An Everyday Ordinary Life*
In the big picture, sending kids off to a few colleges, a change of address (time zone, too), and a career shift is kind of a “Big Deal.” I can attest to this. Full of details needing attention, hearts needing intention, and a mind needing to run off steam – this move to Adventures in Missions should be my undoing. But it’s not.
How does an ADHD poster-child not unravel with such changing landscapes?
I think it has to do with the work that lies ahead. In serving with Adventures in Missions, I’ll be able to more overtly live as I have quietly lived these years at the City of Manhattan and Sunset Zoo – hoping to be the hands and feet of an unseen God. Too often, I’m afraid, I was more “donkey” than servant, but the hope of reaching out in love and bridging a lonely, tired, fearful gap was always present.
This reaching out and this love is not of my own design or craft. It has been the mortar of an everyday ordinary life; a life I hope will give more than it takes, prays more than it shouts, laughs more than weeps. And during this transition-there has been taking and praying and shouting and laughing and weeping (and one unfortunate incident of beverage flowing from the nose due to surprise and giggling).
We all have a chance to change the landscape for another: to offer a glimpse of a better life in the midst of great wrong. I know this. It happened to me. I cannot step aside and not offer it to others-this fresh water to thirsty souls.
And then I met the team of women heading to Cambodia to join the team on the ground. Doggone it. Sneaky stuff for an unseen God. You’d go too if you had met them. And I must pack up the uHaul this next week and see what I can do to support them as they walk with, wash dishes beside, and love – become the hands and feet – to people in Cambodia whose everyday ordinary lives are filled with despair, brutality, forced prostitution, alienation from family, loneliness, and great loss.
Join me. I need your help. This is a self-funded gig and though the quick sale of my home bears witness to the merciful provision of an unseen God, I need folks who are willing to be hands and feet to support me as I go.
Pretty extraordinary what God does when we say, “YES”, isn’t it? How long has it been since our phone conversation when you weren’t exactly sure what God was saying or how it would work out? You still aren’t sure of anything but that God is saying, “GO”.
May your journey be filled with more and more and more of Jesus!
Allie, I love your obedience and am excited to see how the Lord manifests himself through you in this transition and next season of life.
We’re excited to welcome you here tomorrow, Allie. What a journey!