Category Archives: faith

Adoption, advent, faith, Guatemala or Bust, Love Boldly

When Hope Wears Thin

December 4, 2018 RunAndBeStill 2 Comments

The first Sunday of Advent and the lighting of the candle of Hope…but man, hope is currently a scary and dangerous thing. Hope has my heart on the line, risks having it broken in two, risks disappointment, and sometimes it’s just easier, safer certainly, to protect that hurting heart rather than let the candle of Hope burn it to the ground. I am sharing this today because I am certain I am not the only one struggling with a hopeful heart this season.

Five weeks ago on Sunday morning, 5 days into my 2.5 week Guatemalan adventure, a weak warm breeze moved across my face as the ceiling fans twisted and turned, struggling to keep the stuffy, sun warmed air moving. Blanketed by a language I don’t speak, my mind continued to wander back to my very first experience in this place. A phone call made from the bottom of a bunk bed, undecipherable words uttered though broken-hearted sobs. An internal promise made for forever without any idea what that was going to cost, emotionally and spiritually and even less of an idea of what that was going to look like. I am still learning the depths of my heart, the passions it can carry within it. The very essence of who I am continues to be written. I find myself mixed up in something I could have never imagined, and it would be untrue if I said I wasn’t afraid of where God is leading in these flashbacks and passions ignited.

Eighteen days. A long time to be gone but I was blessed with the opportunity to spend this time working and loving and building relationships in what has become my second home. We shared meals, celebrated birthdays, played countless games of UNO and soccer, fumbled through the language barrier, laughed, and cried. Eighteen days I was given the chance to show up at the door of a very special house on the hill, creating memories, giving life to the promises I have made. My momma heart just wants to wrap them all up and level their path, take away their uncertainty of the future.

Take delight in the Lord, and he will give you your heart’s desires. Psalms 37: 4. The verse of the day delivered to my phone bright and early on a Tuesday morning. I am trying so hard to delight in God. I am rolling up my sleeves and making this my job, delight, worship, praise. I know this is what you do in the in-between, in the waiting. As for the desires of my heart, I was again reminded on this morning that none of this was my idea in the first place but now it feels like it is literally breaking my heart. I am broken because of the desires that I fully believe God placed there.

For the last month my right eye has had this fantastic little twitch and two weeks ago I found myself in a completely ridiculous argument that ended with a complete meltdown (think toddler tears and snotty nose) on my part, not at all comparable in magnitude or topic to the disagreement that brought it on. I just want to go back to feeling like me, except not really either because I LOVE THIS KID and I wouldn’t undo that for anything. But I can’t figure any of this out. How it works, when (IF?) he can come home. And anyone who could help, tells us the same thing, there are no adoptions happening between the US and Guatemala. EXCEPT I KNOW GOD IS MOVING AND THERE IS LIGHT IN THIS TUNNEL NO MATTER WHAT THEY SAY!!! So this is where it gets messy.

Hope. This first Sunday of advent. I identify with the words of Ann VosKamp and Jason Hague,

How do you hope unlikely things because you love someone to death?

We all need to believe that things can change.

Sometimes believing in a miracle feels like living in a mirage. You can feel like a fool, walking around with your pitcher. Really, God? Really?

YES! I have asked God that, a lot lately. REALLY?! And every letter I have sent out seeking answers has been like seeking water in a mirage.

It seemed to me I had two choices: I could either live in perpetual sadness, or I could lower my level of hope.

Living in this land of the unknown, the waiting, the land of unanswered prayer, your heart throbs, maybe with anger, maybe with hurt, but almost certainly with disappointment.

Yes! Everyday, my heart carries with it the burden of helplessness. I feel crazy and that pendulum can swing from righteously crazy to flat out delusional. Crazy. My orderly, logical mind, struggles everyday with seeing the way, seeking an answer, continuously chasing it’s proverbial tail.

But, I know. Faith in things unseen. Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. (Hebrews 11:1)

I know that when Noah built the ark he had never seen rain but he picked up his hammer in obedience. Can these stories be true for me? Today? Am I grasping at Biblical straws?

We are building an ark, actually it’s a bedroom, but if we are going to have faith in things hoped for and live in what we believe to be obedience, then we need to be ready for another child. So, in what some days feels like insanity, hammers are being picked up.

For we walk by faith, not by sight. (2 Corinthians 5:7)

In the land of unanswered prayer, we follow His lead.

The Lord taught me how to sigh in pain, how to weep in gladness, and how to trust during days of hope deferred.

It was not an easy road to walk. It still isn’t easy, and it isn’t safe.

Rather, it is a confounding country full of myths and mirages. Here, faith resembles denial, settledness looks like surrender, and hope is the scariest creature of all.

We (Mae, J and I) had the gift of sharing a “normal” day together during our last visit. An opportunity to spend the day together in Antigua (his first time,) breakfast at one of our favorite places and shopping in the marketplace. The opportunity (and struggle) for him to pick something out for himself. And lunch at his choice of places, McDonalds, where we ate ice cream first. Life is short…eat dessert first! The gift that these few hours were, not just for him, but for me as well, to watch these two together, knowing what my heart longs for, having a peek into what life could look like, the day was as beautiful as it was heartbreaking. This is a day you relive over and over and over.

In July I began a mantra. Every letter, every visit, I make sure to remind him, as much as myself, what we know to be true. This has become the rudder of our relationship as the months have passed and I believe that he is maybe, hopefully, finally trusting the truth in the words. How many promises has his heart held, only to be broken? These words, our promise to him, have to be lived out continuously though our actions because without that they are empty, they are worth nothing.

We are a family. We don’t look like a normal family but God creates all sorts of families and we belong to each other, all five of us.
I promise I will be back – forever and always. I will always come back.
God has a plan and we can trust it. (This one I must remind myself of, as much as him. It is so hard to see the hurt and not be able to fix it in the way that my heart longs to. As much as I love him, God loves him even more. I know that in my helplessness and disappointment over every passing day I need to lean into God as the sovereign one, trusting He knows best. Comfort at the foot of our Savior. I know this, and it terrifies my heart, because what if…)

Everytime, in both English and Spanish…Somos una familia, volveré, lo prometo, y Dios tiene un plan y podemos confiar en él.

It’s the first Sunday of Advent. Hope candles are lit everywhere.

God is giving you Hope.

Hope — for you.

Christ who comes to give us the gift every one wants more than anything — a future and a hope.

And my prayer must be, “I believe; help my unbelief!” (Mark 9:24).

Postscript- I stumbled across an old post, apparently I have been here before, just not with the same passionate desire. I could say that the life situation that birthed this post also birthed the one I find myself in today. Be encouraged by these words written in 2015 if you are struggling with hoping in the impossible today. Today, I feel an even closer connection to Sarah. I understand better what the longing and waiting for a child can do to a mother’s heart. Laughing along with Sarah…

faith, family

Tomorrow We Celebrate

August 6, 2016 RunAndBeStill 1 Comment

Ok. Seriously. Enough is enough. I am crying Uncle. I am done. Exhausted. Disjointed as it may be here goes…

My plans for this week: Prepare for the Do Good Marketplace event that was supposed to be today.

My reality: doctors appointments, multiple rounds/days of tests capped off by another trip to the hospital. The dehydration from last week had come back to bite us.

First thing this morning, after staying up deep into the night getting everything ready for The Studio sale which was not to be we got a call from Ty’s doctor. He asked that we take Ty to the ER ASAP as the test results from yesterday were marginally worse with declining kidney function and off the chart protein numbers indicating muscle breakdown. He needed to be seen and soon! The doctor prepared us for the reality that he would probably be admitted. Long story short, by the grace of God Ty is home this afternoon without any restrictions. I can’t even tell you the swing of emotion that has taken place in the span of 12 hours.

This has been a week of halting stops and starts, highs and lows. (In the midst of all of this today I got notification that Love Runners 501(c)(3) was approved. We are officially an operating non-profit!) I was attacked this week at one of my most vulnerable spots, my kids, and I am feeling the after effects of that strain this afternoon like a bad hangover.

Yet there is so much to celebrate and be thankful for this evening. The celebrations will have to wait until I am a little more energetic though. (As will the cleaning of the extreme mess I made of our family room last night. It looks like the Do Good goods exploded all over it-which they kind of did.)

I feel like every obstacle has taken a piece of me this week. And the trusting in waiting is so hard when you want answers and action. Watchman Lee nailed this for what it is.

“Satan has, in fact, a plan against the saints of the Most High, which is to wear them out. What is meant by this phrase, “wear out?” It has in it the idea of reducing a little this minute, then reducing a little further the next minute. Reduce a little today, reduce a little tomorrow. Thus the wearing out is almost imperceptible; nevertheless, it is a reducing. The wearing down is scarcely an activity of which one is conscious, yet the end result is that there is nothing left. He will take away your prayer life little by little and cause you to trust God less and less and yourself more and more, a little at a time. He will make you feel somewhat cleverer than before. Step by step, you are misled to rely more on your own gift, and step by step, your heart is enticed away from The Lord. Now, were Satan to strike the children of a God with great force at one time, they would know exactly how to resist the enemy since they would immediately recognize his work. He uses the method of gradualism to wear down the people of God.”
Today I am going to allow myself the day off (maybe even take a nap, gasp!) and allow God to begin fortifying the areas that Satan has been wearing thin.

Tomorrow we celebrate!

Encouragement, faith, family

When The Alarm Does (or Doesn’t) Go Off

August 4, 2016 RunAndBeStill 2 Comments

packyourbags A door downstairs flew open, jarring me from my peaceful sleep. “Oh NO! What time is it?!” Fumbling for my phone to check the time I see that we had already overslept an hour. I was tumbling out of bed, down the stairs, asking “What do you need?” while gathering socks, Gatorade, and miscellaneous lunch items. This poor grown child looked at me with terrified, sleep filled eyes and said “This has to be a nightmare!”

Football two-a-days. This is a taboo phrase in our house. Not to be spoken aloud, basically like a four-letter word times four (so you know it’s really, really bad!) If you have had any part in them ever, the memory will stay with you eternally. So, when the alarm didn’t go off at 4:55 for the first time or 5:05 for the second time, we slept until the 10th phone call woke my blissfully unaware son at 6:00. Thus inducing the Fear Of Coach panic that flooded each of us. He was out the door in record time and I collapsed into a chair after and remember these words from two years ago during the same season of life …

We had spent the day at the ballpark watching a double header and our friends’ son in his Major League pitching debut. However, with all of the poster-making, jumbo-tron dancing, hot dog eating excitement of the afternoon it wasn’t until we were on our way home (at 10:30 pm) that I realized I still had two pair of football pants that needed to be washed (spray the Shout, scrub the stains, wash, rinse, repeat if necessary) and more importantly dry by the wee hours of the morning. Fun has a price. So, while I waited on the washing machine to do it’s thing, I thought, “You should pack Ty’s lunch. You will thank yourself in the morning when all you have to do is roll out of bed, grab a coffee, and head out the door.” I also searched out socks (why does this always seem to be the one missing item?) and had his football bag otherwise packed and ready to go because I knew neither of us would be functional this morning. And I was right. And I did thank myself. On my drive back home from the football field as the coffee began to work and my brain began to wake up I had a thought. I remembered something I had heard a very long time ago and thought it was a great reminder for all of us. I was as true then as it is now!

You have to live ready.

Tomorrow may be a good day or tomorrow may be a nightmare. Will you be ready? Is your faith something you are building and strengthening everyday? Is your relationship with Jesus something you are nurturing? Or, are these just things that get dusted off, possibly on Sunday, and otherwise left alone only to be unpacked In Case Of Emergency. Are you waiting for “tomorrow” to explore this Jesus-thing a little bit deeper? If this is where you find yourself, please, wake up!

When the alarm goes off (hopefully when it is supposed to) at 5am after too few hours of sleep, is your bag packed? Do you have clean matching socks and a lunch or are you scrambling to pull it together? We have to live ready because we don’t know when the crisis alarm is going to go off. We don’t get a notification in the mail that says, next month you will be diagnosed with a life-altering disease, please plan accordingly. We don’t receive a call that says, please make sure you have appropriate clothing you will be attending a funeral next week. (Maybe yours? I am sorry. That is harsh but it is also reality.) Ready or not, here it comes, with no warning.

We have to live ready! We need to use and strengthen our “faith muscles” every day because if we wait until crisis strikes they will be sluggish and sleepy when we need them most. We will have to dust our faith off and hope that we remember how to work it. It is so very easy to let our faith and relationship with Jesus rest in hibernation, only to be awakened in crisis.

This is a slippery slope. I know. I have been there. I grew up in a solid Christian home, was involved in church. We were bringing our children up to love and fear the Lord. I thought I got it. Then God let me really have it! Oh, foolish proud heart. I have realized that I had nothing without Him. I am nothing without Him.

The problem with crisis is that we don’t know when the alarm is going to go off. When crisis strikes, your brain tends to go into default mode. So what is your default? You want live ready? Nurture your relationship with God. If you don’t have one, start one! If you don’t know how, ask me, I would love to help you figure this out. Dig into His Word for nourishment, spend time in prayer, communicating with our Father. Listen for His voice instead of just talking at Him. I don’t have all the answers. There is not an Easy 5 Step Plan For Readiness but we can stumble and bumble through this together. There are some things you will never be ready for but with faith you can survive them with hope for a better day ahead. The point is, don’t wait.

I can remember playing Parcheesi with my son and mom, 8 years ago at least. In the spirit of competition there was a little smack-talk going on and my son looked at my mom and told her, “Pack your bags your going home!” This my friends, is great advice, pack your bags. Live ready. You’ll thank yourself in the morning.

100 box challenge, chirstmas child, christmas giving, faith

Spreading Love with Toothpaste and Pencils

October 2, 2015 RunAndBeStill Leave a comment

Good News! Great Joy! Operation Christmas Child- have you heard of it? Operation Christmas Child delivers great joy to millions of children around the world throughout the year through shoeboxes lovingly and prayerfully packed with gifts that will bring delight to a child. In the hands of local churches, every gift-filled shoebox is a powerful tool for evangelism and discipleship—transforming the lives of children and their families around the world through the Good News of Jesus Christ! After receiving shoebox gifts, many boys and girls are invited to enroll in The Greatest Journey, their 12-lesson discipleship program where children learn what it means to faithfully follow Christ and share their faith with others. These small shoeboxes are making an unbelievably big impact.

As a family, we have packed shoeboxes for going on 5 years now. As a family, I wanted the four of us to go hear from a shoebox recipient last Sunday night. And, as a family, we left that evening changed. Each of us in turn having our hearts affected by the message that we heard. Each of us walking away with an urgency to do more.

I sat with tears clouding my vision as I heard story after story of how God is working through something as simple as a shoebox gift, something I had done selfishly because it made me feel good, something that I didn’t really understand until last Sunday. We heard stories of children with nothing who are experiencing a gift for the first time. Children who are excited to receive, as a gift, things we take for granted, soap and washcloths, a pair of socks, a comb. This is how God is using toothpaste and pencils to make an eternal impact.

We heard stories like this one…

A 9 or 10 year old little girl in Mexico was patiently waiting as box after box came though the hands of the volunteers delivering them, but not one for her particular age. They kept telling her they had a box for her, they just had to find it. When they finally found “hers” she opened it and sat stunned. They thought something was wrong as she sat holding a picture of the family that had sent the box. When they asked her what was wrong she pointed to the little girl in the picture and said, “I know her.”

“Honey, you can’t know her,” they replied. “She lives in Alabama.”

“No, I know her. We lived in Alabama for a year and I went to school with her.”

This is real! This happened! God is directing these boxes!

We sat and listened to how a Pastor in the Philippines built his church in four days so that the children would have someplace to gather as the boxes were handed out. Single handedly built a church in FOUR days! And then, after the boxes were handed out and opened, instead of leaving, the children continued to sit in the middle of this church floor with their parents and families lining the walls around them. No one moved, no one left, and the Pastor kept sharing the gospel, and out of a shoebox, packed across the globe, a church was born.

I would invite you to read the story of Timur, last Sunday’s featured speaker. I won’t try to sum up his story in just a paragraph other than to share this sentiment from him with you. “Through the shoebox I felt loved. Someone took the time to put in those items that became my favorites. I wondered a lot how Christians who didn’t know me were willing to give me a gift.” This was a child who would sneak to the bathroom in the orphanage at midnight to read the Bible because that was the only safe place and time to do it, a child who’s life was changed by a box!

Last year Samaritan’s Purse sent 10.5 million boxes to children across the world and through these boxes 1 million of them have come to know Jesus as their personal savior. This year, they are projecting that, directly through this program, 1.5 million children will come to know Jesus. That is 4,000 children every day as a direct result of such a small act of giving on our part.

And then I heard this story….In one particular village they had brought 250 boxes to be passed out in the local church. As they were passing out the boxes they noticed, though the cracks in the wall, little brown eyes. You see, these were the children on the outside, the ones who weren’t invited in because there weren’t enough boxes. These were the little ones to whom they had to say, I am sorry. We don’t have enough. And this…this is a story, this is an image, that I can’t get out of my head, let alone my heart.

Please, please, please won’t you partner with me, with my family, and as we try to make sure that no child is left on the outside looking in? Let’s band together and see if we can sponsor just 100 boxes. This is a beautiful picture of our story, being linked through a shoebox gift, to the story – to the life – of a child across the world.

Here’s how you can be involved and help us reach this goal:

Shop! This is the fun part, and was always a great family activity/adventure. The Dollar Store is a great first stop for small toys, hair accessories, and toiletries. Multipacks of anything are always good because they can be broken down and split among multiple boxes. Here are some detailed shopping guidelines.

Locally, on Sunday, November 15 we are going to be hosting a packing party (watch for coming details on the where and when.) We would love to have you join us to help assemble and prepare these boxes for their final destinations around the world. If you are unable to join us and have items you would like included in this year’s boxes let me know. I will be happy to come and get them.

Please also consider donating to have a box shipped. The cost is $7 per box and we will be tracking where each of our boxes end up.

In addition, you can cover the cost of filling a box and shipping it ($25 tax deductible donation) through the Operation Christmas Child site using the email address ashley.cunningham@yahoo.com. We will be sure to share what the boxes were filled with.

Finally, and most importantly, PRAY. Prayer is what is fueling the amazing work that is being accomplished through this simple act of giving in the name of Jesus.

If you have any questions or want to have your own packing party, please let me know! Box by box we can change the world, and become part of a kingdom building movement. Let’s do this!