This Week's Read: Godspeed

Sometimes as believers, just figuring out why God has us where He has us is half the battle, isn't it? A young mom might feel trapped and useless in and amidst days overflowing with diapers and the ever-present dirt and mess that accompanies the raising of small children. At the same time, the truck driver nearing retirement age might be struggling to understand why a door to reaching others around him seems firmly shut. 

The dentist can feel largely ineffective, as can the clothing store manager, the teacher, and the college student. If each of us is supposed to be living with a mission in mind, what exactly does that look like right here, where God has me today?

Affiliate links below. Disclosure here.

I'd been a fan of pastor Britt Merrick's sermons and books when Godspeed: Making Christ's Mission Your Own was released. Britt had been preaching through the pain of the loss of his own daughter Daisy to cancer, and we were battling our personal ills at the time, as well. God let Britt step into our lives just when we needed to hear what he was saying. 

But when Godspeed launched, the Merricks were deep into Daisy's fight with the cancer that eventually claimed her life, and Godspeed went quietly into the bookstores with not a lot of fanfare.

That's unfortunate because Godspeed: Making Christ't Mission Your Own is an excellent, engaging, tightly constructed book that is appropriate and helpful reading for pretty nearly everyone. No joke. We chose to use it with our community group shortly after I read it the first time, and that group could not have been a more eclectic bunch. We were comprised of two middle-aged married couples, three college students, two single moms, two single women, and a high schooler. We had medical professionals, homeschooling moms, administrative assistants, baristas, and one woman awaiting a sentencing for a felony crime. And yet, Godspeed spoke to each of us, individually, right where we were.

Would you, too, like to know how you can be a part of the grand and beautiful plan of redemption? How to recognize the unique mission God has given you? Be encouraged that you have been made for such a time as this? Start here. 



Hope For Parenting the Extraordinary

Before Mighty Joe came along and fought the Enterovirus, I had no real understanding of seizures and medical issues and pretty much anything parents of kids with special needs go through. Joe has fewer "issues" then other kids with brain damage to the extent of his, but we still live our lives in a flux state that has to allow for what happened this morning.

I'm going to spare you the details, but here's what's good for folks without special needs in their homes to know: We parents with these extraordinary kiddos never get to turn off. 

Remember when you had a toddler or two? Remember how you always had to have an ear and an eye cocked in order to know what exactly they were doing at all times? This is the unrelenting reality of the parent of a child with special needs. There is no "off". 

I won't drag you into a pity party because Joe is now 9 and this has been our 9-year reality. It has actually been my 24-year reality because of the older kids and their toddler years that just all smooshed into Joe's life. He's the preschooler that doesn't progress. 

It doesn't end.

I sit with my closest friend-mom-of-a-child-with-special-needs and we spill our frustrations and joys. Kid you not, last night she texted me at 11:30 PM from the ER because her 18-year-old mentally retarded daughter got a ring stuck so firmly on her finger, it turned purple and took an entire ER team an hour to get the offending ring off while she spit in anger and kicked her mother and sister and screamed. 

This morning I texted her that Joe had just finished an 8-minute seizure that showed no signs of stopping until I pushed his heavy body onto its side so I could get the emergency meds suppository administered (that was fun) and watch him come down from the convulsing that left a huge, foaming pool of spit all over him and a sore hand that smacked the wall repeatedly before I got to him and held it down.

Neither my friend nor I know when the next event like these will occur. There is no "off". 

Joe is in the bath as I'm writing this. My day has had to change, from plans to be out and accomplishing tasks to what I can get done while keeping my ears and eyes wide open on him. 

Where is the hope for parents on seizure watch and parents of toddlers and parents of adult kids with the mentality of a preschooler? We're all parenting the extraordinary in one way or another. Where is the hope for me?

Hope always, always, always abounds in the goodness of God. I'm not one for prescribing anything, because I well know after years spent placing my hope in methods and "prescriptions" that the only true hope is in what God has done for us, but if you need a tool of ministry, there is no better RX than the Word of God. Start here?

Many are saying of my soul,
‘There is no salvation for him in God.’
But you, O Lord, are a shield about me,
my glory, and the lifter of my head.
I cried aloud to the Lord,
and he answered me from his holy hill.
I lay down and slept;
I woke again, for the Lord sustained me.
I will not be afraid of many thousands of people
who have set themselves against me all around.
— Psalm 3:2-6, ESV

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We're All Messed Up, and I'm Not Just Saying That

Pontoon - Sandy Cove

Christendom is full of messed up, broken, needy people.

That guy you think for sure has all of his ducks in a tidy little row and singing out of the hymnal every Sunday morning and in church on time? He's messed up, too. I confidently know this and my expertise is backed up by decades of experience in a variety of churches, but then last week my husband Fletch and I spoke at a family camp all the way across the country and let me say this again in case you doubt: Christendom is full of messed up, broken, needy people.

The 600 people we hung out with at Sandy Cove's homeschool family camp were not more messed up and broken than any others, but like us, they are really good at the "shiny, happy people" masquerade. And then we got up on that stage on Monday morning and just put all our own messed up, broken, neediness out there, and it began what was at first a slow trickle of the broken, messed up, and needy moms, dads, brothers, and sisters that grew day by day into a deluge of the most sinful junk and yuck hidden beneath years of shiny, happy Christianity and laid bare at our feet. And we wept.

How have we missed the truth of the gospel in this? The truth that Jesus paid it all, just for us? The truth that He weeps over us, not because we are messed up, broken, and needy, but because He is the answer, the way, the truth, and the life, and we sit in our musty little corner polishing our shiny, happy people idols and missing all the fullness of everything He is. 

And aren't you tired of it all?

Laughing - Sandy Cove

Laughing - Sandy Cove

After we spoke about shifting our hope off of Jesus Christ and onto, oh, everything and anything else, we followed up with a session on what it looks like when we live remembering how loved we are by God, and then a session on living confessionally, with all our stuff out there, living lives of authenticity, and then a big, loud, beautiful reminder of how very much loved by God we are.

Many of the people there were tired of it all.

They came wounded, bleeding, hemorrhaging. They waited by our door in the morning and grabbed us on the way to breakfast. They scooted their chairs next to us as the salad was just about to hit our lips. They even pounded on our door late one night in a last attempt to confess and break through the chains of addiction that had bound them for years and years and years. 

Cargo Net - Sandy Cove

Cargo Net - Sandy Cove

And lest you be tempted to think it must just have been this wacky group of people out there in Maryland, let me reiterate: We're all messed up. And I'm not just saying that.

Isn't it grand? It is, because >>> Jesus <<<. Because the gospel. Because the truth that there is not one of us who does good except for our loving and generous and perfect savior, Jesus Christ, and we get to lean in, hide under his wings, and be seen by the God of the universe as complete and whole and not messed up.

How does that change the way we think about Jesus? About the good news of his death and resurrection? Does it make it truly good news? It makes it great news. Excellent news. Perfect love and grace for messed up, broken, needy people. Like me.

Sunset across the bay - Sandy Cove

Sunset across the bay - Sandy Cove