It's Ridiculous.

I heard God say something loud and proud and terrifying about 2 ½ years ago.

“If you’re going to stay here and live how I made you to live, you’re going to need a bigger car and a bigger house.”

So, me in all my super-missionary-holiness, humbly and respectfully replied to my Father, “THAT IS RIDICULOUS.”

And that was the end of the story.

I like to think it’s kinda like that time He told an old guy in a desert that had never seen rain to build a boat to save the world.

It felt like that same level of ridiculous and scary and impossible and RIDICULOUS.

But, as it turns out, that old guy did build the boat.

I, on the other hand, sputtered about ridiculousness and cracked a joke with the one person I dared tell that I would probably end up with a giant, obnoxious, red Condor (used as taxis around here).

Annnnd a few months later, I was clown-car piling Africans for a giggly, gas-guzzling joy ride in my new 4-wheel drive reminder that God always wins… now affectionately known as Clifford the Big Red Condor.

Tweenz Car Wash's #1 (and only) customer

Now, I can’t imagine living and loving without God’s amazing provision of the most outlandish, obnoxious thing I could fathom on that ridiculous day. It’s upgraded His capacity to work through me… And the amount of people we can reach. This week, we put 20-people in that 7-seater!

Don't judge... My sister taught him this.

A year later, He reminded me about that house.

It’s true that my tiny cottage walls felt like they were caving in on me, bruising me with burnout, and crawling with things, including things with long tails that eat my cooking utensils. That’s real… My life is disgusting.

But, still, a HOUSE!?!

Yes, I realize that I live at and work with a ministry called Ten Thousand Homes… that happens to build houses in local communities. But, to be honest, building a house is the biggest fear I’ve ever faced. He didn’t just tell me to build another bite-size cottage.

HE said, “Build a house with room. And name it Glory House.”

There’s a purpose and a plan for the place I live and the way I live. There’s a name.

So, what does a super-holy-missionary do in a time such as this?

She shuts down. And doesn’t tell anyone.

And feels ridiculous.

Terrified, embarrassed, ludicrous… I could go on.

I kept it a secret, only letting God’s holy, anointed promises leak out in slow, accidental outbursts of snotty overwhelmedness and cottage burnout.

I was afraid of building a house with “room”, and not knowing what the room is for. I was afraid of looking like a fool for building on promises that I couldn’t guarantee would come true. I was afraid of building a Spiderman room, in faith, and it never being lived in. I was afraid of doing this on my own, having to make decisions beyond my understanding, and the very most afraid of having a bigger space to feel lonely in at the end of every day of pouring myself out in the name of Family.

I was afraid of the scary number and all the scary 0’s that would be required to build it. So I didn’t tell. But that slow leak to His faithful ones backfired… THEY RAISED ALL THE MONEY BEFORE I COULD EVER ASK FOR IT.

Just over a year ago, I sat, pooly-eyed, over a bowl of pasta and shared with a part of my spiritual family that I felt disobedient because God had told me to build a house, but I just couldn’t start this… do this… share this… live this… ask for this…

My church had raised half of the money WITHOUT EVEN TELLING ME. And, there I sat with my carbs and cheese, halfway there and still too afraid to talk. The human-hug sitting next to me just batted her perfect-love eyes and said, “Well, that is so funny because I came here today to tell you I was giving you the EXACT amount you just told me you need to complete your house.”

So funny. She actually said that.

SO RIDICULOUS.

GOD IS RIDICULOUS.

He asks you to build a boat in a desert, and He wraps the new, blue sky with His multicolor covenant . He asks you to take a 40-year wander in the wilderness, and your sandals stay new and your food falls faithfully. He asks you to lose your life, and you find it.

The One outside of time and space is beaming and scheming, while this class-act in yoga pants is kicking and screaming. It’s kind of our thing…

First dance party in my new yard!

Nevertheless, it’s happening: Glory House is COMING!

I don’t understand why there have been so many forward and so many backward steps. I don’t understand the setbacks, the setup, or WHAT A PERLIN IS.

But, with every step forward and every step backward, I am understanding a little more the limitless measures the One outside of time and space will take to show us how great, how high, how deep, how wide His love is. Big enough to build a House on and live there forever. 

 In my faithlessness, He has been faithful. In my weakness, His strength has been made perfect by an army, a family, of Truth-speakers, head-lifters, and burden-sharers collaborating with His cascading miracles and inconceivable provision.

April 2014 - The day we celebrated promises and family with Sunday Lunch in the new yard.

He’s beckoned me to a Promised Land that is still full of battles to wage – within myself and in the land before me. But, after all this time and all that I’ve seen, how can I glimpse at His glory and count the giants rather than the grapes?

May 2013 - The day Lifa and I set our feet in the yard, prayed, and thanked God for the land.

That would be ridiculous. 

Liiiiiitle Lifa saying, "Thank you Jesus for Glory House."

May 2013

Some days I'd rather eat raisins

Today, my team and I huddled in a tiny room with a team of women Ten Thousand Homes has been walking with since 2009. We’ve eaten countless cakes together, shared thousands of hugs, and we’ve danced… Oh, how we’ve danced!

I cherish them and their calloused hands that cook for and serve more than 300 every week. I’ve proudly imparted my spiritual gifts of the body roll and the shimmy to them. We giggle in the kitchen while they use their crazy African superpowers to stir the giant pot of pap, and while I contribute my well-refined superpower of taste testing. We’re real family.

Today, in that room with those women, we celebrated life and our relationship together. Then we talked about changes, growing pains, and how we are all affected when God calls us into greater things.

We talked about how obedience brings blessing and abundance. And we talked about the painful pruning process that often comes first.

None of us were unmoved.

Tears threatened all of our eyes as we remembered our past and looked toward our future. It was a beautiful and a raw process. We had heard God for tomorrow, but it didn’t make today easier.

Today I wasn’t just relying on my friend Sibongile’s translation.

I was relying on the One who writes new things by new mercies every morning.

I was speaking to a group of women who give their lives to help other people live just one more day.

They walk up mountains to deliver medicine, and they pass out plates to fill starving stomachs. They literally thank God every morning that they woke up that day because so many people do not. And they walk to those funerals too.

I was speaking to wilderness survivors about pruning for the Promised Land. And my spirit was sputtering and groaning and praying that they could grasp the promise of tomorrow’s feast beyond the desperation for today’s plate.

I wondered if their minds would go to the places my mind has been going lately.

Would they would stomp and cry out, with their desert feet pointed at the Promise Land and with their mouths full of manna, for what it was like before?

Would they remember the steady routines we settled into before we heard God’s voice, and would they crave that?

The Israelites did. During a 40-year hike through the desert, these set-free people of promise began crying out for slavery. Even if they were bound, beaten and broken when they lived in Egypt, at least there was enough food there and they knew what each day would bring.

The South Africans do. They’ve only been set free for 20 years, and that’s not enough time to rewrite a culture’s identity. I live behind security bars and don’t drive alone at night because people who’ve been oppressed are oppressing. They wave a destructive banner of false freedom and imprison themselves in counterfeit justice.

I do. Everything I’ve been capable of dreaming of and believing for has been shaped by what I’ve seen, what I’ve tasted, what I’ve known before. My perceptions and realities have been shaped with the mindset of a former slave following a cloud.

Those things that felt like fruit and abundance before - the safety, the steady, the known, the fathomable miracles, the happily ever afters – have to be pruned away. I have to stop craving Egypt’s fruit because Freedom’s fruit is amazing beyond belief.

True story: Some days I think I’d rather eat raisins.

I get a glimpse of the best that’s yet to come, and then I look down at the terrain and time between me and those perfectly plump grapes on the vine. And I suddenly think the pruned off, dried up fruits will satisfy me just fine.

So then I write a blog, and ask you for help.

A new thing is coming. We’re huddling in rooms having hard conversations; we’re traveling to learn from other ministries; we’re casting new vision and we’re starting to get a taste for freedom food.

I am honored to be a part of a new thing starting at Ten Thousand Homes, and I’m prone to want to run backward for a mouth full of raisins when I run out of understanding (i.e.:  sanity and/or any of the fruits of the Spirit) of how to take the next step toward promise.

We weren’t meant to live as foot-stomping, raisin-craving former slaves.

We’re made to be new creations with the minds of Christ.

We have minds that can rewire us to crave those fat, juicy, (and preferably seedless) grapes of promise when we allow them to. We just have to stay connected to that Vine, that Living Water, so we don’t get stuck on what’s being pruned off.

I don’t have the words to share about the new things yet, but I am asking you to pray with me and for me. Pray for words, people and practical steps to come together around this new thing, and pray for my heart and mind to stay focused on the fruits of His promises and purposes. Pray for us all as we transition into new things, and pray for freedom’s banner to be the one we wave over our families and our futures.

Thank you for praying. I’m believing that, together, we will taste and see that the Lord is good. 

Happy Mother's Day!

Thank you, Mom, for giving me a love for celebration and surprise, a crazy video voice, an any-weather passion for ice cream cones, the need to capture every moment of life on camera, and the growing understanding that, even when you cannot be with your child, you can still love them without limits. 

I love you! Happy Mother's Day!

one more plate

There are things to get excited about in South Africa.

There are families extending themselves to orphans.

There are orphans learning they are part of a bigger Family.

There are former hopeless and homeless mothers speaking dreams into existence.

There is a Texas girl learning how to cram her cottage, her Condor and the condition of her heart with True Love and the happiness of her Creator.

He says that if you do good with the little He’s entrusted you with, He’ll give you more.

He let the sin of the entire world pierce His hands so ours would be worthy to hold that “more”. He doesn’t say all that much about what that extra weight, that extra “entrusting” is going to feel like in our little human hands.

Hands that hold, grasp, reach, grab, clench, drop, and rise.

Yesterday was a day that reminded me about the burden and the make-me-raging-madness of being born into a place like this. Into the circumstances that they were born into. Yesterday my hands clenched and reached.

A police officer keeps calling me regarding the assault of my friend.

A baby waits in a hospital four hours from home, alone and unvisited, because of the staff’s mistakes.

A mother gets too overwhelmed by her body, her circumstances and her babies to keep any of them healthy or well.

A young woman gets cornered and mocked for having HIV.

And, then, I visited Busi.

I thought it’d be a fresh breath after a hard day of South Africa’s broken-hearted realities. Busi always smiles. I was ready to hug and to show off her hopefulness to a visiting team at Ten Thousand Homes.

We built Busi’s house in 2011, and she’s an all-the-time part of my life.

As we sat on that veranda, I asked her if she would mind sharing part of her story so the team could hear how far she’s come.

Busi broke. Tears flowed.

 Surrounded by listening ears and helping hands that represented six nations, Busi’s hands shook as she wiped her lament onto her crisp, clean school shirt. From behind that uniform, Busi exposed her soul.

“I am an orphan. I have no family except my brother and my child. Not even an auntie. There is no one. There’s no one else. Every night, when I go to sleep, I pray that God would give me enough food for tomorrow. I go to bed hungry. And I just pray for enough food for tomorrow.”

Our hands ended up on Busi that day praying, begging, and interceding.

Open palms pressed on her back and prayed in a host of languages.

Open hands felt empty in that moment.

Just an hour before, all of our hands, including Busi’s, had been an assembly line passing plates of warm, delicious food to 300 children.

But, right then and there, Busi wept as she wondered where the next one was coming. And I wondered how we can do “enough”.

How can we keep mouths full?

How can we keep enough plates in our hands?

How can He say He’ll give us “more”?

And do we keep our hands full or empty?

Pressed into prayer or passing plates?

I don’t know.

But I know the Hands that behold.

His hands reached for the unclean, washed the feet of the broken and betraying, grasped onto a cross, and opened wide to receive the burden.

Those same hands broke bread when there wasn’t enough, blessed it, and put it into the hands of His broken and betraying buddies. He entrusted his disciples, who grabbed and clenched as much as I do. And He made “more” in their hands.

He made leftovers.

I went to bed last night crying for just one more plate. One more plate for Busi.

But, today, my Daily Bread reminds me that, in His hands, there are leftovers.

I don’t always know what to do with my hands. So, tonight, lets reach for His.

For Busi, and for all the others. For leftovers.

April Showers Bring May Flowers

So it’s not technically springtime in South Africa.

But I am believing, because it's necessary, in a spiritual springtime right here and right now.

April’s showers will bring May’s flowers.

Because dreams are rising up.

Plans, promises, hopes and futures.

Secrets and seeds woven right into the Creator’s workmanship are sprouting and blooming out of the hearts of the created.

A woman, whose home and dreams burnt down less than 14 months ago, proudly cares for her family and her neighbors from a secure, beautiful and fully-stocked home today. She tells me, “I thought I had lost all my dreams, but Jesus came. And he sent people. This year my life-long dream of having my own salon will come true. I’m so happy. I’m so free.”

A woman whose life story was tainted with rejection, violence, abuse and lies smiles from the first home that is really hers. She smiles while she sweeps, and she smiles while she bathes all five children. She even smiles when she travels the long journey back and forth to the government hospital to take her son in for extensive surgeries and medical care.

For the first time ever, she dares to utter a dream beyond survival. A dream to start a chicken business and take care of her family on her own. She’s ready to stop being run over by life, and start living it.

A woman who thought she gave up everything she loved, her counseling career, her platform to strengthen families, her own family and her dreams for a family, hears, “Mammmmma Kacyyyyyy,” wherever she goes. She sits in a church and teaches a group of South Africans how to change families through the art and the stories of the children.

And, on some weeks, she holds hands, plays with and tucks in a little boy in their little home.

A dream’s been sewn into her that’s bigger than she knows how to handle – a dream of living like His Family with the people He’s placed around her. A dream of teaching orphans how to be part of a family, and a dream to build a house big enough to do it well.

It’s budding. It’s blooming.

Lizzy's Hair and Beauty Salon
business plan

There’s a business plan for the salon.

There’s a chicken house.

And there’s a full-sized refrigerator.

And it’s hard.

These women have been losing sleep, and the last one on this list seems to be losing her sanity, on behalf of the growing pains, birthing pains, blooming pains of these dreams.

There is so much to overcome.

It feels like it’s taking so long.

And I can’t find anything in this tiny house!!!!! BAH!

The journey to the Promiseland was full of what looked like setbacks and disappointments. And even when the promise-bearers set their feet on that fertile ground, when they got to the place they’d been looking to, there were still battles to be fought.

But you know what they did?

They worshipped. They exalted the Original Dreamer when they didn’t even understand the dream anymore.

They turned to the Creator who cast us with the ability to dream, and the requirement of constantly pursuing and needing the Beholder. (Joshua 4)

They built an altar right in the middle of the river He split open to make a path to promise. They built another one that same night when they spent their first night on the grassy carpet of their new Glory House.

And then they got to work with the plans and purposes of God. Hard work. 

Battles and believing with obstinate obedience.

And so will we.

Every Wednesday morning, these women gather and share Scripture, promises, plans and disappointments. We make altars of celebration, and we dance in His victories. We encourage each other to keep taking the steps toward the things God has promised and planted in us.

And we will keep going.

Until that day when we arrive in eternity and our forever Glory House, we have a cloud of glory and a pillar of promise within… strong enough to consume my bad attitude, my off-the-charts crankiness, my feelings of deferment, dejection and disappointment… even how worn and weary I feel.

So, today, I offer up my thanks to my God who never leaves us without a dream and who designed us to crave Him more every day.

And I remember how faithful He is in our families.

And I cram 6 women in my current “kitchen” for baking lessons and family time.

And I celebrate a refrigerator that can accommodate enough food to feed 25+ people every week at Sunday Lunch and eagerly await the day a backyard and dining room table come with it.

And… I pray that God helps me remember that, on this journey, playing with a refrigerator box and licking the bowl are actually the best parts.