Waiting for Sunday

You’d think I’d be used to this heart flip-flop by now – three years of Lifa coming and going. And more than four years immersed in a foreign culture, extreme circumstances, and people coming and going… coming and going.

Some days I can celebrate the beautiful Kingdom-esqueness of it all. (Just let that be a real word today.)

Some days I can laugh at the crazy moments, awkward culture rubs, and the sheer ridiculousness of so many parts of daily life.

But on this Saturday I could not.

I burned through pages in a journal with words that you probably shouldn’t use when you pray. I unearthed the depths of my own depravity, and was horrified by how deep it really goes. I shook my spiritual fist and my gel pen at the Maker of the heavens and earth and asked Him, “HOW!?!”

HOW could you know all of this….

All of me… and all of what’s happening around me…

I shook, and I scolded Sovereignty.

How could YOU expect this, KNOW this… and come? Come and DIE for it?

I just let Saturday’s restless, disappointed storm spew out of my spiky depths.

Because nothing felt right. Nothing lined up. Nothing was ok on this Saturday morning.

Because there are cousins’ babies with new bunnies and new Easter dresses in Texas.

Tomorrow, there will be sugar-covered grins smeared on the faces of so many children I love from afar – the children my children were supposed to grow up with. My American church will come together in beautiful worship and rich teaching in a language and culture I understand.

Today, I woke up in an empty cottage in a country where it’s not safe to go to the communities on holiday weekends. My African church doesn’t even meet on Easter Sunday. And… during the 4 ½ minutes my coffee brewed in the French press, a spider had time to weave a web around it… such is life in the cottage.

I didn’t expect to spend my Saturday Sabbath exasperated and embittered.

My mind wandered to this same Saturday Sabbath over 2,000 years ago.

On a restless, disappointed Saturday a long time ago, they cried too. Nothing was turning out the way it was supposed to.

Hope had just died on a cross, and the whole earth shook with the greatest letdown in human history.

The people who gave up everything to intertwine their lives with his were disappointed. 

Peter screwed up everything in the last moments… What was his Saturday morning like? How bitter were his tears?

But Saturday eventually ended.

While Friday shook the world and the people with disappointment that the Savior had really died, Sunday proved that it was our expectations that had to die so the King of Kings and Lord of Lords could surpass them, liberate us, and bring us Home.

Saturday is ending soon on this side of the world. 

And I can’t wait for Sunday.

I’m praying for a Sunday like that Sunday.

I need Easter deep down inside of me.

Last week, we threw the BEST PARTY EVER. This is no exaggeration.

It was an Easter party for the local volunteers who work hard every week to feed hundreds of children during our After-School Program. The whole idea of the party was to impart carefree, childlike joy to them, so they could give it to our children.  None of them had ever experienced any kind of children’s party or celebration, so we did it all.

In the midst of a photo booth, ribbon dancers, giant beach ball volleyball, sugar-overload, Easter egg hunt, and a triple-layer cake, real Easter happened. The women who came from life stories and lifestyles of disappointment, restlessness, and continual death, experienced freedom and joy.

They never knew the plans we had for that day, but they came ready to soak up every second of it because they knew it was for their good. They knew it was because we loved them.

I’m asking for that kind of Easter. 

Tomorrow, I don’t want to wake up with Saturday's angry questions and broken heart. 

Tomorrow, I won’t be the one planning the party, hiding the surprises, setting the table, or orchestrating the love lavishing.

Tomorrow is the day where His plans take the lead, and we take our place at the party. 

Tomorrow is Easter.

Father, let us awaken on Easter Sunday and immediately feel the beauty of the robe of righteousness and the garments of praise you clothe us in. 

Give us the morning smile of royalty - betrothed and belonging to the King of Kings.

Fill us with  laughter, celebration and joy in the things that are big and the things that are silly.

Renew us with joy in this world.

Let us dance in freedom and in victory.

 Sunday's dance.

Renew our youth so that we run after you with abandonment.

So we laugh at your surprises.

Let us seek you until we find you.

And celebrate every treasure and surprise along the way. 

Let us taste and see that you are good. That there's more than what we expected when we look inside. 

Their faces when they saw THIS...

It's better than what we expected. Let us be awed, overwhelmed and giddy by what You have prepared for us, Banquet-Preparer, Family-Gatherer, Life-Redeemer.

Yes, that's right. Our sister creation: A multi-colored coconut covered TRIPLE cake.
That's three different kinds of cake stacked in secret on top of each other
and covered with sugary frosting and coconut. PARTY in your mouth.

Thank you for that Friday I'll never understand, the Saturday where my expectations died, and the Sunday that You rose again and changed everything. Thank you for new things. Beautiful things. Amen.

Easter Week Came Early

This past week… you know, the week that came directly after family-fun, dream-come-true, sister-son-bliss week… was intense.

I’m sitting in the new morning’s sun after a sleepless night, reflecting on a week full of life and death. Easter week is approaching, yet it feels like I lived it last week.

People I love lost loved ones, and a little girl I love passed away.

A mother shakes and breaks, and is unable to care for her babies because she went off her HIV medication.

Orphans try to raise children, and their lack of parenting becomes painfully obvious as a cycle continues.

Predators come boldly in the daylight to the homes and lives of the disabled to steal, kill and destroy.

Violence and alcoholism wound the beloved and endanger innocent lives.

Jealousy and rivalry break spirits and come to defeat bright futures and favor.

And that’s just with the people I encounter on a regular weekly basis.

In those moments, too overwhelming to shed a tear, I wonder how deep can death go? When do cycles stop swirling and burrowing further? How far does broken reach, and when will it ever stop?

But, you know what?

In that same week, sprinkled perfectly throughout what seemed like a death cycle, were Life-sprouts. New things budding, blooming and bursting.

A mother who had given up on life called us family, smiled a real smile, and became a part of something that can’t be broken on this earth.

A young lady whose heart beats for God’s hope in her community had a breakthrough, and is ready to start making a difference with wisdom and integrity.

A dancing GoGo smothered us with biscuits, kisses and family Truth.

Two women bared their most-beautiful hearts to us, and committed to pursuing Him and His people with the most amazing love.

A new Ladies Time was born with a promise to come together every week for tea, cookies, and open hearts for discipleship and prayer.

A queen was called out of her despairing circumstances and crowned with beauty and Truth.

A new business, Tweenz Car Wash, was officially started with an investment contract, a business plan, a new vacuum cleaner, and the shiniest and most committed hearts ever.

And we ended the week by throwing the party of the year to bless the hands that toil, serve and give every week to serve feasts to the least of these. Our hearts were restored as they danced, rejoiced and experienced carefree, childlike joy for the first time ever. (You better believe this one’s going to deserve its own picture blog later. It was that good.)

In the same homes, churches, yards and communities where dark and heavy swirls crept in like a thief in the night this week, Everlasting Love was breaking through with Glory-Light that will end dark nights forever.

He was pierced, punctured, wounded, killed and buried because of those death swirls and sorrow cycles.

That dark day shook the earth.

But it didn’t last.

While that week looked like betraying disciples, grieving mothers and plundering murders, a new thing was taking root in the unseen, forever places. The bottom was getting kicked out of death, and a stone was getting rolled out of an empty tomb.

That week, the first ever week of both death and Life, happened in a sequence of events. Days that are now named and call for extra church services to help us remember.

This week, it happened all together.

Life and death.

Things that are passing away, and things that are sprouting up for eternity.

After a week like that, I have to sit in this new morning sun and choose to see with Easter eyes.

Eyes that swell with tears from a Savior’s suffering and from all of the broken parts. And eyes that see first, through all that swelling, what is not there… No one is in that tomb and death has not won.

New things are taking root.

Dancing is replacing mourning. Life overcomes death’s swirls every day and in every moment – Easter week is every week.

Our Easter view all week

“Weeping may remain for a night, but rejoicing comes in the morning.” 

Psalm 30:5b

Peanut Butter Fingers and Sister Tears

Last week was a real life, heaven on earth, dream come true week.

Soul-saturating, joy-bubbling, heart-healing perfection.

My family - usually separated by not-knowing, time zones, hemispheres, culture gaps and a million other details - was together.

Smiles for days.

A little boy and a big sister feeling overwhelmed by the love of a newlywed that would leave her beautiful life to come and join ours – filled with frogs, dirty water and stinky-toots.

Silly songs and moments that would never happen on Skype leave a forever mark and sacred memory, long after those windshield fingerprints wash off. I’M SO THANKFUL!

Saturday, that sweet boy had to leave our happy dreamworld to go back to his father’s house and back to school. We had an extra special breakfast pizza, remembered through pictures, and sent him off with our best version of goodbye smiles.

And we wept. 

I had my sister to cry with. She felt that family loss with me like no one else in the world can.

And I felt the love of my sister and the loss of that perfect little boy’s presence in our home equally.

SO MANY TEARS. We couldn’t stop.

Swollen faces that actually physically hurt.

By the time our eyes had stopped pouring and that post-cry exhaustion was setting in, my phone rang. It was a young mother from Dwaleni, one of my sweet sisters that comes to Sunday Lunch. And she was frantic.

She screamed with fear over the sound of another mother crying hysterically in the background that there were dangerous things happening in their community. Violence and vandalism were happening in a home that I’ve prayed and played at a million times, in a hope we built. With a family that I consider my very own.

The background sounds were horrible.

I had swollen face, empty eyes and fragile heart… and I sat on my bed listening to the same conditions happening in another community in a much more dangerous setting. And I just didn’t know if I could handle it.

I instructed the women on first aid, helped them make a plan for the night, gave them the information they needed to call the police, spoke Truth until the frantic screaming stopped, and started praying with the unsuspecting couch-full of people who had just come over to my house to grate some cheese for Sunday Lunch and enjoy the chocolate-covered pretzels my sister packed.

How could it go from extreme bliss to… this?

How could it go from my cheeks hurting from smiling to my face hurting from heartsick blubbering in a day?

What was I supposed to do?

It was supposed to be a happy Sunday Lunch.

My sister is here.

AND it was a triple birthday party.

I had made ginormous amounts of their favorite pizza, bought a whole watermelon, and made a double layer change-your-life cake with strawberry whip cream frosting.

What were we supposed to do?

I had no idea.

The next morning, I had enough food to feed an army waiting on standby, bloodshot eyes, and a sister with a hurting stomach and a Benadryl hangover.

So…

We grabbed the peanut butter, and we loaded up to go see what this new day would hold.

We found a mother broken and hurting, wanting only to crawl into a dark hole and disappear. And five kids + neighbors who still just wanted attention, needed diapers changed, and needed a family.

My sister plopped down on that porch with peanut butter in hand.

I slipped inside to pray, and to speak Truth over that mama until she could hear it.

That peanut butter and those prayers did something.

That mom needed a sister to cry with and feel her family loss too.

Those children needed an aunty to dote over them and to create happy moments with them too.

When I asked my hurting friend what we could do to help her, although she’d been at the police station until 3:40am and her head was pounding, she recognized there was something good about what was happening right now – about peanut butter fingers and sister tears – and she said, “You can take me to church.”

While she cleaned herself up and bathed her children one by one, with strength and energy that had to come from the One we’d been appealing to, my little sister and I sat outside in a peanut butter dream world.

There was no way to undo the tears. There was nothing to make the bad stuff better.

But family was together. And we had peanut butter.

It wasn’t the moments I tried to create for Lifa and my sister.

It wasn’t the carefully planned and prepared Sunday meal.

It wasn’t anything I knew how to do.

It’s that supernatural love that sticks sweeter and stronger than peanut butter when sister tears are shared and when you come even when you don’t know what to do.

We never figured out what to do. But we realized we are family.

And family blows out birthday cakes and proclaims birthday blessings even when smiles are sleepy and dreams feel far.

And family exchanges birthday speeches and dancing for birthday spa time when faces are swollen. 

Possibly my most favorite Sunday Lunch moment of all times. Swollen eyes exchanged for serene, cucumber-covered smiles. It was bliss for me to cover theses sisters with a rejuvenating, mini-fridge kind of face mask, to pamper them and give those eyes that’ve seen too much some much-needed rest.

And then my sister did the same for me. I laid right there with them and soaked up that serenity.

We are family wherever we are. 

We have peanut butter. We have prayers. 

And we have sisters.

A way-better morning routine

This morning started with the same routine as every morning.

A yawn and an 8-step walk from my “bedroom” to the “kitchen” to start the kettle and start the day. A cup of strong coffee helps the sun come up as the Maker of that sunrise whispers morning secrets to me better than the pink and orange splash lighting up the kitchen window.

This morning, though, I didn’t hear or experience anything I’d call profound in my designated “Jesus time”.

During that quiet, morning-still time that I was having trouble paying attention to, I glanced up from those pages of the Word of God and saw it in real life, in living color, in this tiny little cottage.

My little sister flew around the world to do family in real-time with me.

My sister's heeeeere!

To love me face-to-face and to kiss the faces I get to love everyday.

Kissing Kevin

TO MEET LIFA.

Everything happy in the world... right here.

She came and broke through that separation… that world from this one.

The biological family and the spiritual family.

A mother of a child of promise and the girl who moved away to squeeze and make orphans smile.

Family field trip to pet lions and feed giraffes

Lifa is enthralled with Aunt Sunny.

And feels unbelievably wrapped up in love by this family who would come around the world, even leaving Lumpy (her dog) behind to play, dance, sing and love.

Anxious airport waiting

And feeling like they've always known each other the next morning

This morning I’m enthralled with Love that says its better when we’re together.

After four years, my smile beams what’s true: It’s worth the wait.

The Sun-Riser, Promise-Maker, Family-Redeemer does not bow to time and space and certainly does not do things according to my plans.

BUT THIS IS AWESOME!

Aunt Sunny teaching unruly behavior in the name of family fun

They're the BEST.

So I had to get in on it too.

This morning I celebrate morning giggles, renewed joy, laughter like I haven’t laughed in four years – or maybe ever. I give thanks for freedom that flows when His Family comes together. And I soak in these moments that are as real and as beautiful as pages of Scripture or sunrise secrets.