What Does Holy Ground Feel Like?

The question struck me as I sojourned through Exodus at a Come Before Winter Renewal last month. Moses went barefoot at the burning bush.

What does holy ground feel like?

Was it rough gravel or fine sand? Were there rocks poking Moses’s instep? Cockleburs he had to pick off of his robe afterwards? Did sharp sticks leave any splinters? Was it sunburn hot or dessert night cold?

It wasn’t the quality of the ground that made it holy. It was the presence of the Living God in that moment.

I realize this applies to me, too. I stand on holy ground in the place of calling to ministry.

There are rocks: my pride. Have I mentioned that I like being able to do things well? I was fully functional back in the states. Here on the field after 5 years, I still struggle to do life at times. My Spanish is so-so, and my government office navigation skills are worse.

There are cockleburs: my desire to be valued. I want my efforts to be seen and appreciated. Who doesn’t, really? But approval is like manna, it tends to rot overnight. Most mornings send you out searching to fill your basket again. God is the only reliable source.

There is definitely a burn: comparison. When I measure myself or my contribution up against those around me, I always lose. It doesn’t matter what the score says. If you pay the ante, you forfeit your chips.

Holy ground is a one-on-one moment, face to face with the Lord. It’s my morning coffee over the Word, my prayer to want what he wants each day. It’s a worship song on my heart, a breath prayer to invite his presence to change me.

My toes are in the dirt. It’s humble. There is no other option but to need him here. He called us into the adventure of full dependency. Every day as I step out my front gate, every month when we open the financial statement.

He listens to my insecurities and excuses. Then he tells me who He is and what He will do. The staff may become a snake. The snake may reform as a staff. The hand may cycle whole, leprous, and healed again. He never changes.

I see his glory passing by in each child we pray healing into. I feel it shine in each team member we encourage out of their comfort zone sandals.

This is holy ground.

This is the place where freedom begins in me, and through me, in others.

Like Moses was, I am surrounded by everyday sheep—cooking, cleaning, discipling my children, homeschooling, loving, writing.

I can become distracted by all of the curly tails and wooly bottoms,

Or I can turn and focus on the burning bush calling me by name.

I choose the fire.

I accept the challenge to trust him and go higher up the mountain.

I’m kicking off my expectations of being perfect, and the trap of comparison.

I am going skin to skin with holiness, instead.

The Lord calls each of us to holy ground, wherever we are in our relationship with him. What does the spot you’re standing on feel like?

Beach Walk Photo by Esther Wiegardt, Desert Scrub Photo by Elliott Engelmann, Footprints Photo by Christopher Sardegna, & Valley Road Photo by Tim Marshall on Unsplash

What He is Doing in My Doing

It was an everyday milk run. We snuck out after bedtime to make it this season’s version of a date. Somewhere between the tortilla presses and the plantains, we saw Maria.

Our neighbor has been fighting cancer for the last half-year. Each time I see her, it’s like the Lord turns his laser pointer on. Our interaction is sparse: my English prayers over her in private and Spanish greetings on the street. I saw her hats and headscarves progress to unabashed baldness. I told her she looked beautiful. She told me about her chemo port.

Lately, I open my arms with every hello. Latin culture pooh-poohs personal space. I don’t have enough words to explain my heart to her. I can only draw her near it for a moment now and then.

That night at the grocery store, she held on. We cried a little. Her Spanish flowed next to my cheek, blessing and thanking me for my love. God’s presence filled that embrace, speaking all the things I didn’t know how to say.

Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

Her hair is growing back now, sparkly silver.

She invited me in the other day, my first time through the steel gate that safeguards her house. Seating me at her table, she shared her evening, her family, her life. She heaped a bowl with fruit salad, serving me a rainbow cut with her limited strength–topped with red jello, of course, for Costa Rican flair.

Stories flowed out as I nibbled and listened. How her grown daughter had stroked her bare scalp in the restless nights of her treatment, the love expressed in cool touch. Her sadness that we all seem to live behind closed doors in the neighborhood. We laughed that it was the mosquitoes’ fault. Prayers sought for her disability pension to be approved, kindly insights on the personalities of the block. Encouragement from the place of cancer, that the Lord is faithful in all things. Her face lit up when we talked gardening.

I went home with arms full of plant cuttings and the fruit I couldn’t finish. Humming with Spanish headache and unexpressed affection, I dove into my freezer. I recrossed the street with banana-craisin bread to sweeten her week the way she had mine. We thumped the language barrier again as I fumbled for the concepts of already-sliced and thaw-on-the-counter.

I may be hemmed in by verb tense and vocabulary, but God is not. He can work great things in the cheerful hello, in the how-are-you, in the hug in the grocery aisle.

Most of the time, what I do is more felt than seen: happy bellies, cleans sheets, a peacefully ordered home. This time the Lord let me feel some of what he is doing in my doing.

And if you give even a cup of cold water to one of the least of my followers, you will surely be rewarded. Matthew 10:42 NLT

How has the Lord surprised you with his movement in your everyday living?

Tipping Buckets

I went from zero to sixty in the time it took to realize that the internet was down. Again. From nurturing wife planning a trip to the grocery store, to snipping, snapping grumpiness.

The last 10 days were busy with blessings. A long brunch at a cozy café shared with other missionary ladies of the area. The end of homeschool year wrap up and our first official whack at standardized testing online. A mission team from our awesome home church serving alongside us at the children’s home. Five dinners for 31 prepared and shared. My heart-story laid out before new friends. Even a rare date night, courtesy of a kind team member’s willingness to watch our children.

In tandem with the high-octane push of hosting a group, we prayed (and are still praying) Matt through his installment of the coughing crud I spent two weeks kicking. The illness is legit if the man will actually drink hot honey lemon tea, y’all. The good Lord didn’t put him together with a natural appreciation for it. Our modem was fried by lightning strike for the second time in 3 weeks, and the technicians couldn’t drop by to fix it until 5 long days later. Workmen were scheduled to come make repairs on various parts of the house we rent. Like a winter snowstorm—you never know exactly when it will hit, how long it will last, or how bad it will be.

So when the little spinny connection icon at the top of my phone screen went unglued for the third time in four weeks, so did I. These moments always catch me (and my beloved) off guard. I’m like the huge bucket at the water park that fills quietly over time and suddenly dumps unannounced with the force of a tidal wave. Okay, I didn’t break anything, say any bad words, or do anything more than be short and cross with Matt, then stomp off to regain my reason. Like the monumental splash, it passed quickly enough for me to ask forgiveness and “hug it right” before I grabbed my keys for the milk run.

What am I learning about myself in this life of serving in a different country and culture? I like things to work the way they are supposed to. Sometimes it’s fun to play pioneer and improvise by catching rainwater from the downspout to flush toilets when city water is out of service. But every once in a while the rolls really do need to be baked when the power goes out. I miss the control of owning my nest and of telling workmen the way things should be done rather than being told what they are going to do and when they may invade my space to do it. I like to be good at things. When my Spanish heads off the fairway into the rough, I feel it like buzz of speaker feedback during a worship song.

I love the role that we have been given to serve the Lord here. We see him moving in ways great and small all the time. We feel him drawing us into closer surrender, showing us his infinite care, our infinite need. Child after child, team after team, the Lord changes lives at Hogar de Vida. Matt in leadership, myself in our kitchen, we really do fit like puzzle pieces crafted to complete the picture for this time and place. It’s an honor to be here, the loving hands of so many in the states supporting this work.

So why the deluge? How can I make holes in the bucket to release the weight of life’s cross cultural, ministerial idiosyncrasies? We are three and three-quarters of a year here. Shouldn’t I have this down by now?

No.

I really mean it. No.

Listen one more time, self that expected to fling her whole being into new language and culture like a baby duckling following momma-duck off of a bridge into a sunset pond. And then realized that being momma-duck in this beautiful family meant most of my hours are spent serving behind my own front door.

No. You aren’t supposed to have it all figured out yet. Life doesn’t work like that.

I have heard a repeated theme recently from anointed missionary friends, fully immersed in the culture, whose Spanish knocks my Gallo Pinto off:

“After all the years, all the effort, I’m still different from the surrounding culture. I will always be different to them. Not unloved. Not without great impact. But yes, different. Still making mistakes and working through misunderstandings.”

In this season, I, Kris, am not out in the culture much. Fail. My Spanish is passable but highly imperfect. Fail. My boys have little to no interest in learning another language. Fail. After 2.5 years of honest effort to engage a great local Spanish church, we felt led to join an English-speaking congregation. Fail.

And yet, we have seen the Lord move endearingly in our children through this new church body. Win. We’ve made new friendships and laughed more than I can remember since we left language school. Win. I’ve conquered my fear of navigating my way around the country. Win. I surrendered my pride in doing homeschool completely myself and enrolled the two older E’s in an online program. They were challenged and learned all sorts of new skills. Just as important, our relationship got a chance to blossom with someone else in charge of the class work. The entire family enjoyed their first year. Total win.

Understanding that I don’t have to have it all down perfect is perhaps the greatest release valve I can open. Giving myself grace to do my best and leave the rest in the Lord’s hands engages the sprinkler to make a fountain. All those expectations don’t belong in my bucket anyway. I need to give myself time and space to recharge, freedom to not know it all. I need to remember that sometimes life is messy and the Internet stops working when you have exactly one day left to finish the Stanford 10 Math tests. It’s okay to not be okay. Everyone has a unique journey. My job is not to achieve perfection. My calling is to live with those stresses trickling over open hands, through fingers extended to receive what the Lord has in each moment. To be the blessing that only I am capable of being to those around me.

To be a watering can, rather than a tipping bucket.

Even the sparrow finds a home,
and the swallow builds her nest and raises her young
at a place near your altar. . .

What joy for those whose strength comes from the Lord, who have set their minds on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem.

When they walk through the Valley of Weeping,
    it will become a place of refreshing springs.
    The autumn rains will clothe it with blessings.
They will continue to grow stronger,
    and each of them will appear before God in Jerusalem.

Psalm 84:3a, 5-7 NLT

Reaching

I don’t want to go.

If tonight’s the same as the last two weeks, I will gulp some chocolate for courage, pack up my books, and head out the door, shoulders squared. Butterflies will give way to June bugs bouncing around my stomach. I’ll wish I could thwack them away with a satisfying “ping,” like I did off of the screen door last night.

Is it lions I’m facing? A legal interrogation? Long division by paper and pencil? No. Something sweeter and more terrifying—friendship in Spanish. I joined a bible study on Wednesday nights with some of the tias that work at the children’s home.

In English, this would be easy. Vulnerability and the things of the spirit are familiar waters in the ship of my mother tongue. But the language barrier isn’t just a wall that you peer over to the people on other side. It’s also a burqa that you wear, a box that traps your personality. You can only express the part of yourself that you have vocabulary for.

For several years now, I’ve heard of praying for a word for each calendar year, a heart-focus from the Lord to press into. At the beginning of 2015, I flicked the question out to my Abba Father like a shrug: “Got anything for me this year?” The answer was immediate. Reach.

Reach? 21 months into our new life serving in Costa Rica, wrapping up the homeschool year, and poised to begin the freefall of the busy summer team season, I would have chosen a different word. How about “breathe” or “rest?” “Be still and know” sounds good, too, although technically, it’s four words. No. It’s reach. Shoot.

I know why He’s calling me out. There’s been a bit of a turtle act going on lately. It’s easier to smile and nod when the RPM of the conversation zooms past my brain’s capacity to distinguish individual words. My language skills build Lincoln Log bridges that can’t quite support the weight of the heart over the communication gap. I can navigate the grocery store, find my way around town, and hold the newly arrived baby twins at Hogar de Vida. I’ve mastered the meet & greet banter with Sunday-morning-fellowship-hall flair. Those things have grown comfortable, even ordinary.

But friendship? That’s going to take some reaching.

And yet, isn’t that exactly where my day-to-day living is malnourished? Isn’t that precisely what the Lord called me to this country to do, to be? More than baked goods, team dinners, and cheerful pleasantries, God wants me to share my heart with the people here. He is encouraging me to grow to be able to support their dreams, understand their struggles, and experience their joys. To be able, not only to broadcast my love, but to receive theirs.

So I will stretch my courage to say new things beyond my grammar’s beaten path. I will press on in the listening to grasp the meaning of the flying words. I will exchange embraces and seek out expressions to add to their value.

I will face the June bugs. I will reach.

“I have heard how you left your father and mother and your own land to live here among complete strangers. May the Lord, the God of Israel, under whose wings you have come to take refuge, reward you fully for what you have done.” Ruth 2: 11b-12 NLT

Celebrations of the Ordinary

They happen every day. Sometimes I miss them, my eyes focused on the road ahead of me, the to-do list on my shoulders. But when I catch a glimpse, and stop my busyness, my spirit looks up to share a smiling gaze with the Almighty. A butterfly outside my window, a sweet moment with the children, a miracle unmerited. I am leaning into the Lord’s heart in the celebrations He gives our family, both large and small.

Snowmen painted on my toes Tica-style in honor of the winter white stuff we miss on the prairie.

The little dear who eyed Matt with caution and shied away from his hand while we prayed over her entry into the Hogar de Vida family, running to give him a hug a week later. Hearing the kids call out, “(Ma)Teo!” when he goes by.

Realizing the soft blues and greens of the quilt I pieced before we launched to the mission field coordinate perfectly with the view of trees, mountains, and sky out our balcony.

The verification that our second language is taking root. Yelling, “¿Qué está haciendo? / What are you doing?” without thinking when awakened from a dead sleep at 3:30 a.m. by someone’s loud footsteps on the neighbor’s tin roof next to our bedroom windows.

Sharing hospitality and life with friends around our table. Cracking jokes and being real in Spanish and English.

Discovering the High School Musicals with my kids and savoring this season when singing the songs with their mom is still cool.

Laughing nonstop with House Tias on a 3-hour bus ride. Hearing my name called out in the verbal melee, “Krease!”

Seeing Ezekiel charm team members, Eliana in her element helping out in the houses, and Elijah playing alongside boys his own age.

Feeling the Holy Spirit show up in a unique way each time I share my testimony with a team.

God’s mercy and my husband’s ingenuity saving my laptop after a baptism by pumpkin spice tea.

Celebrating our Elijah’s arrival into double digits and his growth into a tender warrior.

Sips of coffee and birdsong in the presence of the Lord each morning. A basket ready on my dresser with bible, journal, candle, and everything else I might be tempted to leave my chair for.

The tiny infant who fussed night and day against some unknown anxiety, calming into peaceful smiles and trusting cuddles through Hogar’s united intercession before the throne of our good Father.

Standing here, humbled on holy ground, filled with gratitude for the provision, prayer, and affection poured out on us.

We would not be here without all of you. It is an incredible privilege to be your hands and feet, serving in this land. Often I ask, like David, “Who am I, O Sovereign Lord, and what is my family, that you have brought me this far?” 2 Samuel 7:18.

Thank you for every way that you have joined with us in this journey. May the Lord of the harvest multiply each seed sown and return to you a good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over, poured into your lap this holiday season. Merry Christmas from the Gnuses in Costa Rica. A savior has been born. May His light illuminate your 2015.

May you be filled with joy, always thanking the Father. He has enabled you to share in the inheritance that belongs to his people, who live in the light. Colossians 1:11b-12 NLT

Linking up with VelvetAshes.com/the Grove/ Remembering.

The Good News Family

Following Jesus, Growing in Grace

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