Tag: Ministry

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When the proverbial plane crashes

I knew the Lord had brought me to Alaska, but the end of first semester was a train wreck. (Or to be more “bush-correct”, you could say it was a proverbial plane crash.) By the time it was over, I was beyond burnt out. I was struggling with what I can now recognize as compassion fatigue and PTSD. I was spiritually overwhelmed, constantly feeling like I was losing the battle against the strongholds of addiction that raged in my house. By the time I’d realized just how far in over my head I was, it was too late. My little TLC plane had fallen out of the sky and was in flames around me.

I sat in our house with my face down on my kitchen table and my hands entangled in my hair, sobbing at one in the morning. Every few minutes I would catch a word or two from the serious conversation between my boss and one of my students in the other room.

I pulled my face up off the table and caught a glimpse of myself in the window. The woman staring back at me was gaunt; the way her black mascara had dripped over her sunken-in cheeks scared me. I stared in shock. Who is that woman in the window? That can’t possibly be what I look like. I tried to turn my head to examine myself from another angle but my muscles were so tense my neck wouldn’t turn. Instead I laid my forehead back on the table and ugly-cried until my stomach hurt. What are you doing Lord?

Eventually I ran out of tears and simply stared at the grain of the wood in my table. I couldn’t figure out where my “good” God was. I couldn’t bring myself to believe that He would ever lead me (or had actually led me) somewhere that felt so unsafe.

Lord, have mercy. Please. Where are you? I pleaded on repeat, as if those were the only words I knew. The first half of David’s Psalm 77 rang in my ears.

My boss eventually emerged from the other room. Lowering himself into the chair next to mine, he asked how I was doing. Unhealthy. Unsafe. They were the only words I could choke out, even though I knew they didn’t make sense as an answer to his question. I tried to focus on the logistics of what I needed to do with my student, but as his lips moved, my brain wandered. I’m ‘doing Your work’, Lord. You brought me here. You gave these girls to me, and me to these girls. Yet I feel like I’m dying. How could you let this happen?

It’s every missionary’s worst nightmare—that moment when the prayers for protection and safety, the ones that people back at home prayed over you before you left, seem to have worn off.

In that moment I was left to wrestle with the fact that because God is sovereign, that this was exactly where He wanted me. He knew this would happen. He knew I would feel unsafe. He knew it would be dark and I wouldn’t be able to sense His presence, but somehow I had to trust that He was still there…

He had called me to the depths of myself—my deepest fears and wounds—in His loving goodness, for His ultimate glory. I knew the theology, yet there I was, weeping, begging God to show up and replace my suffering with a feeling of safety, even though I’d always said I would do whatever it took for the people around me to know the love of Christ…

~~~

Around these parts, we pray for our pilots in church on Sunday and before almost every meal. To us they’re not just pilots—they’re family, my friends, my friends’ husbands, my bosses, my students, me.

I’ve learned a lot about trusting the sovereignty of God from hearing pilots and their loved ones pray. Our pilots all have their fair share of plane crash stories—some minor, some major, all mildly terrifying. Yet when they pray, they ask for wisdom as they fly, not for safety, even though many of them understand what it feels like to be in a plane that’s going down.FlyingSidewaysThese men and women have been there; they’ve felt a complete lack of safety akin to what I felt in December.

They’ve all said, “Yes Lord, I want to follow you. I want to serve the people of Southwest Alaska by bringing them their groceries, the fuel they need to survive, and their loved ones, no matter the cost.” (After all, none of us could live and minister where we do if it wasn’t for our valiant bush pilots.) And thus, we cover our pilots in prayer, just as my church family in Colorado prayed for me as they sent me out as a missionary.

But even within that covering of prayer, many of them have walked away from a plane with it’s landing gear folded or it’s wings ripped off.

They know what it’s like to question God’s plan with every fiber of their being while simultaneously fighting to trust the theology and truth of His sovereignty. They’ve managed to praise God just moments after feeling the least safe they’ve felt in their lives. And they still wake up every morning and fly despite all of this because that’s what God’s called them to– even when it feels dangerous.

The prayers of our pilots have challenged me to stop praying for safety, and instead pray to be exactly where God wants me to be— even if it seems horrible and hard, maybe even traumatic at times.

What if we all prayed that way? For wisdom rather than safety, for His will rather than our own? It seems strangely reminiscent of The Lord’s Prayer if you ask me…

After all, Jesus never promised His disciples they wouldn’t suffer or be unsafe (Look at the life of Paul if you doubt me.) Similarly, the Lord never promised David that life, even life as a king, would be easy. (The beginning of Psalm 77 is pretty solid evidence that it wasn’t.) But God did promise He would be David’s refuge when the excrement hit the stone-age ventilation system… He never promised me that living in Alaska would feel safe, but through His word He has promised to be my refuge and physician when my proverbial plane crashes and I’m left climbing from the burning wreckage.

~~~

I woke up the morning after our proverbial plane crash, disheartened and dehydrated from crying every spare ounce of fluid out of my body. But being the stubborn woman I am, I was determined to salvage something (anything) from the wreckage. I threw my Bible and journal on the table I’d wept on just hours before, and got brutally honest with the Lord: “I don’t feel safe. I need to feel safe if You want me to stay here.”

Do you? Is safety the call I’ve put on your life, Kacy?

Etched below God’s rhetorical question in my journal are the words that I pray I’ll be able to live my life by, everyday–

Alright Lord, things might not “get better”. I’m coming to terms with that. It’s a very real possibility that You’ll continue to ask me to walk into (and live in) places that are hard and desolate, almost completely devoid of light, and call me to expose all of my pain so Your light might shine through this brokenness.

You might not deliver me from living in an unsafe environment, but I know this mess is a part of Your plan. And Abba, if You are going to use this hot mess to draw people in and glorify Yourself, then dammit, this is exactly where I want to be; safety or no safety…

“We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsake; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies. For we who live are always being given over to death for Jesus’ sake, so that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal flesh. So death is at work in us, but life in You.”

(2 Corinthians 4:8-12)

 

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I believe Love (and tacos) can conquer all

“Kacy, sometimes you open your mouth and say something, and I gasp. Because you get it. You’ve been there. Somehow you’ve lived parts of my story I thought no one person would ever understand.”

It was ironic to read those words in a note from one of my students this last week, given the fact that one of my worst fears in moving to Alaska was that I would never be able to relate to my new students. After all, what could I—a Brown, wild child, ex-hoodrat—possibly have in common with Native Alaskan teenagers from bush villages?

I was terrified coming here. I was scared that we would never find common ground, they wouldn’t like Mexican food… Or even worse, that my students simply wouldn’t like me. Could an approval junkie like me handle (and live in) that kind of rejection?

By the grace of God, my students and I have found more common ground than I could have ever hoped for in the last two months. (And after introducing my students to Mexican food and explaining that you don’t put soy sauce on Spanish rice, they’ve taken to my cooking. Even if they still spell quesadillas “Kacy-diaz”. Baby steps, right?)

Every night once my students are in bed, I lay down and scroll through a few online newspapers and my social media streams. In the last two weeks, I’ve watched in horror as terrorist attacks and subsequent political debates have unfolded on my tiny iPhone screen. As I lay under my blankets, in my warm bed in the middle-of-nowhere Alaska, my heart breaks for the world that we live in.

After all, I live in what could arguably be one of the safest places in the world.

Every morning I wake up in a village where the post master knows me by name and calls me to tell me when I have a package to pick up. I live in a place so safe and so quaint that if I’m hiking when the “grocery plane” lands, my neighbors put away my groceries for me; it’s just what we do here because this village is a family who lives for Jesus.

It kills me to read the news and be reminded that this is not the way of the world.

It pains my sappy heart to know that fear is driving hatred, racism, exclusion, and perpetuating foreign and domestic terrorism. But I suppose I shouldn’t be shocked… after all, as Carl Medearis (one of my favorite “Christian” authors) says, perfect fear casts out all love. Oh, wait… No, something is wrong there.

That isn’t the way of Jesus…

No, Jesus confronts fear with His perfect love. In fact, He confronted more than fear in His life (and death). Jesus confronted racism, sexism, pain, and shame all throughout His earthly ministry, but He did so specifically when He shared the Gospel with a Samaritan woman at a well in John 4:

“So Jesus came to a town of Samaria called Sychar, near the field that Jacob had given to his son Joseph. Jacob’s well was there; so Jesus, wearied as He was from His journey, was sitting beside the well around the sixth hour.

A woman from Samaria came to draw water. Jesus said to her, ‘Give me a drink.’ The Samaritan woman said to Him, ‘How is it that you, a Jew, ask for a drink from me, a woman of Samaria?’ (For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans.) Jesus answered her, ‘If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked Him and He would have given you Living Water.’ The woman said to Him, ‘Sir, you have nothing to draw water with, and the well is deep. Where do you get such Living Water? Are you greater than our father Jacob? He gave us this well and drank from it himself, as did his sons and his livestock. Jesus said to her, ‘Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.’ The woman said to him, ‘Sir, give me this water, so that I will not be thirsty or have to come to draw water.’” (John 4:5-15)

Jesus challenged man-made boundaries of racism here by talking to a Samaritan. *Gasp!* Then He got really risqué and pushed aside cultural taboos by crossing gender barriers and talking to a Samaritan woman. Even His disciples knew this was a big deal: “Just then, His disciples came back. They marveled that He was talking with a woman, but no one said, ’What do you seek?’ or, ‘Why are you talking with her?’” (John 4:27) They marveled at the fact that Jesus was loving someone so different from Himself… so foreign, so “lowly”.

Now, there’s speculation over whether this woman truly was an unlucky widow (several times over) or whether she was an adulterer or prostitute; We can speculate all we want on the facts here, but we will likely never know this side of heaven.

As a fellow woman, I can deduce however, that this woman likely wrestled with fear and shame if she had gone through that much deep, relational upheaval in her lifetime. And Jesus, knowing the depths of her heart more than I could ever begin to speculate, still chose to enter into her fear, shame, and brokenness to offer her the Kingdom of God anyway, even with the complicating circumstances of her nationality and gender.

I read this chunk of scripture and it causes me to pause. Every. Stinkin’. Time.

If this is the way of Jesus… And Christians are followers of Jesus… And I consider myself to be a Christian… What am I doing? What am I valuing in life if I find myself unwilling to cross uncomfortable barriers to love the ones He loved first?

If we as Christians claim to follow Christ, but are unwilling to follow Him across political, social, and man-made lines today in 2015, we are following something… but I dare say it isn’t Jesus.

Let me say it again: Jesus confronted the brokenness of the world with Love.

In the midst of the horrific headlines regarding terrorism and the political debate the rages on over the futures of refugees– real human beings— what our world needs is the love of Christ.

We don’t need another political mandate, stricter man-made laws, or bloodshed to retaliate for bloodshed.

We need to love.

And we will never be able to love those whom we are afraid (or unwilling) to get to know. The Lord has shown me this first hand time and time again through scripture, and through moving me to the middle of the wilderness to do life with people that I thought couldn’t be more different from me, but whom He adores.

“Those people” whoever “they” are?

“They” are beautiful.

“Their” culture is rich with lessons, just waiting to be learned and loved.

“They” have been created in the image of God, just like you and me.

“They” need Jesus just as badly as you and me.

(“They” probably like Mexican food just as much as you, my students, and I do. [Just sayin’… I believe Jesus and tacos can unite the world…])

We’re all human, which unfortunately means we’re all a bit screwed up. But Christ came in PERFECT LOVE and died for all of us, that we might turn to Him and die to our sinful selves. To die to ourselves is to live for Him, and I don’t know about you, but it seems like living for the Jesus of the Bible means to love the people He has placed around us and love them as we love ourselves.

Scripture tells us the truths that His perfect love casts out fear and His strength is perfected in our weakness. But we, as the followers of Christ Jesus, have to be willing to humble ourselves and be His hands and feet; we have to be willing to invite in our poor and needy neighbors– those who live right down the road and (hold onto your seats) those who are foreign. 

Jesus was not an example of discrimination or exclusion, and thus I struggle to believe that we should walk those paths.

What would it look like for you to truly love “those” people today? (“Those people”– whoever they are– probably aren’t as scary as you think. Trust me; I live in a house full of people I was terrified to meet.)

“By this we know love, that He laid down His life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers. But if anyone has the world’s goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God’s love abide in Him? Little children, let us not love in word or talk but in deed and in truth.”

“There is no fear in love, for perfect love casts out fear.”

(1 John 3:18, 4:18)

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Get in the river

FlyFishingTanalianYou can fish from the shore, or you can throw on a pair of waders and follow Jesus into the river. This is what Alaska is teaching me.

Okay, let me back up…

Maybe the cold has frozen the frontal cortex of my brain, but I’ve taken to spending my Saturday mornings standing in frigid rivers with a tiny pole, tempting Pike with sharp teeth to come near me. In other words… I spend my Saturday mornings fly fishing with my boys.

Full disclosure:

1) I know Alaska has frozen a chunk of my brain. I haven’t seen weather warmer than 40 degrees in weeks.

2) I’m a terrible fly fisherman. (Fly fisher? Fly fisherwoman? See, I don’t even know the correct term. Maybe that’s why I haven’t caught anything yet…)

3) Jesus continues to prove that He’s the only One who could ever tempt me to stand in an Alaskan river on my “day off”.

Due to the fact that I can’t talk or sing while fishing (lest I scare away my prey) I’ve spent a good amount of time lately considering the fact that Jesus walked into our proverbial river by coming down to earth. In fact, He came to us and then He called us to follow in His example.

Jesus walked out of his heavenly perfection and He entered in to our lives; it’s in His very name. Emmanuel—God with us.

In this season of living with my students, teaching and learning with them during the day, and hanging out with them at night, I’m learning what His call to “enter in” with Him to peoples’ lives looks like in a new way.

Consider with me the commands of Christ in the New Testament:

“And Jesus came and said to His disciples, ‘All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to Me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.’” (Matthew 28:16-20)

As I read this, I can almost hear Jesus saying, “Hey! Kacy. I came to you, for you. Now go and be with others. Tell them who I am, and when you can’t seem to remember who I am, simply remember that I am always with you. You need only ask and I will show myself because I’m Emmanuel– God with you; God within you.”

We see two of the other most important commandments of Christ later in the Gospel of Mark:

“One of the scribes came up and heard the Sadducees disputing with one another, and seeing that Jesus had answered them well before, asked Him, ‘Which commandment is the most important of all?’ Jesus answered, ‘Hear O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is One. And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength. The second is this: you shall love your neighbor as yourself. There is no other commandment greater than these.’” (12:28-31)

Love your neighbor as yourself. Woof; the weight of that calling is never lost on me. After all, this is the call—the one to enter in to the brokenness and pain of those around us and point them to Jesus.

Jesus doesn’t seem to be talking about “dipping your toe in the proverbial water while your other foot is comfortably planted on the ground” here. He isn’t referring to the kind of “entering in” where you see a struggle, recognize the pain and mess, and offer a Bible verse or applicable “Christian” platitude where you see fit, then leave, hoping that things will get better for that person.

No.

He’s talkin’ about slapping on your waders (even if they make you look like an idiot) and walking into the river of another’s sorrows beside them.

You might walk in and find yourself knee deep in the mud of life, which is often difficult to navigate. You might find yourself feeling like you’re drowning in the other person’s pain at times. The waters of their sorrow, pain, and fear will be cold, dark, and incredibly uncomfortable. But God is continuously reminding me that we have to be experience the rivers of other’s sorrow, in one way or another, to effectively love them as we love as ourselves. We have to be in it with them—truly in it. No matter what “it” is…

I don’t know about you, but I’m one broken, self-absorbed human being. I’m overly consumed by my own heart at times, and as I look at those moments filled with my own humanity I recognize that I’m being called to be just as concerned about the hearts of those around me.

But how do we do this? How do we enter in to the river of sorrows with another when we feel like we’re drowning in our own?

We love the Lord our God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength. That may sound trite, but I don’t mean it to.

Think about it: What does it look like to love someone that much? You long to be near them. You want to be in their presence, to hear their stories and know everything about who they are, where they’ve been, and where they’re going.

In short, if we are going to love the Lord with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength we have to be obsessed with His story. We have to be constantly looking to the Gospel to see who Jesus is, where He has come from, and where He is going. Our God came down as flesh—a tangible example of what it looks like to love the Lord through faith, obedience, and action (and how to love His people in the same way).

We have to be in the Gospel.

It seems so obvious, and yet in day-to-day ministry and life it’s so easy to stop looking to Jesus and simply become absorbed by the humanity and brokenness that surrounds us, or even the humanity represented within scripture.

I don’t believe that we ever intentionally take our eyes off Jesus.

For me, taking my eyes off of the Gospel usually begins innocently enough—I decide to spend time elsewhere in my Bible. For months, I was camped in the Psalms and the Pentateuch (and trust me, this is not a rag against the Psalms or the Old Testament—I LOVE both.) but slowly, ohhhh sooo slowly, I stopped looking at who Jesus was and what He has done for me.

I didn’t realize that I wasn’t looking at Him until I slammed into a wall of exhaustion a few weeks ago. Physically, I felt fine. Emotionally, I’d been better, but I knew that wasn’t my issue. I was spiritually exhausted from a lack of the Gospel in my life. And when my alarm would wake me every morning, I would lay in bed and cry at the thought of having to get up and engage with my students.

I can’t. I can’t do it, Lord. I’m too tired. I can’t enter in to the river of sorrows today. I just want to lay under this electric blanket and pretend that I’m not in Alaska and that life is not hard.

As I bemoaned this fact to a friend on the phone, she asked the question that she asks me so often: “Who are you seeing Jesus as right now?”

Jesus… Huh… I don’t think I’m seeing Jesus period… In fact, I haven’t seen much of Him in my quiet times or our lessons in the Old Testament this week. I thought out loud.

“That’s probably the problem…”

And I knew she was right.

We are to look at Him at all times; If we don’t, loving people and entering in to their lives is impossible. After all, Jesus is the only one who can save us. He is the King of the universe—the only god who has ever come to humbly die for His people and raise Himself to fulfill scripture.

He is the only one who can teach us what it means to “enter in” to the lives of the people we love.

We can’t take our eyes off of Him.

I recognize more everyday that I am not Emmanuel. No matter how hard I try to be a savior, I am not God for anybody. (And trust me, you would not want me to be your savior. I’m a mess. I cry too much and I doubt even more than I cry– a scary thought for those of you who know me… I let my fears control me, consume me, and ruin things far too often. I get angry at pain and injustice, and hell hath no fury like an angry Mexican woman…) 

So, I’m not God to this world. But by His Grace, I am of Him, in the world and so are you.

As believers, we’ve been called to show the world who God is and what He’s about. But that requires looking at Him and following His example of walking into the river of sorrows.

There are plenty of times in scripture where God promises to do amazing things once His people have gotten in the water.

What do you think Christ could do with you and those whom you love if you were willing to get in the river of sorrows with Him?

~

And the Lord said to Joshua, “Today I will begin to exalt you in the eyes of all Israel, so they may know that I am with you as I was with Moses. Tell the priests who carry the ark of the covenant: ‘When you reach the edge of the Jordan’s waters, go and stand in the river.’ ‘And as soon as the priests who carry the ark of the Lord—the Lord of all the earth— set foot in the Jordan, its waters flowing downstream will be cut off and stand up in a heap, so that the entire tribe of Israel might pass through on dry ground.

(Joshua 3:7-8, 13, 17)

 

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Becoming Real

BecomingReal“You become. It takes a long time. That’s why it doesn’t often happen to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don’t matter at all, because once you are Real, you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand.” –The Velveteen Rabbit

Every Monday afternoon, my TLC girls and I have a “house meeting”. Because I’m possibly the least meeting oriented person on this planet, our meeting essentially consists of us all cozying up on the living room couches with a cup of tea and our favorite blanket. We talk about everything from practical items like the chore chart and groceries, to prayer requests and where we’ve seen God move in our hearts and lives that week.

The reality of these meetings is that they’ve been some of the most mundane moments with my students thus far—a heartbreaking reality check for someone who loves nothing more than chatting about Jesus over hot beverages.

More often than not, I ask questions and then sit smiling– like Dora the Explorer, awaiting an answer that more than likely isn’t coming.

“How can we pray for each other this week?” …Crickets. (Sometimes an awkward smile, if I’m lucky.)

I generally wait a few moments, offer a prayer request of my own… and then wait some more… until the silence becomes unbearable.

“Where have you seen God work in your life this week?” I trudge on. No response.

“Or maybe, would one of you risk sharing what you’ve learned in Bible this week?” Not. A. Dang. Thing.

That is essentially how our first two weeks around here went…

At every meal and house meeting, I felt like I was stuck playing the world’s worst game of 20 Questions with a mildly captive audience. (Captive being the key word here, since I think my students realized that they were gonna have to interact with me if they wanted me to feed them.)

It was rough.

“If someone other than me doesn’t start talking in this house soon, I think I’m gonna lose it! I’m gonna throw myself off a bridge or something.” I vented to my best friend in Denver last weekend.

“Well, lucky for you, you live in a village and there probably aren’t bridges for a few hundred miles.” Eyeroll. Thanks, Kitty.

It was with this salty attitude that I began my day on Monday. I’m not gonna lie—I was whole-heartedly dreading our house meeting that evening. Just the thought of another round of 20 Questions made me want to keel over. It felt like this job was going to be the death of me.

I sent my girls off to work with a smile early Monday afternoon. As soon as they walked out the door, I proceeded to dramatically put my face down on the dining room table and tried to resist the urge to slam my forehead into it. Realizing that I drastically needed an attitude adjustment (and to pray through my cranky heart), I shoved the little Velveteen Rabbit notecard that a friend from home gave me in my hoodie pocket, laced up my sneakers, and I went for a run.

I ran down the airplane runway, through the creek that bounds our village, and took off through the woods grumbling and grousing at God the whole way. (Yes, family members, I had my bear spray with me… Everyone can calm down.)

What the actual HECK, Lord?! Why did you bring me all this way just to put me in a completely silent house? What are you doing?! Is this real life? I could be perfectly ignored by teenagers in Denver AND not be 2,500 miles away from home (AND ice cream). This just can’t be reality here.

The trail wore thin and spit me out on the banks of the Tanalian River. Mildly pissed, I plopped down on the rocks, threw my shoes behind me, and took out the little white notecard from my pocket. As the frigid river water rushed over my feet, I read and re-read the ending of the Velveteen Rabbit.

“I am making all things new.”

As I read the words on the notecard in my hand, Revelation 21:5 rang in the back of my mind—likely because I had just included this verse in my teaching of the story of Joseph last week in Bible class. I sat and thought back to how God had turned Joseph being sold into slavery into the beautiful salvation of an entire nation. Joseph had real struggles, yet God redeemed his pain and made a new plan for generations to come.

In the strangest of ways, God used the story of Joseph to remind me that the pain and loss in the story of the Velveteen Rabbit was turned into something beautiful and new too. When the little saggy, eyeless rabbit had been thrown to the burn pile after scarlet fever ravaged his best friend’s home, the fairy turned him into a new creation—a Real rabbit.

I sat for a few seconds and considered the sweetness of the children’s story that I’ve grown to love— the beautiful redemption of becoming Real because of Love…

My emotional daze wore off quickly as a four-wheeler blazed out of the trees behind me and scared me back into reality. “Buhhhhh, I know…” I sighed under my breath while tugging my socks and shoes back onto my damp feet. “I know You are making all things new, God. I know You’re making my students and I more ‘Real’ this year, but I am literally out here in the middle of the Alaskan wilderness talking to myself like a nut, begging You for some freaking depth here. All I want is to have a decent conversation about You with my girls. Is that too much to ask?”

(I don’t know what I was expecting as an answer to that one, but no divinely audible answer came. Neither did a mystery writing in the clouds like it seems to in the movies… And so, I returned the notecard back to my pocket and took off down the trail home.)

Still mentally fried, I barreled into the house just before four o’clock. I gathered my girls in our living room and as we all settled in with blankets and tea, I pulled the card out of my pocket yet again.

In true Kacy word-vomit fashion, I abandoned the loose agenda I had for our meeting and somehow ended up telling the story of the Velveteen Rabbit instead. “We’re all becoming Real.” I choked out at the end of the story. “I know the process and the vulnerability really hurts sometimes… Shoot. I’m exhausted and just feel like I could cry most of the time lately, but I know that God is doing things in your lives and I would really REALLY love it if you would be willing to risk sharing some of that with me. Because just like we learned in Bible last week, God really is making all things new… and that is something to celebrate…”

My word-vomit trailed off and I sat staring awkwardly around the room about to cry out of mental exhaustion. Just as I was anticipating yet another painfully silent gathering, a quiet voice came from the sofa to my right.

“Uhm. Can we pray for my family? They’re really hurting right now…”

And by-George, at four-something Monday afternoon, God answered weeks and weeks of desperate prayers for interaction with my girls. That afternoon the silence was broken in the Elisha house (along with the floodgates that held back my girls’ tears). Never in my life have I been so thankful to talk about alcoholism, suicide, brokenness, death, and Jesus. It was beautiful.

As one of my girls closed our house meeting in prayer about an hour and a half later, I stared down at that silly notecard yet again and laughed under my breath.

You become…

We’re all “becoming” in this house; God is making us all more Real, day by day. He is returning voices to the voiceless. He is beginning to set captives free in very real ways.

Even on the days when my eyes feel like they’re going to fall out like the Velveteen Rabbit’s from excessive crying, or when my not-so-old joints feel loose, and I feel shabby and under-fluffed from lack of sleep, I am learning to count my girls burdens as blessings because they are learning to trust Jesus and I with them simultaneously.

He truly is making all of us here at the Tanalian Leadership Center New and Real in Him. And just like the story goes, “Once you are Real, you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand.”

“And a heard a loud Voice from the throne saying, ‘Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be His people, and God Himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.’ And He who was seated on the throne said, ‘Behold, I am making all things new.’ Also He said, write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true.'”

(Revelation 21:3-5)

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Water into wine

“Miss!” He shouted as he threw open my classroom door and stuck half of his body in my room. I glanced up from my laptop and met the eyes of Sanchez*, one of my MANY beloved fourteen year old freshmen.

“Miss!!!” He yelled again, as if I hadn’t heard him the first time, when he nearly knocked my classroom door through the wall. “I’m gonna beat his a**!”

Laughing to myself, I glanced from Sanchez to one of my junior girls who was drawing in the rocking chair across from mine. She shook her head quietly as the same smirk I was wearing started to draw across her face.

Returning to the e-mail I had been writing, I mindlessly drawled, “That’s not very nice Sanchez… What would Jesus do?”

I glanced up to see him frowning in my direction, giving me his best Shut it, lady glare.

Just then a quiet giggle came from the rocking chair and Emily perked up. “Jesus would turn him into wine.”

I laughed so hard at the flippancy of her statement that I nearly dropped the computer that had been balancing on my knees. My kids are nothing if not absolutely hilarious.

~

About a month ago, I was laying in bed, talking on the phone with a friend. It was just a few days after Johnny had been murdered and I was really struggling to see the Light in our little school community and within my own heart.

“I know you can’t see it now,” she said. “But from the outside it’s really obvious that God’s doing a great work at DSS. Every time I pray for you guys I just keep thinking about when Jesus turned the water into wine in John 2. No one really knew about the miracle except for the servant and he didn’t even see it right away… and I think that’s kinda what you guys are doing. He’s turning water into wine at DSS and you get to see it first. That’s pretty cool…”

As I laid there listening to her, all I could think was Yupp. We’ve got plenty of water. Unfiltered, dirty, rough water… I mean freshmen… I mean water…

(Allow me to clarify: One of the reasons that this year has been so difficult is because our student body is SO young. In the last two years we’ve graduated 27 seniors– a record and miracle in itself! But when a school is only made up of roughly 40 kids at a time, losing that many leaders and replacing them with rambunctious, rough 14 year olds, well… it makes things a bit more interesting.

Sometimes this year it has felt like we’re all out of our “precious aged wine” and all we’ve got around here is water– freshmen that is. In fact, most days it feels like we’re drowning in the chaos of the freshmen…)

As my friend began to change subjects, I made a mental note of her observation, but honestly didn’t think much more of it. I had far too much to think about in those first few weeks anyway.

Or maybe I didn’t…

Maybe the only thing that I thought about for a while was why…

Why was Johnny gone? Why did God let this happen? Why did he randomly march into the principal’s office in October, sit down, and say, “I know I’m 18 with freshman credits. I know I’m not the best student. I know this is gonna be hard, but I want you all to teach me. I’m ready to learn.” Why on earth would He bring Johnny, a kid who had been at DSS three years earlier, back to the school only to have him there for less than a quarter before being murdered?!

My questions were repetitive. They swirled through my brain while I was awake and inundated my dreams when I fell asleep.

And I wasn’t the only one.

The Monday after we lost Johnny, the computer teacher and I sat down after school and processed what we knew about the investigation and what we had seen the week before.

I rambled through all of my “why” questions once more and she quietly hung her head and said,

Ya know, I’m not really one’a those ‘audible voice of God’ kinda people. When I pray, I usually don’t get answers right away. But this weekend, I was praying, asking the Lord all of those questions you just listed off…and I got an answer.

I was sitting there, asking God why, why, why?! and out of no where, He just said, ‘Because I want to be in the middle of this.’  And it dawned on me that He is.

More people than I can count have been praying for their family, our staff, and our students. People I don’t even know have told me they’re praying for peace in this city. I think He brought Johnny back here, not to stop this from happening, but so the aftermath would be covered in prayer and love… He’s gonna be glorified through whatever comes out of this.

I sat there, staring at my fidgety hands and breathed a sigh of relief. Even if it wasn’t what I necessarily wanted to hear, God had a plan, even in the darkest of situations.

~

As I sat in my rocking chair last Thursday, giggling and trying to collect my composure and the papers that I had dropped when Emily made me erupt into laughter, Sanchez remained in my door, clearly not nearly as amused as I was.

“But for real, Miss. Come here.” He demanded, motioning me to the doorway.

After collecting my mess, I grabbed my keys and followed him out the door.

“What’s up, dude?”

“Miss, I don’t want to end up like Johnny.” He said seriously as he stared straight at me.

My heart twitched and I swallowed back the emotional feeling that was starting to rise in the back of my throat. Unsure of what to say, I stammered out a simple, “Uh okay…” and kept my eyes locked on his.

“Miss, I’m not gonna tell you whose a** I want to kick, but I do want to give you this so I don’t do anything stupid.”

As he said that, he took off his hat, pulled a blade out from under the bill, and held it out for me to take.

“I found this and was gonna use it. But then I thought about Johnny and realized that I don’t want that to be me… I don’t want that to be the other guy either.”

With that, he turned on his heels and walked down the hall to lunch, leaving me stunned, standing in the hallway with a blade in my hand.

Water into wine, folks…

God is doing miracles within our walls everyday.

He is in the middle of our turbulent, freshmen infested water, turning it into wine. Sloooooowwwwwwly but surely. And He is being glorified by what may seem like the tiniest of miracles and positive decisions.

 

*Student’s name has been changed to protect their identity