Tag Archives: showing up

The Heart of Our Work

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P1230297 compressedThere are a lot of missions organizations out there. I just discovered a site that has some dozen different trips to choose to be part of this year.

When I look at these sites and these missions organizations I know that Capturing Courage is not the same, is quite unique, yet I’ve had a hard time articulating the difference.

Released into the international aspect of our ministry 1 1/2 years ago it only took a couple of months to know that we were not going to be taking ‘teams’ overseas in any way.

Let me try to explain why.

For starters, we stay with the people. Jesus told his disciples to enter the towns, stay with whom will keep you and eat what they feed you. This is what we do. In each place where we go we stay with a family. We are not looking for nice per se, need no hotels, just simple and safe.

Doing this enters us into immediate interdependence. Sure I may be there to pray over and train and to facilitate an intimate encounter with the Lord, but I am dependent on those who keep me. In this we are mutually coming under each others leading and guiding.

Fellowship doesn’t stay at the surface. It goes much deeper.

Because I’ve gone by myself on all of my trips thus far, I’ve entered into relationship with those I’ve been privileged to be with. There is no other Canadian nearby, the easy comforts of a persons familiarity are not right at hand, and this forces real dynamics between myself and those I am with.

Our primary goal is building relationships. In fact, our entire ministry is dependent on the relationships we build. No relationships, no ministry.

Investing in each other has us looking ahead together in each other. I’m not sure how that can completely be done in a team setting. Can you imagine moving six or more people through a crowded city street, or onto a taxi, or via boda-boda’s into the villages and to sit with the elderly. I can’t.

Which brings me to the other thing that is different. We move as they move. Capturing Courage uses the same transit that our hosts use. In fact, our hosts are the ones arranging all the transportation.

We are entering into their worlds. We are not bringing ours with us, rather we do life and our time there in the same way they do. This is our goal.

The world over we have this prevailing idea that more is better. But I am convinced that less gets the job done far more. With less of us we connect more. With less of us we fit in better. With less of us the conversations are richer.

It is similar to years back when I would take my kids to Science World. Here in Vancouver we have a science playground of sorts where an entire day can easily be had. And there was a marked difference in the ways we could spend a day at Science World.

When I and just my five kids went, we found that we took our time. We went from area to area at our own speed and pace. We delved deep into the areas that struck us that day. My interactions were with my children, each one in turn and as we conversed together.

Every so often we had this ‘great idea’ to go with another family. Another mom and her kids would join us, and it was never as good a day. For all of a sudden I’m talking with this other mom more than with my own children. The conversation that did happen with my children was brought down to the level of giving instructions, issuing warnings, calling and commanding.

Sure I loved visiting with my friend, but all in all, these were far less superior days. The quality cannot even be compared.

Instead of moving at our own pace and entering into deep discussion and learning that was not rushed, we instead gave way to being in sync, organizing the children’s needs (who needed to go to the bathroom now?) with our conversation about planning and strategy and other such sundry details.

As much as I loved the idea of going with another family it was just never what we imagined it to be.

And I am pretty sure that moving a team through a foreign land would amount to the same. All the shuttling, strategizing, planning, organizing, timing, checking in, double checking, and more and more, certainly is not what we at CCI are called to do.

We must think very carefully about what the actual goal and the job is that we are taking on.

For instance, get a job in women’s fashion at a local department store as a ‘customer relationship manager’ and you will be folding and hanging clothing all day long. Is that really the job you wanted?

If a missions organization wants to pay thousands of dollars (actually charge you thousands of dollars) to move a team through airports, and in vans and through villages, care-taking the team, managing the team, providing for the team, solving problems within the team, ensuring the team has something to do, maintaining equilibrium within the team, and so on, then go for it.

But maybe we don’t want to call it missions so much as a grand team experience. Lets get real.

My niece recently said to me that when she did a missions trip to Mexico a few years back, that she never once interacted with a local Mexican person. So, I may be new to this scene, but there is something about this that is not okay. In fact, there is something about this that is very bad.

Having said all that, there is an organization based out of South Africa and they explicitly say, we do missions trips so that western youth might see other world realities. This is great. They are sure of their mandate and are stating it explicitly. Way to go for them. Because here the goal is to manage a team, grow a team, develop individuals to work within that team. This is honest. This is clarity.

It is hard to find clarity in anything we do in life. Even more so the rather nebulous arena of ‘helping’. What exactly might that be anyway! Well at CCI we enter into relationships and into life, into interdependency and mutual blessings.

There is nothing so grand as walking out of an international airport completely dependent on one person to be there to receive you. Nothing so amazing as to put one’s safety and care into another’s hands and guiding, “You lead the way, I’ll follow.” Little else compares to humbly receiving and sinking into the one family bed that has been prepared for you as your recover from your flight.

Nothing like receiving the jug of water that has been warmed for you that you might bathe. Nothing like falling asleep to the low sounds of the family conversing from bed to bed as they settle for the night. Nothing like your host following to the toilet (a pit toilet/outhouse) to stand guard since it is now dark outside.

It is these intimate adventures through life that bond us to each other. And it is out of these types of dependent interactions whereby we settle into each other, acknowledge each other and can then turn together looking forward committing to the future together.

At CCI it will never be about ‘here let us come help you’. Rather it is all about ‘we see the amazing strength and passion of your life, we see the work you are doing day in and day out, unceasingly and with great faithfulness, how might we encourage you?’

It’s as simple and profound as that.

At Capturing Courage we are simply finding friends we never knew, family we hadn’t yet met, and colleagues we are simply privileged to enter into the work alongside.

If you want to support this work head over to Love Global

God Forbid

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capturing courage international, living outrageous lives, going after the gold, not settling, go for more, more service, more love, take a risk, live a life bigger than you, make a difference, go after your calling, invest in your dreams, respond to God's call for you, refuse less-than living, make some changes, I ran across someone yesterday using the verse, “I must be less and he must be more” to justify not going after anything more than what they already have, to merely settle, and silence the whispers that say, ‘there is more’.

To the person stuck with self at the center this is the kind of theology we get.

To those hunkered in right and wrong, good and bad kind of thinking, theology gets skewed.

“I must be less and he must be more” becomes about doing less, when it is rather an injunction to living bigger than ourselves.

I less and God more means that our lives are poured out on behalf of others.

I less and God more means that the decision we make do not revolve around our comfort or our safety, whether physically or psychologically.

Refusing to go after that ‘more’ that God calls each of us to, is choosing psychological safety. And it is death. A living death.

Because we are in fact made for so much more.

Contentment in God is not about ensuring our comfort. Its about giving our comfort away and finding in the midst of less that we are at home none-the-less.

Oswald Chambers put it best, “Let us pray lest we seek merely for peace and not to and for God himself.”

God forbid that we should use his word to live safer lives.

So Sad

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new perspectiveMy weekend has been one of sadness.

Now sadness is an interesting thing. Years back I learned to be sad. Rather than fighting sadness I learned to roll with the pain, sitting in the sadness till the sadness lifted and I wasn’t sad anymore.

I am pretty sure that we all have sadness from time to time. I don’t think that I am any stranger or sadder than the rest of us.

At the same time, I get the distinct impression that most are not okay with sadness, that when someone is sad we rush to fix it.

My sadness of these past few days are a combination of a personal sadness of mine, added to a spiritual carrying of another’s sadness, added to a spirit of sadness that settled on me from an outside source.

It’s been quite a bit all at once and yet the only real difficulty in it all has simply been that I am very tired.

It was two years ago today that a friend of mine lost her son. It was a tragic accident and the marked loss has remained as sharp as ever. My friend relives the knife-cutting death of her son nearly every day, the sadness these last few days being particularly pointed.

I am helping to carry her sadness.

Another friend has buried anger and bitterness and these horrific lies coming at her (and out of her) about the origins and journey of her life. Over the weekend I came face to face with the power of these lies, and in it was nearly stifled with an immense sadness that permeated my soul.

I am experiencing her deep sadness.

To top it all off, I’ve a relationship of my own that is not doing so well. With bumps and hurdles the pain of that relationship has been most acute this past week. I don’t know what the answers are. There is no immediate help for the difficulties.

I am moving through my own sadness.

Years back I learned that it is okay to not be okay. I still remember the relief of finding that out and even more profound I realized that God is in the worst of it at all times.

I was going through a crazy difficult time that had me simply wanting to run. I was overwhelmed and in an over-loaded state of being. Everything around me was hard. I was exhausted.

And to my mind’s eye came an image of a gigantic pile of manure. You know, the kind you order for your garden each year and that sits in the driveway until it is all distributed.

Or if you live on a farm, that heap of manure to which more is added day by day.

Imagine that pile of manure as big as can be. Now imagine that this is how my life was. My entire life. One gigantic pile of poo. (it is how it felt at the time)

And to my mind’s eye came the crystal clear realization that God was in the center of the crap. That God was right there for me in the midst of all that was bad and wrong, as long as I didn’t run.

That instead of turning in the opposite direction I could enter into the difficulty and I would find even more of God.

I learned that God is in the shit.

All of it, all the time.

Personally I’ve hardly been more relieved by any other theology than this one. This theology meets us in the center of the worst of circumstance and the middle of profound sadness.

Even though we are sad, we don’t have to do it alone.

So I am doing my part joining in and carrying sadness for others. It’s not something I necessarily run to do and yet I am aware of the honor and the privilege of entering into the midst of others difficulties with a prophetic work of sharing the pain.

It is part of God’s Kingdom and part of God’s work.

For whom might you be sad today?

Moving from Conviction to Action

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the art of convictionThe key difference between people who are making a difference in this world and those who are struggling through their every day can be summed up in this one admonition:

Pay Attention to Conviction.

Consider this passage from Isaiah 59:10-12,

“We grope like the blind along a wall, feeling our way like people without eyes. Even at brightest noontime, we stumble as though it were dark. Among the living, we are like the dead. We growl like hungry bears; we moan like mournful doves. We look for justice, but it never comes, we look for rescue, but it is far away from us. For our sins are piled up before God and they testify against us.”

Have you ever ignored the thought of a good thing you could have done for another?

This is what Isaiah is describing.

I’ve experienced this. Where thoughts of the good I could do for another, once ignored, become a wall between me and that person and simultaneously between me and God.

Where good actions denied become reason for justification and defense and cover-up.

If you don’t believe me, take a look at this verse spoken three different ways,

“So whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, for him it is sin.” James 4:17 English Standard Translation

“In fact, if you know the right thing to do and don’t do it, that, for you, is evil.” James 4:17 The Message

“Remember, it is sin to know what you ought to do and then not do it.” James 4:17 New Living Translation

James was a pretty wise man.

The book Leadership & Self Deception by the Arbinger Institute spells out this exact same thing but without any of the scripture (I love it how much of current wisdom is mirroring so exactly the word of God).

They simply explain it this way. When we have a compulsion and compelling towards a good something, be it word or deed, and we ignore that compelling we then put ourselves in a box.

In the box we then make the other bad and wrong in some way, thereby justifying our lack of action.

For instance. Consider you are walking down an inner-city street and you have the thought to give $20 to the homeless person sitting on the sidewalk.

Now imagine that you ignore this thought. What immediately happens is that you will make all sorts of reasons why you couldn’t or shouldn’t give the money,

“Well he would have probably just used it for drugs or something.”

“She just needs to get her act together, I’m not going to reward her poor choices.”

The transition from the compelling thought to give $20 to the justification of why you are not, happens so fast (in the blink of an eye) that we hardly understand the dynamic.

But once we see it, so much of our stuck lives begin to make sense.

As Isaiah put it, “our sins are piled up before God and testify against us.” (59:12)

Remember, sin is, “knowing what you ought to do and not doing it.” (james 4:17)

Those stuck are those ignoring the thoughts that compel us to action. When we ignore what we can do for others we enter into a space of hiding and cover-up. We are not in integrity with ourselves and therefore not in integrity with anyone else.

In regards to sin it is as we read farther into the Word of God that we come to see that God moves us from ought and should, and from the letter of the law which was, ‘designed to last only until the coming of the child who was promised’ (galatians 3:19) to this inner core integrity from which we can all live.

Sin is so much more than the letter of the law. In fact, sins that pile between us and God are much more about the good ideas that we are ignoring, the conviction and compulsions and compelling of our hearts towards others that we are not doing.

If we want to live a free life, if we want to live an increasingly satisfying and substantially fulfilling life it is imperative that we stop ignoring conviction.

Getting out of the box is all about doing the things and speaking the words that we know are ours to do and say.

In this we have nothing to hide. Nothing is piled up against us. We simply go from strength to strength.

And our world, one compelling act at a time is transformed.

Lives are touched. None of us are the same.

Committments

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compressedI’ve been working on the plan for next year.

Now plans are a tricky thing. Because they cannot be guaranteed to work out just the way we envision them.

With any plan there are elements of it that we can control, that we can ensure and that has the locus of control right in our hip pocket so to speak.

But then there are the elements of any plan that depend on others, on specific circumstances and details and assumptions that once in the midst of the plan we realize will not jive.

Plans usually have the hows and wherefores down. ‘We will do such and such at this time and in that manner.’

(I’m pretty sure this sets us up for failure)

I’ve made a plan like that for 2013. It was a good exercise. The process refined my thinking, opened up my creative planning, and really made me look at what can be done.

Rather than being stuck in overwhelm or waffling in confusion, unsure how to go forward and not knowing what can or can’t be done, the process of making a plan turns stalemates into forward action.

Every plan requires decisions made, the future envisioned and that certain crisis within us that takes on the courage necessary in order to go forward.

Plans are great things.

Yet, once the plans are made, so many things can go wrong.

The plan I’ve made has multiple holes in it. There is room for all sorts of error and miscalculation and simple misunderstandings.

For the plan isn’t just about me or for me, it is about and for a number of others.

My friend in Uganda, who originally invited me there wrote me about a month ago with this, “All we know Cyndy is we need you back in Uganda.” He had been speaking to the Pastors that I’d already been alongside and this was their conclusion.

My other friend and primary interpreter for much of my times in Uganda said this to me last August, “Okay Cyndy, you’ve been here three times now. It is time to make this more official. Raise up a team of us, teach us to carry on the work.”

So I’ve been praying and contemplating, digging deep and reaching farther into myself for this next leg of the journey, and I’ve come up with a plan.

It sounds good. It looks really good on paper. But like all plans, it will need its fair share of tweaking. For like any plan it is just a compilation of my own ideas. A general sketch so to speak of the year to come.

That sketch will be filled in with color and with light and with flesh on the bones. Most likely in ways I could have never foreseen.

There are cultural differences to take into account, differing world-views and expectations, and then the simple matter of logistics and technicalities. I really don’t know so much of how the year will work out.

So while the hard emotional labor has gone into the plan, while I’ve dug farther into myself to see what is really there, and while I’ve put words to what I envision and what I think is possible, I’m holding my plans loosely.

In open hands stretched out.

It’s now time to harness those plans with something that is even more powerful.

Commitment.

Pure and simple commitment.

The rough idea is laid in place. But the goal, the real goal, the end result that is the reason the plan was made in the first place, this is where our commitments reside.

Allowing the details of my best laid plans to fall to the wayside, reveals my commitment. ‘To grow a small team of forward thinking, visionary leaders, leading in humility kind of godly leaders within Uganda’

This I can commit to. This is really the plan.

How it will work out. Exactly. I haven’t the foggiest idea.

Yet taking it from a plan to a commitment we find incredible power. Not because of you or I, but because a commitment will draw from us more than we even know we have to offer.

It will be messy and unmanageable in many ways. There will be surprises every single step of the way. Some things will work and other things will not.

The power of commitment though, cuts through all that.

So my suggestion as we are nearing another year. Make your plan, yes.

Yet even more powerfully, what is your commitment?

For that is where things will happen.

Notorious

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P1260728 flipped compressedI heard my name.

It was a chilly, slightly rainy evening at Maama Bosa’s. The radio was on and through the (unintelligible to me) words came my name, ‘Cyndy’, more Ugandan, then the word ‘Muzunga’ (which is my second name in Africa, it means English or white Person), more Ugandan, and then the word ‘Canada’.

Cyndy + Muzunga + Canada

“They must be talking about me” I realized. Although through the dampened rainy evening, when even our thinking slowed down, it took me some time to absorb this concept.

But I’d been to the radio station on an earlier trip, and had even made a short commercial, “Hi I’m Cyndy from Canada and when I’m in Uganda I listen to…” My short burst of stardom!

I have no idea what the radio was announcing this time. I was there alongside local leaders hosting a three day conference and crusade in the town of Madudu, and the week after that we began a Bible School for rural pastors.

My day of arriving in Madudu brought immediate greetings. Still some miles away from my destination, a child called my name, “Cyynnddyy” as I passed on the boda-boda. In other words, I stand out everywhere I go in Africa, there is no blending in.

I mentioned to Maama Bosa how I’d been greeted by name some miles out and how tickled pink I was, and she replied that now I was ‘notorious’!

Not quite the way we like to use that word, but maybe it is closest to the truth!

My point in all of this, is how easy it is to make an impression and to make a difference in the world. And I have been reminded in these trips to Uganda (actually really got it for the first time), how much power we as individuals carry.

There is incredible power to encourage, to bless and to empower others, just by who we are in this world. We all have this available to us, and we all walk in it in various amounts every day. But we don’t all know it, and we are not very often intentional in it.

It all comes in the power of showing up, and of engaging a person, a gathering, a community.

This doesn’t have to happen across the seas, but it should be happening. And it can be happening. Right in your and my back yard.

It is time that more of us become notorious.

How might you be notorious today?

Where might you show up?

Positioning ourselves to bless others takes intentionality, it takes an ability to see a bigger picture than the one we live in each day, and it takes a risk to meet those we’ve not met before.

But positioning ourselves to bless others reaps incredible satisfactions and is in fact what save us from ourselves.

A life turned in becomes stagnant and dies an unnatural death. A life turned out, yields impact we will never be able to measure, and will never really understand.

I don’t know what the radio man was announcing that day in Uganda, but I am glad to be making a difference of some sort in this world. Will I ever really get what that is? No, I won’t. We never do.

And you won’t either. The impact you are making, you won’t really ever understand. But trust me, it is significant. So keep walking, become notorious, and allow the satisfactions of simply showing up, spur you on.

Forward ho, God-speed ahead.

Uncomfortable Constraint

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adventure and privilegeOff to Uganda, you are reading this as I’ve arrived, been received at the airport by David and taken to he and his wife’s home. I’ve had a nights rest at their home (they’ve given me their bed to sleep in), and I am off to buy medicines in Kampala with Mildred today.

And constraint is all around.

The work of coming and traveling and ministering in Uganda is all about constraint. And in fact, on my last trip here, I made a list of all the constraints upon a person, that I might alert any who want to do a trip to really count the cost, seeing if they are really up for it.

For instance, in Canada we are used to our space around us. We are used to sitting in a vehicle with room for our legs and with room for our arms. In Uganda it is much different. The taxi service is more like that feeling of camping in a very cramped campsite.

My legs have no space in these vehicles. I am fairly long-legged and I must sit with a slight rotation to my hips and back in order to fit (and even then my knees are jammed into the seat in front of me). On either side are my traveling companions, some I know, most I do not. Regardless, we get used to our hips and legs in close quarters and the skin of our arms stuck together in the heat. And though the journeys are any number of hours in length, and there are no bathroom stops nor pauses to stretch, we give no sigh of disdain or contempt.

We have entered into another persons home and we will make no complaint.

My luggage is sparse. And I have ensured it is no heavier than I can carry myself. Constraint of time and space as well as energy and strength, ensures I don’t overdo my luggage, and in the consequence make a fool of myself.

The surest way to be ashamed in a developing nation, is to pack too much.

The roads are rutted, graveled and sometimes soggy from recent rains. And suitcases on wheels are a joke in the crowded city of Kampala. If you can’t carry it, don’t bring it. Constraint saves us.

The boda-boda rides (motorcycles) prove the same. Imagine your gear and suitcases strapped onto a boda-boda along with you and a driver. Imagine it, and you will ensure you do not overdo it. Constraint saves us.

The habits of minimalism do one well when in Africa. Well thought out planning and execution alongside frank consideration are must-haves. Last trip I took three pairs of socks, and didn’t put one pair on once. Silly. This time I’ve taken one pair, and very small and thin at that.

In service to the people there, my days are not my own. But years of child-raising has prepared me well; constraint on my person is certainly not unknown! Fact is, I am simply honored to be their guest, and at their disposal. “What shall we do today? Here are my thoughts and ideas, but really, you tell me.”

We somehow believe that when we enter into the most important works of our lives that we will be freer, that we will be with less responsibility and more expression. And while some of this is true, in actual fact, the greater the work, the greater the constraint upon ones person, time, stamina, and responsibility.

The CEO of a company does not carry less, but more. The president of an organization does not have it easier, but tougher. The Leader of a nation deals with more and therefore has less. The one who ministers to many can only do so as constraint is embraced and welcomed and given over to.

For instance, praying over fifty, one-hundred, two-hundred people as they come one by one, lined up and waiting… Is not about more. It is about less. How much are we willing to pour out? How much of ourselves will we give over.

The greatest works of our lives require constraint, and discipline and responsibility.

Another way of saying the identical thing – enter into constraint, discipline and increased responsibility, and your life will ooze of great works.

p.s.

The Bible speaks over and over again of the little that we can bring in order for much to come of it. Nowhere does God say, ‘Come to me and I will make you great’.

Rather, it is, ‘Lose your life and you will find it’.

‘The one who is last will be first’.

Leaders are those who have determined to put their lives in service to others, be it through non-profit service, business, politics, or community involvement. They walk a hard road, without complaint and without murmur, and with much constraint.

God bless our leaders.

Spiritual Constraint

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powerful constraintWant to be spiritually powerful, employ constraints.

My last post was a precursor to this one; a brief introduction to the power of using constraint and limitation. You can find it here.

What we call the spiritual disciplines are also simply constraint, yet applied to the deepest parts of our inner person.

Physically we know the power of constraint. Focus on running, pour yourself into the martial arts, spend your time devoted to hockey, (but not all), and you will become a champion in your own right, if not literally.

Relationally we employ the power of constraint and limitation all the time. It is why we marry, and why we make choices of these types of friends but not those types.

In education we create constraints. Limiting access eliminates those who want a free ride, or who are not as serious as others. Ensure there are hoops to jump through and those who really want it, will be the ones on the other side.

Spiritually speaking, constraint works the same. It is why we have the disciplines and simple good habits of, taking a day of rest for instance. Limiting our work days to six ensures we are rejuvenated and restored on a regular basis.

Fasting is a prime example of a spiritual discipline. Fasting invests in something we cannot see, asks for favor we can barely touch but know we need, and joins into a work of God and of Spirit that barely makes sense, but invest we will anyway.

Prayer also, focuses our thoughts and worries and gladness in one concentrated conversation between ourselves and God. By coming into constraint of thankfulness for instance, of limiting our focus to that which we are thankful, creates a powerful catalyst for more of the same. Sow thankfulness reap thankfulness.

Spiritual Authorities work the same way. The question might be asked like this – How big is your sword? Constraint as spiritual discipline is the work that proves one can handle spiritual authority.

For the bigger the sword, the less it is swung. The bigger the sword the stronger one must be to swing it. And the bigger the sword, the wiser one must be in the swinging.

Constraint proves this. Constraint ensures this. Constraint enters into powerful work without flippancy, without jumping ahead and without random actions. Constraint proves our character and our habits.

A person without constraint, we call a wild-card. A wild-card cannot be completely trusted. A wild-card runs ahead, then lags behind. Always out of sync with those round about, a wild-card makes a mess out of time, money, energy, integrity and choices. To name a few.

Spiritually speaking, a wild-card is someone who has authority but who runs out of sync with God.

The difference – Constraint. Constraint not employed and we have anarchy and chaos. Constraint employed, and we have well-fashioned inner persons, employing well-fashioned constraint through all parts of their life.

The spiritual disciplines hone our walk and work alongside God. Constraint fashions us into someone useful in the Kingdom of God, where we become partners in setting things right on the earth.

How might you grow your spiritual authority today? Enter into constraint.

p.s.

As you read this I am on my way to Uganda for some days of leadership development and spiritual training for rural Pastors in a village 150km west of Uganda’s capital city of Kampala.

Constraint is applied over and over again in these spiritual works. Constraint becoming a natural course of the rhythm of spiritual work. My days prior to this trip, my inner person was quieting down. Deep inside I was hunkered, waiting, preparing, garnering the energy necessary for the work to come.

And now, the reality of about 30 hours of travel is a welcome opportunity of continued investment in the constraint of a work to come. The to-do list has been completed, the preparations are finished, the backpack has been packed and packed again, and now the hours of silence and of physical stillness only adds to the work.

I am thankful, and glad you are joining me for the journey.

Start In

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life is a journeyI have no idea what to write about. I’ve been working on Advance Daily’s for a few hours now, trying to get a bunch of them out and ahead of the game.

My mind feels a little dry and with not much else to say.

But writing, I have found, is much like cooking.

In cooking I hardly know what I want to make at any given time. After years and years of cooking my mind goes blank and my creativity dries up when given the task of one more meal to make.

And yet, I’ve found a trick when it comes to cooking. I just start cutting an onion.

Yup, that’s right, I simply get an onion out, the cutting board, my knife, and start in. And somewhere in the process of getting the skin off the onion, of making my slices, the next step takes form.

I get some olive oil heating up in a pan, and then one ingredient after another comes to mind, other vegetables, spices and seasoning, accompanying starch or meat, and without a lot of strain there is a meal ready to be savored.

Writing is the same, we simply must start in. Some months back my daughter was crying the blues that I wasn’t ‘teaching’ her how to write.

Now I am a writer, and I know how this works. So I just kept telling her, “Just start writing.”

“But… but… but…” she protested, “I want one of those writing books, a this and a that…”

“Just start writing.”

It took some time, quite a bit of time, but finally she started in, and within some minutes had a stunning poem about her dog that had simply flowed out of her.

Today this poem graces her bedroom wall.

And this is writing. Where our hearts simply overflow and where words are put to emotions and character and experience.

Life is the same. Exactly the same.

While we are looking for formula and for instructions and for lessons, we miss that life is here to be lived. That we figure out living as we live, not before.

We must just start in.

Exaggeration

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Beauty in DetailHow far can we go?

It has become most evident over the years that we can only go as far as our hearts can go.

While our minds think they have dominion over our beings, it is really our hearts that determine the extent of our movements and manner of life.

We only go so far as our hearts will take us.

It is NOT the government, or your teachers, your boss, or your parents or your spouse, your pastors or your local leaders, it is NOT the circumstances of your life, the size of your house, the income level that you earn, the kids or family that you have, nor is it your past, present or future that determines your life.

It is your heart.

Pure and simple and horrible as that.

Now, our hearts are multi-faceted organisms which are influenced by many things and a profound dynamic is the attitudes of our hearts coupled with the law of sowing and reaping.

First off, the law of sowing and reaping is a given and is inviolable. There is no way around it, no discounting it, no wishing it away.

It is a fact of life that what we put out we get back; that what we plant we harvest.

The equation is this:

Law of Sowing & Reaping + Hearts Attitudes = Your Life

The attitudes of our hearts are basically the lenses by which we see life. And the lenses can be clean or dirty, smudged or clear, colored or transparent. But not both at the same time.

And the state of our lenses can be determined by the words we speak, by our body language, and by the decisions we make as we go through life.

The law of sowing and reaping takes all of who we are (what we do is only 1/4 of that) and multiplies it.

We may be doing the right things. But if we are filled with bitterness or judgment or envy or despair or fearful responses or  (fill in the blank yourself), that is what is multiplied.

Actions always outweigh words. And Words always outweigh intent. And Intent always outweighs action.

And pretty soon there are patterns of a life set well into place.

It is the intent of our hearts that are multiplied.

What are the intents of your heart?

If for instance you were to die (and become more alive than you have ever been) and were then to forever more reap the intents of your heart back on yourself thousands-fold forever and ever, how does that sound to you?

How are the intents of your heart looking now?

It is no secret that to find truth in anything we exaggerate it. Story tellers do this, movies do this, plays do this, and I do this time and again.

“If we take this line of thinking to its most possible farthest extreme what do we get? What do we find? What is the fruit?”

It is sort of like microscopes that can see farther and farther into the detail of creation, revealing what is really there and by whom it is by.

When we do this in nature, we find fractals. Beautiful and intricately designed characteristics of the maker of this universe. Exaggerate what God has made and we find stunning beauty and detail. Pattern upon pattern that just gets more beautiful the farther we take it.

And then we have our lives. That exaggerated and over time become more ugly and more pinched and more narrow and more fearful; more bitter, more negative, more (you add in your own) as time goes by.

It is because of our hearts.

We decay and die and degenerate in the natural course of life.

Our hearts take a beating, we add judgment to our observations, and we begin to reap what we sow.

It doesn’t matter if what we are doing is right or good or worthy. We in our hearts are not.

And it is our hearts that ultimately lead us to life, or away from it.

Exaggerate your heart and what do you get?

One Very Small Step

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Journey of LivingThe deepest places of our beings we barely mention. We hold the most fragile reckonings of our lives in secret, pondering them in silence.

This has been my journey. For the last dozen years I’ve kept in secret a conversation between myself and the Lord. A conversation about traveling the world speaking life-giving words, encouraging words; giving strength to many many people.

When I was first brought in on this conversation (at God’s initiative), I thought I was nuts; that I must be imaging things, that this vision and possibility couldn’t really be for me.

For starters, the initial vision and idea came at one of the worst possible times in my life. I was a full-time Mom to five young kids, my husband at the time, had just come out of a number of intense years of drugs and alcohol addiction; I was fragile to say the least.

My world had shrunk down to survival mode, I was exhausted and emotionally spent, and into that small shrunken space came these visions of my words touching a multitude of people around the globe.

Who, me? Really? Are you sure?

I’ve always been a deeply spiritual person. Always in tune with the movement of God in my life, attuned to the Spirit’s direction and leading, with the testimony of ‘God in me’ always the same. Ever since a teen, time and again I’ve been told something to this effect, “I still remember what you said to me years ago, it has never left.”

The mix of God in me has always been about words. It is where the supernatural intersects the natural, where the finger of God takes normal and makes it into something so much more.

Every one of us has a place and an expression like this. Where the living God intersects our ordinary and makes it extraordinary. I don’t know where this is for you, but for me it has always been in my words.

So when I began sensing that I was to impact many with my words, and though I initially thought I was nuts, the evidence of likelihood was just enough to have me tentatively believing the visions and prophecies. Just enough to move me forward bit by bit.

For we can only ever move forward bit by bit. Nothing in life comes of large leaps. There is always a process of growth and faith and personal integrity (and so much more) that must happen to support and nurture any work of our lives.

Nothing ever just happens.

(So if you are waiting for something to ‘just happen’, you are wasting your time, get in there, engage in action, put your feet to the pavement)

I know that my own actions in light of this call to Africa seem nuts. Here out of the blue Cyndy is off to Africa. And not just once, but multiple times… But it has not been out of the blue. And in fact, though it looks like high risk, it isn’t.

There have been so many thousands of words, verses and passages, multiple visions after visions, with so many encouragements and prophesies by others, that to disbelieve and to reject the invitation… that seems nuts to me.

And I wonder about your own journey; about what the living God might be inviting you into?

Fact is, we don’t have to do a thing with these invitations. We all have free will. We don’t have to take God up on anything, ever. It is our choice.

With no recriminations either. A number of times along the way I’ve been asked by the Spirit, ‘Do you want this?’ and ‘Are you sure?’ and ‘You do know what this would mean for your life don’t you?’

‘You don’t have to do this’

It is all an invitation.

But I’ve said ‘Yes.’ And the work is exploding around me (this has been prophesied too), and so though I am overwhelmed and stretched in many ways, none of this is a surprise to me.

The Pastor Training in August, in a small village in Uganda has gone from fifty participants to five-hundred registered. Just like that. And we’ve mapped out the next year: six trips, eighteen weeks of travel to eleven centers in six countries and on two continents.

To sum it all up. We don’t have to do a thing with the prophesies of our lives. They don’t have to happen. And in fact, they won’t happen, unless we participate.

This journey of walking alongside God is not a ‘have to’ anything. We can say ‘no’ at any time. But that is scary to me. That is nuts to me. Why would any of us say ‘no’ to the Living God.

Whatever journey God is inviting each of us to, it will not come to be without adequate equipping and preparation and attention to detail. Looking back on my own life I see how every single little piece, every random everything, has been preparing me for what is to come; preparing me for this assignment.

And I have truly only just begun. We are still easing into this work, still warming up. Still easing into full stride.

There is no way to predict our futures. No way to know the full extent of anything, where it will take us, and who we are becoming.

But we are given glimpses. Like a curtain that is pulled back just a touch, giving us a small view of something more than what we’ve known. An invitation to something we never would have imagined for ourselves.

What are you being invited into? What does the curtain pulled back reveal to you?

And how might you participate, stepping forward bit by bit; how might you put action to faith, one very very small step at a time?