When the Shock Brings Truth

I was electrocuted twice as a child. The first time was with my 80-year-old great-grandmother. That was bad. But the one that stands out most in my mind was the other one. 

I must have been about ten. Braids, bell bottoms, and a smattering of freckles I tried to scrub off on a daily basis. I had followed my older sister and her next-door-neighbor friend into the woods. I’m not sure if they knew I followed them or if they intentionally tried to ditch me. I imagine it was the latter, as I was a tag-a-long and wanted to be included at any cost. Even if I was the “villain” in all the make-believe games or given the Barbie doll without the head, I was fairly determined to be a part of anything my older sister did, and so I persevered. 

I trampled the damp path through the woods alone, as the others had gotten far ahead. The path weaved its way between patches of skunk cabbage and over plank-boards bridging mud holes. For a ten year old, it seemed a good long way from home, though it was probably yards from the girl’s house. 

My sister’s friend had a small barn tucked at the edge of the path. She kept her horse there, within the boundary of an electric fence. By the time I reached the outer perimeter, my sister and her friend were swinging around the dilapidated hay loft, already full bore in some game I was missing.

I should have assumed the fence was hot when I went to climb through it. I’m not sure why it hadn’t occurred to me, especially since we had horses too, and it wasn’t my first rodeo with electric fences. I guess I wanted to join the fun, and my focus was on the loft. If you’ve ever been caught on an electric fence before, one of the first things you learn is that you can’t get off. When I gripped the wire to shimmy through it, the voltage spliced through my body, contracting every muscle I owned. My fists clenched the wire in the current and couldn’t be opened. Not for anything. The rule of thumb is there’s no getting off until someone unplugs the power. My great-grandmother had tried the first time to wrench me free, and that just got both of us stuck.

I don’t know if I screamed or if my sister and her friend had seen me, but the power shut off some time after, maybe only seconds later. The girls rushed down and circled around me to make sure I was okay. The buzz of current remained under my skin, leaving me weak and shaky all over. Wrung out and zapped. I could barely stand, but I assured them I was okay. I was fine. 

They ushered me up the twisting path, back over the bridges and through the skunk cabbage toward home. Those details are a little blurry to me, either from the shock’s aftermath or time’s. But there are some details I’ll never forget.

As we climbed the girl’s driveway and my own came into view, my father stood at the edge of our drive waiting for me. To this day, I don’t know how he knew he needed to be there or why he was looking for me. How he knew I needed him so badly at that moment. 

But there he was. 

When I saw him, I ran to him. He held me, and everything let loose inside me. The pain of the shock. The hurt of being left out. The shame of going through all of it just because I wanted to belong so badly. It came in a deluge of tears that never found words. Grimy and unkempt sobs that bled down my cheeks and held nothing back. 

My sister still teases me about it. She’ll say that everything was fine until I saw Daddy. That I had gotten over it ten minutes before, shrugged it off, righted myself, and marched through the woods all better from my escapade. Just up until the point I saw him. Then I crumbled. Soaked it for all the attention it was worth, she’d say. 

And she was right, in part. But here’s the deeper truth. Here’s the thing I understand now from this side of life:  

That in that moment, wrapped in my father’s strong arms, beyond feeling safe and secure, it was okay not to be fine.

It was okay that the burden was too heavy to carry. That I could no longer hold the weight of it, not just the physical pain, but the heaviness of shame and unworthiness. Insignificance. That I had trekked through mud and stinky weeds to belong to something I was never a part of. To try so hard to fit in. It was okay to no longer have the strength to wear a plastic smile and pretend everything was all right, that I was untouched and unaffected by the shock waves that ripped through my world.

Because maybe I wasn’t.

And maybe they look different today, those waves, but they’re still there. I still pretend to have it all together. To be smart and organized and on top of everything. To hide the cobwebs in the corners and the laundry in the basement. The shortcomings and the fears. And though I’ve made peace with my freckles, the adult version of my mask is the same. I just want to be loved. To be a part of the good stuff. To be okay.

When I look in my Father’s eyes and gather up close in His arms, when I come to Him with muddy tears and shaky knees, His words wash over me: I know where you’ve been, child. I understand the hurt and heartache you feel. The heaviness you cannot bear. The pain you try to conceal. I see it all because you are Mine. I know your deepest need. I see YOU. And I love you just as you are. 

And it’s there, in that place, we let it all out. We give it to him. The walls. The facade. The pretending. Our heart settles. Our breathing regulates. And we don’t have to work so hard at being okay. 

Because who we are is just who we’re supposed to be.

And when we come face-to-face with that kind of love, we no longer have to lie.

I am dry. And I thirst for Him.

As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul longs after You, O God (Psalm 42:1).

Today I am dry. And I thirst for Him. 

I had a vision once when I was in Mexico. It happened in the middle of the night when I had gotten up to use the bathroom. The moon was full over the desert ranch as I passed the window, and its light spilled a cascade of silver on my newly planted garden below. The tilled soil. The baby plants. All of the day’s labor. And somewhere in my mind, wherever visions are planted, I was barefooted in that garden. The mud squished between my toes as I danced. I danced with the Lord, beneath the moon, my arms raised to Him. Free and unhindered like a child, with hope and joy bursting from my heart. And I said to Him, “If you will plant it and grow it, I will share it.”

We lived in a land of great need. Of hunger and poverty. Scarcity in life. And that little garden was what I had to give. It was my part to bring hope into the hurt others. And I was longing to share it.

Only, it never amounted to much on my watch. I am not so great with plants, and the hot sun, little rain, and sandy earth are hard to compete with. Nothing really grew. We got a few vegetables, that was it. Nothing to feed the hungry. To meet the deep need of those around us. And there has always been a little part of me that mourned that garden. I think I believed somewhere inside, I had made a promise to God I could never keep. That I had failed Him.  

To know me is to understand. I am a child who seeks approval. Who desires to be recognized. Who tries very hard to be perfect. I am that child who hears a thousand good things yet crumbles underneath the weight of one bad. Not outwardly. No, you will not know it. 

Writing is vulnerable for one like me. It opens me up to opinions, both good and bad. Accolades, acknowledgements, judgements. And I can try as hard as I can to please, but I will never gain approval from everyone. I will not be perfect to the world. And so, I will fail. I will ingest the highest praise and the lowest rebuke, all of it, and it will be a reflection, not of what I do, but who I am. 

You say, but you are a child of God, you should gain your identity from Him. Yes, you are right. But often I do not. And criticism can devour me one whisper at a time. 

So, my writing has taken its toll. Sometimes I don’t know what to say. Or I am afraid to say the wrong thing. One friend after reading something I wrote said to me, “I thought I knew you. Now I don’t know who you are at all.” 

No, maybe not. Maybe I don’t know either.

My husband says to me, “You need to write more. It is a gift that God is using in people’s lives.” And I say in my heart, But I am empty. I have nothing to give unless the Lord gives it. Unless I hear from Him, I have nothing for anyone. 

You say, that is the right perspective. But it wasn’t. You have to hear the I am empty part. 

I have nothing to give.

I am a dry and weary land. And I thirst for Him.

We had a ladies’ retreat at the farm this last weekend. Twelve women in the upper room. The worship experience was overwhelming. One of the songs says: 

Lord, take me back. 

Back to the beginning. 

When I was young. 

Running through the fields with you. 

…Running through the fields with You.

And He took me to that place I had met Him in the garden. Under the moon. When I had kicked off my shoes, threw off all care, and danced with Him. Where my dreams and hopes were birthed. That place I wanted to change my world. To have the greatest impact for Him. 

He took me, also, to that same garden where I had failed Him. Where the soil was dry and cracked and did not bring life. That place where I had nothing to give. He took me there. 

And He said to me: My child, don’t you see? It wasn’t about the plants in the ground. It wasn’t so small as that. It was about what I’ve planted in you. In you. I have done the work. In the soil of your heart, I have planted my garden. 

I will nourish it. I will water it.

It will grow. 

And you will share it. 

On the way out of the retreat, through tears I shared with my dearest friend what the Lord had shown me. That it wasn’t about the garden in Mexico at all. That He had planted in the soil of my soul. And someday, I would know exactly how He was using it.  

She turned to me and said, “Wasn’t it in Mexico, during that same exact time you had the vision of the garden, when the Lord gave you the gift of writing?”

Yes. It was.

So, my friend, here is a seedling planted just for you and just for me. The Gardener will tend to whatever it is He has planted in your heart. He will till the dry and cracked land. He will nourish it back to life. He will grow it to be all it is meant to be. 

And you will share it with your world.

Whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give him will become in him a fount of water springing up to eternal life (John 4:14).

In the Chaos

When I was a young mommy, I followed a woman online called The Fly Lady. I don’t know if she’s still around. But she was one of those wise people who taught young women how to manage their days. How to organize their households. How to get through the whirling chaos that comes with infants and toddlers and home life in those early years. Her advice was simple. Start with the kitchen sink. Just the kitchen sink. Begin there. Wash the dishes. Scrub the basin. Bleach it. Dry it until it shines.

Well, that’s fine. That’s easy. But what about the rest of my house? What about the scattered toys? The clogged toilet? The muddy carpet? What about the sleepless nights? The cranky husband? The crying baby? What about all those things I don’t know how to manage? What about those?

Just start with the sink. Clean the sink.

I think in my younger years I understood part of the truth. The practical side. I realized that in the midst of the craziness, I could manage cleaning the sink. It was a small part I could take some control over. I could do that. I would be able to claim a tiny part of my world. Accomplish something, even small. And move on from there. Like eating an elephant one bite at a time. It was a small bite, but it helped me begin the climb.   

But as I stand here at my kitchen sink thirty years late, I think about The Fly Lady. And I realize maybe I didn’t understand the deeper meaning of her lesson—maybe she didn’t either. And maybe her advice wasn’t just about managing a household. Because today, my first grand baby of six months old lies in a hospital bed after a terrible fall. We’re waiting for news from the neurosurgeon and neurologist. For the 4-hour MRI results. For the seizures to stop. For him to open his eyes and be normal again. For some tiny control over our shattered lives.

And all I can do is stand at the kitchen sink. I stand and I weep.

What about the living room where his toys are? What about Christmas and his presents under the tree? What about all the what-ifs and should-haves that torture my mind? Where do I go when all around me is a reminder that just days ago, moments ago, we celebrated and laughed and planned, never knowing the tragedy right around the corner? What do I do with that, Lord?

And through blurry tears, I wash one fork.

One single fork.

Because that’s about all I can do.

The pain and the chaos is too great.

And thinking about anything else will bring me crashing down.

So, I scrub the fork. And then a bowl. I wash them, dry them, and put them away.

But in this moment, I understand the Fly Lady’s lesson a little bit deeper. And give it eternal breath. Because maybe it’s not so much about managing my household, but managing my soul. Because I can do the next right thing. I can take the tiniest step, the smallest part. I can do that. I can wash the dishes. Dry the sink. Fold the towel. Cry the tears.

But I can’t calm the waters.

I can’t silence the storm.

Only Jesus can do that.

In this empty, fragile, chaotic place, only He can sustain me.

And in that quiet space alone at the kitchen sink, that still moment when the warm water washes over my hands and I take up that next fork, I find just a sliver of courage, a moment of victory, to give it back to Him.

Surviving New Life

I guess I’ve been thinking a lot about birth lately, given that my very first grand baby is on the way. And I’ve been thinking about the miracle and design of the process, how a baby passes from one world to the next. From womb to earth. Water to air. And how those painful minutes in between are the most vital of all. Because as that baby passes through the birth canal, squeezed and pressed through, physiological changes are happening within him, water is forced from his lungs, and he has a compulsion to take his first breath. Without this very process—the squeezing and pressing—he would struggle in this new world. He would find himself ill-equipped. Unprepared. And chances are he would not survive.

Yet, we question the design. Why did God make it so hard? We ask for ease and comfort.

Every farmer knows this truth even in the animals. For if you help a struggling chick out of an egg, you’ve debilitated him for life. He may not survive. Because there is a process, beyond ourselves, that we cannot see. A process designed by our Father to give us the best chance in this new world. There is a greater purpose to the pain. A triumph at the end of the struggle.

I have some new friends. A young couple breaking out of the throes of addiction, trying hard to get on their feet again. He’s been clean for a good 90 days. She has a couple weeks maybe. No more. It’s new for her, this world, and hard. She is overwhelmed by the pressures around her. She has been thrown out of her home. She has nowhere to go. No footing. No grounding. She feels lost and alone and afraid not knowing how to breathe in this new place. All the while her old life and the comforts there call her back. The ease to escape the trial. To return to the place she knows.

The struggle is real.

But there is a new spark in her eyes—a reflection of the love she is finding on this side. A place she truly belongs. And she is holding on. She is pressing through.

And since God has been teaching me about these things—lovingly giving me these truths you and I are talking about now—I had words in this precious moment in time when He allowed me to be a conduit of His love for His child. I shared with her just this—how the growing pains and the pressure and the squeezing—even that—are vital. How the process prepares us, strengthens us, and helps us to not only survive, but thrive in this new world.

That each thing she is experiencing is not in vain.

It will allow her to breathe.

To be fully alive.

And His little lamb asks why does it need to be so hard?

I don’t know all the answers. I didn’t know what I did wrong when I broke a chick out of an egg one day on the ranch and held its last breath in my hands. When I cried for its life because I had done everything I thought was right to help it survive. But in the very act of bringing it ease, I had lost it.

I don’t have all the answers, but He does. And if we’re in His hands, we trust the process because we can’t always see how it makes us strong. How the very fight equips us to survive.

This beautiful young girl looked at me then, with all the weight bearing down on her shoulders, and the glimmer of unshed tears in her eyes. She whispered, “Thank you. I’m going to think about that the rest of the day.”

And the breath of the universe caught between us. I felt it.

He was right there. Right there to help her forge into new life.

And, yes, little one, we all need to think about that.

When You Breathe

Image by Nanda Dian Prata, Unsplash

Some words stop me in my tracks. 

They have a way of affecting me deeply and changing the way I look at things—the way I look at life. 

The words I recently heard by Sandra Thurman Caporale did that for me. They turned my day upside down, brought me to that space before my Creator, and gave me a sweet glimpse of Him in a new and fresh way.

I pray you are equally moved.

YHWH

There was a moment when Moses had the nerve to ask God what His name is.

God was gracious enough to answer, and the name He gave is recorded in the original Hebrew as YHWH.

Over time, we’ve arbitrarily added an “a” and an “e” to get Yahweh, presumably because we have a preference for vowels. But scholars and rabbis have noted that the letters YHWH represent breathing sounds, or aspirated consonants. When pronounced without intervening vowels, it actually sounds like breathing. YH (inhale), WH (exhale).

So a baby’s first cry, his first breath, speaks the name of God.

A deep sigh calls His NAME—or a groan or gasp that is too heavy for mere words.

So when I can’t utter anything else, is my cry calling out His name?

Even an atheist would speak His name, their very breath giving constant acknowledgement to God.

Likewise, a person leaves this Earth with their last breath, when God’s name is no longer filling their lungs.

Being alive—breathing—means I speak his name constantly.

Is it heard the loudest when I’m the quietest?

In sadness, we breathe heavy sighs.

In joy our lungs feel almost like they will burst.

In fear we hold our breath and have to be told to breathe slowly to help us calm down.

When we’re about to do something hard, we take a deep breath to find our courage.

When I think about it, breathing is giving Him praise. Even in the hardest moments!

This is so beautiful and fills me with emotion every time I grasp the thought.

God chose to give Himself a Name that we can’t help but speak every moment we’re alive.

All of us, always, everywhere. 

Waking, sleeping, breathing, with the Name of God on our lips.

—Sandra Thurman Caporale

Where Does the Fairy Tale Go? (Hope in the Disappointment)

Photo by Jill Wellington from Pexels

He was the cutest boy I had ever seen. Three and a half feet tall. Baby brown eyes. He lived right across the playground and over the chain-link fence. Brett Elmblad … the name forever embedded in the recesses of my mind.

We were five when he chose me – me – to be his wife. We were playing house on our street. My best friend Kim was elected to be the child—the baby. Brett and I were married without much ceremony, and we moved into our tree house home. Just climbed right in and started our new life together. It was divine. Everything I had hoped for in a marriage. When he looked into my eyes, I knew I belonged to him forever.

Sadly, we were divorced a few months later when our family moved two towns over. No papers to sign. Not even a goodbye. I had lost him, but it wasn’t the end. One day he would find me, and that day would be glorious.

 My mom had done some shopping while we settled into our new home. She bought me clothes, including a lime green, frilled nightgown. Fancy, like a princess would wear. I knew it was the one. The very night I wore my brand new lacy green princess pajamas would be the very night my prince would come for me. He would find me, even two towns away. I kept the nightgown folded neatly, tags still on, and tucked it into my top drawer, waiting for the perfect evening. I would know the time when it came.  

And I did. It happened. It was a clear, winter evening. The stars hung low and bright. Magical. It was the night. I removed the tag and dressed in my frilly nightgown. The lacy hem reached the floor. I brushed out my long hair and sat on my stairs in range of the front door. I felt every bit the princess and knew my prince would come that night.

One hour passed, my focus glued to the door. To the tiny windows on either side. To the expectant trill of the doorbell. Two hours. My mother told me to go to bed. But how could I sleep on this fated night. I would miss his arrival for sure.

Three hours pushed the limits of any six-year-old, and I returned to my room and changed my pajamas. I folded the gown neatly and stuffed it in my top drawer. I crawled into bed in my worn cotton run-of-the-mill pajamas and pulled the covers way up.

In that moment, hinged between reality and fairy tale, I understood the truth . . . I had picked the wrong night.

You see, when it doesn’t turn out the way we thought it should, we have the chance to pivot, not to give up. Because so many times the dream doesn’t look exactly like we thought it would. The prince doesn’t come … quite yet. The nightgown, though pretty, didn’t hold the power we gave it. But the dream is not gone because of these things. That hope rising up within us … it remains. And, believe it or not, we have all we need to move forward despite the setback. Because it isn’t really a setback at all. It’s a chance to choose another way . . . another path to get to the dream.

For more blogposts from Cher related to this one, check out …

A Stripping Away

The Road Less Traveled and How We Find It

When Fear Says We Can't

Photo by Sven Brandsma on Unsplash

We’ve always told our youngest son the story of the day he turned three. He woke up that birthday morning down in Texas (during language school) and told my husband, Peter, he had a dream he could ride a two-wheeler bike. He asked his dad to get it out of storage so he could ride it.

So, doing what all great dads do, my husband dragged out the bike and got ready to launch our little guy down the paved road on his fledgling flight. And, like all good moms, I scolded him. “Are you kidding me? You’re going to send him down the pavement? You’re not even going to start him in the grass? No helmet or training wheels? He’s three!”

“He said he can ride it.”

“He had a dream he could ride it!”

“Yeah,” my husband shrugged. “Let’s see what he can do.”

A three-year-old! Really? A two-year-old just the day before. Are you kidding me?

I’m not even going to tell you how the story ends because just the other day, I broke into our old computer and guess what I found? I had taped it. The whole thing. I didn’t remember that. But, here it is, my baby’s first try on a two-wheeler after a dream that said he could do it:

What happened? What made it possible for him in that moment to take a dream and make it real? How did he do it? 

The answer is in him: He believed with all his heart he could ride that bike. That he had everything he needed within him to make it happen. He didn’t stop to ask what if he failed. If he fell. If he got banged up along the way. He never allowed the fear of what “might” come to stop him in his tracks—to debilitate his dream.

Fear can do that. It can knock us out. And it’s usually not the expected punch—the jab or the right hook—the straight-in-the-face warnings to keep us safe; the reason we have fear in the first place (to avoid the cliff, to run from the snarling dog). But it’s the sucker punch, the one from behind. The one that didn’t feel like a punch until we’re down on the ground.

Fear speaks loudest through the voices in our heads. Voices from our past. From those around us. The ones that say we can’t do it. There’s too much at risk. We’ll fail. We’re not good enough. The ones that, by the time the list is complete, the dream is dead.

So, how do we conquer fear? How do we move forward?

Step One: Silence the Voices.

That sounds easy, but we all know it’s not. It takes work and effort to “take all thoughts captive in obedience to Christ” (2 Cor. 10:5). The voices and messages are embedded deep within us. And, even when we’re not aware, they can dictate our choices. Whose voice do you hear when you’re measuring your steps? When you’ve found form to a dream? Think about it. Listen quietly. The voices are talking whether you want them to or not. 

How often we allow people power over us; power in our heads, power in our lives. Often, it’s people closest to us, but sometimes, we even give this power to strangers. People we don’t even know. How do they gain a voice in our head, a place to determine our own value? Strangers? We give them an ear because somewhere, deep down, they confirm the lie. The lie that we don’t measure up.

Even good voices can hinder us. We all need cheerleaders, encouragers in our life, people to spur us on. But when we seek those out, when we allow the accolades to dictate our worth, we can end up as approval-seekers. We’ve listened to the wrong voice. 

But here’s the secret. There’s only one Voice that really matters. One that holds the truth of who you are and what you can do.

Step Two: Listen to the One.

Can you hear your Father’s voice? The One who calls you “dearly beloved child.” The One who formed you and knows you intimately. The only One with the power to give you worth, the One to place value on your life. His voice says you are held, forgiven, adopted, strong, whole, victorious, fearfully and wonderfully made, never alone, complete, dearly loved, and nothing can take you out of His hand. And His opinion of you does not falter because it doesn’t depend on you. It’s not a worth you need to prove. So, if that’s the case, how can another person, even a stranger, gain more access to your heart then Him? 

Step Three: Keep Pedaling.

When the disciple Peter saw Jesus on the water, he first asked, “Is it you, Lord.” When the answer was ‘yes,’ he got out of the boat. And because he got out—and he was the only one—he walked on water. He experienced the miracle. Do you hear Him? Is He saying, ‘I have placed this dream in you. You have everything you need, and I’m right here with you.’?

If that’s you, if you hear Him calling, step out. If He’s given you a dream, it won’t happen with training wheels or soft grass. Not even with an audience (even your own mother) yelling on the sidelines, “It’s not safe, don’t try it.”

I could watch this video over and over again. Not because it’s my little guy—and he’s pretty darn cute—but because it reminds me to carry my dreams with me, to pull them out of storage. To climb on. Pedal like the wind. And most of all, believe in my heart that, if God has given me a dream, I can do it.

A Stripping Away

Photo by Daiga Ellaby on Unsplash

I’ve been off for a while. The pandemic and all. I just didn’t know how to speak into it. So much pain and heartache and loss. Isolation. A re-routing on life, I guess. Maybe a stripping away.

I sat around the table last night with my kids. We talked and laughed, not about the things today, but stories of yesterday. My youngest son shared one of his earliest memories. He was two, and we were packing up for Mexico. Such a vivid memory for a little one. He remembers looking out the window at our garage sale one week before we left. All of our belongings scattered across the lawn. When he saw another kid pick up his race track to buy, he ran outside and tried to hand him something else—a different toy, so he wouldn’t have to part with his favorite track, his favorite matchbox cars. But I stopped my little guy because we just couldn’t take it along, and I let the sale go through. He had to let go. He was young for such a grand lesson.

Sometimes life doesn’t feel like “letting go” but “stripping away.” It sometimes feels as if we have no say in it. The decision doesn’t seem to be ours.

That day at the garage sale, we got rid of everything that wouldn’t fit in our van and travel trailer. With a family of seven, trust me, it didn’t feel like much came with us. And each of my children remembers something they lost that day. But we packed in everything we could—everything we thought we needed—waved to our best friends down the driveway, and drove 2000 miles to our language school in Texas.

I remember too the day we left Texas one year later with as much Spanish under our belts as we could grab hold of and the whole world open to what lay ahead for our family in Mexico. Our last stop before pulling out of the school was the bodega where our things had been in storage. For a good two hours, we worked in the sweltering heat to shove our belongings back in the places they should have fit. Believe me, my husband is the best packer around. If he can’t puzzle it in, it can’t be puzzled.

Yet, at the end, there were still six plastic bins on the sidewalk.

“We can’t take these,” he said.

“We have to.” There was no bending in my mind. No compromise. Not now. We had already given away so much. This was the bare minimum.  

“We can’t,” he said. Period.

I sat down on one of those bins and cried. It poured out from some untapped reservoir inside of me. The anger first. I already had nothing. Why more? God, will you take everything from me? I cried, not for the “things”—children’s clothing and pots and pans—but for the hope. The dreams. All that those bins somehow represented inside of me. My family’s chance to start again. To have a home. A new life together.

We took those bins to the school’s thrift shop. One by one the woman lifted the lid and explored the items inside. Oh, I had needed that … I had a place for those, I thought. Like my two-year-old trying to hold onto his race track that day, I had to let go. The woman smiled at all the items she could re-home, and we left.

I think I might have cried to the border.

And we entered a land so foreign to us. People we didn’t know. A language we could barely speak. Unspoken rules we kept breaking. When our first team came down from our home church—our friends, faces we knew and loved—I remember the sheer panic I felt as they boarded the plane to leave. Please, take me with you. Don’t leave me behind. When our friends left, I experienced a whole new level of stripping. Not things, but people I loved. And I felt very alone.

One day, a man came from the states. I don’t even remember his name or why he was there. But I remember him. I stood with him at the ranch while activity whirled around us. A team was digging a trench. They were laughing despite the dirt and grime and heat. The man told me about a ministry he was involved in back home. He said the old-timers would sit around the fire and talk about the good ole times. The inception. The beginning. The glory days. The days that were rough and hard and took everything from you. He said how he wished he could have been a part of the stories, of the life when it all began.

Then the man turned and looked at me and said, “Someday, you’ll be sitting around a fire talking about the ranch. Because, right now, right here … these are the glory days.”

You know what? He was right.

But sometimes we can’t see it in the moment. Sometimes, we just feel the loss. We feel like we don’t have a choice. That things are happening around us we have no control of. And every day something else is taken from us. But often we can’t see from where we’re standing. We don’t know what’s just around the corner.

And what we think is a stripping away … is actually a new beginning.

Photo by Danielle Macinne (Unsplash)

A PAIR OF DUCKS- And how we find higher ground.

Photo by Christian Bowen on Unsplash

When we came off the mission field after ten years on the ranch, our debrief coaches handed us two plastic ducks. The kind you had in the bathtub as a kid. These “pair of ducks,” they explained, represented both the good and the bad of our experience on the field. There were parts we loved—launching a ministry, meeting a new culture and new people, freedom to dream. And parts we hated—unending demands, new rules we didn’t understand, less comforts.

But both were a part of it. Both the good and the bad. And both were a part of life.

A “pair of ducks”—A paradox. 

That’s what life is.

We run and hide. We fear. We question. We become angry with the system, angry at each other. And then we don’t. Then we find peace. And joy. And we rest in the blessings around us—the extra time with our kids. The new cadence and rhythm of our lives.

After the mission field, we lived in a 900 square foot house with seven people and one bathroom. In the frustrating craziness of that, we reminded ourselves that someday we would look back on that house with gratitude. We would see it as just what we needed in that moment—just the thing God knew we needed. And that the solitude would bring a measure of joy. A dose of healing. And a portion of rest. But it was hard to see when we were fighting for the bathroom or sleeping with the laundry spinning next to the bed. Or when we questioned why we were there and worried about what our future held.

So yes, a few years later, we see it much differently. But why couldn’t we see it then. Why couldn’t we see that house, the solitude shut away from the world for just a moment, as the haven it would become. Our chance to stop and breathe deeply for a while. Just a little while. To take it all in.

That’s how life rolls. That’s the paradox. That in the midst of the storm, there is something beautiful brewing. A new respect for one another. A new quietness in our souls. A new trust in our Lord.

And it’s not so much that we ignore the bad and focus on the good, but that in both, we find the higher ground. The greater purpose. We open our eyes to see the depth of both the shadows and the highlights. Because the full revelation requires both.

The question is, how will we look back on this moment? What will we see? And how can we find that now, not later?

The house on Cullen Street became a sanctuary when we bathed it in gratitude. When our shortcomings were laid bare before a good, good father. When we trusted all that He had for his children even when it looked scary and unpredictable. When we took a blind step, knowing He held us up. When we put on our spirit eyes and knew it went beyond what we thought we saw in front of us.

When we trusted. And allowed ourselves to grow and deepen with both pair of ducks in hand.