pinch me, hero

You know how sometimes He leads, and you plunge after, and sometimes you've been working so hard to be faithful and focused in your following that you almost miss one of His sweet blessings?

An unexpected email yesterday forced me to stop and be blessed.

Matt and I spend a large majority of our lives feeling awfully humbled.

We continue to be the only people in our entire village with a generator.  With steady power.  With drinkable water.  With internet access.  With laptops.  With a truck.  With a passport.  With clothes that fit our kids and new shoes for the new school year.  With toilets.  With running water.  With a shower.  With a fridge.

That, with every friend and every mud hut, is incredibly humbling.

We continue to travel the States and Canada each summer, speaking everywhere we can and asking fantastic, hard-working, God-loving, sacrificial, giving people everywhere to please help us...to help us train pastors.  To preach to all the world.  To help us keep the lights on.  To help us keep food on the table for 70 men and women...and even to help us keep food on the table for two little girls.  Every penny we have and use and provide has been one someone generously gave us.  We own NOTHING.

That, with every single ask, is incredibly humbling.

Then, we continue to have talented, gifted, and hardworking people every single year who step away from THEIR lives, their families, their jobs, often their salaries, to come and help us.  We're talking about professors who are pastoring churches and teaching full-time, who have their doctorates, paying their own ways to come and teach--WELL--our brothers and sisters.   We're talking about contractors and farmers and mechanics and doctors and electricians, great and incredibly talented men and women, coming TO Haiti and serving with ALL they've GOT, because we needed help.

Every time they come, we thank them, but it is not enough, and it is incredibly humbling.

When the Lord listened to all the reasons we couldn't move to Haiti at 22 and give everything we had to Him through a foreign people--He reminded us that He's asked us to pour ourselves out.  To be a drink offering, a sweet aroma until Him.  That we were not our own.  That giving your all for another is the model Christ already gave us.  And that He would provide and bless and be our joy.

And being poured out, all that time, that is blessedly humbling, too.


The last two days, we've gotten to spend some time with bunches of people we are in awe of...who strongly follow after Christ, who are GOOD parents raising up Godly children, who are leaders in their workplaces full of integrity and discipline, who are leaders in their fields, who are ministering with any extra time and gifts in their churches and in their communities, who are giving to the poor and holding hands with the orphaned and buddies with the widow, who are sharing the Gospel boldly in every place, who we know because they all ALSO somehow come to Haiti and help every time we ask....Who are Missionaries.  All of them.  Right where God's asked them to be.

And we all know missionaries are intimidating :)

So as we were guests in their homes these past two days, eating special things and playing with our kids and basking in the glow of their unmerited, really humbling, God-given friendships... one of them had the audacity to tell me that I am her hero.

Here she is, constantly caring for my family and bending over backwards to make her own ends meet to be poured out like a drink offering in Haiti to help US, then having us to her house and buying us dinner and playing with my girls, and while I feel like all I should be doing is thanking her, over and over and over again, and she goes and says that.

And I swear to you, I heard His voice in the same moment, saying "See?"

Not, "See? You are so awesome!"

But "See?   While you give, and are grateful, and overwhelmed by the giving and hearts of so many, I am using YOU."

See? I am using You.

Tears sprung right to my eyes, because there is nothing more humblingly beautiful than the after-realization that a Mighty, Holy God is at work in YOU.  It is my greatest desire.

And as we ate and laughed with six New Jersey missionaries until much-too-late last night, in awe that they took time to hang out with us, one of them said, "We just can't believe you took time to hang out with us!"

I wanted someone to pinch me.

Because only God sets stuff like that up.

I cried when we left, because I want it.  I want to live next door to all these couples, hang out, eat dinner together, raise our children together in Him, be there for one another, go through life together, pray together.  Because I am so humbled by the way following-Christ is real down to their nitty-gritty.

But then I realized my cheeks were wet with joy, not sadness.  Because He had just given it to me.

All I have needed, His hand has provided...

Yep, I suppose we "gave it all up" in 2007 when we moved.  And our best years of youth many think are meant to be spent on our own joy, we sweated and learned Creole and served away instead.  And I bet a lot of people think we are giving up a lot now.

But I am RICH with clean water, beautiful girls, a Godly husband and His work and joy.

And I am RICH with heros.