I interrupt this blog series....

Oh you guys, I am so SO excited to break up the seriousness of my past couple of posts to bring you this EXCITING, newly released video from Visiting Orphans (VO).  I'm sure you remember that VO is the mission-sending organization I have traveled to Africa with the past two summers, and will be leading a trip with this December. I am so honored to be part of a team of bloggers who have the privilege of presenting this fresh look at VO today.  I just watched the video myself for the first time this morning, and I cried through the whole thing.  Because I know these people.  I know their hearts.  I know their passion is to see the world changed - to BE the change - through bringing the love of Jesus to the nations. 

I know first-hand that VO is committed to seeing lives transformed by empowering and equipping Christ-followers to GO to the nations, BE focused on relationship, and LOVE like Christ by caring for children and communities world-wide.  GO. BE. LOVE.  It's about so much more than just a cool trip to tell your friends about.  It's about being the very hands and feet of Jesus.

I know sometimes it's hard to pause in the middle of your morning blog-surfing to watch a 10-minute video (ok, 11 minutes), but y'all, please please take just a few minutes (ok, 11) to stop and watch this beautiful video.  I so want to share with all of you the amazing organization that has captured my heart, and which God has used and is using to send me to the nations. Do it for me?



You can read more about VO's vision and their mission at these links.

And if your heart has been stirred?  If you feel a tugging inside to GO. BE. LOVE. to the nations?  Leave me a comment right here and I can hook you up!  (especially if that tug should be pulling you toward Uganda this December!)

TMI: Honesty in all its ugliness - part 2.

Once I was finally able to come up for air, I think my thoughts were something along the lines of, "Whew! Man, that was a rough season! Thank You, Jesus, for rescuing me out of that. Glad that’s over." But my eyes were still full of sand, and my clothes were still wet and ragged, and I was so relieved at not drowning, that I didn't even realize I was still a mess. I just continued stumbling around in the dark for....oh, I don't know....the last year.

Because you say, “I am rich, and have become wealthy, and have need of nothing,” and you do not know that you are wretched, miserable, poor, blind, and naked. Rev. 3:17

Added on top of all the emotional mess I was in, watching so many of my friends and former teammates move on into lives of service and purpose and passion – adopting, raising money to support ministries, traveling on and leading mission trips – while I was still struggling to catch my breath, well, it left me a little….ok, jealous.

And jealousy is an enemy to your soul. It hold its hands over the eyes of your heart and leaves you walking along in darkness when you don't even know it.  It was blindness on top of blindness.

Then sometime this past spring, I began to notice a few things. Things like....we hadn't taken the kids on kid dates in forever and I hadn't even realized it. Like, we hadn't done family nights in months and I didn't even have the energy to care. Like, I had lost contact with many of my friends except for an occasional text every couple of months or so.

Slowly, slowly I began to realize I’d been living life in a daze.  At first I wasn’t sure what had happened or why.  What was it that had caused me to be sleepwalking through my life?  I actually don't think it was until I started working on this post that I finally started to see what had happened.  

The nearest I can figure is that I never let Jesus completely heal my heart from the wreckage that happened last summer when I left Uganda.

A couple of weeks ago, I read this on Shaun Groves’ blog.  Shaun is the leader – director? developer? – of Compassion Bloggers. Two to three times a year, he leads a group of bloggers on trips with Compassion International to raise awareness about what Compassion does.

"On the last night of every Compassion Bloggers trip we sit around a table together and talk about how to go back home. Because re-entry is a peculiar and scary thing. We talk about the myriad responses we may have when we get there. There’s no telling what’s going to happen when a person goes from slum to Super Target.

Some people are numb, unable to feel anything.
Some are battered by guilt and embarrassment over how easy their life is.
Some feel inexplicably sad, over nothing…or everything.
Some lose their drive and ambition entirely and quit blogging.
Some get angry.

And, I tell the bloggers, some people experience all of this in one afternoon!
No matter what you feel, I tell them, it’s normal. You’re not the only one."

Ahh….finally, there it was! THIS is what had been wrong with me!  Not only had I experienced pretty much "all of this in one afternoon", I had continued to experience all of it for an ENTIRE YEAR.  And I didn't know what to do with all of it.  I didn't know how to process it.  So instead of working through it with Jesus the way I should have, sub-consciously I just pulled myself into a cocoon, and I hid as best I could.

I distinctly remember, when the waves of sadness would start to engulf me, I would say to myself, "It's ok.  It's ok.  I can do this." - meaning "It's ok that I feel this way.  It's normal, and I'll be fine."  Umm, yes, it's ok to feel that way.  It's not ok to stay that way.  And the only way I could be fine was to let Jesus heal me.

“It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not LET yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery.” Gal. 5:1

When Jesus reached down and rescued me from that oppressive weight that I thought was going to suffocate me, I didn’t realize that I needed to continue pressing hard into Him in order to not LET myself continue to be burdened by the YOKE OF SLAVERY that still had its clutches around me.

Did you know you can LET yourself be burdened by a yoke of slavery?  Caught in a stronghold?  Even after Jesus died to set you free?  Yep.  Jesus has provided us the victory, but just like salvation, it's up to us to choose it.

"Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the power of His might.  {YOU} Put on the full armor of God, so that you will be able to stand firm against the schemes of the devil." Eph. 6:10-11

Sheesh, y'all.  I know this stuff.  I've done Beth's Moore's Breaking Free.  I've done Believing God.  Twice.  I've filled one index card spiral after another after another with scripture.  I've quoted it and prayed it and memorized it.  I KNOW how to stand firm against the yoke of slavery, against strongholds, against the schemes of the devil.  I KNOW how to put on the full armor of God....His truth, His righteousness, the shield of faith, and the sword of the Spirit (His WORD).  

But man, Satan is so devious.  I totally expected the struggle of coming back from Africa.  I expected the sadness, the guilt, the anger and frustration.  And because I expected it, I accepted it.  I just laid right down and LET that yoke wrap itself right around my heart and mind.

*sigh*

....conclusion coming soon

TMI: Honesty in all its ugliness - part 1.

I didn't actually mean to stop blogging. Not really.

I kept meaning to get back to it, and every couple of weeks or so I'd think, "Man, I really need to catch up on my blog." But then somehow I just never did.

So much life has happened during the past year that I never got around to documenting (or only did so minimally). Our sweet Kloe turned 12. Her last year as a pre-teen. And I was mentally absent for much of it (more about that later).

I resigned from PTA – a big change for me after 5½ years (I’ve actually accepted a new position for this coming school year, though). We got a new (used) minivan. I miss the Expedition terribly, but you know, we have to eat. :)

Our sweet Annie died last August, and we brought home a new puppy in January. Also in January, I was asked to speak during a local Christian schools’ chapel time about my mission trips. Wow, that was an amazing experience!

February was a big month. Jacob turned 10. Double digits. Did I even post a blog about that? I don’t think so. I started having some issues with my hip that still aren’t resolved. I got my braces off (yay!), had a minor procedure done on my foot that left me hobbling around in a “shoe” (you know the kind) for two weeks, and we had TWO school snow days in a row! I also went to Nashville for leadership training with Visiting Orphans, the organization I have traveled to Africa with the past two summers.

Other things I missed? Kloe’s first overnight band trip (I actually went on the trip as a chaperone, but you know….mentally absent), her first band UIL contest, her first major ballet production, Passover, my mom’s birthday, Jacob’s school field trip….and the list goes on.

It's been such a strange season for me this past year. If anybody's still hanging around here who was with me back when I came home from Uganda last summer, you may remember what a hard time I had transitioning back into "normal" life. I really thought I was gonna go under there for a while. And then one day, through God's abundant mercy and kindness, He pulled me up out of the pit and set my feet back on some semi-solid ground. After weeks of feeling like I was suffocating to death, at last I could finally breathe again.

The Nile River

Funny thing, though. I came up out of the pit....but I never really came out of the fog. I felt such relief at finally being able to just get through my day without breaking down in tears....at being able to take a breath without feeling like there was an elephant sitting on my chest - on my heart - that I didn't realize I was still wandering around in the dark.

It was kind of like Jesus, in all of His great mercy, reached down into the raging waters that were threatening to drown me, grabbed my hand, and pulled me up onto a sand bar. As I lay there gasping for air, so grateful that I wasn't having to struggle for every breath, so thankful for some solid ground under my hands and knees, I never bothered to look around me and realize that I was still standing in the middle of the ocean, surrounded on every side by waves and emptiness.

I was still LOST, but I didn't know it. So I didn't bother trying to get found.

...to be continued