A vlog … (for sinners’ eyes only!)

P.S. — I did not, in fact, record the whole thing with my eyes closed, despite the picture you may see below.

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RESOURCES:

John Piper’s resources on the Love of God.

A Love Letter from the Father.

A song about the depth of God’s love.

RELATED: Jennifer vlog on Fear.

Have you come by for God-Bumps and God-Incidences? Write your story, share the button (found here) on your blog post, and then link below. I’m eager to hear about the God-Things in your life this week!

I’m no math whiz, but I know improbability when I see it. I exhale one long breath, lay down my pen and look over the rims of my glasses at the two-person sales force across the table.

They are flashing their toothiest Girl Scout grins. One is wearing pigtails. I drum my fingers on the table.

How am I going to break it to them?

They have determined to each sell 1,000 boxes of cookies by March. In Girl Scout world, reaching a sales goal of this magnitude is something like being listed in the Fortune 500. And of course, it comes with a free Apple iPod Touch and the coveted title of “Mega Seller.”

I do some more figuring.

Statistically speaking, this would require half of all households in our rural county to purchase one box of cookies from our girls.

My oldest Scout slides a pencil behind her ear and widens her eyes, which suddenly look like a pair of Thin Mints resting atop her cheeks.

“Taylor sold, like, 503 boxes last year, Mom. You should have seen it!”

Naturally, Taylor is the daughter of the Troop leader.

I’m just about to explain my logic, when my brain rewinds. In the playback, I’m ten years old again. I remember all of it: the Girl Scout sash with sewn-on merit badges, the pressed uniform, the orange necktie, the outlandish sales-goal. I would bend headfirst into bitter winter winds, undeterred in my door-to-door sales drive. I would will the ink in my Bic pen not to freeze up because, after all, I was doing good in the name of the Girl Scouts of America.

And, of course, I wanted to take a wild stab at winning an eight-track player or whatever the grand-prize was.

I’m pretty sure I knocked on every door in our little Iowa town that year. Scratch that. Almost every door. I always skipped Fluorine, who shared an apartment with her pet monkey and who mistakenly believed every year that she’d won the Publisher’s Clearinghouse Sweepstakes. I was afraid to knock, thinking she’d be exceedingly disappointed to find a scrawny Girl Scout at her door instead of Ed McMahon.

All those years, I never once met my sales goal. But never did I feel like a failure. Perhaps there’s something magical about dreaming big, against all odds. I wonder if the rare chance of accomplishing what we’ve set out to do is sometimes just enough to buoy the soul.

Maybe that’s why I find myself where you see me now – unwilling to talk my girls down from their lofty ambitions.

According to my figuring, my Girl Scouts will fall about 900 boxes short of their goal.

Some of the dads in the neighborhood put their heads together and determined that all of the Girl Scouts should consider combining their orders. Then, they could share the Apple iPod Touch.

But my girls will have none of that.

I do think the oldest Scout in the house has begun to sense that her goal hovers a bit high. Just yesterday, I saw her eyeing a photograph of the “Eco-Wood Owl Necklace,” a shiny gold owl pendant threaded onto a blue string. The necklace is awarded to anyone who sells at least 50 boxes.

But you never know what can happen. After all, she’s sold 35 boxes so far. And it’s only February.

Reposting from last year’s archives, with a reminder for all of us: Dream Big! What are you dreaming these days?  How do your dreams buoy your soul?

Photos: Girls in Scout uniforms that originally belonged to me and my sisters.

“Don’t become like the people of this world.
Instead, change the way you think.
Then you will always be able to determine
what God really wants—
what is good, pleasing, and perfect.”

    ~ Romans 12:2

Drink deeply from the cup of delight, friends, for it is a gift from the Father. Earth is a fertile playground for mortals.

So …

Let the kite string out farther.

Dance the last song.

Wait for the encore.

Pick the first daisy.

And dance in the rain.

Dance even, in the mud puddles.

Make a mess.

Buy the box with 64 crayons.

Then, color the sky in cotton-candy or electric-lime.

Pay good attention.

For delight is under your nose,

or in your arms,

or thump-thump-thumping inside your chest.

And yes, this post-Eden world groans with agony.
I know the pain of loss, and how
Rancor tries to dim the bright presence of God.

But His fountain still flows.
His Light still shines.

He is here. Alleluia. He is here. Amen!
And I want to know his delight by heart.
I want to memorize joy
So I remember what it tastes like on the darkest days.

Sometimes, the old saying goes, life hands a person lemons.
Or maybe an orange or a grapefruit.

I say:

Let’s squeeze every last drop of delight out of it.
And add a little sugar.
And may we’ll see our worlds transformed by
the squeezed-out,
teased-out
delights of our Maker.

*****

Writing in community with The Gypsy-Mama today, who gives us a one-word Prompt and Five Minutes to write about it. Her word this week: DELIGHT.

It has been — what? — a month since I’ve asked?

“Here I am, Lord. Won’t you send me?” 

I’m ready to go to Haiti, I tell Him.

I drive south on the gravel, with rocks knocking against the fenders, and I pray the whole way to the doctor’s office. A nurse will inject the last of the Hepatitis vaccines into my arm. My husband went to Haiti in November, and he said after he got home that I may as well get ready.

“Just get your shots, then you can go when God calls.” That’s what he said.

I believed him. So I started my shots the next day.

That was two months ago.  God hasn’t called. Maybe I left the phone off the hook? Maybe He forgot my number?

I pull onto the highway, an asphalt ribbon leading straight to the doctor’s office. It’s time for the last shot.

I’m spiritually ready. And in 15 minutes, I’ll be physically ready. But I’m a traveler without a destination. I’m a missionary without a mission. My heart aches to love the least of these, and I don’t have a place to deposit.

I steer into the parking lot, pull the Acadia between two yellow lines, and walk through the glass doors.

The nurse calls me back right away. I hike up the sleeve, and she asks just two questions:

Which arm?
And when are you headed for Haiti?

Left arm, I tell her.

But regarding the “when?”

“Um … I don’t know. Waiting for the Lord to lead there. Waiting for Him to tell me when, I guess.”

She presses the syringe through the flesh, and I draw in a deep breath. I close my eyes.

With one little prick — a single puncture through the skin — I remember three nails. I’m ready to go to uncomfortable places for my Savior, ready to serve the least of these … for the Most High. I’m ready to live the words I write and speak. No need to fear, right? Isn’t that what I just said straight into the camera?

But who am I kidding? My knees knock. I don’t even know what I would pack in a suitcase. I’m half-afraid, and I’m fighting back fear, but didn’t I just say that the best way past it is to walk straight through it?

I did. I did say that. And yes. Yes, I would. I would walk straight through the fear. If He called, I would. 

I tug my sleeve down. I take gravel home, arm still burning. And I say it again: “Lord. Send me.”

***

Home now, I check the email. A woman, she’s written.

She doesn’t know me. She doesn’t know what I’ve prayed. Doesn’t know I’ve just gotten my last shot. Doesn’t know that I’ve even had my first. She has no clue that I desire to serve in Haiti.

But this woman … she has written.

She writes:  ”We were wondering, would you consider going to Haiti with us?”

And I tell her I will.

*****

I am heading to Haiti March 19-26, with ViBella Jewelry!

ViBella means “Beautiful Life.” He answers a prayer with pure beauty.

ViBella is a mission with a redemptive purpose. Haitian boys collect plastic bottles littering the Haitian countryside, and Haitian women serve as artists.

Look at the beauty they create!

They make beauty from ashes, treasure from trash.

These women “upcycle” the material from a littered landscape, transforming it into beauty. ViBella then invests all profits back into the artists’ communities, which brings the transformation full-circle.

Have you come by today to share you own God-Incidence or God-Bumps story?

What are the God-Things that make you go “Hmmmm?” How has God been stirring in your life?

A little girl, her face round with wonder, finds me in the church kitchen, where I’m plugging in a crock-pot full of BBQ meatballs.

“Jennifer,” she tugs at my sweater. “I brought cupcakes, and I frosted them all by myself.”

I bend down, so I can see her eye to eye. I tell her to save one for me. At a potluck, everyone has something to bring. We are each provider and guest. Even the child can offer a gift to the table — even if she brings only her hunger.

And we all come hungry. 

Before we eat, we worship. For the next hour, we sing, and we read the Psalms responsively — a community’s way of lamenting and praising in unison. We confess our sins,  shoulder to shoulder, and read aloud the Creed. Voices rise from hungry souls who empty to be filled again, by the One we confess as Lord. The One who will come again.

Meanwhile,  the kitchen hums with crockpots and ovens set to 350-degrees, warming pounds of meatloaf and lasagna in Pyrex beds.

The service ends with the pastor’s blessing. And like clockwork, the women — long accustomed to feeding everyone else first  – slip out from the wooden pews. It is a dance, what they do, moving in and out of kitchen doors without bumping into one another. Their potholdered hands carry pieces of a feast.

The table does the hard work, groaning under the weight of ham, meatloaf and a variety of foods wading in pools of mushroom soup or spaghetti sauce.

And I am, again, the child in my own church basement, remembering how my plate performed a miracle all its own — holding all that I had piled upon in, without spilling onto unlike foods.

Here,  from the back of the fellowship hall, I watch as the children fill their plates first. They pile plates with too little protein, and too much of whatever was topped with Cool-Whip.

Taste and see. Taste and see…

I find my way to the potluck table, and fill. There is more than enough, always more. The room hums with conversation, in this, a shared ritual passed down through generations. I hear someone ask who made the rice soup, and I know it was Joyce because I recognize her crockpot.

I find my place between a family of six, speaking in Spanish, and a young mother, murmuring baby-talk while coaxing her child with a choo-chooing fork.

At the table, I slow down. I eat attentively. And here, with fork in hand, love comes into focus.

We have each invested something of ourselves to get here — the frosting on a cupcake, the carefully measured ingredient. Even this — the simple opening of a bag of Chex mix — is an offering at the table of grace.

All of it leads to God.

At the potluck, the mind sharpens its focus on Christ, and community, and what it will mean to live fully restored. All are invited to the table, and I pull up a chair.

Cicero once said that in friendship, our joy is doubled and our grief is divided. In that single hour of a potluck, where we lean in toward nourishment, the mathematics are multiplied even more so among the calloused hands and the tendering hearts.

I lift my fork for a last bite, among guests at a long and enduring table of startling grace. And Christ, the unseen host, becomes more visible here, in this place. For our banquet of meager offerings is but a foretaste of what we professed — in unison only minutes ago — of our Savior, who has bought a place at the table for each of us.

*****

“Only God can write such a letter. … It’s written
with Spirit on spirit, his life on our lives!”

(From 2 Corinthians 3:4-6, The Message)

Joining Deidra, on Sunday …

“Close your eyes,” he coaxed.

Then, he placed it in my hands: A journal to record this new writing journey. (Pssst…. Have I told you yet that I’m writing a book?)

My God’s-Got-It farmer — who teaches me to trust in the Lord whether days bring drought or storm or perfect sun — he gave me a journal with the words TRUST on the front.

I need farmer-trust, farmer-surrender — not just for a book, but for a life. I peeled back the first pages of the journal and found a note from my man.

“Jennifer … I would like you to keep this journal for a record of the process that unfolds to get this book into the hands of those who need it,” he wrote. “It does need to get into those hands, and we know you will TRUST that God already has the process all planned out!”

Note: This is submitted as part of Gypsy-Mama’s Five-Minute Friday, in which we are told to write for five minutes on a topic she selects. This week’s topic? TRUST.

Gypsy-Mama, I hereby confess that this took longer than five minutes to put together with all these photos. But I couldn’t resist linking anyway. It was too providential to pass up.

RELATED: The website for William K. Jensen Literary Agency.
A list of authors represented by Bill.

But we don’t have to be anymore. Jesus says so.

And, I’m going to set my own fear aside today and appear on camera for my first-ever vlog.

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Helpful resources to fight back fear:

10 Bible Verses To Inspire Courage at Beliefnet.

Max Lucado’s eight steps on overcoming fear.

A devotion from The High Calling’s Mark Roberts. He writes: “The antidote to fear doesn’t come from within our selves, but from the Lord.”

A book by Hannah Hurnard. “Hinds Feet on High Places.”

Have you come by for God-Bumps and God-Incidences? Write your story, share the button (found here) on your blog post, and then link below. I’m eager to hear about the God-Things in your life this week!

She’s still tiny enough to fit on my lap, so I embrace her, warm and snug against me, on a cool Iowa morning. We look out the window, the window with the word PRAY on the sill.  Overnight, our trees played dress up; they’re all wearing lacy-white robes and pearls.

The winter air is still. Not a single branch moves. I slow to the hushed rhythms of the world, and inside, I hold this one beautiful moment in my arms. I wrap a single tendril of her hair around my finger. And she’s got all of me wrapped around hers.

“I thank God for you, Anna,” I tell her. “You know that? I thank God for you every day.”

“I thank God for you, too, Mommy,” she says in a hoarse morning whisper. Her legs dangle over the arm rest, and I hope she’ll never outgrow my embrace.

“I wonder why God would give me someone as wonderful as you,” I tell her. I shake my head over astonishing grace.  Stilled by beauty, I cannot get over the God of our “immeasurably mores.”

She cups my chin in her hand, blinks her eyes and preaches a mini-sermon from a living-room pulpit.

“I know, Mommy,” she says. “I know why God gave me to you.”

I raise my eyebrows, listening to the seven-year-old preacher.

“It’s because you asked.”

“Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us,  to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen.”

– Ephesians 3:20-12

Linking with Laura and Michelle today …