A Life That Counts

Posted on December 28, 2011 by dyuhas48

You and I are a lot alike. We all want to live a life that matters. My guess is that you’ve been busy, like me, jotting down goals for the coming year. We write and rewrite, searching for perfect prose to succinctly communicate an ideal life. We create goals that both challenge and comfort us as we seek to become the best we can be. We make resolutions because, when it’s all said and done, we want our lives to count.

: **

If you are anything like me, and you are, there are certain aspects of life in which you perpetually hope to get better, like self-control and discipline, whether it be following a budget, controlling your eating, reading the Bible in a year, or getting enough exercise. Every year you say, “This is the year when it will all come together. This is the year when I’ll finally __________ (fill in the blank). And twelve months later, at the close of that same year, you realize you haven’t moved all that far from where you started. Me too. We’re a lot alike.

I’ve tried to make the process easier. First, I exchanged the term ‘resolution’ for ‘goal’, hoping to make them something to anticipate instead of something painful to perform. A good hypothesis, but unsupported by the evidence. Frankly, I didn’t reach goals any more than I had resolved resolutions. I needed a new format.

The next thing I tried was to revise the nature of these goals from something I might reach to something I’d be hard-pressed to miss. If weight loss was too difficult, I’d set a goal to at least not gain weight. Simple. Too simple. Self-defeating, in fact, because not only did I fail to take measures to lose weight, but I gained it instead. Back to the drawing board.

This time I chose to set miniature goals, baby steps, if you will. Little by little, I’d raise the bar. No undue stress, self-nagging, badgering, or arm-twisting. I liked that. It’s a lot easier to reach a goal bit by bit than all at once. I set mini goals to boost my entire lifestyle, from eating and exercising to writing, reading, and following a budget. It felt great and looked good on paper, but as it turned out, I still failed to meet them. Too many goals, not enough gumption. Where does the fault lie- with the goals or the girl?

There’s a rather embarrassingly immense gap between the person whom I ought to be and the one I actually am, between the real and the ideal. Setting new year goals every year makes this glaringly obvious. I am far from perfect and I suspect the same is true of you. Why do we seek perfection in our lives? It’s impossible, and we know it. Yet on and on we labor, trying to capture the ideal and make it ours. I think we do so because of a backward equation in our faulty thinking:

Perfection = Acceptance + Worth

You and I strive for perfection, believing deep down that if we are perfect, then others, including God, will fully love and accept us and no one would doubt that we belong. If we were perfect, if we lacked nothing, we would be, as the serpent suggested in the garden of old, like God. There would be no need for humbling grace and mercy. No one could question our significance.

That’s a lie, a bald-faced, black-hearted lie right out of the pit of muck and mire, and we know it. Behind the striving for perfection is the force of our sin nature threatening to churn up a frothy lather of pride and pain within us. It is a battle that rages, that age-old war between the flesh and the spirit, and we must look to God for deliverance. The battle belongs to the Lord (1 Samuel 17:47).

I want to look to God, not myself, to perfect me. He knows exactly what I need at every moment and has promised to continue my transformation until Christ returns. And I have His guarantee, the Holy Spirit, within me. What I want for 2012 is to simply fix my eyes on Jesus, the author and, dare I say, perfecter of my faith.

“I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and participation in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow, attaining to the resurrection from the dead. Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already arrived at my goal, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 3:10-14).

My New Year’s goal, my mantra, the everlasting goal of goals is this:

I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. I press on toward the goal to win the prize.

I want God to create in me a life that counts. So do you. We’re a lot alike.

Buffer

Bree’s Story: Safety In Numbers

Posted on December 26, 2011 by dyuhas48

When you were the youngest of four children, you didn’t have much power in the grand scheme of childhood things. When everyone got together to play softball, kickball, ice hockey, or any number of team sports of which you weren’t very fond, you had to play whether you liked it or not. When decisions were made about what to watch on television or what to do that day, you pretty much had to go along with everybody else because your opinion didn’t matter. You were just the baby, even if you were old enough to stay up as late as than everybody else.

http://dreamstime.com

Whether to avoid those things I didn’t like, such as chores or team sports, or to simply be alone to play as I liked, sometimes I gathered up my Barbie dolls and headed out to the barn, to its haymow made warm by the afternoon sun, where I’d sit cross-legged, my dolls spread about in the glory of pretty clothes and plastic shoes. There was Midge, a hand-me-down from my sister. She was the oldest, with coppery hair frizzled like a Brillo pad, and to whom I usually assigned the oldest and ugliest clothes. Then there was Madge, with curly hair cut just above her chin, who reminded me of the lady in the Palmolive commercial, and Marta, a dirty blonde whose legs could bend. Finally, there was my favorite: Mari, a real Malibu Barbie, who came with her own blue swimsuit and matching towel. She had straight, shiny, sun-kissed hair and a sweet tan. Mari had been my birthday present that year. I also had a couple of Ken dolls, but up to that point I hadn’t much use for them and usually sent them off to work each day. They just weren’t all that interesting.

Malibu Barbie was the leader of the flock. She told the others what to do and led them on all kinds of crazy adventures. They were housewives and explorers, scientists and cattle rangers. They lived in field and forest, mansion and mountain, digging up dinosaur bones for posterity in their spare time. Wherever they were, they dressed well and kept house beautifully.

One day, as I was wont to do on a warm summer afternoon, I gathered my dolls and escaped to the quiet solitude of the haymow. Sunlight poured in through the open door and I sat in its genial warmth. Like the baby in Hi and Lois, I loved to sit wherever sunbeams poured their soft, warm light over dust motes, heating up cold, wood floors in the house and barn. Our barn was not really a barn, per se, but an old carriage house with a haymow overhead. In the winter, we stored innumerable bales of hay, which we used as building blocks for mazes and forts, but in the spring and summer, before the harvest, it served as a refuge for those of us who “vant to be alone”. I liked to play there with my dolls.

There I sat in that great beam of light, lost in my own little world of dolls and adventure, working things out in my head, what this doll should say and that one do, when a sudden creak in the floor boards pulled me from my reverie. It was him. I knew it like I knew my shadow. I froze, hoping he didn’t know I was there, but too late. With the suddenness of a flock of birds taking flight, there he stood, looming in the open doorway, blocking the light. He must have snuck up the ladder.

Furiously, I evaluated escape options. There were only two: a) throw myself out the open door to the ground outside, or b) jump down the ladder to the stable below. Just as I decided to go for the ladder, my eyes flickering toward it, he moved in, blocking my exit. I was trapped. He unzipped and pulled down his pants. Not again, I thought.

And then suddenly, with crystal clarity, I saw a chance. I’d run like crazy, heading straight for the main ladder. He would have to pause to pull up his pants or risk being seen by our blessedly nosy neighbors since the back of the barn faced their house directly. It was the only chance for escape and I took it, leaping up and running like I’d never run before. He grabbed, but missed me as I streaked by, dolls forgotten. I raced across the haymow, ducking under the metal bars that anchor its walls, and hurtling myself out of its huge open hay-door, grabbing the rungs of that old wooden ladder, swinging myself around and flying down the rungs. He was older, bigger, stronger, and faster, but that moment he took to pull up his pants cost him the upper hand. On the ground below, I raced around the corner and headed toward the house. At the last moment, just before he turned the corner and saw me, I ducked into an old, broken-down chicken coop and ran to its end, falling to my knees and trying to hide myself behind some metal bars. I could hear him running toward me. The chicken coop became a trap, its walls collapsed on the far end so there was no other way out. Panicking, I covered my head with my hands and squeezed my eyes shut, hoping that if I couldn’t see him, maybe he wouldn’t see me. I tried to not breathe.

He entered the coop, breath ragged from running, and stopped. I knew in my heart there was no way he couldn’t see me. There hadn’t been anything to hide behind. Like a deer when it gets a whiff of an enemy, I started to jump to my feet, but something stopped me and I waited, squeezed my eyes tighter, and prayed for invisibility.

Suddenly, a strange sound came to my ears. It was the sound of running. More to the point, it was the sound of feet running away from me. It was the sound of feet running along the outside of the coop, toward the house. He yelled, “I’m going to get you! I saw you run into the house!” I opened my eyes. He hadn’t seen me! He hadn’t known I was there! Slowly I stood up, gathering my wits. He hadn’t seen me.

I had to get out of there. It wouldn’t be long before he’d realize his mistake and come back. Quietly, gingerly, I tiptoed to the doorway and looked carefully around, just in case it was a trick. But no, he really had left. I took off, running as fast as my feet could fly, straight through the barnyard and across the field to the safety in numbers of my neighbor’s house. There I stayed until my mom returned home. Funny. She had always warned us to stay out of the neighbors’ barns for safety’s sake. Funny that the real danger lay in our own barn.

Fast forward 20+ years.

As a young Christian, one of my greatest struggles was believing that God loved me personally, me, Bree B.W., pretty, but not beautiful, smart, but not very intelligent, talented, but not particularly so. I was average, mundane, commonplace, a solid C. And no matter what people say, there isn’t any single Scripture that says if I were the only person on earth Christ would still have come and died for me. It felt like I’d gotten in on a technicality. I had confessed and prayed the prayer, therefore God was forced to receive me. Yeah, I had a way to go in my faith.

There were times that I felt kind of like a blade of glass, winking and blinking in the morning dew, trying my best to get God’s attention like every other blade of grass in the great lawn of life. God gave me a picture of myself once, in which I saw myself dancing a beautiful ballet before his throne, dancing to the best of my ability. At the dance’s end, I looked up to see my Father’s expression of joy only to find his attention had wandered to other girls who were more interesting than I. I had not been able to hold His attention. God had showed me how I saw myself.

Oh, I longed to hold His attention, to be special to Him.

One day, I decided to take a leap of faith and prayed, asking God to show me that I was, after all, special to Him. His response was immediate.

I saw myself all those years ago, crouched down at the back of the chicken coop, eyes shut tightly, praying. In that moment, as I looked back on myself, God revealed what really happened, why my abuser had not seen me, even though there’d been little to nothing in that chicken coop to hide behind.

I looked and I saw Jesus standing before me, facing my abuser. He had stood firmly between us, like He forever stands between eternal night and day, and had taken the hem of his garment between his fingers and lifted it up, hiding me from sight. Jesus himself had protected me that day. That was why my abuser never saw me even though I crouched in plain sight.

I cannot tell you how deeply this knowledge affected me. I cried rivers of joy. Jesus had not sent an angel to do the task, but had come, He-himself, to save me. Never again would I need to question whether I was special to the Lord, for the Lord Himself had shown me and there could be no more doubt. I believed, and a deep wound healed that day.

dreamstime.com

Oh, there is safety in numbers, friends, but never more so than when those numbers begin with God the Father, God the Son, and God the Spirit, three-in-one. I hope my tale encourages you, when pain threatens to engulf you, to seek God, for He alone heals the wounded heart.

Psalm 121:1
I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help.

PS: Bree is a pseudonym for someone I know, who allowed me to tell her story in the first person. Details have been changed to protect her privacy.

Buffer

Christmas Triumphant

Posted on December 20, 2011 by dyuhas48

www.dreamstime.com

Christmas traditions have waxed and waned in my life. As it is for most people, traditions wax in childhood and then wane during the teen years right on through early adulthood. Today’s Christmas is never as glittery and exciting as Christmases of the past and we mourn their passing until the day we have children of our own and the cycle begins anew.

The Christmases of my childhood were filled with good things like a mouth-watering Christmas feast, traditional Christmas cookies, lots of presents, and a real tree, taken from our own land and dragged home by my father and brothers. Every year we untangled yards of old-fashioned lights, the least favorite task since Dad, with his penchant for perfection, always got irritated with the general incompetence of we kids. Dad wasn’t very good at making work fun. Ah, memories.

The tree, with its star on top and colored lights cascading like scalloped garlands, was always beautiful. Tucked within its branches were all kinds of lovely ornaments, the biggest toward the bottom and the smallest toward the top, including those tiny Swiss houses in pastel pink, blue and green, decorative birds with dyed feathers in deep pink and peacock-blue, clear plastic icicles, antique glass ornaments, and those glittery, bejeweled creations made by my mom. Finally, there was more tinsel than you can imagine thrown in gobs while my mom tried to convince us to hang them one by one (yeah, right). The whole concoction twinkled and glittered and glowed in concert with the oo’s and ah’s of the entire family.

Every year of my childhood, Christmas came with ribbons, tags, packages, boxes and bags and every year I was rather surprised, knowing we hadn’t been that good. Ma stuffed our stockings with an orange, and then with hard candies, chocolates, nuts, and candy canes. We had our favorites – hard raspberry candies with a soft center, chocolate coins, and those crunchy mints with the chocolate center. There was peanut brittle, ribbon candy, and hot chocolate in Santa Claus mugs, but not before the delicious, hot breakfast prepared by our mom.

One year, everyone got bicycles. Another year, it was ice skates, black hockey skates for the boys and white figure skates for the girls. There were six kids in our family, enough to make up teams for sports. There were Christmases with footballs, basketballs, softballs and bats, board games, miniature sewing machines, a Betty Crocker oven, Barbie dolls, and GI Joe’s, record players and the Beatles, hula hoops and hot wheels. Heavenly.

The year I metamorphosed into a gangly teenager, we moved off the farm and into a house in town. Change became the triumphant constant in our lives. We were now a single parent household and one by one, we six kids began to graduate high school and leave the nest. Ma changed jobs and hours, friends changed faces, and I exchanged Barbie for Teen Magazine and jeans with elephant bells.

Christmas traditions dwindled; our tree grew smaller each year, and eventually turned into plastic. We no longer hung every single ornament and my mom didn’t bother to set up the diorama of little skiers and skaters. Gifts of noisy toys turned into sweaters and pajamas. Christmas breakfast became breakfast as usual and by early afternoon, most of us took off to visit friends. Christmas, for me, became more of a longing for the old days, a bittersweet occasion, a ghost of the past. I felt it deeply. I missed Christmas. I missed our family togetherness.

What happened to Christmas? Where did it go? Why did it change?

Simply put, we grew up. The enchantment of Christmas was unable to withstand the impassioned tumult of puberty and we left it behind, just as we left childhood, never to return. That’s the constant of change: when it’s all said and done, nothing is ever the same, especially Christmas. Sound familiar?

Those of you nodding your heads, you know. You’re familiar with that singular sense of loss. You remember the family gathered around the table, full of Christmas cheer, those loved ones now grown and gone, grandparents in their graves, and you remember. You remember your aunts, uncles, and cousins, visits to Gramma’s house, and those sentimental hours spent listening to stories of Christmases long ago. All gone.

Praise God.

Yes, you read it right. Praise God.

Praise God, because He has not left us out in the cold. In our ignorance and disobedience, we made Christmas all about us. And like all human institutions, it could not help but fail and fade away.

But God, in His infinite mercy, has for us something better, a treasure rather than a tradition, a gift that never stops giving. It is Christmas for all who birth Christ in their heart, a present that never fades or fails. It is the true Christmas. He, who knows we are but dust, has come, wooing and drawing us into the deep ocean of HIs infinite love and grace and mercy. He opens our eyes to see that Christmas is not about us, but about Christ the Savior. Christmas is Christ.

Every good and perfect gift is from the Father above. Christmas is the gift of Jesus for those who prepare Him room.

Will you join me in setting aside those old and weak traditions of Christmas to make room for Jesus? Forget the past and strain toward what is ahead. Let go of weak traditions, commercialism, and debt, and fill your heart instead with visions of voices singing praise to God. Let your heart, mind, soul, and strength find HIs quiet rest and be filled with the unending and wholly satisfying joy of the Lord. This is Christmas triumphant.

“Sovereign Lord, as you have promised, you may now dismiss your servant in peace. For my eyes have seen your salvation, which you have prepared in the sight of all nations: a light for revelation to the Gentiles, and the glory of your people Israel” (Luke 2:29-32).

Buffer

Bree’s Story: In Pieces

Posted on December 14, 2011 by dyuhas48

Author’s note: Bree’s Story is a collection of narrative pieces for a book I am writing. The stories are true, but names and details have been changed to protect those directly or indirectly affected. It is written in the first person because, as a writer, that is my modus operandi. This post is the first of many pieces of Bree’s Story.

photo courtesy of http://dreamstime.com

My name is Bree and I’ve a story to tell. It starts with a bath, a long soak in warm, silky, foamy, fragrant bath water.

I once read a book about a little girl who was taught cleanliness by little fairies who flitted around her like happy butterflies. I wanted to be like her, pure and clean, with shining hair and breath sweet as apples. I longed to wear pastel party dresses and have my hair tied up with ribbons to match, with white socks and patent Mary Janes. A bath was the best place I knew to dream about being a beloved, pretty little girl.

Bath time was fantasy time. Soaking in comfortably hot bath water, washing my hair, and playing with the shampoo bubbles enabled a happy visit to my own little world of imagination. I liked submerging empty bottles and watching them spring up to the surface (we didn’t own bath toys, per se) and turning the water on and off with my toes. I loved to soak in the tub until my skin shined and my fingers resembled prunes. The smell of soap on my skin and the fragrance of newly washed hair created a cloud of cleanliness that had to be next to godliness.

There was only one bathroom in our house, so it was not uncommon for somebody to interrupt bath-time reverie with pleas for permission to come in and use the toilet. There was an old latch on the door that could be lifted with the judicious application of a butter knife and we were all used to it. In these cases, we just pulled the shower curtain closed and waited while he or she got in and out. In a house of four rambunctious kids, nobody thought much about it. I know I never did, that is, until the day everything changed.

It was evening and my turn in the tub. He asked to come in and I pulled the curtain closed as usual. Only this time, instead of going straight to the toilet, he stood by the tub and pulled back the curtain. And stood there staring. I’ll never forget that look in his eyes, so strange and a little terrifying. It was not like his eyes grew large or the whites of his eyes more visible. He didn’t raise his brows. He didn’t blink. He just … looked. I had no idea what it meant, but I felt acutely embarrassed and vulnerable. I wanted to cover up, but there was nothing available. The towel was out of reach. “Ma, he’s looking at me!” I tattled. My mother’s harried voice came out of the kitchen nearby, where she was busy preparing supper. “What are you doing? Get out of there and leave her alone.” Without a word, he left and I locked the door behind him. The bliss of bath time was over. I dried myself off and got dressed. That was the first and last time my mother intervened. The next time I hollered out that he was looking at me in the tub, she replied, “I’m too busy. Tell him yourself.”

Being the intelligent, bright-eyed child that I was, I clearly understood in that moment that was up to me to protect myself. There wasn’t anyone on whom I could rely. Mom was simply too busy to share in my concern and there wasn’t any other adult. My father had traded us in for a better family that same year. I was 8 or 9 years old when he left, another person not to be trusted.

From that point on, staying safe and sound was up to me. Unfortunately, I soon proved a rookie in this matter. He was older, stronger, faster, and far more devious than me. My only real protection was safety in numbers, a difficult feat when you’re too young to hang around your sister, you prefer to play alone, you don’t share a room anymore, and your mother works during the day. Deep down in my heart, hidden away even from me, grew a certainty that at some point some dirty part of me was responsible for his bad behavior. I longed to be clean and pure and pretty.

The lessons learned in childhood are the lessons we never forget. I learned to trust others only so far and to remain ever alert for the signs that things were about to go south. It could be as simple as the sudden quiet, a gesture, or a look, but mostly it was my own subconscious hypervigilance that kept me out of harm’s reach. These lessons served well in those days, helping me to avoid the long line of predatory men in my life, like the fathers and brothers of my friends, my sister’s two husbands, and a few boys in the neighborhood. As far as I could see, the whole male world was queer, which is how I thought of it.

The abuse progressively worsened and went on and on until I grew strong enough at sixteen to put an end to it. By this time my heart was so ashamed and fearful I simply wasn’t capable of receiving the kind of love for which I hungered with all the humor of a starving dog. It’s fragrance surrounded me like the smell of fresh, baked bread, drawing me to its bakery window where I’d stand, mouth-watering and hungry beyond belief, nose was pressed against the glass, hands stuffed inside empty pockets, hoping against hope that this time, there’d might be a coin or two to trade for a slice.

In growing up, we are to put away childish things, but this pain, this fear, this habit of suffering through an awkward version of love-from-a-distance proved impossible to put away. I didn’t know how to fix it; I didn’t even know what was wrong. All I knew was that I wanted love, but couldn’t find it. Somewhere between my first Harlequin romance and the whispered secrets of girls at school, the longing for love became totally enmeshed with the notion of some nameless, faceless, dread champion riding in on his white horse to save me from myself. I figured I could live off his splendor. His love for me would prove beyond all doubt that I was pure and beautiful, kind, and wonderful, all the ideals I wished I were. Nobody seemed to think these things were true of me, but if a handsome prince came along, they would have to believe. They would have to acknowledge that I was worthy.

When I looked up and saw his eyes, when I tried to cover myself with bubbly bath water, when I called to my mom for help all those years ago so, I didn’t know that trust had been fractured and would crash and burn my heart so that its wounds would seemingly bleed for a lifetime. I also had no idea that God was right there with me, allowing in my life only what I was able to bear, and using that pain and longing to slowly bring me to Him, the Lord My Healer. Most of all, I had no clue that the prince I longed for, the one to whom I could give my whole heart, who would love me beyond my wildest dreams and save me from myself, would be none other than the Jesus Christ, the Prince of Peace.

This is my story and I’m still living it. Day by day, God reveals tiny pieces of my heart that still cling to the old ways, still learning that perfect love drives out fear. I’m not perfected yet, but day by day, more and more, my heart whispers, sings, and even shouts, “God is good.” God is so good.

Buffer

Eleventh Hour

Posted on December 9, 2011 by dyuhas48

dreamstime.com image

Revelation 20: 11-15

“Then I saw a great white throne and him who was seated on it. The earth and the heavens fled from his presence, and there was no place for them. And I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the throne, and books were opened. Another book was opened, which is the book of life. The dead were judged according to what they had done as recorded in the books. The sea gave up the dead that were in it, and death and Hades gave up the dead that were in them, and each person was judged according to what they had done. Then death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. The lake of fire is the second death. Anyone whose name was not found written in the book of life was thrown into the lake of fire.”

Folks, this is the eleventh hour. Judgment Day is coming. Don’t be caught dead without Jesus. Be saved by putting your faith in Christ that your name may be written in the book of life.

This is what Christmas is all about.

Buffer

Guest Post: A Little Can Change A Lot

Posted on December 2, 2011 by dyuhas48

Today’s post is by Gina Holmes and was originally presented on the blog Inspire A Fire.

“We have much to be judged on when he comes, slums and battlefields and insane asylums, but these are the symptoms of our illness and the result of our failures in love.” – Madeleine L’Engle

When my brother traveled to the Sudan he had an encounter that changed his life—and as it ends up, mine too.

He stood in Darfur at an orphanage filled with children leftover from the genocide. There were over 800 children, and during the night wild dogs were dragging them off and killing them.

My brother already felt shell-shocked from the travesties he’d witnessed in Uganda.

The day was hot. The sun beat down upon him. His camera had nearly been ruined from all the dust. He’d barely slept. His gear was heavy. Yet his conscience was seared by the numbness he felt, so he turned and confessed to a Sudanese pastor.

“We shall pray right now that your heart will be opened,” he was told.

Not long after that prayer three young children approached Joshua and started to follow him. After a bit, his father nature kicked in and he stopped and sang Father Abraham. It didn’t take long before the four of them were dancing and going through the motions.

When they finished, he asked the children to tell him how they came to be there.

The oldest, a girl, answered. “The soldiers came and shot my mother and father, so I came here.”

The two other children nodded in agreement. “Me, too.”

He was grief struck, but it was what transpired next that tore my heart. “Do you have a Mommy?” The little girl asked my brother.

“Yes,” he answered.

“And a Daddy?”

Again, his answer was yes.

“Oh,” she said, her voice hinting at a strange intermingling of numbness and grief.

Her question stirs me still. For I believe it came from her soul and revealed the thoughts of her heart. She didn’t want to know what his country was like, what kind of food he ate, or what he did for a living. She had her own bullet holes leftover from the genocide. Her world consisted of this single question: Who still had parents and who didn’t?

In her questions I heard her worry and fear. Imagine being trapped in a war-torn country, a land of famine, drought and disease. Imagine trying to survive it as an orphan with death threatening you every hour. No matter how much she’s endured, at the end of the day, she’s still just a little girl. And all she really wants is her Mom and Dad.

I imagined my daughter living as an orphan in the Sudan. If I were shot and dying, it would be my hope that my brothers and sisters would care for her. But what if her aunts and uncles were killed too? What was it then, that her parents hoped?

As members of the body of Christ these children are not alone. They have aunts and uncles. Multitudes and multitudes and multitudes of them. Talk about staggering! These kids are our nieces and nephews! Mine. Yours.

So who, I wondered, within the church has the responsibility to step in?

I didn’t like the answer that came. Earlier that week I was shocked to learn that globally I was one of the richest people in the world—even though as an American, I’m pretty poor.

Like it or not I was the rich aunt. I had knowledge of the situation. That made me accountable.

I wasn’t comfortable with the knowledge then, and I’m not comfortable with the knowledge now. But I am determined to do something. Anything.

That day Joshua had in his possession a picture book that someone had asked him to give to someone in the Sudan. It was a children’s book with a story about how we have a Heavenly Father who always loves and cares for us. Joshua read the book and gave it to them.

An American woman took it upon herself to raise the money to build shelter. Every person who donated, even a dollar, helped to create a place where the little girl now sleeps safe from wild dogs.

When Joshua told me he’s going to start a branch of Watermelon Ministries called Media Change, a non-profit encouraging Americans to give up a portion of the money spent on entertainment to serve those fighting world hunger and thirst, I wanted to support it.

For seven years he’s helped non-profits raise money that serves the “least of these.” He’s seen the impact a small investment can have. This is a brand new initiative. He’s not quite ready to launch, but you can sign up and be kept updated at www.mediachange.org. His first goal is garner the support of 10,000 people who are willing to give $10 a month. I’m number #3.

This is only a blog post, but who knows what one blog post can do.

What if the task of helping others isn’t as overwhelming as we make it?

Buffer