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30 April 2025

the place of prayer

A few crazy weeks have led to the finale...graduation at WBS is this Saturday and we have all kinds of loved ones graduating...from Ethan and all our Haiti Heckmans coming, to Patrick and all our family Buckners, to Gaga Beth's son and his family to the final Friedeman graduating. We're about to have a FULL house and FULL table and a FULL four days, complete with a track meet for Lily, cheer tryouts for Sofie, a baseball tournament for Coach Matt and Ben and all the normal church things. 

You can be praying for us while we celebrate and seek to love people well!

I read a powerful little line today on prayer, and it keeps coming back to me. Several prayer initiatives for the church have come to me again and again the last months, and yet busyness has given me many excuses: Leonard Ravenhill--"Poverty-stricken as the Church is today in many things, she is most stricken here, in the place of prayer.  We have many organizers, but few agonizers; many players and payers, few pray-ers; many singers, few clingers; lots of pastors, few wrestlers; many fears, few tears; much fashion, little passion; many interferers, few intercessors; many writers, but few fighters.  Failing here, we fail everywhere."

I have badly missed writing and am bringing it back...thank you for being my praying people. 




19 April 2025

strong and kind

I'm not sure why the school calendar also goes crazy the week of Easter, but it did, and we've all been hanging in there by a thread! National Honor Society induction, Spring prom, two trips to the pediatrician this week, Maundy Thursday services, Good Friday services, and the normal school, Wednesday night Bible study, etc...it's been FULL. 

Far heavier was the shocking news Monday morning that one of our fellow pastor's daughter was killed instantly in a car accident on her way to school in Jackson that morning. Beautiful, blond, 23. How full the week was of tears and prayers for that precious family, how heavy and different the weight and glory of Easter. Add a gut-wrenching, heart-breaking, hope-clinging funeral to the week. 

I was assigned in the middle to share a short devotional at church on one of Jesus' last phrases, "Woman, behold your son...Behold your mother!" and at first glance, I really did not know what else to say about that. 

'Till I took a breath and stopped. Till I took the kiddos all outside with my Bible and notebook and got them playing so I could pray...Lord, show me something.

Instead He brought instantly to my mind a song Ben and Nora sing every year at their Friday homeschool co-op. Jesus, strong and kind.

He here was, suffering greatly, agony, doing what He came to DO. He'd been on divine mission and was at the end, and He was doing it. Gasping. Agonizing. Strong.

And He stepped out of His dying focus for a minute with tender eyes...on human relationships. ALSO a part of His divine mission : community.

And there at the cross, literally at the foot, he took two people who did NOT share blood, and made them family. By HIS blood. There in the middle of His suffering, He anticipated the CHURCH, and made family through HIS blood two people who were not. 

A different family.

A family who shared His blood. A family marked by self-sacrifice. A family marked by mutual responsibility. A family centered on Christ.

This is what He does, strong and kind....takes away the sins of the world AND plants entirely different kinds of community, different kinds of family.

I couldn't help but think of my mom, suffering those last weeks in the hospital, praying endlessly for the future gaps she would be leaving, almost unaware in her suffering that I was in the room listening. I heard her pray for the gaps in my dad's life. I heard her pray for the Lord to send a mother to watch my sister play softball, to sit where she should be sitting. I heard her pray for the Lord to fill the gap she was leaving at my future wedding, at my brother and sister's future weddings. I heard her pray for the Lord to send men and women to fill the gaps she was leaving for future grand-babies. In her suffering, she focused on relationships in a totally self-sacrificing and Christ-centered way.

It's why we can't just be individual Christians who don't go to church. It's why we can't live as monks on poles, worshipping God and focusing on Him but entirely neglecting mutual-care and relationship. It's why it doesn't MATTER how broken the church is! We've gotta be it, in it, a part of it, Woman, behold your son! Friend, behold your mother!

It says at the end of that passage in John that from that moment on, John took her home with him and lived as if she were his mother. From that moment, Jesus said HIS blood made them TRUE family.

What did He NOT do that Good Friday?? What good work did He NOT complete with Easter? Not just saving us from our sins...not just redeeming pain...not just defeating death...not just making heaven possible...not just atoning for us...not just filling all the gaps...not just paying the price...not just laying in the beds that WE'VE made...not just drinking the cups of God's wrath WE've absolutely poured for ourselves...He also showed us what HIS family looks like...and led the way.

man. 

the richness.

Mallory, my sister because of JESUS blood, is whole and with Him and finally complete, no more crying, no more pain. Her parents, my family because of Jesus' tenderness, can be carried again and again to His throne, tears in His eyes with them, by me. My parents, whole and free and His name on their foreheads are not missing out on anything, but the Lord has filled their gaps again and again with Himself....

Again and again the Lord has been on His mighty throne doing important work in my life and in yours, and looks down at us with tenderness and love, and moves His people into place to be JESUS in our lives.

Oh Easter.

I needed you today.  King Jesus, strong and kind.




12 April 2025

sunshine

We had a lovely women's conference at our church this morning with a friend of ours doing the Bible teaching. It was on "Choosing Cheer" and there were SO many great takeaways and perspective shifts. But the image she shared that probably blessed me the most was of her pup.

She spoke about how her older dog adores lying in the sunshine. How they know where to find him first thing in the morning, in the sunny square in her office.  By ten, the spot has moved to the stairs, and he lays there in the rectangle. Mid-day, there is no sun coming through the windows, and he restlessly awaits the sun-setting spots at the back of their house, contorting his body into whatever shape the sun patch is in so that he can soak up as much sunshine as possible. 

Nicolet spoke about how we often chase joy like this. We see patches of it in or near our lives and we go after it, only to find it move away a moment later. We go after it again and again, reshaping our lives to enjoy it's warmth, only to have it move away, and often times seem totally unavailable to us. 

I couldn't help but think, let that dog out in the YARD and she beat me to it : "The fullness of joy is found in HIS presence...instead of chasing sunspots, step out into the light and soak in the fullness of joy that cannot be taken away from you, that doesn't shift, that doesn't fade away."

What a GREAT image.  What a great truth. 

It's ridiculous to be chasing sun spots when the back door is wide open and He's asking us to know and experience and live in THAT kind of unwavering joy.  In this world of promised tribulation, we can be of good cheer. 

Sun-spots on the carpet are for the dogs. I don't know why I settle for so little, so often, when all that He offers is so radiant! 






06 April 2025

His table

The Lord, man. 

Where is He not? When does He not love us enough to love us to righteousness? 

He. Always. Wants. MORE.

And that, my dear ones, is LOVE. He has in His heart this vision of who He made us to be...who He made Stacey Ayars to be...and it is FREE, it is Holy, it is fragrant, it is selfless, it is beautiful. 

And until I'm ALL THERE...He's at work.

Until I start ignoring His voice and ignoring His leading and refusing obedience, He NEVER gonna leave me alone. 

And. I. Am. So. Thankful. 

I'm so thankful He's not content with less than all of me. I'm thankful He never says, "Stacey, less than holy-as-I-am-holy, eh, good enough." 

There is ONE THING good-enough in my life. And it's Him.

Until I'm with Him, looking full in His wondrous face, Lord be at work. Love me that much. 

And He does.

He reminded me in church today again of that image of the woman He wants me to be. That woman at rest in the chair of His presence, trusting Him fully and praying for His people. He reminded me again of the fully-forgiving, fully-loving, fully-abandoned woman He wants and that the world needs. 

And He lovingly showed me where I fall short.

Once He shows us that? We can stuff it down and silence Him. Or it can change everything.

This God we have? Even what He painfully and lovingly shows us, He is ready to HELP us do.

I SEE, Lord, I prayed this morning, help me.

and He did. 

He does. 

I get thinking His table should be so many things. Should look such and such. Should have these foods, these attitudes, these blessings. Should be approached a certain way. 

And you know what He said of His table?  Come.

This is me, body and blood broken and bled. There is nothing you can do or fall short to shorten my love nor my arm. Come.

If there is NOTHING we can do to stop His love from coming after us, why can others do SO much to stop OUR love? How can THEIR shortcomings and sin keep us in unforgiveness when OURS didn't stop HIM? How can our love be limited to those who love us back, or when it is merited? When HIS love. Never. Fails. 

When the church starts looking like THIS...oh man. 

I come to the table with NOTHING. 

He meets me with ALL of Himself and the completeness of His LOVE.

If I walk away from that table with less than all that....the world is missing out and so am I. 

The only thing that stops Him from touching the broken places, from healing, from helping, from speaking, from leading...the only thing that can block Him from us is US.

I'm not content being the best person I can be.  That dream HE has for abandoned, loving and holy mirror-image children, that's the dream I want for myself, nothing less. Cost regardless.

The good word sermon the Lord used to meet me...



05 April 2025

His bride

A good church friend took Sofie to ride horses for a bit on Tuesday, and she told me they had stopped to visit one of her friends on the way home.

She told me her friend used to be in church, but that something was said in some meeting long ago, and after that day she never went to church again. "Every time I see her, though, she tells me she's gonna get back to church one day."

I never realized how many people this is true of until I became a pastor's wife and people started telling me... and until I started seeing it for myself. 

There are a LOT of hold-ups, hang-ups, disappointments, traumas, excuses, reasons and pains keeping people out of church. I know people right now who have left the church over the music. Over the preaching. Over the people. Over a Sunday school class. Over a change. Over a person. Over covid and never went back. Over life circumstances making it hard. Over a marriage. Over a child. 

There ARE a lotta good reasons, especially since church is made up of people, and people gonna mess it up. I don't think it's often that someone leaves thinking they are out completely.  They're gonna go back. Go somewhere else. Just...not yet. Or it's complicated.  Or they don't know where to go. Or they are waiting for something. Or it's just easier. 

And I get all that. Better now than I ever have.

But I know

Jesus had a hundred good reasons not to leave that golden throne and join US. A dozen not to head to Jerusalem on that donkey, the signs all written.  At least six reasons not to head to the cross. A thousand reasons not to make himself among us. Billions of us not worthy to work with or come alongside

There are a million reasons not to be the church, not to work with church people, not to go. There are a million reasons to go a little but not really, or to quit altogether.

Everybody got a reason not to be in church. I have reasons now I never had before, pastor-wifing on the sometimes ugly inside.  We all have our reasons not to be the church. 

But it's His Bride. 

It's the Bride of Christ. 

Praise the Lord He laid down all His better reasons for us.  

The church isn't about it's people, it's worship, it's preaching, it's perfection or it's broken places. It's about HIM. And I don't have ANY reasons good enough to keep me from doing what He asks, for His reasons and for His glory (and I'm betting for my good, too.) After ALL the reasons He laid down for me, surely I can lay down my hang-up.

Give Him your reasons, let Him have them, and get to church. All the way in there, all in. 

So all in that you hurt when it hurts. 

Just like Jesus did. 




02 April 2025

family

I've been blessed by the sunshine and blooms this week, and I've been blessed by the constant realization that for a family who has NO family within a 12 hour radius, we sure do have a lot of family.

Mr. Adrien brought fishing poles and chairs and took Ben and Nora to the pond for the day, and they are STILL talking about it. Ms. Peggy takes and watches Sofie get stronger in English riding every Tuesday, Ms. Cindy, the "Sunday Cool Teacher" as Ben calls her) came to Ben's first baseball game, Gaga works hard and faithful and patient with our slew of squirrels, and is working patiently with Emma (who adores her), as she seems to be the one who got the color-blindness of her dad and his mom. As our small group crowds into our home, as our church gathers for Bible study, as friends fold in or send over kids on different days, I'm so deeply thankful for how the Lord sends family when we need it...which is always. 









21 March 2025

where He is, we can be too

 A few random things from a random week :)

A few of you continue to support the Ayars as missionaries to Haiti, monthly. Many of you no longer do, but you DID, many for YEARS...like, 15!  And it may not seem like it was much or is much, but that savings and that continued giving means that when we go to Haiti like we did a few weeks ago, that money is getting us on that missionary plane, taking care of us in Haiti and bringing us home. That money is going to Emmaus University in His redeeming work in Haiti...and that money is making it possible for our one-income family to keep on serving in Haiti...and it's a big deal.  THANK YOU. Thank you. Continuing to be a part of His work in Haiti is one of the richest areas of our lives and is making a difference in Haiti. If you ever wanna talk Haiti, email me!

While the kids and are feeling ready for summer vacation, I've also been feeling really rich lately to be able to homeschool this crew. It is a full-time job...it takes everything I've got, but it is also a huge gift. Lily came home this week with a list of everything she needs to take before graduation (she is a sophomore), and due to years of focused studies at home, she is two classes away from being eligible. Sofie has been struggling with some hard friend things lately, and as she shares with me what she's learning through it...I'm here for it (and what she's learning, I've had the priceless gift of teaching her all these years!) Ben and Nora and Sofie just finished memorizing Psalm 139...a Psalm we all thought would be too long to learn, and the richness of studying God's WORD in school as our truth for life...oh man. What a gift! If you ever want to talk homeschooling, email me :) If you can get a Beth to help you, all the sweeter :)

Finally, the Lord has been stretching me on a thing lately, and I wanted to share in case it may speak to you.

My whole susie-sunshine life, I have avoided sadness, depression, mourning, worry, anger and fear like the plague. In my mind, Jesus is always waiting in the joy...in the peace...in the faith...in the hope. I chase Him there, always. I hang out there, clinging, avoiding the hard places or pushing past them.  

It has been occurring to me lately, with His help, that perhaps He was has at times been waiting for me in the sadness...waiting for me in the mourning. Perhaps the anger I was avoiding, He was sitting in! Perhaps He had wanted to meet me there...and I wouldn't come...refusing to GO those places in the name of Jesus. I'm still asking Him to help me work all this through, but my point is that perhaps when you find yourself sad or angry or mourning or disappointed...it is not to be avoided, because Jesus is IN it. When we are sad, He is sad, and in our sadness He is there. In our losses, He feels the pain, and is to be found IN that pain. 

I don't think He leaves us in our broken places...but He sure does MEET us there, and as long as He's there...we can be too. That's all. 

Grateful for you friends





16 March 2025

His fault

I've got some friends going through some things right now...maybe you can relate. 

Major life transitions.  Incredibly hard challenges with children. Battles with brutal cancers. Huge and sudden losses. 

Impossible situations. No right answers. One hour at a time. Dark nights of the soul.

I've been praying lots of grace. I've been praying lots of mercy. And I've reminded again and again that He can be trusted for two things: His glory. Our good.

He can be trusted for our good. 

I've always struggled with idea, because I'm not often sure His good is the good I'm wanting. I'm sure He wants my good...but what if the one He has in mind isn't best? I want Him to promise my outcome...not just my good. I'm not the first Christ follower to question if His good IS good. If it's the best good. If maybe I don't have a better good in mind. Oh, how patient He is with me. 

Finally through this last incredibly hard season (and you may still have to remind me in the future), He's been stretching me to a place of "I'm trusting you with my good, no suggestions.  I'm trusting that You have my good in Your heart, and I don't need to tell you what that looks like. Whatever comes, I'm trusting that it is for my good."

Whatever happens here, it is on YOU. If it goes the way I want or the way I don't or some other way I haven't thought of, You are the one on the throne of my life. It's on You, it's Your fault, and I'm good with whatever is Your fault. I TRUST you.

And He can be trusted for His glory. 

That one, I don't pretend to understand or know or have the grand perspective for. All I know is that I can trust He's working for His glory...and I want that. I want to be doing that too...I want to be a part of THAT.  So if this current circumstance can and will be used for His glory, and that's His work, then I'm in...relying on His help to be pleasing to Him as we go. 

It's taken me a long time to trust that for Haiti....Leme's good, Gerta's good, God's glory. He's working for their good...even in the situations that are not. It's taking me time, still, to trust that for those dear ones who are deeply hurting. 

However hard or impossible it is to see now, I know the instant we see His face...His goodness to us and His glory will be all that we see. All that we breathe. All that we know. 

And if that's the true reality...I'll take that perspective.

He is who He says He is. 

He can be trusted.



11 March 2025

courageous

Haiti always kinda brings out the boldness in me. It always makes my excuses surface...and look pathetic. Makes my Christianity feel cushy. Makes my faith seem dimmer than it should be.

I get frustrated with a few things at my church...and then my Haitian brothers and sisters pass me on the way there, walking miles to get there, carrying their chairs on their heads. They've been waiting all week to gather together, and they're gonna be there, whatever the cost. They're gonna sing like heaven's already here, dance like they're bringing glory down, clap like the rhythms of life are His.

I get shrunk by disappointments and losses in my own life...and then my Haiti people are kissing loved ones goodbye from treatable, minor illnesses because the hospitals are shut down and gang-burned. They are investing everything in one another, and then losing one another to the Bahamas, Mexico, Brazil, Turks and Caicos, the US, anywhere that perhaps could offer a job or safety or a little money to send home. People work hard to earn a little money to send their kids to school...and then threats and dangers rage, shutting down schools again and again and keeping kiddos home. 

I think it takes courage to post a truth on FB or to confront a friend...and then the students at Emmaus tell me about what they have overcome to be there, about mothers and fathers who have rejected them, entirely, about threats and curses and hardships that would have crippled and done me in. 

I think there are areas where I'm giving enough, doing enough, praying enough, stretching enough, and Haiti reminds me every time I'm there that it's not. When the One we follow gave everything, and asks everything, when following Him costs many everything...so much of my "good enough" suddenly feels so pathetic. 

What excuses do we live by? We're tired...money's tight...it's someone else's turn...no one expects us to do that...we don't feel like it...people will think it's weird...we don't want to do it alone...we have good reason not to forgive...we have our own problems without worrying about someone else's...we're afraid...we're worried. We're content. 

I've had a lot of these excuses in my life these past seasons, and since coming back from Haiti I keep envisioning myself seeing Him face to face and sharing my reasons for smallness. My reasons for dimness. My excuses for blandness. When I see the global church, persecuted and hungry and weary and I see His precious face, I bite my tongue on my excuses. I stand before Him and I have none.

What are we praying for that we're not ready for Him to do? What are we asking Him to do that we're not prepared to vessel? What am I wanting to see from the church that I'm not churching myself? What am I complaining about that I wouldn't in front of Him? What am I praying for that I'm not meanwhile preparing for Him to do? What am I giving to Him and then trying to sneak in the back door and keep worrying about? What is not evil...but junk, and why's it tolerated?

It's not far from my dishwashing vision of the praying pastor's wife...if godly and holy and obedient and radiant-unto-Him looks any different than our lives do today...what's our excuse?  Do we want it? 

I am grateful for the country that always reminds me that He is who He says He is, and that He's asking what His Word says He is asking. 

It all gets complicated and cluttered until it's mud huts and food for the day and walking dirt roads by faith and trusting Him for tomorrow. It all gets entitled and comfortable until there are churches of beheaded Christ-confessors, and men and women risking their lives to be the Gospel and homes who do not have enough, hemming in orphans and widows and refugees and homeless. It all gets cushy and easy until we take His Word at His Word and let it highlight all the allowances we've given ourselves that He never did. 

I'm thankful for a few days away to process what all that means! I'm thankful for our Haitian family, encouraging me to be deeply rooted, sincere and brave...just by being themselves. 


07 March 2025

ashes

It is incredibly something to go full steam ahead in Haiti for a week, to wake up to the birds and the cars and the flooding the night brought in and to wake up the next day in a hotel....to wake up the next day back at home. Hot shower. Smooth roads. Closed house. Clean water.

It's almost as if it never happened...and also almost as if the entire world was gone around since last we were home. 

It's a mix of lots of things, rushing back to school for Lily, Matt busy mid-week and a sweaty, stinky pile of laundry Emma-high.

Mostly, it's that nothing stops or slows down...just shifts, and your brain and heart are left with lots to process. 

We got home at 3, I started a load, got a much needed shower, dressed up, stuck a frozen pizza in the oven for wiped kids and headed to the Ash Wednesday service at church to meet Matt. 

I slipped in late and sat in the dim and Matt talked about what it all means, and I needed that. 

He asked if we knew about the ashes, and tears started to pour unknowingly down my cheeks. 

I know about ashes. All the ash heaps in my Bible have "Haiti" scrawled beside them, every image from these days in my mind are of the ash heap. He raises the poor from the dust and lifts the needs from the ash heap, and makes them sit with princes, with the princes of his people. He gives the barren woman a home, praise the Lord.

He talked about Lent and about suffering and slowing and lengthening, on purpose. He talked about the journey to the cross, and said that suffering leads to deepening and lengthening.

Stretching.

Sitting with the beautiful suffering these days leads to such stretching, such deepening, such lengthening within myself. 

Eating meals with a suffering people lengthens you. Asking for and listening to suffering stories, it changes you. It should. Looking when it's easier to look away...it deepens perspective. 

Spending days with Jonas and Gertha and Anne-Yolie and Leme deepen you. Walking in the ash heap and asking God if He sees, if He's reaching down....seeing Him at work and yet sitting with the suffering, it stretches you.

As Matt smudged the ashes on my overwhelmed forehead, I felt the grit and it helped me. 

I am desperate for Him, smudged for my heart. 

I have seen so many different sides of Him this past week. I want it to deepen me. Lengthen me. Sober me. Re-orient me. I want to be poor in spirit...humble of heart...undistracted...

Among the poor in spirit our hunger for Him is fueled....in suffering we are deepened. 

There is something lasting and rare in the beauty that comes from ashes. He reminds me.

That which seems like good excuses won't the day we meet Him.