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I sat down with a girlfriend the other day and we talked about our husbands.  Girlfriends do that, you know.  Sorry guys….but we use one another as sounding boards and function as encouragers as we walk through life together.  But if those of us who are married are honest and are keeping our marriages “best” in mind, we endeavor not to badmouth or bash our husbands but rather ask one another the hard questions, and help one another walk through the difficulties that we face as women and wives.

As I processed our time together, once again, I was reminded of what a great example she was to me in how she processes and maneuvers through difficulties in her marriage.   She’s kind of my hero because she almost always shows grace and kindness to her sweet husband, and when Salsa guy and I have differing views on things I tend to be much more “no nonsense”….perhaps critical and impatient with him.  I so often perceive weakness, flaw and childishness and then get weary and just want to drop-kick him through the goal posts.  HA.  Now that’s a Godly I Corinthians 13 woman for ya!  NOT.   

This particular meeting I was supposed to be functioning as the encourager to her, as she needed a sounding board to process what she was going through.  I don’t know that I helped her much other than to listen, but God sure used her to minister to me.  And isn’t it just like God and His grace to use people when they are struggling and at their weakest to help others?  Because of my friend’s Godly example I walked away with a new conviction to love Salsa Guy less selfishly, and then as I prayed about it God gave me a very clear message that I am to view the act of loving and caring for him as just another act of worshiping the Father.  And isn’t marriage really just another act of worship? Honoring God by our behavior and submitting to His will rather than our own.  HA!….what a concept.  When I view it that way…it’s less about Salsa Guy and more about God…and I think that is going to help me walk through any difficulties better in the future.  It only took 34 years to come up with that one.

It makes me sad that my selfishness often gets in the way of wanting to do the right thing and react in the right way with the person I love most.  But the picture God gave me – showing me that love and patience to the most important person in my life when it is the hardest is the same as sitting in church, raising my hands to the Heavens and singing songs, or listening to a preachers sermon…now that’s revolutionary!  (I’m pretty sure God’s looking down and saying “Big giant duh!”)  I think it will be so much easier to swallow my pride and let down my defenses and show him unconditional love and grace when I view it that way.

It’s interesting…..when I finally figured out that life wasn’t all about me I began to see how flawed I was, in ways that I can’t even begin to imagine.  But I am so grateful that God reveals my flaws and sin to me slowly in small portions.  I continually ask Him to heal my brokenness, and lucky you….now that you’re reading this….you get to watch and see that played out.  I am just so passionately pursuing grace with all my heart in the hopes that I can learn to show it to others….but it’s always hardest at home.  So whether you’re a husband or a wife….keep at it.  Keep pursuing worship in your marriage.  Keep pursuing grace.  And thanks to my sweet friend for being the example.

And I’ll keep praying for our husbands…because even if I may not feel like he is at a particular moment, that Salsa Guy of mine…. he is a gift to me and precious.

Starting a post with a title like that is sure to gain some readers and generate interest, but I promise – this is NOT a post about something that you might find unexpectedly floating in your pool on a warm summer evening. Eeewwwww. No, but I promise you’ll find that this topic eventually winds itself back around to grace.

My sweet mom looked and acted younger than her years, and I made a vow after caring for her in the later years of her life that I would do everything I could in my power to age gracefully like she did.  There’s the G-word again…. grace.  My mom used to say “getting old ain’t for sissies“….a paraphrase from something Art Linkletter once said.  If you don’t know who Art Linkletter is then you probably don’t need to be worrying about aging gracefully, but I’m beginning to understand what she meant.

There’s a phrase I keep bumping into a lot lately that is making my life very uncomfortable, and makes me feel more and more like a sissy.  It’s used most often at medical appointments and usually in the context of describing why something in or on my body is deteriorating or breaking down.  It’s the phrase “as we age“.  It all started when I walked through the golden gates of menopause and began to seek out bio-identical treatments and the wonders of hormonal imbalance were described for me with the opening statement… as we age our bodies stop producing…..well, you get the picture.

Then again, a few years ago when I thought I was going blind.  A big ol’ blur appeared right smack in the middle of my right eye, and I high-tailed it to the ophthalmologist.  This blur appeared out of nowhere when I was driving one day, and then it was gone the next. Was I going crazy? One minute I was asking myself how my vision could have changed so dramatically in such a short time, and then the next I was asking myself if I was just seeing things.  I was wiping spots that weren’t there off of my progressive lenses (progressive is the new hip word for trifocal’s…again, something you get to experience as we age!) and I wasn’t sure if I should be seeing an ophthalmologist or a crazy doctor.

My ophthalmologist is a brainiac, and probably reads the Ophthalmology Quarterly in his spare time, but he did give me good news.  At least I think it’s good news – the news was that I wasn’t crazy.  The bad news was that I suffer from a condition that is pretty common in middle-aged women called floaters.  It always sounds so much more dramatic as we age if you say “suffers from a condition”, doesn’t it?

He explained that floaters in your eyes are basically gel-like thingamabobs called vitreous humor (I find nothing humorous about them) and as we age they thin, detach, and form fibers and float around willy-nilly wherever they darn well please on the surface of your eye.  They’re kind of like ostriches…they have no apparent reason for being here and no purpose other than to cause people to wonder why God invented them.

In trying to keep the moment light-hearted I said to him, “so what you’re saying is that I basically have a big booger floating around on my eye?” The man had no sense of humor (which I find is an imperative quality needed as we age) nor was he amused.  He did inform me that my floater was a bit artistic and beautifully shaped; more wispy than others he had seen and it swirled down and then back up with a trailing tail. How nice. At least I can rest in the knowledge that my floater is a work of art.

Well, I assumed that we could do away with this masterpiece in my eye or auction it off to the highest bidding art collector.  You know….zap it with some cool laser thing or slice it off with an Exacto knife and then list it on Craigslist or something?  No such luck.   Surgery on eye floaters risks the detachment of the retina later on….(wait for it)…as we age…so it’s best to just live with it.

On the up side, the artsy ophthalmologist explained to me that the brain does a really remarkable thing with floaters.  Eventually your brain gets tired of watching the floaters drifting about with nothing important to do all day while it has to work hard, day after day, so it eventually refuses to mentally recognize them or record that they’re there, and you tend not to notice them anymore.  Kind of like accepting the flaw and refusing to make a big deal about it.  My brain apparently isn’t that smart, because that still hasn’t happened to me.

Here’s my thought on floaters and grace.  Wouldn’t it be nice if we all could do that same thing with people? I mean, when we see something in a person that messes with our idea of what ideal is, if only we had the ability to tell ourselves that it’s not all that important to get our panties all tied up in a bunch about, and simply refuse to make them (alias a “floater” in our world) such a big deal.  I know you can’t do that all the time, but in some cases it might just be life changing and save a lot of marriages and friendships.

That would be giving someone something they don’t deserve, right?  Hmmm…that would be the same as grace.  Can we live in a world that does that?  Can we love a God who does that?  He did it for me, so how can I not do it for the person in the cubicle next to me?  Different doesn’t always mean bad.  I say we try to find the good in others around us.  Heck, I mean my floater is tickin’ me off, but hey, at least its artsy!

As a final blow in this aging chapter –  I went to the chiropractor yesterday with various complaints and Dr. Chris (who is barely older than my kids) starts to tell me that when the weather is muggier and the air conditioner is blowing, or the ceiling fan is running all night,…..STOP!  I KNOW WHAT YOU’RE GOING TO SAY!!!!……yep…he said it…..”as we age our bones are more brittle and susceptible to shifting and aching.”  Sigh.  You’re killing me, doc!   I really wanted to slap the young pup, but since he’s such an awesome chiropractor I decided instead to extend him grace.

Sigh.  I’m still a sissy, but I’m working on it, Mom.

I was born with this odd sort of yearning that took me many years to figure out.  I would consider it part of my journey even starting when I was a young girl.   I think that what I’ve come up with in my sage wisdom is that what I’ve been yearning for was a home.  A place I could call home.  A place where I fit in and felt wanted.  I think everyone on this earth is born with that same yearning – to find purpose and meaning, safety and security.   My childhood home  on Silver Spur Road was that place for me in the early part of my search.  It was my refuge.

It was a beautiful yellow ranch house with white shutters that my father designed and helped build.   He was on the roof when my mother went into labor with me in 1956.  It sat on a hill overlooking the city of Los Angeles, and at night you could see the city lights…and the planes landing in the distance at LAX.  It was still removed enough to be in a rural setting where there were horse trails and tranquility.  I lost myself time and time again on those trails when it was just me and my horse, and alone in those moments I had great conversations with God which I found great comfort in.   There were lots of eucalyptus trees lining the streets, and my home was only minutes from the beach.  It was a beautiful place to me.  It didn’t always offer me relief but it was always a great place of comfort.  I could always come back to it with an understanding of the places that my heart had traveled….even as a young adult.  It represented Eden to me; my Eden, and it is etched in my memory always.

I would return to the yellow house often during college and still after I got married, and the yellow house on Silver Spur Road told me that history and the future were not going to engulf me anymore than the river or the valley.  If I allowed my heart to respond to the beauty I found there; and the steadiness of this familiar place then maybe something of the beauty I found there might be built into me too.  I was at home there.  This place meant hope to me…but as with almost everything that has a lifespan, one day the inevitable was lost.

My parents made the decision to sell the family home my father built when I was in my mid-thirties in order to be closer to my family in Northern California.  What?  No!  You can’t sell the family home.  Yep….they did, and a short time later complete strangers were going to move in and take what was once mine.  As quickly as I could I dragged my 6 month pregnant self out to the car and made the 8 hour trek home to say my goodbyes to the house that played a huge part in building me.

As I walked around the house that October weekend, I stopped to lay my hand on the fireplace mantle in living room – the same place where many a prom photo was taken.  I stood at the stove in the center of the kitchen where I had learned to cook (well, sort of) and where I watched my mom make goulash and bacon and eggs.  I giggled when I walked into the laundry room, as memories of the holidays flooded over me when my dad would convert the top of the washer and dryer it into a makeshift bar….where the liquor of adults meshed with the hopes of childish dreams.

I lingered in the family room – a focal spot of our family, and I could picture where our first black and white TV sat and where I watched Saturday morning cartoons.  Later we would be one of the first on our block to have a color TV.   It was also there in that room that my mom actually told me the truth about Santa Claus.  I can remember it as if it were yesterday.  It was the week before Christmas and my childhood doubts made me ask her if there really was a Santa Claus.  She asked me if I really wanted to know, and I was in too deep to say “No….I was just kidding.  I don’t want to know….at least not until next month.”   What was she thinking – telling me the truth right before Santa was suppose to come down the chimney?”   It was also in that same room during college when I came home late on a Friday night for a weekend and as I babbled on about something I thought was significant in my life I ran to the sliding glass door and flung it open, calling for our family dog to come in from the yard.  I realized, slowly, when he didn’t come running as he always did, and as I turned to my mom the tears in her eyes told me without a word that Loki had died while I was gone.

Then I walked down the hall where on rainy days we kids would close all the sliding doors so it was pitch black, turn out the lights, and play hide n seek down that long hallway.  I was a master at walking up the walls with my hands and feet on each side – all the way up to the ceiling so no one could ever figure out where I went.   My bedroom was the last one on the right, so I sat down on the bed to reflect on all that this room had meant to me.   Among the packed boxes, mirrors and pictures that leaned up against the wall – if  I closed my eyes I could see a crib against the wall where I slept as a baby and where I caught my fat, chubby leg in its rungs as a 1 year old.  And over there was where the corner desk painted with 4 layers of paint sat, where I did my homework  for so many years.  And where were all the psychedelic posters of the 70’s that said “make love – not war“?  My mother wisely told my Grandmother that her little girl of 10 really didn’t know what that meant.   I practiced guitar there in that room and curled my hair in the yellow framed mirror on the wall.  That’s exactly what I was doing when the mirror began to sway in the early morning of February 9, 1971 as I was preparing for early morning basketball practice and the big 6.4 earthquake hit the Los Angeles area.  And there next to my bed would have sat one of my favorite gifts that my parents gave me as a teenager; on my 16th birthday I got my very own push button yellow princess phone with my own phone number!  Can you imagine?  Independence!  It would have been the equivalent of getting my own cell phone today.   And finally, if I kept my eyes closed long enough I could see the bright colors; the yellows and greens and oranges and pinks of the patchwork guilt bedspread that my mom made me when I went away to college. Sigh.  So many memories.  It was hard to leave the house that weekend.

It’s been 26 years since that day, and I’ve driven past the house on Silver Spur Road a few times since when I journeyed back. Only once did I dare attempt to knock on the door and ask the new owners if I might come in and say hello to my old childhood house.  There’s a great song recorded by Miranda Lambert called “The House That Built Me” (hence, where I got that phrase from) that reminds me of that interaction, although it didn’t go quite as well nor were the circumstances in my life as dramatic, but it speaks to me nonetheless:

“The House That Built Me”

I thought if I could touch this place or feel it
this brokenness inside me might start healing.
Out here its like I’m someone else,
I thought that maybe I could find myself.
If I could just come in I swear I’ll leave,
Won’t take nothing but a memory
from the house that built me.

Mama cut out pictures of houses for years.
From ‘Better Homes and Garden’ magazines.
Plans were drawn, concrete poured,
and nail by nail and board by board
Daddy gave life to mama’s dream.

I thought if I could touch this place or feel it
this brokenness inside me might start healing.
Out here its like I’m someone else,
I thought that maybe I could find myself.
If I could just come in I swear I’ll leave,
Won’t take nothing but a memory
from the house that built me.

You leave home, you move on and you do the best you can.
I got lost in this whole world and forgot who I am.

I thought if I could touch this place or feel it
this brokenness inside me might start healing.
Out here its like I’m someone else,
I thought that maybe I could find myself.
If I could walk around I swear I’ll leave,

Won’t take nothing but a memory
from the house that built me.

I wish I could tell you that the lady of the house flung the front door open and willingly invited me in, acknowledging that my history with the house was far more important than hers.  Not so much.  I mean, that’s what I would have done.  The reality of that interaction and the times we live in is that she was pretty suspicious when she opened the door.  I told her who I was and asked if I might just pop my head in and see the old house again….and you could tell that she really didn’t want to.  It was awkward but she reluctantly let me in.  I felt bad for her.  How many times had we opened those front doors to strangers who had broken down on the road below?  Or taken in someone who needed help?   So I quickly passed through the main living areas, not daring to even ask to see my old bedroom.  I felt as if I was imposing on their privacy, but wanted to take in just some little pieces of my past to fill any holes or cracks that I was feeling at that time of my life.  But the house wasn’t the same.  My Dad had taken great pride in keeping the place and the yard well groomed and manicured – now it looked as if it hadn’t been cared for as well.  The beautiful yellow color had been changed to a drab grey.  Nothing stays the same.   My Eden, once again, seemed lost.

So what do I do when I can’t find my Eden here on this earth?  I think that’s what propelled me to seek.  When hope is lost I found that I need to make a conscious choice to keep my heart focused on the only sure future God has promised me….the memory and hope of the real Eden.   The memory of it is what I mentioned before – I think we all have a hidden secret memory of Eden within each of us.  It’s what the Master Designer put in each and every one of our hearts, and that’s what became that yearning I spoke of.  What I’ve learned is that with that memory of Eden there’s no reason for me to feel uncomfortable in this place so marred and filled with stench of the fall.  It’s Eden’s memory, a place we’ve never been but know in our hearts and built into each of us that invites our hearts to faith.  That’s what the house on Silver Spur Road did for me….it started me on my journey of faith, and that’s why I loved it so.

This whole concept of yearning keeps coming back around for me.  I look back on my childhood and I remember that even at an early age I yearned for relationship in my attempt to find home.  I’m realizing that this yearning placed deep in my soul for a place was actually carefully placed there by God to point me to Him.  Those longings and feelings of incompleteness I’ve felt all my life were designed by God and ingrained in me to ache for a person and a home.  I confused the house on Silver Spur Road as that place for a time.  But now I’ve realized that the home I’m aching for isn’t here.  What I was made for….that fulfills both the relationship and home I’m looking for is Heaven.  HA!

Isn’t God gracious to allow me to figure that out?  It’s my hope that the Father would use this longing within my heart for home to help empower me to live in a way that brings Him joy and pleasure.  For me, He is the source of all the pleasure and delight in the world today.  I hope grace captures you as well, and you find the person and place that your heart was designed to yearn for.  And here’s to grace for the journey.

I find that I have the most trouble extending grace to those who I live with.  That troubles me.  It upsets me.  If I’m to be a blogger about grace and yet can’t show my husband grace on a consistent basis….what the heck am I doing blogging?

The kids have all moved out and Salsa guy and I are empty nesters and I’m thinking this is the time we’re going to cherish together – rediscovering one another.  I mean, I’ve got a pretty great reputation around these parts of being a kind and gracious woman of God, offering grace to those around me as if I were spreading bread crumbs to the ducks at the lake.  But the problem is….my husband doesn’t necessarily think I’m full of grace.  In fact, he thinks I’m critical and unyielding.  What?….me critical?  But everyone else thinks I’m great!  What’s wrong with that picture?  It baffles me, and I’ve tried to balance being honest and being full of grace at home.  But sometimes the wheels fall off and I wonder if its just one of those things.  “It is what it is”.

You hear that phrase a lot these days.  “It is what it is”.   I think it means that we’ve tried but nothing has changed and it seems that there’s just nothing we can do about whatever situation we’re in.  “It” is just how it is and “it’s” not going to change.   But is that always the way it has to be?  Here’s another way to put it….the truth of who we are (the ugliness) before the ugliness encounters  grace = “what it is”.

So here is what is bothering me…..I’m really good at showing grace to those around me that I don’t share a roof with.  The people who try my patience.  The people who try to manipulate me.  The people who aren’t genuine and feel entitled.  The people who need attention and do things to get it.  The people (Christians specifically) who talk about God and yet they don’t “get grace” yet.  I’m patting myself on the back as I write this.  I think I’m pretty darn amazing.  But the truth of the matter is that once I walk through the door of my own house things can quickly go downhill and the man I love the most can test my patience and tolerance and the threads of grace come unraveled at a frightening pace.  This drives me crazy and I feel a bit of a fraud.  It saddens me and tugs at my heart.  Why can I be so good at showing grace to those in my world that I bump into, and yet the one who knows me the most intimately doesn’t see the grace in me that I’m blogging about.  What is wrong with that?  I plan on getting to the bottom of this!

What I’m learning is that the hardest people to be gracious to are my family – especially Salsa guy.  The more I know about people the harder it is for me to give them the benefit of the doubt.  If you’re a perfect stranger, I can be kinder to you than I am to my husband.  You can be mean and ugly in a particular situation and I can say “bless their heart…they must have had a bad day”.  However, if you’re Salsa guy then I’m thinking you’re being selfish and self-centered.  If you’re in need, I’ll be the hands and feet of Jesus and spend all the time you need to mentor you, encourage you….but if you’re Salsa guy I’ll think you’re needy and childish and you need to grow up.  If you’re trying to manipulate me and I see through you, I’ll still put my arms around you and take it, knowing that you’re a work in progress and on a journey with God, but if you’re Salsa guy I’ll roll my eyes and call you on it.  When it’s my husband I don’t want to give him the benefit of the doubt because he doesn’t deserve it.  I know the truth about him!  The truth of the matter is that the more truth I have on you the less I’m able to offer you grace.

No one can send me into a tizzy faster than Salsa guy.   I see what you’re trying to do!  You’re trying to trick me and change the subject.  You’re trying to take the heat off of you and send it back on me.  How did you do that?  We were talking about flawed you and now we’re talking about perfect me.  It works every time.  How did he do that?  Then doubt and shame and confusion seep in and I have no idea what we were talking about in the first place before I wanted to drop kick you into the Pacific Ocean.

Have you ever had this happen to you?…..someone comes up to you and comments about how great your kids are, or how wonderful your wife is, or what a blessing your mother is to them….and you’re thinking “REALLY?”  Are you talking about MY kids?  You can’t be talking about my wife…the one who is nagging me to clean out the garage.  What?  My mom?….the one who is always making me feel like I’m not good enough with her criticism.  The dirty details and the behind the scenes stuff comes to the forefront of our mind because the more facts we know about the people we live / lived with, the more frustrated we can get with them.  The bottom line is that we’re really good at being full of grace when we don’t know the truth about you.

When I see my husband’s sin and I feel I need to be truthful with him, I’m much better at being truthful than I am at showing grace.  My tact and wisdom in timing my words might not always be perfect.  On the other hand, when I’m really plugged in to the Holy Spirit and I’m doing really well at showing him grace, then I’m not good at being truthful with him.  Ugh.  It’s a vicious cycle.  I tend toward being one or the other.  When I’m really on my A game and I’m really doing a great job at balancing 50% grace and 50% truth with Salsa guy…he thinks that I’m a pretty fabulous wife and we get along great.  But that’s not how it’s supposed to be.  I’d really like it if I weren’t balancing 50/50 between grace and truth.  I’m supposed  to be 100% grace and 100% truth – both at the same time.

The journey I’m on is learning to do both really well at the same time.  The only person I know who is really great at doing both at the same time is Jesus.  He knows the wretchedness of my heart.  He knows everything about me, yet he extends grace to me.   He knows what I’ve done, what I’m doing, what I’m gonna do, and has all the dirt on me and yet He still says “I like you!  Let’s hang out.  We’ll work on things together.”  Always extending His grace to me, and working with me to be a changed person despite the conniving, manipulating, selfish, peculiar self that I can be.  He sees the fraud that I am, but He functions FULL of both grace and truth as he walks alongside me, transforming me day-by-day.  AMAZING!  That’s grace.

Is there a way to live in community within our marriage, our churches, our schools, our neighborhoods more relationally – showing grace and truth at the same time?  At no time in Jesus’ life were grace and truth “balanced”…. they were just married and worked together perfectly at the same time at 100% all the time.  If He can see right through our distractions and our manipulation and still offers us grace, is it possible for me to discover that for myself?  Or is this just one of those “it is what it is” things that will never change?

Here’s what I’m learning about change:  It doesn’t have to be “what it is”.  I CAN be different.  It may take time and effort, but as I study grace and learn from it, it can change to “what it can be” .  HA!  That is AMAZING!   That’s the kind of person I want to be.  Transformed by Jesus.  Full of grace AND full of truth.  A “what he can be” wife.  I want to see past the truth about him and see who and what he can be (righteous and holy) and “take it” and love him and give him the benefit of the doubt and see him as God sees him….what he can be.  Every life is transformable.

That’s my goal for the coming months.  Salsa guy may not be who he should be….but I’m not either.  But he also isn’t who he used to be and he’s changing and this is part of his journey with Christ.  It’s a process for him and part of his journey.  Where Salsa guy is right now is not where he’s going to end up.  He’s growing.  So am I.

There you have it.  Truth and grace…married 100% together.   And grace to Salsa guy.   All the time.  It’s no longer “It is what it is”….but it’s now “It is what it can be”.

I’m just now recovered enough from my week in Washington Heights, NY working with Operation Exodus to form a cognitive thought and to sit down and put thought to paper.  Our theme while we were working with inner city kids in New York was “A Story Teller’s Adventure“.  We walked the kids through books that are mysteries and stories that need solving, all the while weaving the thread of how God is writing OUR story (which can be a mystery in of itself) as we journey through life.  It was crazy preparing for that week and somewhere in all the stress of planning and preparing I lost my mind, and I gotta tell ya….I’m exhausted.  Even before I stepped foot on the plane….I was exhausted.  Can you imagine how God feels?

I will say that my story and how it intertwines with the ministry there is so less taxing than the stories that God is writing in the lives of the tutors at Operation Exodus.  These young people – mostly Dominican or Puerto Rican in their early 20’s – live in the heart of an urban city where life isn’t always as easy as the suburbia that I live in and they have to live their faith actively on a daily basis.  I don’t know if I have to do that all that often.  I mean, I have a pretty cush life here in No. California….I drive a nice car, have my family around me, and other than perceived “hardships” I really don’t have to practice living moment by moment in my faith.  Sure, my faith touches everything I do ….but I don’t have to rely on it quite as much as some of the kids and tutors there in Washington Heights and Inwood.

It reminds me of believers that travel from Africa to serve as missionaries here in the United States.   Now that’s a shift!  For two hundred years and more, Western nations have sent Christian missionaries to the continent of Africa.  Now, in a remarkable turn of events, Africans are sending missionaries to us.  It’s a sign that the center of gravity in world Christianity is shifting away from Europe and the United States to places where its people HAVE to live their faith day by day in the reality of poverty and death, witchcraft and magic, and disease. We have become mission fields to them.  I would suggest it is because we are complacent and too comfortable in our Christian faith.

So what does that have to do with Operation Exodus and story telling?  Well, each and every one of the tutors that teach at Operation Exodus are SO committed to their faith – they’re SOLD OUT to God’s faithfulness – not because someone told them to believe that way but because they have had to live it and rely on it in their own lives in a personal way.  They’ve either lost parents, or have family members in gangs or who have been gunned down on the streets, or have siblings from different fathers, or have family who live on the streets, or have friends living a promiscuous lifestyle, or expectations are that they won’t graduate from High School.  You name it – they’ve had to deal with it a whole lot more than I have and they all have stories…great stories of God’s redemptive power.

So that means they’re all writers!  Writing stories that don’t match the norm of where they live.  Writing stories of a better way to live life.  Making a difference in the lives of young kids by mentoring them in a program that gets them off the streets and directs them to their Creator and gives them tangible tools to succeed in life.  And it’s hard and exhausting and yet they continue to walk alongside these children – day by day, and sometimes on Saturdays, and then they spend several nights a week at their churches worshipping God (mind you…not for just the 90 min. every Sunday that we here are accustomed to but more like 3 hours on a Sunday morning), growing in their own character and living a lifestyle that far outshines my feeble faith.  They are writing their own personal stories…and helping the kids at Operation Exodus to write theirs.  And it’s exhausting, but they live for storytelling…and they’re so good at it.

The grace part of this is that the heartbeat of Christianity is being awakened by God, whether you live in California or the Inner City of New York, sought out by His relentless love despite our tendency to wander, despite whether we worship for 90 minutes or 180 minutes, and then by God’s grace making a difference.  Its amazing and I am in awe and overwhelmed by being forgiven.  It makes me whole, which makes me more helpful in this world and helps me understand this grace thing, which better enables me to serve others.

Operation Exodus tutors!  You ROCK…..and I was honored to work alongside you all.

A co-worker of mine had this impressive list on her office door entitled “10 Requirements To Be An Effective Believer”.  I was so captivated by it, because until I stumbled on to grace I would never have been able to get past even Number 1.

I googled the list it but I haven’t been able to find its author. It sounds like Tim Keller, but I couldn’t authenticate it.

As I look over the list it hits me that there are a lot of Christians that have trouble getting past even Number 1 on the list.  I know it took me awhile because the more life is about you, the less you recognize what’s right in front of your face.

The other thing I figured out is that each requirement builds on the next – you won’t get Number 2 until you first get to a place where you’ve completely embraced or understand Number 1, and so on.  The list isn’t for everyone, but it’s my hope it will be for you.

Personally, I struggle the most with Number 3 and Number 4…and sometimes Number 9 (when it applies to Salsa Guy).

Number 10 is the reason I blog.   Enjoy, and let me know what you think:

10 Requirements For Being an Effective Believer

1. A personal understanding of my own sinfulness

2. An overwhelming sense of God’s grace for me, and for everyone

3. A heart that forgives and forgets

4. An absence of agenda

5. An expectation that God is already in the world…I’m joining Him there – not taking Him there

6. A sense of the church as the body of Christ Universal

7. An insatiable curiosity for all that is not yet known to me

8. A belief in the intrinsic value of every of every human life

9. An assumption that I have something to learn from everybody

10. A deep and abiding desire for everyone to know what God has done for them through Christ

I love how God can use even our selfish motivations for His glory.  Such is the case with my involvement in a wonderful ministry in New York called Operation Exodus.

Much of my younger life was filled with feelings of entitlement and pity parties. One of those areas that I felt entitled was travel. “I’m the only person I know that hasn’t been to Hawaii!  I never get to travel anywhere.”  I remember some of those words coming out of my mouth, and God, in His sovereignty probably rolled His eyes and shook His head and mumbled something like “Kris, Kris, Kris! REALLY? You’re going to play that card?”…when what He probably really wanted to do was drop-kick me.   Just another time I’m sure I grieved the Holy Spirit.

Grace comes into this story (as it always does) by the Father allowing me to slowly learn a great lesson once I started to put other people first.  I’ve now been to 3 of the Hawaiian Islands, Alaska, Mexico, the Bahama’s, to many states in the U.S. and ya know what….they’re just places.  None are quite as pretty as Lake Tahoe.  So what I built up in my head as something that I deserved – I really didn’t need.  Oh, they were nice and the experience was fun, but God doesn’t owe me anything.

Fast forward to 2009 where I am facilitating mission trips at work that deal with an organization called Mission To The World.  By then I had been to Mexico to build homes for needy folks for several years and had begun to catch on to what ministry to others felt like (putting others before myself) and God was gently directing my heart to embrace serving others. It was exhilarating and new and it felt really good.  That’s what happens when you take your eyes off of yourself.

I was challenged via Skype by my dear friend Bobbi Jo at MTW when she said “Why don’t YOU go on a short-term mission trip, Kris?” I quickly  informed her that I had been serving in Mexico for years, but she persisted in encouraging me to stretch myself out of my comfort zone.  My boss (gosh darn him!) supported Bobbi Jo and also encouraged me to go.  Really?….I was a middle-aged woman and where would I go?

When Bobbi Jo informed me that she was the Director of MTW Missions to Asia, Europe and New York City… well my ears perked up when I heard New York!  What was this?…a Broadway play mission trip?   I had always wanted to travel to The Big Apple and here was my chance!  This was something I could embrace AND look good at the same time because people would think I was being self-less by doing ministry!  And it was certainly less threatening than Asia and less scary than traveling to Europe by myself.   WooHoo….sign me up, baby!

Thus began a love affair with a broken and beautiful city that would rock my world and change my life.  I packed my bags that first year and headed to New York for a week and worked alongside Bobbi Jo and the tutors at Operation Exodus, feeding 45 volunteers daily and watching the most amazing young people in the inner city of Washington Heights do an amazing job teaching and mentoring kids.  These tutors, many who have been through OE themselves as kids, walk alongside the local Dominican and Puerto Rican children and teach them how to better themselves, and how to make a difference for the gospel.  In an area where gangs and drugs and teenage pregnancy rates are high, the tutors at OE help build Christian character, and focus on academics in a program that has seen phenomenal high school graduation results in the past 14 years.

I fell in love and have been going back the past 5 years, taking with me teams of people each summer whose lives are forever changed by the ministry. You go thinking you’re going to help these kids, but you walk away finding that God is teaching you way more about yourself than you could ever teach these children.  And isn’t that what grace is?  Getting something you weren’t expecting?   Even a middle-aged gal…traipsing around NY like a teenager.  HA!….Ya gotta love it!

OK – this is the part where I have to “fess up”.  I have to admit that I’ve been to a few Broadway plays while there, so don’t hate me because I’m Broadway saavy.   It’s what God lured me to New York with in the midst of my selfishness and so I feel like I should honor Broadway plays by seeing a show now and then.  That, or at least a Yankees or Mets game.  Are you buying this?  Yeah…no – me neither.

So anyway….I’m heading there again at the end of the week to work again with these delightful kids.  If you think of it, pray for a safe trip, lots of great stories about God’s grace, as well as my ability to lead our team of 14.  Each team going this summer will be teaching on a different genre of books;  historical fiction, mystery, biographies, science and technology, etc.  Our team will be teaching on mysteries, writing stories and how God writes OUR story.  We have been busy preparing, but I sometimes get all wrapped up in  the plans that go along with making this a successful trip, when my first priority should be to pray.  I always want to be reminded that I’m not in charge – it’s God’s gig and it’s His party.

Speaking of parties….this will be the first year that we are in the Big Apple when our country celebrates our Independence on July 4th.  That will be a treat!  Undeserved….but a treat nonetheless.  Follow along on the fun as I blog my way through New York next week with Operation Exodus.  Grace…and Broadway plays.