not sitting down

The sweet family who was with us this weekend is unique in lots of way.  Matt was Ricky's SLA, or Spiritual Life Assistant, and I knew Aidan a little bit. Ricky has always been an incredibly positive, fun, down-for-anything and faithful person, and Matt had several classes with Aidan and she's uber-smart, passionate, and ready to live out her faith.

For many years they supported us in Haiti, and when they joined Wycliff Bible Translators a few years ago, we joined their team. When we moved to Mississippi last year, they moved their support from us to Emmaus, and so basically, we all just keep on supporting each other and I cherish that. 

Nonetheless, we hadn't seen Ricky and Aidan since before they were married. Definitely never met any of their children, though I've watched them grow from newsletter to newsletter all these years.

When they let us know their "thanks for being a part of our team" tour this summer was taking them through Jackson, we were thrilled at the chance to see them.

The last time we saw Aidan, she wasn't in a wheelchair quite yet, born with a nervous system disorder called Frederick's Ataxia. The year we were married, she got to the point of needing it, and the slow decline of her nervous system these last 15 years for us happened overnight.

How precious, to sit around the table and watch 8 active and happy stranger kids become friends...all of them used to the constant social of missionary life, and instantly sharing life and beds and toys and stories with one another.  How precious to listen to Matt and Ricky belly-laugh through story after story from college, to hear all about life and ministry and family.

How humbling and challenging and sweet to sit with Aidan...to ask her questions and wait with her as she struggles and fights to formulate the words, most of which she had to graciously repeat again, many of which I was never able to understand. How frustrating to not be able to freely share our hearts with one another, all the while knowing our minds and hearts are so like-placed, and yet she never once got frustrated with me.

How blessed and humbled I was to wash days worth of little t-shirts and clothes from the road, to wash bottles and cook breakfasts and to take away from Ricky and the kids for a few days all the many jobs they all pour into to make life function in their family.

How sacred, sacred, to sit at the table and work through understanding even the simple request, could I cut her nails? could I brush her hair? How precious, while we struggled back and forth for understanding, she and I, sisters, as we talked and stumbled through her life and mine, as she asked about Gertha, about Micheline, about who my children are, about all of life's struggles and beauty, about what the Lord is working on in both our hearts and lives. 

Their lives and bodies and marriage and future and children and gifts and resources and days are His, fully, beyond common sense and dangerously close to His, with abandon.

There were many moments that inspired me, and only one moment that really shook me up. 

Sweet little Morgan, just turned one this summer, is crawling all over the house, playing with every toy in sight, never looking back, grinning at anyone who stops to chat with him. He snuggles easily and chatters insistently all through meals that people aren't getting to him fast enough, and easily clings to the hip of any child passing by.

One afternoon Aidan and I were sitting side by side in the living room, watching the kids all playing, and little man Morgan was reaching for something and took a tumble, bonking his head and instantly letting loose the most pitiful wail. His face scrunched and genuine tears poured, and the moment I heard his cries, the mama in me jumped...and noticed that the mama in Aidan did not. 

When I realized that, of course, that Aidan couldn't spring from her chair and scoop up her wailing little one, I quickly snuggled him up and brought him close to her for comfort.

But of all the years I've prayed for them, I never ever thought about Aidan's children being hurt in front of her, needing her help, and Aidan watching them struggle from her chair, unable to move to them, to intercede, to change their situation, to comfort and dry their tears.

It pierced my heart for the thousands of times I know it has pierced hers, for the same mama in us all is the same mama in my sweet friend.  Instead of leaping, she sits near the pain and watches, and cries out to God, again and again, and trusts Him.

She said in a video testimony recently through Ricky that when she mourns her losses, she makes the conscious determination to realize that she has everything she needs for life and godliness, the fullness of the Spirit, right now, wherever she is.

These last months, but especially days, I have been watching, frozen, as Haiti stumbles and falls and cries out. I have been sitting in my chair struggling to find the breath to even pray with, hearing the wails and watching the stories and knowing the pains and complications, imagining the nightmares, easily translating the despairing cries from all the videos coming out of Haiti. 

I've been sitting here, stuck in my chair, watching the fears and the murders and then the destruction and then the flooding and then the bodies and then all the fears of Haiti, of Afghanistan, of the world.

There is so much acute pain, even all around me close, and I sit by watching...Utterly unable, no matter how desperately I want to intervene.  I am unable to leap, unable to rock or soothe or fix one. single. thing.

It is easy to feel angry and desperate and frustrated as I do NOTHING in the face of a mess but watch it deepen and despair right in front of me.

It kills me, it kills me like it did watching little Morgan.

Two things the Lord is speaking to me.

One, sitting in my chair and doing nothing are not the same thing.

Being unable to come alongside His church in Afghanistan is not being unable to do anything. Being far from Jeremie and Le Cayes is not the same as being useless. 

I make the conscious determination that I have everything I need to intercede and minister and usher grace in horrifying situations, because I have the Lord present and at work and the ability to boldly draw near to His throne, and He has promised to listen and to move!

I am only doing nothing if I am not fasting and praying, if I am only scanning the news and shaking my head and feeling my heart break and growing in despair. I am only doing nothing if I am losing all hope and thinking like the world and talking like her, too, and not being faithful and constant in prayer, and steady and growing in faith.

Two, we might be absolutely paralyzed. We might be sitting in our chairs, seeing great need and anguish, watching other's struggle, unable to move to them, unable to intercede, unable to change situations, unable to comfort or even dry any tear. The whole world might be completely and totally paralyzed to change or fix many of these situations, and many efforts are just NOT stacking up enough.

Our paralysis, smallness, inability, hopelessness, weakness and helplessness DOES NOT Represent the Lord in ANY way.  

Tossing up our hands in anguish does not mean the Lord is.  Despairing over the death of our brothers and sisters does not mean He is.  Our inability to move and meet and find and change and help does not mean HIS.

Dang it, Stacey, hurt as you may, at the end of the day you fall to sleep in the middle of your prayers AND HE IS NEVER DOES.  He carries on, faithful.

He does NOT SIT DOWN nor has He ever been glued to ANY chair. He is not deaf to the cries of His people. He does not sit idly by and watch us suffer. His hand is NOT so short that it cannot save, His might is not so small that He cannot still redeem.  He is not TIRED as we grow weary, He is as fully HOPE as He has always been.

As I watch Him, even these days, bring so many men and women and children into His presence and wipe every. single. tear from their eyes and wash freedom and life and wholeness over each and every one of His children, I remember that our experience, our reality, our best effort, our last breath IS NOT HIS.

Beloved, we must hold firm to our faith without wavering in these desperate days.  We must never give up hope, we must never stop gathering up our courage and inspiring it in others, we must never cease in gathering together and praying, and we must never think that our condition escapes or limits or stretches or surprises Him.

He was before, and He will be, and best...

HE IS.