How to End the Orphan Crisis on a Sunday Afternoon

There is a whole lot of sickness and need – the kind you talk about and the kind you don’t.

There are only fragments of families – the sharp debris of suffering littering lineages.

There are not enough places to stay, not enough food to eat, and not enough hope to look past today. It leaves legacies of violence and perpetuating poverty.

They call it the “orphan crisis”.

It makes some people squirm and scoff.

It makes others jump on planes to come see, know and reach.

It makes some scrub their hands and carry hand sanitizer.

It makes others bow their heads and open their hearts and resources.

But how do we make it stop?

I saw it for myself yesterday, y’all. This is the real answer…

YOU HAVE A PARTY.

Not just a pretty, one-more-thing-to-do, ain’t-nobody-got-time-for-this holiday event.  A CHRISTMAS PARTY.

It was set to begin at 9:30am on Sunday morning… So, around 11am…

All that sickness, need, starvation, hopelessness, homelessness, familylessness got all dressed up in red and green, walked through the red mud, filled up a sweltering church, and sang. And then partied.

My church decided to have a family Christmas party this year.

The church people come to when they want to encounter “the orphan crisis”.

The church that told me in 2010 that they didn’t know anything about family, but they wanted to learn.

The church whose members only included 3 men 3 years ago, exemplifying the cultural norm and the real issue labeled “the orphan crisis.”

My church ended the orphan crisis yesterday.

The men did what men do – they stood around piles of meat and talked man talk while they cooked.

The women chopped vegetables and chit-chatted.

The grannies sat under the tree and watched the kids play.

THERE WAS A JUMPING CASTLE.

It felt like the greatest family reunion of all time.

There was a feast. More meat than we knew what to do with was served to more than 200 people – many who wouldn’t have the pleasure of enjoying meat or any type of feast this Christmas.

There was dancing and celebration with everyone from the babies to the grannies… and some crazy white girl who just couldn’t resist gyrating with a GoGo. (Don’t judge me.)

Children who’ve never received a gift left with treasures.

In that yard, we were a family.

How can there be an orphan crisis in the middle of a family?

How can there be starvation and poverty at the feast filled with gifts?

A little church in South Africa rallied up what they had… mostly each other… and a really fat pig.

A little group of ladies in Rosebud, Texas pulled together what they had… $360.

That’s all it takes to change the world, folks. Eternally.

For one afternoon, everybody had a place in the yard and in the family.

And, you know what? It was probably the first time some of these young men had the opportunity to stand with other men and learn what men of character talk about.

And the first time there was someone there to watch some of those children play and give them something for Christmas.

It was probably the first time some of those moms stood next to someone else and shared a burden.

It was probably the first time portions were abundant, and everyone knew there would be enough.

All it takes to end the orphan crisis is a family. 

And we’ve got that.

Even if skin and names and languages don’t match. 

We’ve got that.

The first day of the end of the orphan crisis started right in the middle of the mess with a lot of details that didn’t line up to be Messiah material. A pregnant, unwed teenage girl with no place to stay that was fit for humanity… much less the Savior of the world. But that’s where He came. That’s where He started. In the middle of the filth with a few who believed and with enough to make a family.

That unsanitary start promised that it would be messy, but it would be finished. He promised that He would not leave us as orphans.

The mess won’t stop. But there's plenty of room and reason to get the party started!  

My Christmas season took a turn toward disheartening this year. Yours might too. But the Reason of the Season says, “Take heart!” In this world we will have a mess of trouble, but He has overcome the world.

The mess won't stop being messy. But that's where He loves to show up. 

So let's get dirty and throw a party.

We have the promise of the happy ending.

All we need is each other until then.

Let’s dance.

Surely

I woke up Friday morning with a man and his ladder on my mind.

The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob chooses to identify Himself by this man’s existence. But on Friday morning, in Genesis 28, Jacob the swindler had to make a quick exit from life as he knew it after his shady, selfish scamming left him on the bad list of a brother with a lot of weapons.

That wild child on the run found himself all alone, in the middle of nowhere. He had just fled from family and was sleeping with a stone for a pillow. God showed up, and gave the first picture of heaven coming down to earth - right there in that rock-bottom resting place. Not a baby in a manger just yet, but also not a rainstorm of mass destruction because the people were screwing up…

The God of Jacob went straight to the screw up and gave him a sneak peak. Angels ascending and descending, making a place of promise for the convicted refugee.

That man woke up and said it, “Surely the Lord is in this place and I was not aware of it.” (Gen 28:16) He looked at his place of exile, and said, “How awesome is this place... This is the gate of heaven.” Then he took that stone, anointed it and he made it into an altar.

He just had to see what was really there, rather than what was happening around him. He just had to see that surely, the Lord is in this place.

Boom.

I decided right then and there that’s the kind of Friday I was going to have. The kind of Friday where, no matter what I walked into, I would say, “Surely the Lord is in this place.” I would call it down to earth. And I would turn the stones into pillars of promise.

I didn’t even have time to eat breakfast before I got the frantic phone call to get Friday started.

Five days before, Mama Siyabonga had gone out to buy something. She never came back. She left 11-year old Siyabonga behind, along with her ID and possessions. She just didn’t come back.

She’s one of those hard-core, been to hell and back kind of mamas. You wouldn’t believe the stories if I told you, but I can tell you she never recovered. She shut down, and pain, anger and victimization became her most defining features, even consuming her mental functioning. 

They say she’s disappeared before. But that was before…

This year, she joined the Sunday Lunch family. 

She's on the far right, and Siyabonga on far left. LOOK at those smiles.

This year, she joined the church, opened up her heart, and became the hardest working member of the  faithful workers who cook and serve hundreds of children at our after school programs. 

This year, she danced and smiled and laughed. 

The hardened, face of stone had become softer and more beautiful with each week This year, she became family despite all the circumstances life has dealt her.

December came. And she left. Nobody knew why.

At Thursday’s after-school program, pre-pubescent Siyabonga, held my hand and clung to me like a baby boy lost in a supermarket… or like a big boy lost in the world without a mama.

We went looking for her. I drove down roads I didn’t know existed and tried to be the incognito white girl in the bright red Condor while they showed Mama Siyabonga’s ID picture and asked for her. No one had seen her.

We prayed, and decided that if she didn’t show up the next day, on Friday, we would file a missing person report and continue the search. And early on that Friday morning with Jacob’s ladder, I got the phone call. “Kacy, she’s here. But she says she’s not staying. She’s packing her things.”

I picked up a church member, Lucricia, and was there in minutes.  We found her, stone-faced and on a mission. She had sent Siyabonga to hire a car to come pick them and their stuff up. They were getting outta there. I watched her wrap her very few possessions in the picnic blanket I had given her. The one that I gave her to spread out in the name of Family, to invite people into her life with on that last Sunday.

Here's the story about the blankets

Surely, the Lord is in this place.

I rubbed her back and prayed to the God with a ladder that reaches down to the runaways. Lucricia spoke words of Truth, love and belonging to her in their native language, and then translated my words into their language. That stone face wept. It never softened, but it shook and it shed broken tears.

I grabbed the hem of that blanket and told her, “I didn’t give you this blanket to help you run away. This isn’t what family does. Family doesn’t leave angry or hastily.”

 I told her that, if she would stay until the new year and still wanted to leave after that, I would help her move. Siyabonga had returned by this point, and was helplessly and hopefully leaning in. I imagined his silently pleading was similar to mine.

Let her see that surely the Lord is in this place, and let her see Him here. Let her realize the reaching of the God of Mama Siyabonga is more real than the stone, the loneliness, the shame and the exile.

She said she would stay if she could find a new place to sleep.

Mama Siyabonga, Lucricia and I went walking down dirt roads in the early morning hours to find a room for rent. With every step, I breathed out a fact and a prayer: Surely the Lord is in this place.

This mom and her son belong in our family. 

There was no room at the inn. For real.

It was time for the Savior to enter our little piece of the world on a Friday morning, and there was no place to stay. We kept walking. And I kept breathing, Surely the Lord is in this place.

He is. And He was.

We found a place. And we made the necessary plans. In less than 15 minutes, we witnessed reconciliation between Mama Siyabonga and a friend, made a plan to help her access electricity, moved all of their belongings in, and Siyabonga was beaming with excitement and relief. And I was giving them a ride to town to buy groceries.

Heaven came down long enough to make a home on this earth. Again. Just like that crazy night when there was no space and no place, the Father made a way.

He turns mangers into miracles, stones into altars.

He sets the lonely in families and releases prisoners from darkness.

‘Tis the season to remember when the heavens entered humanity. The stone was rolled away because this world and death itself couldn’t keep a lid on Life.

I’m not going to pretend like Friday morning ended happily ever after.

The stone never melted into a smile. I watched Mama Siyabonga recklessly run through an entire month’s worth of money. The place they will stay houses a boy that could be a horrible influence on sweet Siyabonga, and the yard is full of empty beer bottles and assorted other disasters in the works. But surely the Lord is in this place.

We all have a story that hasn’t reached happily ever after yet.

We’re all standing in the middle of something.

Siyabonga

But surely the Lord is in this place.

A bunch of shivering shepherds, wandering wisemen, and a teenage mom were certainly standing in the middle of something.

And surely the Lord was in that place.

On this Sunday morning, I am declaring Jacob’s words over Mama Siyabonga’s situation, and mine and yours.

He was afraid and said, “How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God this is the gate of heaven.” Genesis 28:17

Hope and Hangovers

Today, we went to visit two different families for the same purpose: December.

December in South Africa is a month of no restraints.

It’s like the people, who spend 11 months of the year just trying to stay standing under the back-breaking weight of oppression and bondage, let their knees buckle and their gusto give out on them. They turn toward chaos; they turn up bottles; they turn away from the anchor for their souls.

Christmas is more like a frat party with bright, new clothes than a spiritual celebration. In spite of the reckless lifestyle, there is a cultural expectation for children to receive new clothes for the year at Christmastime. Otherwise, they feel ashamed by their poverty in the midst of the other brightly clad children.

Y’all… the spectrum of skinny jeans is off the charts on Christmas Day.

So we went to visit two families on the first day of December to try to help them see above the cultural customs and make some pre-decisions for their families. Because sometimes hope looks like making a pre-decision.

Both families seem to have the odds stacked against them… There is not enough money for food each month, much less the new clothes they need and the big expense of school uniforms approaching in January.

In their lives, shame is louder than starvation. The way it’s always been and the oppressed oppressors dwelling in neighboring shacks drive people to make decisions to spend on skinny jeans and hair extensions rather than food for their family. And sometimes hope looks like setting your sites on Truth rather than talk: “Your first job is to feed your family. We can trust God to provide the rest.”

I’m not sure anyone has ever told them that.

The first family we sat with had done the homework I’d given them the week before. The head of the household handed me an itemized list of their monthly expenses, as well as their clothing and school uniform needs. She’s in grade 10 and raising a family of 5. They pulled out the newspaper ads they were sitting on in the dirt to show us pictures and prices of each item. We sat there together on newspaper ads under the mango tree and etched out hope. Right there in the skinny margins of the tight budget, we wrote notes in the areas we were trusting God to provide for. And then we left room for Him to do it.

“Your first job is to feed your family.” They committed to buying enough food for the month first. Then we took silly Christmas pictures, hugged and kissed each other, and said real, family goodbyes.

Just a few speed bumps and a couple more dirt roads later, we arrived expectantly at our next house. We’d just been together the day before for church and the mama knew we were coming to help her with December. We sat on the porch we had helped build and waited…

Finally, this mother that I love like a sister stumbled up. Completely wasted. She started shouting and slurring, “KACY! I can’t do it right now. I’m too drunk! I’m too stressed about my kids. I don’t have enough money to buy them clothes for December. I’m too stressed. I can’t do it. I’m too drunk.” Like a broken, boozy record, she wept and spewed her drunken sorrows. 

There would be no budgeting, Christmas pictures or hope-making pre-decisions on that porch that day. I put cookies in child’s desperate, dirty little hands, kissed their innocent faces, and told the mother that I loved her, I never wanted to see her like this again, and to call me when she was sober.

Her situation is no different than the first household’s.

Why did they stand up, and why did she stumble in shame?

Why is that narrow gate of Truth so narrow?

You can’t stumble in. You have to decide on it.

What about all the cookie-filled hands that aren’t big enough to choose their gate yet? That don’t know how to make a pre-decision? That live in the aftermath of her decisions?

Today I got to hold a family – a family who doesn’t have enough of anything – in hope, in joy and in promise. And I had to let go and lay down another one, at least until the hangover clears.

Is that part of the narrow gate?

Guiding and giving it all to the one where God guides you and says, “THIS ONE”?

But what about that one? And those little ones?

As we roll away leaving cookie crumbs instead of hope, He reminds me…

I’m not the Shepherd. I just sing the Shepherd’s song. 

He reminds me that this one, that one, and every one of these has their own angel watching over them and keeping eye contact with Him.

Even in debauched December.

He reminds me that HE is the One that created these sheep and knows each wandering, stumbling step they take away. When I leave the porch, He is the One who lays down his life, to leave the 99 and go for the 1.

He stirs advent’s song in me as the sounds of December threaten to drown out hope. He is coming. But first He’s going to get that one so they can come too. He’s coming, but He wants everyone to be there.

So we keep singing Shepherd songs, and we keep walking onto porches and sitting on newspapers. And when He says, “THIS ONE,” we love without holding back. And we thank Him for going to get that one that He so loves.

Because that holy night we remember and rally around in December was just the pre-party, the Gate, for the happy, happy day ahead. And He wants everybody there.

“See that you do not despise one of these little ones. For I tell you that their angels in heaven always see the face of my Father in heaven. “What do you think? If a man owns a hundred sheep, and one of them wanders away, will he not leave the ninety-nine on the hills and go to look for the one that wandered off? And if he finds it, truly I tell you, he is happier about that one sheep than about the ninety-nine that did not wander off. In the same way your Father in heaven is not willing that any of these little ones should perish.” Matthew 18:10-14

She sees full

She called me to tell me she was hungry.

Like a child who comes home from school and says, “Mom, I’m hungry and we don’t have anything to eat!” But not actually like that at all.

This child hasn’t had a mom – or anyone – to cry to or to be fed by since she was 12. That’s when she found herself living alone in a shack with her 8-year old brother. Now she’s 21 and has a child of her own.

When she calls to say she’s hungry, she’s speaking as a head of a household with an empty stomach and a burden of responsibility.

I brought food, and we sat down on her porch to pine over her baby’s preschool graduation photo and to talk about her empty house. I asked her why she ran out of food this month so I could help her make plans for next month, especially important with the brutal, beastly nature of December around here.

Her culture’s oppressive roots teach them to survive in dark corners behind dark stories brought on by dark skin. You’re not supposed to ask why someone ran out of money, especially when you look like I look and she looks like she looks. But, with counter-cultural candidness, this hungry child-mom held nothing back.  

She told me that two of her cousins had just come to live with her and her 18-year old brother. One is 14 and in 5^th grade, the other is 19 and in 10^th grade. These cousins have no parents, no birth certificates. She’s already run around the social services circuits to seek help, only to be repeatedly rejected. Now she has a house full of teenage boys, and everyone in the house is a student. No income, no parents, and no food.

Suddenly, the small bags of groceries I had carried in seemed wildly insufficient. My heart sunk to the pit of my not-empty stomach. Yet this hungry girl on the porch of this empty house was not despairing or panicking. I assessed the circumstances and could only say, “I don’t know what to say. What is God saying to you?”

Without hesitation, this little girl left alone to survive in a grown-up world said, “They are staying with us, and God is making a big family. We will help each other.”

Her house and her stomach are empty.

And everything in the world seems to be against her.

But she sits on that porch and does not see what she doesn’t have.

She doesn’t see two more mouths to feed, broken systems with no birth certificates, and no way to maintain her household.

She sees family.

She sees hope.

She looks in that empty house, and sees that it’s full.

She no longer defines herself as an orphan.

She says, “God is making a big family. We will help each other.”

I want to be like her on this Thanksgiving Day. I want to look in empty houses, empty hearts, and empty eyes, and to call out family and fullness. I want to see family when I join hands over a meal, when I pass out plates at an after-school program, when I hear their stories, and when I tell my own. I want to be all up in that family helping each other.

She’s right. God is making a big family.

He says to make some space because they’re coming home! More mouths to feed and all of their broken baggage in tow. “It’s a big family. We will help each other.”

“Enlarge the place of your tent, stretch your tent curtains wide, do not hold back…”

Isaiah 54:2

We bring our empty, and He makes us full.

I run out of room in my hands and my heart, and He gives me His.

Father, let me see full, and let me see family.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Whatever you do... DON'T SMILE.

Today's post is in honor of my extra-Sunny sister's birthday and the ultra-emotional previous blog post. Let's be real: I just baked (and ate) an I-miss-you birthday cake, and ain't nobody got time for all these tears. 

Sometimes the world seems to scream, "Whatever you do, DON'T SMILE."

But we have hope that does not disappoint, no matter what this world, human nature or our circumstances say. 

Today I'm celebrating a sister who can make me snort laugh and break my whole face with joy when the world seems stacked against me. Thank you for the smiles, sister.

I dare you to watch this and not smile. 

Just in time

I dreamt Texas dreams all night last night. I woke up thinking I was in my NaNa’s house and immediately started overflowing with prayers of gratitude, warm fuzzies and hometown giddiness. I was just about to get up with a morning dose of sass for my mom.

“WHY have I been in Texas for A WEEK and have not gone two-stepping yet!?!”  

And then I looked up and saw a spider on my ceiling.

And I remembered.

Toto, we’re still in Africa.

These Texan toes haven’t two-stepped in a year and a half! There are new family members to meet, new flavors of Blue Bell to eat, and my NaNa… She’s made of perfect, and I’d swim to America to see her. For real.

 

LOOK. AT. HER. I can't even stand it.

But there has been no twirling with my mom or Dancing with the Stars marathons with my NaNa for a long, long time because something is broken.

My volunteer visa expired at the beginning of this year, and I was totally prepared for it y’all. I had the system down, the paperwork complete, and turned everything in for a renewal just in time.

Just in time…

Just in time for a presidential election that stopped paper-pushing and time itself.

Just in time to remember I don’t have anything down; I’m not prepared; I have no control.

Just in time to realize this doesn’t actually have anything to do with time.

Here’s the deal:

I re-applied for volunteer visa in February.

Just in time for a colossal paper jam. Right after I submitted my application, the laws changed so that if I leave the country before I have the new visa in my passport, I will not be allowed to reapply for re-entry for 1 – 5 years.

I was prepared for the 4 weeks to 4 months of visa limbo ahead of me.

This ain’t my first rodeo, people. You gotta just go with the flow.

Under. Control. I’d be home for mine and NaNa’s Labor Day weekend birthdays.

August came and went. No visa. No NaNa. No Texas. (But Texas DID come to me!)

In September, I finally got a number to call to check on my case. Since then, I’ve called weekly with no new news.  I’ve asked a bazillion questions, offered to make the 4-hour drive to the capital city offices, and done everything I know how to do – and then some.

Still pending.

Welcome to visa purgatory.

I actually begged a guy to reject my visa so I could at least reapply to get the process moving again.

He said it’s impossible.

And not to call him again.

And no one with answers would talk to the public or agree to see me.

This is not under control at all.

We joke, (well it’s kind of a joke), about “Africa time”.

Africa has its own rhythm. Usually, when we talk about “Africa time”, we are talking about how, when an event starts at 1pm, that’s usually when people start thinking about getting ready for it. Or, when offices open at 7:30am, that just means they’d like to try and get the day started earlyish so they can go home early. Time is a suggestion because Africa doesn’t run by seconds and minutes as much as by sunrises and survival skills.

There’s a culture clog. Without the efficiencies of running water, personal vehicles, or even common language in the third world communities that I spend my afternoons in, things take longer. I think about these things as I write this from a café just down the road from those communities, where I just ordered an americano, a filling breakfast and am enjoying free WiFi.

(edit: I finished writing this blog on GoGo’s couch with GoGo-biscuits while a midget dances on a too-loud TV, Zodwa boils water to bathe, and two tiny grannies stand outside hanging freshly washed clothes and tilling land for a garden.)

There’s a gap between these worlds.

Not by time or by space.

There’s a gap between the system and the people.

Not by rhyme or reason.

There’s a gap in realities. And it hurts.

It’s heavy. It doesn’t make sense.

I was fine. I was actually at a newfound depth of trust and thankfulness with God in all of this unknown. I have been committing to telling Him, “YES” daily and thanking Him for trusting me with what I don’t understand. His plans, His timing, His ways. That’s what I want to be all about. That’s what I should be writing this blog about.

Even when my driver’s license and bank cards expired. Even when there are so many things in Texas I need to attend to. I was fine. I was thankful. And I was confidently saying, “Yes, Lord. Your ways and not mine.” But, let’s just be real, when my black bra and my iPod broke on the same day, there were some tears and… some words. But those tears finally washed up an even more sincere and resolute,  “Yes, Lord.”

“It hurts, and I’m sad. But, yes, Lord.”

But today, after Texas dreams and yet another, “I’m sorry, there’s nothing we can do,” from home affairs, I feel like there’s a boulder on my chest. Not because of passports or Texas or two-steps or black bras or iPods.

Because it’s broken.

Because there’s a gap.

Because I fell through the cracks 9 months ago, and I feel like a piece of gum, chewed up, spit out and stuck under somebody’s shoe.

Because I know a little super hero who doesn’t even have  record of existence, with no piece of paper to get jammed in a system.

Because there are thousands of cracks and millions of people that have never lived a day any different than the way I feel this day – who don’t know there is anything but the bottom of that shoe.

My visa’s pending.

Pending in some sort of visa vortex that feels like a black hole.

I can’t leave this country right now.

That’s real life.

My residency has nothing to do with my visa or my passport.

My home and my citizenship are in heaven, and I am just here as an ambassador for my Father’s family, wherever I am on this earth.

That’s the Way, the Truth and the Life.

He knows that visa vortex, those places between the cracks, and the underside of those heavy shoes.

He has every unwritten name etched in the palm of His hand.

He’s coming soon and very soon. And he will not delay.

The Father who sets the lonely in families, and Who definitely created the two-step and NaNa, does not run on Africa time. Praise the Lord.

So today, on a Texas-sized teardrop day, as I write you from this fancy café and with red mud stains on my shoes, I’m sending out an all-call for prayer.

He says His yoke is easy, and His burden is light.

Today, I just can’t understand how when He sees and knows all these people, all these cracks. How can He be so light when He knows all those unknown names and chewed up hearts? How could He leave Home and become the cracks, get scraped off of shoes, and become unknown and unnamed so our names would never be forsaken or lost?

He did. He does. And He is just in time.

Time and space bow down to Him. His love and power are so much deeper and wider than a visa vortex or a broken system.

So will you pray? Pray for me to remember that His burden is light. Pray me out of this visa vortex. Pray for Batman’s birth certificate. Pray for all the people in all the cracks. Pray for just in time to come now.

Now is the time for His Kingdom to come.

This is the time for justice, restoration and abundant life.

Rolling out the picnic blanket

Two and a half years ago, the standard, sweaty South African Sunday afternoon church experience was transformed into a weekend experience of bulk grocery shopping, hours of cooking, a car overload, spewing fountains of bodily fluids at any and every given moment, a thousand cake crumbs and even more memories – all in the name of Family and Sunday Lunch.

And Sunday became the best day ever. Every week.

Way back then, it was time for an upgrade.

Time for me to stop talking about family and to start living like it.

The “orphan crisis” looks different in South Africa now than it did 15 years ago. Because those little orphans have grown into big ones – who reproduce.

 

Becoming a grown up doesn’t make you stop being an orphan.

Becoming a family does.

But how can you convert from a reproducing orphan to a life-giving family if you’ve never been a part of one? If your story isn’t hemmed in with a white-picket fence or covered in rainbow sprinkles? How can we be courage and light for each other if no one ever turned on the lights to scare away our monsters under the bed?

Someone who knows teaches you, invites you, and sacrifices for you.

That’s what Jesus did. So that’s what we do.

The “orphan crisis” runs through all of us, no matter who we are or where we are, if we haven’t found our forever Home with our forever Father yet.

Once we know, we can’t stop knowing. We can’t ever go back to being orphans. We have to do something.

For me, for the past 2 ½ years, that has looked like picnic blankets, a lot of food and Kool-Aid, hauling people and dish water, and hours upon hours of living life together. We’ve danced, cried, laughed, fought, hugged, dreamed, created artwork, blown out birthday candles, popped a hundred beach balls, had cooking lessons and spa days, celebrated new lives and mourned lost lives, and we’ve learned how to be family. (Here’s a post with pics from Sunday Lunch’s one year anniversary.)

Y’all… it’s worked. Family works.

I won’t pretend to host a yard full of perfect parents and perfectly behaved children. (That would quite possibly be the very furthest thing from the truth!) I won’t claim to have set all the right boundaries or have said all the right things at all the right times. But I can tell you that moms love their children with real mom love. I can testify that both the mothers and their children have experienced security, belonging and satisfaction just in knowing that they’ve got a place on that picnic blanket, a job to do, and there’s a bowl and spoon waiting for them every week. A sisterhood has formed and is filling up the former gaps in their families.

And now the Father says it’s time for another upgrade.

We all start our lives drinking milk, being contained and watched over in every moment. 

Gradually, because they love them, parents and caregivers help their children transition to solid food, freedom and the ability to make their own decisions. We can’t grow if we don’t make the changes.

As soon as you get in the rhythm of a stage of life, it seems like it’s time to change to another one. What a sneaky plan to keep us in step with the Spirit.

It’s time for change here too. I wrestled, and I cried. And I heard God.

He said I can’t keep spoon feeding them from their very own spoons. I can’t keep bringing them into the safety of my home at the Ten Thousand Homes base with their own space on a freshly-washed picnic blanket, away from the chaos of their own communities. (Confession: when I say picnic blanket, I actually mean a ripped and stained teal bed sheet.)

He says now they know family, and it’s time for them to go and be family.

They speak the language.

They live next door.

They share a culture, life experiences, and daily life. 

They can end the orphan crisis faster than I can.

The edges of their picnic blankets can stretch so much farther than mine.

Now they know, and, no matter what decisions they make, they can’t ever not know how to belong in a family.

Two weeks ago, we had our last Sunday Lunch.

We had everybody’s favorite foods, remembered our happy moments, shared what we had learned from each other, and prayed together. With a wretchedly ugly cry face, I imparted spiritual Truth to these moms who have been transformed from being my children to my sisters. I gave them framed photos to remember, and, even more importantly, I gave them each their own picnic blanket.

 

Sunday Lunch mamas wrapped in their new picnic blankets.

I told them that nothing was ending, but something was beginning.

In God’s family, there’s always room for more… He doesn’t run out of picnic blanket places, bowls and spoons, or pots of beans. His resources don’t get stretched thin when there are more people added to the family, they increase.

It was time to increase the space on the picnic blankets so the family could reach wider. 

It was time to let go of our Sunday afternoons together, so He can do something greater with our lives.

The truth is, I feel a woozy combination of sadness, relief, eagerness, loneliness, security, anxiety, excitement, confidence, lostness (I don’t care what auto-correct says - it’s a real emotion), etc, etc. What do I do with my Sundays and my life while I seek to understand the next level of living like and extending His Family? Why does it have to feel so shaky and scary?

AND…finally the ginormous house God asked me to build is HAPPENING. And I can’t help but wonder, “Why did You tell me to build a big house and then, the very week construction started, tell me to stop bringing my family home?” Cue: feeling insecure and ridiculous and completely avoiding the construction site I’ve been praying for for 2 years.

 

Building my house.

The real Truth is, He stretched out the edges of His picnic blanket through Mama Charity, Busie, Mama Siyabonga, Esther, and Ruth two weeks ago. And He’s stretching them through that construction site too. He doesn’t expect me to fill it because He will. I don’t need to understand the dimensions and lingo (phew!) or even why I’m building such a big house because He’s the One who gives, spreads out, and brings all His children in to His picnic blanket and then sends them out with their own.

 

Visiting Esther's house.

So… now you know.

Roll out your blanket.

Sidenote: I've been trying for the last 9 1/2 hours... literally... to upload the Sunday Lunch video I made to show the mamas for our last Sunday Lunch. Finally it worked. Please feel free to watch it 3,000 times... that's what I did.