love has come

I knew this past Sunday was going to be a big one because the Wellspring Kids I've been stretched, blessed and humbled to lead the past months had their big song and dance number! It was also the last Sunday of advent, and Matt had a million plates spinning. 

I was NOT expecting it to be a big one because the Lord was going to confront me. Shift me. Show me. 

Not five minutes in, after the lighting of the love candle, our friend Charlie got on stage to share a short testimony about love. 

He shared a story of a time he was driving to Home of Grace to volunteer for a few days, a faith-based addiction recovery program a few hours from here we happen to have had several phone calls with the past two weeks. He had my attention. 

On his way there, having once been a hitchhiker himself, he stopped to pick up one. As he slowed down, he said he almost took off again, because the man he was planning to give a ride to looked terrifying. Dozens of piercings and tattoos covered his face, but Charlie was determined to help and let him in.  The man's appearance alone made it obvious to Charlie that he needed the Gospel! Urgently.

Charlie started in talking to him about Jesus and his need for a savior, preaching...and before long the hitchhiker stopped him. "I don't mean to be rude, but I'd rather walk the whole way to Panama City than listen to one more word about Jesus. Please let me out."

Lord, Charlie prayed, help me. I'm doing what I should have done before I ever opened my mouth to start preaching. You know this man, through and through. You see him. Tell me what to do.

Love him, Charlie clearly sensed.  

How in the world do I do that when I can't even talk about you? Charlie wondered, chatting with the man while he prayed and searching the Lord for wisdom.  As they drove and talked, Charlie asked what was in Panama City.

"Well," the man said, "I should have told you this when I got in. I have AIDS, and have been given six months to live. I've spent my whole life far from home and hurting my family, and when they told me I'm gonna die, I called my mama. She's 90 years old, lives in Panama City, and she said I could come home. So, I'm going home to die at the only place I can ever remember being happy."

That's how, the Lord clearly spoke to Charlie. Take him home.

Mind you. Home of Grace was a few hours away. Panama City? 20.  

Friends. Twenty hours drive to Eugene's mama's house in Panama City.

Well okay, Charlie said a million times quicker than I would have.

And he did.

No preaching, just talking, stopping at Waffle Houses and gas stations along the way, sharing their stories and their lives. Learning about unspeakable brokenness in Eugene's life. 

He finally got him to his mama's house. Before they got out, he handed Eugene a pamphlet he had with him of a short description of salvation and an example of a sinner's prayer.  

"I know you don't want to hear about Jesus," Charlie said, "but I believe if you read this and pray this prayer, He will meet you. And I KNOW that He loves you." 

He left it at that, met the man's mother, left his address in her hands and headed the 20 hours back home. 

Six months later, almost to the day, a letter came in the mail.

He didn't recognize the man in the photo, so put it aside as he read the letter.  

That mother he'd met in Panama City said that every day, again and again and again, Eugene had read that prayer. Memorized that prayer. Prayed that prayer. And over the course of the last six months of his life, Eugene began to change. 

The photo was of Eugene before he died, all the metal in his face replaced by light and joy, and a softness that made him almost unrecognizable to Charlie. 

By now, I had ugly tears running down my neck, and my babies weren't even up on stage yet singing and dancing for Jesus. 

"I guess Eugene's dancing in heaven, because the same love I've known from the Father, He helped me give Eugene."

love like that, pray like that, the Lord clearly impressed on me. 

I realized that while I have never stopped praying for certain people in my life and in the lives of others, it has often been with frustration. I have often prayed with irritation. Without hope. Often prayed with disgust or exhaustion or bitterness or anger or hopelessness.

And He wants us to pray with His LOVE. 

And I have often silently or not silently given direction. I have often known what others need to do. I have often shared and preached and pointed the Gospel. 

But I have NOT shared my life. I have often guarded my time, my family, my wishes, my agenda, my schedule, my safety, my comfort.  I have not exemplified crazy love over you're-driving-me-crazy or loving-like-this-is-crazy.

Maybe one day, there will be a man at Home of Grace with tattoos and piercings all over his face that many have prayed a million prayers for. 

As those candles burned bright...hope and joy and faith and LOVE, I was convicted deeply on my love looking a lot like Stacey's-biggest-heart-love and totally missing the mark of just my love looking like His.

Like the kind that left heaven to come down for Christmas. Like the kind that willingly headed to a cross. Like the kind that drives 40 hours.

Like His love and Mary's love that put Jesus not in his mama's arms...but in a feed box, wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger. 

Jesus, not for her, but for the world to COME and receive the gift God gave, Bread from Heaven, Living Bread, taste and see. 

Christmas, not for me. But a gift to give. A sacrifice to make. A love to live for people, not hold for them. 

And as I've shifted this past week in my thinking and prayers, there has been such unexpected freedom and joy. 

Eugene is with Jesus today because of how great the Father's love and sacrifice, and because Charlie was willing to sacrificially mirror it.  

How many souls eternal are healed and rejoicing because the Church loved like Jesus did? Because I did?

I love you...Don't Stop praying for your people...But pray with His love. 

Merry Christmas, dear ones.  

Come Let us Adore Him

 Sunday was the sweetest day.  I will always remember it as a day He made His richness known to me. When it was time for baptisms, some dear friends went before with powerful testimonies and decisions, and I am SO blessed to a part of His Church. When it was time for family to surround our children, I had family surround my children. Their friends came, and Lady Jane, Martin and Sharon, Hannah. When it was time for Ben and Nora to share their hearts, they pointed to Jesus. When it came time to baptize them, death and new life, having the pastor also be their dad was really special. 

It will go down in Stace-history as a very tangible seeing of Jesus and His great love for His children.

Sometimes at special family events, the gaps are so painful. But He had them packed so full of His goodness on Sunday, doing in my children and in people I care about things that only HE can do...I only felt and saw the richness.

It restored my hope for my brother. 

The VERY long time we have prayed for him is NOT a very long time for the Lord. It is just HIS time. And as long as there is air in his lungs, the Lord is pursing him and waiting for him to come home. If He can fill my gaps...He can fill ALL gaps. He is waiting, love in His eyes and peace in His hands, for my brother to come home. My prayers will never stop waiting with Him. 

Never stop praying for Lord to fill and restore the painful gaps in people's lives.  It is His best work. 

It is the work and rest of Christmas. 

Come let us adore Him.

prayers

 I am just barely keeping my head above water. I've got lots to reflect on and it's going to have to mostly happen later.

Two things: tomorrow Nora and Ben are being baptized along with a slew of other really special people, and at the last minute Martin and Sharon got on a plane to come and join us for that. Neighbors, dear friends, all are gathering around tomorrow, and I am so touched and blessed to have family come out of the woodworks, and also to have two passionate, independent kiddos saying they want to outward show their inside hearts for following Jesus. 

Imma be a mess.

Also, we are needing extra prayers for my brother. Many of you have been praying for a long time, some longer than I have. Please keep on.  I am praying that the current dark awfulness is setting the stage for answered prayers.  Lord, please come and honor the long-suffering prayers of my parents. 

I am thankful for you.

not well-enough alone.

Matt's mama was sick the whole time she was with us for Thanksgiving, and Matt got it hard the morning she left. Dear man has been out for the count this week...which didn't work as well as needed with so many things on the church calendar. A few he missed, a few he pushed and a few he preached (including just a powerful and sacred funeral!), and the Lord met us. 

As the whole family participated in different parts of the Madison Christmas Parade in the cold this morning, representing Wellspring Church and Jesus, the Lord reminded me that our weakness isn't to be avoided, despised or skipped.  It's often where He shows up...it's often where He is WAITING. 

If He's waiting in our hard places, I'm trying to stop avoiding them.  I'm trying to simply meet Jesus there.

There have been some hard anniversaries this season. Sometimes they hit you without you even expecting them, don't they? You're not even THINKING about the date and suddenly painful memories of it years past hit you...or memories of sweet things no more. One of them just about physically hit me in the face this morning, so clear I had to laugh out loud at the Lord, always working to redeem and heal our circumstances...never leaving well-enough alone like I wish He would.

Mind your business, I tried to tell Him.

I am, He reminded me better.

He's not after our well-enough, is He?

Our God isn't content with our shoved-down, our buried, our hidden bruises, our tiny seeds of bitterness or lack of forgiveness, our broken anniversaries, our markers of loss.

He wants to make them new. He wants to make them sweet. He wants to back-flow His redemption into these days, these places. HOWEVER broken or dead or gone.

If it's still painful, or fearful, or bitter, or sarcastic, or stabbing...it's not well-enough. And it is His grace and tender mercy that won't leave it alone. 

I'm thankful. 

This past Wednesday in Bible study, Matt taught on my mom's favorite end-of-life chapter of the Bible, Isaiah 40.  Ah, she read it SO many times those last weeks.  Often out loud. Often to my bitterness as I watched her suffer and fade and her skin peel to pieces and her cry out in agony all the while joyfully announcing renewed strength and eagle's wings.

It wasn't until she was long gone that I realized I was the one misunderstanding...not her.  She knew exactly what she was believing in, the Lord strong and mighty, strong in power. She waited on the Lord and He met her and the truth of Isaiah 40 she lives fully in.

When I got to pray for our church family after the study, I couldn't help but share the preciousness of this chapter to me.  And I know to some, my tears as I shared probably seemed like something must be unresolved, or still stabbing, or that I miss her. 

And of course I do. But I grinned with my tears as I shared because He has truly TAUGHT me there, God has MET me there...in that place...that little incubated hospital room that once made me shudder and now has a heavenly glow in my mind and memory and calendar. He's met me in that room so many times the last 20 years...healing, unpacking, reframing, replaying, restoring. Redeeming. Backwards.

I can go there now and full see Him. I can grin with good tears because He met my mama there forever and meets me there still. 

There are more places in my story I wish weren't a part of it.  Maybe you too. Maybe especially around Christmas it hits you extra heavy.

May He MEET us there, may we be brave enough to meet Him there...and take what was dark and cold and weary and thrill His HOPE into it.

I love you friends.

the Lord is near

Thanksgiving is not a liturgical holiday. 

But it could be.

For, what could be more faithful than breaking bread with family (and foes) knowing that Jesus spent his entire ministry doing the same?

And yet, there is a sense in which what happens around the Thanksgiving table is more determinative over our lives than the One who gives us life. Rare is the family that is immune to the political pandering that happens over turkey and mashed potatoes. Gone are the days we could sit back and rejoice without worrying about who will say what and ruin the holiday mood. We, then, approach the table of blessings without feeling like it’s much of a blessing at all.

But what if God is the one calling us together for the explicit purpose of redeeming our Thanksgiving tables? What if this is the year to let forgiveness reign over judgment? What if we took seriously the claim that, as Paul put it, “The Lord is near,” even at the holiday table?

There’s no guarantee that anything good can come out of our Thanksgivings this year, save for the fact that we worship the God of impossible possibility! So keep your eyes and ears open, let your gentleness be known, and rejoice! The Lord is near!

That good word blessed me this thanksgiving! And, the Lord carried it over.  After Thanksgiving dinner with all the kids, Matt's parents and a good friend, Matt and I headed over to the house of a dear church member, on his deathbed. 

We pulled up to the house with the whole street full of cars, and the porch and house was FULL of their children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren...grandparents and chubby babies and teens and pie...all the  richness of Joyce and Harry's lives was pouring out of that house. 

As we met people and gathered around Harry's bedside, I kept hearing echoes of "the Lord is Near." Keep your eyes and ears open. Let your gentleness be known.

We read Psalm 23, we anointed his precious head with oil and the forehead of his beloved wife of 74 years...we prayed over his dying bones and lifted our voices in the benediction and my heart was so full of the sacredness and holiness of it all it poured down my cheeks. 

You could sense we were standing at the gates of heaven. You could see we were surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses, both there and to ahead. In the tears of all around us, 40 people crammed in a sacred space, you could see hope and heartbreak and the THANKSGIVING.

Every dying and broken and pain,

the Lord is NEAR,

and He is EVERYTHING He says He is. 

There is ONE thing that has never disappointed, never abandoned, never let me down...

and He is NEAR. 

What a gift, this Thanksgiving

a great reminder : prayer

If you didn't grow up around mangoes like the entire 11 million population of Haiti, you might not know.

You might think, when you see trees full of them, branches heavy and swaying, that the large, green fruit is surely the right size for picking! But with mangoes--some kinds small as apricots, some large as dinner plates--size has nothing to do with their ripeness.

Long after they are full and green, they are still hard as rocks, hanging by a long thread of a stem. If you pick them now, force one off impatiently, it will remain hard and white and never soften...only sit on your table to shrivel and rot.

You have to leave them and let the invisible do it's work...let the sun warm their skin, let the drip...drip..drip of sap seep through those narrow stems and slowly soften and ripen the fruit.

When they are sweet and warm and golden and juicy on the inside, they fall...and it is from the ground, not the trees, that you gather mangoes.

All night long you here them thump and thwack, and with the earliest rays go the men, women and children with baskets and bags and five-gallon buckets. Get them before the goats and chickens do, huge baskets of fruit every day, more than everyone can eat, more than you can sell!

Those days, mango season, even the most serious business man quickly smudges off traces of orange from his chin, toothless babies and grannies patiently suck every fiber from the huge flat pits, students stash a few unflawed fruits among their notebooks, and everyone who goes to visit takes a few mangoes as a gift, even if every host already has a yard full of them.

---

There are many who wonder what to do for Haiti in this hard, hard time. How do you pray for so many baskets full of problems?

Does prayer even matter? Surely you have prayed many times before! What does prayer even DO?

Does prayer make it always mango season and feed the hungry? Does prayer clear the roads, calm the storms, supply the fuel so sought after, does prayer force peace down the throats of chaos and smudge out all traces of corruption and evil?

Not always.

But prayer DOES always drip...drip...drip grace.

The prayers of His people, lifted from well-worn knees and faithful hands, slowly and surely deliver grace to hard hearts, trickles warmth into stone-cold situations, seeps His grace upon grace through narrow stems and slowly softens and ripens.

God uses our prayers—our steady, invisible prayers—to drip grace into the lives of those we love, into the hearts of those we pray for, into the situations that look from the outside like they will never bear fruit, will NEVER be sweet.

It is not TIME that sweetens stony mangoes into delectable, nutritious fruit. It is that deep water, coming up from many roots, climbing strong trunks and spreading through a thousand stems, pouring slowly into each fruit, turning it golden!

Do not simply wait for your brother or aunt or co-worker to finally soften to Jesus...do not wait for your difficult community or your strained marriage to change. Do not wait for something to shift in Haiti, do not wait idly by and hope that that hard prayer request sitting on the counter will somehow sweeten!

It is not by patience, but by PRAYER His grace pours out...the deep-rooted prayers of many, lifted up with strong and faithful hands day-in-and-day-out that CHANGES the hearts of men, that softens the broken situations, that takes what was hard and usless and makes it sweet and GOOD.

Pray on for our dear Haiti, ushering grace into the hearts and lives and situations of many.

Pray for that which is bitter to miraculously turn sweet, and bring your baskets.

As we wait and watch and pray...it is with hope.

faithfulness

We got home Monday morning at 2 am utterly wiped, but THAT was a wonderful wedding weekend...not only celebrating Elisa and Chris, but celebrating all of God's faithfulness. 

There was a time when Craig and Deb, Elisa's mom and dad, came to Haiti to teach a class for us at Emmaus University, and had asked us to please be praying for them and their three adult children....for spouses, for grandkids, for God to move. We prayed together with them then, and we have prayed, many years, and my most emotional moment of the weekend was at family pictures, seeing Craig and Deb beautiful and surrounded by their sons and daughter, daughter-in-laws, son-in-law, grandson, granddaughter. Every prayer answered and beautiful and in His time.  

The richness just totally overwhelmed me. In Him is richness and work and redemption and good. 

There will still be hard days, shadows, challenges. But His faithfulness just abounds. 

Elisa was just gorgeous. 

Having Lily and Sofie with me to celebrate Aunt Elisa was extra fun. 

Most of these friends I have gotten to know over the years, and it was extra fun getting to spend the weekend with them! Elisa has some incredible women in her life!

I am not going to lie that I felt old...and my girls felt old to me. Like, they fit in. They're not little girls anymore. They are gorgeous. 

I'm not ready.

Between the cruise, the sickness, and the fun weekend away...I am very content to stay home forever and never get back in the car :). 

Keep on praying!

Wedding Weekend!

The Lord gave me in Elisa a rare and precious friendship that has stood the test of time and life!...We have each been through a LOT in the last 22 years, and after being in my wedding in 2005, this weekend I get to be in hers! I am SO thankful for this gift, and for ALL the prayers the Lord has heard and seen and blessed these years of lifting one another up.

Pray for Matt and Hannah as they hold down the fort this weekend, and for Lily, Sofie and I as we celebrate Aunt Elisa and Chris!

My dad, who adored Elisa, would be SO happy.  (He is so happy. So I guess we're good.)

So thankful for this good gift, for which I have prayed!

manna

Grab a cup of cinnamon tea and sit with me. 

It's been a wild week, literally to the Bahamas and back again, full of so many little sweet gifts and so many hard things.

After church Sunday the kids and I drove as long and as efficiently as we could to Ocala, and then woke up early the next morning to book it to Ft. Lauderdale. We unloaded the party bus and quickly overheard the parking attendants speaking Haitian Creole. Lily had friends in ten words, and we finally broke away from that little family to fall into the arms of sweet cousin-family...just in time to board Royal Caribbean and set out on our first ever cruise. 

All the work of travel, all the work of making up a week of school, all the work to earn the money even for the cheapest week of cruising of the year...it would be worth it for precious family time and a Bahamian vacation!

We woke up the first day at Coco Cay, known for "the perfect day."

And it was. It was beautiful, the cousins all had the most precious time together swimming and playing beach games. The food was bottomless and "free" and the water was surreal. 

Not long after we re-boarded, I was seasick...I thought. Emma was wobbly and emotional. And as Ben, Nora, Emma and I packed into our tiny, dark cabin, I started to be violently ill.  Between trips to the bathroom, Emma started throwing up, and by morning...it was ugly, violent food poisioning. We were exhausted. Every towel and sheet was rancid. I sent Ben and Nora to breakfast with Aunt Lisa, and when I bent to clean Emma again, my throbbing head spun and I blacked out. Emma was bawling and filthy and I was on the well-worn carpet, unable to help her, unable to lift my head, unable to push.  I'm not sure I've ever been that sick. 

That was the high and the low...and the following days were sweet precious memories of watching the eight cousins play on the pool deck from a chair in the shade with Emma...of cheering for Ben as he played basketball, shakily cheering for the cousins as they scaled the rockwall, of taking another excursion our last day and I finally felt good enough to get down in the sand with Mayah and to catch up with Uncle Adam on the boat. And that night Lisa started throwing up, and the next morning we piled back into our van with loads of terrible laundry and cried through goodbyes....and as we drove Lily started to throw up...and Emma, to this moment, still hasn't bounced back.

As I drove the 13 hours all in one swoop, passing bags to sick kids, watching Emma grow weaker and more lethargic still, and hearing stories of the big bellyflop contest...I thought of manna.

The Israelites thought because they were no longer in slavery, the dessert would be paradise...and turns out, the paradise was hard, too. I get thinking that vacation, Bahamas, Coco Cay the Perfect Day should be blissful and perfect and I've deserved it and relaxing and turns out in the sweet, there is still hard. Till heaven, it's still broke. Unlike Him, the BEST places and the best experiences still don't satisfy.

But when I needed help, recovering and driving sick kids 13 hours, He provided exactly what I needed for that specific situation, just like manna. They were hungry, and His hand was not short. God cared more about their hearts and about mine, too, but also...He saw and met their everyday, tangible needs. Simple, sweet manna. 

They had nothing to do with its production. They simply had to gather it up. Exactly what they needed, exactly how much they needed, and His provision even accounted for Sabbath rest! 

God provided. For real. He met them. There was no lack. His hand was not short. There was no waste. 

And then He replaced the bread from heaven with the bread of life from heaven, and though I've had nothing to do with its production, I have and keep receiving the free gifts of His salvation and grace and love and joy and peace. 

When I needed His help and protection on the impossible, 800+ mile road, He truly helped and protected me and us. When I needed help in that dark cabin, He sent Lily in a sunshine yellow t-shirt, who patiently cleaned and carried and found us a quiet chair in the shade with fresh breeze and brought us water and tea, and when I had four kids and couldn't be mom, my most precious sister swooped in and loved them and adventured them well. 

When we got back to our van, now 3 adults and 9 kids, our new Haitian friends had a giant platter of Haitian food they had made us for our return. 

Haitian women who had never met us, who work for minimum wage in a parking garage, while WE were on a CRUISE, kept track of the days and hours, bought meat and vegetables and plantain of their own money, cooked it, and when we struggled around the corner, they provided our family's sweetest comfort food. 

Manna.

As I drove that late night, trying to make sense of all the hard in our lives and the lives of those we love, especially in the pockets that were supposed to be perfect and pampered and restful, He asked me if I saw His manna, "given that he might humble you and test you and do you good in the end" (Deut. 8:16) as His sweet provision, or if I would "complain in the hearing of the Lord about their troubles" (Numbers 11) like Israel. If my children would hear me complain about the meat of Egypt or point out His provision and tender loving care. 

And so, as much heavier things surround me and I battle on my knees for many...I am hungry for SO MUCH. Until we are living in that true, perfect day...I am hungry. And when I am hungry and tired and out of options...praise...the Lord takes care of us. 

Lord, give us today sweet manna in the places we are waiting on You for things that have yet to resolve. 

Amen!

good gifts

Our precious week with Aunt Sharon was matched by Matt and Sofie's precious last week in class...Matt can hardly talk about his students without getting choked up. The challenges, persecution, violence and hardships that are a part of their daily lives and ministries are overwhelming, and their joy in the middle was more so.  That has touched Matt and Sofie for good, forever. 

Sharon extended her trip an extra day so that I could join one day of Elisa's bachelorette trip at the beach. This is the way Sharon is. Not just making it possible for my good, but doing a lot of good with Nora and Ben and Lily and Emma so that I could, and they didn't feel it. 

While Matt and Sofie headed home, I drove 6 hours to the beach, had 24 beautiful hours with a lotta good women, and when they got home I headed back and she headed to the airport :)

I listened to a lot of worship and the entirety of Comer's "The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry" on the way there and back, and between that a whole day in His creation with dear women and some priceless solitude, I feel ten times free-er.  A lot of ways of living and thinking just kind of join us little by little, and taking a ruthless step back and realizing, "This isn't how I want to be doing it" and setting out on a better course -- a more "Christ apprenticeship" course, is so freeing.

If you haven't read it, dooooo.  If you want to hear about Matt's trip, he couldn't help but preach it today...I was so blessed by that. https://www.facebook.com/wellspringms/videos/1121355200205866

One of my shifts is getting my time off FB and IG and back into writing, here, which is what I love and how God meets me and helps me process.  It is less instant, less hurried, and more focused....and if I MISS writing, and it brings me joy and edifies my faith...why aren't I?

Grateful for these good gifts....