It’s not necessarily grass huts

If I could write this post while holding my breath, I probably would. It feels risky to talk about what has been bee-bopping around in my head because of a habit of being circumspect about what we are/were doing and choosing to be quiet about it over being overly talkative (and then not being able to take back what we’ve said). I’m talking about responding to the Great Commission in Matthew 28:19 “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations,…” and actually going somewhere, to a people, that would otherwise not have the chance to hear about Jesus or see what a life dedicated to Jesus would look like. Certainly there are lots of ways to respond to the Great Commission, but one of those ways is to actually go. There is a word that many people still use to talk about the people who go to another culture to share Jesus with them (starts with “m”), but I’m still not comfortable using that word (too many misunderstandings and stereotypes attached to it).

Many of us who go, feel compelled to go to the “unreached” or “unengaged.” “Unreached” in this context means that less than 2% of the population are followers of Jesus. “Unengaged” means that there are no known followers of Jesus. It’s still crazy to me that, apparently, there only needs to be 2% of a population following Jesus to be sufficient enough to reach the rest of the population. Until then, even if someone wanted to know about Jesus, there aren’t enough believers in the mix of the population for that person to ever find someone who could share with them about Jesus. This is what compels many of us to go and what deters the argument of, “but there are plenty of people who need Jesus right here.” Because there are enough believers – even here in Portland, OR – for anybody who wanted to know about Jesus to be able to access him via whatever means (person, church, online, etc.) I’m not saying that we don’t need to reach out right where we are, I’m just saying that that isn’t an argument that overcomes the stats for those who “go.”

That makes these unengaged, unreached people seem super-duper remote, doesn’t it? The result being that many Western minds go to this idea of moving to the jungle and living in a grass hut – and most of us just don’t feel called or compelled to do that. But the reality is, most of these unreached and unengaged people live in cities and towns and yes, villages. But even in villages – most people aren’t living in grass huts. Mud bricks however…

The ideas surrounding what “goers” actually do and where they live came back to the forefront of my mind recently when I saw an announcement for a “Work as Worship” conference. By the way – I am in FULL support of this type of conference and any like it because I wholeheartedly agree that doing our work with purpose and faithfulness is an offering of worship to God and we all need encouragement that the repetitive, daily stuff we do is valuable to him. So in this announcement, it talked about how maybe you don’t feel called to be a pastor or a “m” (that word again – let’s keep saying “goer”) but instead you are in a “secular” vocation (ie: not ministry). I couldn’t help but think of all the other “goers” who I know – the majority of them work “secular” jobs, but in another country/culture/language. I realized (again) that there is still a wide-spread idea that “goers” are somehow doing something other than working “normal” jobs. Indeed, there are plenty of people who are doing ministry work vocationally and they are doing it in a country outside of their passport country. But the majority of the unreached, unengaged people groups don’t allow that. You have to have a job – whether with a non-governmental organization (charitable organization) or with a business. But either one of those require office hours, spreadsheets, meetings, production of something (even if it’s services) and some pretty “normal” mundane stuff that most other vocations require. For us, Monday through Friday, Rees usually went to work in the morning or he worked from home via computer. He would work in some strategic lunches and meet-ups with men who expressed a hunger for God and he’d pray for people when he was out on errands and he’d often bring one of those hungry young men with him on errands, but his day more or less looked like an extra social work day. Most of the “goers” we know have lives that look like that. I would be home with the kids – doing home school, feeding and clothing our household, joining in with whatever community stuff was going on, keeping track of where my kids were and what other kids were in my home. And we lived in a house – granted it was made of mud bricks, but you would never know by looking at it! I do a lot of that same stuff now – it’s just easier to do the feeding and clothing part now and the community and neighborhood aren’t so active and social so I have less obligations and “interruptions” (although, where we lived – those interruptions were just part of relationship). There is the awkward issue of pay-checks. That is a bit different. Many of these unreached, unengaged places have fragile economies and a generous dose of corruption so it doesn’t matter how great a business you run – it’s nearly impossible to make an income that supports your day-to-day life. So, many of us “goers” have supporters that contribute to our paychecks (another response to that Great Commission passage). Just a side note – it is pretty refreshing to not have “being extorted” as a line item on our budget these days!

I guess that’s what I would love for other believers to know – that “goers” are probably more similar to them than they may think. That we have a lot of encouragement and support to offer each other and that we are all just doing our best to let Jesus leak out of us into all the parts of our “normal” mundane lives.

It’s about trajectory

It has been so fun to be reunited with Troy & Jenny and their three boys. We loved doing life together previously and we love it still. We are at a point where the two youngests (only one day apart) are four and a half and can do a lot of stuff on their own – like get a drink of water and wipe themselves after using the toilet. Amazing how life-changing those things can be. All six of them play so well together and when they are having troubles, they can usually figure out how to solve the problem on their own or with a few prompts. The net effect is that it’s easier to have them all together. It’s louder and takes a bit more effort to feed or move them, but it’s easier on the whole because they are happily engrossed in play whenever they are together. Actually, all six are downstairs right now putting together the gingerbread Starbucks cafe that Auntie Leesy gave them at Christmas-time and I hear them yelling at each other occasionally, but then they seem to re-convene with a better strategy once everyone has had their say.

Troy & Jenny and Rees and I are trying to give each other some regular dates. A few weeks ago, they had our kids while Rees and I had a date and Troy got the kids organized in making “love snacks.” The kids wanted to put together snack packs to hand out to homeless people. So out came the zip-lock bags, granola bars, fruit snacks, bite-size Snickers and bottles of water and the kids filled the bags with the kinds of snacks they would like to eat themselves. They also drew pictures and wrote notes like, “Hope you get a really good home someday” and stuff like that. I love that Troy just let them do what they sincerely felt would be helpful to do, without editing it into a heavily adult-influenced project. The logical side of me thought, “This doesn’t do much to help alleviate the complex problem of homelessness.”  But I had to just appreciate that the kids were doing something that they felt was helpful and kind.

You can imagine how this might all go down. Naturally, the kids aren’t driving around town on their own. Most of the time they have a chauffeur – me. So I am the one who actually ends up handing out the love snacks. I was tempted once to add a disclaimer like, “I know it’s not much…” but I realized that these genuine little souls would hear that and possibly feel like their efforts were being demeaned. I decided that I would just say, “My kids put together some snack packs, would you like one?” It took a few days before we were perfectly lined up at a red light, in shouting distance of someone holding an “anything helps” cardboard sign. The first guy seemed really happy and immediately tore into that water bottle. The kids were feeling pretty good. A couple more days passed before we ended up back in that situation and the lady who received the love snack gave the kids a big smile and said, “Thank you! God bless you kids!” Ironically, only one block later, there was another red light and another woman with a cardboard sign. I offered the love snack to her and she glared at me and said, “No way, *#%&@! Why would I #$*&@#* want water?! F#@*& you!” The kids looked at me with wide eyes, incredulous. They didn’t even know all the swear words she said. I said, “Well, kids, you can only offer what you have to someone, you can’t make them take it and you can’t control how they will respond to it. We can only control how we will respond.” We talked about the kinds of things that can contribute to homelessness and how that can color a homeless person’s view of the world, and being a mom (and therefore concerned about their character) we also talked about what a better way to decline something could be – say, “no thank you”?

The thing is, I kind of understand that woman’s response. Who knows what her background is and certainly a zip-lock bag with a bottle of water and some kid snacks in it may have seemed like a mockery of her situation to her. If you feel beaten down enough by life and people, you can view everyone as hostile to you. I considered, for a brief second, if we should keep giving out love snacks. But I decided that the kids were on a good trajectory and that I should encourage it. They regularly see homeless people and tent cities and they wanted to do some problem-solving about what they could do to help out. So they put together something they thought was really nice and had the guts to give it out. I couldn’t help but think that wasn’t a bad approach to a lot of things they will encounter: see a problem, make a thoughtful response, then do the thing you came up with and evaluate how it went. They are on a good trajectory toward making an impact and the trajectory is the more important thing.

I was really happy for them to see the next four or five responses from people. Every other person we have given a love snack to, gave them big smiles and said things like, “Wow kids! Thank you so much! That is so nice of you!” Really, the kids have done more to reach out to these folks than I have because I take too much time thinking of more sophisticated solutions that might make a bigger dent in the problem. But they have shown me that sometimes it’s better to just do something with sincerity, even if it isn’t a “perfect” solution. It’s about the trajectory.

Little bits of thankful all over the place

It’s such a gift to be thankful and be thankful often! I say it’s a gift, though we all know that it requires intentionally developing the habit of being thankful (and then continuing to nurture it), because it still seems like grace to actually notice what to be thankful for right in the moment. It feels easier to me to take a moment at the end of the day and reflect on things that I may be thankful for – and often I wasn’t thankful for them right at that time. But it feels like something I couldn’t control or make happen to feel thankful right at the moment that something is happening. That is a gift. Here’s a list of some of the “thankfulnesses” that I’ve had since we’ve been back in the U.S. :

The lights turn on when I flip a switch. Every. Time.

The furnace. It starts pumping out heat when I turn it up. One button makes it hotter or colder throughout my whole house. So nice. So easy.

The coffee is brewed when I wake up in the morning because the time-brew function works because the electricity didn’t go off in the night.

It’s quiet. As much as I appreciated being truly part of the community in Tajikistan, I’m really appreciating the lack of pounding on my door and the constantly flow of people in and out of our house/yard. That’s the introvert in me.

Being able to pay things online. This is kind of related to the above point. Lots of times the pounding on the door is a money collector for electricity, garbage, water/sewer.

Lots of cabinet space.

Lots of counter space. Hannah and Emmett were putting together pizza pockets the other day and I was at the kitchen counter next to them, making soup – with all my ingredients and all their ingredients spread out and still plenty of room for all our elbows too. It took my breath away.

Not having to count volts to ensure our stabilizer doesn’t burn out. I looked up the other day and saw that I had on the dishwasher (LOVING that thing too!), the oven, the lights, and my instant-pot all at the same time, WHILE my whole house was heated and it made no difference. No lights flickering. No smell of something burning. No problem.

These are just a few things that I’m noticing and feeling thankful for and feeling thankful for feeling thankful. At certain moments in life, thankfulness feels like it takes a lot of concerted effort to offer – worthwhile effort but effort nonetheless. I’m just feeling thankful that it feels easy to be thankful for these things right now.