You know me.

Sorry for Saying Sorry. Shoot. Sorry.

Woe to those who [seek to] hide deep from the Lord their counsel, whose deeds are in the dark, and who say, Who sees us? Who knows us? [Oh, your perversity!] You turn things upside down! Shall the potter be considered of no more account than the clay? Shall the thing that is made say of its maker, He did not make me; or the thing that is formed say of him who formed it, He has no understanding? Isaiah 29:15

Mmmmm.

Wow. I have been coming before my Father apologetically. Not because I’m humbly aware of my need to repent but rather because I feel like He didn’t know what He was getting into with me. I feel like I must be a disappointment for not being able to fully and successfully carry out His plans for me. His dreams for me. Man, they feel distant and burdensome when once they felt compelling and ingrained. 

I have tried to be my own counselor. Mending my life back together in order to get back to the place where I can glorify Christ in spirit and truth. But if God created me, knit my inward parts, seen my whole life play out before me... why do I play hide and seek? Lord, I’m tired. I’m tired of subconsciously believing that You are disappointed and getting tired of me. I’m tired of thinking that you couldn’t possibly understand nevertheless show compassion. Yet your word is screaming the opposite to be true.

 “O God the proud have risen against me, and a mob of violent men have sought my life. And have not set you before them. But you O Lord are a God full of compassion, and gracious, longsuffering and abundant in mercy and truth.” Psalm 86:14-15.

And the cross meets me here and crucifies my self-pity, pride, and passivity. Jesus restores my eyes to see Himself rightly. God, the Author and Perfecter of my faith, is painfully merciful, abundantly compassionate, and ultimately loving. It's news worth hearing over and over again. I'll try to stop saying sorry for You having to repeat it. I know you never tire.

I am fully and deeply known - it always comes back to this. You love me because You love me because You love me. 

Sharing and Sheep

I am always teaching my Kindergarteners about sharing. It is a never ending lesson that extends beyond what I thought I 'd have to explain. It is endless as I repeatedly have to ask for grace in order to effectively and compassionately instruct how to share crayons, how to share talking time, how to share love. I find myself often lacking in patience and grace and trying to hold on to one glimpse of hope or  at least a string of truth. Hoping that string will lead to the place that I can remember the Giver of abundant mercy and endless grace. When I am restless and overwhelmed by the thought of having to remind or redirect one more child or feel the weight of my direction and authority being weak. There are moments when I can barely stand to smile at them because I feel so personally attacked by what they do or simply discouraged by how they behave during my instruction. Then it hits me, they are sheep. I am a sheep. We are sheep. I may be a shepherd in their life but somehow that puts a tension on me to be hyper aware of my sheep-ness and desperate for the Shepherd. It is good and it hurts because it exposes the bad in me in order to refine and glorify the good from the father. It is good because it is eternal. It is good because He is writing stories to be shared with others along the journey. It is good because Jesus does not change. It is good because God already sees how I am the day when I meet Him in Heaven. It is good because as I lose more of my sheep-ness each of my kids gets to meet more of their Shepherd. Oh Lord, for a heart that will continue to let you strip away my impatience and trust the Hand that deals. But for each child to know the love that surpasses knowledge, so be it.

Holding Hands

"Then place your hand in His and follow fearless, til you the riches of His grace behold."

I've been reading Donald Miller books since January and he described one event in his life that changed the way he saw his reflection in the mirror forever. He couldn't forget who he was anymore. Identity redefined. In the same way I won't ever quit looking at the sky as a reflection and remembrance of who God is now because of how He's revealed Himself to me this month.

With any good defining moment about the Lord we learn about our own suckyness, to be profoundly prolific. Wow, am I aware of my sin, my selfishness, and my obsession with things I can see. I'm currently in a position I've never found myself to be in before. I'm the minority. I'm not one in a sea of large tank tops and nike shorts. I'm not one in a crowd of people with families that have come out to support their athletic children. And I'm definitely not one in a congregation of people that worship the same Maker. I am thirsty, I am weak, and I am so naturally wrong. 

God loves everyone. Easy. Done. Got it. Now Elaina... go love everyone because God loves everyone. Okay! Wait.. Hard. Can't. Won't. 

We talk about "loving" on people so much that it has become a part of my vocabulary and mindset similarly to talking about eating brunch. Still I never really know when brunch happens or why it's not more defined and what kind of food it means we're actually going to eat. I want to love people because I know that I am loved and I know that they are loved. But why is it so much harder to love these people than ever before? Because now they don't look like me. They don't think like me. They do things contradictory to what I believe. They've been burned by people like me. They actually should and maybe do despise me. I've been in rooms where the entire point of a lesson is contradictory to what I believe is true about the identity of a person. I believe it is more than who you are attracted to, what groups you identify with, or what country your ancestors came from. I believe identity is breathed into you from the same One that created you. I'm tempted to throw doctrine and scripture and opinions into the room. Then I think to myself, if the Son of Man were sitting at the table across the room during these conversations what's he going to say? It's sure going to look and sound a lot different than what I naturally declare.

I want to get on a soap box and discuss the different theories about identity. I want to expose how sexual identity is destroying the most precious gift we've been given. I want to defend. And then I want to attack. Is this that whole "loving people" thing we always talk about? Is this what it means to be the aroma of Christ? As I look over at the empty seat I hear Him in a gentle way catch my attention. I see Him lift His hands into the air and gently say stop using those eyes. Then I see them. The holes in His hands. The two lenses through which He sees, and the same ones that I don't have to pay a quarter to look through. The grace. The real definition of loving people. To honor and to give grace as Jesus gives grace. It is the only way I can understand what loving people really means. To put the armor down and instead grab a hand that looks different than yours and hold onto it because you know you once needed a hand too. If I can give my hand to hold, to meet them at the hurt, then hopefully they will catch a glimpse of the hol(e)y hands that are calling them home. There is a lot of injustice and a lot of what I'm doing here is working against that, but when I forget that I don't breathe compassion and grace naturally then I am enlarging the gap between each of us rather than scooting closer and closer. 

Brothers and sisters, let us love. But let us love not on the authority of "christianity" or the cause of justice or ministry. Let us love because we did nothing to get ourselves to where we are. Someone showed us the holes in the hands of Christ. So let us move forward and see that He is on the other side of the river giving us the strength to step across as we keep our gaze on Him, and we have no idea whose eyes are seeing the hands that we are sharing. 

So long England...

I am so sad to have left England this morning. I have had a really long day at the airport with a 10 hour layover in Chicago and have looked through every picture and video from the trip. Now I sit here reflecting on everything I've learned, been challenged by, and experienced in the last 5 weeks. However, my mind still races on about Helena's (among many) endearing character and alive spirit.

Wednesday evening we returned to the rough town that we hosted the Western Themed Camp at. Helena had told me that she would be unable to make it this week but I was still hopeful for the other kids. This silly, smart, and crazy little girl had not left my mind since last week when she sat crying in my arms. When we pulled up, she was the first one I saw. She was waiting outside with several other kids that had continued to come back and back again to see the American people. She was so overcome with joy and all I could do was praise Jesus that she had not lost hope or forgotten. We hugged (they call it cuddling) for several minutes and then ran off with some other kids to play along like we had just one week before. After a little bit she ran off home to grab something. Next thing I know, she has her 6 year brother, ALWAYS-smiling Harvey, bring over a homemade card and flowers in a Hello Kitty cup. I played the character of Daisy May in the skits last week and now all of the kids in the camp believe it's my real name, I have no reason not to be Daisy May. My card reads "Dear Daisy May, I love you I love you I love you, No. 1 Girl, No. 1 Girl, No. 1 Girl! Love, Helena." I couldn't have worded it better myself.

We had a sad goodbye but not tearful or disheartening. Next week she will receive a Bible (from the Queen's Jubilee) with a note inside and underlined verses. I hope that it's enough to push her on in getting to know Jesus, finding His love, and letting her joy stem from Him. Thanks to Kookie (forever and always my England Mom), I read Mimosa by Amy Carmichael. This was exactly what I needed to read. How the Lord's power is beyond our expectations and how He truly does not need us to change children's hearts, however, he is still willing to! Sovereignty.

“Is not the courage of the love of God amazing? Could human love have asked it of a soul? Fortitude based on knowledge so slender; deathless, dauntless faith — who could have dared to ask it but the Lord God Himself? And what could have held her but Love Omnipotent?“ -Amy Carmichael

Hard-Pressed

Hard-pressed. The word that has not left my mind. Everyday I repeat to myself "Elaina be hard-pressed." I've been reading and I see hard-pressed in scripture. In bible study, the theme was being hard-pressed. And tonight, I was absolutely 100% hard-pressed.

We've been doing a Kid's Camp all week for kids in a really rough area not far from where we live in Teesside. The kids are almost all from broken homes and have gone through worse than most of us ever will. We started on Monday and finished up this evening. We've been playing games, doing skits, singing songs, and just loving on kids as much as we can. Many of them resist anything that has to do with "Jesus," refusing to sing and dance, and often bullying on the kids that do. Many of the kids have never heard of a Savior and don't understand why us crazy Americans are so willing to love them. As I am, in my selfish, foolish, untrusting ways, I find myself just yearning to get away and be surrounded by my Father in Heaven. In my head thinking God just take me away from it all, bring me to Your kingdom so that I can be surrounded with Your love and perfection and not have to face the hurt and hard and despair of this world. Come back Lord, we're ready for You. This IS my desire to depart and to just be with Christ. But it isn't all.

I had the pleasure of running around the park with Ellie, Crystal, and Helena. They are all under 10 and just love to run and lay in the grass and sing and do cartwheels and pick flowers. So we did for awhile, but then Crystal and Ellie had to go home for tea. Helena was still braiding my hair and when they left she instantly started weeping. She wrapped her arms around me and begged me to never leave her. I told her that I would have to leave soon that night but that I would be back next week and she said she wouldn't be back for some reason. This little girl has gone through so much hurt and so much loss. All she wants is someone to be consistent in her life that LOVES her. (It's funny I've noticed that in America when you say I love you to any kid they respond with I love you too! but here they look at you like you don't mean it and when they see that you do they just blush a little bit.) She loved being loved. Helena soon found out that she has a Father in Heaven that loves her 10 million times more than I could ever love her. She found out that her and I could play and run and sing and shout for eternity in Heaven!  She really liked that idea. As we were talking I was thinking, Lord, don't come back quite yet. I need to be here for You. I need to do what you've asked of me and plant these seeds in these kids' hearts, Lord I need more time. And this is when I know, that being hard-pressed for Christ is right where I need to be. Desiring to act out His will for me and to spend eternity with Him. Hard-pressed between knowing His love and acting solely on that.

This week was a struggle and I'd be lying if I said that they all came to believe in Jesus. But this town is different. A kid today said before we all got there he would come by the park and not see anyone around. As he was talking there were 50+ kids on the field, smiling and giggling and singing "I am not forgotten, God knows my name!" People were coming out of their houses to watch the kids play and see why they were all so joyful. God was so evident in their smiles. I will never forget their smiles. We laid the foundation for a whole ministry that is happening here due to some amazing people that have devoted time to this little town alone. I know that if we come back in 1 or 2 years, this place will not be what we walked into on Monday afternoon.

"For I am hard-pressed between the two, having a desire to depart and be with Christ, which is far better. Nevertheless to remain in the flesh is more needful for you. And being confident of this, I know that I shall remain and continue with you all for your progress and joy of faith." Philippians 1:23-25

Beyond the Blue

Today was one of the most glorious days of my life. Josh Garrel's song Beyond the Blue was on repeat in mind. I could not possibly find words to describe it so I will try with pictures. If only you could smell and hear them though....

 Stand on the shores of a site unseen/ The substance of this dwells in me/ Cause my natural eyes only go skin deep/ But the eye’s of my heart anchor the sea

He who finds his life will lose it, and he who loses his life for My sake will find it. Matthew 10:39