**In the past few months, the Lord has surprised me with a new sister. We share dreams and a special place in the heart of God, and are excitedly watching Him develop something beautiful here in our shared hometown–as well as dreaming of what’s coming next across the oceans. She’s been so kind as to write for us today, and it just happens to be her birthday! So wish her a happy one along with me. I’m very pleased to introduce you to her; my friend, Michele Perry!**
*******************************************************************************************
DROPPING THE MOP {HOW TO FIND STILLNESS EVERYDAY}
Mama-hood. I did not come to it naturally. Rather, I stared through tears at a TV screen filled with wide dark eyes and gaunt ebony faces. I watched small fingers sketch Crayola landscapes of the very adult atrocities of genocide. These were the smallest witnesses. And so the stirring of God in the womb of my dreams began.
Nine months later I was bouncing over dirt paths a world away searching out entrance into a place most were intent on escaping. Three days shy of 29, this simple pale-faced, one-legged city-girl who still thinks mascara belongs in a survival kit rode ten hours down rebel-frequented roads in what is now South Sudan to a dusty outback border town called Yei.
The echoes of what I had been told rang loud in my ears: “You crazy white woman. You’ll be dead in months. You’re insane. You can’t go in alone. No money. No connections. No team.” But I wasn’t alone and I had connections in the one place that mattered most: heaven.
There was a promise growing large on the inside of me. I was pregnant with the purposes of God’s heart and the vision of those wide pleading eyes etched into my own.
Two short months later I had a family of 12 sons and daughters. We lived those early days out in a premium-priced, bullet-hole ridden shell of a building. No electricity. No running water. Scarcely a latrine. We bathed from buckets and my skin darkened with a tan I knew would eventually wash off.
Within months our family grew to over 50 little lives. And while I have never known physical labor pains, I have known labor and pain, loss and victory. Each child birthed into our family through incredible adversity.
Six years later we have 121 children and over 40 amazing Southern Sudanese staff and Western volunteers on 40 acres of our own land. Just this week it came full circle. I knelt low to catch the gaze of one older daughter who was wondering about her future, her heart still bowed down by her past.
We looked eye-to-eye as I spoke truth soft and straight: “Daughter, family is forever. You can never out grow it. You can never out run it. You will always be my daughter.”
Fresh understanding of the magnitude of what Papa has done these last years choked in my throat, gratitude streaming from my eyes. Again I stared through tears… Right into the face of a promise fulfilled.
All this– a strange canvas for the topic of stillness. But you see, the last six years of gunfire, rebel attacks, cerebral malaria {which I have had some 17 times}, the loss of my children and being surrounded with overwhelming need has been my classroom. It has been the context where I am learning at whole new levels the raw necessity being still and knowing.
Lest our worlds seem irreconcilably different, it isn’t the context of the lesson that is most important. It is learning His lessons in every context we are in that counts. It truly doesn’t matter if you are contending with typhoid or teething, trusting for grace to parent 3 or 123. True, some of our challenges are especially unique to us. But who’s challenges aren’t?
One morning I was stressing the accounts. Numbers were disappearing far faster than they were coming in. Can anyone relate to that? Into my mental gymnastics, Papa whispered softly, “Beloved, these children I have given you– would you invite them into your house only to give them a broom or a mop and tell them to earn their keep?”
I flared indignant at the very thought.
“Well then, neither do I invite you into My house to be my servant wielding a mop, but a daughter knowing she is loved. And if I make My home with you (John 14:24) will I not meet all your needs? You need only to be still and know that I am God. (Psalm 46:10).”
There is a world of difference between living and serving as a loved daughter with full access to her Father’s house and frantically clinging to a mop like a slave trying to prove herself worthy of being in the house at all.
Be still, cease striving, relax, let go and intimately experientially know He IS God. {Alright, I took Hebrew in university and am a bit of a word study geek. Shhh. Our secret, OK?}
What if we did be still and know? Lay down the broom and our need to impress God or win His affection, what then? We already, you already have His affection. What if we just dropped the mop we define our worth by and let the love in His gaze define who we really are?
I am learning in my crazy chaotic life lived between continents: stillness is a state of being, not a state of circumstance. It is practiced intention not perfected execution. And it is absolute grace from beginning to end.
In the middle of a hostile takeover of laundry piles, Mt. Everest sized to-do lists and the hectic pace of family life, there can be a space of grace where we learn to drop the mop of own strength and efforts and lean more fully into His.
In this journey of the last six years, I have found a few practical things incredibly helpful. Perhaps they might be a blessing to you too.
- Look for the “selah spots” in your day when your life’s rhythm slows even marginally. Caught in traffic, children’s nap times, even the rare solo outing to buy groceries. Note when they are and take full advantage of them to turn your attention to God.
- Relentlessly reduce auditory clutter. Turn off the TV and the Wii. Insist on a quiet hour in your day for everyone’s sake. Even if your children no longer need naps, they still need to learn to love stillness. Offer puzzles, books, crayons to keep them occupied. In South Sudan, even our five year olds love our “listening prayer” times where we are quiet together so we can hear heaven. Then they draw what they sensed in the listening. How God speaks to ALL of us through them!
- Don’t bow to the tyranny of the seemingly urgent. Prioritize stillness by giving it your attention and making room for it.
- Model, teach your children the importance of being still so we can know and experience God. Set aside a quiet corner filled with books, pillows, cozy throws, drawing supplies, favorite books, soothing worship music perfect for when your seven year old is in meltdown mode and needs calming. Identify with her in her distress, but then help her move past her storm by showing her how to still so she can know.
When we slow, when we still on the inside is when we most fully come to know Jesus as He is right in the middle of daily life on the outside. And it is in this knowing, this experiencing Him we find all we need for all we face– in South Sudan, the USA or where ever you are reading these letters scratched upon your screen.
So incredible amazing you, my new friend {at least I hope you will be that}, what mop are you holding that is hindering you from experiencing more of Him? How might you carve out space for stillness?
Here’s to unexpected motherhood, selah spots of His presence, grace-saturated moments, and yes, dropping the mop.
His, from the unpaved road– Michele
Word weaver, picture painter, unabashed dreamer, mama to over 120 beautiful sons and daughters: Michele spends her time between continuing to serve her family in South Sudan and pioneering Create 61, a creative community with an Isa. 61 mandate in the USA. She is part of Iris Global founded by Heidi and Rolland Baker, has authored two books {Love Has A Face and An Invitation to the Supernatural Life} and writes regularly at fromtheunpavedroad.com
******************************************************************************************
Was that not a treat? Michele is another of those amazing, true word-picture painters who makes me want to quit writing on bad days because her gift for it is so beautiful! She won’t let me quit, of course. And because she’s such a generous soul, she’s offered a copy of her book for one of my readers! And because it’s so amazing, I am giving out one extra! 
You can enter using the widget below! Just click to share, leave a comment, tweet … Contest ends next Tuesday at midnight!
a Rafflecopter giveaway
