26
July

The House That Regret Built

rearview mirror

I know what I want to be when I grow up.

After burning through four college majors, two college degrees, teaching high school English for seven years, momming it at home for ten years, working on church staff for three years and traipsing around the planet for forty-two years, I finally know.

And the thing is….I vividly remember bumping up against what stirred my soul on several occasions along the way.

In the early years of my adolescence I wanted to be a missionary. I was born with a teacher’s heart, so during that span of life, I “practiced” the missionary life by teaching my sister about Jesus. Heather is ten years younger, so I would sit her three year-old little self in my lap and read her endless Bible stories. Asking her questions to check her comprehension as any teacher worth her salt knows to do.

I again rubbed elbows with my heart’s love at the end of a bar in Clemson shortly after my college graduation. With a degree in Secondary Education. Deep in conversation about what I wanted to do next, I stifled tears when I shared my desire to search out the poorest community I could find and enact change through quality education. With a grand finale flourish, I released the tears and concluded, “I think I may be a Democrat.” True story. I didn’t know what to call the fire in my belly. I didn’t have a label for it.

My trip to Kenya in 2009 once again inflamed this thing in me. It felt like all my senses were on high alert. Colors were more vibrant, smells richer, flavors deeper. I felt all wide-eyed and alive.

And then. My recent trips to visit with the female inmates in the Florence County Detention Center sealed the deal. The thing was back. And this time I knew what to call it. And it isn’t at all tied to a political party.

Fear and doubt in the form of…

You can’t go live in a foreign country by yourself.

It wouldn’t be safe for you to work in a low-income community as a young teacher.

What are you going to do? Sell all of your belongings and feel sorry you were born in America? How does that help Kenyans?

…caused me to reject the stirring. My own preoccupation with safety and certainty has stolen years.

I regret that. It makes me sad to only now walk with clarity of purpose. It took decades to get here, and time is short. There is so much to do…..

There are other things I regret too.

But here’s what I know about regret. It builds a house and invites us to dinner. It rolls out a lavish spread and makes it easy for us to accept its hospitality. Regret says, “Put your feet up. Rest. Cry if you want to; your tears are welcome here.” And all the while it coaxes us into paralysis. Until our faith atrophies. Our hope feels like concrete blocks. We are smothered by the oppressive blanket of the past. We’re a guest at the inn of shame where no sunshine angles through the window. It’s dim. And we’re stuck.

house

That’s the house regret has built in my life. Does that ring true with your experience at all? Is that your current address?

Well, here’s what else I’ve learned about regret. If we’ll intentionally muster the persistent effort to leave out the back door, we’ll find ourselves standing in the sunshine on the front porch of opportunity.

Because we can’t change the weight of the past.

But we don’t have to continue to sit under it.

God has provided informed hindsight where He’s allowed me to look in the rearview mirror and see how essential every part of my journey has been to our current location. Experiences from my childhood taught me Jesus is the source of healing and helped me connect with others who have similar backgrounds.

My early love for disciple-making and the years of studying educational theory and practice as a college student work nicely together.

My years on a church staff taught me how to lead a ministry, how to lead people and build teams. How to engage people with the Truth and the pure joy of serving others.

My mistakes have baptized me in an understanding of grace that I desperately needed, and they have broken the legs of pride that attempted to stand too tall. Because sometimes the Lord’s goodness tastes like humble pie.

While He has worked good from everything in my life for His purposes, He has said as He did after the miracle of feeding the five thousand in John 6, “Gather the pieces that are left over. Let nothing be wasted” (v. 12).

Let nothing be wasted.

I look back and know that every part of it was necessary. Though I could have chosen to learn lessons in less painful ways.

Today, as I stand in the sunshine on the front porch of opportunity, I am not alone. There are two friends with me, Kay Douglas (the business/legal guru) and Lindsay Haselden (the creative/marketing brain), and we peek in the window and see a ministry called Tenacious Grace. God has knit us together with a submission to Him, a love for each other, and a passion for seeing people thrive in their relationship with Jesus. I am particularly broken for poor, marginalized, hurting women.

friends.

We don’t know all of the specifics, but we know that Tenacious Grace is a place where people can find Truth, strength, and hope in Jesus. Through speaking and writing and serving in jail and whatever other directive the Lord gives, we intend to point to Jesus, champion grace, and serve women who haven’t enjoyed the advantages of life we have.

We have a tiny office and bills. We are in the process of filing for 501c3 (nonprofit) status, and next month we’re filming a six-week video-driven Bible study, which will be our first major project.

If you are interested in watching and participating in what God is doing through the ministry of Tenacious Grace, like our ministry page on FB, subscribe to the blog, and share posts to help us reach outside of our circles of influence. There will be lots of opportunities to get involved, and we would love to have you on board.

As always, thank you for reading, and I hope you’ll stop by again real soon.

[Feature Images: Miguel Angel Arroyo Ortega and Max and Dee Bernt]

read more →
1
March

Once Upon a Time in a Seasonless Land with Soggy Air, There Lived a Girl Who Thought Too Much.

story of a woman


Two matters of business before we proceed.

One, the subject in the featured image is not our protagonist. Her hair is far too smallish and unaffected to be native to the humid southland of our tale. Unsplash has no collection of stunning photographs of girls with frizzy, misbehaving, drenched, matted hair. Photog friends, I have found a niche.

Two, many of you clicked this link because you thought, “This could be about me.” I knew I could count on the Sisterhood of Southern Over-Analyzers. Thanks for playing along.

_______________

Once upon a time in a seasonless land with soggy air, there lived a girl who thought too much. Her mind was populated by a dense forest of trees that reached skyward and spread to the horizon from every angle. She stood at its center and tried to run in all directions at once, liquifying into thinness and leaking as tiny rivulets down the wandering paths between the pines. Only her bushy, messy bun retained its volume.

She drank too much coffee to help her overthink faster. She packed the boxcars of her time like a fiendish hoarder so her legs might outpace her concerns. And then she flapped in the wind behind her runaway train.

Because busyness was a celebrated self-medication.

Some called it hustle. Some called it magnanimous. She deemed it necessary. Because stillness gobbled her up. A good day swallowed all the margin where fear lived.

An indentured servant to “Yes.”

A hostage to the secret things buried beneath the forest floor.

Abused by doubt and uncertainty.

She plucked the silky curtain of her cheek with her teeth to divert the sensory attention her body lent the angry tigers wrestling in her belly. They bit and clawed and roared and twisted leaving her insides raw. A feverish hole where anxiety nested.

She presumed upon the future, forfeit the present, and obsessed about the past. She was beset by worry, bullied by lies, paralyzed by the opinions of others, and half-convinced she might be certifiably crazy. She was choked by guilt, hounded by shame, waterboarded by unhealed hurt, and drawn and quartered by her own unmet expectations.

And she was solitarily confined.

Regardless of how many people inhabited her existence; they knew nothing of the forest where she leaked like rivulets down the wandering paths between the pines.

So she ate chocolate.

And stayed locked away. Running and escaping without progress. She lived in exile in the circular province of her thinking.

_______________

 I am an expatriate of the circular province of my thinking. I’ve completed a few tours of duty on that unkind land, and I’m here to share a secret.

There is passage through the pines.

It’s a scary course, and no part of you will want to cooperate. You’ll have to manhandle your very own self, which we do terribly.

But we don’t have to suffer the overwhelming oppression of our brains.

Are you ready?

Here it is.

Lean in closer.

Stand on the edge of the thicket with a brilliant torch and lead someone in. Invite someone in. Into the jungle of your mind and feelings and hurts and fears and insecurities. Not the landscaped perimeter. The wooly, overgrown center.

Because the forest isn’t a dangerous place to be; it’s just a dangerous place to be alone.

Twice I have asphyxiated on the stale air of my entombed hurt. And twice I experienced a cool, resuscitating breeze through the pines as I led someone in. My lungs struggled to accommodate this new wind, burning in a cleansing, difficult way.

But there was passage through the pines.

And it led to a spacious place whose topography was peace. Whose climate was restorative.

Invite someone in. 

_______________

Storytelling is a harrowing journey to mending. There is a measure of instant healing that occurs when we push the hard words from our mouths; they relinquish their role as jailer. The work of healing just begins there, but in a realm where the labor takes so much time and effort, I was slack-jawed at the now liberation that follows hurt dressed in words.

During the month of March, we want to encourage you in your story set in a dense forest of trees that reach skyward and spread to the horizon from every angle. We will be sharing the voices of seven different women between the blog and the Tenacious Grace Facebook page, and you don’t want to miss a one.

These brave ladies have agreed to stand at the edge of the thicket with a brilliant torch to lead you in. To their stories. So that you might be strengthened in your own.

We’re inviting you in.

To ensure you don’t miss any of these posts, you can subscribe to the blog (in the sidebar) and like and follow our FB page.

read more →
9
September

When a Dream Dies

One of the coolest things I (Lindsay) have gotten to do recently is editing and formatting devotionals for Cookie as she enters the final stages of an amazing writing project (more on this at the end of the post :)). With her keeping her writing focus on that project this week, I am back at the blog today to share more on how my story with Jesus ties into what He is up to on the crazy ride of Tenacious Grace.

dreamdies2Sometimes Jesus says yes. Sometimes He says no. And sometimes He says not yet.

In April of 2012, as I was praying, Jesus whispered three things in my spirit and gave me clear instructions to “have faith.” Excited over the revelation and clarity I quickly wrote them down on a post-it.Post-It

I felt like all three of these things fell into the “not yet” category, but I stuck the post-it on my desk to serve as a reminder of where Jesus was taking me.

Then over a year passed. And instead of God drawing me closer to these opportunities, my circumstances seemed to be pulling me farther and farther away.

Holding onto hope became hard. And eventually I just couldn’t bear to look at the note without feeling discouraged. I felt pressed to let go. So…with a heavy heart, I pulled the post-it off and placed it into a folder.

Some would say I was giving up on God. I felt like that myself. I thought maybe I had misunderstood Him; or He was just letting me down. But I was wrong.

I didn’t realize it then, but sometime in the year after I had written my post-it note, I had gotten wrapped up in following Jesus for the purpose of seeing those promises fulfilled. My joy became tied to whether or not I thought I was getting closer to where God was taking me next. And God wanted my joy to be solely anchored in the fact that He was with me now—no matter what season I happened to be traversing.

As I bitterly let go of my dreams, Jesus stripped me of unhealthy ambition, idols, and pride. But over time I eventually and amazingly found myself in a place of peace — free of striving and straining.

I learned that when we get overly infatuated with the idea of what’s next, we will unavoidably lose sight of the purpose He has for us right where we are. And even worse, our God-given dreams can unintentionally become our gods.

Through that season He replaced my iron-fisted grip on my dreams with an open-handed hope. Where I could still have faith for the future, without obsessively looking for ways to bypass the present.

It’s been over three years since I wrote that post-it note. I had forgotten about it until I recently sat at the computer and saw a link to a devotional I wrote for my church’s blog. Then suddenly a wave of excitement hit me–reminding me of that post-it and all that Jesus has done since I put it away.

I searched my folders and found the note. Reading it I was overwhelmed with gratitude to Jesus. When I wasn’t paying attention He brought me full circle — providing every single opportunity that He had whispered over my life three years ago:

* ministry with C

* a women’s group

* the writing team

Alone I may have chalked them up to coincidence. But together they stand as a testament to His faithfulness in my life.

…He who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion…

And as for the star on my post-it labelled “Ministry with C” — let me tell ya, Jesus is up to something of the Ephesians 3:20 variety in the form of Tenacious Grace.

Recently I got to spend a few days sitting in a studio, watching Cookie do what God has so beautifully gifted her to do. Teaching in a way to help people find Truth, strength, and hope in Jesus.

I’ve been able to attend and work alongside her through each of her previous Bible Studies. Listened to her do her thing on the NewSpring stage. Seen her speak at women’s conferences, in small groups, and in churches around the community. Jesus never fails to speak to me when Cookie teaches. Getting to partner together with her in what Jesus is doing is one of the greatest blessings of my life.

As Cookie, Kay, and I continue moving forward and assembling the nuts and bolts of Tenacious Grace we’d love your prayers. And here are a few things we’d love to share with you:

  1. Cookie is fully immersed in the final stages of writing a devotional book that will accompany her upcoming video Bible Study. Expect lots more info on this amazing resource soon!
  2. Cookie will also be speaking at several churches and ministries in the coming months, and if you’d like more information about having her speak at your church or event check out the SPEAKING page. We’d absolutely love to come and serve you!
  3. If you would like to stay up-to-date on all that Jesus is up to in Tenacious Grace, head on over and like our ministry Facebook page. We’d love to connect with you there!

read more →