Behind the Picket Fence

She stood there, cautiously baring her heart to me. Her words said to me that she thought I had it together. She thinks I know what the heck I’m doing every day when I wake up and all the things from near and far are calling my name. 

Instantly my mind went back to a few days ago when I found myself weeping uncontrollably under the covers and pillows on my bed, my bedroom door locked to the demands of my kids, and my heart physically aching in my chest because I miss my jungle family so much and the loneliness is sometimes too much for me to stand under, so I cave. 

Turns out, I’m human like the rest of ‘em.

My house has a white picket fence. It’s quintessential irony calls to me every day when I check the mail or take out the trash or mow the lawn in the monotonous day to day. 

I gave this all up once, you know. Willingly. Joyfully. I turned it all in for a life overseas. All that I had been called to became my reality. 

And then Jesus said, suddenly and unexpectedly, it was time to sacrifice a different way. 

It was the harder to say yes that time. 

Now I find myself at Walmart and still, two years back on this side of the border, I fight another anxiety attack because the aisles seem so long and toilet paper options seem like a task of decision making prowess that I’m just not equipped for. 

But those are not the photos we put on social media are they? Of our struggle to reconcile broken dreams with the beautiful life given. Of not being able to relate or not being understood because suddenly you are thousands of miles from everyone who knows you best. 

I never post an instastory of me losing it with my daughter because the lies seem insurmountable and never ending and five years into this confusing and refining role of adoptive mom to a child with a hurtful past, I still feel as lost as ever many (most?) days. And there are harsh words and apologies and lies followed by truth revealed and lessons learned for both of us. Tears and hugs and another step forward after two steps back. 

It’s the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do to face myself in this mirror of adoption. And it’s a lonely road when others just don’t get it. 

And I have never snapped a selfie when I’m crying on the bathroom floor, shoulders slumped because I feel so inadequate and useless under the weight of raising awareness for the many tangible needs of our jungle family. I struggle to find the balance of here-meets-there, where kids are being abused on every corner and we need funds to reach them but also laundry is piling up and my own kids need me to teach them math and reading and how to tie their shoes.

These just scratch the surface of the social-media “non-worthy” items. 

All the while Jesus whispers to me every day, “Cease from striving.” I can almost hear it as though it were an audible voice calling to me. 

And I don’t know yet what it looks like to live that out. 

So I wake up early and lean in hard. I physically open my hands, achy heart and shaky knees, and ask Jesus to show me He is real here, too, in what feels like lonely loss. He wasn’t only real back when I thought I knew His plans for my life. My preconceived and naive ideas of who He is and what He has called me to isn’t enough. He is bigger and better and His ways are true and good. 

My calling is not to know all the things. It is to trust Him. To look to Him alone.

Even when I feel lost and inadequate. Even when I see another Facebook post that reminds me I’m here and not there or this way and not that. 

I shut out the voices that can't see my heart and I trust the One who can.

It still leaves me breathless in tears many days. It’s ok to grieve what was lost (or perhaps just reassigned). 

Most days, I choose to run back into hope and gratefulness. And you see it. 

Other days, I collapse in sadness, fear, doubt. And you don’t. 

So when I post a photo on Instagram and it appears that I’m living a perfect life, remember it’s my highlight reel. There is a behind the scenes, too.

But instead of focusing on all that feels taken, I focus on what is given. 

Rather than honing in on what makes my heart ache inside my chest, I hone in on what makes my soul glad. 

In place of what appears to have been lost, I look for what I know to be found. 

Because wouldn’t you know it, that adorable white picket fence doesn’t close properly. You have to lift it up and pull it ever so particularly for it to shut all the way. Life’s like that, too. No matter what it may look like on the outside, it’s always harder and more finicky than you think it should be. 

Don’t believe the lie that says anyone has it all together. They don’t. You don’t. I don’t. We are all just humans with struggles. 

And really, if you think about it, that’s good news... because it is precisely why we all need Jesus.

His Kingdom, Right Here {Part 3}

I glanced up at his face while she told me about the boy that had hung himself just two days prior. He had the same look I’d seen before—one of resilience but also desperation. It’s a fierce kind of look that he seems to carry with him everywhere.

And how could you not bare that expression when you live in this reality of dark forces all around yet you yourself are full of Light? The contrast is harsh.

They’d invested in the young man who chose to take his own life after a fall-out with his wife. He had lived on their grounds like the dozens of other boys that they care for and invest in, including his own brother. They’d spoken Hope and Truth over him. And yet, the darkness prevailed.

It’s a heavy burden to carry and one that’s weight is exaggerated all the more when you find yourself isolated in the depths of the Amazon jungle.

She went on to tell me more about the six-year-old boy who rejoined their family after having been taken away from them by missionaries without their consent—the son of a witchdoctor, mysteriously entrusted to their care. She told me stories that give goosebumps. They’re the kind of stories that missionaries like to tell from the front of America’s air-conditioned church buildings. They make good fundraising material.

But it’s not so glamorous when it’s your reality, this kneeling down early in the morning to pray away the evil. There are 19 young men who live on their property with them. Each with their own story, their own past. Some are Christ-followers now. Others quite the opposite.  All of them hearing and experiencing the Love that surpasses tribal cultures and languages and myths and strongholds.

But not all of them experiencing the freedom that comes from knowing the True Healer, Father, Life-giver.

Little nine-month-old Sofia bounced in her lap as she continued to unload these burdens and my mind tried to reconcile all of the disparities of young men overcome by darkness with bouncing infants in all the innocence, wondering how Hope can prevail in all of this hopelessness.

And then it hits me that the Hope is sitting right in front of me. It is Josi, sitting with her daughter whom she will raise up to know Jesus as her Father. It is Marcos, with his hand on his son Lucas’s back, whom he will teach what it means to be a Christ-follower. It is little Tepi, learning from Marcos in the wee hours of the morning as they swing together in the hammock, speaking of the True Chief. 

It’s the day to day of hard prayers and hard Truth being spoken on their property on a little parcel of land in the midst of the jungle as they invest in the lives and futures of these young indigenous men who will go back to their tribes and communities, armed in the darkness with the True Light.

There is Hope. And it’s a Hope that prevails through the darkest of places and the pierces the coldest of hearts. It’s through the day in and day out. The bending and pouring out of lives spent for the broken. It's each of us investing in our own disciples, the children He has entrusted to us. It's the dying to of self and dreams and plans for the sake of the one. It's believing that He is True and His Love is worth the cost. 

It's building His Kingdom, right here. 

“The people who live in darkness 
have seen a great light, 
and for those living in the shadowland of death, 

light has dawned.”

Matthew 4.16

This is a multi-post series. See His Kingdom, Right Here {Part One} and {Part Two}.

Visit www.onthebeautifuljourney.com for more information on what God is doing through the Amazon Network. 

His Kingdom, Right Here {Part 2}

“Play it cool,” I thought, as I fumbled along the unfinished road with the dignified wife of the former Amazon Governor. She in her high-heels and me in my flip-flops plodding our way to the notary public just five minutes out from closing time.

“What in the world am I doooooing??” I thought to myself as I signed the papers for a one-year-lease on a massive leap of faith we had only brain-stormed and kitchen-tested up until this point.

“This is it. We have officially lost our minds.”

She handed me the key to our newly rented space with a dubious smile and I took it about as uncertain as Peter must have been those moments before his feet touched solid water.

What followed was a whirlwind of paperwork and fees and building and sweating and juggling timeframes and learning legal requirements and hiring and little sleep.

Then suddenly, there it was: The Donut Company. Exactly as Richard had sketched out on a piece of paper in the middle of the big empty white space was an incredible testament of God’s power and creativity. Truly a demonstration of His strength at work in us because I can say with certainty it was only by His provision and might that we went from Googling a recipe to opening an incredible, beautiful donut shop in a matter of four months.

Un.be.liev.a.ble.

But as exhausting and draining it was to build out a shop, to navigate the waters of employee rights and accounting requirements and legal jargon in your second language, to figure out where in the world to buy industrial kitchen equipment in the middle of the jungle, to figure out ingredients and schedules and suppliers and operate new machinery, and so on and on, the true challenge was yet to come.

Because the point in our shop wasn’t just to provide a few locals a job or to offer a tasty treat to native residents of this jungle town. Our main objective was much more than affording tourists a trendy escape on their Amazon expedition.

Our whole purpose is this: to love God and love others. In a town saturated with churches, we want a place for the unchurched.

It’s the opposite of what we feel naturally inclined to do. But we are firm believers that if you are surrounded by people who look, think, act, talk, and live exactly like you, you’re doing it all wrong.

Because we can shout all day long to a broken world that they are lost and going to Hell. But they are dead. And dead men, well, they have trouble hearing.

So the language we’ve been commissioned with speaking is Love. It’s this crazy, unorthodox, supernatural language.

Naturally, some people don’t like the way it sounds. They say it sounds like we’re hippies, condoning sin and living freely, everyone doing as they please.

I propose those people haven’t quite grasped what true love looks like. Because love requires a lot more dying to self and a lot less being right. It requires a lot of sacrifice with no promise to see the fruit. It requires massive amounts of humility and shows so much mercy and grace it’s painful at times.

Love is hard. It can be this strange conundrum of sharing a meal with someone who lives completely contrary to your convictions and laughing together over a surprise common ground. And it is those unexpected similarities that slowly break down the walls and lead to open doors and liberating conversations of how Jesus changed our world and opened our eyes when we were blind, too, and now we see so clearly that we are all just alike at our core—broken people in need of a Healer. Maybe our sins look different than theirs. Perhaps we don’t have the same struggles. Our backgrounds are different. Our cultures varied. But we are all the same. We all need Love.

And loving hurts. Often. When you give your life to the wounded, you’ll likely be bruised. People you pour your heart and soul into will walk away seemingly unchanged, resolute in their habits. We’ve cried a lot over relationships ended despite our best (though imperfect) efforts to love.  And we’ve been labeled a plethora of things for our open door approach. We’ve had to let employees go who just couldn’t accept graceful correction. We have had people we considered friends all but spit in our face when we stood firm on Love. Because sometimes loving means correcting and sometimes it means forgiving when it’s so hard to do and sometimes it means watching them walk away but still keeping the door open wide just in case they return.

Love bears all things. Believes all things. Hopes all things. Endures all things.

It never fails. 

Which requires time. It will take sacrifice. It will demand humility and forgiveness and sacrifice and dying daily.

But over time, if we’re patient, we may start to see little buds of fruit. When that atheist boy comes back to the shop again and again because “it’s just so different here”. When that girl who cuts herself sits down across from your employee who grew up fatherless, too, just to talk it out because “he’s the only one who will listen”. When that same employee says “tell me more about what it means to love others” because all he’s ever felt in the institutional church is “not good enough and condemnation” and he, too, wants to love others well. When those well-to-do clients are baffled that we would use the profits from the shop to love orphans in a neighboring town. When locals see us loving the homeless on the streets. When we take in refugees and fight for them. When we treat the nomadic hippies like actual human beings.

Suddenly it’s quiet here. Defenses start to fall. Hearts are softened. Ears are opened. And humility and grace finally get a platform to speak.

So to those who would never set foot in a building under a steeple? Come on in. Those who look different than they “should”? There’s no dresscode here. The crazy guy who everyone ignores? How’s a free donut a day sound? The prostitute working late? Welcome. The homosexuals, the fatherless, the lonely, the cutters, the agnostics, the atheists, the broken, the overachievers, the young families, the elderly couples, the enthusiastic teens, the Average Joe—this place is for you.

Because we love you. And we believe there is hope to be found for each and every one of us and that Hope is true Love and His name is Jesus. He’ll be the one to do the changing. Love will mark you in a way that you can’t help but share.

Jesus said, “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another.”

Fortunately, He loved freely. He didn’t require us to change first and He didn’t shout condemnation to the lost. He shouted grace and mercy, forgiveness and freedom.

He went on to say, “By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”

He didn’t say they’d know because we had it right. He didn’t even say they’d know by how good we were. It’s love that they would hear first.

It looks a lot like sitting across the table and talking. It looks a lot like, “Welcome. How can we serve you?”

It looks a lot like the Kingdom of God, right here.

This is a multi-post series. See His Kingdom, Right Here {Part One} and {Part 3}.

His Kingdom, Right Here {Part 1}

It was about three years ago last month that God brought one of the most incredible women I’ve ever met right to our front door.

It was dark out and we were settling down into our wooden home at the end of a crumbling road in a crumbling society. We opened the door with hesitation and anticipation. We didn’t know anyone in this small town and, as the new foreign family in town, we were targets for scammers. Our guards were cautiously up. She introduced herself as Rosa (pronounced “Hoh-za”) and her daughter as Vandrena.

I tried in my broken Portuguese to understand and be understood as she told us her story and we shared a bit of ours. And so a friendship was born.

The timing of this meeting wasn’t by chance at all. We had only recently died to some pretty big dreams and were doggy-paddling our way to whatever it was God had for us next.

We didn’t know the Kingdom was already on this street. His Body was alive here. And He would allow us to be a part, to find our place.

We began pouring ourselves out. Our doors stayed open. Our table stayed full. Our hearts stayed broken. Rosa showed us the ropes of working among the poor. We learned from her unconditional love and she learned from our unwillingness to give in to pressures from the naysayers.

I’ll never forget when we were sitting in our kitchen floor chatting one day about life and she was talking about her middle son coming back home. He had been away for about a year and she was telling him about us.

“He asked what you guys were like. I told him you guys were simple people, just like us...”

She went on to say other things that I don’t remember now and had no idea that she had just spoken words of hope and life into my heart. Because that’s exactly what we wanted her to see. That we are her peers, her equals. The white man didn’t come here to save, but rather to serve.

We walked an almost two year journey together with Rosa on that street and watched and loved and served and taught and gave and cried and laughed and lived. A house was constructed that would bring more children to the feet of Jesus. More bellies were fed and neighbors loved. Drunks were picked up out of the streets and Pharisees sneered. We invited in the rejected and those hooligan BMX kids. We built water systems and funded small business endeavors. I learned to scale fish (earning the nickname “mermaid”) and how to cut a whole chicken. I encouraged and listened, gave and received.

And so many seeds were planted during those trial-filled years. And by God’s glory we get to watch some of the flowers already blooming and even some fruit starting to grow.

Rosa is now the Director of Grace House Amazon which is home to four children: Cairara, Mariclea, Frankie, and Michele. We have been able to expand her influence exponentially by empowering her and speaking words of truth into her life. She continues to pursue what God called her to twenty years ago and what she was already doing, and God has used us to facilitate that in new ways. The feeding program is well underway, feeding 10-15 street kids Monday-Friday. Many kids are being tutored in math and reading in the afternoons.

Rosa’s oldest son, Boboco, whom Richard taught small business skills and discipled, is investing in the lives of young boys through soccer ministry every week. Her middle son, Pepeco, whom Richard discipled for a year and a half and is one of his closest friends, is pastoring the kids at Grace House as well as his own family as they face trials and struggles on a daily basis.

Our former neighbor on that street, Aurilene, is now the Assistant Director of Grace House and serves these kids selflessly every week. She has come so far from the shy, introvert that we first met as she now boldly stands up for what is good and right in a society of critics. She and her husband took in her niece and began raising her as their own. Then they took in his nephew. They know that there is joy in sacrifice. They've seen it with their own eyes. 

There is something so beautiful when we recognize that this thing isn’t ours at all. We are a small part of a big Body. We each have a role to play and it’s an important one. But it’s no more important than any other part. When we humbly submit to one another in love. When we are quick to hear, slow to speak, and slow to anger. When we esteem the other as better than ourselves. When we trust God’s timing. When we accept that God not only created different cultures, He is glorified in those cultures. When we realize His ways are not our ways.

When we truly DIE to ourselves.

That’s when we get a little glimpse of what Christ meant when He prayed, “May Your Kingdom come. May Your will be done on earth as it is in Heaven.” All of His followers, walking in unity just as He commands, for His glory and the edification of His Body. And the world watches and wonders at it all. And we invite them in, too.

And man, is the journey breathtakingly beautiful.

“I assure you: Unless a grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies, it remains by itself. But if it dies, it produces a large crop. The one who loves his life will lose it, and the one who hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life. If anyone serves Me, he must follow Me. Where I am, there My servant also will be. If anyone serves Me, the Father will honor him.” –John 12.24-26

This is a multi-series post. See Part 2 and Part 3.

Top Ten Highlights of 2013

I laid in bed this morning listening to the rain on the metal roof of our home, thinking about the past year and one thought kept resonating in my mind.

We are crazy.

Or at least this year almost made us that way. 

But by the grace of God, we are different people today that we were twelve short months ago—a little wiser, a little stronger, with a little more faith… and a little thinner.

Here are the top ten highlights of 2013, in no particular order:

1) Go West Young Man

Back in the spring we made the move from the east coast of Brazil (Recife) to the western border, where Colombia, Peru, and Brazil collide. We had every intention of moving into an Indian village, but literally two weeks before we moved, God slammed that door closed via the village chief changing his mind, leaving us with $3,500 worth of wood we had already purchased to build our home and 46 people with plane tickets ready to come help with the construction. You can read more about that and the details here.

Looking back, we see clearly how God orchestrated every detail to bring us right to the home we are in now. Thank you, Jesus.

2) Jungle Hosts

This year we had a total of 64 visitors from the US of A, from work teams to young couples exploring missions to friends wanting a good dose of Jungle life and lending a helping hand. Forty six of those were in a four week stretch! These teams were able to accomplish many work projects that we could not have finished on our own. They also provided spiritual encouragement… and a chance to speak English!!

Thank you to all who came and served. We hope that you left with more than just sunburns and worm meds ;)

3) A Teensy Tiny Dose of Aviation

We don’t yet have a helicopter down here (stay tuned for future plans!!), but Richard had the privilege to fly our partnering missionary’s airplane on two separate occasions. He very first jungle flight was to deliver water filters to a village in Peru. It “just so happened” that we had 17 filters to deliver and there were 17 families. (Pretty sure God had that planned out.)

The second was a medical flight for a woman who had had a c-section because her husband had kicked her in her belly, killing one of the twin babies inside. She was bleeding at the incision site. Richard was able to bring her to a hospital where she could receive treatment.

While it’s been challenging for Richard to be absent from aviation for this long, we know that God is cooking something up for the future. Doors are opening and we are praying for wisdom as we raise the necessary funds in 2014.

4) Putting That Medical Training to Good Use

We were blessed to be able to go through Equip International’s Missionary Medical Intensives course before we came here to the Jungle. The knowledge we gained from those twelve days has been invaluable during our time here. We have treated deep cuts, rashes, tropical ulcers, parasites, tropical diseases, whooping cough, monkey and spider bites, aided in the treatment of Tuberculosis and the list goes on. We have used countless band-aids and yards of coban wrap. We’ve had the opportunity to teach natural alternatives to medicine and health and hygiene for community health.

It’s been a humbling experience to be the hands and feet of the Great Physician, the only one who can truly heal. Amazing.

5) Disciples Making Disciples

Back in January, Richard met a young couple who welcomedtheir first child at the Indigenous Seminary. We had no idea at the time how God would weave this family into our own. 

In June, we received word that Alberto, the father, was nearly dead with TB. Prompted to action by the Holy Spirit, we paid to have him brought here to Benjamin to get treatment. We are friends with the owner of the hotel here in town and she allowed him to stay for three weeks where we used natural treatments to get his body in a state to undergo the antibiotic regime he needed.

Fast-forward to August and we felt God leading us to hostthem in our own home, to do life with them, teaching them, learning from them.

Five months later, we praise God as we see how we have all grown spiritually through this time together. We see how they have overcome cultural hurdles to show physical affection to their daughter. We have seen them open up to us as friends and fellow believers. They have watched us stumble and we have watched them fight against what the Holy Spirit is leading and we have seen how those experiences have been used to mold us more into the image of Christ.

It’s been hard. I won’t lie. You take two COMPLETELY different cultures and put them in the same house, you’re going to have struggles. But how amazing to watch as God conforms us more into His image through these trials and experiences. Only a God as big as ours could pull that one off.

6) House or Hotel?

There have been times throughout this year that we have asked ourselves, “Is this a house we live in or a hotel?” Between the teams, our discipleship family, and our Indian friends, we have had visitors all but about 4 weeks out of the entire almost ten months we have lived here.

Whoa. 

But we praise God that we have the capacity to host, especially to our Indian friends who need a safe place when they are passing through. What an INCREDIBLE opportunity we have had to sit on the floor and listen to the stories of our brothers and sisters in Christ from cultures so different from our own. From what we can count, we have had Indians from three countries and seven different tribes sit and share a meal and a story with us. Unbelievable.

It’s been a stretching experience, no doubt. There have been times I have thought I might lose my mind. God is constantly teaching us selflessness, to have a servant’s heart, and patience. Worth it, for sure.

7) Our Brown Eyed Daughter

We’ve always wanted to adopt. We’ve talked about it since we were teenagers.

But we sure didn’t expect to do it during our first year on the mission field!!

That’s how God works sometimes, though, and we are so thankful. When this little girl first showed up at our front door, I fell in love. Richard knew it and he too was soon smitten. Don’t ask me how a dirty, disobedient, smelly, nearly toothless little girl off the street with life experiences no one should have could capture our heart, but she did.

Through a series of events, this little girl took up residence in our home on August 23 and we began the process to give her our last name. It’s been, without a doubt, the most difficult months of our lives. There have been days that we have asked ourselves, “What have we done???”

But what a transformation we have seen!! That dirty little girl from the street is now a beautiful, loving child whose heart has beentransformed by the Holy Spirit. 

A beautiful picture of God’s redemption story in each of our lives.

Amazing.

8) In Our Spare Time, Let’s Start a Children’s Home

While we have had the privilege of making Mariclene our own, there are dozens, if not hundreds, of other kids on the streets of this small town in need of a safe place. Not long after we moved here, we met our neighbor Rosa. She has been a GOD-SEND in our lives and we, quite frankly, probably wouldn’t have survived this long without her and her servant’s heart. True story. Anyway, she has a heart for children, so our wheels started turning.

For months we planned, prayed, schemed. Fast-forward and earlier this month God miraculously provided the funds to purchase a small home to start the first ever children’s home in Benjamin Constant. WOOHOO!!

We have a ways to go before it will be an operating home, taking in abused and abandoned children, but the work is underway. God is so good!!

9) A Trip to the States

In July we were able to go to the States for a 10 day visit. We are so thankful that God gave us this time with family and friends since our furlough that was planned form October was delayed due to the adoption.

God’s good to give us those little blessings.

10) We Survived

That’s sort of how we feel at this point.

They say your first year on the mission field is hard. They are just being nice. It’s harder.

But looking back at all that we have gone through, learned, experienced, we can truly say that we are thankful for the trials because without them there is no victory.

We’ve cried. We’ve been overwhelmed. We’ve been lonely. We’ve wanted to give up .

We’ve had people we thought were friends turn their backs on us. We’ve had things said about us that weren’t true. We’ve poured ourselves into others just to watch them go down the wrong path...

And it taught us to forgive. It taught us to love better. It taught us that we are sinners, too.

It taught us that it is God that sustains us.

Through the tears and laughter, trials and victories, ups and downs, God is good.

Thanks for walking this journey with us. 

Here's to another great year in 2014.