leaving to go do missions overseas in a little less than a year.  I'm be going to Thailand with a team for 5 to 7 years, and we’ll be church planting.”

“Oh.  I don't really know what that means.”

“Basically, we’ll be talking to people and telling them about Jesus and how great He is, and then they’ll tell their friends, and then… churches will form.”

I said something else in Christianese that I can't recall now, something unintelligible to the untrained “churched” ear.

“Oh, that's interesting,” he replied.  “I'm not really religious, though.  I used to go to church…  But me and God, we have an understanding,” he said with a chuckle.  When I asked what he meant, he went on.  “When I was a kid, I was at church almost every night of the week.  But I didn't like it.  It just never really made sense to me.  So now I don’t really go anymore.”

“Yeah… It would make sense that it would be hard to enjoy church when… you didn't really… care about it.”

Conversation over.

I left work that night feeling like such a missionary failure. What happened? This guy set me up for the perfect opportunity to share Jesus with him, but I was too scared to ask more questions, to breach uncomfortable boundaries.  I had talked about Him with strangers before.  It's not like this was my first ballgame.  But for some reason, the right words just seemed to escape me.

It was that same defeated feeling times a thousand that had me in tears as I revealed my fears to my teammates a week later in Kansas City.  As we sat in our stuffed sofa and chairs, encircling a coffee table piled high with perhaps not-so-realistic expectations, I confessed.  I feel like I am going to fail in Thailand.  I have no idea what to do, and I'm afraid I won't be able to create any relationships with the people.

If I can't do it here, what makes me think I'm going to be able to do it there?





I'm sure Moses and I would've had a few good laughs, a couple of blubbering idiots trying to tell God we can't do anything right.

And then I picture God sitting back with sort of an amused smile, thinking, "Okay… so what?

Apart from me you can do nothing.”

Turns out, nearly every teammate in that circle had experienced some kind of spiritual attack that weekend.  Plaguing thoughts and fears about how there were a thousand people more qualified than them to go.  About how the team would be better off if they weren’t there.  About how they were just fooling everyone with a mere appearance of spirituality.  About how, really, they were just hypocrites.

It should be no surprise.  The greater God’s plan, the greater Satan’s attack.  The more affirmed the calling, the more prevalent the lies seeking to destroy it.

What I tend to forget is that the victory doesn’t depend on my sufficiency, but on the One who is already the Victor.

He is security.
He is relationship.
He is sufficiency.

Easter & Other Stuff

A sunrise in Thailand.

Christ is risen! On Easter morning, I awoke with a profound sense of joy.  I don’t ever remember feeling that deeply about Easter before.  Rather than glazing over the anniversary ofJesus’ resurrection – as if it were merely something that happened a long time ago that was somehow significant to our faith, but sort of irrelevant to us today – I placed myself in the story.  What would it have been like to be Mary as she walked to the tomb that morning, spices in hand, grieving the loss of her very best friend and the man whom she believed would save her land from oppression?  What would it have been like to see that stone rolled aside, the tomb empty?  To meet an angel whose news would have been shocking, to say the least?  And, finally, to hear your name spoken by someone who you were convinced would never speak again? What fear. What amazement. What joy. I’ll be spending this day on the other side of the globe this year, Lord willing.  Maybe I’ll even be able to produce a jumbled mess of words that sort of resemble, “He is risen, indeed!”  I’ll be living among a people who don’t know the meaning of the most important day in history.  Who don’t know the joy of having an Advocate who overcame death.   I grew up in the church (as the gone-to-church-my-whole-life Christians say), so I never experienced not knowing who Jesus was. But I imagine finding out would be similar to not finding His body in the tomb.  Putting to death your expectations from a religion meant to pave the road to peace.  Placing your doubts about whether you’ll ever arrive at perfection in the burial chamber.  Rolling the stone in front, sealing your own shame, guilt, and failure inside forever. And then waking up to find the tomb empty.  And something, Someone who is far greater than anything you had ever hoped or dreamed – the embodiment of peace, eternal life Himself – standing before you, saying your name. …………………………………… THE STUFF OF NEWS: I met (most) of my Thailand team last weekend!  We all met in Kansas City, MO for a few days to get to know each other; fly a kite; pick the brains of former missionaries to Thailand; consume lots of BBQ, stir fry, coffee, and Thai tea; talk about our expectations for the team (eek!); and pray over where God has us now and what He is preparing us to do.  (Pictured below:  women of Team Thailand:  Marnee, me, Heather, Liz)                    I had the blessing of seeing one of my World Race teammates get married andreconnecting with several of my friends from my WR squad.                    I pierced my nose… again.                                    THE STUFF OF PRAYER: April is already a difficult month for many in Oklahoma who lost loved ones in the OKC bombing 19 years ago, but poor health and death have become a more recent struggle for many others in my community and close social ties.  Please pray for those who are mourning the loss of Kaytie Joiner and for God’s comfort and healing in the lives of close friends and their relatives profoundly struggling with health issues. Pray for my team as we continue to raise financial and prayer support and that our growth and trust in Christ will continue to increase. Pray for the Holy Spirit to continue to move in the hearts and lives of the Thai people, preparing them to hear the Gospel.

Help Send Me to Thailand!

How was your Easter?  Did you have any awesome revelations?  What was the coolest thing you found in one of those plastic eggs?  Let me know!

Real Talk (Seriously, Not a Joke)

Flowers at the Buddha's feet:  Thailand

Happy first day of April!

I promise nothing in this update will fool you in any way.  I struggle every year on this particular day to remember not to fall for everything, so I won’t be the one to put you in that position.  (But if someone else does, and it’s hilarious and worth sharing, I highly encourage you to tell me about it.)

March has been sort of a whirlwind month for most of us, with weather going from blizzard to summertime heat to rain to ice to… wherever it ended up yesterday.  Then there was spring break for those of you who still get those, then back-to-school woes for the kids of those of you who have those…

For me, March was a beautiful month of opportunity.  After spreading the word thatyes, me going to Thailand for 5ish years is a real thing, I got to sit down with several people to tell them more about it.  I shared my story.  They shared theirs.  We processed through how Jesus found us and where we each feel called.  I showed them my incredibly fancy blue binder with words and pictures depicting my upcoming life in “the world”, as I like to call it.  I shared stories about what God was already doing.  And I invited them to be part of the team.

I’ll be honest, I expected this whole support raising process to be a drag.  I mean, who really wants to sit down with people they don’t know that well and ask them for money, right?  But every time, every time, I walked away blessed and encouraged.  These aren’t your everyday conversation topics – ones like God, and how you came to know Him, and cool stuff He’s doing in the world, and how we can all be a part of it.  It isn’t everyday that someone confesses their struggles with God, the church, or their own spirituality.  And it definitely isn’t everyday that we can sit in booths across from each other, eat spinach artichoke dip, and celebrate how God brought us from some point of devastation to realizing we actually need Him.  

These are the conversations, the ones about things that matter, that bring forthawakening.  Remembrance.  Growth.  These are the sort of jolts that call you out of the mundane, just-get-by kinds of days and empower you engage life rather than sit back and watch from a distance.  Sharing yourself isn’t easy.  But if we all come to the table knowing that we all have a little bit of baggage, a little bit of victory, a little bit of struggle, and a whole lot of redemption…  Why does fear have to be a thing?

Have you had an authentic conversation recently?  What was it like?  Was it worth it?  And how did it move you?



Stuff to talk to the Lord about…

• God is already present in Thailand.  Pray that the Holy Spirit moves in the personal lives of the Thai people, preparing them to receive the Gospel that we (or someone else) will get to share with them!
• Pray for believers in Thailand, that Jesus will empower them to share Him with their communities.
• Pray for me, that I will continue to desire Christ and know Him more.

As, always, I want to know…  How can I pray for you?

twenty-six

My 26^th birthday wasn’t much of a thing.  I went to church.  I came home to a traditional Sunday roast lunch with my traditionally-gathered Sunday roast lunch family members.  I ate a delicious not-so-traditional peanut butter pie.  I opened presents.  And then I went to work, where I hung out with self- or others-harming adolescents who, for the most part, kept destructive behavior to a minimum that evening.  Thankfully.  Because it was my birthday, and I was freaking entitled to be mildly worshiped…  at least.

Really, it was mostly just a day.  Sort of a harsh anticlimax to what I thought would surely be the beginning of the ohmygoshican’tbelievei’mactuallythisoldandistilldon’thavemycraptogether season.  But February 23^rd came and went without much to say for itself, as if shrugging and commenting something apathetically on its way out like, “Well, looks like everything is going to be pretty much the same."

I sat in a booth across from my cousin Morgan at Panera Bread about a week later.  We both clasped hands around our coffee cups, catching up on lives and woes and new things over the last couple of months since we had seen each other.  I had done a bit of introspection over those few days since the anniversary of my birth.  I reflected on how, in the past, each birth year had gone by with a sense of failure because I hadn’t accomplished this or that by now.  Remember that blog on being 23?  I recall being dumbfounded and ashamed that I hadn’t found “the one”, gotten a “real” job, figured out what I wanted to do with my life – all that being a white, middle-class, Christian American woman entails.  Each early-twenty-something birthday passed with the hope of Well, maybe next year…

“But year twenty-six is going to be different,” I told myself one day, and Morgan a few later.  “I declare that year twenty-six is going to be the year of not looking forward to the things that haven’t been promised; but instead, the things that have been promised."

Think about it.

Did God ever promise me a husband and family of my own?  Well, no.  But He promised an adoption as His daughter into the beautiful and eternal family of Christ.  Did He ever promise me a fancy, secure job?  Nope.  But He promised to provide everything I need.  What about the knowledge of definite plans for the rest of my life?  Of course not.  But He promised that if I trusted Him, He would direct my path.

Or the harder realization…  Does God promise to give the desires of my heart if I delight myself in Him?  He sure does, but…  He doesn’t promise those in this lifetime.

Ever read Hebrews 11?  The “Hall of Faith,” as the Christians say.  A chronicle of the ways in which sixteen people showed exemplary faith for the glory of God…  "yet none of them received what had been promised."  Jesus.  The promise of the Messiah.  Not received in their earthly lifetime, but certainly known in the eternal.

I guess it's about time I approach the brink of a mature and peaceful acceptance that getting older and wiser – and more like Jesus – doesn’t entitle me to the pleasures of this world I often believe I deserve.

But His blessings are far sweeter than my expectations anyway.

So, cheers to 26 years.  Here's to every following birthday not including the anticipation of a sort of arrival.  Here's to not pining away for burdens I was never meant to take on (for now).  Here's to actually being, I don't know… content.  But not content, exactly.  Thriving.  Where I am.  Right now.  Here's to learning how to cook before I meet a guy I'll have to cook for and working part-time jobs to fund the things I actually care about doing.  Here's to saying yes to God's promises and living without expectation in regard to all the rest.

Because now is enough.

Thailand Q&A

Agriculture is the main economic activity in the Isan region of Thailand. These women, like many others, sell their fresh produce in the marketplace.  Photo source.

One-sided conversations are boring.

So I want to give a big thanks to those of who joined in by sharing what makes you come alive with me.  From playing music, to sharing Jesus with kids, to loving hurting families, God is using you as His hands and feet on this earth.  And that’s pretty dang cool.  If you didn’t respond, I’d still love to know about you and what you are passionate about.

In my last update, I told you about the opportunity I have to be a real, live, full-time missionary in Thailand.  (No idea what I’m talking about?  Read it here.)  Now I want to add a little more flesh to those minimal details and hopefully answer a few of the most common questions…

• Are you going with the same organization as you did for the World Race?Nope, that was Adventures in Missions.  (They’re super cool too, though - check them out if you’re looking for mostly short-term missions opportunities!)  This time, I’ll be with Avant Ministries.  They’ve been around for 120 years, sending teams of missionaries to places in the world that have had, at most, almost zero exposure to the Good News.
   
• How long will you be gone?
  I’ll be over there 5-7 years (whoa!), but I’ll be able to come back for short stints within that time frame. 

• Are you going by yourself or with a team?
  No way am I going alone – I’d just get lost all the time.  I’ll be on a team with all these people!

 

    

                   Tim, Alex, Dominic, & Marnee Neudorf               Elizabeth McCall                          Heather & Matt Rittscher

• Will you have to learn the language?
  Yep!  For the first year or so, my team and I will be learning Thai at a language school in Bangkok, the capital of Thailand.  มันจะเป็นเรื่องยากมาก

• What exactly will you be doing?
  After language school, we’ll be moving farther northeast to the Isan region of Thailand, where we’ll build relationships with Thai people who have likely never heard the Gospel.  As we share the Truth about Jesus with them, we will pray and work to form churches among these new Thai believers.  If you want to get fancy with the terminology, we’ll be doing something called Short-Cycle Church Planting.  Feel free to check out a more extensive description of that here if you feel like geeking out, but don’t worry – I’ll tell you more about it later.

• When do you leave?
  The official “launch” date is still in the works, but it’s looking like sometime between December 2014 and January 2015.

• Will you have access to the Internet?
  Yep – praise God that the Internet can be found in the Third World too.  So, no fear, you'll still have a steady stream of food pictures blowing up your Instagram. Like this one.

I have so appreciated your encouragement and excitement about what God is going to do in Thailand.  Would you be willing to pray alongside me as I prepare to go and for the hearts of the Thais already there?  I am specifically looking for at least 5 people to commit to praying for me and my team on a weekly basis.  This thing definitely won’t fly without others partnering with us, seeking favor from the Father on our behalf.  If that’s something you’re excited about, please send me an e-mail to let me know!

Several of you have said you know people who care about Thailand.  Maybe they’re really into missions, or they live there now, or they’ve ridden an elephant at some point – whatever the reason, that’s awesome!  If you think they might be interested in learning more about what my team will be doing there, feel free to send me their info or just pass this along to them!

Alright, that was a lot of information…  But it’s exciting when things are happening, and there is stuff to share.  So, tell me...  If we were having this conversation at Starbucks, and I just told you all that stuff about my life, and now my mouth is tired and it’s your turn to talk for the next 10 minutes…  Tell me, what’s God stirring up in your life?

Coffee Date

Let’s sit down for a cup of coffee.  Or tea, or hot chocolate, whatever you like.  Wrap your fingers around your mug, soaking in the warmth of your preferred comfort beverage, a sharp but pleasant contrast to the chilly weather outside.  Lean back in your big, cushioned chair, inhaling the candle scent of… what’s your favorite?  Vanilla?  Cinnamon?  Fresh linen?  Let it stimulate your senses, conjuring up thoughts and dreams you may have set aside long ago for more practical things.

Because, for now, I want to talk about things that aren’t so practical.

What is your calling?

Has anyone ever asked you before?

What’s the thing that sets you on fire?  That niggling thought of what could be, the issue that keeps you up at night?  What has God awakened in your soul?

Maybe it’s kids living on the streets of a land oceans away.  Abandoned, helpless, hungry, your arms long to hold them and your heart longs to love them, breathing affirmation and the reality of something better to come.  Maybe it’s the professional women who wander through life in a haze, wondering if there is any meaning to the day in and day out, keeping of books, laundering of clothes, scheduling of appointments, handling of budgets, securing of relationships – but ever alone.  Maybe it’s writing music or researching the cure for breast cancer or saving the killer whales at Sea World.

Sit on it for a minute.  Allow it to stir you.  Reflect on how it began, where the journey has taken you.

May I tell you mine?

I have made it my ambition to go where Christ has not been named.

It all started at Camp.  The experiencing life beyond the Bible Belt, the coming into contact with kids who didn’t grow up singing “Jesus Loves the Little Children” or having parents who kissed them goodnight.  The realizing…  Oh, I have the Message that matters.  And the ability to tell them about it.

So I did.

And God woke me up to a passion I didn’t know I had.

This started me down the uncomfortable and dangerous path that is…  Well, I have seen.  And now I am responsible.

I volunteered in youth groups.  I got back to the very basics with my small group of high school girls:  Why did Jesus have to die for us to be saved?  What does being “saved” even mean? 

I loved teaching, I really did.  But my heart wandered elsewhere, to the places where the name of Jesus had scarcely been uttered.  Countries far, far away.

I spent eleven nomadic months in these places, growing into a state of dependence, a realization that I could never change the world on my own. I saw the hunger – physical, spiritual, emotional.  And I was never the same.  Trusting the Lord to be my strength and my guide, that was the key.

Having dabbled in enough wanderlust to satiate me for awhile, I asked God to open up a door for something less short-term. And he did.

Imagine.

Imagine growing up in a place where the name of Jesus had never been spoken or heard.  Where your parents encouraged you to dedicate your worship to various gods of gold or stone.  Where your sole ambition, besides maintaining your existence, is to gain perfect peace, nirvana, through giving to temples, feeding monks, and praising lifeless idols.  A place where the produce of the soil is low, but the number of people who believe the Truth is vastly lower.

This is the province of Isan in the country of Thailand.

For the past 120 years, international missionary organization Avant Ministries sought out these kinds of places to plant thriving, Christ-centered churches where none exist.  They invited me to be a part of the team they will be sending to Thailand, where the harvest is plentiful, but the workers are so few.  I have been appointed to be a real, live, full-time missionary.  To learn a new language, adopt a new culture, make new friends, tell them about Jesus, and watch the Holy Spirit transform their lives.

Pretty cool, right?

I’ll leave it at that for now, but I’m excited to tell you more… soon.

For real, though, I want to know:  What sets your heart on fire? 

When I Think of Freedom

I’ve had this girlish fantasy for a few years now.  It’s a little vain, maybe, but the desire remains.  You know those photos or commercials you see of women in flowing white dresses, running across green, flower-clad meadows?  I want a picture of myself being that woman.  I want to wear a long, wispy dress that fans out all around me as I twirl in circles with my eyes closed, arms outstretched, palms facing the sky, head upturned, with a smile welcoming the sunbeams that kiss my face in response.  I want to laugh in elation at the wonder and joy of life.  There are no bounds to my meadow.  Trees dot the landscape here and there, but there are no mountains or forests that enclose it, caging me in.

 




 

I want to feel free and confident – not the kind of confident that comes with lots of people telling you how awesome you are, or that you’re really funny, or that you should write a book or become a counselor.  Rather, the confidence that comes with a steadfast faith in the Giver of your identity.  And this confidence is hard to come by for me because I look for my identity in all the wrong things.  Like other people.  Because, at the end of the day, one of my greatest desires is for people to know me.  Really know me.  Know me and love me in such an impossible way that, after they’ve failed me a few/lot of times, I remember again that I really just want them to be Jesus.

 

I want Jesus in all the people from whom I seek attention and affirmation.  I want perfect pursuit.  Perfect, servant-hearted love.  The kind that makes me feel safe, like I’m not an annoying toddler who keeps spilling her milk or making a mess of the pretty table arrangement or being too loud when important things are happening.  I want Jesus in someone to look at me in my mess, pick me up, and wrap me up in their arms, laughing at how cute I am just because I’m alive.  And I want Jesus in someone to hold me close against their chest and hum soothing melodies and sing songs over me.  And I want, well, Him to speak life over my life and hold me in His arms and stroke my hair until I fall asleep.  Secure, blissful, peaceful rest.

 



 

I recently started working in a psychiatric hospital/residential treatment center.  I work in one of the children’s units, where kids enter in a state of crisis.  Most of them have some kind of abusive background, and many are self-harming and suicidal.  In order to protect the kids and/or ourselves from various forms of danger, we sometimes have to put them in therapeutic holds. One of my coworkers calls it “wrapping them up,” this action of restraining their arms behind their backs and seating them on the ground until they can calm down, process, and remember that there are coping skills that don’t involve stabbing their peers with pencils or punching door handles.  And once we feel certain that the child’s response to the situation will look different and better than before, we communicate that it’s time to slowly get up, verbally process through what happened, and return to the normal day’s activities.

 



 

When I think about the concept of freedom, all of these pictures feel vaguely familiar, like I’ve been in each of them at one point or another.  And it all makes me wonder if freedom comes in different forms.  It’s a woman dancing in a field without limits or a baby sleeping in a secure embrace or a kid who took freedom too far and needs to be redirected to a better expression of it – for her good.  And I wonder if freedom is sometimes accessing the liberty of saying yes but also embracing the maturity in saying no.

 

Rob Bell said something like that in Velvet Elvis, writing that “Freedom is not having everything we crave, it’s being able to go without the things we crave and being OK with it.”

 

That makes sense to me, because it tells me that when I’m free, I’m not a slave to anything.

 

I stumbled upon a verse awhile back that paints the perfect Scripture picture of my fantasy.  Psalm 119:45 in the ESV says, “and I shall walk in a wide place, for I have sought your precepts.”  In the NIV, it states, “I will walk about in freedom.”

 

I feel like I’ve been drifting around pretty aimlessly these past couple of months.  It makes me tired.  Tired of paving my own road to freedom and sucking at it.

 

It’s kind of ironic to me that pursuing holy boundaries – following the steps of the Maker – would lead to the real thing, the freedom that is pure and good and confident and safe.  Something about denying yourself and taking up your cross, right?  And even though I still mostly get it, the rebellious child in me wants to buck against authority and do what I want.

 

Or get picked up and rocked to sleep.

 

When I awake, I will see you face to face and be satisfied. Psalm 17:15