"Why are yall moving to a farm???" #answers;)
"How are you going to live missionally way out on a farm?!" came the sincere words from someone I really respect. It wasn't an off the cuff comment she made - this precious woman texts me every week and asks how she can pray for me and then the Heavens open up as she does. So when she asked me this question in the company of a collection of friends, I knew it was from a place of honesty and genuine care. And I loved it. It takes trust and a lot of time to have an honest relationship and I knew she held my heart close to hers and the question she asked came from a desire to understand, not to judge. But it hung in the air like the heat that stands on the road in the middle of a Texas summer - no getting away from it or acting like our actions in moving to a farm weren't creating discomfort in the minds of people we really love.
We've received a lot of calls and text and emails and lunch invites from folks who love us and are essentially asking "What the hell are yall thinking? What's going on? How does living on a farm fit into living missionally??!" It's the summer and I don't blog a lot when my kids are all home, but thought that it might be time. Time to give some explanation to the folks who love us in Japan, Thailand and India asking the same questions that the ones are asking here in this city that has our heart. We won't be able to get with everyone so this blog is second best...we're hating that, but here's our heart as best as it can be put down in black and white.
Here's the very short answer for those who like "sound bites" - We're moving to a farm in TN because we feel like Jesus is leading us that way.
But for the others who are like my fourth child who said at bedtime the other night, "SO. When I get to heaven I'm having a little chat with Jesus about alllll the details he left out of the Bible stories." LOL - I love that kid!!!
Have you ever been a part of something - maybe a school or a club or an organization or a family - and you start to change and it makes questions rise up to the surface for yourself and others? Anytime someone starts to change it can make others uncomfortable - even good change can be hard. What can be tricky is to allow yourself to change and still communicate love and respect to what you find yourself differentiating from. We LOVE the community and movement we have been a part of these past eight years. So very much, but we realize we are differentiating.
To begin, we know we're complicated. :) #surprise! And we get it - we're not making a lot of sense to ourselves or anyone else. What family of 8 leads a discipleship training school, takes their family to Mongolia for a summer to start a training school there then comes home and decides they can't do it anymore? They can't even lead a small group. So they stop. That's not the logical next step. Packing up to church plant overseas? Makes total sense. Leaving the city and people we love to move to TN to buy a farm? Craziness. That would be us. #grace
We love Jesus. A lot. But somewhere along the way our focus had gotten so skewed about what that meant. In His kindness Jesus began to deconstruct that focus a few years back. We knew something was wrong inside our hearts when we began to push down the longings we had had since we were dating as teens to have a place of rest in the country for people. Not just vocational ministers - there's plenty out there for those precious people to receive care, but people we really connect with - laity.
However, we kept getting stuck when we thought about being in a rural setting = because "You can't really be a part of what God is doing if you don't work around a lot of people who don't know Him...even though folks working on staff at churches aren't working around people who don't know Him..." Lots to think through needless to say. It began with repentance...asking forgiveness for making life about us and what we could do. Restoration always begins with repentance...and it's painfully freeing.
Let me just stop and say that my cheeks are hot with shame remembering the thoughts we processed. But it's important to be honest about how we got where we are in this whole process.
For many years we needed to know that we were doing the "right thing" by living in the city. It felt "right" to invalidate those who don't live in an urban-like setting because clearly there are more people in the city who need Jesus. Tears are stinging my eyes remembering the pride in our hearts.
But as we prayed and talked we realized that there was a similar feeling we had experienced before too. We wondered if Believers in the rural settings felt viewed by city people the way we sometimes felt viewed by folks serving overseas? Not all of them or most of them, but some folks who serve overseas talk about how selfish Americans are and how they only think of themselves. We've been a part of those conversations and it is very, very painful. Yet, it's those very Americans who work at jobs they often hate; but still sacrificially give to those serving across the salt. Often a lot of guilt is wrapped up in the giving too. As a culture we measure and value people based on what they do - and we do that in the Church too. Telling or vibing to American's that they're selfish naval gazers who don't help enough in the Church anyway is a great way to shame them into giving toward something that "counts". Father, have mercy - we don't know what we're doing to each other.
When we invalidate people through shaming we are screaming "I'm very insecure and need to validate myself and my choices." That's what we had been doing in various ways and it was so ugly and needed to be dealt with on every level.
We've wrestled a lot with the ways we had been thinking for a long time, "How can you really be on mission and yet not be around a lot of people who don't know Him?" The doctor goes to the hurting, the medicine for the ill, the Love of Jesus for the many people. I don't think we have the answer yet - in fact it feels really raw and vulnerable where we're at right now. But that's a really good place for the Lawman and me, not knowing everything or how to make it work. It leaves us having to reach for Him every single day. But a good place to start for us was living in a shame free atmosphere - no more living under shame and no more communicating shame.
There are some ideas formulating though and it all started with realizing that everything honorable is worship if your heart is postured in gratitude and surrender to Him from a place of longing...not duty and not driveness. Everything. Nothing counts more over the other. Cooking for my people is worship just like sharing Jesus with my neighbor. Watching the color come down the mountains in the fall is worship just like sitting in church. It all counts.
But somewhere along the way we had idolized people who sold everything and gone overseas to reach the nations. And then we graded everything and everyone else based on how effective the position was to reaching people for Him. If you're an extrovert with the gift of evangelism you for sure are going to make it onto the global church Wheaties box. :) And who doesn't want to be effective in something they love - and a part of something big, too. We sure did...
I think for a long time we lived like God sent Jesus to die for us to all be put on mission. But when we stopped to really think about it we saw that we had been wrong. We had been viewing "mission" all wrong. Jesus came to give His life because His Father asked Him to...He even begged for another way. But to restore relationship with the Father ~ it was the plan since we started not trusting His goodness in the Garden. Someone perfect had to pay for all of us who are imperfect.
But somewhere down through time we've acted like it's the other way around.
We've believed that it's all about mission and not relationship. Jesus said to go out and tell everyone the Good News - and I want to do that with every breath. But like my sister said, "If the Great Commission is what it's all about then everything else isn't good enough." Everything else. Raising children, getting married, working at your job - it doesn't count. Unless, maybe He meant something different? Maybe He meant that AS we are going about doing all of the other things in a posture of worship we share Him. Even if our mouths never share the Gospel our hearts and actions do? I would say that most people in the Church agree with what I just said, but I also know that when performance gets in bed with the Bride they make babies called Baal...the way the world does things. Performing Christians. And that - that was never what Jesus died for on that sacred Cross.
I guess I'm just beginning to see that the Cross was about Redemption ~ all of it. Either Jesus did everything on the Cross or He did not. And how that message gets around the whole world looks a lot different than maybe we've been living. Once we gave ourselves permission to worship Him with everything we did we began to see that we could actually worship Him on a farm as much as we do in the city. Freedom. But here's a secret - nobody will throw you party for getting free. In fact, you may feel really lonely. But that's ok...just keep hearing Jesus and doing whatever He says. You'll find those who understand along the way.
Back to the process...;)
Something happens when you stop to see who you are and where you're going. We're about two years into that process and it's a LONG story and too much to type. But the Lawman and I realized that if we're really being honest we are really ordinary. I think one of the worst thing a parent or culture can say to a kid is "You're special and you can be anything you want to be if you work hard enough." Ummm, that's a LOT of pressure. Too much pressure if you ask me. What's brought us freedom is asking Him, "What do you want us to do? You made us...show us who we are and how you created us to bring glory to you." The pressure is off if your audience is One.
As the pressure began to lift and we realized that it's not about us (but about Him) it was as if He gave us a huge blank canvas and a palette of paints and said..."Here's who you are and how I've made you...let's paint together! Let's use these colors here for this season of your life and we'll use those later." It made us giddy with Hope that He was using all of our mistakes and all of our past for His good...He makes all things good. Even beautiful.
Freedom to glorify Him ~ that wild dancing freedom that comes when your life is for One Person's pleasure. The pleasure of the Father waiting for us to come home.
We also gave ourselves permission to love a handful of people really well, Joy overflowed our hearts. We saw that if we didn't have an agenda for people and growing something, peace reigned. If He breathes on it and it blooms, beautiful. If it never moves past one on one, stunning! The longing for intimate friendship bloomed when we gave ourselves the time and space needed to invite those friendships into intimacy. Seeing our clan come alive in the mountains made us wonder what it might look like to live there. And then when each step toward His love brought freedom ~ then we thought it might be worth the risk.
We love the nations. Really. We both come alive overseas. Not just one nation, but all of them make us cry at how beautiful their people are the way God made them. We can see ourselves overseas one day when we've raised these beautiful people and send them out to fly. Or not. We don't know.
We love loving people. Really. But we can't do that anymore the way we used to...we can't love our neighbor with the idea of wondering how to get them into our church. The way He's made us we have to be agenda/goal/intention free ~ just hearing Him and doing whatever He says with a lot of love heaped on. Of course, we want people connected to others who love Jesus; but it's different when you just love and help people find their own part of the Bride where they feel most at home.
So - back to the question, "How will we live missionally on the farm?" Darned if I know. ;) All I know is that there are a few neighbors down the road and on the way to town I saw a young couple building a fence that made me think, "I want to get to know them!" And the drive into town...my spirit is glittery alive with worship to Him moreso than any song I've sung with the people I call family at church.
And because we love Jesus and people maybe it'll be like the other night when my single mom neighbor and I stood in the driveway crying together about how hard it is to raise kids when we're so broken ourselves. I told her she was doing awesome and how Jesus' grace is the only thing that gives me hope about my mothering. We encouraged each other as the sun sank behind our homes. Our kids' started getting hungry and I needed to go inside to feed mine. We hugged and she stopped me a said, "Hey, my boyfriend and [son] and I would love to have dinner with yall sometime." and I said "Oh, wow! We'd love that - ya'll bring the beer and we'll cook the burgers!" We walked away excited to share a meal, the Eucharist, together.
As I walked inside tears ran down my cheeks like they are now because it was one of the few times I had interacted with a neighbor out of agenda-free love. With no goal. The first time I didn't race inside to text my Christian friends and ask for prayer for my neighbor to come to our small group. The first time I hadn't eagerly shared how awesome I had been at boldly sharing my faith. I inhaled deeply what it might look like to live like Jesus gave His life to restore us to the Father and that that might be able to happen on a farm just like it did in my front yard.
So here's to loving the one in front of us and not worrying about the many. Here's to allowing holy desire to wake up and taking that shaky step of faith to trust that He's in it. Here's to being free. Here's to being farmers who love Jesus and people. :)
He sees you and you're exactly what He had in mind when
He knit you in your momma's womb. Because Christ has already done everything and made you new in His image ~ you're free to receive His love and to give that love away however He shows you. He's already done everything. And I see the canvas and the palette He has waiting for you and I'm just jumping up and down like the rowdy big sister with your art on her phone showing everyone and saying, "Yeah, she's an artist like our Dad...isn't it beautiful what she's painting with her life?!!!"
I'll close with a kid story. :) We try to ask intentional questions around our dinner table. Not because we're that "awesome" family, but because otherwise it dissolves into whining, tired toddler talk. ;) The not serious question two nights ago was "What do you want to do when you grow up?" Lots of answers. I personally want to make furniture, one kid wants to be a musician, another a writer, one a dentist, one a nurse "that holds tiny babies"...and then my 17yo shares..."Ummm, I want to travel the nations..." My heart stops and I think with pride "OH!! He wants to be a missionary!" (#performancestillrearsit'shead:) and he continues, "...and I want to stay in all the nicest hotels and give them reviews." I bent over double and howled!!!! YES!!!! He's FREE!!!! He's been raised in this nations/missions focused family, been dragged from India to Mongolia and other places around the world and walking around FREE to go and stay in the nicest places and give them reviews because God is into beautiful places for us to stay in AND he's into the hut in Africa where someone's heart comes alive to sleep on the floor. Just LOVE IT!!
Lean in close...can you hear me? You're free...the pressure is off. There's no performance in Heaven and so let's live like Heaven is here...even on a farm in Tennessee. ;) You're free...free to be Loved and free to Love...
We've received a lot of calls and text and emails and lunch invites from folks who love us and are essentially asking "What the hell are yall thinking? What's going on? How does living on a farm fit into living missionally??!" It's the summer and I don't blog a lot when my kids are all home, but thought that it might be time. Time to give some explanation to the folks who love us in Japan, Thailand and India asking the same questions that the ones are asking here in this city that has our heart. We won't be able to get with everyone so this blog is second best...we're hating that, but here's our heart as best as it can be put down in black and white.
Here's the very short answer for those who like "sound bites" - We're moving to a farm in TN because we feel like Jesus is leading us that way.
But for the others who are like my fourth child who said at bedtime the other night, "SO. When I get to heaven I'm having a little chat with Jesus about alllll the details he left out of the Bible stories." LOL - I love that kid!!!
To begin, we know we're complicated. :) #surprise! And we get it - we're not making a lot of sense to ourselves or anyone else. What family of 8 leads a discipleship training school, takes their family to Mongolia for a summer to start a training school there then comes home and decides they can't do it anymore? They can't even lead a small group. So they stop. That's not the logical next step. Packing up to church plant overseas? Makes total sense. Leaving the city and people we love to move to TN to buy a farm? Craziness. That would be us. #grace
We love Jesus. A lot. But somewhere along the way our focus had gotten so skewed about what that meant. In His kindness Jesus began to deconstruct that focus a few years back. We knew something was wrong inside our hearts when we began to push down the longings we had had since we were dating as teens to have a place of rest in the country for people. Not just vocational ministers - there's plenty out there for those precious people to receive care, but people we really connect with - laity.
However, we kept getting stuck when we thought about being in a rural setting = because "You can't really be a part of what God is doing if you don't work around a lot of people who don't know Him...even though folks working on staff at churches aren't working around people who don't know Him..." Lots to think through needless to say. It began with repentance...asking forgiveness for making life about us and what we could do. Restoration always begins with repentance...and it's painfully freeing.
Let me just stop and say that my cheeks are hot with shame remembering the thoughts we processed. But it's important to be honest about how we got where we are in this whole process.
For many years we needed to know that we were doing the "right thing" by living in the city. It felt "right" to invalidate those who don't live in an urban-like setting because clearly there are more people in the city who need Jesus. Tears are stinging my eyes remembering the pride in our hearts.
But as we prayed and talked we realized that there was a similar feeling we had experienced before too. We wondered if Believers in the rural settings felt viewed by city people the way we sometimes felt viewed by folks serving overseas? Not all of them or most of them, but some folks who serve overseas talk about how selfish Americans are and how they only think of themselves. We've been a part of those conversations and it is very, very painful. Yet, it's those very Americans who work at jobs they often hate; but still sacrificially give to those serving across the salt. Often a lot of guilt is wrapped up in the giving too. As a culture we measure and value people based on what they do - and we do that in the Church too. Telling or vibing to American's that they're selfish naval gazers who don't help enough in the Church anyway is a great way to shame them into giving toward something that "counts". Father, have mercy - we don't know what we're doing to each other.
When we invalidate people through shaming we are screaming "I'm very insecure and need to validate myself and my choices." That's what we had been doing in various ways and it was so ugly and needed to be dealt with on every level.
We've wrestled a lot with the ways we had been thinking for a long time, "How can you really be on mission and yet not be around a lot of people who don't know Him?" The doctor goes to the hurting, the medicine for the ill, the Love of Jesus for the many people. I don't think we have the answer yet - in fact it feels really raw and vulnerable where we're at right now. But that's a really good place for the Lawman and me, not knowing everything or how to make it work. It leaves us having to reach for Him every single day. But a good place to start for us was living in a shame free atmosphere - no more living under shame and no more communicating shame.
There are some ideas formulating though and it all started with realizing that everything honorable is worship if your heart is postured in gratitude and surrender to Him from a place of longing...not duty and not driveness. Everything. Nothing counts more over the other. Cooking for my people is worship just like sharing Jesus with my neighbor. Watching the color come down the mountains in the fall is worship just like sitting in church. It all counts.
But somewhere along the way we had idolized people who sold everything and gone overseas to reach the nations. And then we graded everything and everyone else based on how effective the position was to reaching people for Him. If you're an extrovert with the gift of evangelism you for sure are going to make it onto the global church Wheaties box. :) And who doesn't want to be effective in something they love - and a part of something big, too. We sure did...
I think for a long time we lived like God sent Jesus to die for us to all be put on mission. But when we stopped to really think about it we saw that we had been wrong. We had been viewing "mission" all wrong. Jesus came to give His life because His Father asked Him to...He even begged for another way. But to restore relationship with the Father ~ it was the plan since we started not trusting His goodness in the Garden. Someone perfect had to pay for all of us who are imperfect.
But somewhere down through time we've acted like it's the other way around.
We've believed that it's all about mission and not relationship. Jesus said to go out and tell everyone the Good News - and I want to do that with every breath. But like my sister said, "If the Great Commission is what it's all about then everything else isn't good enough." Everything else. Raising children, getting married, working at your job - it doesn't count. Unless, maybe He meant something different? Maybe He meant that AS we are going about doing all of the other things in a posture of worship we share Him. Even if our mouths never share the Gospel our hearts and actions do? I would say that most people in the Church agree with what I just said, but I also know that when performance gets in bed with the Bride they make babies called Baal...the way the world does things. Performing Christians. And that - that was never what Jesus died for on that sacred Cross.
Back to the process...;)
Something happens when you stop to see who you are and where you're going. We're about two years into that process and it's a LONG story and too much to type. But the Lawman and I realized that if we're really being honest we are really ordinary. I think one of the worst thing a parent or culture can say to a kid is "You're special and you can be anything you want to be if you work hard enough." Ummm, that's a LOT of pressure. Too much pressure if you ask me. What's brought us freedom is asking Him, "What do you want us to do? You made us...show us who we are and how you created us to bring glory to you." The pressure is off if your audience is One.
As the pressure began to lift and we realized that it's not about us (but about Him) it was as if He gave us a huge blank canvas and a palette of paints and said..."Here's who you are and how I've made you...let's paint together! Let's use these colors here for this season of your life and we'll use those later." It made us giddy with Hope that He was using all of our mistakes and all of our past for His good...He makes all things good. Even beautiful.
Freedom to glorify Him ~ that wild dancing freedom that comes when your life is for One Person's pleasure. The pleasure of the Father waiting for us to come home.
We also gave ourselves permission to love a handful of people really well, Joy overflowed our hearts. We saw that if we didn't have an agenda for people and growing something, peace reigned. If He breathes on it and it blooms, beautiful. If it never moves past one on one, stunning! The longing for intimate friendship bloomed when we gave ourselves the time and space needed to invite those friendships into intimacy. Seeing our clan come alive in the mountains made us wonder what it might look like to live there. And then when each step toward His love brought freedom ~ then we thought it might be worth the risk.
We love the nations. Really. We both come alive overseas. Not just one nation, but all of them make us cry at how beautiful their people are the way God made them. We can see ourselves overseas one day when we've raised these beautiful people and send them out to fly. Or not. We don't know.
We love loving people. Really. But we can't do that anymore the way we used to...we can't love our neighbor with the idea of wondering how to get them into our church. The way He's made us we have to be agenda/goal/intention free ~ just hearing Him and doing whatever He says with a lot of love heaped on. Of course, we want people connected to others who love Jesus; but it's different when you just love and help people find their own part of the Bride where they feel most at home.
So - back to the question, "How will we live missionally on the farm?" Darned if I know. ;) All I know is that there are a few neighbors down the road and on the way to town I saw a young couple building a fence that made me think, "I want to get to know them!" And the drive into town...my spirit is glittery alive with worship to Him moreso than any song I've sung with the people I call family at church.
And because we love Jesus and people maybe it'll be like the other night when my single mom neighbor and I stood in the driveway crying together about how hard it is to raise kids when we're so broken ourselves. I told her she was doing awesome and how Jesus' grace is the only thing that gives me hope about my mothering. We encouraged each other as the sun sank behind our homes. Our kids' started getting hungry and I needed to go inside to feed mine. We hugged and she stopped me a said, "Hey, my boyfriend and [son] and I would love to have dinner with yall sometime." and I said "Oh, wow! We'd love that - ya'll bring the beer and we'll cook the burgers!" We walked away excited to share a meal, the Eucharist, together.
As I walked inside tears ran down my cheeks like they are now because it was one of the few times I had interacted with a neighbor out of agenda-free love. With no goal. The first time I didn't race inside to text my Christian friends and ask for prayer for my neighbor to come to our small group. The first time I hadn't eagerly shared how awesome I had been at boldly sharing my faith. I inhaled deeply what it might look like to live like Jesus gave His life to restore us to the Father and that that might be able to happen on a farm just like it did in my front yard.
So here's to loving the one in front of us and not worrying about the many. Here's to allowing holy desire to wake up and taking that shaky step of faith to trust that He's in it. Here's to being free. Here's to being farmers who love Jesus and people. :)
He sees you and you're exactly what He had in mind when
I'll close with a kid story. :) We try to ask intentional questions around our dinner table. Not because we're that "awesome" family, but because otherwise it dissolves into whining, tired toddler talk. ;) The not serious question two nights ago was "What do you want to do when you grow up?" Lots of answers. I personally want to make furniture, one kid wants to be a musician, another a writer, one a dentist, one a nurse "that holds tiny babies"...and then my 17yo shares..."Ummm, I want to travel the nations..." My heart stops and I think with pride "OH!! He wants to be a missionary!" (#performancestillrearsit'shead:) and he continues, "...and I want to stay in all the nicest hotels and give them reviews." I bent over double and howled!!!! YES!!!! He's FREE!!!! He's been raised in this nations/missions focused family, been dragged from India to Mongolia and other places around the world and walking around FREE to go and stay in the nicest places and give them reviews because God is into beautiful places for us to stay in AND he's into the hut in Africa where someone's heart comes alive to sleep on the floor. Just LOVE IT!!
Lean in close...can you hear me? You're free...the pressure is off. There's no performance in Heaven and so let's live like Heaven is here...even on a farm in Tennessee. ;) You're free...free to be Loved and free to Love...
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