What to do when the A.F.R. has hit the fan

Today is the Monday before Fall Break begins on Thursday. And as is the case on most college campuses before break, all the professors got together and decided that the most delicious form of torture for college students would be to coordinate syllabi so that all the exams, all the projects, all the papers, all of the big-ticket assignments would come due at the same time. And of course every professor or instructor treats his or her assignment as the most important, expecting you the student to do the same. Even if you are only enrolled in basket-weaving 101, that instructor’s attitude toward that class is that it is the most vital to your entire educational career, even if you should go on to pursue a PH. D. in aero-dynamics. It’s just the culture of academia.

Returning students have learned to greet the days before Fall Break with the grim resignation to hunker down, bury themselves in the library or dorm room, and grind through each intellectual obligation until all are completed. Freshmen are more like deer caught in headlights. For a few brief moments they hyperventilate, and then, after chatting with friends, parents, and pastors, discover that the devastation can be survived. Then they too, hunker down. If you are a college student reading this, you didn’t need me to tell you that the A.F.R. (I learned this term on TV last night when a resort worker was explaining what happens when a kid poops in the pool—it’s called “accidental fecal release.” Cool huh?) has hit the fan. You are living it.

And as I was pondering A. F. R. this morning during my run, I began to wonder as my breath formed a foggy mist in front of my face if toots (passing gas, farts, tooties, whatever) would also form a lovely foggy mist in the cold air. Can you tell I hang around college students? I share this for two reasons: First I think it is hilarious! Second, when we are going through tough times we need help to get through, to persevere, to survive. Humor has always done it for me. I often tell my students that in the body of Christ I am the funny bone. My bizarre thought process on how we survive the tough times is actually related to Philippians 4:11-13, a familiar scripture that I have been pondering for the last several days:

For I have learned to be content with whatever I have. I know what it is to have little, and I know what it is to have plenty. In any and all circumstances I have learned the secret of being well-fed and of going hungry, of having plenty and of being in need. I can do all things through him who strengthens me.

There is a Veggie-Tales video that explores this verse. Larry the cucumber asks Bob the tomato if it means that through Christ he can be a chicken, because he always wanted to be a chicken. Well, no. It doesn’t mean that. Usually we take it to mean that we can do anything for God through the strength of Jesus Christ. And yes, that is true. We can do anything God asks us to do relying on His strength. But we usually look at this text through the lens of the American Dream, meaning that if we don’t like the situation we are in, with God’s help and our own will-power we should be able to fix it. We kinda are the “fix-it” nation. We hate to be uncomfortable, and we avoid pain at all costs. However, this is not the way of the Gospel, certainly not the way of Jesus who did not run away from the cross but chose it because he loves us and knew there could be no resurrection, ultimate defeat of sin, death, and evil, without it.

At the heart of the Gospel is the good news that Jesus transforms the bad into the good. Not by running away, but by enduring, and pushing through. Somehow the power of Jesus infused into our lives gives us the ability to do the same, to persevere and push through. And through His grace, our worst experiences can be transformed through the power of His love and resurrection into something of eternal beauty. Don’t ask me how He does it; I just know that he does. And He does it not by removing us from the difficulty but by strengthening us within the difficulty. Now don’t get me wrong; I do believe in miracles and deliverance. But I also know that God doesn’t choose to answer every difficulty we encounter in this way. What He does give us every time is the strength to be okay in the midst of A.R.F.’s and quickly whirling objects (i.e. fans). The good news is that no matter what circumstances we find ourselves in, God is able to sustain us while we are in them. He helps us get through them. He makes us able to praise Him on the other side. So thankful. Honestly I’d rather have the American Dream, but I’m so thankful I have His grace instead. He’s gotten me through a lot.

And so my dear ones, do not be discouraged. In a matter of days Fall Break will be here, and you will be able to rest from your basket weaving 101 adventures. Just know that the God who loves you is with you, to strengthen you and to bring good out of you and through you. And in His grace you will see your toughest trial transformed into something of eternal beauty for His glory.

This is me trusting,

Sami

Loosey Goosey Religion

I get how crazy life is. On Sunday the pastor at the church I attend was commenting on someone he met who just wasn’t into “organized religion.” His reply to the person was, “That’s okay because our church is disorganized religion.” My thought was, “he just thinks he’s seen disorganized religion. He hasn’t been to the Wesley Foundation yet.” Anyone who has been a part of our ministry at all knows just how unorganized we can get. There is some sense of organization there; it’s just all loosey-goosey. And God has been showing me that this is okay.

There is so much pressure during this segment of life to be regimented, to have a life plan, to know where you are headed with finely crafted steps lined out for getting there. And I must admit, living with intentionality is a powerful thing during the young adult years. I mean, you have within you the capacity to set the trajectory for what will follow. Being intentional is a good thing. During my university experience class as we talked of time-management I encouraged my students to harness the power of intention. I asked each of them to make a list of what is most important in their lives. Then I asked them to consider how they spend their time in any given week. My next question was to examine how much the way they spent their time reflected the important things in their lives. If there was a discrepancy, I challenged them to make changes that would incorporate their life values into their actual living.

And because I don’t think it is fair to ask my students to do something I am unwilling to do myself, I have been pondering my own ability to harness the power of intention. In fact I spent quite a bit of time wrestling with this question of my own intentions. To be honest, the experience left me unsatisfied, feeling like I was trying to fill a bottomless pit. However, in the middle of my ponderings grace gave me a different perspective. The new question that came to my spirit was this: “What are Your intentions, Lord?” This is not the same thing as, “What is Your will for my life?” Trying to find God’s will has been an integral part of my life for a long time. Rather this comes from the assumption that the things we are intentional about yield something later on. For instance, if I harness the power of intention to study hard, I will yield good grades. If I harness the power of intention to spend time with the people I love on a regular basis, the yield is better relationships. It is another way of saying that we reap what we sow (also something the pastor talked about on Sunday.) My question of God was thus one of asking what had He been sowing in me that were now yielding fruit. Also, what is He sowing now that would yield fruit later? And finally is the big one, what does all this fruit look like anyway?

When I only focus on what I can intentionally plant and harvest in my own strength, I suddenly become very tired, a bit agitated, and eventually overwhelmed. Yet when the question shifts, and I begin to sense that God has been intentional in planting things in my life all along, well, my footing becomes solid again. Often I look at a past season of life and think, “Dude! I was just trying to survive!” But when I think of that season in light of God’s intentions, or rather His intentional occupation in my circumstances, I can see that He produced something worthwhile in me the whole time I thought I was just barely holding on.

Here’s the thing of God’s grace: He intentionally shows up in the chaos of our lives and weaves His goodness into it, if we will simply let Him in and go with what He gives us. We may not understand it. We may be overwhelmed by it. We may not have any sense that it will resolve itself in any recognizable way. But the promise of Grace is that surer Hands are holding us than we ourselves have. I love that about our intentional, loving God who specifically chooses those things that confound us to show us Himself the most. So dear one, rest in His goodness, knowing that you are not responsible for ordering the universe. Indeed the One who brought forth the universe in all its glory from chaos is able or order yours. Be blessed.

This is me trusting,

Sami

Winner, Winner, Chicken Dinner

Why did the chicken cross the road? To run in Butler County’s Project Prom 5K race. Well at least I did, on Saturday. My strategy was simple: just keep running. I could run any speed I wanted, I just couldn’t stop. I knew if I ever stopped it would be so hard to regain my momentum. And the temptation to stop is so appealing when it is hot and hilly. But I didn’t stop; I finished the race (in honor of all 38 year old women with three children, the youngest of whom is 9 mos). So incredibly glad I did.

Mostly because I am metaphor girl. I can relate anything to anything, and running really seems to relate to the life of faith. What I love about both disciplines (running and following Jesus) is that the equipment is light. To be in shape, all you need is a good pair of running shoes. You don’t need fancy equipment. You don’t need to join an expensive club. You just have to step outside. As Nike says, “Just do it.” Living as a disciple of Jesus is really the same way. It’s good to have a Bible, so you have a ready reference for how to’s. And it’s also good to have a community that encourages you in your walk. But you don’t need a theology degree. You don’t have to become a monk. You just have give yourself to Jesus and follow the little nudges you encounter throughout the day.

It’s so easy when you are a runner to get discouraged, distracted, or waylaid by circumstances beyond your control. I’m very thankful for my sweet husband who asks me every night if I want to run the next morning. In some ways his simple question keeps me accountable. However, quite honestly most mornings I don’t want to get out of bed. My body often feels heavy laden, and I just want a little more sleep. What I have found, though, is that if I will push through, the experience of running does in fact get easier. The difficulty lessons, and the benefits begin showing up. For instance, I seem to have more energy throughout the day. My clothes start fitting better. I can eat what I want! And eventually, my body wants to get up and run, desiring the activity rather than fighting it. So just push through!

The same is true for the life of faith. Reading the Bible and attending a faith-based group regularly is so hard. Especially as a college student when there are so many other things that you could be doing, so many other things that seem to be more fun and fulfilling. But pressing through is definitely worth it. Eventually the effort pays off. Don’t try to be perfect; don’t try to always get it right; don’t try to always sound super spiritual. Instead, just keep doing what you know to do, regardless of how well you think you are doing. Let Jesus take care of the rest. Remember how the book of Galatians talks about the “fruit of the Spirit?” As you allow God’s Spirit room in your life to grow, to be nurtured and cultivated, an amazing thing actually happens: The fruit of that cultivation begins to show! It’s not that we spend our time trying to force love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control to show up in us. Whenever we do that the results seem strained and fake. But when we make room in our lives for spending time with God, reading His word, and hanging out with His people, those fruits just automatically begin to show up. God brings them forth from us—we just provide hospitable dirt for them to grow in. Eventually doing the God thing first isn’t hard anymore, and everything else gets more manageable too. Because it’s no longer our strength making it happen, but His strength coming through us. So just push through!

Truly the secret to finishing in a life of running and a life of faith is not very complicated. Paul puts it this way: “Let us also lay aside every weight and the sin that clings so closely, and let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus the pioneer and perfecter of our faith, who for the sake of the joy that was set before him endured the cross, disregarding its shame, and has taken his seat at the right hand of the throne of God” (Hebrews 12:1-2). The secret to finishing the race set before us is a little word called “perseverance.” Last Saturday there were lots of people in that race, including teenagers who started ahead of me, but then finished behind me. It’s not that I’m a great runner; I’m not. It’s not that I’m a fast runner; I’m not. Even though most of them were faster than me, they stopped running; however, with my turtle pace I kept going. It’s just a simple strategy that carried me through: don’t stop running. I could run as slow as I wanted, I could strip off extra clothes if I wanted, I could breathe as heavy as I wanted, I just couldn’t stop. It wasn’t pretty; but I finished. And finishing is all that matters.

So I want to encourage you this semester: Do the God thing first, and persevere in doing it. You will have all kinds of reasons not too. You will face all kinds of distractions and discouragement. Do don’t give up and don’t give in. Even if you fall away for a little while, come back. You will be so glad you did. Make up your mind now to win the race that Jesus has set before you. The more you run with Jesus, the easier it will be. So don’t give up; just push through!

This is me trusting,

Sami

Cardboard Blessings

It happens in life that you come to a place of reckoning, where everything is stripped away and you come face to face with the stuff of who you are. It is like the heavens open up and you see yourself unvarnished. The supports fall away and the bare-naked truth reveals itself: We really are dust. Or cardboard. That's the way I came to think of it at a particularly pointed time of unvarnishing in my life. Through those somewhat painful moments I began to see how human I really am, that without Grace filling me up, my life is more like cardboard than crystal.

That "moment of truth" was quite a few years ago. While it was quite a shocking revelation at the time, I've come to accept, make friends with, my cardboard-ness. After all, though it is not very pretty, cardboard is not as fragile as crystal. And I kind of like the anonymity that comes with being deeply ordinary. I am comfortable there. Don't get me wrong: I try really hard to give my best. But I also know that in my quirky expression of self, my best is not often pretty. It just is what it is. I jokingly tell my dear prayer partner, "At some point God has to take credit for my ineptness; after all He made me this way, and only He is able to make me into something different." Sometimes I feel like I need one of those cartoon bubbles over my head filled with words: "Please forgive her; she is cardboard." Or dust. People may need the explanation, but God never does. I love the scripture that says, "He knows how we are made; He remembers that we are dust (Psalm 103:14). Even cooler is the verse right before that: "As a father has compassion for his children, so the Lord has compassion for those who fear Him (Psalm 103:13). So I just recklessly abandon myself to the Lord's compassion. I know that He gets me.

The coolest thing happened the other day. For months I have been frustrated with my little boys clothes chest. It has shelves in it where we stack his clothes, but as he sorts through them they often become a tangled mess. There is no order, no neat stacks, just the chaos of wadded pants, shirts, and shorts. For a while now I have wanted to get baskets that we could use to separate the clothes in this chest, but it always seemed like such a frivolous expense. And then the other day I happened to think that the boxes that hold the baby wipes and diapers we use for our six month old are just the perfect size! Sure enough they fit perfectly, neatly holding pants and shorts, with shirts nicely folded and stacked in between. I even cut the fronts off of them so that we can easily see what is where, making everything easily accessible. After the fury of activity that made the mess manageable, my sons and I stood back with awe and appreciated our hard work. Instead of chaos there were simply stacks, neatly contained by, you guessed it, cardboard.

It took me a couple of days to realize what had happened. Not so much in the "my son's room is messy" arena, but in the "my soul's room is messy" arena. For the purpose we needed fulfilled for little boy clothes, those cardboard boxes worked perfectly, better than fancy baskets that would have cost alot. And I realize now, for the purposes God has chosen me for, exaclty who I am is exactly who He needs. This cardboard self that I am has Divine purpose. And I don't have to be crystal to fulfill it. And even if I were crystal, I never could be and do the things He needs me to be and do. From His perspective, no apologies are needed.

From my quiet time today the scripture reading is this: "What then is Apollos? What is Paul? Servants through whom you came to believe, as the Lord assigned to each. I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth. So neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth. The one who plants and the one who waters have a common purpose, and each will receive wages according to the labor of each. For we are God's servants, working together" (I Corithians 3:5-9). This is all to say that God uses us according to His own wisdom, working through our lives in unique ways that ultimately bring glory to Him alone. So don't worry about not being something you are not. Sure you may not look like Apollos or Paul. Your life may be more cardboard than crystal. But God has a purpose for you that absolutely will be fulfilled when you surrender your self to His love, boldly trusting in His awesome compassion. He love you, and dear one, He also loves through you.

This is me full of trust,

Sami

Fourteen Years Ago Today . . . .

My husband and I play this game. It's called, "Do you know what you were doing _________ years ago today?" Sometimes it goes by, "Do you remember where you were?" Or "What did you eat for dinner?" Or "What clothes were you wearing?" It's mostly him asking me, but I like it. It's a fun game.

Mostly because it helps me mark milestones in my life, and the sign posts can often be missed because they are so ordinary. But on special days, even the ordinary has significance. I remember fourteen years ago today waking up and trying to take a bubble bath in a hotel room with a fancy jaccuzi tub. For some reason I couldn't figure out how to make the plug stick, and all my bubbles kept running out. By the time I found a solution, all the hot water was gone, my bubbles had disappeared, and I had used up my time to leisurely enjoy a bubble bath tinkering with the drain on a crazy bath tub that required a PH.D. to operate. And I wanted my day to start out special because one of the most significant events of my life was getting ready to take place: I would marry Tim.

As a pastor I have learned to tell couples getting married, "Don't worry about what goes wrong; ten years from now you will laugh about it." I think that is one of the greatest lessons I have learned, laughing makes everything better. Rarely does anything in my life match the scenarios that I invent in my head. But time has taught me that life is good anyway. On the day of my wedding, the fancy tub didn't work, I took a cold bath, my hair didn't do what it was supposed to, the candles weren't lit for most of our pictures, and my dress didn't fit down the aisle. Yet despite all the pitfalls, we shared a lovely worship service with beloved family and friends. Tim and I sealed our promise to one another at the same place we began our relationship, the altar. I was walked down the aisle by one of the most precious men I have ever known. And my sweet father blessed our marriage as the one who performed our ceremony, preaching a beautiful message on the power of God's grace to overcome all obstacles.

The scripture for our wedding was Romans 8:35-39. It says:

Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? As it is written, ‘For your sake we are being killed all day long; we are accounted as sheep to be slaughtered.’ No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

My Dad spoke of God's never failing love, and the power of the love of Christ to redeem everything in our lives, no matter what we experience, no matter what mistakes we make. In fourteen years Tim and I have discovered that to be true. Perfection doesn't exist in our lives, but grace is lavish. Through all the ups and downs, heartaches and heartbreaks, we have found a Love that holds us, even when we are too human to hold each other. And somehow that same Love gives us the strength to love one another better than we could simply in our own strength, amazing both of us sometimes.

I share all this as my celebration, captured in a very ordinary day, in remembrance of another ordinary day filled with significance. Today my hair didn't do what I wanted it to, my toe-nail polish is chipped and fading, I somehow got toothpaste on my shirt, I forgot to pick up something at church, my quiet time didn't quite happen the way it was supposed to, and I haven't gotten anything on my to-do list accomplished. But today is filled with significance. Because I am still in love with the man I married fourteen years ago. He is still the love of my life. And perhaps more extraordinary given my incredible self-doubt and insecurity, I know he loves me. Wrapped up in the craziness of my ordinary life is wonderful Grace, mysterious Grace. Grace that makes ordinary beautiful, expecially in its commonplace insignificance. I am so thankful for God's love that keeps me so much better than I can keep myself, and helps me to appreciate the best gift He's ever given me . . . . Tim.

Sweetly Broken, Still

I've spent the week still pondering the whole sugar bowl incident, and what it means to live my life with an open heart, even when it means that my heart might sometimes be broken. I have been pondering the connection between brokenness and love. The most powerful connection for me is Jesus, which the song "Sweetly Broken" is all about. Specifically I am considering the weight of love revealed in His words, "This is my body broken for you." The words themselves add a whole new revelation to the phrase "sweetly broken, wholly surrendered."

When I was in seminary I had what some would describe as a vision. All I know is that I had a powerful experience of Jesus that filled all my senses in a way I had not known before. And what is funny is that, although I had given my heart to Him a hundred times in my adolescent life, I had never had that experience of His presence. Now the presence of God, or the Holy Spirit, both of those were very real to me. But feeling Jesus as a part of my life was so hard for some reason. And then there was that night in seminary. I was in a worship service, my eyes closed, my voice raised as I sang a love song to the Lord. In my mind's eye I saw someone standing before me, hands stretched out to me. The face was obscure, but those hands had been pierced. I knew exactly Who it was, and in astonishment, joy, and relief I grasped the hands held out to me. I was so overwhelmed at finally having a real encounter with Jesus that I began to weep. Ever so gently those nail-pierced hands lifted to my face and began to wipe my tears away. "No," I said, "There are too many." And the voice of Jesus spoke to my heart, "There are never too many tears for Me to wipe away."

Jesus always appeared to His disciples after the resurrection with the scars of His death intact. Even in His glorified self, His body held the evidence of His love for the world that He died to save. So when He says to us, "This is my body broken for you," we can believe Him; He does not erase the cost of loving us from His person, as if it didn't happen, as if we had ceased to exist for Him the moment He enterend heaven. It is immensely comforting to me.

Because a broken heart is not the only risk that love has demanded from me. My body has been broken as well. I am the mother of three boys. Each one was delivered by C-section. For the first two I have a fairly well hidden horizontal scar on my abdomen where they cut a hole in my body to pull my children out. I begged my doctor for this third time to just let me have another incision like that. But she did not give in; the scar tissue inside my body was far to bad. As it turned out, having a vertical incision probably saved my life. Without it, she told my husband afterwards, I would have been in trouble. And so now I have a red scar that stretches up my belly.

In the month or so after giving birth to Jeremiah, I grieved for my body. I wanted the old one back; the new one looked ugly to me; the new one made me feel ugly all over. One morning I simply sat in the middle of my closet and cried. In the midst of terrible physical pain, a breastfeeding nightmare, hormonal overload, and kidney stones to top it off, I just broke down and wept. Every part of me hurt: body, mind, spirit, and soul.

As I sat there crying, my sweet three year old came in. With a gentle touch he cupped my face in his little hands and looked intently into my eyes. "Mommy, you're a princess," was all he said.

As I have pondered the words to that worship song the last couple of weeks, the meaning of "sweetly broken" has gone deeper and deeper. I am beginning to make peace with my body. I am immensely grateful to it for giving me the gift of motherhood. I love being a mother, and I love my boys with all that I am. Now when I look at my scar, I try not to think about how unflattering it looks, but rather about how those three boys are so worth it. It is worth it to me to bear a scar that brought my children into the world. I guess that is how Jesus feels about His own scars. It is worth it to Him to bear the scars of bringing His children into eternity.

I still don't feel much like a princess, at least not the image of one I carry in my head. But I know I am one to my son. And I believe I am the daughter of the King. He died to bring me home to Himself. So being a princess is not about unblemished perfection. It is not about being untouchable and unreal. Instead it is about being boldy accessible, vulnerable and bendable, willing to enter in to love, even at the price of suffering. I continue to learn that love truly does conquer all. But it is only His love that makes real love possible or plausible.

This is me full of trust,

Sami

Sweetly Broken

Monday I got to go to Camp Loucon for Youth Workers Sabbath. It’s one of my favorite things. I look forward to it each spring. It gives me a chance to reflect on where I am at the end of another school year, to renew some precious friendships with youth pastors who have been opening their hearts to kids for years, and to just be refreshed and renewed in some forgiving space for awhile. This year the theme song for our worship was “Sweetly Broken” by Jeremy Riddle. The chorus goes like this:

AT THE CROSS YOU BECKON ME
YOU DRAW ME GENTLY TO MY KNEES, AND I AM
LOST FOR WORDS SO LOST IN LOVE
I AM SWEETLY BROKEN WHOLLY SURRENDERED

I was very moved by the song and really felt a connection to it. I left my time away with those words pressed into my heart. And so I returned home to the busyness of finals week, and the preparations of our Ladies Tea Party. Replacing my hiking boots with strappy heels, I prepared for the end of year celebration soon to take place at my house.

The thing is, I love tea parties. In my first place of ministry my dear friends introduced me to the practice. Anytime one of us had something to celebrate we gathered around fine china and crystal, being very intentional about making our time special and the guests honored. I continued the tradition when I became a campus minister. I wanted my girls to know themselves as special and honored too.

Last night I got out the server pieces from my original china set to serve sugar and creamer in. It is beautiful to me with its delicate curves and filigree handles. The china is a pristine white that is transparent when held up to the light. It was part of the pattern I registered for as a new bride almost fourteen years ago. As I went to fill the sugar bowl with sugar, the unthinkable happened. It was too close to the edge of the counter and accidentally got pushed off, shattering as it hit the floor. And “sweetly broken” began to have new meaning for me.

Two of the young ladies who joined us last night will be moving on to new adventures soon. One is graduating, and the other is transferring to the University of Louisville. It was a very bittersweet celebration. On the one hand I am immensely grateful for the opportunity to know and love them. On the other hand, my heart is breaking as I say goodbye. Like my sugar bowl, I too am sweetly broken.

Jesus warned His disciples that they must count the cost of discipleship: “Whoever does not carry the cross and follow me cannot be my disciple. For which of you, intending to build a tower, does not first sit down and estimate the cost, to see whether he has enough to complete it? (Luke 14:27-28).” I don’t think He says this to scare them, but simply to let them know that there is a cost in following His path. Jesus heads straight for the path of love, and love leads Him to the cross. It leads us there too.

Like a sugar bowl (even a fine china sugar bowl) was made for sugar, my heart was made for love. It would be so easy to keep my china and precious tea cup collection safe. I could just go to the store and buy disposable everything. But then our tea parties wouldn’t be so special. And all that beautiful china would simply sit unseen in a cabinet, never fulfilling its intended purpose. I too could protect my heart from loss. I could go through the motions and never risk getting hurt by never opening my heart. I could keep my life an unopened book, never sharing its mysteries, struggles, and triumphs. I could never share the story of who I am, never listen to the story of who you are, and never allow those stories to shape each other in eternal ways. I could lock up my heart and never allow the presence of a student to live there and never suffer loss when they leave. And I could live a miserable, joy-less, empty life, bereft of laughter, flat, without any vibrant color or candor, simply a barren existence. I could do that, but I would forever forfeit who I really am. My heart was made for love.

And I am a pastor whose flock always leaves. As my sheep, I will love you, nurture you, pray for you, wait for you, patiently tend you, gently guide you, and always worry over you. But if I do my job right, you will always leave me. And if I do my job right, your departure will always leave an ache in my heart. Loss is the cost of loving you into the fullness of God’s intention for you as a sheep in my care. Still I would not have it any other way. After eight years of being a campus minister, I have discovered that I was made for this ministry of loving students into fullness. It is worth it to me to suffer this loss. You are worth it to me.

Because we are all worth it to Him. On the cross Jesus answered Love’s call and laid down His own life so that He could take our brokenness and sin into His own heart. It was worth to Him to die there so that the power of sin would be broken in our lives, and so that we would know without any doubt that we are forgiven. When scripture says that nothing can separate us from the love God has for us in Jesus Christ, it speaks the truth. He removes the sin that separates us from God’s holiness by His death, and then He removes the death that sin breeds within us by His resurrection. His gift to us is eternal life, peace with the Father, and love that cleanses us from all un-love. Praise Jesus.

I know what I was made for. Do you know what you are made for? Part of my purpose is to help you discover that, to love you into it. To walk beside you until some day you walk into the destiny God has prepared for you, designed you for. The thing you would suffer loss for because nothing else fills you up quite the same way. And that is what you are to me.

So I love you, because He loves me and chooses to love you through me. In ways you cannot know you have been grafted into my life. And when it comes time to let you go my dear ones, it will always break my heart. But I am so grateful to be sweetly broken.

This is me full of trust,

Sami

Doing the Pee Pee Dance on South Lawn

Let me begin by saying, this particular e-letter is not for the faint of heart. The subject after all is “doing the pee pee dance.” But I am a firm believer that everything teaches, and I will use anything to tell students about Jesus. Nothing is off limits. So here goes . . . .

I have a urinary tract infection. The pain comes and goes, but when it comes, it is brutal. The feeling I described to my doctor is like peeing razor blades. Not fun. Thankfully he gave me some antibiotics and a purple pill I’m supposed to take 4 times a day, with a lovely side effect of turning urine blue. I got kind of tickled this morning when my sweet husband Tim says to me, “It looks like a smurf broke into our house in the middle of the night and used our toilet.” Precious.

So yesterday I was on South Lawn with our prayer labyrinth. We got to participate once again in “Stresstivus” which is sponsored by WKU’s Health Services. I love participating every year since it invites students who wouldn’t go to church to experience Jesus and prayer in a meaningful way. But because I was hurting and had to go to the bathroom every 45 minutes, there was a big part of me that just really did not want to be there. Campus outreach projects are some of my favorite things in the whole world. I mean, that is when I am an over-the-top fool for Christ. For example, during our Easter Egg give-away I put on a Sunflower headband. It looked like I had yellow petals sprouting from my head. (I would have worn the pink bunny ears, but they clashed with my t-shirt.) I love sharing the love of Jesus with random people in inviting, winsome, and often wacky ways. So it was a bit disconcerting to be on campus sharing Jesus and not quite having the heart for it.

Here is the thing. We had more people walk our prayer labyrinth than ever before, and I even got to have some really cool conversations. Each person who participated received a mosaic tile as a reminder of their experience, along with a corresponding bookmark with scripture and reflection questions on it. These were given as a way for the experience to speak deeply to their lives in the areas of transformation, experiencing a heart of peace, or learning to live like “lilies of the field,” without worry. We had a great response.

And the whole experience was a real lesson for me. The scripture that comes to mind is from 2 Corinthians 12:9: “But [the Lord] said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.’” Most of the time, I live my life as if the whole world relies upon my strength. I am fully aware on many occasions that God’s presence and power under-gird me in ways I cannot comprehend, but I also feel weight of responsibility so heavily. I know that there are people depending on me. While I am so aware of my limitations (and mostly because of my limitations), I just feel like I can’t afford to not give all that I am to everything I do. It’s like I believe that if something significant is going to get done, I have to make it happen. Well yesterday my maker was not up to making things happen. My maker was simply making me have to go pee all the time, praying that sometime soon the pain would stop. Yet in the middle of all that God my Maker showed up.

Yesterday I was reminded in a powerful way that God is not dependent upon me to do His thing. He can do His thing whenever and wherever He wants. He can move with the power of a mighty wind whether I am feeling up to it or not. I guess what I am trying to say is that I don’t have to be my best in order for Him to be His best. Marvelous happens on His time schedule, regardless of what is happing in mine. I’m so thankful. So I guess the moral of this little confession is that God helps those who cannot help themselves. He does His best work when we cannot work at all. Thank God. I’m just hoping someone else needed to hear that as much as me, because I feel kind of silly having to confess to and repent of my own self-sufficiency. So there you go. Praise the Lord. Oh, and by the way, the razor blades are gone. Praise God!

This is me trusting,

Sami

Common Beauty, Uncommon Love

It is spring time and dandelions are everywhere. Have you ever thought about the difference between dandelions and potted plants? One is common; it grows at will, wild and un-tame. Very ordinary, and in its abundance very obscure. One is cultivated; it’s growth is precarious, needing time and attention. It grows through intention, needing specific care to be sustained. It is special, specially placed, and specially noticed. I am a dandelion girl, growing wherever I will, wild and un-tame. Thoroughly common.

A few years ago I noticed a set of dishes in a department store sporting pictures of various wild growing flowers, usually considered weeds. The dandelion was just one of four common flowers that graced the front of that particular china pattern. I loved it. I loved that an expensive set of porcelain captured the loveliness of the ordinary, elevating it to the ranks of beautiful, as these un-common dishes sat beside the more common stacks of rose painted plates. It gave me the courage to notice the beauty in what is often overlooked, simply because it is so abundant.

Obviously Someone is cultivating the common. I believe it is God. God loves dandelions, and there was a time when we did too. I remember as a girl making numerous bracelets, necklaces and crowns out of the yellow blooms, stringing each flexible green stem through the next until there was a chain. I remember the fascination and joy of watching the white dandelion seeds being lifted by the wind as I blew upon their fuzzy heads. In that innocence of youth, dandelions were still flowers, not yet weeds, and still an object of beauty instead of an aggravating nuisance. Whatever happened to our uncommon love for common beauty?

I think it is because our culture has trained us to think that only unordinary things are worthy of notice, that life at its heart is a competition for VIP status. Only the rare and very important things and people matter. What is common is undesirable, unnoticed, unworthy. Understated is uninteresting. Our culture tells us that if we want to be successful, marketable, and have value we must be over-the-top, bigger and better than everyone else. Survival means setting ourselves apart. Even if it hurts others around us, grabbing that status is everything. And once we are deemed worthy of attention, we have to work even harder to stay that way. In the college scene it means belonging to the best organizations, making the best grades, establishing the best reputation, enjoying all the right contacts, gaining the most achievements, growing the best resume. And ordinary is just not good enough. Only outstanding will do. You future happiness and well-being depends on it. Sound exhausting?

As a teenager and young adult, I used to see people (namely myself) in those same terms, believing that the category of beautiful applied to pageant winners, the “in” crowd, and people with power and prestige. Beauty, or worth, I felt, was only reserved for those who were “special.” So I tried my hardest to be as special as I could, making the best grades I could, being as acceptable as I could, pleasing the most people I could, gaining all the success I could. And when I couldn’t live up to those standards, my world came apart. The Lord patiently put me back together again. Somehow I learned along the way that I had to make peace with my ordinariness. Then I began to discover God’s grace that creates and loves the ordinary, naming and claming that which the world does not. His purposes for such ordinary things surely outshine worldly efforts at greatness. And just like we cannot stop the dandelions from filling our yards, neither can the world’s demands for extraordinary deny the power of an ordinary life lived through simple trust in the Lord.

I love these words from scripture: “Consider the lilies, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, how much more will he clothe you—you of little faith! And do not keep striving for what you are to eat and what you are to drink, and do not keep worrying. For it is the nations of the world that strive after all these things, and your Father knows that you need them. Instead, strive for his kingdom, and these things will be given to you as well” (Luke 12:27-31). It is almost as if I can hear God saying, “Have you looked at any dandelions lately? Did you ever think about why they grow so abundantly when you do absolutely nothing to make them do that, when you even try to inhibit their growth? Don’t you think if I can make dandelions grow so beautifully, I can take care of you too? So why do you think your well-being depends on effort you cannot possibly give? Stop trying to do My job! Instead, why don’t you just try to be the blessing I created you to be? So you are a dandelion in the great garden of life. I made so many because I love them so much. You are so beautiful to Me; just be what I made you to be!”

Don’t get me wrong. Potted plants are nice, but at the end of the day, they too are just plants, no better or worse than the ordinary dandelion. God creates each bloom with such exquisite detail and care, tending to the needs of each flower’s life with sustenance we can only guess at. Surely if God cares enough to give life to dandelions He also cares about us as well. And even in our ordinariness we can trust Him to have a plan and purpose that not only sustains us with mercy, but reveals His glory to those all around.

This is me trusting,

Sami

Walk by Faith

Last weekend eight students and I went to Camp Loucon for our Spring Retreat. It was awesome, and amazing, and it rocked our world! Woo Hoo!!!! Can you tell I had a great time? It was everything we needed it to be and more. The theme of our weekend was the twenty third Psalm; together we considered the many ways that God shepherds our lives. What I love about God is that He always speaks His message to us in several ways, through many mediums. I especially experienced this when it came time for us to do low elements.

We began our low element activities with our facilitator instructing us to get into pairs, handing out bandanas, and asking a person from each pair to be blindfolded. It was then the responsibility of the “seeing” person to guide the blindfolded one along a path set by our facilitator, using only her or his voice. The guides were not allowed to touch those being led; they could only tell them how to walk the path in their blindness. Sound familiar? Doesn’t it sound like following God’s lead when we cannot see Him or touch Him? I believe it is a perfect metaphor for faith—God, who knows all and sees all, tells us with hints and nudges how to walk through life in our blindness. And while we have the guidance of scripture and the camaraderie of a community of believers, in specific details we can only guess at what our best decisions are: we cannot see the future, we cannot possibly know outcomes or consequences, and we are clueless in regard to the intentions and decisions of others. We’re not even that good at predicting the weather, even though we try really hard.

It can be really disorienting. Like being blindfolded and asked to walk a path that may or may not be on the road. Because we had an odd number, I got paired up with both Derek and Tyler. We each got a turn to be the guide to two blind people and each of us got to be led around in the dark. I would much prefer to be blindfolded any day. Kind of like, I would hate to have God’s job. And both of my guides did a great job! It was so cool to see how each approached the task of guiding their charges to safety. Derek had a keen sense of description. I knew exactly what the terrain was at all times and exactly how best to approach it. Tyler lead with his own feet, making as much noise as he could by scraping and dragging that we always knew where his feet were and could simply follow their sound in addition to his specific vocal cues. I have often said before that the life of faith is like this. As we come to know the Lord, we each develop a language with Him. Thus He speaks to each of us in a way that is unique to the relationship we have with Him. Of course He does this; His loves each of us personally and specifically. What I found with each of my guides is that after a while I could relax; the pattern of our communication, their leading and my following, eventually became almost like sight. Familiarity opened up our trust.

And then we came to a point when Tyler said, “I don’t know what to say. We’re not changing direction or anything. Just keep following the sound of my feet.” And then I started to panic. My first impulse was to scream, “I don’t care what the road is doing, just keep talking!” I couldn’t see after all. I just kept thinking, “Don’t take away your voice too!” But then I found that, in fact, the road was fairly easy, and I didn’t need extra instruction, and the sound of his feet was so reliable I didn’t even need His voice. And then it struck me: “God this is so like you!” Isn’t it? Haven’t you found yourself trying to follow God and He suddenly becomes very quiet? All the ways that you used to sense Him speaking have dried up. The only thing you can do is to go on what you know about Him, and hope it will all turn out alright. And it will. In that moment of my uncertainty and panic it was as if I heard God say to my spirit, “You don’t have to worry when I am silent, Sami. Those are simply the times when my last bit of direction is totally sufficient. Just keep doing what you are doing and trust me to give you new insight when you need it.” In Tyler’s words I heard the sound of my Lord: “We’re not changing direction or anything. Just keep following the sound of My feet.”

This Sunday we will be going to Elizabethtown to share our outreach ministry with the home church of some of our students. One of the songs we are singing this year is “Walk By Faith” by Jeremy Camp. The chorus goes like this: “Oh I will walk by faith, even though I cannot see. Because this broken road prepares Your will for me.” In our walk with Jesus, there will often be times of clarity and brilliant insight, but more often than not, there will be times of guessing and hoping, trusting and blind obeying. It is in those times that our faith grows the most and we develop a keener understanding of Who God is in our lives, and who we are in His. I want to encourage you, dear one. If you are in one of those silent times when your faith is being stretched, know that you are still in God’s sights even when He is not in yours. You can trust Him to get you safely home. And also know, if you were not ready to trust Him more, he never would have led you to where you are now. Be blessed on the path you follow. He is always, and still, shepherding you.

This is me trusting,

Sami