Family, Lessons Learned, Lives Full of God, Music, Parenting, Pray, Transitions, Walk with God

On the Eve of a 25th Birthday – A Charge, a Quote, & a Rhyme

September 4, 2014 admindeb 3 Comments

How can it be that you’re 25 years old tomorrow? I really don’t have the words…and you’re probably glad. Over the years, you have single-handedly taken me to my knees more often than you realize – praying to be the parent God would have me be for you; appealing to God for all the moves (overseas and stateside) to not be too hard for you; asking for comfort when situations were sometimes hard anyway; and thanking Him for all He did for you – the friendships, the opportunities, and His relationship with you from forever.

So many memories. “Let’s go kill buffalo!” Following your sister around for play ideas. Grandparent visits. Family vacations at the Chesapeake Bay. Carpool buddies. Gameboy. Drawing cartoons. Computer games. Getaways to the Red Sea. Dreamcast. Baptism back home in Tennessee. Roadtrips to the Sahara. Soccer. Cousins. Airports. Basketball. Grumpy when hungry – feed the boy. High School Rock Band. Great friendships. Game Nights. Sleep-Overs. PlayStation. Laughter. Working out. Classical Guitar. VCU. Aletheia Praise Band. Sharing a house with your brother, sister, and then Duy. Met and married beautiful Bekkah. Grad school at East Carolina. Now back to Virginia, working and making a home…grown.

Settled for now in the U.S. after so many stamps in your passport. Settled in our hearts forever. You make us laugh, and you make us think. Your grown-up heart is so worth the childhood/teen year battles. And your music…what a gift to us. Whether you’re on electric, acoustic, or classical guitar. Your music goes right to the heart. Thank you for honing the gift God gave you.

As you round the bend on this first quarter-century, I leave you with God’s word to Joshua, Oswald Sanders’ word to leaders, and a poem often quoted by our friend Tom Elliff.

Happy birthday, Son. I’ll love you forever.

“Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be terrified; do not be discouraged, for the Lord your God will be with you wherever you go.” – Joshua 1:9

“When a person is really marked out for leadership, God will see that that person receives the necessary disciplines for effective service.” – J. Oswald Sanders, Spiritual Leadership

When God wants to drill a man,
And thrill a man,
And skill a man.
When God wants to mould a man
To play the noblest part;
When He yearns with all His heart
To create so great and bold a man
That all the world shall praise –
Watch His method, watch His ways!
How He ruthlessly perfects
Whom He royally elects;
How He hammers him and hurts him,
And with mighty blows converts him
Into trial shapes of clay which only God understands
While his tortured heart is crying and he lifts beseeching hands!
How He bends, but never breaks,
When his good He undertakes. . . .
How He uses whom He chooses
And with every purpose fuses him,
By every art induces him
To try his splendor out –
God knows what He’s about. – Anon.

Nathan Mills Guitar

J. Oswald Sanders’ Spiritual Leadership

Part of Joni Eareckson Tada’s Testimony – Poem Drill a Man

Book Favorite I’ll Love You Forever Before Helicopter Parenting Became a Cultural Issue

Bookmarked Summer, Books, Culture & Religion, Family, Food & Drink, Home, Inspired, Lessons Learned, Parenting, Transitions, Travel

Quotes from Between Worlds – Essays on Culture and Belonging – by Marilyn R. Gardner

September 4, 2014 admindeb 1 Comment

In this bookmarked summer of mine, Between Worlds brought a refreshing wash of memories for me of living cross-culturally. I miss the years we spent as a family in North Africa. Marilyn Gardner writes in colorful strokes of her third culture kid (TCK) experience of growing up in Pakistan. She also described vividly what it was like as an adult raising children (her own TCKs) back overseas. Read Between Worlds and you are transported to the places she lived as a child and again as an adult. She speaks of her family’s years in Cairo, Egypt, and I am also taken back to one of my favorite cities in the whole world. The smells, sights, and sounds are there…you will be enchanted.

Marilyn also shares with clarity and vulnerability that experience of living essentially between worlds. Of living among peoples not your own and yet you feel they are. Of returning to the US and appearing to be like all around you, and yet you are an “invisible alien”…not fully of this world either. Her stories are marked with lessons of deep living cross-culturally. We can all gain from these lessons – whether we’ve lived a third culture life or not.

Her stories I will leave for you to read in your own personal places…but some of her wisdom I share with you through these quotes from Between Worlds.

“Home is where our story begins.” For a third culture kid who questions the definition of home, this is both reassuring and sad. If home is where our story begins, what happens when we cannot go back?” (p. 4)

“I read in Psalm 84: ‘Blessed are those whose strength is in you, who have set their hearts on pilgrimage…They go from strength to strength until each appears before God in Zion.’ In my journey, this Psalm makes ‘Home is where your suitcase is’ a spiritual reality.” (p. 8)

“I was raised on chai…It was not just the taste; it was the full experience of comfort that nourished body and soul.” (p. 21)

“There can be strength in remembering…Perhaps writing helps keep some of the bricks intact, because memories are precious and if used properly give strength to the present.” (p. 26)

“Turns out identity isn’t about a place you live at – but a Person you live in.” (p. 44)

“Those childhood wounds that brand us, that tell us lies about who we are and what we’ll become, are not strong when they come up against the Image of the God who made us.” (p. 55)

“Pieces of childhood are important foundations to building adults…in the pieces of childhood there is grace and a Father God who delights in putting together the pieces.” (p. 71)

“When I finally stopped grasping at success, at confidence, at belonging, I inexplicably found it.” (p. 87)

“If you don’t start kids on the road or plane when they are young then too soon they, and you, will move into a place and state of mind that sees all the obstacles instead of the benefits.” (p. 102)

“It is amazing how much waiting there is in a life of movement…Above all, we wait for God. We move forward in faith, only to be stopped in transit. So we wait. It’s not time. We sit tight. There are dozens of ways that God moves in and orchestrates our plans, our movements…For waiting is nothing new in the work of God.” (p. 109)

“Behind every third culture kid is a parent – a parent who wishes, hopes, and prays that they are doing the right thing.” (p. 120)

“God chooses ‘place’ to reveal himself to people, to show who He is, to remind them of his love, his care, his sovereignty, to call them to himself.” (p.138)

“Cultural humility gives up the role of expert, instead seeing ourselves as students of our host culture. I puts us on our knees, the best posture possible for learning.” (p. 193)

“May I forever hurt with the goodbyes that I say. May I forever remember the strength of the words ‘God Be With You.'” (p. 202)

Whether you’re a chai or coffee drinker – you will want a cup of one or the other, as you savor this book of life Between Worlds.

To Purchase Between Worlds

Follow Marilyn Gardner on Twitter

Author Blog – Communicating Across Boundaries

Give, Go, God, Inspired, Lives Full of God, Music, Wednesday Worship

Worship Wednesday – With Every Act of Love by Jason Gray & Jason Ingram

September 2, 2014 admindeb 2 Comments

[Image from www.richmond.com/www.homewardva.org]

“Your kingdom come. Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” – Matthew 6:10

In downtown Richmond, Virginia, you will see people standing on corners with cardboard signs. The signs tell stories of veterans needing jobs, homeless begging food, the down-and-out asking for spare change. Signs made out of pieces of cardboard held out to the drivers stopped at intersections. Those of us in the safe insulation of our vehicles size up these requests and wonder if they speak to real life. Do these sign-holders look needy enough? Is it real destitution born out of hardship thrust on them or is it out of circumstances they brought on themselves? We try not to look into their eyes as the seconds tick by before the light changes to green, and then we accelerate past them and our discomfort fades as they do in our rear-view mirrors. God forgive us.

There have been times I’ve responded with some money, or staples from a grocery store trip, or some food from the order I just placed at the drive-through window a block away. Still, a little money or food or conversation or prayer only scratches the surface of what must be going on in the lives of people willing to stand exposed, with a cardboard sign, on a city street. Responding in any way that “leans in” is at least moving in the direction of Kingdom living…Kingdom building…but we must not stop there.

Jason Gray explains how he came to write the lyrics of this song, “The Gospel is clearly a theology of deeper engagement and restoration and redemption ….Yes, the Kingdom will come, but the Kingdom is coming, day by day, moment by moment, and that we’re invited to play a part in that Kingdom coming, right now, right here, with every act of love we do…With every act of love, we get to be a part of God’s Kingdom coming. I love that.”

Dear God, help us to know and practice authentic love for You and for “the least of these” whoever they are. Also we pray that we infuse every moment of our lives with the love You’ve given us. Given not just for our pleasure but meant to bless the nations – our own children, and these whom You know and love on the streets of our cities…and in places far from us, but not far from You. Give us wisdom, God, and hearts like Yours.

Reaching out to the poor and displaced can be complicated, but we all were poor and displaced, and God reached out to us. My prayer is that we wrestle with this daily in a way that stirs our hearts to prayer and surrenders our hands and feet (and finances) to a good and generous God. If we build margin in our lives for the needy, God will grow capacity in us to serve them in ways that bring them the Kingdom.

Worship with me…

With Every Act of Love [Lyrics] – lyric video below

Sitting at the stoplight
He can’t be bothered by the heart cry
Written on the cardboard in her hand
But when she looks him in the eye
His heart is broken open wide
And he feels the hand of God reach out through him
As Heaven touches earth

(Chorus)
Oh – we bring the Kingdom come
Oh – with every act of love
Jesus help us carry You
Alive in us, Your light shines through
With every act of love
We bring the Kingdom come

There’s silence at the table
He wants to talk but he’s not able
For all the shame that’s locked him deep inside
But her words are the medicine
When she says they can begin again
And forgiveness will set him free tonight
As Heaven touches earth

God put a million, million doors in the world
For his love to walk through
One of those doors is you
I said, God put a million, million doors in the world
For his love to walk through
One of those doors is you

Oh – we bring the Kingdom come
Oh – with every act of love
Jesus help us carry You
Alive in us, Your light shines through
With every act of love
We bring the Kingdom come
With every act of love
We bring the Kingdom come
With every act of love
We bring the Kingdom come

Writer(s): Jason Gray, Jason Ingram

With Every Act of Love – Official Lyric Video

Life Will Have the Final Word album by Jason Gray

Story Behind With Every Act of Love

Derry Prenkert’s Notes from 2014 Global Leadership Summit – Brian Loritts on God’s intent for the Church in doing good

Baptist Global Response to the Tragically Displaced

Jason Gray Music

Inspired, Lessons Learned, Life Skills, Teaching, Transitions, Workplace or Marketplace

Back to School – Teachers on My Mind

September 2, 2014 admindeb 1 Comment

Back to School! Must be September…with all that comes with it. I have always loved the smell of newly sharpened pencils and notebooks just opened. Put me in a room full of books and I can occupy myself for hours. “Back to school” can mean delight for some and dread for others. I actually never cared for school – growing up or sending my children off to school. I liked being home, as a child, and I loved having our children home. Yet, there comes a day that vacation is over, and the work of children begins again in earnest…at school.

The Tuesday after Labor Day marks the beginning of the public school year here in Virginia, and my mind is busy with images of kids of all ages in the latest coolest outfit with all the appropriate age-specific accessories (backpack, lunchbox, cell phone, etc.). More than even the kids, I think of the parents who entrust their loves to teachers and staff, some of whom they may not even know really…except for maybe the rushed Open House introductions.

More even than the parents, it’s those teachers, I want to focus on. How do they prepare for the onslaught of the first day of school? To receive 20-25 little strangers into their classroom. How do they begin to build order and community among these little strangers? These , coming from different home cultures, some not native English speakers. How do they sort out who needs what to help them learn best? It’s all a great mystery to me.

Then there are those first day tears…or first day fears that are harder to recognize. These teachers just seem to know, and they work to settle these young ones and to stoke confidence in their hearts.

I have always admired the giftings of teachers – adults able to enter the world of their students and render opportunities to learn and inspire in just such a way these young ones can grasp. Not just to master content but to learn how to be good citizens in their particular community (be it 3rd grade or 10th). It’s a shame when teachers stay so long – or too long tired – in the classroom such that they lose their passion for teaching (or is it for learning?). They still have impact, and hopefully for good. Hopefully. I don’t know any teachers like that right now, and today could be a fresh start.

Right now, I am well-acquainted with some wonderful teachers who are greeting their new class of students today, and I want to say to them, “Thank you.” Thank you for thinking of these students through the summer, although they did not as yet have names or faces…yet you were already planning for a good year for them.

Thank you for preparing your classroom to be a bright and colorful place that will delight their imaginations. Thank you for filling their space with books, and floor pillows, and games, and art, and math manipulatives, and computer programming – to touch the hearts and minds of each of your students with their unique learning strengths and weaknesses. Thanks for not taking yourself too seriously or them too lightly. Thanks for your understanding of which students need to be drawn out and which other ones need to be settled down. Beginnings are important, and your students have so much to learn from you about starting well.

And then finishing strong. Thanks for determining to stick with them through the year. For not giving up on the ones who seem to have just too much going against them to be successful. We never know, do we? And for those students who just seem to have everything going for them, thank you for challenging them to serve others, to think critically, and to lead in ways that go deeper than popularity.

Thank you for applying all your “super powers” for their benefit – be they little ones or the almost grown ones – including seeing their parents (or grandparents or other guardians) as some of your best resources. It means more work for you, but it could make all the difference…not just for that student, but for their adults as well.

So thanks, teachers…it’s a new year. And you’re ready.

3 Free Tools for a Productive September [September 1st is the New January 1st] – Ann Voskamp

Recipe for Pecan Pie Bars – to go with those Pumpkin Spice Lattes that Appear Magically in September Along with School

Inspired, Lessons Learned, Life Skills, Volunteering/Serving, Workplace or Marketplace

A Labor of Love – Hanover Habitat for Humanity – Still Sore Two Days Later But a Good Sore

September 1, 2014 admindeb 5 Comments

Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat their produce. – Jeremiah 29:5

The wise woman builds her house,
But the foolish pulls it down with her hands. – Proverbs 14:1

Unless the Lord builds the house,
They labor in vain who build it;
Unless the Lord guards the city,
The watchman stays awake in vain. – Psalm 127:1-2

The Bible is filled with references about building and building well – exact measurements and materials, strong foundations, counting the cost before building, and obeying God in building and being community together.

A team of us from Crosstrain Community Church in Richmond, Virginia volunteered a couple of days ago to help with building with Hanover Habitat for Humanity. We had been intrigued for some time on how to participate, as construction novices, in the good work of Habitat – providing affordable housing for people in need.

Their processes have changed through the years and are better than ever (in choosing candidates for homes, mobilizing and equipping building teams, and strengthening community relationships). It was amazing for us how they took a group of green volunteers, with very little experience, and guided us through a day’s work. We accomplished so much – considerably more than we could have imagined.

We had a team of 14, and the site foreman, George, divided us into three smaller teams. He asked for those who considered themselves to be “perfectionists” to do prep for vinyl siding for a house. All the guys on our team chose that work).

Then George asked for 5 of us to paint trim all day. That might seem simple, but on-your-feet painting for 6 hours in the August sun was a job!

Still fun though – good company, sweet music, and lots of laughter as they splashed paint on all those strips of wood.

I was on the remaining team whose job it was to lay the plywood for the subfloor on the floor joists that were already in place. Never having done more with a hammer than hang pictures, I was more than uneasy as to what we would be doing. Fortunately, as is the case with all Habitat projects, we had “professional” volunteers leading us in the job. Our guys, Brian and Mike, knew well what they were doing and they were patient and encouraging with us.

With these guys and a couple of others, we finished that subfloor.

Between our three small teams, we worked on two houses that day. Both of the designated house owners were there helping as well. It was a pleasure to get to meet and work alongside the people who were most invested in building these houses that would be their homes.

Working together is always a great opportunity to build relationships and to serve others. We learn from others with differing strengths and see weaknesses in areas that we had no other opportunity to see except in unfamiliar territory. I am a hard worker and want to always do my part, but that was the absolute hardest physical work I’ve done in some time.

It was an incredible experience for me to be side-by-side with friends who shouldered up to you when the task got too hard, and your strength ebbed. A sunny day at the beach and a sunny day on a work site are two very different experiences. No wonder we see builders with huge coolers heading to their work! They must eat and drink massive amounts to stay hydrated and energized through the day. I’ve always had respect for these guys, and my experience with Habitat boosted that respect all the more.

When we left the site, at 3:30 that day, we had finished what they asked us to accomplish. All I wanted to do when I got home was eat, drink, and be horizontal…not thinking about anything. Completely exhausted. It has taken 2 days to get back to my “computer job” fit self (sigh). It’s the good sore of working hard, in community, for something that matters. Looking forward to our next day out with Habitat…hopefully in the cool of a Fall day.

George (on left) – our site foreman with Habitat

Our team (minus two) at the end of the day in front of the completed sub-floor. They are not going to love this picture but working with them that day makes me love them all the more.

Habitat for Humanity, Hanover County, Virginia

Blog – Deb Mills

Monthly Archives: September 2014

On the Eve of a 25th Birthday – A Charge, a Quote, & a Rhyme

Quotes from Between Worlds – Essays on Culture and Belonging – by Marilyn R. Gardner

Worship Wednesday – With Every Act of Love by Jason Gray & Jason Ingram

Back to School – Teachers on My Mind

A Labor of Love – Hanover Habitat for Humanity – Still Sore Two Days Later But a Good Sore