I lost my dignity once. Somewhere in between the main floor and the basement of a Colorado vacation spot my dignity took a U-turn. I’ll spare you the details at an attempt to retain some of the feelings of femininity I like to possess. But to put it simply, my loss of dignity involved three...
The winds of the Kansas plains in our hair.
God is faithful. Life is Bliss.
“Put your life in the hands of the Lord; have faith in him and he will do it.”
- Psalm 37:5
Innocence just doesn’t seem to get fought for much in today’s cultures.
I was pulling up to a stop light on a residential road where I saw a kid who looked to be about 7 walking with his mom. Having just had his hair cut at the neighborhood barber, he kept rubbing his hand up the back of his head with a smug smirk on his face. He was proud of his hair cut. But the thing that struck me wasn’t the hair (although the spikes on top were perfectly formed). It was the look on his face, that was pure and simple… innocent. I looked at him and his mom and thought… “He has a good mom. You can tell that. He’s a good kid. You can tell that. His face is innocent and he is loved.”
Will that innocence disappear from his face too? How long until his innocence is gone? When will the pure naivety leave his face? And when innocence leaves, where does it go? Who takes it? How can it be stopped?
Innocence seems to disappear so quickly…
This past week I have become keenly aware of the innocence of children everywhere and have found myself wondering when the exact time is that the innocence from the face of a child begins to fade.
Currently, my man is in Africa. While there he’s met many orphans and has seen a country laden with beautiful people and also deep sorrow… much like the rest of the world, just manifesting itself differently. When he talks about children growing up too fast in Uganda, he doesn’t reference wearing makeup too early, but he said that 50% of the children are having sex by the time they are 15 years old. 50%. Shocking.
Children are growing up too fast all over the world. However, it seems like our culture actually encourages it. I believe that innocence is beautiful. We should fight for the innocence of our children… always.
I really am curious what your thoughts are on this as my questions are sincere. How do we protect the innocence of our children? How do we keep our children from growing up to fast, and what is too fast?
**Photo Credit**
I believe in Great love.
I believe Great love is uncommon.
I believe Great love is unnatural.
I believe Great love has to be fought for.
I believe Great love is rarely reciprocated but always rewarded.
I believe Great Love is the one thing that can set a Soul free.
I believe that in order to discover Great love, you have to choose it.
I believe Great love is found through unwarranted sacrifice, uncommon consideration, and unreasonable circumstances.
Great love sees the good that could be, despite what is reality.
Great love will sometimes walk away, but Great love will often embrace.
Great love isn’t afraid to get dirty, broken or hurt.
Those with Great love find their own restoration in the Greatest Love of a God that is always Bigger.
I think many people have love. This is not rare. But many of us do not have Great love... Great love is worth searching out and fighting to own and to possess.
I choose Great love. Great Love chose me.
***
I lost my dignity once. Somewhere in between the main floor and the basement of a Colorado vacation spot my dignity took a U-turn. I’ll spare you the details at an attempt to retain some of the feelings of femininity I like to possess. But to put it simply, my loss of dignity involved three things: Altitude sickness, my forehead… and a toilet seat. No doubt a recipe for disaster.
The Encounter with the Toilet Seat
It went something like this. I felt a bit sick… really sick. I went to the bathroom to take care of that. Through an unfortunate incident… the toilet seat hit me in the forehead leaving a rather large and very conspicuous gash right in between my eyes… followed by two black eyes.
I lost my dignity that day… and the day after… and the day after that. War wounds of that nature beckon explanation. Bye-bye dignity.
What I really think about dignity.
I think it’s overrated. The loss of dignity provides a chance for a reminder of our humanity and a balanced view of the world around us. We hold fast to our dignity, but perhaps that is one of the greatest deterrents to doing something great. I’m not saying that random stories that happen during a ski vacation really have much to do with the overall theme of making a difference. But if one day I get to make a choice to be a bit undignified in order to impact the greater good, then I hope to choose to look like a fool and have a foolish story to tell. I will gladly lose my dignity for those in need.
“I will become even more undignified than this, and I will be humiliated in my own eyes. But by these slave girls you spoke of, I will be held in honor.” – 2 Samuel 6:22
**
“Surely he couldn’t be serious.”
It was 1997 and I was in Guangzhou, China sitting across the table from one of the greatest men I have ever met. His name was Dr. Samuel Lamb and he was one of the leaders of the Chinese House Church Movement. Dressed in the grey government-sanctioned clothing that was customary for the Chinese people during that time, he may have looked quite simple, yet the impact with which he had lived his life was unrivaled. As a young seventeen-year-old, I certainly never thought I’d hear all that I heard that day. With great conviction he spoke of his many years of ministry and of the persecution. He spoke in factual detail and without remorse.
The Strange Request
Dr. Lamb had begun preaching decades prior to our meeting. After preaching for a few years, he was arrested and put in jail for three years with the charge of disobeying the government’s rules concerning religion. When he returned from prison in 1957 his congregation had exponentially increased in size to several hundred people. In 1958 he was imprisoned for the second time, and this time for over 20 years. When he was released to his church he found that there were now thousands in attendance. After being jailed and released a third time, he saw once again that the church had grown in size. When we visited him, his very small building had two stories and they were having multiple weekly services for around 4,000 people.
The growth of the church and the impact was amazing. However, it was Dr. Samuel Lamb’s strange request that caused my western mind to come to a halt… Click here for the full blog on Destiny In Bloom.
She looked at me and said, “I just need to stay in my lane.” The moment she said those words, my world kind of had that slow motion movement to it as the words slowly reverberated in my head. “Stay in my lane.” What does that even mean?
“Staying in My Lane“
There is a place in some of us that holds a hard wired desire to make a difference in the massive problems of justice across the world. Whether it’s the AIDS epidemic, the need for clean water, or the evils of the modern day slave trade, there is certainly no lack for problems. My friend that said this to me is a lawyer. She’s one of those people that sees the big issue of human trafficking and is working on the legal portion and determining what specific role she is to play. She was talking about how she has to focus on legal only because that’s what she’s good at… that was her lane. She was most effective there.
What the Old Poet Had to Say
Every time I think of what she said that day, I remember the stanzas of Robert Frost. He wrote my favorite poem of all time, The Road Not Taken. The stanza that echos in my head is this:
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
We all choose a road. Some choose the roads that are less traveled and some choose the roads that many travel. Neither are wrong. I think when it comes to issues of justice, we just need to make sure we take “our road”. Whatever road we feel God has put us on. We need to walk that road until it ends. Because in order for God’s awesome strategy to unfold, His strategy that ends in the redemption of his people, we need to simply do what we’ve been called to do. We need to stay in our lane.
It’s all His work. So let’s just do what we’re good at. Let’s do what we’ve been called to do. Let’s do it well. Let’s do it with passion. Let’s do it with Love. That’s what people need. That’s what God needs. He needs us in our lane. He needs us on our path. And his strategy of redemption will unfold the way He’s planned.
Sometimes I have these moments where I feel like my heart is going to literally beat out of my chest. Those moments are usually when I can suddenly see clearly. When the distraction of my own personal world begins to fade and I see the reality of others around me. The moment when the girl at the counter, becomes a person. The moment where what’s happening on the 6 o’clock news causes me to pause in my tracks and feel. The moment when what another is unjustly facing becomes my issue. Where injustice is intolerable.
I pray that these moments increase and that within each moment God begins to unravel vision for each of us… We can’t do everything, but we can love the girl at the counter. We can be fully engaged in compassion. Yes. I want to see clearly what is going on around me. Join me?
*******
Psalm 12:5
Into the hovels of the poor, into the dark streets where the homeless groan, God speaks: “I’ve had enough; I’m on my way to heal the ache in the heart of the wretched.”
God is bigger. He’s always been bigger; He’ll always be bigger.
I have to believe it. I have to.
Amy.
I met Amy in 2003 over the phone. She was a speaker for the company that I worked for and was one of the most genuine, lovable Texan beauties I had ever known. Within three fast minutes, we were life-long friends and within three fast months I had only begun to realize the impact she was having in so many lives.
Her Story.
I remember the first time Amy told me her story as we sat in a restaurant overlooking the Boise city streets. A former beauty queen, passionate speaker, heartfelt friend and the biggest giver I’d ever known, I never imagined I’d hear of the tragedy that had colored her life. From losing her father to losing her husband, pain was not a foreign concept for my dear friend. Yet, as she told me her story with tears on her cheeks and hope in her eyes, I was once again in awe of the kind of woman that sat before me.
Continuing in her story, she told of her moment of breakthrough when her life began to take shape again. She declared with quiet boldness the verse that had granted her sleep and set her on a firm foundation once again:
“For I know the plans I have for you declares the Lord, plans for good and not for evil, to give you a hope and a future.” – Jeremiah 29:11
With those words Amy moved forward and quickly found herself presenting her message before large audiences. She shared the stage with Heads of States, but her most treasured moments were in ministry as she spoke to battered and bruised women in shelters.
Shocking.
When I moved to Dallas in August of 2007, Amy was the first to greet me, bubbling with excitement and plans. Our working friendship was over but our real-life friendship had continued. Her life was full, her joy overflowing and her lasting touch in the lives of people glimmered with the fruit of a life well lived.
So one can imagine my utter shock when I heard the news. As I was preparing for a women’s conference at my church one spring day, I ran into the grocery store to grab an apple and unexpectedly ran into my friend Jay who I had also worked with during the time when I met Amy. We caught up very quickly and then he told me of Amy’s fall on stage the week prior and the tests that produced evidence of kidney cancer. Stage IV. Terminal. Nothing can prepare you for a moment like that. Amy was 41.
God is Bigger.
I hate cancer. It’s an evil disease that seems to cast its sites on the most unsuspecting, precious people. Yet, my faith was sure and I had a bold confidence that “God is bigger.”
In the days that followed I spoke with Amy and we began to plan the next time we’d meet and catch up. I asked her how to pray and she told me to pray as I always had and to pray for healing. I told that I would and I did. With tears streaming down my cheeks and hope in my eyes, I asked the Lord to heal my friend.
Last year, after a 2-month battle with cancer, Amy went to be with Jesus. A couple of days before she passed away, while at a fundraising dinner for the ministry she had founded, she sent a message:
“Whether in my life or in my death, God will be glorified.”
I remember her telling me a long time ago how she wasn’t afraid of painful things happening to her anymore, because she had seen what God had done for her out of the most horrible tragedies she could have imagined for herself. She had given her life to the One who had rescued her so many years before, so to her, there was no fear.
Celebration.
Many tears streamed down many faces in the days that followed, but it became so clear that the ministry she had founded was booming with the radiant faces of lives that had been changed as the girls declared the redemption that they had each experienced in their own lives.
I’ve known a lot of people in my life, but if one day I remotely resemble the radiance of Amy, then I will be honored. She was driven, yet soft, passionate and hopeful. Yet, most of all, she had experienced first hand what it was to be loved by God and rescued by His hand.
Tough theology.
I have more faith in God’s healing power today than I have ever had. Yet, it’s hard to understand cancer. It’s hard to understand healing. But as my friend Jill said at the funeral, “I can just hear Amy in heaven now… ‘You’re never gonna believe this!’” If anyone is going to love heaven, it’s Amy. She just beat us there.
Yes, God is bigger than cancer. I’ve seen him heal many people. God is also bigger than my theology and my understanding. I’ll miss Amy. But in her death, my eyes were opened to where God was calling me. On the day she passed away, I wrote in my journal: “Okay, Lord. I’ll do all that you called me to, everything I’m afraid to do. I’ll do it because I know that she was afraid too. But she did it… in half the time.”
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Amy Jones, author of book: Twice As Much In Half the Time.
Brace yourself because I am about to blast a very, very secret recipe across the world wide web for the first time ever in history. My friend and I created it when we were little… The name? Friendship Blue. For obvious reasons: We were friends and it was blue.
RECIPE: Water, sugar (lots of it), mint leaves (from the backyard) and blue food coloring. Delicious.
We tried our best to only use these special ingredients in each batch of Friendship Blue (wouldn’t want to mess up this killer recipe with unknown variables), but if we had to substitute something, we could make that work as well. These days Friendship Blue has become a bit too elementary for me. In fact, my formulas have gotten a lot more complicated… in everything.
The Problem with Formulas
Well, they kind of don’t work… and that sucks. Here’s what I mean:
Beyond the Formula
Greater than the ability to work a formula is the ability to look at all of the variables and create something far better. God works beyond our formulas. He sees the variables we don’t see. He is the greatest strategist, understanding how each piece effects the other. He understands the story beneath the story.
I’m not sure about you, but I am horrible at knowing “the right time to say the right thing, do the right thing, or be the right kind of person.” All I can do is live and trust God with the variables. Because in all honesty, I am usually clueless anyway.
Psalm 20:7-8
7 Some trust in chariots and some in horses,
but we trust in the name of the LORD our God.
8 They are brought to their knees and fall,
but we rise up and stand firm.
This video was put together by Francis Chan and others and gives a perspective on how we do Church. It presents questions that are worthy of considering. It’s a short 5 minute clip.
The Big Red Tractor from Jacob Lewis on Vimeo.
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