Of Unclean Lips

A few weeks ago, I was in a meditation of the word- Daniel 7:13-14, with the key word being “authority”. For those who aren’t familiar with Biblical Meditation, I highly highly recommend watching one of Kirk Bennett’s videos on youtube, they are quick and to the point and it is a life-changing practice.

Anyways, I was walking through this verse with the key word being “authority”. What are you saying about that? What does that mean? Etc etc. And I saw an image of a woman in armor, with the helmet covered in green and red rubies. Each Ruby was a testimony. (Our testimony is our authority, right?) It was like each ruby marked a testing and an overcoming that strengthened this person in a holy way, almost like military badges.

So I continued to talk to Him… what does it look like to walk in that authority? What does it look like to walk in authority every day, long-term, to be steadfast in authority?
And then I asked… what would stop someone from walking in authority?

And you know what he said? “You can’t wear authority and self-pity.”

OoPh. What a word.

And he reminded me of a moment I had to recognize and overcome my own battle with self-pity. A few years ago I was really struggle-bussin, and bitterness and self-pity really got a hold of me. Gosh, it really is a source of death. But you know what? It’s a very common weapon of the enemy and it can be as subtle as a snake.
So, the Lord has been bringing that back to my mind this week as I’ve been fighting some disappointments and then…of course..I walked into service on Saturday morning and what was the sermon on? Self-pity.

I’ll just share one word from that that I really love and summarizes the whole thing pretty well:
“Every time someone hurts us or wrongs us in some way, we have a choice to respond as a victim or as an intercessor. We either focus on what they have done to us that we didn’t deserve, or we can keep our eyes on what God’s done for us… that we didn’t deserve. If we lay down our lives the way Yeshua did, no one has the power to take it from us.”

Bless

Its been a hot minute. This blog has been shut down for a few years and I didn’t realize how far back it went. I thought my first post was “The Sun Also Rises” and that’s the only post I ever really think of, but apparently its older than that.
Anyways, I felt obligated to post something after all of these years. Here’s a note that was sitting on my phone from a few months ago.

– – – – –

Deep down I’m a homebody. I do love to travel. I’ve done a fair share of it and I’ve loved it all, but because of those experiences, if there is one thing I have an abundance of gratitude for, it’s having a home. A safe place. A warm bed to curl into. A lock on my door. Something familiar. A place to come back to when all is said and done. This is something I value more now than ever, so letting go of it this time is scary.

It was fine when I had plans, when I knew what was next and was excited for the future. Now I’m going back to living day by day, living by faith and not by sight, and honestly that’s a really beautiful place to be. But the day has come that I have to let go of my home and the assurance that I will have one. Maybe that sounds dramatic, but every few hours or so the fear reappears. I’m closing the door on this season of life, but I don’t know what’s next, and that panicked voice comes back often- you’re giving up your comfort. You’re giving up your safety. What if you never get it back?

And then I stop and remember His words: “I will bless you ”.

How many times have I prayed these last few months… “What now? What do I do, God? Am I just being selfish? Where do you want me to go?”
His response..

Whatever you do, we’re going to do it together. And I will bless you.

It sounds so sweet.
Fear and anxiety flee.
Hope returns.

I can do anything if He is with me.

– – – – – – – –

We have an urban garden that models how to grow plants in urban settings. My favorite part is the rooftop portion, featuring the “blanket garden bed”. It’s 3 layers of blankets and a thin layer of soil, followed by small concentrated piles of soil where the seeds are planted. And guess what?
Those plants thrive.
It’s incredible.

One day I walked over when I noticed a melon on the the concrete. (We definitely didn’t plant it there.) I went to pick it up thinking it was unattached, but it wasn’t. So I went to place it back where it came from..figuring it was in the dirt bed right next to me. Imagine my surprise when I followed the melon’s vine over…and over….and over…..two. garden. beds. away. That includes the slabs of concrete between both, meaning there was at least 7 feet of space between the birth of this seed and its’ fruit.

I love this.
And I love these garden beds because they show us something really incredible:
Plants want to live. They are fighters. They are fierce.

We just put some seeds in a tiny pile of soil surrounded by concrete and they thrive. Why? Because they want to grow, they were designed to grow, and they reach for any and every nutrient they can get their little seedy hands on to burst forth and live the way they were designed to.

It inspires me.
It reminds me to be fierce.
It reminds me to be optimistic.
It reminds me that life is a gift.

It brings me comfort,
Because I know that truth and purpose is so interwoven in God’s creation.

“I went to the woods because I wanted to live deliberately, I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life…to put to rout all that was not life and not when I had come to die, discover that I had not lived.”
-David Henry Thoreau

Friends, if you woke up this morning: Congratulations. You have been given a new day.
Remember that there are opportunities all around you.
I hope you will grab a hold of them and choose to live.

-Rudy Francisco, HELIUM

Not long ago I was listening to a podcast that called the audience out: “How many of you have been positively affected by someone in your life?” Everyone raised their hand. “How many of you have told them?” Most hands didn’t go back up.
I thought about that speech a lot.

A few weeks later, I found out a former mentor suddenly passed away.
Aside from all of the grief this already comes with, I couldn’t help but be haunted by this one fact: I never told them how much I appreciated them.

Why?

I know why. I was intimidated. I felt small. I didn’t want to be rejected. I didn’t want to embarrass myself. And that hurts to admit now because how silly is that? To rob someone of love and edification because I was insecure.
It’s only in the future we ever seem to realize how trivial our fears really are.

The big picture above was the first thing I wrote in my journal when I got back to my room.
“Awkwardness and rejection is always worth the risk in the pursuit of people.”
Awkward moments and being rejected is ALWAYS worth the risk.
Because beautiful things are rarely born in comfortable places.

I would go back and embarrass myself a hundred times rather than let someone die without knowing they mattered to me. Any possible repercussions of that seem so incredibly trivial now.

People are worth feeling stupid for.
We’re all weird. We all get insecure. We all have awkward moments.
GREAT. So let’s embrace it. Let’s walk right through it, because it’s just on the other side of that weird silence that a relationship is blooming.
And it’s just beyond that weird conversation that someone who is quietly hurting feels visible for the first time.
People are worth trying for.
Don’t worry about what happens next, you can’t always see 10 steps ahead. Back when I started as a youth mentor, I constantly fought the fear of talking to students because I was so afraid of failing them. It was a terrible thorn in my side. Insecurity. Perfectionism. Lies from the enemy. They were always worth the risk.

I challenge you to say goodbye to fear and pride too. To not take yourself so seriously that other people would be robbed of honor, joy, and relationship. Step out this week and take a risk.

As my dear friend Shelby puts it: #peoplareworthit

p.s. If you’d like to hear the talk I referred to earlier go here: and scroll down to listen to Drew Dudley. Or listen to “full show” at the top (highly recommend.)

Lately my “blogging life” has looked a lot like sitting down and starting something that means a lot to me and then walking away. Whether its because something interrupted or just feeling like I can’t intelligibly express anything.

To be fair, these last few weeks have also been pretty tied up. And the fact is, when you live on a farm there is no such thing as making plans. Life is going to do what it’s going to do.

So anyways. I’m just going to talk, because talking looks a lot like being vulnerable and I need to work on that.

This was my day.

I woke up at 6:30am. Laid in bed for 20 minutes thinking how good it would feel to just stay in bed. Walked over to the Koinenea (our kitchen/meeting place) and rang the bell for chores. Off we go-
Milk the goats (20-30 minutes?), feed them and the horse.
on to rabbits,
then ducks and fish and pigs.
Then we get to chicken coup #2 and notice one is dead in the back. Happens every once in a while so didn’t think much of it. Then we notice a couple look injured. Then we notice there’s a gaping square hole in the cage. That’s a problem. Deduce that a raccoon (or maybe something else) may have gotten in. Take all the chicks out (these are halfway between babies and adults) Put them in a traveling cage and head over to our nursery to temporarily move them in there.

“What are the odds that raccoons picked April Fools Day…”

Open the nursery and find 12 baby chicks huddled on the ground together (not in a cage) and dead baby chicks strewn about a cage and on the floor. It was a slaughter. In the time I’ve been here, we haven’t lost any farm animals to wild animals. What are the odds that raccoons picked April fools day to tear them apart?

So I’m a little frustrated at this point. I was disappointed about the first chicken problem because I had made the call to put them in that Orchard the day before which turned out to be a bad call. Victoria had even said something about the condition of the cage and I put them in there anyways.
In addition to that, I didn’t know we had gotten a new batch of chicks yet, so to walk in to the nursery and find them running around freely and mutilated across the ground-  “dumbfounded” is the only word that can describe it.
We start cleaning up the mess and brainstorming where to put everyone etc. The bell rings for breakfast.  I send the crew away to eat their breakfast while I finish sorting things out (I honestly just wanted to be alone at that point).

Finish up that whole thing and head to the kitchen to grab the plate they saved for me (breakfast is over).This is the fun part:

“But they didn’t know that someone had already pulled a prank…”

Someone changed the coffee sugar with salt with the intended joke being: salty coffee. BUT the cooks used the COFFEE sugar jar to bake the pancakes…not only that, the kitchen manager didn’t know that someone had already done a salty prank and decided to salt half of the strawberries and not tell anyone which ones. So basically the breakfast that I missed in exchange for the chick massacre was TERRIBLE. (HA!) So I did not fall prey to the prank that triple pranked itself. Seriously, that was like a light in a stinky dead tunnel. Gave me a good laugh.

After that I took my car in to get some estimates. Met a nice gentleman sitting next to me. Estimates from the car place were WAY better than the last guy. Headed home feeling optimistic. Had a gift card for Dunkin Donuts- grabbed some coffee for me and some friends and went back to H.e.a.r.t.

Let me tell you…I hadn’t had coffee in a while and it must have worked cause we got work DONE after that.

“You can PLAN all you want, but life is going to do what it’s going to do.”

Here’s the thing life…particularly in a village…you can plan ALL YOU WANT. (I said this earlier) but life is going to do what it’s going to do. I had every intention of working on that cage and clearing out a shed. But on my way to do said things, discovered that our aquaponics needed serious help, so I went over to get that squared away. Finished. I’m about to head to the chicken coup when I notice that our lovely new pig’s water situation is not doing so great. Encase you didn’t guess…water is pretty important. So THAT is the priority now.

Evening labs are the most time consuming. It involves the most chores that just take time to get done- Milk the goats and process the milk, cut fodder (fresh greens) for the rabbits and goats, collect eggs and put them away, then the other normal chores- feed and water everything.We get an hour in the evening to do animal chores so everyone splits up to get it done.

Well AINT NOBODY GOT TIME FOR THAT.
We have THINGS to do! There are CAGES that need fixed, PIGS that need a water spout.!..we can’t be spending an hour feeding goats and chickens and stuff…

So I start cutting fodder for the animals and doing whatever chores I can do that early so we have more time during labs. Discover the chickens are low on feed. Could they get through the day? Yes…but probably not the whole weekend and nobody wants to get feed on their day off. SO, I go to the feed store, get enough food for the next week and arrive back in time for labs.

Labs start. By the time milking the goats and feeding everyone is done we have about 30 minutes left. We rally together and brainstorm solutions for pigs water. Students had already started on something- we found the short-term solution for how to use it. Success. Hooray!

Go to dinner (which was 30 minutes late anyways) have some awesome food. Have some awesome fellowship.

Head back out to finish the pig water thing.

Then head to the baby chicks to feed them. Almost forgot because they were moved into the library where we could plug in a heat lamp.

“Why would you still be here if you were never going to make it?”

[So…this is something I didn’t mention earlier. In the morning when I was clearing out the cage, I found a chick that was still alive. He was actually looking pretty ok. Part of me thought he just might make it so I stuck him with the others.]
12 hours later, we go back to the baby chicks to feed them again and that guy is still alive- but not looking so hot. I pick him up to observe and he’s dying.

Now listen. When you have a lot of animals and mamas having babies and this and that and the other thing- death is just part of it. You pretty much know from the get go if something is going to make it or not and it’s just the circle of life and you can’t get all attached and stuff. This guy, I don’t know what it was but I just really wanted him to live. He had already beaten the odds. He was the only chick in there that was hanging on. And 12 hours later he was STILL alive. If he wasn’t going to make it he should have died a long time ago. Right? So I pick him up.

“Then I would be responsible for taking its life…”

He’s for sure dying. He has to be dying. He’s struggling to breath and he won’t open his eyes anymore. But why is he alive? WHY ARE YOU ALIVE? That’s what I kept thinking. HOW DID YOU MAKE IT THIS FAR? Why would you still be here if you were never going to make it? And I knew what my coworker was thinking and what any farmer would think “We need to put it out of its misery.” But I didn’t want to. It’s strange how that works right? I know this chick is probably suffering, but I would rather let it die then be responsible for killing it. And what if it WAS going to live? What if it had a chance? Then I would never know and I would be responsible for taking its life. And I sat there for a long time feeling around for its bones, trying to assess injuries, and I just keep thinking, “Why are you alive? Why did you make it this far if you were going to die anyways?” “Are you supposed to make it?” And I thought of what helplessness feels like. And I thought of all the mothers and nurses who have held children in their arms and had to ask the same questions.  And it’s just a baby chick I know, but it was sad. I was really sad.

So it eventually passed.

I buried him and finished putting the tools away.

I don’t remember what happened after that, but later the village family all got together to watch a movie in the library. I grabbed my homework and sat in the back. That didn’t last though, I wound up playing with Maya (the Tucker’s baby) and then watching the movie.

When the movie was over everyone left and I stayed and started some homework but I realized that I really didn’t want to be alone and I felt like If I didn’t just sit and have a conversation with someone I was going to lose my mind. So I went over to the kitchen. Everyone had gone to bed, but Sierra was still there so we hung out and started talking. Long story short, we stayed up talking until 3:30am. It’s 5:09am right now.

We talked about a lot. I learned a lot of things. I learned some things that were fun and I learned some things that hurt and we had a good night. I really cherish Sierra. I really cherish every one here. If there’s one thing I’m constantly aware of, it’s the blessing that is every person in our community. Every person is so incredible and so special in their own way.

I learned some things that were fun and I learned some things that hurt.

After that I went back to my trailer. My phone is dead and I can’t find my charger anywhere. Walked around the village looking for it to no avail. Couldn’t sleep. And now I’m here. That was my day. The whole thing. I’m sure there’s the little in-betweens, but that’s the general idea.

Now we have tomorrow to get ready for our next trip and Sunday we head out.

So there I did it. Nothing fancy or poetic, just spitting it all out.

Goodnight.