A few weeks ago, over at
LisaJoBaker.com,
5 minute Friday was kicking in gear with the theme, "Rhythm" and the following Friday, again, with "In-between". I could have wrote for miles more than 5 minutes on both these words but instead I wrote for 0. "0" because I have been "in-between" and trying to find the "rhythm"!
Rhythm, a metric undertone that moves our day through ebbs and flows.....
In-between, the place I feel has become my new place of residency as I can't see before me and I can barely see behind me.
Where are we without these elements gauging our day? How do we walk, do, be... as women, mothers, wives, even homeschoolers...without it's measure to mark out the spots where we need to step.
Maybe you are someone who is GREAT at shooting from the hip. Maybe rhythm is clatter to you. I praise you, for you are much more pliable than I for the life that God has called me to live!
Missions - Motherhood
Missions - Housewife
Missions - Doting wife
Missions - Teaching
Missions - Missions
I am the type of person that bounces when I walk... sways when I sing... taps when I wait.
Rhythm underscores my very heart. And at the places in-between, when God calls us from point-to-point-to-point, I loose track of the rhythm... the jumbled movement creates clatter and the motion is near chaos.
They don't tell you this when you read books on God's Work. You don't see it in videos about serving in the field.... smiling or crying faces, holding babies, praying for the lost, ministering to the broken. You just see the work.
But those are PEOPLE. God's chosen to walk among the weary when we ourselves are weary. To speak to the hearts when our own cries out for a voice. To love on the unloved while our own loved ones need our attention. To teach the dailies while our own dailies cry for completion. Helping others when we ourselves ache for help.
I'm not trying to scare anyone from missional living, making daily sacrifices and reaching beyond self for the Kingdom's Call. Nor am I trying to detour anyone from outreach treks in this nation or another, truly stepping outside 'comfort' in order to comfort the lost or help the church. But as I reflect on my time as a traveling missionary around this great nation we call the United States, seeing what I never could have thought or knew could exist in such contrast through just one country.... I want to be REAL.
Missions life is not a cake walk... but it is the icing on the cake of hope and fulfillment of kingdom work in our hearts.
Missions life as a mother is a juggling act... but the motion is an exercise of ever expanding love.
Missions life as a housewife swings the comfortable, typical rhythm of daily to-dos into a free-fall of sometimes daily re-adjusting what is suppose to look like a schedule so all physical and health needs are properly attended...but in the free-fall others are often ruptured up into our presence and relieved to see WE ARE REAL TOO! We cry and hurt and bleed.... we work, and scrape and manage... and they can too.
Missions life as a wife is a challenge to the design of a biblical marriage, warfare seems to hit hardest when the enemy knows a united couple is disaster for his divisive plans... but the challenge calls us to rise to new heights and dig to greater depths to find true unity as we encourage unity in others.
Missions life as a teacher of my children is often marked by
outside-the-box learning... but outside the box we find so much more to learn and, ultimately, end up teaching others also!
Missions life as a missionary called to live and serve radically in the states and beyond pushes and stretches understanding, often leaves me tiered and regularly rocks the plans of every.single.aspect of my life as a woman... but life any other way is foreign.
I have grown in the stretching... and I know I will continue to,
I have drawn up from the most vital Source of Strength when I am deeply weary,
I have made buildings out of rock-slides... some are lopsided but most are strong!
Matthew 11:28
New American Standard Bible (NASB)
28 “Come to Me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest.
(Bible Gateway.com)
The next time you open your planner, or nestle into your rhythm, or bask in the moments of destination... pray for a missionary who can't steady a planner, or is struggling with clatter in the search for rhythm, or is needing to learn how to dance in the hallway in-between as they give their lives over to the service of the Lord! And don't be afraid to step out with them!
Next week I will try to share HOW I capture moments of rhythm in this crazy life I lovingly know as Missions!
Blessings to you!
Also linking up with some of
these
