God knew He was giving me a Haiti friend when He sent us SD, even though she's never been. She comes over without texting, she knows right where the mugs are and gets herself coffee as she plops down, the kids think she's part friend / part adult, she gets in the fridge when she's hungry and is thoughtful about what would be a gift in our lives, our days and DOES it. She talks about her struggles and feels without apology, and asks about mine and lets me, too.
Her heart is a bit stuck in Africa, and she's intent on remaining a missionary nonetheless, wherever God's got her now, and that means she's our co-worker in His kingdom and it feels like it.
Still, it caught me off guard to be crying in the kitchen the other night after she'd biked some ridiculous miles and stopped in after to catch up and re-heat pad-thai and be friends after the kids were in bed, knowing Matt's still away.
When someone asks, and then listens, you realize things you hadn't, and the other night the tears were confessing that this life-ministry thing in Mississippi is HARD.
Ministry came so naturally in Haiti. Everywhere we went there were a thousand needs wanting met and a hundred homes wanting visited and a million people wanting time and prayer and relationship. It was easy to take the kids along, to talk about what Jesus would do, and to do it.
There were no dinner conversations of "there are starving kids in Africa, eat your rice!" for there were starving kids two huts over and we would take them rice, tomorrow. I never once wondered how to get plugged in. We wondered how in the world we could do all we plugged into without even realizing it.
I've been trained, then, to focus ministry and relationship and Gospel giving and sharing on obvious need. It was easy to see glaringly where love and food and friendship and the Gospel was needed, and easy then to go and DO it. Stretching. Heartbreaking. Sobering. Rich. But easy to identify.
How much harder in a country that not only has so much, but that is so independent. So private. So individualistic. So strong surfaced. So busy. So distracted. So safe.
I can't SEE it.
The need for Him is as great, if not greater still. The need for community, the need for friendship, the need for the Gospel, it is the same, surely...if not stronger. But it's all so hidden and foreign to me that I struggle to know how and where and when...and so the "work" struggles to feel meaningful.
I am used to ministering in such extremes, in the mud hut village, to the poorest of the poor. But finding my ministry place in the middle of THIS campus, of THIS village of Bless Your Heart in a country where we hate and hide our own poverty instead of inviting people into it, on this missionfield of a million churches, but football first?... What in the world am I doing? I asked SD, and she reminded me first years on every new mission-field are brutal.
That was Thursday night, a few days Matt had unpacked from Philly and handed me some Buzby NJ sweet corn and a book from Emily, the neighbor I never ever would have moved away from.
Today the sun was shining and Ben was napping and the kids were playing outside, and instead of doing what "needed" done...the list that never ends and probably never will...I did the rare act of sitting. And rare-er still, of reading.
And God knew giving me SD and Emily and this book all this week was His goodness.
The Ministry of Ordinary Places: Waking Up to God's Goodness Around You by Shannan Martin is exactly what I need right now.
As Christ-followers, she writes, we are called to be long-haul neighbors committed to authenticity and willing to take some risks. Our vocation is to invest deeply in the lives of those around us, devoted to one another, physically close to each other as we breathe the same air and walk the same blocks. Our purpose is not so mysterious after all.
We get to love and be deeply loved right where we're planted, by whomever happens to be near. We will inevitably encounter brokenness we cannot fix, solve, or understand, and we'll feel as small, uncertain, and outpaced as we have ever felt. But we'll find our very lives in this calling, to be among people as Jesus was, and it will change everything.
The details will look quiet and ordinary. They will exhaust and exhilarate us. But it will be the most worth-it adventure.
I am having trouble navigating. I'm having trouble balancing. I'm having trouble learning the language, finding a place where we can volunteer as a family, finding the church we thought, getting it all done, finding my place on this mission field.
But long-haul neighbors committed to authenticity and willing to take some risks? Invest deeply? Embrace brokenness I can't fix?
THAT, finally, sounds like home. THAT, finally, is an assignment I cherish. Small, uncertain and outpaced is Stacey Ayars, friends.
Until I know what in the world to do, please come and get your own mug and love like a neighbor where you are.
Ben woke up, I folded down the book, we all made our first-ever 6 pound cakes and had the sweetest time delivering to neighbors...catching up true with some and even meeting some more, finally making it back to our driveway at bedtime and the kiddos singing together in the dark, Nora on her bike and needing pushed over every hill, Ben with his soccer ball still in his hands.
We're gonna carry on, small and outpaced. Oh Lord, bless it.
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