My dad and I made daily gas station trips when I was young. Yep. Pretty much daily.
He always got his jam: a sausage biscuit with a coke and I got my jam: frosted honey bun with a Dr. Pepper.
Yes. The picture of health, I’m aware.
One such day as we waited in line, the ding of the bell on the door loudly rang and every eye was on a giant of a man, seemingly 10 feet tall, with long messy hair, not the cute-messy-bun kinda messy, like the maybe-I-just-killed-a-guy type of messy. He was covered in tattoos and wearing a ripped up rough-and-tumble looking beige shirt, unbuttoned with no shirt under it.
But the most important part, the key element to his appearance that day, the one piece that tied his entire look together perfectly was…. BLOOD. He had blood all over him.
(Here’s a amateur composite sketch directly from dad’s memory, almost 30 years later…I die.)
And here he came, just bee-boppin into our local, friendly convenience store. Just your regular old Grab-and-Go…which we were all hoping and praying he wouldn’t actually do.
He wandered, calmly-frantic, to the back of the store. You know the look. Deer in the headlights.
My dad squatted down to me and decided to take this moment, this particularly-tense moment, and make it a teachable one.
“Hey sweetie. You see that man over there. He’s a scary, ugly man and I don’t want you to ever mess with someone like him. Ok?”
I gazed at the man. Got it.
Scary. Check. Ugly. Check.
This bounty-hunter-type-individual came and got in line right in front of us. A total-line-cutter. He boldly stepped up to the counter with no regard for who was next in line. Us. But I mean if you just killed someone I guess line-cutting is easy-breezy-child’s-play stuff.
Sweet dad did his best to keep his eyes down. There would be no friendly chatting with the blood-soaked-friend that was heavy-mouth-breathing, now standing in our rightful place in line.
Pin-drop-quiet.
Did no one see the blood? Should we do something? Call the police? Did he just straight cut us in line?
Were we all just going to play it cool until the man left?
Not me.
Into the pin-drop-silence came my pint-size voice:
“My daddy said you UGEE.”
Plain and simple. Matter of fact. Gospel Truth.
From my mouth straight to his ear.
My dad’s whispers had obviously hit home.
I had heard abundantly clearly the lesson my dad had taken the time to teach, all except the don’t mess with guys like him part.
I took what he said to be truth and was bold enough to proclaim it.
We quickly bought our 3-days-worth-the-reccomended-calories and hit the road.
As we left we heard the sirens and watched as the man dove under his car. He had totally just killed a guy.
What if we took our Creator-Papa that seriously?
What would it look like if the words He has whispered to us, about us, became a confident-gospel-truth-force in our hearts?
And what if the force of those truths made us secure enough to look fear, suffering, oppression, addiction, name-your-poison, in the face and tell it the truth?
Tell it how ugee it really is.
Boldness like that isn’t just found in the naturally brave.
Boldness like that is birthed out of trust. Trust in the mouth that spoke the words. Trust in the kindness that stooped to whisper them.
Trust built on time-tested faithfulness. Trust based in identity, the knowing we are His.
Jesus, being led by His Papa, found himself in the desert. It was there that the bell on the door rang loudly and in walked the devil himself. He had the I-just-killed-a-guy-look when he set his sights on Jesus.
Three times he told Jesus lies.
And all three times Jesus SHUT. HIM. DOWN.
How?
Not with his own words or cultural pithy-sayings found on quickly-scrolled-over-memes.
His only response?
The words of His Papa.
It is written. It is written. It is written.
The words of His Father he knew to be true. Trusted to be enough. Trust that’s built on time-tested faithfulness.
Defeat came for the enemy in the desert that day simply because Jesus knew what His Father had whispered, and the force of that knowledge, the deep down knowing, made Him secure enough to tell the devil the truth.
Friend. Do you trust your Father that much?
Do you know what He has said? About you? About your purpose? About what He thinks of you?
What are His promises to you?
Maybe you’re staring at a season that is threatening to kill you, the ding of the bell on the door has rung loudly as it flung open to hurt, sadness, loss? A season so intimidating that you’re paralyzed with pin-drop-quiet fear.
What does your Papa have to say about it? Where is He in it? What does He want for you from it?
Ask him. And listen as he bends down kindly to teach you.
Don’t get it twisted friends, you may see me on a stage with the Queen-B herself, Beth Moore, but this is not at all about me or anything I’ve done.
Jesus has, yet again, done what only HE can do: he has pursued, loved and esteemed the broken in the grandest of ways.
I am not the big deal here, and neither is Beth.
Jesus took the main stage in the life of an exotic dancer, and He esteemed HER on a platform in front of 4,000 people. How scandalous right? There’s nobody like Him people.
Beth and I simply got a front row seat to watch with wide-eyed wonder as God pursued the heart of His daughter.
I am overwhelmed to have even had a pinky’s worth of involvement in it.
Watch Beth and I tell the story on Life Today! Click the image above.
PS: YES. Beth Moore is all that you dream she would be. She is fabulous in every way. And YES, I was totally fan-girling and every time she opened her mouth to speak I wanted to take notes. She is the real deal my friends. Warm, gracious and nurturing, but with a fire in her bones for the Kingdom…not for religion or approval… but for things to be on earth as they are in heaven. Love her BIG…we’re besties whether she would say so or not…I declare we are.
Ok peeps. So with a new year comes NEW-YEAR-NEW-ME!! It is declared from every social media platform, it comes out of all of our mouths, it is the theme of the 1st few months of every new year.
For me, it has usually been more of a question.
New Year…. New Me?
To which my heart would sigh a “probably not”.
Why? Because I had set goals over and over and over and every. single. dad-gum. time. I failed at those goals a hot-minute later.
Man…is there anything worse than that feeling? Failure. Especially internal failure…when we set our hearts on what we want and we fall painfully short, and the reasons we fall short feel so dang predictable and habitual.
The post I-wanna-lose-20-lbs-in-a-week failure binge-eating sesh is always reeeeal good for my morale.
Year after year, season after season, it happened every single time. Goals set and immediately not met. It was a pattern, a very obvious one. And it wasn’t just at the New Year. If I was being really honest with myself, this trickled down into my every day life.
I asked myself and the Lord… “BUT WHY????”
The want to was there. I had the desire to set the goals and I would have said I really wanted those goals to happen.
I would lament and say “same” to my boy Paul who said:
“What I don’t understand about myself is that I decide one way, but then I act another, doing things I absolutely despise…. I can will it, but I can’t do it. I decide to do good, but I don’t really do it; I decide not to do bad, but then I do it anyway. My decisions, such as they are, don’t result in actions. Something has gone wrong deep within me and gets the better of me every time.” Romans 7:15-20
Same Paul. S.A.M.E.
Something has gone wrong deep down when you decide to not eat carbs and then you IMMEDIATELY get up from that place and slam 4 slices of pizza as if you had not just made up your mind about that exact thing.
If this were an infomercial it would say in a yuppy-goofy voice with an actress holding her head in stress as she looks at a treadmill:
“Are you tired of setting resolutions and not doing them one single time?”
And you would say to the TV… “Why Yes, Yes I am actually.”
Well friend, let me let you in on what feels like the best little secret to my heart, what changed it all for me.
It was one tiny word, one single collection of letters, that held with it the power to radically change my life:
BECOMING
At this word, the cycle ended.
Last year I sat down to think through what goals I wanted to set for 2017, again with the heavy-heart-sigh that I felt so unbelievably unable to achieve them even as I wrote them.
I stopped writing and bowed my head.
“Lord, what do you want for me this year? What do you want me to do?”
And in an instant the freshest breath of God breathed over my heart and the words came as clear as day to me:
WHO ARE YOU BECOMING?
Not “What are you doing?” or “What can you accomplish?”
WHO WILL YOU BECOME in these next 365 days?
And the deeper question, WHO WILL YOU ALLOW ME TO MAKE YOU?
See friends, my problem was that I was setting a bunch of goals without knowing the WHY behind them? My goals lacked serious vision, clarity and purpose.
The WHY behind the goals I was setting just didn’t cut it for motivation.
Let me show you:
Start Exercising and Eat right so that I can lose weight.
Get Organized so that my excess stuff stops stressing me out.
At first glance this may read as normal and healthy and understandable.
But what if our goals looked like this:
I want to become HEALTHY and STRONG
Why? Because I know that if I am healthy I will have energy to do the things I am being called to. I will be around for my kids and will be available for them. If I am healthy I can have a clear mind, not a sluggish one. Health would mean that my body is taken care of. If I am strong then I will feel capable of handling what life throws at me. If I am strong I will be able to bring that strength into every area of my life.
Why? Because as a child of God, I am a living and breathing billboard of God’s glory and His nature. If I am not healthy and I am not strong, what does that say about the God I am an advertisement for.
I want to become FREE FROM MY STUFF
If I am free from my stuff, then stuff won’t control me. If I am free from my stuff I will consume less. If I figure out why I have so much stuff, why I feel the need to pile up possessions, I will have significantly less to organize. My stuff won’t be an issue because I will know the issue that ended in all my stuff.
Why? Because in becoming free from my possessions I will become freed up to do what I am called to do, freedom from my stuff will open up margin for me to invite more meaningful things in.
Let me tell you a quick story:
(feel free to skip down if you don’t want to be a part of story time)
One day I came home for lunch and parked in front of our town house. Right in front of the door. The shortest route into our house was to park on the front curb and hop-skip-and-jump up the short sidewalk and into our front door.
Now, a little about me: I am all about the fastest route to anything or anywhere. I am in constant, quick movement at all times.
So, this parking spot was my fave. If I parked in the garage I would have to drive all the way around the entire house, wait on the garage door to take-it’s-time and open and then walk through the courtyard where I would have to deal with the stupid dog.
I don’t have time for all that.
So anyways. I’m inside eating and my tall-drink-of-fine comes to me and says,
“Hey. Don’t park right there next time.”
I gave him a quick head nod and an internal eye roll. He’s not the boss of me is truly what I probably thought. Because: ME=mature.
The next day, same thing.
“Hey Babe. Don’t park there ok?”
And would you believe I said “Ok” and then did it again THE VERY NEXT DAY.
So on the third day the oh-so-better-half of mine came to me and said,
“Hey, come here for a sec, I want to show you something.”
He opened the front door and pointed down the street, past my car, to the mailman’s car that was parked on the same curb about a block up from my car.
“Do you see the mailman’s truck?”
“Yes”
“Ok, do you see the mailman?”
I did. He was ABSOLUTELY PRECIOUS. I swear he was the little old man from UP….just shuffling down our sidewalk with our mail.
“Awww….he’s cute Babe.”
“Do you see what he’s doing? Why do you think he’s out of his truck walking towards our house?”
“I dunno.”
“Because every day you park in front of the mailbox. So he can never get to ours. He has to pull down the sidewalk, get out and walk back a block to give us our mail.”
OH.MY.WORD. Bless his little UP-heart. I had unwillingly created extra work for this precious man. He had to make that shuffle EVERY DAY because of me.
I’ll tell you this.
I NEVER PARKED IN THE FRONT AGAIN.
What changed?
I now knew WHY it mattered that I didn’t park there.
The WHY changed everything.
What’s behind our goals? What are the WHYS behind them as we set them? Why do they matter?
Are they driven by the desire to BECOME who we’re meant by our Creator to be or are they simply a list of tasks or a compilation of “should-dos”? A collection of DOINGS that lack any real focus?
Do you know what I have learned? That God delights when we sit and dream and ask Him who He wants us to BE. He is the AUTHOR of our lives, He knows the end from the beginning.
He is delighted in the BECOMING process of our hearts.
And as we BECOME, we naturally DO. Out of our BECOMING, we actually achieve things. Deep, rich things, things that actually matter, things that end with Him getting more glory.
With a shift in heart on the matter, I was able to set some BECOMING goals last year that TRULY CHANGED MY LIFE. Like in the everyday nitty-gritty mundanity of life, I saw changes happen, I met goals, I achieved things that I had always wanted to do.
But more importantly, I BECAME someone in 2017, the someone that God had in mind all along. I got on board with the plan that He had set before time. I followed His vision for me instead of creating my own version that would no doubt sell my potential short.
I took steps closer to His design for me with each passing day.
I found the better thing.
I’m gonna leave you with one more story:
“As they continued their travel, Jesus entered a village. A woman by the name of Martha welcomed him and made him feel quite at home. She had a sister, Mary, who sat before the Master, hanging on every word he said.
But Martha was pulled away by all she had to do in the kitchen. Later, she stepped in, interrupting them. “Master, don’t you care that my sister has abandoned the kitchen to me? Tell her to lend me a hand.”
The Master said, “Martha, dear Martha, you’re fussing far too much and getting
yourself worked up over nothing. One thing only is essential, and Mary has chosen it—
it’s the main course, and won’t be taken from her.” Luke 10:38-42
Friends, let’s not get caught on the wrong side of this equation.
Let’s not try to decide what matters more to Jesus and get that answer wrong.
Jesus clearly knows where he stands on the BECOMING vs DOING topic:
“One thing ONLY is essential…and Mary has chosen it…”
Mary sat at His feet, hanging on every word He said.
She knew that in His words lied the potential to BECOME someone new.
Let’s sit at His feet and ask Him who He wants us to BECOME. Let’s hang on every one of His words to us.
And then, get out a pen and a fresh notebook, and LET’S SET SOME GOALS standing on the fresh ground of what He tells you.
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Want to know my BECOMING goals for 2018?
Well, I want you to know them so that you know I’m practicing what I preach:
FILLED & AWARE // I want to be filled with the Holy Spirit every day that ends in Y. I want to be more aware of the small things that God is doing right in front of me. I want to be more aware of who I am: my personality, my needs, my quirks…all of it. More aware in general of the tiny ways that God moves and speaks.
HEALTHY & STRONG // I want to be healthy on all fronts. I want to be responsible with my body, take care of my body and figure out what makes me feel full of health and beauty. I want to be strong. Not skinnier, not a certain size. I want to feel the strength of muscles that have been worked hard for.
FREE FROM MY STUFF// I want less of all of the things. But more than the number of things I own, I want to tackle consumerism in my heart. Why is it there? I want to feel the freedom of wide open margin, free from clutter and excess, and open to all that Jesus has for me.
A WARRIOR MAMA// I don’t just want to be a parent. I want to war for the hearts of my girlies. I want to war in prayer for them, I want to war against distraction that robs us of quality time and give them the gift of my undivided attention. I want to war for their salvation and for their destinies. I want to parent them through the sharp lens of intentionality, making the most of my days with them.
A CURATOR OF HOME//I want open-door living, a house full of people from all walks of life, all backgrounds of faith. I want our home to be a refuge for people. I want a home that spurs on creativity in my family, a no-limits environment that is fun, relaxed and spontaneous. I want visitors and my own family to leave better than they came in.
A GIVER OF WORDS// I desire to see the Lord take the gift He’s given me and use it to change the world. I want to give away my words as if they are a gift. I want to lavish people with encouragement and I want people to feel known and cherished by my words.
Thanks for reading all the way to the bottom. You, friend (since there’s probably only one of you who love me enough to read all the way through my rambling…Hey Mom), are why I write the words that I write. I’m cheering you on in all that you are BECOMING!
Let’s all take a big ole deep breath. Breathe in, now out…shake it like a polaroid picture, shake it all off…it’s a fresh start!!!
2017 was a doozy for the Hammett tribe. In a lot of ways it was one of the hardest and weirdest years of our existence as a family. But in more ways it was beautiful and refining and deep and real and raw and we saw different sides of Jesus, hints of His nature we never knew before, as we bottomed out in desperation and found that He was there waiting.
I LOVE NEW! I love a fresh slate, a blank page….the crispness of possibility is in the air and we are SO READY for what 2018 has in store.
If we learned one thing this year it was this:
You can plan and strategize and dream up your life, but Jesus ALWAYS desires to exchange your plans for what He has instead. If you are chasing Him He won’t let you settle for what you can dream up or plan…because He knows that what He has is so much better.
And it might be painful and confusing and ugly as all get out, when He takes from you your plans and gives you His, but what He trades you for will ALWAYS be the better thing, the more-whole thing, the thing that will make you more like Him.
Amen and Amen…said with a slight limp in my step…but still Amen.
So… to start this year off right with you, my lovely blog tribe, I want to INTRODUCE MYSELF.
Weird to say I know…because I’ve been blogging for years, and some of you may feel that you know me already, because let’s be honest I don’t struggle in the sharing department…maybe over-sharing, but definitely not under-sharing. I have all the words for all the things and I have let it all hang out on this-here blog.
But one of my greatest worries is that folks would read my words and assume things about me that just flat out aren’t true.
Things like:
She has it all together
She’s a super-christian
She doesn’t struggle the way I do
She’s a 100% perfect mom at all times that has all the
beautiful words for all the instagrammable moments
She doesn’t have fears, she’s worked through them all
She doesn’t have doubts, she’s never tossed about by her thoughts
Just to name a few.
Oh how I wish I could sit with each of you, a cup of coffee in hand, and we could exchange war stories and brag about our battle scars together. We could throw our heads back and laugh about all of the quirky, weird things that make us who we are. We could get to know the realness of each other. Nothing would be better…don’t you agree?
I want you to know that we’re all in this together. That my words wrapped around stories are coming from a place of mutual slugging-it-out with life and faith and parenting and all of my own flaws and short comings- with the whole beautiful mess of it.
So, let’s start this year off with a good old fashion meet-and-greet. Let’s pretend we are coffee-in-hand, across from each other, friend to friend.
Buckle up people… it’s about to get real vulnerable up in here.
Here are 10 things about me that I want you to know…
FIRST THINGS FIRST:
I feel that I need to start with the very best thing about me. I need you to brace yourself because this is BIG.
I AM IN THE GUINNESS BOOK OF WORLD RECORDS.
I am a WORLD RECORD HOLDER.
Friends this is the GOSPEL truth. And why?? What world record did I set? (drumrollllll)
THE WORLD’S LARGEST BUNNY HOP
Yes. The dance. Yes…the largest, both the largest group of people who have ever done the bunny hop at once and the longest amount of time that that many people in the world have ever bunny hopped without stopping or breaking line.
(TRUE STORY: I just went to find the link to the page of the world record I helped set for proof to you to ONLY JUST NOW FIND OUT THAT MY RECORD HAS BEEN BROKEN. I feel that I deserved at least a heads up on that Mr. Guinness. I just lost one of my most treasured answers when playing 2 truths and a lie…excuse me while I mourn. And no, I will not change the above wording to “WAS” a record holder…because I STILL AM one ok.)
The rest follow in random order…but just know that this first one is by far the most important.
TWO: I am the wife of Brent Steven Hammett. (I use his middle name to prove to him that I do know how to spell it because to be honest 11 years into marriage and I still sort of don’t know every time I write it) Being Brent’s wife is a big deal y’all. He is by far one of the coolest, most talented, most mysterious men on the planet. I call him my tall-drink-of-fine. He stands at 6 foot 3, has a full sleeve of tattoos and plays the drums. Excuse me while I swoon. His day job is working for a hunger relief organization that feeds hungry children all over the world. (www.numanainc.com) Again – Swoon. He also does free lance design and video work (www.brenthammett.com) and every once in a while tours with bands to run their shows. I mean COME ON right?? Anyways…he’s mine and you can’t have him. We’ve been married 11 years. I am never not aware that being married to me is A. LOT…but my man is in it to win it.
(If the saints could pray for him please)
THREE: I am the Mama to two incredible little unicorns named Liv Nima and Esther Fei. Liv is 6 years old and has been my daughter since she was 8 months old. She is from the Democratic Republic of Congo and is as beautiful as you would imagine. (for your research visit my Instagram page and behold her beauty @casshamm) Liv is tall and muscular, like muscles that make me jealous. She has the coolest gap in her teeth that I pray stays the rest of her life. She is smart. I mean really brilliant. She started Kindergarten this year and is currently reading on a 4th grade level. She is compassionate and kind, always ready to serve or be a part of something. She is a voracious reader and a disciplined writer, recording all sorts of things in the bajillion journals that are all her treasures. She is EXACTLY like Brent. To the letter. She is structured and calculated and logical…all the things that I am not.
Esther is 3 years old and has been mine since June, only a short 8 months. She came home with an un-repaired bi-lateral cleft lip and palate, fluent in mandarin and a zest for life that can not be tamed. She is tiny and squishy and we love her so stinkin’ much. She loves getting her nails painted, is passionate about band-aids and wears her sister’s panties over her diaper every day. She is extremely opinionated about her fashion and she spends most of her days in a pink tutu and rain boots. We call her Wreck it Ralph, or Ralph for short, QueenE and Yue Yue (her chinese name). She walks into a room and leaves a wake of destruction in her path. She is spontaneous, zany, chaotic and spunky, all the things that I am. She is EXACTLY like me. It is scary. This truth also makes for some interesting head-butting/sparring sessions.
***Disclaimer: The amount of times that I fail at items 3 and 4 is astonishing. I mostly feel like I get it wrong…but Jesus, in all His grace allows me to get back up, make things right and continue to move forward with this little gem of a group of folks I get to call my family. Raise your hand if you’ve ever asked your hubby “Am I screwing up my kids”….Cause I did this morning…oh.. just me… alright then, moving on.)
FOUR: I have a super power…or some might call it a party trick. I can lay down flat on my stomach and NO ONE has the ability to flip me over or pick me up. I can make my body weigh as much as an elephant and there has yet to be one single person able to move me. I know what you’re thinking… I could move her. No. You couldn’t. I have always believed that ONE DAY this power will be extremely useful. Like maybe it may save my life. I dunno.
FIVE: 3 months into my marriage to my tall-drink-of-fine I fell into a deep, dark season of depression and anxiety. It was crippling and terrifying and I thought it was going to take my life. I walked the hard road of debilitating anxiety for 6 months before I met Jesus face to face and He, in all of His kindness, pulled me out and put me squarely on my feet…and those feet were planted on a path that I could have never expected. More to share on that later…can’t wait to tell ya about it.
SIX: I am the Founder of The Hub: urban ministries (www.thehubministry.com). The weight of this honor is NEVER far from my heart and mind. I don’t deserve to even have a pinky in it, but God saw fit to choose a very unqualified girl’s shoulders to place the most beautiful mantle of leadership on. It has been the greatest adventure, the biggest risk and the best/hardest thing I’ve ever done. (Read a little more about it here)
SEVEN: I am bad at math. Scared of numbers really. If you tell me your phone number I will nod and smile and will make you believe I have a beautiful-mind-style ability to compute but I am telling you now that as you say those numbers to me my brain begins the process of jumping-ship and shutting down. In college I got a D in remedial math…that’s the math that’s lower than introductory math. It was the first time I had to face the facts that there was something I was just downright bad at…and for my personality-a fixer, this was hard. But there was nothing I could do about it. I remember calling my dad from college hyperventilating and him saying, “Hey Cass…just pass. Get a D. That’s all you need to do. It’s not that big of a deal, don’t let it become more than it needs to be. So, you’re bad at math? Who cares??.” This would be a nugget of wisdom that I would tuck away and pull back out countless times in the years to come… so you’re bad at something…so what?? Thank you dad.
EIGHT: I am writing a book. And it might kill me. It’s a dream of mine but it’s a discipline and a lane that I find incredibly intimidating. I have had this book in my bones burning to get out for an entire 5 years. So, this year, it will be finished. You know what convinced me to do it? My precious little crazies, Liv and Esther. I pictured them picking it up and reading it one day and that made it a priority. It will be a record for them, a marker of what God did in their Mama and Papa’s life. It’s called Tiny Giant and I can’t get started about it because if I do I just.won’t.stop ranting about how excited I am to share it with you. I am thrilled to see what God is up to with my words.
NINE: I am divergent. I have taken a bajillion personality/enneagram/temperament tests and they HAVE ALL BEEN WRONG…or at least that has been my assessment of them. I can take the same test 3 times and get a different result every single time. I once was used in a blind experiment where I was unaware of the reason we were doing it or the goal of the study or the rules of engagement, and I MESSED UP THE STUDY. They were on a track, had proven one thing and then I took the test and did the opposite thing to what they had proven. So… I choose to call myself DIVERGENT because crazy just doesn’t have the same ring to it.
TEN: I have a constant compulsion to reinvent myself that I have to keep in check and submitted to Jesus. I don’t know where it comes from yet, I am currently on a journey to figure that out, but if I allowed myself I would do something different, try something new, change my hair, get rid of my clothes and buy a new wardrobe ON A WEEKLY BASIS. I buy new notebooks to mark new seasons and end up buying a new one before I even use the one I just bought. If I do something or look one way for too long I get the itch for change. I love change…maybe a little too much. I am leaning into this this year to dig around and find the root of it. Stay tuned.
See, friend. You and I are not that different. We are all feeling our way through this beautiful, funny, exciting, painful and jacked-up world.
We are all in desperate need of Jesus, every single one of us.
And if you don’t know that sentence above to be true, let’s chat! I’d love to help you see your need and find it immediately met in Him.
We are wives, mamas, sisters, friends, champions, creatives, movers and shakers. But we are also messy and hurting, depressed and maybe anxious, prideful, pre-occupied, missing the mark, failing and falling short.
So as we start a new year, let’s not look at the broken in us and sweep it under the rug in honor of a fresh start. Let’s wrestle through it.
Let’s celebrate the things that make us quirky.
Let’s laugh at the things that are just downright dumb about us…the silly things that matter to us but don’t make a bit of difference to anyone else. Those little things matter to our Father. He put them there.
And let’s look to the left and right, take each other’s hands and charge forward toward all that God is breathing into existence in our lives. Ignoring our failures and the whispers of the enemy…and running with abandon, TOGETHER, towards the next stretch of ground.
She left home in a fit of rage, rebelling against her parents…no looking back she charged into a world that stood with open arms, ready to take her rebellion and turn it into fuel for a much deeper, darker fire.
He hooked her quickly. He knew just what to say, what to offer. He knew just how to look at her to make her feel the edges of her “no one gets me” start to soften. He made every promise she had always longed to hear.
She was hooked.
Days turned into weeks and weeks turned into months under the heavy eye of a man who had no intention to love her, only to abuse and groom and sell and trade her. Night after night after night, no rest for her weary feet, weary mind or weary heart.
She was his alright. His property, owned. She was hooked, more than she wanted to be.
One night the emergency hotline of our ministry rang…
“Hello…” said an extremely shaky voice on the other end of the line.
“My name is Susan. My daughter is in danger, she’s in trouble and I don’t know what to do,” I could hear the I-gave-birth-to-her desperation in her voice.
She told me the story, or what she knew of the last 5 months of her daughter’s life…which wasn’t much. But what she knew was enough. Enough to know that a rescue was in order.
I talked her through her panic. Asked her for details and told her to call back if she heard from her.
The phone rang the next night.
“It’s Susan. We’re going to get her. Someone told us where they thought she was. He won’t let her leave so we’re going to take her from him. We will call you when it’s done.”
They didn’t know the room number, only the hotel name.
They didn’t know what he looked like, only that he had their treasure and they intended to get her back.
They sat in the parking lot and waited.
Waited for any sign of her. Checked the hotel’s laundromat and found her clothing in the wash. They knew she was there.
They waited. And finally, there she was. He walked her to the room and the door closed.
They waited.
The door opened and he left. They didn’t know how long he’d be gone…they didn’t care.
She sat down on the bed, on a pile of money that she had just piled as proof she had done the job. She was tired. She was scared. She didn’t know how much of both she really was.
There was a knock on the door.
She opened it, and shocked, stood face to face with her father. He had come for her.
There she stood, make-up thick and clothing sparse, looking like the work she had just done.
There she stood, eyes locked with her papa…he had come for her and he wasn’t taking no for an answer.
He stood in the doorway and when her captor returned spoke not one word to him.
She ran.
Her papa chased her.
He picked her up and physically put her in the car…kicking and screaming, she had been rescued.
The last person she expected to be on the other side of that knock….the rescue she least expected.
She was free and she had done nothing to deserve it.
Her daddy’s love was the only qualifier. He saw past her mistakes, past the pain, past the scantily-clad shell of a woman who stood in front of him… he chose to knock, chose to enter into that room, chose to pick her up, chose to bring her home.
He was her coming-for-you-hero.
Jesus. The coming-for-us-king came screaming like a babe into existence that night….a flesh and blood knock on the door of humanity’s heart.
He was the last person expected to be on the other side of the knock that would save the entire world…a baby in a dirty animal- feeder, surrounded by a rag-tag group of people, the least deserving- according to society.
Those lowly who had just been given access to the King of the Universe, showed the world that this flesh-and-blood God was for us all, from the Kings to the dirt-covered-sheep-keepers, everyone was invited into this scandalous grand- entrance.
All of God’s nature, crammed into the tiny, skin-wrapped vessel.
The least expected type of rescue.
God, Papa, in all of His all-knowing-ness chose to chase us down, chose to look past all of our brokenness and all the times we would choose everything but Him and chose to come for us anyways.
He was not what the world expected.
Not who we thought would ever lock eyes with us, as we stand shocked in our shame, covered in the evidence of our brokenness.
He’s the King who chooses the lowly, the prostitute, the sick, the leper and the orphan. The King who chooses you, and me. The King who chooses to give full access to Divine to us, undeserving as we are.
He is the Coming-for-you-Hero-King and His showing up has changed it all.
I found myself lying flat on my back in a deep, dark pit. The kind of heart-pit you can’t dig your way out of alone.
Paralyzed by depression and anxiety.
And when I say paralyzed… I mean absolutely frozen in the brokenness of mental illness.
I was empty. Desperate. Confused. Angry. Scared. And convinced this is where I would stay.
But that wasn’t the woven-together plan of my Father for my life. He had every intention for me to come out of that pit and He sent His Son to do the dirty work.
The night that I met Jesus, the real Jesus, the down in the dirt with you Lord…was about 3 months into my struggle with a life-altering panic disorder. I was young, newly married, (what a wedding gift…hey babe…remember how you said in SICKNESS and health…let’s give that sickness line a spin) and…wait for it…
I was a CHRISTIAN. Gasp. Clutch your pearls. I know. Scandal.
How could a Christian end up where I had?
Trust me. I thought it too.
One night my dad, desperate to see me come out of this incredibly desperate season, came to me with a Bible and told me to go out on the porch and not come back in until I heard from Jesus. And he meant it. Locked me out of the house.
I was pissed.
If Jesus was going to say something to me why would He wait until now? He surely sees the suffering I’m in, the 10 times a day debilitating panic attacks, the sleepless nights, the lack of eating, the way that I had slowly slipped into this shell of a person who couldn’t even form words. Surely He was there when the ER doctor suggested a mental institution? So why now? Why now would he decide to pipe up and give me His opinion?
Did his 2 cents even matter at this point? I didn’t think so.
I plopped down on the porch and opened the Bible arbitrarily, like a spin the globe and point kind of method.
“The Spirit of God, the Master, is on me because God anointed me. He sent me to preach good news to the poor, heal the heartbroken, Announce freedom to all captives, pardon all prisoners. God sent me to announce the year of his grace— a celebration of God’s destruction of our enemies— and to comfort all who mourn, To care for the needs of all who mourn in Zion, give them bouquets of roses instead of ashes, Messages of joy instead of news of doom, a praising heart instead of a languid spirit. Rename them “Oaks of Righteousness” planted by God to display his glory.”
Isaiah 61
In an instant I felt a feeling of lift, where I once felt paralyzed I felt the tingling of life coming back, movement where once I was frozen.
Jesus whispered into my weary face that night and said, “I have come for you. The real me. Not the me you’ve pledged your loyalty to but had no dependence on and no affection for. You are the captive I have come for tonight. I am going to set you free.”
I was pardoned. And I immediately felt it. I was going to be ok, more than ok, Jesus himself was here for me, he had climbed down to the bottom of that black hole and was speaking life back into me.
That night I knew that freedom was being declared over my life. That this anxiety…this controlling force in my life no longer could control me.
And as quickly as I knew that I was free, I knew this: that God had a VERY clear purpose for me.
He was calling me to my fellow pit dwellers and I knew that He was coming for me to heal me, redeem me and then immediately use me.
The rope that Jesus threw into that pit, the way He chose to pull me out, was to show me my destiny, the knowledge that I had a design and that all of the mess I was laying in, all of the moments stolen from me by this season, could be, and would be redeemed, lit a tiny spark in me that turned into full blown hope.
I had a head on collision with the reality that Jesus, the real Jesus, had come to set me free of anxiety and to piece my life back together. And that He was sending me out to do for others what had just been done for me.
It was my “Get up and walk” moment.
A short 3 months later the Lord blew through my heart a tiny vision – a crazy idea, a way to love the poor in my city by using His people, the church.
Three months after being flat on my back in that pit I was taking my first steps towards what would be the mantle of leadership I have carried at The Hub: urban ministries for the past 10 years.
Don’t let the title “Founder” fool you.
I was just a freshly healed girl, legs shaky but feet on the solid ground of Jesus…who came for me with a whisper of hope and a shouting of my purpose.
The Kingdom is upside-down in every way.
The choice of Jesus is never the choice of the world and hardly ever the choice that looks good on paper.
I sure didn’t.
“Take a good look, friends, at who you were when you got called into this life. I don’t see many of “the brightest and the best” among you, not many influential, not many from high-society families. Isn’t it obvious that God deliberately chose men and women that the culture overlooks and exploits and abuses, chose these “nobodies” to expose the hollow pretensions of the “somebodies”? That makes it quite clear that none of you can get by with blowing your own horn before God. Everything that we have—right thinking and right living, a clean slate and a fresh start—comes from God by way of Jesus Christ. That’s why we have the saying, “If you’re going to blow a horn, blow a trumpet for God.”
1 Corinthians 1:27-31
The story of The Hub doesn’t start with the story of an organization.
It starts with the glorious putting back together of a very broken girl.
He knew that the broken in my city needed someone who had tasted destruction and lived to tell about it. Someone who could only stand before them because of the power of the same God that was offering the same glorious rescue to them.
They needed to know that if He could restore me, He would restore them.
The story of The Hub reflects the heart of God from day one: that He is a pursuer of the broken heart, that HE is coming for His kids and His choice is that He do that through us.
That’s how much He loves us.
Man, what a good God.
Don’t disqualify yourself from the whispers of dreams and the visions God has given you.
It is precisely in your weakness that He will get the most glory.
“She’s out of surgery and she’s doing well. In a few minutes we will wheel her bed past you so you can see her before we get her settled in her room, and then you can come in.”
I was shaking from head to toe. My little love had been in surgery for 7 hours. I was ready to hold her, ready to hug her tight.
But I was unsure if I was ready to see her little face. Completely restored and fixed, but also completely different.
This was the moment I had built up in my mind for months leading up to this surgery.
I heard the elevator open and Brent, Liv and I were standing around the corner, ready to see the little Chinese love of our lives.
They wheeled around the corner and I laid my eyes on the most beautiful little girl I had ever seen.
A small petite nose, small petite lips.
Her face shape was different. Her eyes were different.
She was changed.
I would love to say that I handled that moment like a champ but I.DID.NOT.
I was a straight up wreck…hot mess express.
I wept and wept as we waited on them to get her settled.
The more sane half of our equation let me have a few moments and then he sweetly, and cautiously asked me, “What’s happening here? Can you help me define these emotions because there’s a lot of them. Are you disappointed? Are you upset? Are you happy? What is this?”
Bless his heart at the emotional road map he has to navigate on a regular basis in our household of BIG FEELINGS and ALL THE EMOTIONS.
Liv held me as I wept. Yeah…the 6 year old held it all down.
Real champ you guys. I was a real solid champ.
The truth is. I didn’t know what the emotions were about. I was feeling all of them, sadness, grief, shock, unspeakable joy, thankfulness, gratitude….all of them, they were all there and all of them were taking the wheel of my heart all at once.
The first thought I had when I saw my sweet E was, “I wonder if she looks like her mama now.”
Which, I mean, you know….bring on the typhoon of emotions that come with that thought.
I was all over the dad-gum map.
The bursting-on-the-scene new felt heavy. I missed her, the old beauty of her face, wide grin, the wide set eyes. I grieved them.
In the days since then, I have gazed at every square inch of that new little face. I have kissed on that crooked grin, with full pouty lips. I have heard my little one breath through a nose that wasn’t there before.
And I am completely in love all over again.
That new face is a billboard for what God enjoys to do the most…restore.
And as she learns how to use her newly shaped muscles to smile, to frown, to make new goofy faces, I am learning to do the same in my own heart.
I am finding that God has given me new muscles that are needed for this specific fight. He is teaching me to use the muscles required for this NEW that has landed in our laps, the new beauty that has replaced the old, the previous. To learn how to use the new equipment I’ve been given to fight for now TWO girls who I have been given to steward.
Exchange.
God is doing a work of exchange in Esther’s life and in the life of our family.
He is slowly exchanging the old for new.
The old no longer has a place in her life. It doesn’t fit anymore.
The new is coming, and has come, and it is pushing the old out.
That surgery, on the outside, looked like a surgical procedure…straight forward and common.
But it was not that.
Those surgeons were not simply doing their job that day.
It was all a grand, orchestrated event to usher in the new that God had already written in the narrative of Esther’s life. He was leaning over heaven, so excited to give her the things that she needs, so anxious to see this little bit of restoration be put into place.
“Exchange” is the new name tag placed on this season for our family.
What once was true for our family of three can not be true for the now four of us because God is doing a new work. It’s time to bend and stretch and make way for that work, not try to fit the old into the new, but to build a wide place for the new to rest and find a home in us.
Old to new is hard. Old to new feels like loss. Old to new feels like grief.
New rhythms are hard to hear, hard to learn, hard to get the hang of.
But new rhythms are rhythms of grace…produced by a loving Father who knows exactly what He’s doing.
We so often fear the change of seasons in our life. We hold on to the same old ways out of sheer terror of not knowing the new rhythms, not knowing what it will be like, feel like, sound like, to head into the new that Jesus is holding out for us.
But friend, trust me when I say, that whatever Jesus hands you is nothing but GOOD.
Old has to hit the road when Jesus hands you something fresh, something brand spanking new, something still in the package, designed just for you.
And stepping into new, it is hard, it is uncomfortable, it feels unknown, it feels like grief, it feels like loss.
But loss always leaves room for life.
Jesus lost it all…so that life was possible for us.
Jump into the newness of what God has for you, for your family, for your future.
Recognize that the God who created with us is in the business of exchange.
Whatever you bring him, your brokenness, your ugly, your anger, your bitterness, your fear, your anxiety…. He will take from you and exchange all of that gross stuff for the goodness that comes from His hand.
Give Him what He’s asking you for, because what He gives in return is so much better.
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I am sad to see it go, not quite ready to let it go.
That wide-gapped-grin has won my heart.
She is wholly and perfectly beautiful to me in every way.
When I look at her I don’t see her cleft. I don’t see a girl born with the “wrong face” as she was called as we stood in her orphanage. I don’t see the thing that changed the trajectory of her life, that set her abandonment into motion. The thing that caused her mama to lay her down and walk away.
I just don’t see it anymore.
I see her.
I see the one I have battled for, every day since I met her. I see the one that I’ve held, and rocked, as she kicked and screamed and fought me tooth and nail. I see the one that doesn’t speak my language yet we seem to totally get each other.
I see the one that has chosen to act against what she’s hard wired to be, chosen to be kind instead of angry, chosen to be generous in place of living in survival mode. I see a tiny one that is teachable and open to learn.
I see a heart that is desperate to find her place…to find a rhythm where she fits. Because she does. She fits with us.
I see a life that is blossoming, and the frequency of that grin is proof.
I see the face that has searched mine, watching for expressions that she can understand, watching my every move and learning each day what it means to be my daughter.
I simply see her.
That wide grin is an ever present reminder that our God is the God of the impossible. He is the God of lost causes. The radical restorer of the broken.
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In 6 days that cleft will be gone. Closed. Stitched. Fixed.
I will send her away as the daughter who’s face I’ve memorized every square inch of and she will come back whole…different…repaired, restored.
In my heart it marks the end of a chapter. The erasing of evidence of suffering for her. The closing of her past and the opening of the glorious future that is laid out for her, every day of her life already dictated by her Father.
He has plans, I know it deep down, to use her mouth as a megaphone of His glory to the nations. He told me so.
That the scars she bears, the story they tell, will simply be a billboard for the scars that He bore on her behalf.
One set of scars declaring to the broken that His scars make all the difference.
What an honor it has been to steward that little cleft. What a joy it has been to be the family that was chosen as the vehicle to making this girl whole.
6 days from now she will forever be changed.
I will never forget the first day I saw her, how my heart sank deep with grief over what I saw, fear of what that cleft was about to do to our lives, of what it meant.
Now, here I sit, with heart-sinking-grief as we prepare to never see it again.
We are glad. We are pumped beyond belief. We are thankful that we have access and the ability to change our spicy one’s life. We can’t wait to see the beauty that lies on the other side of that operating table.
We are bracing ourselves for that moment, the unveiling of a restored face, a new smile, a new glory.
This surgery will not change my daughter. It will not buy her more beauty in my eyes. I will not sigh a sigh of relief because she is “fixed”…as I previously thought I would.
She’ll never been more beautiful to me than she is right now.
Friends.
Let’s take a moment and celebrate our scars.
The places that are evidence of our suffering. The marks of our pain. The ever present reminder that we’ve been broken.
The very things we try to cover, try to make less obvious.
Let’s put them out there for the world to see.
Let’s expose them to the light of Jesus and see what He has to say about them.
How can He use our scars? How can He heal the gaping wounds we now bear and turn those wounds into megaphones for His glory?
If your brokenness has been healed by your Creator, those scars are your very own badges of honor.
They are altars for you to bring people to, telling them of the goodness of God.
Markers of His faithfulness.
Our scars can point to His.
To the scars that changed the trajectory of our lives. The scars that closed the pain of our past and opened the glorious future He has laid out for us.
He loves us, scars and all.
You will never be more lovely to Jesus than you are today.
SURGERY INFORMATION
Esther will be having her first surgery next Tuesday, October 17th at 6:00 am.
This surgery will be correcting her lip and noes. Closing the cleft and reshaping her nose.
The surgery is supposed to last around 4 hours.
We will spend one night in the hospital and as long as she eats, poops and pees we will go home the next day. Pray for poop friends.
To follow along with our surgery head on over to my Instagram @casshamm and follow me. I will be posting updates as we go through the process.
What’s more intimidating to an exotic dancer than a Christian women’s conference?
Nothing, I tell you. Nothing.
Let me explain.
A few years ago I got a phone call from a dear friend and mentor.
“Beth Moore is coming to town, and Lifeway has chosen Purchased (www.thehubministry.com) as the ministry they want to highlight and support while she is in town. You interested?”
Hold on one sec, while I fall out of my chair on the floor, immediately start pit sweating and try my hardest to gather myself, to sound cool, calm, and collected.
“Of course. Tell her we said thank you so much.”
I hung up. Beth Moore? THE Beth Moore?
I mean, if you’re a Christian and a female you have no doubt heard of or studied with Beth Moore.
Who cares that it would take me four full days to complete one day of her studies? I owned every single one of them.
This woman had shaped my view of scripture and had lit a fire in my heart to know more of Jesus.
And now she was choosing the ministry I was a part of to be her highlight ministry at a live event.
It was too much for my little brain to handle.
Let me tell you a little about Purchased.
Purchased works with women who are in the sex industry. Women who are walking the road of prostitution, exotic dancing or pornography. We exist to give them a way out, an escape, first and foremost, through Jesus and then through a community of women who will love them like Jesus and be in their corner every step of the way.
It is the loveliest ministry, and it has been the honor of my life to be a part of it. It is gritty and hard and not glamorous work, but it is good work, and Jesus is leading the charge for it in our city. I am who I am today because of the women of Purchased. They are hands down the coolest, bravest, spiciest and strongest women I know.
So…back to ol Beth.
We were given a block of free tickets for the conference and were told to set up a giant booth at the entrance so that attenders would run straight into us and learn about what God was doing through Purchased.
I immediately knew who those tickets belonged to.
We had a rag-tag group of exotic dancers that were meeting weekly to study the Bible together. We were having the time of our lives as we walked through scripture with these precious ones, who, for the most part, had never heard a single word of the Bible.
These nights were full of questions as we all processed the crazy truths of the Bible together. The girls would sit wide-eyed as they heard truth after truth about who they were for the very first time. They could not believe the things they were hearing and would throw their heads back in laughter over some of the Old Testament shenanigans we would read. They particularly loved stories of women, especially women who were broken…the jacked up ones. They leaned in to every second, soaking in who Jesus was and what that meant for them.
Side note…one time they asked if we could buy an “ark of the covenant” for decoration. Bless it. How does one explain the ark of the covenant…and that it can’t be purchased at your local Hobby Lobby.
These were the women I wanted at that conference. These were the ones that I wanted to bear the tee-shirt of our ministry, to be the mouth pieces for what God was doing…even though they were just now grasping it for themselves.
Now, let me pause here.
A Christian women’s conference is a very hard sell to a group of tatted up strippers.
A hard sell.
“Ok….what is it again?” one asked me.
“It’s called a women’s conference. You know how we all meet every week and read the Bible. Well it’s like that, but there will be 4,000 women coming to do that together. There will be worship, which is just music about Jesus, and a woman named Beth Moore will be coming to teach us about the Bible.”
What I should have said was, “Well…it’s like our little Bible study on crack.”
I helped them process the sheer amount of women that would be present.
I warned them that women at Christian conferences are more insane than women not at Christian conferences. I know this because I lose my cool at conferences too.
I explained that there would be all the loud talking, laughing, weeping, praying, cheering and women feverishly buying every product there was to offer in the lobby. There would be a lot of togetherness and sisterhood and “love you darlings” being thrown around….it would be a lot.
Is that not a women’s conference in a nut shell?
And this, my friends, was their worst nightmare.
For these women, “church” had failed them for the most part. They were beginning to fall in love with Jesus…but His people…they weren’t so convinced. People who claimed the name of Jesus had harmed them, abandoned them in their time of need, or judged them so hard they could no longer hold their heads up high inside the four walls of a church. And women….well their struggle with other women was a unique one. To them, women were competition, a threat…that is how their world worked. Connecting with other women was foreign. And women who were “not like them” had never welcomed them. So 4,000 of them did not feel like a fun time.
They sat stunned.
“Come on y’all. It’s gonna be a blast.”
They agreed, with rolled eyes, to do it.
Cut to the parking lot, the night of the event, where half of them were having panic attacks and the other half were refusing to go in. Good start.
But we did it. One baby step at a time we made our way to our table.
The doors opened and the lobby flooded with women and laughing and high pitched squeals and hugs…..it was on.
I watched as our team engaged women at our table, passed out material about our ministry, introduced themselves, and TOOK CHARGE.
My eyes filled with tears as I realized that, in that moment, behind that table, all wearing the same tees, no one knew. No one knew that they would leave that event to go and dance on a pole. The playing field was level. They were not only equals, but they were ambassadors for the work that God was doing in our city.
I will never forget it.
We found our seats, and the conference began. The worship band fired up and everyone in the arena jumped on their feet and began to raise their hands in worship.
To which, my sweet group, immediately looked down the row at me with looks of “what on God’s green earth is happening here?”
I whispered an explanation and had them pass it down. No telling what the explanation turned into by the end of the line.
Worship ended, and THE BETH MOORE took the stage.
She was visibly bothered. I could tell she had something to say.
What happened next literally blew my mind.
She explained that she had woken up in the hotel that morning, in our downtown, to pray and prep for the conference. As she was praying, she noticed a bright orange light streaming through her closed curtains, the sun was rising outside of her window. She went and opened the curtains, and her heart skipped a beat as she realized that the view from her hotel was the sun rising right over a strip club.
I froze.
She went on to declare that the sun rising over that strip club was a reminder that the love of God rises over everyone, no matter how broken, how lost, how messed up….that the Son would rise on every life. That His light could cover all darkness.
And then for the next 15 minutes she had the entire arena pray out loud for the employees of that strip club. Those 4,000 women prayed for each and every dancer, bar-tender, bouncer, manager, owner, and patron.
Beth got down on her knees and wept through her desperate prayers that their hearts be saved, their lives be restored and their brokenness mended.
She ended by challenging the full-to-the-brim arena to never close the doors to the broken and spoke truth about the lives of the women in that strip club, pushing everyone in the room out of their comfort zone. She ended by saying that the call of Jesus would never call us away from strippers, but instead it would push us right to them.
WHAT IN THE ACTUAL WORLD HAD JUST HAPPENED.
I looked down the row and every one of my sweet friends was weeping.
What Beth didn’t know was who those free tickets had been given to.
She had no idea that an entire row of women, from that exact strip club, would be present that night.
She could not have known that her words would directly pierce their hearts as they sat feet from her in complete shock over what they were hearing.
And those women watched wide-eyed with wonder as the Lord himself showed His love for them in front of 4,000 women. HE is who spoke through her, directly to their hearts. Those were not her words to them, but His words to His beloved daughters.
He took the largest stage, in front of a packed arena, and chose to make THAT the place where He would speak up for them. He esteemed them in the grandest way possible and stated LOUD AND PROUD that they were His, that He adored them, that He wasn’t ashamed of them….that He in fact loved them.
Worship started, and one of our girls grabbed my arm.
“I want to know this Jesus….” she said wild-eyed.
“Ok, let’s go.”
We began to walk down the arena steps towards the altar.
Arm in arm, we were making our way to her freedom.
And we got a good laugh all the way there as woman after woman looked at us, reached out, patted me on the arm and said “Congratulations!”…. assuming that I was the one making the decision that night.
Maybe it was my mohawk, nose ring and tattoos, or the fact that I was ugly-face crying, I dunno…but this was hilarious to my side-kick.
“All these women think you’re the jacked-up one,” she said through laughter and tears.
And they weren’t wrong. I too had been jacked-up beyond recognition once. Lost, broken, desperate…in need of rescue. I had been the one that Jesus came for, throwing me the rope of rescue deep down into the bottom of my pit. I had felt the deep sigh of relief to be found and known, to know that I had a way out of my brokenness. And now, here I was, walking with a cherished one towards the very freedom I had been offered. She was about to encounter the same loving gaze of Jesus. I could feel the expectancy of redemption…it was a familiar feeling.
That night, at the altar, one soul found her place at the feet of Jesus.
One heart was claimed by Her Savior, and she would never be the same.
And a whole row of women walked away knowing that what they had been reading was indeed true.
That the God of the Bible was real, and that He loved them.
He loved them enough to declare it to an arena of people.
He was not ashamed of them, and He had let the whole world know.
Friends, Jesus esteems the broken. He holds them high, honors them with the way He loves them. He chases after them and makes the light of His presence rise over their lives. And he chooses to do that through us, you and me. We become His vessels, the way He communicates with the hearts of His kids.
Don’t shut out the broken. Throw open the doors of your life and invite them in.
This blog is dedicated to a dear friend of mine, Deb Douglas, who is now dancing at the feet of Jesus, healed and whole and NO DOUBT happy.
She was a true hero in the Kingdom.
She was in love with Purchased and she pushed the Lifeway team to choose our ministry for that Beth Moore event. She was the one who called to tell me we had been chosen and giggled with me in excitement.
Before the event started that night, she came and found me. “I feel like all of this is for one woman on your team.” And she didn’t mean “all this” as in the free tickets and booth we had received…she meant “ALL OF THIS”…the arena, the lights, the sound, the thousands who would travel to be there. It was all for one woman.
And she was right.
It was her push for the broken to be loved that caused incredible God-sized things…like this story…to happen.
Hand-in-hand with Jesus, Deb radically changed the lives of the women of Purchased, a countless others across our community, with just her presence. She championed them, mentored them and constantly pointed them to the feet of their Father.
Her zeal for hearts to know Jesus resulted in a ripple effect in our city that will be felt for generations to come.
Deb, you will be missed my friend. You were a true treasure, a jewel from the hands of Jesus into our lives and now you are back with Him.
The hubby and I have a little side-hustle company called YouWood!
It is a darling business that sells all wood products and gives the proceeds away to organizations that are fighting the good fight in our world!
Wood that does good!
YouWood exists to pour financial resources into front-line folks who are feeding the hungry, freeing the slave and loving the orphan.
It.is.our.jam.
We absolutely love it.
Why?
Not because of the products, although that are very hip and trendy and cool and you should go buy some right now. (not so subliminal)
And it’s not only because we get to give the proceeds to people, real live people, who are directly serving populations that are walking through suffering that is unimaginable….although this is INCREDIBLE and we are unbelievably honored to do it.
What we’re most thankful for is that YouWood is teaching a tribe of people that the fight for justice is not just one big event, one big social media campaign, one big push towards change; that the fight for broken people, to see them be made whole, is about a ton of tiny decisions, stacked up on top of each other, causing a domino effect of change.
The decisions that we make impact the freedom of others.
Something as simple as where you shop, how you spend your money, can actually change the world. (Like buying a watch and feeding 30 people…what in the world could be better??)
YouWood is declaring that the hungry, the slave and the orphan are our neighbors. And we are called to treat them the way Jesus would…with care, attention and LOUD GENEROSITY.
YouWood is declaring that the world CAN change and that it is up to US to engage it’s broken parts and work to make them whole.
God can use WHATEVER you’re willing to give Him to change the life of someone else.
That is always the point.
We are not living for ourselves. God does not radically transform us just for us.
He finds us, cleans us up, loves us scandalously, redeems our brokenness, restores our hearts and then tells us to go and do likewise, go and be like His Son.
We are handed a task immediately after we are restored. And that task, to be like Jesus, will always point us to people, broken people.
So, what about you? What choices will you make, on the small and grand levels, to love your neighbor?
When no one else would love the broken, feed the hungry, free the slave, love the orphan, care for the widow…. would you?
