Woman on the Front Line

Mystery and the Voice of God: My Story (Part 2)

July 11th, 2024

[Link to Part 1]

Day 40

Back to early-mid 2023.

I was waiting. Everyone who knew me was waiting too. They checked in with me moment by moment, which was kind, but very similar to being nine months pregnant. You have no control over when you have the baby, but feel like a watched pot that never boils.

Then it finally happened. The first glimmer of progress. A job posted that I had been waiting for.

As summer progressed I was in a lengthy process for this role, which I felt passionate and excited about. It clearly aligned with God’s calling and words for me. From the outside looking in, it was like the job had been created for me. It fit the scope of my life and ministry experiences well—so much so that my former colleagues called it a “no brainer.” Jeff and I felt anticipation for what God might do as this application process unfolded.

Prior to the posting, other opportunities came my way. Early on, I was even given the opportunity to write my own job description out of my sense of call, but something did not feel right. I held it in prayer until I finally got a clear answer to wait and take this other emerging path instead. A team of people praying for me through my transition asked, “What will you do if you don’t get this job? Are you applying to other jobs?”

I responded, “It feels like the Holy Spirit is stepping on my neck and telling me there is only one path to take. If I do not get this job, I will have a lot of questions for God. It just will not make sense.”

I should pause and say that I never heard God promise me this job as an outcome. God did give instructions to exclusively wait on and apply for this specific role. One might assume that would mean a positive outcome. This was my assumption. If, for some reason, God did not give me this job, we believed there must be something better that would soon become obvious.

As the summer went on, I made it through every hoop and stage of the process down to the final two candidates. I was eager and ready to resume work. I went in for the final interview early in the kids’ new school year–perfect timing for something new for myself. The following day, Jeff and I celebrated our 21st anniversary, anticipating a long-awaited season of change. That next morning, I received an email that gut punched me so hard it knocked me off the face of the earth. They had chosen another candidate who “God had been preparing for the job.” I have no doubt that is true, but what on earth had God been preparing me for?

The process was over.

Eight months dragged out in waiting came down to a swift rejection. Despair moved across my entire body. I had walked out to the edge, jumped off the cliff, and no one caught me. I plummeted. Like a cartoon from my childhood, I had crushed myself into a puddle at the bottom.

My husband encouraged me about all the possibilities at my fingertips, but all I could feel was beautiful clarity from the voice of God ending horrifically with a heavy door slammed abruptly in my face. Even then, I sensed how seemingly impossible it would be for me to move forward from this place apart from a supernatural lift.

In a normal application situation, at this point, you work through any disappointment, assume the best about doors closing and opening, and keep dreaming about what the future might hold. You move on to the other logs you’ve thrown on the fire since this one has burned out. But, just as I told my prayer team, I did not have any other logs on the fire. God only gave me one log and it just burned its last ember.

In retrospect, I was expecting God to bring me to door #2 if door #1 closed. If I really got this far out into two years of obedience and then this was not the final destination, surely God would provide for our family by quickly showing us the real thing we had been waiting for. Right?

At this point, I did what any person who had already been several months without income waiting on a specific process would do, I began applying to all the other jobs. In so doing, I tried to approach it with an open mind and choose jobs that overlapped with at least one clear aspect of my calling.

Day 150

In a short matter of time, I began to have interviews almost every week, a process that was like goldilocks trying porridge. Everyone I knew had desires and opinions for me about the bowls I was tasting.

A large ministry’s development director.

A director of church partnership for an institute of higher learning.

A Dean of Spiritual Development at a college.

A Discipleship Pastor at a megachurch.

A CEO of a local ministry home.

A high profile family’s covert charitable foundation.

I took the approach that if God opened doors, I would walk through them until the processes closed. I was curious as phone calls and emails came so quickly in comparison to the long, slow slog I had just gone through. But, each time, a sadness and concern would come over me. I knew that this path did not match the clarity God had given me. The unmistakable clear trajectory that began when the Holy Spirit spoke to me and sent me on a new journey never lifted.

It would have been easier if it had.

Instead I found myself in daily and nightly despair about the disorienting process I had just been through. Then, for a few hours I would have to dress nice, throw on a blazer, put on makeup and perform to my highest abilities. It was brutal.

This interview season spanned six months and yet I was no closer to my calling than before I began. In fact, I always knew in my gut that I was not supposed to be on this journey. God never asked me to leave my job so that I could go on a wild goose chase. There was no reason to leave the previous job for this kind of a journey. I just did not know what else to do.

I tried to keep an open mind in the event that momentum would start to build and God would give me a clear direction or nudge. Mostly I just found myself panicking when I became a final candidate for jobs. The morning before the Dean interview, which seemed like the best fit for me, I abruptly awoke at 4am, sweating. I was thinking about a church up the street going through a season of scandal.

“Churches…making churches healthy. I’d rather work for myself if I have to.”

I tried to show up for every interview and bring my best, but the truth is, I felt locked in to the original calling God had given me. It just would not let up.

Having interviewed dozens and dozens of people for ministry jobs in the previous decade, I knew my problem. A) I wasn’t called to these jobs B) I was aimlessly looking for work C) I had a specific vision and calling that was coming through more strongly than the work at hand. Jeff and I both agreed. We wouldn’t hire me for these jobs either.

As each door closed, I felt relief instead of sadness. But, I also felt confused and aimless.

Day 260

Sunday morning comes and Jeff and I decide to take our son an hour away to the megachurch where I will be interviewing. It is Christmas time.

A famous worship singer and songwriter comes out on the stage. Jeff and I look at one another with the same knowing chuckle. We were not expecting that!

As the worship plays, I merely close my eyes and God begins to speak to me with direction for the first time since the early part of the year.

I receive a vivid picture. Standing outside the door of my calling, I am weeping. I feel sadness all over my body as I stand in a sewer tunnel staring at a door vaulted shut like you might see at a bank. I see I am at the end this tunnel and notice there are other doors along the sides. With no other choice, I begin to ponder these other doors. They are not welcoming but they are not vaulted shut either.

I could knock on these.

But, in the distance, on the other side of the tunnel is a sense of heat and daylight. Reluctantly, with curiosity impeded by sadness, I sensed an invitation to start to take steps toward the light.

The image panned out again and I saw that the path toward the light would also put me over and above this sewer. A different access point to my calling would become available. I would be above all these doors instead of knocking on them.

I thanked God for speaking. The slow pursuit toward heat and light had begun.

[To be continued…]

Photo credit: The City of Toronto
Mystery and the Voice of God: My Story (Part 1)

July 9th, 2024

2021

My spiritual director, sitting with me in our usual meeting place of over a decade, declares with confidence, “You really hear from God! When I make reference to you, I tell my husband, she really hears from God.” This was news to me. I never thought of it this way. As far as I knew I was just minding my own business in my faith life. I had never claimed to anyone that I heard from God. God made things clear to me as circumstances lined up, as I looked at how things had worked out in the past, or in my gut. I never heard a voice that I connected to God’s. How interesting that this was my descriptor–the one who hears from God.

This was a little external reinforcement to look back upon for the road that I would soon begin to travel.

Days later, I found myself in the midst of a profound supernatural experience that brought me to tears. I had never experienced anything like it. I was wrestling in mental frustration about a particular circumstance when, out the blue, God began to show me how he saw me by providing clarity to a longtime question which was related to my struggle.

What exactly is the thing that I have been made to do, no matter the job or the season of life? It came through crystal clear. I sensed it all over my body along with God’s presence as I was driving down the road. It took me by surprise and was so powerful that after I pulled into the garage and parked the car, still weeping, I walked into the house and wrote it all down. I was very clear on what was happening and I knew I would not be the same.

Like Moses and Mary, while minding my own business, carrying on with my daily life, an encounter changed my life without warning.

From there, I began to grow in new and deeper ways in my relationship with the Lord. I also began to know my time in my current career was ending because what I was made to do and the current reality of my job was no longer in alignment. This visitation was the beginning of a redirection.

In the process of redirection, at times it feels like I have the faith to walk on water. Other times, it feels like I am sinking.

2022

12 months later, I am sitting in a room at church where a meeting has just wrapped up when my Facebook messenger makes the distinct noise of an incoming message. “Hi Lisa, I promise this is not spam, but have you ever thought about a career change?” How curious! “Why, yes. Funny you should ask,” I answered the friend on the other end. “I am thinking of leaving my 20-year career. Why?” What followed was an incredible opportunity that I should have/would have jumped at if I did not have so much specific clarity on what God had called me to. Nonetheless, it was exciting, tempting, and flattering.

The next day I got on a plane for London for a work trip. This new job option would be a nice pay bump. It would open doors to a new world. And, it would be local, an important component to my sense of redirection. But, it would not check the main box. That entire night as I was bouncing my head forward and backward, sleeping and waking, in my economy seat, I would hear over and over again, “Church, not non-profit management. Church. Not non-profit management.” It was persistent and clear. Take the opportunity as a sign of good things to come, but do not take the bait, I decided.

I would stay the course and wait.

Six weeks later, urgency was growing in me. The end of the calendar year was drawing near, but no opportunity to follow my new sense of call had materialized. I told God early in our conversations about new beginnings that I could by no means afford to lose my salary or go backwards in progress after all the early years of ministry penny pinching and struggling to advance as a woman, so I was sure that God would honor my bargain and there would be no gap from one job to the next.

Eventually, I had to pay attention to the pounding sound in my chest. It was sounding an alarm of release from my job. It was not that I did not like my job. I had felt excited and called to that job. In so many ways it was the best job ever. But just as easily as God had given me a call to the position out of nowhere, I knew God had taken it away. God had been preparing me to go where God sent me. I did not know where I was going, but I was no longer sent there.

One night, as I lay in bed, I felt the Holy Spirit again. This time it was an urgent, clear, step-by-step plan. The instructions included exactly what date to leave my job, a volunteer ministry assignment to step into, and a financial plan to cover our family for two months after my last day of employment. I sent the appropriate emails to enact the plan and went to bed with peace.

Since God led me step-by-step and I followed all of them, I naturally expected there would be more instructions by the time the plan ended. The last thing I expected was a gap, let alone a long gap.

2023

Early in the year, I worked one final month in my career, completed my volunteer assignments, and then came to the end of the lit path of instructions. It was difficult. What lay beyond was darkness. It was terrifying. In the beginning, every calendar day was excruciating. One day out in the wilderness…two days out in the wilderness…

Over 400 days out in the wilderness…

At this point, I have learned to walk with a very tiny headlamp on a very dark path, sometimes making no steps of progress on the path, and often taking the tiniest step imaginable. I cannot see far enough out to take any huge steps. Every day is an act of trust and obedience.

[To be continued…]

Photo by Trygve Selmer
10 Habits That Harm the Soul of Your Ministry and 10 to Aspire to Instead

July 3rd, 2024
Culture-making and culture-shaping are important tasks. Often, with ministry, we lose sight of the cultures we make on our way to produce outcomes. The problem is that our habits produce cultures which can deform the soul of ministry into misalignment to God’s character and purposes. It is a sad cycle. In our effort to make something great for God, we make some not-so-great and even terrible things along the way. For me, it is joyful and holy work to shape or re-shape the culture of a ministry to better reflect God’s purposes and bring healthy alignment to mission.

While some skeptics will call certain habits inevitable, as a leader, I have tested and learned that we do not have to accept them as reality. We can resist the urge to give into these habits and aspire, through the hard work of changing old policies and habits, to replace them with practices that better reflect God.

The following are some aspirational habits to replace unhealthy ones. To help elaborate on each, I have included an example and a danger to be avoided. Let me know what you think.
1. Instead of fostering and acting out a scarcity mindset,
  - foster and act out of God’s abundance.
    
    Ex – ministry resources, pay, treatment of people
    
    Danger – Believing there is not enough = God does not have enough
2. Instead of using positive testimonials to sell an outcome,
  - let authentic testimonies shape God’s people in joys and trials.
    
    Ex – real testimonies aren’t for announcements or donations but to help others see God’s work in another believer
    
    Danger – Manipulating people with our goals instead of letting the Spirit speak and transform
3. Instead of relying on human strength,
  - turn to prayer.
    
    Ex – pray more than you plan
    
    Danger – Believing we are primarily responsible for our work and the outcomes
4. Instead of overworking your people,
  - make rhythms for rest and sustainability.
    
    Ex – make sure people take sabbath, vacations, have boundaries around work hours, and invest in sabbaticals
    
    Danger – Ignoring human limitations and acting God-like
5. Instead of over-scheduling employees and participants in your ministry activities,
  - give them time to love their family and neighbor by being present at home
    
    Ex – family and neighbor interactions should be a barometer of how well pastors/ministers are doing
    
    Danger – Incongruence between personal life and public
6. Instead of upholding policies that reinforce individualism,
  - consider policies that uphold the communal good.
    
    Ex – reward teamwork and model sharing of resources
    
    Danger – Mirroring worldly frameworks instead of the communal nature of God
7. Instead of underpaying your employees,
  - consider how your pay structure can reflect generosity.
    
    Ex – start by paying fair wages for the geographic area with opportunities for raises under a structure of pay equity across your organization
    
    Danger – Unsustainable and harmful working conditions, which reinforce scarcity for doing God’s work.
8. Instead of labeling opposing voices from within as enemies,
  - keep your eyes on your duties as shepherds caring for sheep.
    
    Ex – pay attention to injured and ornery sheep as a shepherd given oversight over a whole flock
    
    Danger – Treating sheep under your care as enemies because they cause you discomfort.
9. Instead of over-professionalizing the work,
  - remember the call to Christ’s ministry and the need for Spirit-led discernment.
    
    Ex – embrace professional characteristics, but not at the expense of recognizing the peculiarity of the call to ministry and the necessity of being led by the Spirit
    
    Danger – Becoming an organization of professionals instead of an extension of Christ’s earthly ministry, made up of sent-ones.
10. Instead of relying on secular business principles,
  - operate in the economy and currencies of God’s kingdom.
    
    Ex – the meek, the weak, and the marginalized have more to teach you than the business world does.
    
    Danger – Driving toward growth based on a system of meritocracy rather than inward growth and transformation patterned after Christ’s death and resurrection.
Picture by Tambako the Jaguar
Preparing a Place for You

June 10th, 2024

Ten years ago, I was about to graduate from seminary when I was asked to give one of three sermons for our Homiletics class celebration, alongside two distinguished classmates. It was a great honor and a special culmination for me.

My sermon was centered in John 14, when Jesus promises his disciples that he’s going to prepare a place for them. This promise sounds like good news, but their responses indicate just how unsettling Jesus’ words were for the disciples. They wanted to go with him. They did not like that he was going ahead. They were troubled and did not know the way to get there! They wanted to see the Father. But Jesus asked for their trust in him, or at least belief based on the things they had seen already. They did not need a physical map to get where they were going. They needed Jesus.

I opened the sermon with a real life illustration of attending a banquet at the end of my first year in ministry where the theme was “God never forgets you.” Each person had a place setting that was marked by a rock with their name on it to symbolize the theme. And, guess what? They forgot to prepare a place setting for me!

It was a sermon highlighting my own journey of starting in ministry and feeling totally overlooked and forgotten, of no worth or value compared to my husband who was made the center of the attention by our employer because he was uniquely needed for emerging ministry on campus. I encouraged my classmates that while there would be times of despair and discouragement, we do not need a map of where to go. Jesus has already given us his presence through all the intersections he has walked us through. When we cannot see where we are going, we look back at where we have been and know that is enough. We know the Way.

I do not have a transcript, but according to Facebook I said, “He is who he says he is. Don’t let your hearts be troubled. He has been leading his people without a map for a long, long time. He is preparing a place for you.” Even before this memory popped up today, I have often thought of this sermon. As we were instructed in this class, I preached the sermon to myself before I preached it to others, and it is one that I continue to preach to myself. On this day, I was looking behind and standing grounded on the truth. I have to do the same now.

In the ten years that have followed, I have been asked very infrequently to preach a text in a church, definitely much less than my fellow male classmates. In part, it is because of where I worship. In order to finish the assignments for the class, I had to preach at the retirement home behind my church during their Sunday service. It was the option offered for those who did not have an option to preach at their own church for practice. My church has a large staff and I can count two Sunday morning guest preachers that have been women in our fifteen years there.

I have lived with this reality for a long time because I was given other assignments that made up my calling. After this class concluded I was offered an opportunity to become a Homiletics TA, but I declined because my kids were 5 and 8 years old and my life was full enough with my part-time role as Co-Area Director for Southern California. As a pastor’s wife at the time, the thought of needing to be different places on Sunday morning to encourage the development of my preaching was untenable. Three years later, I accepted a full-time role as Regional Director for the Western US. None of these were going to be preaching roles. I took assignments here and there to be faithful to preach the scripture–speaking at student retreats, to my staff, and teaching Bible Study to 100s of students at Urbana. I took the many teaching opportunities available at my church–MOPS, adult Sunday Schools, and other one-off invitations. These were all highlights in between the day to day of the job. And, let’s be honest, writing sermons is a huge amount of prep that is hard to fit into an administrative job’s weekly schedule. I was content with this ratio of preaching and teaching to other types of work, even if it was a gift that was sitting on a shelf.

But here I am. It is a different season. God is making something new out of me for a new season. On the one hand, it is the least comfortable I have ever been. On the other hand, with my open schedule this spring, I had an uptick of opportunities to preach in churches and at retreats. God is preparing a place for me, but I do not know where I am going or how to get there. I am filled with just as much fear as the disciples in John 14. I would like a map. But, instead, I will remember where I have been and who has been with me there. If I keep walking with Jesus, I will never fail to know the Way.
God in the Nothing

May 7th, 2024

I remember sitting at my desk in my home office, looking at my boss through my computer screen. It was a series of weeks where I was stressed, drifting from the metaphorical shore. I told him, with confidence, “I feel myself drifting, but I know how to get back to shore.” I went on to explain how, usually, it takes me less time than I predict to get my bearings and feel secure again. This assurance grounded me through the busiest and most difficult seasons of work in my demanding role. It was a requirement for managing the day-to-day and keeping my eyes on what was ahead.

A year or two later, I had a very different metaphor. I was out to sea, a dark sea, with no shore in any direction, treading water. God was with me, but there was no comfort in that thought. I felt a bit like Peter when he got out of the boat, looked at Jesus, then the storm, then the waves and wind. God was there, but I felt more terror than peace. Sinking was imminent. God’s presence does not feel like enough to keep you afloat when you are in deep waters without a life raft.

The longer I stayed in this space, drifting, and treading water, I was able to put the experience into words.

“I am just a black dot on a blank page.” These were the words that most resonated with my experience. Never before had I thought to compare myself to a lonely dot. In past seasons, I might have drawn myself as a dot with a circle around me. Between me and the circle was the fullness of life, vitality of people, and joyfulness of hope. Good things were in the closed circle. They embraced me, like the life raft I did not know I was embracing. In contrast, when I look at this black dot as a stand-in for Lisa, Lisa looks all alone in the world. Somehow, currents took me out to the deep where no one swims and few boats pass.

What remains when you no longer have your circle of belonging and comforts? You have God. I knew that within the space of that blank canvas, surrounding the black dot, the white space was God. But, if you consider the image, God looks like nothing–the absence of anything. You might say that, thus far, I knew God as a circle of good surrounding me and suddenly God was without shape, just the air around me. It was painful.

In the inky black sea, God is all-surrounding. God is in the nothing and God is the nothing. God is that empty white space on the page or that silent dark sky over the water. It reminds me of Genesis 1:2, “Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.” Before a single bit of creation was created, God was in the nothing. This means God was the nothing. I know, that does not quite sound right.

It is not that God is in essence nothing. But God is not everything in the way we think of everything. Everything is just a tiny reflection of the fullness of God. Everything put together is still only a mere reflection. We cannot visualize this because before eyes were created and before there was any creation to lay eyes on, there was just God. No wonder the best image I can conjure is a black dot on an empty page. It takes a new mindset to settle into the nothing, and know it as the surrounding presence of God.

It reminds me of a float therapy session I was gifted where I learned to lie completely still in a dark, contained space and trust salty water to buoy me. The idea behind this “therapy” method is to create an environment for relaxation without stimulation. After my session, the woman at the front desk told me, “It takes multiple sessions to get used to.” I don’t think so! It turns out the absence of all stimulation while contained is…terrifying and not particularly relaxing! The experience of trusting God’s presence in the absence of all other stimuli is similar.

God’s created content populates the earth and stimulates our senses everyday so we can see God. As examples, we see God in the flowers, the sun, the variety of fish and birds, crashing waves, and the faces of our loved ones. We understand that no created being or thing is God. However, these things translate the “nothingness” of God into concrete objects for our senses to experience, even if these experiences are just a slice of God’s creativity. It is too much for our brains to understand that before any of it was there, God was. God is eternal, not created, and, therefore, original. There, in the nothing, was nothing but God.

I am in the process of reprogramming my brain and body to receive God this way. I know Jesus’s take on earthly blessings is that they do not define our favor with God. But, I realize, in practice, I still expect a short list of specific blessings to experience God. If you take away my list of what feels essential for my sense of well-being, I experience what feels like emptiness, not divine presence. Because I have transferred my understanding of goodness on to things that God gives and not onto God’s presence alone, I struggle. I have had to learn in deepening ways that God’s everything is, in a sense, best reflected in the nothing.

Jesus hints at this all throughout the gospels. Material stuff is not bad, but it is not the goal. Fasting is a related spiritual practice. Through it, deprivation from food can become closeness to God in a counterintuitive way. I do not mean that suffering and deprivation are holier than enjoyment and fulfillment. After all, God’s word uses the banquet table feast as a frequent metaphor for the kingdom. I mean that our deepest enjoyment and fulfillment are in God, not the things God created. However, it initially feels like starvation and death to be deprived of our creaturely needs. It requires rewiring our brains, body, and spirit to accept a reality of God’s existence and presence surpassing anything else.

In The Critical Journey, Hagberg and Guelph describe a stage and process on the faith journey called “The Wall.” Here, a person is moving from experiencing God in the everything, to wrestling with God in the nothing. It may not be that the person has nothing like Job, but the person feels a nothingness. It is a place of prolonged struggle and silence from God. What looks like the end of all we have known, potentially even the end of our relationship with God, is, actually, a place of depth and transformation.

The Wall comes after a life of action and activity for God brings us to a place where what we have done and known no longer works for new challenges. Our paradigm is beginning to shift because The Wall spurs us from an outward to an inward journey or our inward journey spurs us toward The Wall. Pete Scazzero, author of Emotionally Healthy Spirituality says that most Evangelicals do not make it through The Wall because of the limitations within our image of God. We are very comfortable with the God of VBS, devotions, and small groups, but it is very hard to grasp the God of suffering, silence, and nothing. When you slow down from all the frantic activity of ministry, the challenge is to know God apart from all of our constructs.

The irony of The Wall is that you feel like you are losing your faith, but you are journeying deeper. Learning about “The Wall” has helped me walk beside others, knowing that what looks like a spiritual stall-out has the potential to be their deepest spiritual wrestling thus far, as long as they stay engaged with God (however that looks). It is a sign of spiritual maturity and growth on the lifelong journey. It looks like we might be losing our bearings, but we are losing our training wheels. With patience and perseverance, we are actually drawing closer to God and learning to ride free.

We become like teenagers who want to slam the door in God’s face. God welcomes us to do this like our mothers who knew their presence brought safety during our struggles of adolescence. The process looks chaotic and feels fraught, but an adolescent is not hopeless. A transformation into maturity is taking place. We have to wait with one another, patiently, to make it to the other side. In time, we can go back to serving and doing things for God with a deeper understanding about ourselves and God. First, intense transformations require space and time.

God as “nothing,” it is not about striving for asceticism. It is not necessarily holier to have nothing than to have God’s tangible blessings. Nothingness is not the ultimate reality. God is reality. With Religious Studies as one of my undergraduate majors, I spent a lot of my coursework studying Eastern religions and pondering them as a Christian. The Buddhist pursuit to know nothing as the true reality has a hint of truth. You do know the truest reality when the circle around the dot is taken away. But from the Christian perspective, what you find there is our eternal God–in the beginning, before creation, and in creation. Union with God, made possible for us through Christ, is the truest reality we can experience.

Sometimes in the Christian life, you will know God through the beauty around you coupled with a sense of deep joy and contentment in your soul. Other times, you will learn and see that when all of that is gone, you are okay. You are safe in deep waters with no sight of the shore because you are with the One who Hovers over the Deep. This is the truest reality to which everything points. We tend to miss the forest for the trees. We miss Christ for the bread. We miss God the Father for the good gifts he gives. We miss the Spirit for the miracle. We miss God in the nothing.
Dealing with Delay

April 23rd, 2024
15 years ago, I was 9 months pregnant with our second child while my husband and I awaited responses from a handful of PhD programs he had applied to. While it was not a surprise that we would spend the year waiting for our future to unfold, it was complicated by answers like “waitlisted” or “alternate candidate.” Even though the entire year was spent pregnant with anticipation (in more ways than one), it was not until 9 days before my due date that we had clarity about which state we would move to in a manner of months.

8 days later I had an emergency c-section. It was not the plan that I would spend extra days in the hospital and have a driving restriction for a month, but it was beyond our control. A week later, Jeff walked in his graduation ceremony with his Master of Divinity. All four family members made it to the graduation. I wore whatever pants fit one week post c-section and spent a lot of the ceremony nursing in the bathroom.

Within weeks, it was time for home hunting in California, but we couldn’t find anything. We had a temporary housing option that fell through and eventually found a month-to-month rental less than two weeks before move-out day. When we arrived in California, we stayed in this rental, boxes unpacked, taking care of a 3-year-old and a newborn, while we searched for houses. We were eventually able to make an offer on our 7th anniversary, August 24, 2009.

No sooner did we put in the offer than Bank of America announced record delays with closing. Ours became the longest of our realtor’s career. We moved into our new home on Halloween. By this time, we were worse for the wear, having been in a state of constant readiness and frequent delay for the year. Jeff famously tells the story of how we were washing and reusing plasticware and were down to just a few as we waited for the keys with our dishes still packed from the move three months prior. The memory of trying to wash a plastic, disposable, spaghetti sauce-stained plate is salient.

Delay is hard and it makes little sense in the moment. I still cannot make sense of that particular delay in that season. It eventually landed us in a home and city we have lived in almost 15 years, but it seemed to have caused more trauma and hardship than necessary along the way. At age 29, my body and brain just absorbed it all and moved on.

Now, at 43, my brain and body have more wear and tear, and our family has been in another season of constant delay.
- I left a job 15 months ago with a deep sense of what I was meant to do next, but no doors have opened.
- Our daughter had a clear sense of her top choice for college and pursued that choice through an early application, but the responses have been “deferred” and “waitlisted.”
- We landed on another college as the backup plan, but as soon as we were ready to submit the deposit, the price was raised.
- Due to record FAFSA processing delays in what is being called the most chaotic year to apply for colleges, she graduates from high school in about six weeks and we are still waiting for things beyond our control.
We have no clear picture of where we are headed. The extended period of delay that I am already in has helped me cope a bit better this time around, but it still brings up a range of emotions, including fear.

Delay can come despite your best efforts.

Delay can come in unprecedented ways.

Even dependable timelines people have been able to count on for generations can fly out the window.

It is not fun. You feel like the anomaly and live out a sense of a perfect storm.

This latest delay season has caused me to reflect quite a bit on what it means to deal with delay. To start, I believe delay has a variety of agents that come into play.

Agent # 1 – God

God may bring about delay to hold us back from something before the proper time. The most obvious example is the intricate timing that went into the long-awaited arrival of Jesus, the Messiah. Jesus could have come at any time in history, but he was born to Mary at the appointed time determined by God the Father. Simeon and Anna attested to this in Luke 2:22-38 after their life-long wait.

Agent #2 – The Enemy

The enemy brings delay as a tactic to fatigue, discourage, and make it appear as if he can thwart the plans of God. In 1 Thessalonians 2:17-18, Paul writes to the church saying he wanted to come to see them, but Satan blocked their way. In the Book of Job, Satan worked on Job to see if an extreme amount of hardship would wear him down to turn on God. He is the enemy of goodness and thriving. When delay is really harming and testing you, especially if you begin to believe lies like, “I’m worthless, ” “I’m a failure,” “I don’t deserve to live,” there is enemy attack that does not come from God. God would never delay something in your life with an intent to bring harm to you.

Agent #3 – Our Choices

Our human decisions that go against the will of God can bring about delay. Jonah was given an assignment to preach to Ninevah so they could turn to God, but his prejudice and disdain for them as a people led him to run in the opposite direction and get on a boat. God had to send a fish to swallow him as an intervention to get him back on track.

Agent #4 – Choices of Others

The choices of others can bring delay. In Genesis 37, Joseph had a dream that his brothers would bow down to him. They did not like the dream so they worked to get rid of him, selling him off. Joseph then had a hard and complicated life, but eventually rose to a position of power that allowed him to save not only his brothers, but all of the people of Israel from famine. Without knowing it, they ended up bowing down to Joseph in Egypt. God did not will for Joseph to be sold and falsely reported dead to his father. God did not will for him to be falsely accused by Potiphar’s wife. God redeemed it so that it would become the pathway to God’s people surviving famine.

Any and all agents could be a part of any given situation of delay. So, how do we discern and deal with it?

Usually we start with the positive, but today I want to start with the lesser discussed negative. First, we understand that God’s will can be interrupted and temporarily thwarted. Jesus tells us to pray for things to be on earth as it is in heaven. God’s will is reflected in heaven; when and how that breaks into earth is a fluid matter that involves our prayerful participation and obedience. While we like to blanket everything as “God’s will,” the imprecision of this statement can be damaging to people going through delays in seeing the will of God for their life. For example, we know it is God’s will for children to thrive, so when children suffer in poverty or abuse, this is not God’s will for them. When people are not healed on earth, it is not because God wills them sickness or death. We know his will for them by considering their reality in heaven. There is no sickness, sadness, or death there.

Second, we understand that God is sovereign over all of it. This, I believe, is what is intended to be conveyed by the harmful “God’s will” statements. Those statements are just too imprecise. It is not a matter of God willing terrible things for us. It is a matter of God being the true Sovereign and ruler over the world, meaning that even though not all the circumstances are good, God will work it out for good. The clash between terrible circumstances and God’s sovereignty is because of Satan’s temporary status as the ruler of this world. We live in a broken world, where Satan has been given domain to wreak havoc, but his timetable is limited and his power weaker than the one who will put him in his place. Therefore, we know that while our pain and circumstances may be the result of evil, they can be used by God for some good redemptive purpose for us and for others, like in the life of Jospeh.

Third, we fast and pray. We fast and pray because of the clash between two realities where we live–on the one hand, God’s sovereignty, and on the other hand, the enemy’s schemes. We need the full armor of God to deal with the opposition. Jesus says some dark powers only leave through fasting and prayer (Mt 17:21). We will have to fast for some difficult circumstances. We also fast and pray to align our hearts to God so that we can hear if there is any sin in us that we have not confessed and so that we can learn dependence on God more than anything, even daily bread.

Fourth, we ask the community of faith to wait with us in prayer and discernment. We can wait alone. Jesus was alone in his final hours on his path to the cross. Christian community is meant not to fix our problems, but to help us absorb them this side of heaven, in a posture of shared waiting. It can be particularly hard if you do not have a community to wait with, or if your community does not have a robust theology of suffering and waiting. Job’s friends certainly did not understand the delay of the Lord to remedy Job’s circumstances, which created more pain.

Lastly, I want to mention that there are indirect influences that cause delay. These realities do not necessarily have particular human or supernatural agency, though they can intersect with these powers. They have, in some ways, a life of their own and are pervasive in our world. For example, when Adam and Eve brought a freewill choice of disobedience into God’s creation, it inaugurated all kinds of brokenness beyond human agency that affects our lives – disease, barrenness, pestilence, natural disaster, etc. These are naturally occurring causes. They stem from the nature of our now imperfect world and its effect on our bodies and planet.

Then there are systemic causes. Systems are broken in our world. They start with human agency on an individual level and become complex systems of brokenness that continue to perpetuate a lack of thriving and goodness. You know a system is broken when it fails to meet its stated good purpose. For example our health care system does not contribute to the health and wellbeing of all. Our immigration system is painstakingly slow and excessively complicated. Our education system damages children as much as it educates them. While you can often find people making selfish, corrupt choices in systems, removing one person from a system typically will not resolve the brokenness. I heard one author call this the “principality” of systems (Ep 6:12). If you have ever had a friend attempt the process for a U.S. green card, you understand the delay and principalities of systems. When you stand on the other end of a broken system, experiencing delay, it can be crushing.

At times, when the delay in our lives is caused by no visible or singular agent to point to, it can become the most painstaking and lead to despair. Typically, in our humanness, we try to find some particular agent to blame.

If you are receiving messages telling you that delay is simply a matter of God’s will, I am sorry. God is in the picture, but not all waiting is because God willed it. It is a complex mix of multiple agents and dueling realities. It is about the world God made and the brokenness of humanity. It is about the Lord’s Prayer, where all of the agents and factors are named.

Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come. Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.

My intent in acknowledging the many aspects and agents of delay is to shed light on something complex and unseen. There is nothing wrong with you if you are experiencing delay. It does not indicate that you have been forsaken by God, though it can feel that way. Let us hold space together so we can hold fast together when we experience seasons and circumstances of delay.

In the last few years, I have begun to pay more careful attention to the process of each bud arriving for spring. The more I tune into the process, the longer the wait feels.
Transplant Shock and Waiting to Bloom

April 9th, 2024

It was two springs ago that I brought home a gardenia tree aglow with bright, white, fragrant buds. It was gorgeous. The occasion was to celebrate the end of a long season, punctuated by breakthroughs and new beginnings. My intent was to look at it every spring when it bloomed as a reminder of God’s faithfulness and goodness.

In a matter of days, it shriveled up completely. Every flower, and eventually every leaf, died. I called the nursery to ask what happened and they told me, “It’s either dead or it’s in transplant shock. You won’t know which one until next year, but just keep treating it like it’s alive and you’ll see.”

It was at that moment that transplant shock became my go-to metaphor for everyone and everything in the post-pandemic world, including myself.

This gardenia has a prime spot on our patio in a large decorative pot. Though I was committed to seeing out its destiny, when it became too ugly to justify its occupancy, I pruned every last wilted leaf and brown flower from the tree in an attempt to eliminate the worst blight. The next month, while preparing the patio for a party, my husband suggested we might want to toss the tree. I told him it might not be dead. He looked incredulous. I understood his skepticism. There was nothing about it that connoted a potential for a comeback.

The next week it developed one small green shoot coming out of an otherwise dry branch.

As the months passed, I impatiently and intently studied every green shoot that arrived on my prophetic little transplant-shocked tree and treated them like an answered prayer. It was a visible example of slow growth and the faith to believe something was happening in the soil and roots.

One day, I realized the best, new growth was coming from the neck of the tree and that it was time to prune all the old branches back to the trunk. This was hard. It was not pretty as it was, but at least it was in a shape reminiscent of its initial beauty. Unready to commit to such a drastic action, I pruned everything except for one branch which contained the last remaining evidence of the tree’s original vitality. I was foolishly romanticizing that the new growth and the old branch could somehow meet up and create a pleasant shape.

Months later, I looked at the tree. It had a healthy amount of new foliage at the neck and that stupid-looking singular branch jutting out from its side. I needed to prune the whole branch if I wanted to support the new growth. With equal part reluctance and faith, I took a gardening sheer to it and let it go. There stood an unimpressive and awkward, albeit healthy, tree. It resembled a drawing a first grader might create of a stickman with hair coming straight out of the stick body. No head. No arms. It was nothing like the beautiful, fragrant full-sized topiary I had brought home from the nursery more than a year before.

Stickman lingered and activated my impatience, causing me to study the tree less frequently until, eventually, spring returned. One year after I brought it home, thankfully, it was no longer just a body and a neck; the branches had regrown. Upon the branches, new green leaves made an appearance with renewed vitality. I was content to know we were moving in a positive trajectory. However, I was disappointed that no single bud of flower appeared.

It would be a flowerless spring. Branches and leaves would have to suffice.

I held my breath as winter turned to spring, knowing another year had passed. This month, I look out the doorway and, at first glance, the tree looks about the same as a year ago. Not bad, but will there ever be flowers again?

One sunny day, in between gloomy days, I half-heartedly fertilized it. There was no need to water it as strange, wet weather patterns continue to unfold in Southern California–atmospheric rivers, flash floods, and snow-topped mountains reappearing on Easter. If the sun wishes to come out long enough to warm the tree before the heat of summer, it has the potential to be beautiful and fragrant again. It could thrive.

The other day, from my dining chair, I noticed new, light-green sprouts emerging from darker green leaves. Fertilizer, water, and heat are working and invite me to hope and watch with regularity. Now a part of my morning ritual, just as sure as my cup of coffee, I step outside onto the cold, wet patio to look. Just shy of two years since the transplant shock that resulted in apparent death and definite dormancy, I am fully engaged with renewed hope in the plight of my little tree.

This year, tucked within the light-green growth, 16 blooms are waiting to open.

Waiting, waiting, every day.

And one day, when I step downstairs to brew a cup of coffee, at least one fragrant, white bud will be waiting for me.
People of Abundance in Systems of Scarcity

April 6th, 2024
We are people of abundance.

Christ looked at a hungry crowd, broke five loaves and two fish, and fed a multitude. Later, he broke his body and shed his blood to feed the hungry world.

The Triune God is infinite and eternal with no beginning and no end, the source of all life and creation. Under our infinite Creator, there can be no such thing as scarcity.

But we live in this world, which, since the fall of humanity (Genesis 3) has included sin. With sin comes competition, hoarding, lording over, and oppression. After the fall, human relationships lost their perfect harmony and these relational distortions began to impact human systems from the most fundamental (marriage and family) to the most complex (cultures, countries, institutions).

As Christians, we live stuck between the two realities. We are people of abundance living in systems of scarcity.

We believe in a God who owns the cattle on a thousand hills (Psalm 50:10). We understand generosity and sharing are biblical values (Acts 2). But the lie of scarcity is constantly chasing after us and embedded in the systems we live and work within.

Competition over resources became normative in the human story, even while it is built on an illusion that there is not enough to go around. Each person grabs and takes and steals and strives to survive because we refuse to live by God’s created order. One person hoards and another person has to steal, but God gives to us so we can share with each person according to their need. God then replenishes and refills that which we give away. But we do not trust others to give back to us if we give away, so we feel justified in participating in the scarcity game.

Because sin moves from individuals into systems, the lie of scarcity becomes the bedrock of systemic injustice. Unfortunately, even institutions set up to give out resources or to give away Jesus himself are layered with models of scarcity within and the evil thought that there is not enough to go around. We bury it in “common sense” practices called practicality and frugality. We even dare to call it stewardship. But, search the system to see if anyone is fearful, if anyone’s needs are going unmet, if anyone is lacking dignity, and you will know that you are not operating in godliness. I would be hard-pressed to find a system this side of heaven that does not have at least one, if not all, of these characteristics.

Why did Jesus tell us to pray for daily bread? God’s systems are not like ours. God is not like a socialist government who wants to give each person one loaf of bread. God is not like a capitalist society where each person has to fend for their own bread based on their individual resources to grow capital. Instead, picture God in heaven listening to all the prayers for bread, giving enough for everyone to have bread, as long as we all pass it along and move it freely from one to another. God’s ecosystem is communal. If he wanted it to be individual (just us and God) he would distribute all resources equally. Instead he has created a world where there is enough, and he asks us to represent him on earth in how we handle these resources.

As soon as we begin to tell ourselves that resources are limited, we are in danger. Every impulse to hoard instead of sharing what we have when we have it is based on that same lie. It is surprising how much these lies can influence us.

I believe in abundance with all of my heart, but when I look at systems of scarcity, I begin to grumble. I feel oppressed. I direct my anger at the people withholding instead of bending my knee to the One Who Provides. Putting my focus on the system of scarcity instead of the source of Abundance invites scarcity into my heart, both to rule over me and to shape me. Rather than resisting the false systems, I become tempted to replicate them. Rather than ignoring their false powers, I let them dictate my worth and value. It takes everything in me to realign and resist so that my checkbook is not just for me and my worth is not defined by my paycheck (or lack thereof).

Here are some lies and truths to help us examine our hearts and actions.

Lie #1 – Resources are limited.

Truth #1 – God has unlimited resources. Your resources come from God, the infinite source, not you. (Psalm 50:10)

Lie #2 – If we were treated in the spirit of scarcity, then it’s “fair” for others to go through the same.

Truth #2 – God’s economy operates on generosity and the equal dignity of each person, not “fairness.” (Matthew 20:1-16)

Lie #3 – Resources are just between me and God.

Truth #3 – Resources are meant to be communal. God gives them to us in differing amounts so that we move them where there is need. (Act 2:45)

Lie #4 – If I spend what God has given me, there will be nothing left.

Truth #4 – Resources are meant to be stewarded, not hoarded. When resources are used, God renews resources both directly from him and through others because he is the source. (1 Kings 17:12-14)

Lie #5 – My worth is determined by my net worth as portrayed by the system of scarcity.

Truth #5 – Every person has non-quantifiable worth according to their status as an image-bearer of God. (Genesis 1:27-30)

These lies and truths present a real challenge for us as believers. We knows the truths, but we also believe the lies, which means we have some choices to make.
1. We can choose the most depraved option and embrace scarcity all the time and watch out for just ourselves and our own. (Fortunately, I do not know many people who do this).
2. We can embrace scarcity first and abundance second once we reach a comfortable threshold so that minimal sacrifice or faith is required. In other words, we can see ourselves as the meaingful source (not God). When our abundance is obvious, we can give. (Ex: When I get a raise, I will use it to help others in need)
3. We can embrace the better option and practice generosity within the constraints of systems of scarcity. In other words, we can be individually generous out of whatever we have been given ownership over even when there is no obvious abundance in a limited system. (Ex: As a manager, I will use the funds in my department to give raises to my employees even though expenses are tight)
4. We can embrace the best option and turn to prayer, faith, and trust that if we release resources, God will also release them to us. We can buck the distorted system, live beyond its constraints, and reject its false messages. (Ex: I will spend my last penny for my neighbor and trust God to care for me)
I am working on moving from option 3 to option 4 and believing, in faith, in the God of Abundance rather than bending the knee to the gods of scarcity. It is a daily battle. I understand the illusion that we call reality, but I’m trying to live more deeply out of the reality that some call an illusion.

Photo: I bought these flowers a year ago as an act of faith and hope in God’s abundance and promises. Jesus tells us flowers are God’s sign that God cares for and clothes creation. (Mt 6:28)
We Do Not Have to Accept Death

April 4th, 2024

Last night, a group of people came together to worship God and pray for the things that burden us in our families. We set the table and the Lord prepared a feast.

Beginning with worship, we came to the Lord as we are–broken, hurting, weary. We invited God to take us wherever God wanted and remembered that there is no shortage of the Spirit to rain down on us.

Joy opened us with a powerful confession and repentance time. “We want fire, but we do not want to repent.” In humble contrition, she confessed her own sins so that we all could come openly before God. She reminded us that we are often concerned about our family members without looking at our own sinful hearts.

We looked at the death of Lazarus, the disappointment of Mary and Martha about Jesus’ delay, and the hope they placed in a future resurrection. Meanwhile, Jesus was ready to display his Resurrection identity and power as a disruption to death. He asked them to open the tomb and then declared in a loud voice for Lazarus to come out, and the once decaying Lazarus became a living, breathing, risen man who walked right out of a grave. Jesus then asked them to finish the work and cut off the grave clothes.

Jesus was devastatingly sad about his friend’s death, and he wept. But he did not weep because he was accepting death. He wept because death is wrong. It goes against everything God is and his personal assignment was to reverse it. Because of Christ’s obedience, the things we see as final and irreversible are, in fact, reversible with God. Resurrection changes everything. Jesus demonstrates the glory of God right out of the smelly tomb of death and decay. There is nothing in our lives that his resurrection power cannot transform.

So we turned to God to pray for our families and to “cut off the grave clothes” with one another. We proclaimed and declared the resurrection power of Jesus in the dark, foul, rotting places. It takes courage and risk to remove the stone.

Prayers were prayed for our families as we remembered the power of praying parents and grandparents in our family lines and as we canceled the assignments of the enemy to bring curses instead of blessings.

We blessed one another singing, “May his favor be upon you, and a thousand generations. And your family and your children and their children and their children.” One grandfather blessed grandparents to go and see their most important task as discipling their grandchildren to know Jesus. Pastors caring for families and youth reminded us that our prayers matter. The power of a praying mother and father is real. Christy proclaimed, “We do not have to accept death!” We have been given authority from God and Christ’s blood to pray life for our families and stand against the plans of the enemy. We have not been left defenseless here. Resurrection requires death, but death does not define us.

As the evening drew to a close, there was an opportunity to come forward for healing prayer. Jesus came for the sick, not the healthy, the sinner, not the righteous. We came to the living water for prayer and healing.

This evening was an offering to God. The “golden thread” observed was that God wants to heal us from the trauma that impacts us as the intergenerational family of God. There is healing and power in the name of Jesus. Thanks be to God.

Photo: The cemetery in the town of my maternal grandmother’s ancestry, Agnone, Italy
Nearly Naked and Trying Not to Be Afraid

February 9th, 2024

Have you ever studied a scripture that you could not get out of your head? One that became so clear and so pressing that you had to go on and obey it no matter how inconvenient and abnormal it seemed. I like to think those who follow Jesus are always trying to obey the scriptures, but at certain times, there are invitations that grab ahold of us and just will not let go.

This happened to me a couple of years ago when I noticed, in a new way, Jesus’ radical requirements for sending out his disciples on mission in Mark 6:8-9, “Take nothing for the journey except a staff—no bread, no bag, no money in your belts. Wear sandals but not an extra shirt.” Familiar words. A simple reading allows us to have a basic understanding. They were supposed to rely on others and God, resisting self-reliance.

Profound as it is, this observation might normally manifest in something like a self-check. Am I growing in relying on God and others? Am I too reliant on myself? But this bothered me. I began to realize that I wanted to experience the power and authority that the disciples exercise. Not because I wanted to be powerful, but because the world needs supernatural help–to cast out demons, heal the sick, and receive the good news in the authority of Jesus’ name. I have been told that all believers have Christ’s authority during many sermons and Sunday school lessons. Yet, quite honestly, my ministry hardly resembles that of the disciples. I work through all the vulnerable and dependent parts of ministry and get them out of the way during my fundraising and personal prayer times so I can arrive ready with my skills, my tools, and the authority of my employer. I bring my PCard. I do some good. But I hardly feel like the authentic expression of the power of Jesus on campus or in the world when I do that.

Why? This elicited in me a deep desire and curiosity. Is this a mindset issue? Or something else?

When I read the words of Jesus in Mark I understand that the power and authority of the cosmic God is passed from Jesus to his disciples. That is dangerous. It was dangerous enough when incarnated into Christ and now in Mark 6, he’s giving it to sinful, scruffy humans? How on earth can this be so?

I condense this phenomenon down to two key words. Jesus sends out his disciples in vulnerable dependence.

They are in danger among the elements (no extra clothing), in need of provision, and risk rejection. They are depending on the power of God and the hospitality of others while dressed like shepherds with just a staff. (This uniform cannot be accidental).

I simplify this picture to myself with my two-word refrain.

vul·ner·a·ble, adj, susceptible to physical or emotional attack or harm

de·pend·ence, noun, the state of relying on or being controlled by someone or something else

Putting the two together, Jesus asks his disciples to go out on a trip into strange towns and homes susceptible to harm and relying on, even being controlled by, someone else. In this case, they were relying on strangers and the power and authority of Christ in them.

The shepherds, sent out in the name of Jesus, are also the sheep, lovingly protected and controlled by the staff of their own Shepherd amidst the dangers of the journey.

How terrifying and how beautiful.

Perhaps this sounds crazy and unappealing, but then we have to consider the brilliant quality controls within this model. God’s antidote to human corruption of power is to require that his colossal power and authority, when entrusted to humans, come in a vulnerable package, dependent on others. First a baby, then a crucified carpenter, and, finally, disciples with just a staff and the clothes on their back.

But do we take this seriously? It is no wonder that so many efforts in ministry now have abuses of power and authority connected. How often do we come to preach the gospel in authority given to us by someone other than God and in our self-reliance instead of in the vulnerable dependence Jesus laid out for the disciples? (And we insist upon some fruitful measure of success that neither Jesus in Mark 6:5 nor his disciples in 6:11 are expected to obtain).

And so I obeyed. I undressed. I left my PCard, my email address, my title, and my monthly ministry expenses behind. Ministry has never been comfortable, but I decided to surrender the comforts I had acquired along the journey. My success. My reputation. My significance.

I was worried about who I would become if I kept going with power and the extra tunic. I longed for the kind of pure power and authority that can only come from God, unblemished to heal the world. Because who am I to try to insist that I have Christ’s authority while tucking money in my belt under my overcoat?

It has been a little more than a year. I’m still lightly clothed, vulnerable, and exposed and it’s the hardest thing I have ever done.

Yet, I trust that this journey of decreasing visible treasure is also increasing something invisible, powerful and eternal.

Photo: Oxford, England

September 2022

Day 40

Day 150

Day 260