HAPPY BIRTHDAY MOMMA GROSE...

Not long ago, while on a retreat with some precious folks, I was asked to spend some time journaling and taking some time to reflect and be quiet before God. One of the questions we were asked to ponder was...consider the greatest gifts of grace God has given you and list the top 5.

Truth be known, the question merited some serious contemplation because we are talking about the 5 greatest gifts of grace to your world. HUGE!! I don't know about you but in light of being given FAR beyond anything I deserve choosing five of those seemed pretty significant.

So I went through the list of blessings and settled on the phrase "gifts of grace." While I have been given so much, there have been a few tremendously significant things that have spoken grace to me unlike anything else ever has.

Getting to walk out a calling that is SO much bigger than me and live out dreams with God here in Honduras is high on my list. I know I should have been disqualified from EVER getting to do anything like this. I should have been the last one chosen, and yet, here I am in a country with people I love supernaturally and children who have become my own and as I stand back one word comes to mind...grace, nothing but God's gracious kindness to this girls life.

There are some other things on the list, which would take way too many words to put on this blog, so for today I'll focus on one person that has spoken grace into my life and reminds me often that God's goodness is abundant.

Somewhere near the top of my list I had to make, right under my salvation and walking righteous with God because of the blood of His Son, was the name of this dear one and the relationship that we are privileged to share. At a time in my life when I had just failed at most everything and was rock bottom in a lot of ways, God divinely appointed this lady a place in my life and I had no idea all that would come to mean.

Truth is by all forms of logic she should have given up and not paid any attention to my messed up self. In terms of the wisdom this world gives I was in many ways a hopeless cause and a rebel in all forms of the word. I had decided at that time in life that I was done with God and fed up with religion and was tired of hearing about what I should do and watching next to no one do it. I was angry and hard and failing...

She believed when I couldn't, prayed when I wouldn't, listened for hours while I questioned and vented, loved when I didn't receive or return it well, made time in her tremendously busy schedule to drive to Athens to meet me for lunch and invest into my world, she was the hands of Christ, the heart of Him and somwhere in the middle of all of that, I caught her passion for Christ and I felt His love.

So many people have been such a BIG part of my faith journey, but if I had to pick one that was grace personified, she's it.

She reached out and believed when I didn't deserve it and nothing logical merited it. She just doesn't operate out of logic. She's got a Jesus heart and that made her heart move toward this one that needed His love and she decided to be a conduit of that.

Since then, she's modeled for these eyes a faith that moves mountains while abiding in Him. She has been tender in moments when my heart has been broken and tough as nails in moments when my stubborn will was keeping me from Him. She's prayed me through doing ministry here and almost everyday I open my email to a note from her that encourages me to chase His heart with everything in me.

So today on your birthday dear one, may you be abundantly blessed, wrapped up in Him...may He honor you beyond your wildest imagination for all you've invested in me, and may He thank you in ways I'm not able for the difference you've made in my life.

I am so grateful for this day...when God allowed your life a place in this world, so that one day your heart and life might bump into mine and change the course of my path forever.

Thank you for loving Him the way you do. My life is one among many who have been changed by watching.

Happy Birthday.

And Amen...

May God bless you with discomfort…
At easy answers, half-truths, and superficial relationships,
So that you may live deep within your heart.

May God bless you with anger…
At injustice, oppression, and exploitation of people,
So that you may work for justice, freedom and peace.

May God bless you with tears…
To shed for those who suffer from pain, rejection,starvation and war,
So that you may reach out your hand to comfort them
And turn their pain into joy.

And may God bless you with enough foolishness…
To believe that you can make a difference in this world.
So that you can do What others claim cannot be done.
Amen

Pray Saints...

I can not even imagine...but I know that they could use an army of praying people to hold them up. I read this last night before bed and just couldn't wrap my head around it. Pray on!!

From Fox News -
NASHVILLE, Tenn. —

The 5-year-old daughter of contemporary Christian music star Steven Curtis Chapman was struck and killed Wednesday by a sport utility vehicle driven by her brother, authorities said.

The girl, Maria, was hit in a driveway on the family residence Wednesday afternoon by a Toyota Land Cruiser driven by her teenage brother, said Laura McPherson, a spokesman for the Tennessee Highway Patrol. McPherson said no charges are expected.

"It looks like a tragic accident," she said.

She said several members of the Chapman family witnessed the accident, which happened in Williamson County just south of Nashville. The brother apparently did not see the little girl, McPherson said.

She did not have the name or exact age of the brother, only that he is an older teenager.The girl died later at Vanderbilt Medical Center, hospital spokeswoman Laurie Holloway said.

Chapman, originally from Paducah, Ky., and his wife have promoted international adoption and have three daughters from China, including Maria.

Chapman has won five Grammy awards and 51 Dove awards from the Gospel Music Association.The singer's Web site said that Chapman and his wife, Mary Beth, were persuaded by their oldest daughter to adopt a girl from China.

The experience led the family to adopt two more children and create Shaohannah's Hope, a foundation and ministry to financially assist thousands of couples in adoption.The Chapmans did missionary work at Chinese orphanages in 2006 and 2007, according to the Web site."After our first trip to China, my wife and I knew our lives were changing — our eyes and hearts were opening to how big God really is, and we have wanted to experience more of that," Chapman says on the Web site. "We've really wondered whether or not we should just go to China and stay there. But I don't think so. I believe God is saying, 'I want you to go, get your heart broken, your eyes opened, and then take this story back to the church in America and around the world."'

Chapman also has released a book about being a father entitled "Cinderella: The Love of Daddy and his Princess."

I MISS MY KIDS...

Well mother's day is tomorrow and while I am so incredibly grateful to be here with my mom and celebrating with her this year...I also miss my kiddo's. Pretty honest statement that when you choose to move away and do mission work that your heart forever lives in two places. Part here, part there, forever and always. That's hard to explain other than to say that when you choose to leave all those you love, you don't do that part way, God creates within you an all or nothing kind of going. While your family and friends remain and you miss them so deeply, you know you were sent and asked to go to invite those folks into your heart as well and so God births another family for you there. I am grateful to my toes for both.

Today though I just need to take a moment to write a note to the ones who call me "Mami" with a joy and exuberance that warms you all over. The ones who want my shoulder to cry on when they're hurt. The ones who want me to lay down with them at night and sing to them and pray with them. The ones who hug the stuffin's out of me and it reaches my soul. The ones whose beds I've now knelt beside and begged the demons to flee and whose bedframes I have touched on a thousand occasions and asked God's Spirit to hover over. The ones who've sat on my lap or kissed my cheek or grabbed my hand and reeled this girls heart in forever.

My dear ones,

Though you won't be able to read this in English (perhaps Mami Ashley or Mami Karen) will read it to you, or maybe we'll print a copy and read it to you someday when you're older and can understand this better.

I just wanted you to hear today that I love being your Mami. I love when you climb up on my lap and just want to sit there cause it feels safe. I love when you smile at me and tell me you love me. I love when you hold my hand because you just want to touch mami. I love it when we play the "I love you more" game and you finish with your I love you to the moon and back in your little Spanish accents. I love singing Jesus loves me with you. I love our trips to town when it's just you and I and we talk about things that matter to you. I love when you beg to sleep with Mami and we lay there before we fall to sleep and you just chatter while we snuggle. (those are some of my favorite times on earth). I love laughing with you. I love the moments when God allows me to pray with you and to hear your pure little hearts pray. I love to watch you praise Him when you sing with all of your hearts. I love to watch you being kind to the others that God has placed into our "Casa family." I love when you bring home your papers from school and want me to have them. I love when you ask me repeatedly to sit with you at lunch or dinner or anytime in between. I love your hugs. I love your mountain of kisses game when you cover my cheek with your kisses. I love doing life with you and watching you grow and change and become the people God is intending for you to be.

While I'm away from you now and when I'm away from you in the future you need to know that a day will NOT pass when I don't feel so incredibly proud to play the part in your life of "Mami Jenny." When I get to Heaven after I have thanked Jesus for my salvation, I will thank Him for letting me be your momma when you needed one, and for using your sweet little lives to touch places in my soul I didn't know existed. You have changed me.

You are precious to my heart and you are forever as close as my heartbeat and my prayers.

Mami Jenny



HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY TO ALL OF YOU WHO PLAY THE ROLE OF BIRTH MOTHER OR THE ROLE OF MOTHER TO A HEART THAT NEEDS ONE. I'M FIRMLY CONVINCED NOW THAT THERE ARE MOTHER'S IN THIS WORLD WHO DID NOT GIVE BIRTH TO THEIR CHILDREN BUT LOVE THEM JUST THE SAME. THAT IS A GOD GIVEN GIFT AND JUST AS PRECIOUS. CONTINUE TO BE BLESSED AS YOU ARE A BLESSING MOMMA'S!!

"People who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are usually the ones who do."

Checking In...

Well I've spent a couple weeks at home just living life near some folks I love a bunch and it has been GOOD for this girls heart. I've sat beside some of the people who remind me without saying a word who I really want to be. I've spent lots of time with my Bible open and my hand just caressing the page as I have sought God in ways different than I ever have before. I've rested. I've read. I've journaled. I've watched the sun rise and I've watched it set. I've listened to the birds make noises and the trees rustle and it has been sacred time.

Today I am going to a Women of Faith Conference in Columbus. As God would have it, some dear saint, has donated a ticket so I can go and be a part of that. I'm going ALL by myself, (I have NEVER done that before and would never have wanted to) but this year it sounded exactly like what I needed to do. Just Him and I. Will sit in a chair all by myself and just listen to Him and soak.

I am relishing in my time with Him right now. Felt like I was parched from the lack of doing so over the past couple of months. I don't know if any of you can relate, but I'm guessing something in that could resonate with a time in your life. Seems as though there are some times in life when you get no heart relief except through those times with Him and Him only. I'm a people girl to the hilt and so it's usually not difficult for me to just feel Him in the middle of all my favorite folks and give me a church setting with whole bunches of people loving Him and I'm in Heaven. Not so right now. It's completely different. I want Him, my Bible, a space in the quiet where I can just hear Him and be with Him. I thought something was really wrong and now I'm just starting to feel like it's way sweet time with Him.

He is faithful. He continues to be so incredibly faithful! I just want to encourage you that the God of the universe can handle your moments of doubt, your months of distance, your questions, your brokenness, your bitterness, your rebellion. All of it. Your God knows how to handle your heart and all that is within it.

I find peace there today! May you do the same.

Blessings abounding on you this day.

Invisibility...

You know it's one of the hardest places to be...that place of invisibility where you feel as though no one notices...notices your effort, notices your advice, notices your presence, notices your behind the scenes diligence, notices what would be missing if you weren't a part of it, notices...well just notices, noone notices.

Makes you think every once in a while that perhaps you should stop offering your effort if no one will notice doesn't it?? Oh come on we've all been there. Well if it doesn't make any difference, then I don't need to ____________, and if matters so little then I'll just show them what happens if I just do nothing. I've said it. I've said it lately even.

And then in this still small voice you know that someone bigger than you and all of them...well He notices. And you're working for Him anyway.

Nicole Johnson does a beautiful job in this short little video of showing the sacredness of invisibility. It is a sacred place to be. May we embrace it as such!!

He notices.

Here's the link http://youtube.com/watch?v=9YU0aNAHXP0

Worth the Watch...

Just wanted to alert you to a video I watched this morning that was touching to say the least. Very good. It's a Nicole C Mullen video called "One Touch."

Take a minute today and watch it. We're all dying for a touch in the middle of our broken places. This is a beautiful representation of that.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L4Zw-9QLlSs

Blessings and Love.

Have you ever wondered how hurting so bad could ever be a part of God's plan for your life...like how to reconcile Him being my "protector" and choosing not to protect me from certain things that have broken my heart...

I'm in this new stage of relationship with God where I have more questions than answers about what following Him all the way to the cross means. I'm sure some of you are very familiar with this place, when God chooses to reveal Himself in harder more difficult ways because deeper requires it. It hurts like heck I've decided...and it's causing me to evaluate so much about what it requires of me to follow Him all the way to the cross.

What does that require when people falsely accuse you... when do you fight for justice and when do you stand silent before your sheerers? Do you ever fight for justice for yourself or are you only to be a voice for justice for others?

Do you speak truth when you know it or do you just wait for God to expose truth in His time? Where do I get in the way of God's timing?

How much pride factors into so much of what I decide to do with my life? Daily where is it hidden from my eyes and so visible to others?

How do you watch a dream die and relinquish it without getting angry or bitter?

If the cross means death and I am supposed to die, then it no longer matters whether I'm right, whether I'm offended, whether I'm hurt, whether I'm applauded, whether it feels good, whether I'm _________ because I'm dead and my "rights" died with it.

it just no longer matters -- but the road to the cross is long and it's hard and it's bloody and it's messy and you sweat and you cry and you struggle and you want to stop and quit and you break and you crumble beneath it - before you ever get to the dying.

So pray that I'll follow Him all the way there, that I'll die to myself...and that in the middle of the journey there that I'll honor Him and that I'll rest knowing that my "desire to please Him does in fact please Him."

no matter how messy it may look along the way.

This I Know....

Just a few things that I KNOW that I KNOW after I've spent a week back in the villages among the people...

I can sit beside the suffering and forget all about what color we are or language we speak and all at once this undeniable bond forms in spite of every difference we share...

Suffering has a way of putting everything back into perspective...

Arms are arms no matter whose they are when the pain is so great that you just need someone to hold you while you cry...

Dirty faces covering up hurting hearts have a way of removing your pretense and pride and I welcome that...

Sharing moments in sacred spaces like these does something that you have no words for...

Jesus lives among the brokenhearted, lowly, humble, and hurting and I see Him more clearly everytime I choose to live among them as well...

I want more than anything in this world to serve them well...