Adventure Love and Dentist Appointments

I want to be out adventuring. Getting my hands, knees and heart dirty.

I want to be standing in the middle of every mess with a megaphone of hope and a backpack full of first aid supplies. Bring me the ooziest open wounds, the loneliest loudest wails, the bruised and  battered women and children. I want to be knee deep in the disgusting, to catch tears, to hold bodies, to know stories, and to call on Light where it’s dark.

I was made for that. I’m compelled to go to those places. Always have been.

And then there wasMay.

The month God said to stop instead of go.

The month I stopped, and I prayed repeatedly:

“Do whatever it takes for Your glory to be known.”

Whatever it takes. Sounds like the perfect invitation for diving deeper into wild- and whole-hearted adventure love, right?

Well.

What if “whatever it takes” means taking you away from all the ways you knew how to love, so that it really does become the story of His glory and nothing else? What if “whatever it takes” is completely un-adventure-seeming and kind of crazy-making?

I’ve sat with Lifa at his homework desk for hours, bought chapter books, made a lot of healthy meals, and had a lot of big boy talks this month long break from ministry. Honestly, some of these May days have felt like I was locked up in a monotonous, passionless prison – a prison decked out with the sweetest jar full of roses and a crock pot, but a prison nonetheless.

Today I prayed May’s “do whatever it takes” prayer again, and I committed my mind, body, soul and strength to anything and everything God would have me do.

Wanna know what He impressed on my spirit this morning after praying that prayer? As clear as day… “Take Lifa to the dentist.”

FOR. REAL.

And the very next person I spoke with “happened” to be a dentist. She said she would see Lifa without requiring any type of documentation (which he doesn’t have).

Next Tuesday. 4pm. We’re going to the dentist, y’all.

An adventure-lover turned dental appointment scheduler.

WHAT IS HAPPENING!?!

Whatever it takes.

The One who came and did whatever it took told me this morning to go to the dentist. 

He’s also said to make friends in town, support the local tutoring center, go to the library, and know the business owners. To live where He sent me – not for fantastical missionary adventures in a foreign land, but for living Love every single day, right here at home. 

He left His Father’s house to come and live – to crack open his hands as a carpenter, to dine with tree-climbing tax collectors, and to make breakfast on the beach for his buddies. 

Love lived with the people around Him, wherever He was.

There were megaphone moments and miraculous storm-stilling, dead-raising adventure stories. And then, He took naps, hung out with his friends, and built the Kingdom.

I have this sneaking suspicion that there might be just as much space to live love in libraries, dentist offices and tutoring centers as there is in government hospitals and dilapidated shacks. I will always love dirty, messy, crisis-responding adventure-love. I will always make sure there is ample time for me feet to get stained by red dirt and my heart to be broken for the things that breaks His.

But maybe my dirty feet can walk into the places those dirty faces might never see and leave some footprints on their behalf.  Maybe we can build this thing together – the hungry mouths and the restaurant owners, the dirty unkempt and the professional hygienists, the invisible ones and the voices of change.

The Kingdom is not built on crisis management, although it is valuable and necessary. It doesn’t come like a tornado – at least not yet. The Kingdom of God comes like a harvest, like a well-watered garden, like love lived out every single day, wherever you are and whatever it takes.