“My father didn’t tell me how to live; he lived, and let me watch him do it.”

~ Clarence Budington Kelland, American author, creator of Scattergood Baines

Amanda has been an unique entity from the time she was born.  She was Miss Independent and had a bit of a sneaky side, (I won’t mention the snack machine debacle of 1990).  I remember when she was around 3, one day mom could not find her car keys any where, we turned the house upside down and they were nowhere.  We were going somewhere and so we went to the car and there they were.  When she turned on the car the radio was on full blast, the a/c was turned all the way up, and windshield wipers were going.  Amanda had decided to play with the keys and had really had a good time in that Buick LeSabre, fake paneled, station wagon (affectionately called the Chuck Wagon by my dad’s youth group).

When she was 5 my mom was baby sitting for a family in our church.  They had a son who was a year older than me and twins, a boy and a girl, a year younger than me.  The boys formed a club in the wooded area behind our house, I was allowed to join because I was the oldest.  My two younger sisters and the twin girl were told they would have to perform some stunt to join.  The stunt?  Jumping off the top of our 8 foot off the ground deck! Sara and Jill declined, Amanda took a flying leap!  The club disbanded after that, because the boys didn’t think she’d really do it.

When she was around 6 she gave her life to Christ.  Really, totally, and has never looked back.  Her identity is in Him.  I know she has struggled with things and things have not always gone the way she wanted or has planned, but she has never doubted God, or at least not that I knew.  She has kept the faith, she’s running the race with everything she’s got.  She could have settled at any point and had a pretty good life.  She could have had the American dream.  But more than she wanted the American Dream, she wants God’s dream for her life.  She is going to live out Ps. 96:3, “Declare His glory among the nations, His marvelous works among all the peoples.”  

Do I want her to go?  Yes! and no.  I love her, and she is one of my greatest friends.  She is one of my biggest supporters and she is who my children will live with if Marty and I die.  (Because I know she will toughen Isaac up and not give in to Lady Annaliese’s diva tendencies!)  She is a fabulous Aunt and they have loved getting to spend the last 8 months with her, their other aunt lives in Texas and they don’t see her as much as I’d like them too.  I didn’t have aunts and uncles close when I was growing up and I desired that for my children.  I will miss her terribly.  But I know, God has great plans for her in Allende. I know that I can trust Him with her.  I know she is going to make His name great.

Bonnie Taylor said at her commissioning that I was someone for her to look up to, but anyone who knows our family knows that that is not true.  Amanda has always been the one to admire, the one to pattern your life after, because she is modeling hers after Jesus.

If you want to follow Amanda’s journey please connect with her on Facebook.

Many of you may not know this, my baby sister is about to go to Mexico to live and work with a missionary family that our home church as been working with for about 14 years.  I am so excited for her, and sad, of course, but excitement definitely outweighs that.

This weekend I went home, to Lexington, where we spent the weekend celebrating my sister.  We had a going away party at my parent’s house Saturday night: a Mexican Fiesta with 50 or so of our closest friends and church family.  I was looking around that night, and thought,  ”Man, this is just perfect.”  Everyone was talking, babies were running around, tons of great food…fellowship at it’s finest!  Another plus, my friend Leslie has a 4 week old and I got lots of snuggle time with little Levi!  My dad was our youth director when I was growing up and a lady who is about 7 years older than me said this is what she remembered from my dad’s time as director; great fellowship.  Hospitality is a spiritual gift of his.  What a great legacy for him to leave, I’m very proud of him!  My mom organized a great party and made sure there was plenty of everything, can you guess her gift?  I’m pretty proud of her too.

Yesterday morning, I went to my home church, Sand Ridge Baptist, to worship with my family.  Let me tell you, I love First Baptist Adamsville, but there is just something about going home.  Seeing familiar faces, noticing the changes, I also ran into another friend of mine, we were close my senior year, when I left town he was a Mormon, but has been faithfully attending Sand Ridge for about 3 months.  It was good to see him and his family as well.  Brother Marty preached a wonderful sermon about working out your salvation and not for it, where he dropped the great line, “Complaining is not a spiritual gift!”  I was gonna use that, until it started convicting me, now I’m thinking I maybe shouldn’t have put it out there for y’all to see!  My friends Scott Diffee and Adam Cook from the band Saul 2 Paul led worship, and really led us into worship.  It was wonderful, to be able to relax and take in for one Sunday and not have to worry about what I or Marty has to do next.

We went home to relax, and the kids got bikes for their birthdays as my dad can’t come to their party next weekend.  That’s gonna be fun, teaching Isaac to ride a bike! (NOT)

Now to the main thing, the commissioning service.  Scott and Adam again led us in worship, thank you guys, it really was wonderful.  And then Brother Marty had 2 people speak.  One was Bonnie Taylor, the mother of Amanda’s best friend, Mandy.  She addressed my mother and praised her for living out Proverbs 31 and teaching us and the women of the church about missions for most of her time as a member of Sand Ridge.  Then my dad’s best friend, Byron Henry, got up to speak.  Byron does not speak in public, Byron does not speak much at all, but when he does you should listen.  Uncle Byron has only been a Christ follower for a few years, but when he got saved, he did the thing.  He repented, believed, and confessed to anyone who would listen.  He spoke about the fact that my dad is who he is all the time, he is a person of integrity.  He’s not perfect, he doesn’t have it all right, but he tries to please his Lord.

Brother Marty then preached to the church from the passage in Acts when Paul is lowered from the city gates of Damascus and from here begins his missionary life.  He encouraged us to be like the ones lowering Paul and to hold the ropes.  We hold the ropes by praying, encouraging, and supporting Amanda.  I love sitting under Dr. Marty Comer’s preaching.  I come away knowing more about Jesus and ready to do something about it!  He then called Amanda to the front, and then our family, and then those who had been to Mexico where she will serve, then the ordained men, and finally the rest of the body to make a circle around the building and we had prayer for her.  In that circle was my parents’ first Sunday School teacher as a married couple, people who rocked us in the nursery, ladies who had gone with us on countless trips, young adults who were under my father’s teaching when they were in youth, and then some that my sister had discipled as a teacher or a chaperone on a trip.  It was a beautiful thing.

The video at the top of this post is Amanda’s theme song for lack of a better word, it played right before we prayed for her.  I ask that you join me in prayer and you can find her on Facebook (Amanda Foley) if you want to follow her journey.

Every now and then, I like to indulge myself with a fantasy.  I sit back in my chair, close my eyes, and I begin to imagine what it would be like to truly “make it”.  To arrive.  I like to try and picture what it would feel like to be finished, with pats on the back and high fives all around.

The honest truth is that my fantasy will stay a fantasy.

The hard truth we have to learn is that none of us ever really make it, never really arrive, and are never really finished.  As believers, we have been given a mission from God.  That mission isn’t over, as much as we wish it could be, until we arrive in Heaven.  That means that until we are there, we are in the prototype stage.  We are unpainted, unfinished works that still require a lot of process to complete.  And, the worst part of it all is that in order to finally finish, to finally make it…..we have to die.

I need to be reminded of this daily.  I have to remember that I’m just like the unpainted prototype, waiting silently to be finished by the hand of the maker.  Oh, there will be revisions.  There will be cuts and trims.  There may even be a return to the drawing board to start over.  But, I’m still the prototype, a placeholder for what will come.

The reality is: I’m unfinished until I leave this life.  My time here is just training for what I wil be.  That day, as I draw my final breath on this earth, I will blink my eyes for the first time in Heaven, and I will be finished.  I will have made it.

I will have arrived.

I was looking around my 1st and 2nd grade room last night and I noticed something.  Out of the 12 we had stuffed into that tiny room (really whoever designed our church was not planning for large classes!) only one of them has parents who are church members, one other attends with her adopted grandmother/neighbor, another was a first time visitor with her parents, that left 9 with essentially no connection to our church whatsoever other than we pick them up from school or home and bring them to church, feed them, and teach them God’s word.  I think it’s great that we are reaching children who possibly have never heard the gospel before, I think it’s great that we’re feeding them a hot meal, I think it’s fabulous that we’re showing them unconditional (sometimes tough) love.

But I got really convicted, some of them I don’t know their parents at all.  Some of them I know their parents, but not really.  Some of them I haven’t even tried to get to know.

But then, I was reading in Acts today in preparation for Bible Study tomorrow, and I got to Acts 10.  The Lord drops a sheet with all these unclean animals on it slaughtered to cook.  And if you know anything about Judaism you know there are certain foods that they are not allowed to eat because of the Laws in the Old Testament.  But God is basically saying, which Jesus said earlier in Mark 7, it’s not what we put into us that makes us unclean, this food is now ok to eat.  Old Peter being a good Baptist, I mean Jew, says “but Lord we’ve never done it this way before,”  and he begins to ponder what the Lord is trying to say to him.  About that time some Gentiles walk up and ask him to come with him to Cornelius, the centurion’s house.  This of course was a big no-no, think blacks and whites hanging out in the south in the 60′s, except Peter eating with a Gentile would have affected his worship as well, he would have been considered unclean.

As I was studying though I found this quote by John Polhill:  It is simply not possible to fully accept someone with whom you are unwilling to share in the intimacy of table fellowship.

This hit me like a brick between the eyes.  How many of these families am I willing to accept into my house.  How many of these children do I sit with on Wednesday nights?  Now, what am I gonna do about it?  But I take it one step further, church, what are we gonna do about it?  I don’t mean instilling another program, I mean personally, what are we gonna do about it.  The Lord’s final  words to us tell us that as we are going to share the gospel and make disciples.  Well, we didn’t even have to go anywhere the Lord has plopped a big load of prospects in our laps.  Let’s not be disobedient.  Let’s eat even if it makes us uncomfortable.  Let’s love even if they’re rowdy.  Let’s get out there and meet their parents so that one day we can be in community with the whole family!

How do you know when God is finished with you?  I’ve always thought that my work for God would be finished when I’m dead, but, hopefully I am far away from that final milestone.  So, I’ve got to try and figure out another angle for figuring this out.  How do you know when God is telling you that your time with someone or something is over?

Is it because they move out of your life?  Is it because something traumatic happens?  Or, is there a way for this to be peaceful?  I ask this because, after ten years at my current church, there just seems to be a different feeling about my work, like I might be moving into a different season.  Sure, I’m older, wiser, and more competent in ministry than I was ten years ago, but how do I discern where my next steps are?  And how do I keep from praying my will above God’s?

These are all questions that I’m wrestling with on a daily basis.  Anyone got any advice, or have you ever been in this situation?

Just five short years ago, I thought my life was over.

I’m going to be honest and admit it: I was a selfish, unlovable person that thought that universe revolved around me.  How I ever ended up married is a mystery.  But, you showed up on April 9th and you changed things.

My world.  My perception of what was important.  My soul.

I never believed people when they would say that because they had children they understood God better.  I just smiled and nodded because I didn’t want children.  The thing is, I NEEDED children.  That need was a lot different than your mother’s need for children.  She had the nurturing instinct, the need to produce and provide.  My need was different in that I didn’t feel the need to produce and provide, but I needed something to save me from myself.  And, by the grace of God, that was you.  Jesus has been using you to save me from myself for five years now.

I honestly can’t believe that I’ve known you for five years.  Time seems to have flown.  Just last night, as you “camped out” at Mimi and Pa’s, I told you mom that it seemed like just yesterday that we sat around the kitchen table, gazing a sleeping little bundle of joy in his car carrier, thankful for the momentary quiet.  You’ve always been a noisy boy, but I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Son, you blow me away.  You are so smart.  You must get that from your mother.  You understand so much.  This past Saturday night, we were at the local mexican restaurant, and I told your mom that Memaw and Pepaw had order you a b-i-r-t-h-d-a-y surprise, and you looked up at me and said “Birthday?!”  I had to scrape my jaw off the floor.  You can write.  You can read!  You can spell.  You’re learning so much.  And I know that’s going to continue.

Your mother and I made the difficult decision this past year to put you in home school.  We believe that this is what the Lord has asked us to do, and that it will be the best education you can have.  I’m praying that God blesses you unbelievably through it.  I know it will be hard, and that it would’ve been much easier to send you to public school, but we have to do what God has asked.

Another way I see you growing is that God is developing such a tender heart in you.  You truly care about people, and words have a powerful effect on you.  You want everyone to be happy, and you chase after that.  You reason with the tenderness that comes from having a heart for people.  I’m praying that God will use that for the nations one of these days, and that He will do great things with you.

This past year has been such an amazing year.  We’ve had so much fun!  I can’t wait to see what another 365 days holds….and if we miss even one of those, for whatever reason, I want you to know just how much I love you.  I never thought it was possible to love someone so much that love felt bitter and painful at times, but that’s how I love you.  You can make me smile or crush my heart with just a turn of your head.  As you grow and get more and more independent, I know that your time as “daddy’s little boy” is fading minute by minute.  So, I will take everyone opportunity to hold you tight, get extra kisses, linger over you at bedtime, and try my best to not take even one minute for granted.

You are a wonder, son, and I love you more and more every day.  Happy 5th birthday, Isaac!!!

Kids are up.  Bunny has come.  Church is imminent.  Ham will be consumed.  Eggs will be found.

But most of all, today, we celebrate a risen Savior and King who endured death and the grave to bring us life.

This morning we claim the promise of these verses from 1 Corinthians 15:

Now when this perishable puts on the imperishable, and this mortal puts on immortality, then the saying that is written will happen,“Death has been swallowed up in victory.” “Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?”

Amen.

So, time to blow the dust off this page and get back to our regularly scheduled programming.  By my accounts, the last time we updated was February 14.  I’d try to tell you that this is because January through May is our busiest season of ministry throughout the year and that we were simply too swamped to get a post typed up, but that would be a lie.  Let’s talk about the real reason for no content being added to the blog:

We’re lazy.

So, in an effort to curb our laziness, we’re going to try and get back to it this week.  With impending youth trips looming on the horizon (Spring Break Mission Trip is next week!) and other things swirling around in our heads, we may not actually jumpstart this page successfully, but we’re going to try!

Check back tomorrow for a REAL post!

‘Nuff said.