The Pressing

What a day.  You know I am continuing to learn that the breaking never stops.  Could it be the one lesson I will be learning for the rest of my life....I place so much on my sense of having it all together, of being whole, and feeling gathered.  You know when you can just smile and feel like the Lord has done a good work in you and somehow He has now placed you among His collection of finished pieces.  Ha!  The biggest fault here is in the idea that His work in us is ever complete.  But you have to admit there are times when you just feel a little bit like He has really gotten somewhere, and you are on your way.  Wait.  Just wait..........

It all changes.  I use to think I was broken and then He put me back together and then I was whole again.  I don't think that anymore.  That made me and my individual place in all that He is doing, so separate and set apart from what was going on in everyone else.  I find my thoughts changing, being shaped yet again by experiencing the word and 'The Body'.  What if my perception has always been so off.  Are we really these individual masterpieces He is shaping?  Maybe the fact that we are all broken is just evidence of our interdependence to one another.  The broken pieces all put together to make 'One Whole'.  That 'Whole' being the Body of Christ, 'The Church'.  

I thought we were coming to Philadelphia for a time of reconnection, some training, and that it would be a time of rich reflection and peaceful...I thought it would just be peaceful.  It can be more closely described as the Lord putting me through a juicer.  Let me elaborate on what I mean when I say juicer.  About 8 years ago, some close family friends gave us an old Champion juicer.  It has this spinning component covered in tiny teeth, and when you force the fruit down the shoot...let's just say it is no longer the same constitution.  I have been using this juicer everyday here, and it has become a very vivid picture of what I have been feeling. 

Today the kids started their rounds of vaccinations.  Many of you know that this pained me.  In the coming weeks we will all be getting them.  We are in and out of sessions teaching about faith and trusting the Lord to provide the finances, surrendering our health, being willing to give all of ourselves...and I feel so challenged and so pressed.  I am being pressed out.   
The journey we are on demands that we find ourselves solely in Christ, that He alone be our treasure, and that we completely rely on Him to provide.  He is so gracious and merciful in the ways He gently reveals how I fail at meeting these demands.  A friend sent me a quote yesterday that said, "Satan has us exactly where he wants us when we are relying on ourselves and not on the Holy Spirit.  He will gladly let us travel to the ends of the earth as missionaries who try to do it on our own, because we go without power".  
Do you know that the Lord is so good, that He has spent the past 3 weeks showing me how much I try to do it on my own, and the breaking,the pressing it is not done so that I am uncomfortable, or simply broken.  It is His grace, His goodness, His mercy, allowing us to realize how desperately we need Him.  And oh do we need Him!  I need Him to take my hand when my kids are getting more shots than I would have ever chosen to allow.  I need Him to create a dependency and longing to be a women of prayer and intercession.  We need Him to speak and draw people to commit to support and prayer for our family.  We are desperate for Him to be glorified in our lives so that His name will be praised in another language....one that we are desperate for His grace to learn.  And it will be an act of His grace, I spent an hour last night trying to pronounce one syllable correctly.  
The amazing thing is that He continues to reveal Himself in every moment of desperation.    

A Journey Realized

We are here.  The final weeks of preparation have begun and I have found myself sorting through all kinds of emotions.  The last 3 weeks were so hard.  It is insane how closets and drawers fill up in houses!  I have no idea how all the stuff we had to rummage through even got into our house.  But the hard part was all of the good-bye hugs and tears.    I have pictures of many of those final embraces, at least the posed ones where we looked all smiley at the camera (phone).  The real not captured on my phone moments were a bit different.  They were full of tears and a deep sense of longing to hold on for a few minutes more, to say I love you just one more time.  So, by the time the door closed on that final good-bye.....I felt like I needed a couch and a therapist.  :)  Watching my kids cry as they said their final good-byes, well you might as well of took my heart out and stomped on it.  It bruised me.  
Now I am here at the Sending Base, surrounded by all of these people who have been praying for us, for our call to the nations, for our brokenness, for our provision, and for our love for the Lord.  We joined in on the weekly prayers this week.  They come together and pray corporately for the teams and workers on the field.  They actually have folders with pictures and names and they sit together and they just pray to the Lord.  We sat and prayed for the team we will be joining and the people we will be loving.  Imagine sitting their and realizing that once we are gone, they will still gather at the table and take our names to the Lord as our co-workers.  We are co-laborers all of us.  You and I, we are co-laborers, neither of us having a more important part than the other.  
To start the day we sat silently and just meditated on Christ.  We were not to ask Him for anything or petition Him for another.  We sat.  We meditated.  We prayed.  We fixed our gaze on Him, not what He was doing or what He might do.  We simply thought on who He was.  Something began to register within me as I forced myself to anchor my thoughts on Him.  The past month we have been frantically preparing to come here and continue our journey to South East Asia.  My sites have been set on this end.  But my journey has never been to South East Asia.  My journey has always and will always be to Christ.  That is our journey.  You and I are on the same journey!  It is a journey to Him.  Don't we get so caught up in where we are headed?  It is insanity how crazy we can get trying to figure out where we are going in life, what should we be doing, how should we manage getting there?  Perhaps our fixation on figuring out the purpose to pursue, blinds us from the journey we were all created to span.  We are all on a journey to Christ and that is it, it is the journey of our lives.  Inevitably our journey to Him will be effected by the voyage of others.  As we journey we pick people up along the way and we share in the sweetness of explorers finding glimpses of the treasure.  Your journey points me to Him and mine does the same for you.  It is so simple and yet so profound.  We see this all throughout scripture.  One person's search for redemption, ends up guiding others to that same redemption.  So, now I sit here and find myself thinking about how many of you have pointed me to the redeemer.  You were like a blazing torch signaling me forward.  My journey has taken a huge turn, one that will require a 24 hour flight....yes feel pity for me.  I will get stuck beside the gross airplane restroom with at least two of my kids and the entire time I will be paranoid that a zombie is behind the door.  Yes, compliments of my husband making me watch that terrible zombie movie with Brad Pitt in it.  Random...sorry.
My journey hasn't changed, we are still on the same journey.  As He calls and we all answer it will look a million different ways and yet we will constantly point one another toward Him.  Imagine how big of a destination that must be!  

My Hope for All of You

I have literally sat down and tried to write from the overflow of my heart so many times over the past month.  There are currently four drafts that remain unfinished, because the overflow is just a bit messy and emotional, and I just have had such a difficult time getting it out in mere words on this screen.  Right now the overflow needs to be expressed in more than words but in hugs and tears, laughter and sorrow, gratefulness and brokenness, and all the things that words can not express.  How do I share with you the process of emptying our life here in Alabama?  How do I let you in to experience the journey of shedding all the things that made our little yellow house feel like home, and saying good-bye to all of the hearts that have become woven into the tapestry of our's?  It just does not read the same as the tears feel that drip off of my chin while I attempt to express to you how well we have been loved, how deeply we have been changed, and how whole brokenness can become.  Our house is presently in absolute chaos as we are packing, sorting, selling, giving, emptying it's contents.  And yet I am drowning in this overwhelming reality that we have experienced the goodness of Christ and what it is like to be part of His family.  A few days ago, as most of our city gathered in homes and locations all over town to watch a big game, I was overwhelmed with thankfulness and humbled by grace.  I sat down at our computer screen and began a small letter that has been racing through my mind each day since.  It was a little thank you note to our Pastor and really to our church.    Today while gathered with this family of Jesus' lovers, I had this longing to share with you what my hope for all of you is in the year 2015.  My hope for you is my letter.......

My hope for you is that you will find yourself shaken by grace and traveling through the belly of a fish, so that you can then be thrust into the purposes of God for your life, and that at the end of yourself you will realize you have been gently carried, loved, and transformed by the love and grace of Christ through His Bride.  

So, "Jess wants me to be swallowed by a fish?"  Can I share with you the story of my fish?  

Two years ago Todd came home from a 3 week trip to South East Asia and was so certain of the call of our family to serve there.  My response was (in less words), "NO!".  At that time he was serving in the college ministry and I had begun to entertain the idea of being a cute little ministers wife.  It even effected the type of clothes I looked for at the thrift store. :)  We were pregnant, so I was happy to stay clear of exposing this baby to any of the stupid little mosquitoes that made our youngest daughter so sick the last time we went overseas.  Shortly after my adamant "no", came events that would plunge me into some of the deepest sorrows and hurt of my life.  Sometimes we are quick to blame earthly things for God's gracious acts. Drowning in the emotional wreckage of that hurricane eventually found me at the doors of the Cobb Theatre.  A church meets there and I walked through those doors broken and in shock and I was immediately met with a safe and compassionate embrace.  Her name is Mrs. Vicki, and somehow everyone in Tuscaloosa knows her.  She thought she was just hugging me, she had no idea that the Lord was throwing me a life line....baiting a fish and thrusting me into it's belly.  I felt dear to her, and I just really needed to be hugged.  That began the journey our family would take in the belly of a fish-our church, our missional community, our family.  We needed a place for our broken wings to heal, a safe place to just be and they let us in, they just swallowed us.  As we journeyed through the book of Acts together, the Lord began to heal, rebuild, and redirect our family with His purposes and plans. Something happens when you are marred by loss and experience those hurts that cut deep in your heart.   It makes you vulnerable and vulnerability is a beautiful place to build transformational, transparent, and authentic community.  In such a short time I found myself really investing in relationships on a personal level.  Sometimes I think we experience an artificial sense of community; the programs and scheduled gatherings make us less likely to pour ourselves out to experience the authenticity and genuineness of really sharing life with people.  So, amid all the wreckage of a broken woman the Lord began to weave this tapestry. Because we were hurting, we longed to build on old relationships that brought comfort, and we were hungry for new relationships that pointed to life.  I have shared in car ride conversations to and from homeschool meetings as a sister joined  in my tears and spent countless hours learning that loving looks no different in German.  I have sisters in Germany.  It has been miraculous to experience the Lord weaving and knitting our hearts to others.  I have experienced great joy in the obedience of an answered call, but it is also met with a deep painful sorrow for those that are no longer going to share our geography.  Tomorrow we will eat Indian food with friends, and in such a short time frame this woman become like my sister.  I can not explain it, or pretend to understand how I can feel so close to someone yet share so little history.  We will soon say good-bye to our community group, and you know that is what we have experienced among them....real community.  I will say good-bye to a Grace that has showered me with such evidence of the Lord's grace.  We will travel via His grace to another people.  That is the thing about fish, at least Jonah's kind of fish....they spit you out and you land providentially where the Lord has always wanted you.  But somehow in your journey (even though it may be shrouded in doubt and disobedience) you and others experience the amazing grace that makes you dance and sing, the grace that fills your life and heart with love for and from others, the grace that changes who you are and what you look like, the grace that smells like Jesus, looks like Jesus, and loves like Jesus.   My hope for all of you is that this year you will look back and find yourself swallowed up by a fish and in the belly of that fish you will experience the grace and presence of Christ that will thrust you into loving lavishly and showering that same scandalous grace on everyone you meet.  Every step of our journey involves being loved by someone; we are all meant to travel together through this life of loving Jesus and being used by Him to love others.  I hope that when we arrive we will testify of His amazing grace and love the way so many of you have testified that to us.