A Treasury of Faith Journey Stories: Your Pain, Suffering, and Hardships

What have you learned about faith from your pain, suffering, and hardships?

Coming off the spiritual high of the adoption, we thought God would continue to lead us in these miraculous ways. Then he invited us to make a home on the edge of the Sahara Desert where I didn't just not know how to find food, I didn't even know how to recognize what is food. I described that first year in Africa as our family being beat upon jagged rocks. God violated our expectations, but he did not violate what He told us to expect.

He didn't say in this world you will have vacations, yummy food, air conditioning, and medical care. He said in this world you will have trouble AND to count it all joy. There were times I questioned if I even wanted a God like that. 

I quit singing, "You're a good, good Father." Immersed in poverty, there were too many times He didn't do 'enough.' Knowing the provision we experience in America, I couldn't reconcile with the poverty all around me. If you had an earthly father with two children who every day gave a granola bar to one and at the same time offered a buffet to the other, repeatedly, there is no way you would say he was a good father.

But we also saw treasures. We saw an unreached village learn of Jesus through a baby they had rejected. We saw God interrupt tragedy time and again. Enough unbelievable stories led us believe life is meant to be lived straddling survival mode and the supernatural. 

When a baby died and with angry, hot tears I cried, "You didn't do enough for her," he tenderly convicted me with the words, "I was her." 

The lesson of faith, especially for us in affluent societies, is that our faith is not just in the One who cares for the poor and the hurting but in the One who identifies himself among them. 

A Treasury of Faith Journey Stories: Other People

How have other people helped you along the way?

This is a fun story from when Operation Christmas Child boxes came to our remote church in West Africa. (Side note: Those boxes arrive in April and have nothing to do with Christmas there. That is a good thing. But that is another story for another time.) 

We had nothing to do with bringing the Operation Christmas Child boxes to the church. They came through a connection the church had long before we arrived. Still, we didn't want to be mistakenly credited with the goodies, so we scooted our family to the back wall where we could watch the distribution without being seen as a part of it. We wanted the church leaders to get full credit for the gifts they had arranged. Subconsciously, we were also identifying ourselves with the givers. We had packed boxes like this before and now we were thrilled to be witnessing the distribution end of it.

But those church leaders saw us back there and said, "No, no, you come up here. These boxes are for the children of the church and the community. Your kids ARE kids of this church."

They sent us home with three Operation Christmas Child boxes. 

We may not have needed the washcloths or the pencils inside, and yet we treasured those boxes as much as anyone. Those boxes represented the gift of BELONGING. When we were the alien and the stranger, this church took us in. 

A Treasury of Faith Journey Stories: Scripture

 What Scripture have you clung to?

Living in a high-risk country, there were occasionally what we called "security flare-ups." During one of these times, I woke up before the rest of the family and that morning I felt like getting on an airplane with my kids. Philip could figure out what it meant for the ministry and the future, but I needed to get my kids out of there.

Not wanting make any rash decisions, I thought, "No, I'm going to read the story of David and Goliath and remember we have a great big God."

Flipping there, my eye caught the heading to 1 Kings 19, "Elijah Flees to Horeb." 

I wonder what God has to say about running away in fear? Was he disappointed in Elijah? Maybe mad because Elijah had just witnessed that whole Mount Carmel episode?

When I got to verse seven, I was in tears as the angel of the Lord said, "Get up and eat, for the journey is too much for you."

"I know, Lord, I know," I prayed. "The journey is too much for me."

God is not mad! He knows he's asked more than what Elijah has to give, so he feeds him until he has the strength to make it to the mountain of God. Then, when Elijah recounts all the hardships he's faced, in a lengthy desperate list, God does not deny it or defend Himself. He offers Elijah a spacial invitation of Himself.

In the midst of fleeing for his life, Elijah received an invitation to divine intimacy.

It's okay to run. He won't be mad.

When I went looking for a pep rally in David and Goliath, I found permission to flee in Elijah. 

With that foundation of permission to flee if needed, I was able to make a home in that high-risk environment another two years.

A Treasury of Faith Journey Stories: God's Faithfulness

How have you seen God's faithfulness?

When asked this question Sunday morning, Philip shared about God's incredible faithfulness in the birthing of our ministry, but since that contains more ministry details than I can share here on a public forum, I am going to share one of the "runner-up" stories. (We had multiple possible stories for each interview question. Imagine that.)

This particular story happened at the time of our baby's second seizure episode. Leaving our big kids behind with a houseful of visiting Americans, Philip and I rushed Anne to the international clinic together. Because she was not bouncing back as she had after the first seizure five weeks before, the clinic admitted her. We went from hosting a Taco Tuesday at our house to checking into the hospital. Everything was chaotic, leaving our dinner party before cooking the dinner to fear for our baby to checking into a foreign clinic with everything in French. Finally, finally, they had her hooked up to an IV and she fell asleep. I looked up and saw a television mounted on the wall. I asked Philip, "Do you think you could find something in English on that thing?" It was a real question. I wasn't even sure English channels existed but with everything around me foreign and uncertain, I was looking for an escape.

As he flipped the channels, we were caught off guard by a documentary on Mammoth Cave in Kentucky. Right there is that hospital room came the Kentucky accent of a park ranger in a big park ranger hat. Instantly, I felt like I was home. From that tv screen came comfort and familiarity and even the pleasing warmth of memories from celebrating my 30th birthday at Mammoth Cave. Mammoth Cave in a West African medical clinic?!?!

Five minutes later, the program ended and there was never another English speaking program like it.

It is with tears running down my face that I want to share with you what those five minutes of West Kentucky did for me in that foreign hospital room. When that park ranger came on the screen, I knew God was in the room. Though I had not reached for Him in prayer, He had reached for me just the same. When I looked for comfort in a tv screen, He crafted the one-in-a-million chance I would find it there. He is faithful when we are not. His promises rest on his trustworthiness, not ours. That park ranger will never know his unexpected Kentucky accent ushered me into the presence of God on a really hard day in a foreign land.

A Treasury of Faith Journey Stories: Our Humanity

How have you come to grips with your own humanity?

This was the first question in our Sunday morning interview, introduced in the previous post. To answer, I want to tell a story from the beginning of our adoption. This was when we had never met Daniel but we were committed to him. He was our son in our hearts, though it would be another year of paperwork before it would be legal and we could meet him. In that year of waiting, we visited the School for the Blind to learn about being parents of a child with visual impairments. At that point, we only knew a fraction of his needs and, coming away from the school, I was already overwhelmed. We also had two other small children at the time and I remember thinking, "I cannot do this."

I prayed, "God, I am not this person."
Immediately He responded, "But I AM this God."

From there on out the adoption ceased to be about what we could or could not do and became a story of who our God is. As Walter Brueggemann says, we saw the Lord as both "a warrior with sleeves rolled up for battle and a gentle shepherd leading his sheep." I think it's important, knowing the stories that come later, to start by saying our humanity is real. My journals are full of doubts, struggles, and short-sightedness. We were never enough for the tasks set before us, but that is not the story. The story is that our Father is.

A Treasury of Faith Journey Stories

"The story in the Western world is the thing you tell as the concluding point, or the children's moment in some traditions. But people love to hear stories; in stories, we find ourselves because we relate to our humanness."

-Randy S. Woodley

I just had the most delightful week preparing for Sunday school. Philip and I were asked to share roughly the last twelve years in approximately fifteen minutes. If you've heard us speak at any church in the last twelve years, you are likely laughing right now. We have talked for hours on this stuff over the years. 

That time crunch is part of what made it so fun. There is no room for fluff at times like this. I spent days pouring over old journals and pulling out old playlists in deciding what stories to tell. Out of hundred of stories, we narrowed it down to five. Incredibly, three of the five stories we shared were DIRECT examples of the Scripture and themes of the morning's sermon. The power of the Holy Spirit was demonstrated in the coordination.

In the end, we didn't share about the work in West Africa. We didn't share about our friends and heroes in West Africa. We didn't share the ways in which we fell in love with our life there.

We simply shared our faith journey.

The theme of the class is to learn of our Father by learning each other's stories. I love this so much and hope you'll indulge me in carrying it over here to the blog.

Over a series of posts, I will share my answers to these five questions:

1) How have you come to grips with your own humanity?

2) How have you seen God's faithfulness?

3) What Scripture have you hung onto?

4) What have you learned about spiritual health and wellbeing?

5) How did others help you along the way?

6) What have you learned about faith through your pain, suffering, and hardships?

These are the questions we answered this morning. Will you think about your story in these terms and share your answers with me, too? 

Because my stories will be fun and exotic due to their geography, it's important for me to repeat now what I have been saying since 2014: my days were just as holy when I spent them changing my own children's diapers in my own home in my own country and no one noticed. Being exotic is not what makes a story faithful. You don't have to leave your hometown to have stories of God's faithfulness and your pain and suffering. Please let me hear yours.

One Story Bound to One Bag of Rice

"We are trying to get home," Fatima* said.

Last week Philip interviewed Fatima, one of the recipients of the Emergency Food Distribution. We can't share her photo or her real name, but her story goes like this:

She and her five children (three in high school, two in elementary) fled their village when the extremists killed her husband. To support her children in their displacement, she buys bread in bulk and sells it on the street. She tried going home once, but groups came saying, "Don't farm." She fled into the city a second time because the extremists are taking young men and boys. In the city she has found much spiritual strength, and she thanked us all profusely for the rice to feed her children.

She still hopes to get home in time for planting season. If villagers like her cannot plant their fields, food insecurity will stretch beyond their own displaced families. The whole country is dependent on the families who farm. If there is no harvest this year, available food will be insufficient for the demand.

I am so thankful for the local church who look at the situation and say, "Not on my watch." 

This photo is a screen shot from the interview. One of the bags of rice you see is feeding Fatima and her children this month. From donors in America and a distribution team in West Africa, the body of Christ is doing what we do best for our Lord who said, "By this everyone will know you are my disciples, if you love one another." (John 13:35)

*Not her real name