Five Minute Friday: Messy

Time flies and it's Five Minute Friday again. When we writers join up for five minutes of unplanned, messy writing. That's today's prompt: messy. 


This serving Jesus thing is messy.

I wake up to my selfishness every morning as I climb out of bed, tip-toeing ever so quietly so as not to wake my sleeping beauties. All I want is time for me. Time to think and wake up and drink coffee and read a bit before my day is full of spills and whining and dirty clothes and people calling and children asking and needs arising.

It's messy in this heart of mine as I fight frustration when five-minutes into my me-time the middle one awakes all full of needs like breakfast and hugs. How inconvenient. Such basic necessities that cloud my sight from the true needs of a self-sacrificing mama who is happy to serve her three little people who will all too soon be three big people.

It's messy when I finally settle in after a long day of "why nots" and bandaging wounds of neighborhood kids who I can't seem to make understand that if they would just wear shoes they wouldn't slice their feet open and then that family shows up on our porch to stay the night and they haven't eaten dinner yet.

Don't they know my messy heart doesn't feel like serving more today?

I wonder what their problem is. Don't they know how rude it is to show up unannounced?

Then I realize that the problem is in me. It's my selfishness and pride that says that I come first or at least that I have earned some time for self-focused relaxation.

It's messy this Jesus serving thing. But mainly because it's messy in this heart of mine.

Five Minute Friday: Friend

There I was, green as the jungle around me, trying to learn life here in this sweltering humidity and heat with a five month old and barely three year old. Learning new fruits and foods and how to take the laundry off the line when the flash rainstorms came.

I’d already killed my fair share of spiders and never seen so many needy children who flocked our home every afternoon. Overwhelmed.

Oh, how I longed for a girlfriend to lean in to!

And there she was. She just showed up on our porch with her adopted daughter and introduced herself. There long after dusk, she sat with us in our kitchen and we listened as she shared her story.

We didn’t even ask if she loved Jesus. We already knew.

There bloomed a friendship of laughter and even tears. She taught me to gut a fish and we laughed when our coffee wasn’t sweet enough for her. She helped me cut up my first whole chicken and laughed when I had no idea how to make a soup.  She could make one blindfolded.

I would like to say I have taught her some things, too, but the truth is I don’t know that I have. But I know I love her and her heart for Jesus. She teaches me about faith and I watch as she loves kids that aren’t her own by flesh and blood but are every bit her own by motherly love.

In fact she loved my own daughter before I ever even knew her.

“I’ve got Jesus, and that’s all I need,” she once told me.

Her life shows it. And our friendship makes me a better person.

She doesn't look like me and she only speaks my third language, but honestly, I don’t know if I would have survived this Jungle life without her.

Thank you, Jesus, for this godly lady you have put in my life to help me look a little more like You.

Five Minute Friday is where we writers join every Friday to write for five minutes straight about a word prompt that Lisa-Jo Baker offers up. Check it out here.

Five Minute Friday: Writer

“I’m not a speaker. I’m a writer.” 

I have said that many times. In this field of ours sometimes you are thought of as a speaker. But I’m just not. I fumble at my words and try to grab them back, hit the delete button and try the sentence again. The truth is, speaking isn’t as forgiving as writing. 

Writing allows for do-overs.

The last four months we have been without a computer thanks to our sweet four-year-old and a glass of filtered water. The hardest part of that was my inability to write my thoughts out.

But the truth is, I needed that time. I needed it to draw me closer to my Savior. I needed it to pour my heart out to Him instead of a blank Word document. I needed it to listen more and write less. 

It has been a beautiful write-free time. 

And now that He has blessed us with a replacement computer, my hands are aching to write again. To write of the trials of our life, the growing moments that make us more and more like our Creator. I am anxious to tell you all of the changes He’s doing in our ministry here. Big, unexpected, blow your mind changes. 

But it took not writing for a bit to see that I need to listen more. I need to hear what God is saying, not just share what I am thinking. 

Because with writing comes listening. And vice versa.

Five Minute Friday is a link-up for fellow writers from blogger and author Lisa Jo Baker. Check it out here.

Five Minute Friday: Home

It's Friday again and that means I'm linking up with Lisa-Jo for Five Minute Friday. Five minutes of writing from the heart. Go.

I don’t know where it came from, but I remember it clearly, sitting on the wooden shelf behind the sofa in the house I spent some of my most formative days as a child.

“Home is Where the Heart Is” it read, with a little red heart where the word heart would otherwise be.

Now I understand, though then it was just a fixture on the wall. Now it’s a very logical phrase.

A year ago, heck, five years ago, my home was a little gray house that I loved. A house filled with memories and the pitter patter of our baby boy and the scratches from our boxer boy on that beautiful hardwood floor that we polished to a shine right before we got married and moved there together. That was home after long trips and long days.

That home slowly became a house and then it was sold.

Now, as we prepare to move from our apartment we’ve tried to call home here in the city for the last six months we feel like nomads in a foreign land. Maybe because that’s what we are.

So home has, by necessity, become where our heart is. In a week we will step on yet another airplane and fly to the place we’ve longed to call home for four years now—the Jungle.

That is where our heart is. And that will be home. A different home, but a beautiful one indeed.

 Home is..

...where the...

 ...heart is.

Five Minute Friday: Ordinary

Joining in again this week with Liso-Jo and Five Minute Friday. Five minutes of writing from the heart. This week's word is "ordinary". Go.

“It’s amazing what you guys are doing! I could never do that!”

‘We are so very, very ordinary,’ I think to myself each and every time I hear those words. 'I wish you could see that part.'

Because while there is jungle and river and village and canoe, there is also dishes and bedtime and whining children and “we forgot the toilet paper!”

As I battle every day through the ordinary that fills our lives only sprinkled with brief moments of extraordinary that come from God Himself, I feel very small and unworthy and unprepared for all of this. I tell a friend that I feel like there is nothing I have to offer and she reminds me that it’s the ordinary ones that God used the most in Scripture and today is no different.

So I write and share and live and try to convey this: we are just ordinary people striving to glorify and extraordinary God.

And aren’t we all? Even those we serve and those who give so we can go and those who go—all just ordinary. It’s not until the God of the extraordinary gets His hands on the molding clay that we are turned into something beautiful and even then it’s not our beauty, but His reflecting through us.

So there will be babies born with nothing and Indians traveling for days to hospitals and flights to carry sick to the doctors and all of this. But those dishes still stack up and didn’t I already sweep twice today?

And it’s those ordinary moments that seep humility into our lives so that God can be big 

and we can remain so very small. 

 Washing dishes in the river... Ordinary Indian life.

Five Minute Friday: Beloved

Linking up for Five Minute Friday again. Five minutes of writing, straight from the heart. Go.

"I bet you didn't picture yourself here nine Valentine's Days ago, huh?" He asked me with a smirk and a flirt in his eyes. 

"No, I absolutely didn't. No one warned me," I say with a wink, returning the playfulness. 

It is probably better that way--that we don't know what the future holds. 

I imagine that if someone would have laid out the past nine years in front of me when I was just 17 years old I probably would have run in the opposite direction. 

Because this journey has to be slow, one faithful step at a time. This growing has to take time. No one can drink from a fire hydrant. 

Now we sit together on a tiny sofa, barely big enough for the two of us, with two--yes, two!--kiddos fast asleep in our tiny apartment here in the middle of Recife, Brazil. Just four weeks from now we will once again pack up our possessions and move, this time to the Jungle where our hearts have resided for over four years now. 

And my heart is full. 

If I had seen this nine years ago, I probably would have been scared. But to say "no"…. I would have missed out on so very much. 

"Thanks for walking this journey with me," he says. 

I smile. 

How could I not? What's better than an adventurous life with my love, serving my Beloved?

Let's do this thing.

Me and Richard on our very first trip to the Amazon, April 2009. 

Five Minute Friday: Afraid

Today, I am joining Lisa-Jo and others for the 5 Minute Friday where we are given a word prompt and write for just 5 minutes simply for the joy of writing. No editing or backtracking necessary. No need to be perfect. Just words freely flowing from the heart.

Sometimes, I'm afraid.

There. I said it. 

Yes, even "bold, brave missionaries" can be afraid. 

I'm afraid of the malaria and yellow fever and dengue. It can strike my children, my husband, me. I'm afraid of those snakes with venom filled teeth and that river current that's so strong. 

It seems like in the Jungle we are more vulnerable some how. That death and hurt and sickness are more prevalent and lurking about. 

Is it so, though? God says not to be afraid (Isaiah 41.10). And I know in my heart that the fact of the matter is nothing will happen to us outside of His divine will for our lives and that everything He allows is indeed for our good and His glory. (Romans 8.28)

And I should be good with that.

But when I hold this warm little girl on my chest and my big boy declares proudly, "Mama, did you see that cool trick?!" as he jumps from the bed again in triumph, I can't help be fight fear that I could lose them. So, yes I, too, am afraid sometimes.

But I remember that God is good. That His plans are good. That His mercies endure forever.

I don't have to be afraid because He has conquered fear. 

And I am never safer than I am when I am right in the middle of his will for my life. 

So when the fear creeps in about the "what if" this and "what if" that, I choose faith instead. 

Faith in His goodness. Faith in His timing. Faith in Him.

It's much more peaceful here. Because fear is not of God. (2Timothy 1.7)

And I don't pray that we will be safe. I pray that we will trust Him.

Five Minute Friday: Again

Today I am joining Lisa-Jo and others for the 5 Minute Friday where we are given a word prompt and write for just 5 minutes simply for the joy of writing. No editing or backtracking necessary. No need to be perfect. Just words freely flowing from my heart.

Wasn't it just yesterday that we did this? It seems like it. But really it was almost five months ago that we stood in an airport and hugged through tears and "I love you's". Only now it's the reverse.

I'm the one staying here while my Mama leaves to go back to the place I called home for 25 years. 

And we do it again. 

We say good-bye again because this is where I live now. This is where I raise my family. I do it again because God has my heart here. 

We say good-bye because these Indians have to say good-bye again. Again to the babies that they gave birth to that die from preventable disease. Again to their dreams because they live in a vicious cycle of hopelessness.

So I choose to endure the hard because really this is joy. This is the joy that I have, to serve these people. 

And while it's hard sometimes when I feel overwhelmed (again) and I just want the old comforts (again) and I struggle with the same selfishness in my heart (again), I know that it's hard that makes me more like Christ. And when I am more like Christ, I can love these people better. And when I am more like Christ I can give them the same hope that I have--the hope that one day we will never have to say good-bye… again.

An Indian family says good-bye to their baby who died from dehydration. Oh, that they would never have to do this again!

Five Minute Frida: Cherished

Today I am joining Lisa-Jo and others for the 5 Minute Friday where we are given a word prompt and write for just 5 minutes simply for the joy of writing. No editing or backtracking necessary. No need to be perfect. Just words freely flowing from my heart to yours.

She must have been terrified as she pulled up to the bank in that canoe. The labor pains were already starting, but she had no way to communicate that aside from the groans. When she went into labor, she was only sixteen. Surrounded by Indians from another tribe, in a place she had never been, with people she had never met… and in the most vulnerable state she had ever been in.

And when that baby was born, through blood and tears and sweat and pain, it was cherished.

It was cherished by the same God who cherished my two babies who entered this world surrounded by those I love. 

We serve a God who cares about us so intimately and to think, imagine, He loves these people I serve with a holy love. These Indians He sent His Son to die for.

These Indians He cherishes.

And I pray that I can love them this way. That I can wake up each day and cherish them because God cherishes me. I am His daughter after all.

As she held that baby for the very first time, exhausted and overwhelmed, she must have felt it. That same feeling that God feels for her. I pray one day she will know it. One day she'll see that she is no less than those foreigners who snarl their noses at her. Who look down on her for her culture.

One day she'll know that she, too, is cherished.