covenant

A week and a half ago, a couple hundred people told me they would stick with me forever. Now, I was actually the one "making the covenant" (myself and six others in our branch of the People of Praise), and I did tell those hundreds of people that I would stick with them too; but the cool thing about the covenant ceremony is that the newbies and the already-covenanted members all say the covenant together. Because "together" is the point of it all.


I've delayed writing this post because I just couldn't settle on the right words, especially because some of you reading this don't exactly know what I'm talking about. For you, here's a brief explanation: the People of Praise is an ecumenical, charismatic, covenant community. It's not my church (I go to Mass at Holy Cross and try to be pretty involved there); it's a way to live with other Christians, and build God's kingdom, beyond my life in my parish. In the People of Praise I live in household, work in the Action Division (that's the group I go to Louisiana with every summer), hang out with my women's group once a week, hang out with the young adults group the rest of the time, and get together with everybody in the branch on Sunday afternoons for a prayer meeting. There's tons more to say about it, but that's a basic explanation.

(If you click on the "POP" tag at the end of this post you can take a look at all the other posts that have had something to do with my life in the People of Praise.)

So that's PoP. What's "making the covenant"? Basically it's making a formal statement that I am going to be part of the People of Praise for the rest of my life. It's a pretty big deal (my mom even came out for the covenant ceremony, thanks Mom!). But in another way it's not a big change. I made the covenant on a Sunday. Monday morning I got up and lived the same PoP life that I lived on Saturday and many days before (I've been in PoP for about seven years). Actually, the whole thing is beautifully mundane. While much of the covenant statement is eloquent, the last line is decidedly un-poetic: "... we agree that the weekly meeting of the community is primary among our commitments and that we will not be absent except for a serious reason." The end. I love that it's not poetic. Because Christian life is not about poetry - although sometimes it is quite beautiful - mostly it's about practical decisions and day-to-day details. Rolling out of bed in time to croak out a song at household morning prayer. Cutting errands short to make it to the PoP center on time for a prayer meeting. Bringing pretzels and two liters of Dr. Pepper to a women's event. These are the things I've been doing for the past sven years and I'm just going to keep on doing them.

But the part that really is awe-inspiring is the people. Apart from all the things we do - we could change it all tomorrow if the Spirit so led us - apart from all the meetings and routines, I have quite simply bonded myself to a couple hundred people in South Bend, and hundreds elsewhere, anf they have bonded themselves to me. We've promised to support each other "spiritually, materially, and financially." We will praise the Lord together, build His kingdom together, live life together, for the rest of our lives. As a covenanted friend joked last night: "We're stuck with each other."

no photo available

I had my camera with me the whole time.

I could have taken a dozen photos of us playing with baby Joshua during the hour and 15 minutes we spent at Sarah's figuring out our plan for the day. Justin feeding him Cheez-its, Sarah standing him up on the table, every photo would have been adorable.

And when we ended up at Rio's and Emily joined us and we called Evan and Peter in Minnesota and sang Happy Birthday to Peter on speakerphone - that could have been a good shot, the group of us in a semi-deserted restaurant midafternoon on a Sunday, disturbing the few other customers with our singing.

After we saw Ratatouille we had time to kill and we went to the park and to the East Race ... I definitely should have taken a picture of Daniel pointing out the "no boating" sign right next to the kayak route.

I've been meaning to take pictures at soccer for ages and since I wasn't feeling well and sat on the sidelines half the game anyway, last night would have been a perfect opportunity to get some sport shots, especially of the little boys who joined us - a shot of 6-yr-old Vinnie scoring a goal would have been perfect. And at DQ afterwards, I ought to have taken a picture of Emily and Emily together.

This is why I bought a digital camera, right? So I could capture all of those moments?

But why do I have to capture them? Can't I let them be free?

Free of the worry that I'll someday forget. Free of the need to show others how much fun my friends are. Maybe next time, I won't even blog about it. We can have a great day and I don't need to prove it to anyone or feel validated by seeing it in text or on film. I don't need to plan for twenty years from now and try to make sure I remember each fun time we had. I do hope I remember, but the important thing is just that I live it now.

the Word of the Lord

Friday afternoon, my last day in Allendale ... the work was finally done. All that stood between me and South Bend was an 18-hour drive with a bunch of teenagers, the last three hours of which would be in the formidable 15-passenger Preuss van. I was nervous about the upcoming drive, kind of brain-dead from the last two weeks of work, but quietly delighted to know that I would soon be back home living my normal life.

The afternoon and evening passed pleasantly: I watched people play Kubb and volleyball, I had dinner with Karen and Mary Beth and MB's husband and daughter, I sang loudly in an empty house while doing dishes, Hannah's lovely voice joined in my song for a bit, and I just reveled in the feeling that I was almost done and almost home. Do you see a theme here? I could not wait to go back home. I'd had some fun moments, some good conversations, got to meet a lot of great people, but the only word for the trip was hard. It had been a hard two weeks.

The evening session began with some words about taking responsibility for your own life, and then Nathan talked to us about choosing to intend to follow Jesus. (The reason for the strange language there is that the only choice we can make is in the present. I can choose to follow Jesus now. I can't choose now to follow him next Thursday - that choice comes next Thursday. But I can choose now to intend to follow Jesus the rest of my life.) We were asked to go find a quiet place alone for fifteen minutes to make that choice.

I'd made that choice a long time ago, maybe not in so many words, but I sat down at the bottom of some back porch steps just to pray for a few minutes. The Lord felt really present so I spoke directly to him. I haven't done a very good job following you these past two weeks, I told him.

You did fine, I know, I was there with you.
I know you were there but I didn't call on you enough.
You called on me a lot actually.
But I kept failing, Lord! I ought to have been more cheerful and less discouraged and a better role model for the teens. And I ought to have built more relationships with the teens and talked with them more.
You did great. You tried. And when you failed you tried again. And when you failed again you tried again. That is humanity.

Thanks be to God.

the end of my rope

A new PoP catchphrase, at least among the missionaries, is to be at "the end of your rope." They say that the end of your rope is when and where God will work - because you have nothing left but him. And they say that many times life puts us at the end of our rope, but we can also choose (through fasting, etc.) to put ourselves there.

For me, it wasn't so much the end of a rope as the top of a ladder.

This summer was the first time I was able to go to Allendale for the whole trip instead of half, and it turns out that two weeks of manual labor in Louisiana in July is harder than one. By the time the second week rolled around, I was already out of energy, physically and mentally and emotionally. But I had to keep going. Each day I got up and vowed that the heat, the mosquitoes, the smell, the difficulty of our job, and the burden of leadership were not going to get to me. We would get a lot of work done, have tons of fun while doing so, and at the end of the day, we'd be tired but happy. I would be proud of myself for being such a good crew chief. I developed a routine of praying early so that during personal prayer time (twenty minutes before beginning the work day) I could sit with a cup of coffee and a list of all the people on my crew and I would plan out the work day. That part always went really well.

It kind of went downhill from there.

Trying to get eight people to the work site on time. Sending two people back to get that one piece of equipment we always seemed to forget. Slapping at the first mosquito of the day after he'd already bit me. Finding yet another place that we missed with the primer. The never-ending battle of getting the grooved siding completely painted. Trying to paint trim with a huge, much-used brush because we just didn't have enough good brushes. Little things, but over and over, on top of exhaustion ...

It was our last day on the job. I really wanted us to finish the trim before we all left town and I kept going back and forth with myself over whether we could do it. I would start to get optimistic, then see another part of the house we'd forgotten ... it was maddening. Like unpainted pieces of trim were getting together and multiplying. Midmorning saw me up on a ladder with my paint bucket hoping no one from the ground would see I was crying with pure frustration. I got over it quickly enough and kept painting until I saw a guy from my crew walking by. "How's it going?" I called.

"Terrible," he said, bristling with anger. "I dropped my paint bucket. There's paint all over the ladder, and my hands, and ..."

The poor guy looked like he'd had it and my heart went out to him. I told him to go ahead and take a break, take a buddy and walk down the road a bit to cool off. I turned back to my painting and realized we really were not going to finish this house. There wasn't enough time and we didn't have enough energy.

With that decided, I went to take a water break. My beleaguered crew member returned from his walk. "Oh no," I said without thinking, "there's paint in your hair too ..." He looked even more dejected than before, which I hadn't thought possible. "Hey," I said spontaneously, "I'll be in solidarity with you. Go get some paint, put paint in my hair." And man, could this kid follow directions. I still have paint in my hair.

Soon about half the crew had paint in their hair, and while normally I would have gotten on the teenagers' cases for the amount of time they spent running after one another with paint, I had let go of my need to see the house finished and I was more interested in seeing the kids smile.

That was the bright spot of the work day, but my woes were not over. Just before lunch I discovered we hadn't taped correctly and a ton of our trim work was ruined. After lunch I had my own paint accident, except my white paint splashed not onto my ladder but onto the freshly painted blue house and the floor of the porch.

And that's all I have to say about that.

(tune in tomorrow for the exciting conclusion of Sheila's Adventures in Allendale)

Teenagers

I spent a lot of time with teenagers during my trip to Allendale. We had 42 people on our trip; I think seven of us were adults. I think the last time I was around so many teenagers for such an extended period of time, I was a teenager. (And because I know you're wondering - that was five years ago, almost six, OK, so that doesn't sound like much, but those are five to six pretty important years!) Honestly, I had forgotten how hard it is to be a teenager. The boys don't know how to act around the girls, the girls don't know how to act around the boys, and none of them know how to act around adults.

As for me? As an adult ... I didn't know how to act around them either. I had a lot of responsibility during this trip - driving teenagers 15 hours to Louisiana without losing them at rest stops, being a crew chief at the job site, and a lot of just being the only adult around a group of teens. I had a lot of learning and growing to do - I kinda had to learn how to be an adult. And that was hard. Trying to rein teens in when they were speaking badly of a friend; trying to actually look like I was in charge on the work site; breaking up a water fight (against the rules) and getting a snotty remark back from a teenage girl ... being an adult amidst so many teenagers was hard. Especially because I'm so short and don't even look like an adult!

But when I didn't have to exercise any "adult" authority and I had a chance just to spend casual time with the teens - it was a joy to get to know them and see them growing. A few girls were talking one day about what they wanted to do with their lives; one wants to become a nurse and open a home for unwed pregnant women. Another wants to work for NASA. Several other times I got to hear girls talk about what the People of Praise is doing and I was amazed at their passion for the Lord and his kingdom. And I got to meet a lot of hard workers. One of my absolute favorite moments of the trip was down at the paint-washing station, cleaning paintbrushes. Matt Brickweg (on staff at Allendale) was showing us how to clean the brushes correctly. He demonstrated on one side of a brush and then flipped it over for one of the teenage girls to clean the other side. She took the brush and scrubbed it and scrubbed it and would not rest til her side of the brush looked better than Matt's. All the other teens were excited to do it right too. I was surrounded by a bunch of teenagers doing their absolute best on one of the most tedious chores of the trip. Praise God.

Citybuilding

Each day after the workday was over (and after our scheduled 12-minute showers, and unscheduled chill-out time, and a delicious dinner, thanks Colleen) we got together for the evening sessions. I have to say, after working hard all day, there were a couple evenings when I was taken back to college seminars and just could not keep my eyelids up, so my memories of those talks are hazy. But the talks that woke me up and actually kept me up into the night thinking were about citybuilding.

The Lord works in lots of different ways, and is always doing something new. What he's doing with the People of Praise right now is calling us to build cities. Specifically, we've heard a call to build 200 cities in the next 40 years. That sounds pretty funky, and I still have a hard time getting my mind around it. But basically, it's a concrete way of building God's kingdom - we want to have real places that you can walk to, places that are part of God's kingdom on Earth. I've heard it compared to Chinatown - a whole different culture and life in the middle of society.

We want our cities to be places where Jesus is king; where good housing is available to everyone; where we live purposeful life together, across boundaries of age or race of economic class; where our businesses and jobs are close to our homes; where money works (people have enough and it is spent well, and in some cases, it is held in common); where there is friendship and peace; where health care works; and where everything is beautiful and functional.

We're not necessarily talking about building a city from scratch in the middle of the prairie somewhere, although that could happen too. For now, we are building cities inside existing places. Allendale is our first "new start": we moved into the neighborhood and are simultaneously buying up unused land to build on and working for and with the neighbors who already live there. We've already transformed Yale so that you know you are in a new place when you cross Gary or Dunlap onto our block. Up in Minnesota, we've moved into Dinkytown, a college-housing area at the U of M, to build the Kingdom there and revolutionize student life. There's also work being started in Indianapolis, and some people will move to Memphis this fall.

And then there's this whole other part of the picture - "branch citybuilding." So we have missionaries whose job it is to "locate and secure new starts," but citybuilding is actually something the whole People of Praise is part of. The idea is simultaneously exhilarating and terrifying - that all 3000 of us are called to do this revolutionary thing. In some ways it's not scary at all, we just have to keep doing what we've been doing - worshiping together, living in households together, having men's and women's groups and youth ministry, taking care of each other in times of transition or crisis, etc. - because that's what is going to make our cities worth living in. But the other part of branch citybuilding is that each branch - we have 20 by the way, in places all across the country - each branch is going to have to figure out how to become a city.

Portland's already started. My new friend Luke told me a lot about what's happening there while we painted together the first week in Allendale. I'd heard about it before but never from someone who's actually living there, and I was fascinated. The branch in Portland just decided on a section of the city they wanted to live in, and now there are several "hubs" of families living together within that area. A hub would be several families living in close proximity - next door or across the backyard or something - the new catch phrase is "close enough to bring a pot of hot soup over for dinner." Life together is intense and intentional. Families even went to look at each house all together before one family would buy their house, because everyone needed to agree it was what would work for life together. Amazing.

What kept me up late at night (other than the coffee I had after Lord's Day dinner, which was my first caffeine in a week) was wondering what we're doing in the South Bend branch to build a city in South Bend. My mind was racing with possibilities and questions and I couldn't wait to get back and start talking to people. Now that I'm back I don't quite know where to start, though ...

I do know that I am passionate about branch citybuilding, and nothing gets me on my soapbox faster than hearing how left-out people feel when we talk about missionaries and new starts. Maybe because I have so often felt that way too. But ... the missionaries are doing amazing work, but when it comes down to it, our regular life is pretty amazing too. It's the Lord's work and we need to keep doing it. Raising families, renewing our churches, being Christ to our coworkers and neighbors and friends ... one college student from my Allendale team is dedicated to her younger brothers and sisters in her branch. She's the youngest committed member of the branch and she knows the teenagers (and younger) need to have her around, to see what it is to be a young person in love with the Lord and committed to Christian life together. That is where the Lord is, just as much as he is in Allendale and Dinkytown.

We just need to pull it all together ...

Allendale, part 1 of 5

Eleven days in Allendale, plus two full days driving, thirteen days. From leaving South Bend to coming back last night at midnight, it was actually three hundred and twenty-two hours, and almost every one of those hours was an experience unto itself, so actually you're lucky that I'm only taking five posts to tell you all about it. I've planned it out too, here's a preview of topics to be covered:

1. Intro
2. Citybuilding
3. Teenagers
4. The End of My Rope
5. The Word of the Lord

So hang in there with me. Now, without further ado, your introduction ...

Allendale is a downtrodden neighborhood in Shreveport, LA, where the People of Praise has been working for the past five years. We have a number of people living there year-round - a men's house, a women's house, and a retired married couple - and they are claiming that neighborhood for Christ. They live life in common with one another, as the early Christians did, and seek to draw more people into the kingdom of God. They pray with people for healing, they talk to people about Jesus, they call people on to live better lives, and they extend the love and friendship of Christ to everyone they meet.

In the summer, the rest of us get to join in their work. Since the crucial parts of their work involve long-term relationships with people in the neighborhood, what we can help with is mostly the physical labor part. Over the past five years we have built six houses and done fix-it projects in a number of neighbors' houses. The picture to the left here is Yale Ave., "on campus", where our houses are. What I like about Yale is that it simultaneously is a departure from the rest of the neighborhood - no trash in the yard, the houses are well-kept, etc. - and also blends in with the neighborhood, unlike the gated apartment complex down the road a bit, which is better housing than most of Allendale but sticks out like a sore thumb. Yale Ave. shows Allendale that it can change for the better and still be Allendale.

So this summer there was some work to be done on campus and also at a business PoP runs down there, WDMO (Windows, Doors, and More Outlet, or "widmo"). But most of us were sent out each day to neighbors' houses. Here's how the day went: breakfast at 6 AM, group morning prayer at 6:45, personal prayer time at 7:05, workday starts at 7:30. A list is posted outside one house to show who's on what crew and where they're going - you might not be on the same crew every day. There's all kinds of work to be done - in addition to Yale and WDMO, our team refinished a kitchen and a bathroom and painted two houses. Other teams in other years have propped up people's sagging porch roofs, hung new doors, and built wheelchair ramps. You might not have any experience in the work you're assigned to, but we all just have to learn.

Sometimes the work is gross. The first two days of this trip, I worked on this woman's kitchen cabinets. She wanted them refinished so we had to sand them down but we had to get the grease off first so I ended up spending long hours with dish soap, a green scrubby, and a paint scraper to get the cabinet doors ready for sanding. I had grease under my fingernails for days. But that really wasn't so bad. Grease happens, right? The other job I worked at was much harder. Trash and beer cans strewn everywhere, rotting food in the back yard, a pervasive sewer smell ... the first time you go to Allendale you wonder if it's worth it to do these fix-its when people's houses are still gross and/or falling apart. Having been there three times now, I'm past that particular issue - we desire to love them as Christ by meeting the needs that they want met - but this house certainly was difficult. One girl on my crew almost threw up one day from the smell. And we had a hard time getting work done in the backyard because nobody wanted to be near the corner with the rotting food and the flies.

But we just kept going.

The work is usually just hard too. In the heat and humidity of this past week, I was dripping sweat by 8 AM. My wrists were sore from painting, my ankles were aching from standing on ladders, my shoulders hurt from the wheelbarrow, which at times contained ten gallons of paint and a 5-gallon cooler of water. My right shoulder was bruised from carrying ladders. But ... it's wonderful. One day, heading home from the work site, there were two of us and just the one wheelbarrow. The other guy volunteered to take it; "No," I told him, "I'll wheel it to the end of the street here, then you can take over." At the end of the street he offered again. "No - just to the top of the hill there ..." When else do I get to really use my God-given health like this?

(Speaking of my God-given health, this body needs some rest, so this post is over ... tune in tomorrow, same Bat-time, same Bat-channel!)

I'm back!

Two weeks later, here I am in South Bend. I have a lot to tell you all but I need some time to organize it all before blogging. Stay tuned ... in the meantime, here's a picture from midway through my trip - this is the house that my crew painted. I'll tell you all about it soon ...

"amazing"

(This post is ridiculously long, read it when you have time.)

"God is the King. He's in charge of everything. And that's something that's really huge for us, that we've been learning as missionaries. And it's really good to be amazed by it. People- it's been my experience that people close to God are amazed a lot. Because - they know God, and God is amazing. And personally, for all of us, I think we've grown in our amazement."

- Nick during Wednesday night's talk

Cat and I drove down to Indianapolis last Saturday. The morning was sunny and we laughed our way down 31, sticking close to a fellow driver whom we dubbed "Speedmeister" and catching up with each other for the first time in weeks. She told me about Montre, whom she was going to visit. He'd been a student of hers and was now seriously ill in Riley Children's Hospital. Cat, who has the biggest heart of anyone I know, had been down to visit him a few weeks earlier and wanted nothing more than to stay by Montre's bedside, hold his hand, and read him some books. Montre had a trach and couldn't speak so she had made up a board with pictures of the book covers so that he could just point to the book he wanted.

I was along for the ride. She told me quite honestly that she'd understand if I didn't want to spend a lot of time in the hospital room. Montre was pretty sick and it could be hard to see. So when the missionaries with whom we were staying offered to have me hang out with them for the afternoon, I felt OK saying yes. We dropped Cat off at Riley and went over to the near southside to go "missionarying."

So who are these missionaries? They are Mary, Molly, Nick, Jon, Rus, Abe, Dan, Tom, and Brian. (There are others too who were not there last weekend.) You can read their blogs to find out more about them, or just keep reading this story. They're living in Indianapolis, with not much furniture and not much food, but what they do have is faith ...

After dropping off Cat, we drove down West St. and I started to recognize things. I lived a summer in Indianapolis, five years ago, living/working at Holy Family Shelter (my first time working with the homeless). I knew we were driving toward the "target area" where the missionaries do their stuff, and when we drove east on Raymond and took a left on Meridian I started to feel lightheaded. My neighborhood, the run-down little place that I had loved for those eight weeks and ever since - this was where the Lord had sent my friends to spread the good news. Amazing.

We went out by twos. Nick and I started walking north on Meridian. We had a thirty-second chat with a woman who left us to catch a bus, and then we hit the jackpot. A tall young man with tattoos and long hair was walking toward us, and Nick went straight up to him. "Hi, I'm Nick, and this is Sheila, and we're missionaries. Have you ever heard God talk to you?" I thought he would walk away, or at best, argue us down and/or cuss us out. Instead we had a half-hour talk about how God might work in the neighborhood, and what friendship with God might look like. Amazing.

Nick went off with this guy to talk more and he dropped me off with Jon and Molly. They were finishing a conversation with an alcoholic whom they had just baptized in the Holy Spirit. Amazing. We walked up the street a ways and Jon went chasing after a teenage guy carrying some groceries home. Did Jon really just do that? There's no way that kid really wants to talk to him. Half an hour later Jon has told him about God calling together his people Israel and the ways that God is calling people together today. "I don't know what to think about all this," the kid says. "But I think I want to be part of it." Amazing.

As Jon is finishing with the kid, Rus joins us, and he and Molly and I walk a few doors down. We meet Laura, a Christian who can't always get out to church because of old injuries that limit her movement. "We think God has called us to this neighborhood," Rus says. "What would it looked like if everyone came out on their porches every morning and prayed for the neighborhood?" We chat about that for a while and Molly moves in to create a relationship. "We'd like to share a meal with you. We can bring dinner over here if you can't get out. Here's my cell phone number." So now we've made a friend. Amazing.

Jon rejoins Molly, I go with Rus, we walk over one street and talk to a married couple on their porch. We talk more about friendship and reconciliation. This one is hard - their marriage is in trouble - and I am tempted to walk away. They don't seem to be listening. But maybe one ear is open. Rus, in courage and love for these people we've just met, keeps talking. Amazing. Sadly, we leave without "success" exactly. But keep praying as we walk down the porch steps and onto the street.

The last chat of the day is largely just funny. This guy asks us what we think happens to the soul after death, and in my first real contribution of the day, I tell him we actually spend a lot more time thinking about life before death. He then asks us if we think that Earth is the only planet with life on it ... what?

We get into the car and go to pick up Jon and Molly at White Castle where they just bought food for these homeless guys and also prayed with them. We drive home hot and tired and thirsty and hungry and sunburnt and - amazed. At least, I am amazed. "So is every day like this?" I ask someone. "Yeah," they reply, "pretty much."

We drive to Riley, and Molly and I go up to get Cat for dinner. Montre is doing pretty badly so Cat decides to stay with him. We can't enter the room without "suiting up" in gloves and gown, so Molly and I pray over Montre from just outside the room.

Dinner after such a day is absolutely perfect and delicious. Ray & Robin Gonzalez, an awesome couple from the PoP branch down there, make us tri-tip and salad and garlic bread ... "Thank you God, for giving us food!" the missionaries frequently sing when sitting down to a meal. Did I mention they don't eat lunch? Our stomachs filled, we work on the spirit with song after song - praise songs, Johnny Cash, you name it - Nick on the guitar, Rus doing some kind of stomping percussion, all of us with voices raised. Life together, generations together, joy together. Amazing.

It's getting late and Cat has been at the hospital about ten straight hours. When we go to pick her up, we find that Montre is still not too good and that Cat never ate dinner. We take her home, feed her some leftovers, and all go exhausted to sleep.

The next day , after church, Cat goes back to the hospital and I again chicken out and stay at the house. Mid-afternoon I go to Riley to pick up Cat so we can drive home and be back in time for soccer. She walks out of Riley, gets into the car, and tells me Montre is dying. One of the nurses said he probably won't make it through the night.

Now I finally go in with Cat.

I spend a short while sitting in the corner chair, trying to be quiet and unobtrusive, as Cat stands quietly at Montre's bedside holding his hand. Montre has been given some sort of paralytic drug so we have no way of knowing whether he's in pain, or whether he knows we are there. Montre's uncle comes in, we leave him to have time alone with Montre, and we visit the McDonald's on the first floor of the hospital because Cat has again forgotten to eat. We finish and the missionaries arrive to visit Montre and pray with him. (They've been regular visitors for the past couple of weeks.) They decide to keep a vigil and have two of them there at all times, switching off every hour and a half. Amazing.

For about three hours - broken up when the nurses shoo us out so they can clean Montre up - Cat and Mary and I pray with Montre. Mary tells us that she thinks the Lord wants to heal Montre and that we should keep praying for healing. Have you ever stood by a dying child and prayed fervently for his healing? Amazing. I wavered between really thinking he'd be healed, and just quietly saying, "Lord, you gave sight to the blind. I don't understand, but heal this boy."

It's eight o'clock at night and I have to be at work tomorrow. Cat is staying - she just can't leave Montre - and I drive her car back to South Bend alone, thinking about these two days of amazement.

***

To let you know the end of Montre's story - he died on Wednesday. I could give you halfhearted attempts at explaining what the heck God was doing there, but I really don't have any such words. For me, right now, I am simply amazed.

All weekend I was frustrated trying to find another word to use, instead of saying "amazing" over and over. But sometimes, there just aren't any words for it. God is King. I don't understand all of his ways, but he is King. And he is amazing.

this weekend

How beautiful on the mountains are the feet of those who bring good news, who proclaim peace, who bring good tidings, who proclaim salvation, who say to Zion, "Your God reigns!"
(Isaiah 52:7)

Later (when I'm not at work) I'll post more about my weekend with the missionaries in Indianapolis.

put me in, coach

Today at the beach I played volleyball with my friends. For me this is momentous! It's been almost a year since I started playing soccer, and that's been a joy, but I have still shied away from other sports. But today it was mostly my soccer friends that I was playing with, so I felt safe enough to try it. And of course I was terrible, but I had fun and I didn't turn the game into a total disaster. So now I have another sport that I can play without crying ;) But what really impressed me was what kind and encouraging friends I have. Sarah, knowing what it took for me to go out there, told me in the middle of the game, "I am so proud of you right now." Daniel took the time to explain all the rules so I wasn't so lost. (The ball kind of sailed over our heads a few times while he was explaining, but that was OK.) Kyle showed me how to serve and I actually got the ball over the net twice in a row!

Some of you reading this might not be familiar with this concept, but in PoP we sometimes talk about a friend "being Christ" to us. Which basically means, that person brought into everyday reality the love that Christ has for us - they put it into action. With that in mind ...

I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.
I can play any sport in the world through Sarah, Daniel & Kyle who strengthen me.

Very Belated Photos (Valentine's Dance)

household rocks

So I'm having trouble with a tire that keeps going flat, and after getting home from Seder last night I was talking to Anne and mentioned I was a little anxious because I didn't know when I would have time to go get it fixed. So she said, "Why don't we trade cars tomorrow? Then I can take it in for you while you're at work."

So, I feel great this morning. Not just because I am relieved not to be worrying about my car, but because I am amazed at how loving Anne is and how well I am taken care of, by the Lord and by the people around me.

the continuing victory of soccer

One of my favorite moments of the week is driving home from Sunday night soccer. I'm hot and sweaty, usually sore from those muscles I don't use much and from wherever the ball hit me (tonight I took only one blast to the shoulder, not bad at all). I'm exhausted and it's late and I need to get home and sleep before starting another emotionally grueling week at CFH. But-

My eyes are wide open and my head is clearer than it ever is otherwise. My whole body is alive and I feel stronger, more confident. The air is fresh and cool and I cruise along listening to the Back Porch and thinking how much I love these friends that I play with. When I get home and walk up to the front door, I can even feel how I am walking differently - maybe even a little swagger.

(The next day at work I make a big deal of how sore I am and especially any bruises I got. Oh yeah, played soccer last night, yeah, I play pretty hard. Check out this bruise ...)

I'm sure this is not unusual, I bet all of you sporty people out there have known this feeling your entire lives. But there's a whole lot of us out there who grew up not knowing it. For years, all that sports meant to me was being laughed at or, at best, being kindly tolerated by teammates who just wished I was not on their team. Sports always made me want to cry and sometimes I did cry.

When the opportunity came up last summer to play soccer with my friends once a week, I knew I had to do it. The Lord wants us to be free and even though I did not want to get out on that field, I knew the Lord wanted to free me. So I played. And I still wanted to cry, and I did cry at least once, but I kept going.

And now - well, actually, I scored my first goal tonight. And that was pretty awesome, but it hardly matters, because the victory for me is driving to the Center even when I'm tired and don't feel like playing ... getting out there and running around and making a lot of bad passes and letting goals go by and getting hit in the face sometimes and feeling sick to my stomach ... and using the healthy body the Lord gave me and sometimes making good passes and sometimes blocking the goal and always laughing.

I laugh when Muzati picks up the ball with his hands, when Peter makes some kind of hyena scream as he runs toward the goal, when Sarah collides with Kyle, when the ball rolls by me because I'm busy talking to Catherine. And then in my car, sore and tired and sweaty, I just smile the whole way home.