May 2023 – Betty's Thoughts

What Does God Want To Do In Your 50s?

THIS WAS 10 YEARS AGO – so I’ve now turned 67 (earlier this year). Look for an update coming later this year. Originally published 3/17/2013.

I turned 57 this week [Remember – this was 10 years ago]. Seven years before that, shortly after my 25-year marriage ended, I turned 50 in Thailand – at a missions conference. There were so many unexpected things about that. I hadn’t expected to be single at 50 – but I was. With the end of my marriage I assumed my dreams of traveling would have to end – but someone covered my airfare to the conference. I didn’t necessarily expect my dreams of ministry to grow or be possible in this new stage – but there I was with missionaries and missions-minded people from around the world.

I had the sense in Thailand that the Lord was whispering (or maybe shouting) at me: “See, I know the desires of your heart. This is the start of a new stage for you but I am very much in charge of it.” Around the same time, two sets of friends prophesied over me that “the second season of my life would be more fruitful than the first season”. There have been times when believing that has been hard, but my spirit sensed it was true when it was spoken and so I cling to it as a promise – a promise of restoration and joy and significance for the Kingdom.

There are a lot of people writing about the “second season of life” these days and I’ve read some of them. I’ve picked up a few things here and there. I felt my spirit stir when I heard a Christian leader in his 60s state that he and his friends had vowed to make their next 5 years the best ministry years they’d ever had. I want that to be true for me as well.

But my journey has been more intimate than books or talks. And it’s been about more than just trusting Jesus. It’s been about the courage to dream dreams. Dreams that I had been afraid to tell anyone in a long time. Dreams that were abandoned long ago – out of fear, out of shyness, out of “circumstance” or “necessity”. Dreams of mattering and making a difference. Dreams of exploring and adventuring. It’s not as if none of that had happened before my 50s (e.g., I’d always dreamed of being a mom), but there was still the restlessness of a few unlived dreams.

And my 50s were about being willing to be honest with the Lord about those dreams. Risk aversion comes more naturally to me than risk taking. There is a tendency in me to not ask the Lord for something until I’m sure He wants to give it to me. I know – it’s bad theology and embarrassing to admit. As a gentle Father, as someone who loves me and who cares about my dreams, He’s been encouraging me to bring those dreams to Him. Not necessarily as a request but as a sharing of my heart. I’m a mom. I know how much I love it when my kids put their fears – or even practicality – aside and just joyfully dream. In that moment, it doesn’t particularly matter whether that is “the dream” that will unfold for them. It’s about the joy of sharing possibilities and hearts. So I’m trying to do more of that with the Lord.

I wasn’t all the way through this decade when I originally wrote this, but I realized I had learned some things about what God might do in your 50s:

We hit a point of realizing time is short and we don’t want to waste it. We want what we do to matter. We have less patience for some of the “okay things” of the past. They just don’t satisfy us as much as they used to.
Complacency can be a very real enemy, telling us that we’re doing good enough, have done enough, have been through enough. That we’re entitled to slow down. That we’re too tired or too old to tackle new challenges. That it’s not our job to do it. That we can’t really make a difference anyway.
It’s an ideal season of life to expect God to speak about transition, new stages, reviving forgotten dreams or birthing new ones. Along with that comes the need for a new season of courage and obedience – especially for us risk averse types. Being empty-nesters brings a type of freedom. Ask the Lord what He wants you to do with that.
We may be in very different places regarding our own health or family situations. Caring for elderly parents may be very much a part of this decade. But for many of us, our 50s are a season where we are still healthy, where our kids no longer need the same kind of care, and where our parents do not need us full time either. Don’t waste this window if it exists. It will be gone at some point. Don’t look back with regret.
We may need to look for new sources of identity – particularly those of us who felt our primary identity was as a parent.
“Letting go” of adult children forces us to trust God in new ways. The relationship changes but it’s a good thing. The faith that is built through letting go of your children builds faith in other areas of your life as well. It’s a transferable “life skill”.
Loss may be more real – we lose parents or maybe even children, long term marriages end, businesses fail, some dreams die, medical issues may surface. In all of these, we have the choice to run to Jesus or to blame Him. It’s in these tough days that we discover whether or not Jesus is enough. Head knowledge and the things we have said all our lives are tested and move more deeply into the heart.
Mistakes or failures may still hurt or immobilize us. But it’s not too late to grieve them well, find healing and grace, and move beyond them.
What we care about, and what nourishes us, may change. For me, I’m less a reader of theology than I used to be.
Friends are crucial. Continue to invest in friendships and community.
Things become less personal, less about me. I’ve become more pragmatic and more peaceful about the hard stuff – the hard conversations, the appropriate confrontations, the lines that need to be drawn, the questions where I’m afraid of what the answer will be. I used to agonize over those things. Getting healthier – emotionally and spiritually – makes them easier.
The world needs you. The Kingdom needs you. The people affected by injustice and oppression need you. We have a lifetime of resources – perhaps financial but also experience, connections and wisdom and it’s time to use those for the Kingdom, even if you feel you’ve never done that before. “Secular” jobs are full of Kingdom opportunities. Be intentional about having a Kingdom mindset.
It’s never too late.
God is faithful.

How about you? For those of you who are experiencing (or have experienced) this decade of your 50s, what has God done? Where is He stirring you? What is the Holy Spirit nudging in you? What is it time to deal with? Or do?

Those Annoying, Pesky, Identity Gnats

Original date – February 2013.

I started this post a dozen times and couldn’t figure out how to structure it. I couldn’t make it say what I want it to say.

I tried approaching it from “I hate it when I think I’ve learned a lesson/been healed/etc. and then it resurfaces and I have to deal with it again.” But that approach felt too heavy handed. Like I was giving this particular thing too much credit. Yes – there are those things I thought I had “mastered”, where I thought all the nooks and crannies had been healed and made whole, where it seemed the foundations were firm and unshakeable. And then I realize they are back. But only sort of, kind of, not as strong, not as distracting, not as painful. I still know where they come from. I recognize the triggers and I know why they impact me the way they do. But it doesn’t feel as if I’m fighting giants any more.

Or maybe something starts the “old tapes” playing again and I’m back in that place of feeling hurt, fearful, unworthy, afraid of so many things, afraid that once again I will not be “good enough”. Those are my old tapes. Your old tapes may tell you something else. But then I realize there’s something different this time. The other voice – the one that says I am beautiful, worthy and capable – chimes in without my having to work hard at getting it there. And perspective begins to return pretty quickly.

Years ago a friend of mine described a season of spiritual warfare as being like a swarm of gnats. Not a serious threat. Just annoying little pests that keep you swatting. If a few of them bite, it’s a nuisance. But you don’t end up out of commission.

That’s the closest I can come to describing those times where my identity issues have been triggered once again, with a greater frequency than they have been in a while. When I originally wrote this, I’d been in a season like this for about six weeks. It had been a pretty steady stream of feeling like I was swatting gnats.

I know where I’m vulnerable. I know where my tender places are. But I have also learned how to swat the gnats that attack my identity.

I learned that someone from my past was saying untrue things about me and it hurt. I got scared that I would lose valued friendships over it. But I contacted the people whose friendships feel most at risk and that matter most to me – and they respond in beautiful ways that cause tears of gratitude to overflow.

Early in my years at Adventures in Missions, I found myself in a steep learning curve with new job responsibilities and I worried that I wouldn’t be good enough. And I realized how much my identity was tied to doing my job well. That’s a good thing to strive for but it is not the sum total of my identity. A sermon reminds me of that and a blog by a friend points out that stretching your capacity is like exercising a muscle – it’s a good thing and increases your ability. Suddenly I’m more excited and less scared. And I like that I’m willing to try things these days without having a guarantee of success. It’s a sign of growth.

I’m encouraged to try to do something (a simple thing that most people probably do without thinking) – and the affirmation from those teaching me that they are sure I can do it brings to mind a list of times I was told that I couldn’t do things “right”. I grieve a bit over “the list” and the feelings it brings back, and then I realize I am enjoying a new sense of freedom to try things, unafraid that I’ll be criticized for the effort. My worth is not determined by whether I succeed at everything or even whether I do things the way someone else does.

I regularly feel like I don’t fit. I’m an introvert in an organization of extroverts. I’m a detail person in an organization of visionaries. I love that I work with people like that – because I love being at a table where people bring things to the mix that I can’t bring. But I wonder if they feel the same about me. The desire to be different than I am – in order to fit in better – resurfaces. And then the Lord asks me to make a list of all the things I can remember Him saying about who I am – and it helps me trust the way He made me.

I want my identity and my sense of worth to be firmly established in the Lord. And that is far more true than it used to be. In the meantime, when there is a season of swatting at gnats, then I can do that, knowing that while it may be an occasional nuisance it is no longer a battle against giants. And for that I am grateful.

Darkness … and Light

To be honest, I’ve been dreading this moment. When I get to this original post (posted December 16, 2012) and it’s the next in line to transfer to my new platform. It’s probably the post that I’ve done the most rethinking on in the ten years since posting – and I know I need to do an update blog when I start posting new material. I considered just skipping it. But I don’t shy away from hard conversations. I try to embrace them. And there’s enough here to post – it’s an accurate reflection of one stage of my struggle with this. It’s not the end of wrestling with how to respond. The need to figure out that response has grown stronger in the intervening years. But the belief that God is still God, even when we can’t make sense of circumstances, does remain. It’s not a full answer though – and the issue is important enough that I need to keep wrestling.

Twenty seven dead. Twenty of them children. There are no words. And publishing thoughts still in process is a risky thing, but it seems important to try.

Children. Not a teen angry at classmates – although that is equally tragic. Not an employee angry at perceived wrongs by a boss or company – also tragic. But children – most of them 6 or 7 years old. There are no words.

How do you attend 27 funerals? What about the one grade level that will always be smaller and gradually work its way up the ladder over the next 12 years? How do parents and teachers guide young children through this, deal with questions and sleepless nights and fears that no child should have to experience?

When will this end, this seeming escalation of violence?

During Advent and Christmas I’m always spiritually watchful for some new insight into, or connection with, the story that is so familiar. Jesus born in a manger. Shepherds. Wisemen. We’ve heard it so many times. The incarnation is an incredibly wonderful miracle and I never lose my wonder at that event. But the story, the biblical narrative, seems so familiar.

In an unexpected way, the events on Friday jolted me into a part of the story I’ve never spent much time in before. “When Herod realized that he had been outwitted by the Magi, he was furious, and he gave orders to kill all the boys in Bethlehem and its vicinity who were two years old and under, in accordance with the time he had learned from the Magi.” (Matthew 2:16)

We don’t talk much about this. I don’t know how many died. But I do know there were tears and grieving, that there were mothers and fathers who would understand the anguish of the Newtown parents. That there was a town in shock.

Madeleine L’Engle, in An Irrational Season, wonders whether Jesus’ tenderness toward children was partially a response to knowing that Herod’s actions in the massacre were connected to the news of Jesus’ birth. That in one sense, He was responsible for their deaths.

Who can fathom losing all the boys in a town under 2 years old? Or losing 20 young children in a school in Connecticut?

Into this world – the one 2000 years ago and the one today – comes Jesus, the hope of the world, the light that overcomes darkness, the one who cares for the brokenhearted.

We know the end of the story. Light wins. Darkness loses. But in the meantime – in this in between time – there are so many occasions for tears, for grieving. So many tragedies. So much that is “not okay”. School shootings. Abused and exploited women and children. Poverty. So many issues and policies that need wisdom in the midst of thoughtful and intelligent discussions. What do we do about guns, mental illness, school security? These are important discussions.

But right now it’s also okay to grieve. To admit that we can’t understand “why”. There are tears that are appropriate to shed. It’s okay to wonder “How do you cling to a glimmer of hope and light in the face of such darkness?”

For me, it’s also become important to say “God is still God”. I don’t want to get caught up in wondering why God allows – or doesn’t prevent – evil. Or to discuss free will and the fall. But I also don’t want to deny that those are important conversations.

I just need to affirm that God is still God. The baby born 2000 years ago is still the hope of the world, the light shining in the darkness, the one who can be clung to and who binds up wounds and cares for the brokenhearted.

God is still God. God is still God. God is still God.

The Church of the Floating Jesus

I didn’t attend this funeral yesterday. It was in November 2012. But my gratitude for this church has not diminished as the years have continued to pass.

Yesterday I attended a funeral – one of those sudden and unexpected deaths that don’t make sense this side of heaven. A vibrant, full of life, wife and mother collapses without warning and is gone. Three college/early career age children speak tenderly, and humorously, at the service. I remember them as toddlers in my Sunday School class and my heart breaks for them. A husband, so enjoying this stage of their marriage, is denied the joy of growing old with the woman he found so amazing. Her name is Holly – and the years that eroded the amount of contact we had after I moved away from Atlanta 20 years ago [now 30 years ago] did not diminish that she had a bigger impact on me than she probably ever knew. If you have a couple of minutes, read her “resume”. It’s how she introduced herself to potential schools and I promise you it’s unlike anything you’ve ever read in a resume.

The funeral was at the church I attended when I lived in Georgia back then – before the move to Connecticut. Before the move back to Georgia. It was the place where I’d known Holly and had taught her children in Sunday School. But it is also the place where God powerfully shaped me. And those memories flooded me as I sat there.

Father Gray challenged me spiritually and intellectually in a way that opened new worlds to me. He affirmed ministry gifts in me and encouraged me to step into them, even when I was tentative about doing so. Even after we moved to Connecticut, he remained a mentor and counselor. He’s the one who taught me how to navigate some painful relationships – who encouraged me to be truthful instead of always defaulting to “nice”. He taught me to look poor people in the eye because it treated them with an appropriate dignity.

And there was Nancy, who as Christian Education Director, spoke life and courage into me when I was timid, shy and fearful even in my 30s. She was a mentor in ways that went so far beyond Christian Education. She drew out gifts in me – not by pushing me from behind into the unknown, but by standing in front, reaching back, grabbing my hand and playfully leading me forward. Since retiring from the church, she has become an accomplished artist and one of my most treasured possessions is a portrait she did of my kids for my 40th birthday.

So many more people and so many more things – it’s where I learned about community and about corporate (not just individual) worship and sin and prayer. It was my first experience in a liturgical church and I discovered an unexpected richness in that. It fed something in me that I hadn’t even realized was hungry and it connected me more deeply than I’d ever been to the saints who have gone before me.

It’s the place where I began to come into a sense of who I was, that laid the foundation for all my future ministry, that gave me the tools that years later helped me walk through healing when my life fell apart.

It opened my eyes to a God who cares about people I’d given little thought to.

It is where I began to believe that God likes me – which somehow felt more personal and more amazing than the generic “love” I’d grown up hearing about.

So why the “floating Jesus”? It’s not the actual name of the church. But it’s what one of my preschool Sunday School students called the magnificent sculpture that grabs your attention when you walk into the sanctuary. In an odd way, that I can’t quite explain, the powerfulness of that sculpture washed over me in long forgotten ways yesterday. This is no wimpy Jesus. This is a Jesus I want to know and follow. One that I can be honest with and still know that I can rely on Him. [He’s also a fun loving Jesus. Every year on Pentecost we’d walk into the sanctuary and see Him holding a bunch of balloons.]

And Father Gray, in the homily, reminded us that this is the Jesus we release Holly to. The program for the service says this: “Christians believe in eternal life through Jesus Christ. We believed that even before Holly was taken from us. Today we draw upon that faith and upon its source for strength. … This service is not intended primarily to convey emotional comfort to the bereaved. This community is presently seeking to do that in other ways over a longer period of time. This service is shaped to permit us together to do something equally difficult and necessary: to give God our permission to hold and care for Holly on our behalf. … We are doing this together, not as isolated individuals.”

There was something holy about being part of that.

And there’s something humbling, in a sacred way, about remembering the wide variety of gifts given to me by that particular place and that particular community. I am who I am because of my time there.

I’m So Grateful – I Can’t Give Enough

Originally published in Nov. 2012. Minor adjustments made to update timelines.

About 35 years, my son Andrew had a best friend named Brett. Brett’s mom (Abby) was blind. A bump on the head as she went down a water slide a few months after she was married, coupled with complications from diabetes, left her blind. Every year during the United Way campaign, she spoke morning, noon and night to employee groups. Her schedule was grueling, her energy completely taken up by this.

Most people told her she was doing “too much”. I asked her about it at one point and she said this: “Almost all of my rehab, the places that taught me how to live a full life as a blind woman, who taught me how to care for a baby as a blind mother – they were organizations supported by the United Way. I am so grateful. How can I not give back? There’s probably nothing they could ask me to do that would be ‘too much’.”

So why am I thinking about that story these days?

When I first heard Abby say that all those years ago, I was struck by how little of that attitude I saw in the church. The passion to give of ourselves out of gratitude, to say “there is nothing that would be too much to ask because I’ve received so much”. To give willingly. To offer everything. Instead, too often I saw a mentality that seemed more along these lines: “How little can I get away with giving? Do I have to tithe from my gross salary or can it be from my net salary? How much do I have to do in order to be okay with God?”

There seems to be a stewardship sermon season in many churches, often in the fall. I’ve heard a lot of them over the years – and heard another one on Sunday. I’ve heard good ones, bad ones, ones that gave me a bigger picture and ones that felt like a scolding. Ones that made me want to grow in this area and ones that felt totally disconnected from the very real season of life I found myself in. Some talk just about “trusting”. Only a few have truly wrestled with the tension between “trusting” and being “wise” or “planning well” (both of which are also scriptural instructions).

So what are my thoughts? At the moment, they center on gratitude and generosity.

Sunday’s sermon was from John 12 – the story of Mary anointing Jesus’ feet with expensive perfume. It’s extravagant (worth a year’s wages). It offends Judas who pretends to care about what it would have done for the poor. It’s far more than any religious law “required”. Talking about tithing in the context of this kind of generosity feels almost out of place, as if you wouldn’t need to talk about it to someone who already gives like this. Years ago a pastor told me that some commentators believe this was part of Mary’s dowry and by pouring it out on Jesus, she may have been sacrificing her opportunities for marriage. It was a costly gift – but appears to have been given in an attempt to express the depth of her gratitude.

I love stories where people, in response to a nudge from the Holy Spirit, do something that doesn’t make sense. I have a friend who once put her earrings in the offering – because it was what she had to give at the moment and even though she knew it would sound “weird”, she also knew she wanted to give whatever she had to the Jesus she loves.

I’ve seen people who are generous with their time – missing things they had planned to do, or going without sleep, because of a chance encounter with someone who needed to be listened to. Or they take the time to get to know the local convenience store clerk and then become his advocate when a hospital system treats him badly in his dying days because he fits into categories and stereotypes that are not often valued.

The early church was marked by generosity. They sold what they had to meet each other’s needs. They fed and housed each other. They ate together. They cared for each other in practical ways. The generosity overflowed. It marked them as a “different” kind of people. Is that distinction still visible today among those of us who claim the name of Christ?

So I’m left with a few challenges.

Do I trust the Lord to provide? Do I hold on to my resources out of fear or am I truly just planning wisely and appropriately? How do I find the trust/wise planning balance? (This is not just financial. I talked about this recently in my thoughts about Sabbath rest.)

Am I proactively looking for ways to be generous? Am I always seeking to grow in generosity – of all kinds and of all resources? Do I hold my possessions lightly?

I think it boils down to this. At my core, does my mind go to “how can I be more generous” or does it wonder “have I done enough to check this off my list”?

Sabbath and the Fear of “Not Enough”

I’m still challenged by this (originally written in October 2012).

I’ve posted before about what I was learning in busy seasons. I was having to let some things go. But there’s something important beyond just “letting things go” and it applies to all seasons of life. It may get interrupted during particularly busy seasons, but making it a priority, whenever possible, should matter to us.

It involves regular rest. A decision to not immediately fill my hours with more busyness. Don’t misunderstand – I want to work hard, I love what I do, I don’t want to lie around doing nothing. I’m too excited by the work to which I’m called to do that.

But within those parameters, it is wise to rest. To sleep a more reasonable amount. I read more. I’m watch some tv and movies. I’m have leisurely conversations with friends. I’m take more walks. When I first wrote this, I had just gotten a puppy – so I was playing and cuddling and spending time housebreaking him which meant spells of standing outside at night looking up at the stars. It felt good and right.

And it caused me to think once again about Sabbath rest and why it is so hard to set aside my “to do” list, and my distorted sense of urgency as I look at the things on it.

Lauren Winner, in Mudhouse Sabbath, talks about the difference between true Sabbath and just “taking a day off”. I know that my rest still leans heavily toward “taking some time for myself”. But I want to move toward true Sabbath rest, a day where normal rhythms are set aside and something different happens in the spiritual realm.

The problem is, whether I say it out loud or not, my mind always goes to “but I have so much to do”. When is the laundry going to get done, the bills paid, the house cleaned? I work full time – and I still have all these other things that need doing. There’s not enough time.

Years ago I learned that tithing or sacrificial giving, for me, is largely about trust. If I give generously in response to the Holy Spirit’s prompting, do I trust that there will be enough left? That God will provide for me? Do I trust that He “will” and not just that He “can”? It’s been about learning that self-sufficiency is not the goal.

A while back I realized the same principle holds true for Sabbath rest. If I “give up” that time, do I trust that there will still be enough? Do I trust the Lord to direct my path – including my “to do” list? Do I trust Him with the things that don’t get done?

And then I realized there was another, more hidden, fear of “not enough”. If my identity is tied to being more competent, more productive, harder working – or any other performance-oriented or people-pleasing characteristic – and if I don’t use every minute I can to “prove” that, then will I be able to do enough? Will people still approve of me? Will I still have value?

It hurts to realize it is a pride thing – and that it impacts my ability to trust God with my time.

But recognizing it for what it is lets me bring it into the light, it lets me confront the lies that shape my identity and it lets me move more undistractedly into the rest I believe I’m called to know and experience.

There are still the challenges of balancing rest with a call that requires a lot of time and energy. There will still be unavoidable busy seasons. There are still many tasks that cannot be neglected.

But this much I know – I want to learn to trust God with my time in ways that go beyond where I am right now. I want to give my all to work and ministry. And I want to learn to rest deeply and well.

Update (May 2023) – I’ve made progress! Rest comes more easily. I’ve learned to trust. I’ve built rhythms into my life that slow me down – and it helps. I miss “rest” when I don’t get it. I relax more quickly when I do rest. And it is often a very sweet time of just walking through life with Jesus.

Kingdom Journeys

This was written over 10 years ago, but the concept of journey – which was newer to me at that point – still feels like an important discipline in my life. To be honest, revisiting this post makes me wonder if there’s something new waiting to be embraced by me.

Those who know me or who follow this blog know that I’ve been on a journey. Specifically, starting in the early 2000s, the spiritual journey included walking through the painful end of my marriage and discovering, in the midst of that, new sources for my identity and new depths to my relationship with Jesus. It has also included the restlessness that would not go away until I allowed the Lord to speak fully into that stage of my life. For me, there was been a physical journey as well. At first it looked like mission trips that took me out of my comfort zone and stirred my concern for the world. It eventually meant a move from Connecticut to Georgia.

So journey is not a new theme for me. To be honest though, when this season started in the early 2000s I probably wasn’t actively seeking a journey. I wanted to continue to grow spiritually – just as I had for the 30 years I’d already been a believer – but I’m not sure I understood journey. Or maybe I just assumed that spiritual growth and journey were the same thing – that vague “spiritual journey” everyone is on.

But the last 20 years of my life have definitely been a journey. I’m not sure that in the beginning I intentionally chose to embark on a journey – with its stages of abandonment, brokenness and dependence. It feels like circumstances thrust me in the midst of a journey that I wouldn’t have chosen on my own. But while I may not have willingly chosen to start it, I did choose to embrace it as a journey – to trust that there was a good purpose in it and that, if I allowed it to, it could shape me in life-altering ways.

I have a new appreciation for the importance of journey, the subtle ways it is different from other spiritual growth and it’s ability to “accelerate discipleship” or “turbo-charge a person’s faith walk” in the words of Seth Barnes. Seth, founder and executive director of Adventures in Missions, goes so far as to call it “the lost spiritual discipline”. In his book, Kingdom Journeys: Rediscovering the Lost Spiritual Discipline, he says “A journey is an act of leaving – a process of physical abandon that teaches us how to do the same spiritually. Perhaps, to find your true identity you need to abandon everything else.” (p. 22)

Finding your true identity and stripping away the things that provide false security – it’s worth doing. It’s important work for anyone who wants to advance God’s kingdom in the world. Journey helps you do this.

We see the theme in how Jesus related to His disciples – asking them to abandon everything and follow Him, and then sending them out on journeys without their own provisions. We see it historically in the idea of pilgrimage.

What makes something a kingdom journey? From Seth’s book: “What sets a kingdom journey apart from gap years, road trips, and volunteer jaunts is the central focus on Jesus’ kingdom. A kingdom journey is first and foremost about expanding God’s reign in the world and increasing it inside our hearts.” (p. 55)

I encourage you to let the Lord speak to you about it. See what stirs in you. See if your view of the world expands. See if it confirms you are where you are called to be – or if it feeds a restlessness you may already feel.

Consider what it looks like if journey is really a life-transforming spiritual discipline.

Here I Am To Worship

Originally written September 17, 2012. It was a special season.

August and September 2012 was a unique season. I attended church at an orphanage in India, at my home church in Georgia, at a megachurch through live streaming and at a bi-lingual Episcopal church in Fort Lauderdale, FL.

The services ranged from a one-hour tightly scheduled format to a 3 hour liturgical service filled with a mixture of prayer ministry, eucharist, annointing with oil and a way of “passing the peace” that involved everyone moving around the church greeting everyone else (not just those around them) amidst the joyful sounds of English and Spanish.

I’ve had hands laid on me as I’ve been prayed over by children speaking Hindi and a Honduran priest speaking Spanish.

I’ve heard Indian children sing the same songs we sing at Day Camp in Connecticut. I’ve watched people who care about revival sing the songs of the 70s that meant so much in that era – and I can remember those early days of discovering a relationship with Jesus. I’ve worshipped at Adventures in Missions with passionate 20-somethings who know God speaks to his sons and daughters and whose freedom in worship pulls me forward and deeper.

As I realized the amazing diversity of that month, I reflected on a few things:

There is exquisite beauty in this diversity. These are my brothers and sisters and it feels a bit like a glimpse of heaven – where people from every tribe and nation will gather around the throne singing praises.
I’m grateful for the wide range of traditions that have shaped my spiritual life. I was not raised in a liturgical church but at one point spent several incredible years in an Episcopal church and discovered that the liturgy and ritual fed something deep in me that I hadn’t even known was hungry. I’ve sat under various preaching styles and different types of worship music. I’ve been in churches that explained away the miraculous and in churches that expected it to happen regularly, where prayer teams saw people raised from the dead through prayer. In all of these traditions, I’ve met people who love Jesus and worship from their heart. (And in most of them I’ve also met people who go through the motions with no apparent heart connection.)
My ability to enter into worship depends more on my desire to worship, on my heart’s longing, than it does on the actual style. This is not to say that we shouldn’t look for a “good fit” in terms of style preference or treaching content when we are looking for a home church. But those things should never become the defining parameters of whether we can enter into worship at a given moment.

I’ve realized a caution as well. If I let arrogance or pride slip in. If I make assumptions about the validity of a particular type of worship. If I subtly believe I’ve “outgrown” a certain “stage”. If I overly value the western emphasis on a particular kind of education as the path to spiritual leadership. Then I miss out on something important.

My own worship is diminished when I fail to delight in my brothers and sisters in the way God delights in them. Looking at the external, rather than at the heart, will always cause me to miss what really matters.

It was an amazing month – a gift, a glimpse of what happens when earth begins to resemble heaven. After this I looked, and there before me was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and before the Lamb. (Rev. 7:9)

What 6th Graders Taught Me About September 11 – and taking Jesus seriously

Originally posted September 2012. September 11 continues to be a pivotal moment in our history and I still think about these 6th graders.

They taught me to wrestle with the hard sayings of Jesus.

The anniversary of September 11 rolls around every year. And it brings memories of living through it that first year. In 2001, the year of the attacks, I was teaching 6th grade Sunday School. It was part of a spiritual formation program that encouraged discussion and real encounters with Jesus, where we expected the Holy Spirit to speak deep truth to the children. I’d been walking with some of these sixth graders since they were 4 or 5 years old.

We had started a unit on the maxims of Jesus – sayings of Jesus that help us know how to live. We had about 20 of them that were part of the unit and we’d talk about a few of them each week. Sayings such as:

This is how it will be with anyone who stores up things for himself but is not rich toward God.
No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for service in the kingdom of God.
I tell you, do not forgive seven times but seventy times seven times.
Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.
With the measure you use, it will be measured to you – and even more.
Give to the one who asks you, and do not turn away from the one who wants to borrow from you.
Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye?
Simply let your ‘Yes’ be ‘Yes,’ and your ‘No,’ ‘No’.
If someone wants to sue you and take your tunic, let him have your cloak as well.
But I tell you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.

We had stacks of laminated copies of each of them and every week, at the end of Sunday school, each child would choose one to take home. It might be one we had discussed that morning or another one that caught their attention. The idea was to pay particular attention to trying to live by it that week. On any given week there would be a wide variety of maxims chosen to be the take-home item.

In the midst of this, September 11 happened. And suddenly, these sixth graders were wrestling with “But I tell you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.” The discussion was real and raw and honest.

“But what Osama bin Laden did wasn’t okay.”
“If we love him, doesn’t that seem like we’re saying it was okay.”
“Does Jesus really mean this?”
“Did stuff like this happen when Jesus was alive on earth?”
“Is it okay to pray that something bad happens to Osama bin Laden?”
“Is it okay to pray that he gets punished?”
“Does loving him mean we have to like him, or what he did?”
“Can you love someone if you are angry at them?”

I sat in awe as I watched them make a commitment to do what Jesus said. To figure out what that looked like in the aftermath of September 11. At the end of the morning, every child chose that maxim as the one to take home. On one level, they didn’t like it. But on another, they didn’t want to run away from a hard saying. It would have been easy to choose a different one – but they didn’t.

Their decision to choose the hard thing, to not look for an “out”, challenged me then and it challenges me now.

How seriously do I take the sayings of Jesus, the ones that tell me to give away my things, to pray for my enemies, to forgive over and over? Do I face up to His words and wrestle with them until I can do it? Or do I choose an easier saying, an easier path?

I know where I want to be. I want to take Jesus seriously, even when it is hard. I want to be like those sixth graders.

Why I Love Ministry to Parents

Ten years later I still love ministry to parents! It looks a bit different than the early days but the reasons I love it are the same. (Originally published September 2012)

There’s been a common thread in a lot of what I’ve done over the last 15 years [now 25 years!]. When I led children’s ministries at church, I loved talking to parents about spiritual formation in children – raising their vision for what it can look like when children fall deeply in love with Jesus and open themselves up to the voice of the Holy Spirit. When youth group mission trips were doing their own training, I loved leading a small group for parents who were sending their children to Peru for a week – encouraging them to let God do something in their lives through the trip, and not just something in their child’s life. And when I spent several years doing college placement for high schoolers, I loved helping parents figure out what it looked like to let go in new ways.

In my current job I spend a lot of my time connecting parents of World Racers to each other and to Adventures in Missions. I’m loving it. I get to walk with them as their Racers leave to spend 9-11 months on the mission field, doing ministry in several different countries. At the beginning of the World Racer’s journey, parents are invited to a Parent Launch – not just helping them understand their Racer’s journey but launching them on their own journey.

It’s a privilege to rub shoulders with this group.

Most of the parents are excited for their Racers. Some are a bit envious that the World Race didn’t exist for them 25 years ago. They recognize that they have raised sons and daughters who love the Lord and who have the capacity to change the world and bring the kingdom. But they also know that they won’t get as many details as they might like. And they might go a few weeks without hearing from them if they are in an area without good internet access. They can’t send birthday presents or just pick up the phone for a quick chat. Wifi based calling works some of the time and not others. And it’s hard to hear that their son or daughter is sick – and there’s really nothing you can do because they are on the other side of the world.

Over the years we’ve established Facebook or GroupMe groups for the parents of World Racers based on when their Racers leave for the Race. They post prayer requests for themselves and for their Racers. They encourage one another in a way that only another World Race parent can. They serve one another in practical ways with information on everything from banks that don’t charge international transaction fees to research on malaria med options. The first one to hear news on travel days gets the word out quickly.

And they sometimes share their own journey. They are letting the Lord do new and deep things in their own spiritual lives and I get to hear bits and pieces of that. The theme of journey is an important one for Adventures in Missions and it’s exciting to see that happening in parents’ lives.

Although I am not a parent to World Racers, I do have adult children who are the age of many of the Racers. So I’ve learned some things about parenting adult children, about letting go, about not trying to limit their choices based on my fears. About offering them freely to the Lord – no matter where that takes them. I delight in seeing them explore new things, take on new responsibilities, learn life lessons and move into new stages in their lives.

But their growing into adulthood changes my season of life as well just as Racers leaving for the World Race can change their parents’ lives. And it’s an ideal time to reassess our own journey. With empty nests come new freedoms. I moved from Connecticut to Georgia to work for Adventures in Missions. But I believe that was just the beginning of a new season in my life, that there’s even more ministry ahead, and that at least part of it intersects with ministry to other parents.

Acts 13:36, in commenting on King David, says that he died after serving God’s purpose in his own generation. That idea – of serving God’s purpose in my own generation – fuels my desire to journey well to the end.

So – when I originally wrote this I was headed to Parent Launch, to meet face to face many of the parents who had been blessing me daily with their support of their Racers, with the generosity of spirit already evident in their Facebook group and with their willingness to care more about the kingdom than about having their children close by.

I can’t wait to see what their journeys – and mine – will look like over the next 11 months.

Update: Since then we’ve done 2-4 Parent launches a year for over 10 years (with a brief interruption for Covid). It never gets old! It’s still one of my favorite parts of my job.