A Breakfast Date in Eternity

I’ll never forget it--the day that Bro. Ron asked me to show him how to use Facebook. Everyone in the office gave me that look like, “Are you sure you want to do that?”

They were kidding of course—mostly.

I opened him an account and the fun began. Initially he didn’t know how to do anything so he would have me print all of the comments on his page, all his friend requests, and all his messages. Then he would hand write responses and statuses for me to type in and I would upload pictures.

When you are Ron Bishop, your friends list grows FAST so it wasn’t long before maintaining his Facebook seemed like my primary job.

One day I told him, sort of nonchalant-meets-hopeful, “You know, I can show you how to run this pretty easily.”

“Let’s do it.”

Not long after that I was watching as my newsfeed blew up with statuses and pictures and shares with “Ron Bishop” as the poster.  I would still get a random phone call with a “how to” question here or there, but those became few and far between and eventually he was set.

And that was how Bro. Ron did things—full speed ahead.

“Let’s do it.”

Long before I had the privilege of working in the home office of SCORE International and serving as a SCORE missionary, Bro. Ron was the interim pastor at my home church, Calvary Baptist. When I was just 11 years old, I remember him speaking on what he loved—missions, reaching the Nations with the Gospel. I sat on the front pew of the church on a Sunday night and I hung on every single word that came out of his mouth.

And I was sold. The Spirit was saying, “This. This is for you.”

I went forward that day with no idea what it even meant to “be a missionary” and said, “I’ll go.”

Fast-forward almost 17 years later and I can see that not only did the Spirit use Bro. Ron’s message that day to speak to me, He used Ron’s very life.

In the following years, Richard and I went on countless mission trips through SCORE, served as interns and translators, and eventually became missionaries. Bro. Ron paved the way for us to attend Word of Life Bible Institute in Argentina where we studied Spanish and the Bible. It was there that we met some Brazilians and God knit our hearts for the Amazon.

Along every step of the way, there were Bro. Ron and Mrs. Pat, cheering us on.

Shortly after we were married, Mrs. Pat called and asked if I would be interested in working in the home office of SCORE.

Um. YES!

Not only did they provide me with a full-time job, they allowed us to travel, leading teams and visiting Brazil, the very place we would end up.

All along the way, they were supporting us prayerfully and financially.

We had many lunches with Bro. Ron and listened to him speak and pray and share. I listened as Mrs. Pat would pray during our staff prayers and would weep for those who were hurting. God used them to shape me.

Working in the home office gave me a unique look at the day to day. I watched his passion and watched him plan and dream. I saw him shoot for things that didn’t succeed and watched him regroup and try a different way. I watched him rejoice when souls were saved and grieve at lives lost. I saw him make mistakes. I saw him apologize. Even from his mistakes I learned. God’s grace is good that way. After all, no one is perfect and it’s His mercy in our lives that uses even our shortcomings for His glory and our good.

As I look back over my life and where we are today—running full speed ahead in a ministry here in the Amazon Jungle—I am so thankful for the influence and the legacy that Ron Bishop had on our lives.

I would not be wrong to say that God used this man’s life to influence our spiritual journey more than any other human being.

My last conversation with Bro. Ron was via Facebook. We were in the States not too long ago and had hoped to get together for breakfast with him and Mrs. Pat. Our time flew by and we never got the chance.

I wrote him to let him know it wasn’t going to work out due to our limited time and I told him we planned to be back in town this fall. Then—then we would get together.

But God had other plans.

I wish we had gotten together, but the reality is God is sovereign. He knew our paths wouldn’t meet again this side of Heaven and He purposed that. His last words were that he loved us and that he was praying for us. And I believe that.

We loved Bro. Ron so much and will miss stopping by to see him in the home office or meeting him at Moe’s for an impromptu lunch. We’ll miss his encouraging words and his Facebook statuses. We hate that our kids won’t know him like we did.

But in all our missing, we rejoice that he is in the presence of our Savior. We rejoice that God worked through him and that he said “yes” to that call. We celebrate the life that God allowed him to live and the lives that were affected for eternity because he was led by the Spirit.

Thank you, Bro. Ron, for your example, love, encouragement.

We look forward to finally having that breakfast date in eternity. We’ll have all the time we need!

I Never Wanted This

I scanned the table, trying to read the expressions on each face.

I tried to read my own heart, too.

The visitor at our meeting had just told us that what we were trying to do is impossible. It would never happen. Nothing like that had ever been done here. It’s just “too hard”.

He began to offer up “easier” alternatives. Maybe we could have a day program to feed the kids and offer activities as alternatives to drugs and pre-marital sex, two things that are quickly dominating this small town and contributing to the crime and teen pregnancy rate.

Rosa was almost expression-less. Was she discouraged? Did her dream of twenty years just die?

Aurilene was searching, asking leading questions, trying to find a loophole that would give us hope that this thing could really come to pass. But she kept calling it “their” desire, referring to me and Richard.

‘No,’ I thought. ‘I never wanted this. God gave us this.’

In fact, we had fought against the very idea. It was never even on our radar to facilitate a children’s home. We knew, after our short experience with the government here in Brazil, that it would be a series of nightmares to try to pull off something like that.  We had said, ‘This can’t be for us.”

But God had said, “Yes. I AM is telling you yes.”

So we [reluctantly] said ‘yes’… and our hearts began to change. That was over a year ago now.

We began to learn the stories, see the faces of these children with no hope. We met our daughter. We learned of Rosa’s heart to give, love, serve, with nothing but Jesus to guide her.

And here we sat, like so many other times in our life, with someone saying, “Ain’t gonna happen, y’all.”

Before this meeting had started I felt something in my Spirit saying, “You need to pray. This meeting won’t be like the last.”

Our last [and first] meeting had been one of excitement and dream sharing and we all left ready to conquer the world.

But this one, the Spirit said, would be different. Pray.

So I did. Not as much as I should have because I thought, “What could be so bad?”

And here it was. Our dream was being challenged. So while our well-intentioned friend spoke of the rules and difficulty of such an undertaking, I began to pray, “Lord give us the faith we need. Lord, give us the wisdom that comes from You. Lord, may we see you and not the challenges in front of us.

God, don’t let us doubt in the dark what you so clearly revealed in the light.”

After about an hour and a half of ‘what-ifs’ and ‘how abouts’, we got the light we were searching for, a new direction that gave us hope. Our guest left shortly thereafter and our meeting continued.

That’s when I probed a little at the heart of Rosa.

“What do you think, Rosa? You’ve been quiet.”

She paused. And that familiar, knowing smile came to her face and she said, “I’ve waited twenty years for this. I’m sure not giving it all up now.”

I relaxed a little. And felt the conviction. This never was “my” dream, yet just when the opposition started to present itself, I was ready to throw in the towel. And here I sat across the table from a woman who has, for twenty years, raised children who are not her own. She took in her husband’s love child and raised him as her own. She feeds and clothes and bathes street kids when everyone around her condemns her, saying she should just worry about her own three biological children. After all, she doesn’t have the means. Just the other day her power was cut off. 

“I have Jesus,” she once told me. “Therefore, I have all I need.”

So she has waited and pursued and trusted that one day, God would bring to fruition this dream He has put in her heart.

***

Since that meeting about a week a half ago, God has given us new leads.

Pray for us. Pray for this home. We know God is in this. We also know that the challenges are real. But God is just as interested in growing our faith in Him and making us more like Him through this process as He is in reaching the lost and broken in this little town.

Because it is all for Him and through Him and by Him that any of these things will happen.

And that is all for His glory.

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 Things You Should Know About Motherhood

I wasn't there, but I think I know the look on your face when you saw those two pink lines. And then you looked at the instructions at least 37 times because you were sure that you must have misunderstood how to hold the stick or pee on it the right direction. Or maybe two lines was a negative? Or maybe you just needed another cup of coffee and there was really only one line?

But no, it was a positive.

And for about three minutes and twenty-two seconds, you have instantly become the happiest person on planet earth.  You're thinking of how to tell your husband and then extended family and before you know it you already have color schemes and names picked out.

But then at the three minute and twenty-three second mark, you thoughts dramatically change and all of a sudden you're thinking about that glass of wine you had at dinner three nights ago and wondering if he or she will somehow glean only your less favorable features and if you will know how to properly install a carseat and before you know it you're ready to dial CPS and give them a nine-month heads up of your impending parenthood.

These things--they're normal.

For the next nine months, you will find yourself experiencing the entire spectrum of emotions from "I'M GOING TO BE A MOOOOM!!" to "I should put this poor kid up for adoption right now."

But when that sweet thing comes into this world, you find that all those emotions melt away. The pains of pregnancy will pass and you will enter a whole new world that will leave you thinking:

"Is there anyway I can stuff this child back into my abdomen?"

Here's why:

1) Parenting is hard.

The old saying is true. Any one can have a kid, but it takes someone really out-of-their-mind crazy to buckle down and parent that thing. Or something along those lines...

The reality is there are some things no one can prepare you for. Like the competition that is motherhood. How every one around you will instantly have an enlightening suggestion on how to stop the crying, get them to sleep through the night, and survive their first cold. There are hundreds of books and thousands of articles, most of which contradict and negate the others. And they are all "right". And that's just for the first year...

The truth is there is no handbook for parenting. No "one-size-fits-all" method. It's just straight up hard.

2) You will cry. Probably a lot and probably often.

There are going to be times that you collapse into bed at night (or at 3am as the case may be) and congratulate yourself on being the worst mom in the history of ever.

You will think of all the ways you should have done it differently and how you could have done better and the next day you will suggest to your husband that you go ahead and open a savings account to pay for your child's inevitable need for counseling.

You just aren't going to be perfect and sometimes you will run to the bathroom, close the door, and cry.

3) You may want to return your child. Possibly before even leaving the hospital.

When you have just finished your seventh green-poop filled diaper IN A ROW and you are covered in spit up and you can't remember if you took a shower yesterday or if that was three days ago, it's very possible that your mind will wander back to the good ole days when you slept until 8am because you could. You will be tempted to riminesce about those times you ran into the grocery store without having to unload 35lb carseat only to find that those Huggies actually AREN'T leak proof.

There will be times you "remember when" and it may unleash the floodgates as mentioned in point number two.

4)  You will be tired almost all the time and will forget everything. And you will forget everything.

Inevitably you will finally build up the courage to go to Wal-Mart after that last diaper adventure and get to the very back of the store when your baby will promptly start screaming at the top of his lungs. "That's ok," you'll think to yourself as you reach in the diaper bag (that is taking up the entire back of the shopping cart). "I have your paci... Riiiight here.... Shhhh... It's ok..... Mommy has your paci.... WHERE IS THAT FREAKIN' PACIFIER!?" And then you will glance up awkwardly as you realize the entire cold-foods section was privy to your most recent display of both exhaustion and forgetfulness.

5) Parenting will change your marriage.

It's all fun and games until your husband tries to sleep through his turn to feed the baby at 2:30am--for the third night in a row. Then it's on.

You will argue over who changed the last poop diaper and who in the world bought non-organic baby food! It sure wasn't me... Are you trying to kill our child?!

You will have times that you give him that "if-you-touch-me-I-will-show-you-seven-new-kinds-of-crazy" look because while he engaged in adult conversation all day, you washed six loads of laundry (how does this pint sized child get so dirty?!), ate leftover macaroni and cheese for lunch, changed 23 diapers, and become fluent in infantese. All on two and a half hours of sleep. The last thing you feel is "in-the-mood".

When you finally do get a child-free date, you will find yourselves talking about the baby you just high-five'd about leaving at Maw-Maw's and Paw-Paw's.

Now, before you hate me and deem me the worst friend ever for sharing these truths, let me share a few corresponding things I've learned in my the-days-are-long-but-these-four-years-have-flown-by parenting adventures.

1) You are not the first person to do this.

Generations of moms have produced children that have turned into thriving adults. After all, the human race is still here.

So while er'body and their mama is trying to tell you how it's done, follow your instinct. Pray about it. Glean advice from people you trust. Then throw out what doesn't work for your family, along with the guilt you're tempted to hold onto.

And remember that babies all around the world survive just fine without that fancy teething giraffe and baby wipe warmers.

2) Crying doesn't mean your weak. Most likely it means you are trying your best.

Those pictures you see on Facebook from those super moms who kids are always in new clothes and sporting a big smile eating made from scratch muffins? That's their highlight reel. They may have just come out of the bathroom from their hourly cryfest because she just changed her spit-up covered shirt for the third time today after she burned the first batch of sugary delights.  

No one posts pictures of that.

So let yourself cry. But also pick yourself up. You can do this and it is worth it. Some days will be easier and  there will always be bright moments sprinkled in. That's called God's grace. Bask in it.

3) There are no returns or exchanges on these little humans. I asked.

Turns out that's ok, because God picked you to be this one's mom. That doesn't mean it'll be easy (re: point number one) or that you will know what the heck you're doing at any given moment. It just means that He's going to equip you and grow you and change you and hold you and listen to you and understand every emotion as you walk this road. And He's gonna use you to have a huge impact on this little life.

So go ahead and own this little one. Cover him with prayer. Ask God for wisdom. Get in the floor and play. Laugh at your mistakes. Give yourself grace. Allow yourself to be human.

4) Try to sleep when the baby sleeps.

But also realize you're still going to wake up tired whether you sleep for 30 minutes or 30 hours (don't count on that last one).

It's just part of this parenting thing.

And you can try to pack that diaper bag in advance but you will inevitably forget something as basic as diapers from time to time. Laugh about it. And be thankful that you have 23 stores that sell diapers within a 3 miles radius of wherever you are.

5) I'm gonna park here for a minute.

Never forget that you got into this situation together and you are both new at this thing. Lean into one another, don't push against each other.

Don't push against each other.

Show grace. Laugh OFTEN. Forgive. Let go. And enjoy this thing that is the hardest job on the planet.

You can't do it alone. You're gonna need God and a lot of Him. And you're gonna need each other.

Go on dates. Talk things out. Find things to talk about besides this new addition.

And let him kiss you, even when you don't wanna. It's important for him. It's important for you. It's important for your child.

It's true when they say it's worth it. There will be a lot of really great times. So don't let these things I'm telling you discourage you, but rather motivate you to do this thing well.

By God's grace you are going to be a great mom. And when you aren't, there is more grace.

I wrote this for my sister-in-law who is expecting her first baby in October. I asked her if I could share it because honestly these are all things I wish someone had said to me before I had our first. Or maybe they did and I didn't listen. Either way, I hope this is an encouragement to new mamas out there. And if you are a seasoned mom, maybe you can shout "amen!" and give other tips in the comments section.