Chapter one of Awe: The Re-Imagined Tattoo

 I was about sixteen when darkness began to feel strangely familiar to me.

I was struggling in ways I didn’t know how to name. I was suicidal. I cut myself. I drank. And before meth addiction would eventually become part of my story, I found myself fascinated by spiritual things I did not understand.

At the time, I called it Wicca. Looking back through the lens of my Christian faith, I understand that season very differently. I was reaching into spiritual darkness while having no idea just how desperately my soul was searching for something transcendent.

I practiced calling the corners. I focused on the elements. I experimented with spells and different forms of divination. I was fascinated by the idea that there might be something beyond what I could see—another realm, another reality, something spiritual just beyond the veil of the physical world.

The irony is that I was right about that part.

There was more.

I was simply looking for it in the wrong place.

Then one night, I had a dream.

In the dream, I saw a specific symbol—a symbol I believed represented the spiritual world I had become involved in. It was so vivid and so compelling that when I woke up the next morning, I drove to a tattoo shop and had the symbol permanently inked onto my body.

I thought I understood what I was doing.

I thought I knew what the symbol meant.

But sometime later, I was at my parents’ house and showed my mom my newest tattoo. She looked at it and then disappeared into my old bedroom.

When she returned, she was carrying a Bible.

It was the Bible my grandmother had given me when I was about seven years old.

And there, printed on its spine, was my tattoo.

The symbol I had dreamed about—the symbol I had permanently placed on my body believing it represented my commitment to darkness—was staring back at me from the spine of a Bible I had owned since childhood.

It was a symbol of the Holy Trinity.

Father.

Son.

Holy Spirit.

Even now, there is something about that moment that leaves me in awe.

Long before I understood grace, grace was there.

Long before I was searching for God, I believe God was searching for me.

Long before I knew enough theology to call it prevenient grace, I was experiencing the mystery of it: the grace of God that goes before us. The God who moves toward us before we ever think to move toward Him.

I had gone searching for mystery in darkness, and somehow, mysteriously, God met me there and pointed me back toward Himself.

That tattoo is still on my body.

It is small. It is faded. And, aesthetically speaking, it is terrible.

I have almost had it redone half a dozen times.

But I can never quite bring myself to change it.

Because that imperfect little mark has become sacred to me—not because there is anything magical about the ink itself, but because of what it reminds me of.

It reminds me that there was a time when I thought I was marking myself for darkness while God was already writing a different story.

It reminds me that I did not have to understand Him for Him to love me.

I did not have to recognize Him for Him to be near.

I did not have to clean myself up, find the right theology, say the right prayer, or somehow stumble my way back into the light before He would come looking for me.

Romans 5:8 says that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

While we were still.

There is mystery in those words.

God did not wait for me on the other side of my darkness.

He entered it.

And when I think about that sixteen-year-old girl now—the one searching for something spiritual, something powerful, something beyond herself—I sometimes wish I could sit beside her and tell her:

You are right. There is more.

There is a spiritual reality greater than what your eyes can see.

There is mystery.

There is wonder.

There is a God who cannot be contained by the boundaries of your understanding.

But you do not have to summon Him.

You do not have to manipulate the spiritual world to find Him.

You do not have to know the right words.

He is already near.

And maybe that is one of the greatest mysteries of grace: sometimes we spend our lives believing we are searching for God, only to look back and realize that God had been pursuing us all along.

Even in the wilderness.

Even in addiction.

Even in rebellion.

Even when darkness seemed to surround me on every side, there was a God who had already stepped into darkness Himself.

He hung on a cross beneath a darkened sky.

He entered suffering.

He entered death.

And He did it for sinners who had not yet learned to look for Him.

For me.

And for you.

That little tattoo still reminds me of something I couldn't understand at sixteen:

I thought I had chosen a symbol.

But every time I look at it now, I remember the God who had already chosen to come looking for me.

Awe and Wonder: the book

 This  most recent book is one that I began on over a decade ago when I began to notice things happening around me that had no real explanation, or atleast not in the human realm. Once it happened once, I began to notice it more and more. Soon, I was writing these chapters as blog entries in what I hoped would publish someday. These are the stories. 

One thing that I believe is that so often, we try to put God in a box. I know that I grew up hearing the stories about how God parted the red sea for Moses, or made walls fall around Jericho; but many times, I admit that the "Big G God" operated in such a place of awe and wonder that when given stories about the not-so ordinary everyday occurrences that might happen on the playground or even at an intersection of a light, God's brilliance could be seen in the daily instances of our lives. 

As I share these stories, my hope is that you will begin to notice how God is a great communicator, and not just when he parts the seas or makes bushes burn; but also when he allows us to see him in the ordinary days of our lives. I pray that this book takes God out of that box and places him in the grand cosmos of his creation where the depth of his existence can't be contained. 

1 Corinthians 4:24

A person should think of us in this way; as servants of Christ and managers of the mysteries of God. In this regard, it is required that managers be found faithful. 

Chapter 10: The Man with the Puppy

 He was one of those people you don't forget once you meet him.

I heard his voice before I really noticed anything else.

It was rough and gravelly, the kind of voice that sounded like life had worn against it for years.

But underneath the gruffness was something gentle.

He spoke carefully.

Kindly.

And most days, he carried a tiny puppy tucked inside his coat.

You wouldn't always see her at first.

Every now and then, a little nose would poke out between the folds of his jacket before

disappearing again into the warmth of his chest.

He protected that little dog like she was all he had left in the world.

And maybe she was.

His wife had died less than three months before I met him.

He talked about her often.

It didn't take long to realize how much of his life had disappeared when she did.

Some people lose a spouse and lose the person they love.

Others lose the person who helped hold their whole world together.

He seemed to be grieving both.

When we first met, he was living out of an old truck.

It wasn't much, but it gave him somewhere to sleep. Somewhere to keep the few things he had.

Somewhere that little puppy could curl up beside him at night.

Then the truck broke down.

And when it did, he walked away from it.

No tow truck.

No repairs.

No backup plan.

He simply gathered what he could carry and kept going.

That's how quickly the little stability he had disappeared.

Then one afternoon, I got a call about a blind woman who had been abandoned outside of town.

By the time we finally got her to the shelter, she was terrified.

She couldn't see her surroundings.

She didn't know the building.

She didn't know where anything was.

She was completely dependent on other people to help her navigate a place she'd never been.

And then something happened that I haven't forgotten.

The man with the puppy began taking care of her.

The man who barely had anything himself.

The man whose wife had just died.

The man whose truck had broken down.

The man who didn't have a home.

He noticed her.

He would let her hook her arm through his and slowly guide her through the building.

“There's a step here.”

“Doorway.”

“Watch your foot.”

At mealtime, he'd fix her plate before he fixed his own.

Then he'd carefully put it in front of her so she wouldn't have to reach around trying to find it.

Nobody assigned him that job.

Nobody asked him to do it.

He just did.

I remember watching him and thinking about how badly we misunderstand people.

Someone could have walked into that shelter, looked at him, and immediately decided what they

were seeing.

A homeless man.

A grieving man.

A man with nowhere to go.

A man who needed help.

And all of those things would have been true.

But they wouldn't have been the whole truth.

Because I was watching a gentleman.

I was watching someone whose own life was falling apart make sure another person didn't have

to be afraid.

He needed help.

And he was helping.

Both things were true at the same time.

Eventually, he stopped coming around as much.

That happens in this work.

People disappear.

Sometimes they find another place to go.

Sometimes they enter a program.

Sometimes they relapse.

Sometimes they move.

And sometimes you simply don't know.

You learn to live with unfinished stories.

For a while, his was one of them.

Then one day, I heard a familiar voice.

That gravelly voice.

I turned the corner expecting to see the man I remembered.

But the person standing there looked different.

Healthier.

Steadier.

There was life in him again.

He had entered a program and was close to graduating.

And that wasn't all.

They had offered him a job.

They had also offered him a place to stay onsite afterward.

He had somewhere to go.

Something to do.

A future.

I can still remember the look on his face when he told me.

Hope looks different when you've seen someone without it.

He hugged me that day.

And I mean hugged me.

We both cried.

He talked about everything he had survived.

Everything he had lost.

Everything God had carried him through.

And over and over he kept saying,

“God sent me to the Ministry Center.”

“You guys saved my life.”

I understood what he meant.

But I've thought about those words many times since.

Because I'm not sure the helping went only one direction.

He changed us too.

Takeaway

One of the easiest mistakes to make in ministry is assuming we know who the helper is.

We think it's us.

We're the ones with the food.

The resources.

The office.

The phone numbers.

The connections.

The programs.

So naturally, we must be the helpers.

And the person walking through the door must be the one who needs helping.

Then somebody like the man with the puppy comes along and messes up all those categories.

Because yes, he needed help.

He was grieving.

Homeless.

His transportation was gone.

His life had come apart.

But then a blind woman arrived who was frightened and vulnerable, and he saw her.

Before himself.

He guided her through the building.

He fixed her food.

He helped her navigate unfamiliar spaces.

He became safety for someone else while he was still looking for safety himself.

I'll never forget that.

Because it taught me something I desperately needed to learn:

Need does not erase what a person has to give.

We sometimes look at people in crisis and see only what is missing.

No home.

No job.

No transportation.

No money.

No stability.

But human beings are not lists of deficits.

A person can need help and still be helpful.

A person can be grieving and still comfort someone else.

A person can be homeless and still be a gentleman.

A person can have almost nothing and still be generous with what remains.

Sometimes what remains is kindness.

Sometimes patience.

Sometimes strength.

Sometimes it's simply an arm for a frightened woman to hold onto while she walks down a

hallway she cannot see.

That matters.

I've learned that ministry gets unhealthy when we always place ourselves above the people

we're serving.

When we're always the giver and they're always the receiver.

That's not relationship.

And it's certainly not the way I've experienced this work.

The people who have walked through our doors have taught me.

Prayed for me.

Made me laugh.

Frustrated me.

Changed my mind.

Challenged my faith.

Shown me generosity.

And sometimes they've demonstrated the love of Jesus better than I did.

The man with the puppy did that.

He didn't have to preach a sermon.

He fixed a woman's plate.

He gave her his arm.

He told her where the steps were.

Sometimes that's what love looks like.

Then, sometime later, I got to see another side of his story.

He came back.

Healthy.

Working toward graduation from a program.

Offered a job.

Offered a place to live.

Hopeful.

I love that part of the story.

But I don't want his eventual success to become the thing that proves he was valuable all along.

He didn't become worthy when he got healthy.

He didn't become worthy when somebody offered him a job.

He didn't become worthy when housing became possible.

He was worthy when he was living in the truck.

He was worthy when the truck broke down.

He was worthy when everything he owned could be carried with him.

His restoration didn't create his dignity.

It simply gave the rest of us another opportunity to see what had been there all along.

I think that's one reason God has used this work to change me so much.

I entered ministry thinking I would spend my life helping people.

I didn't understand how many of those people would help shape me.

The line between “us” and “them” gets awfully thin when you actually know people's names and

stories.

Eventually, you realize there really isn't an us and a them.

There are just people.

People who sometimes need to be carried.

People who sometimes do the carrying.

And most of us, if we live long enough, will be both.

I'll always remember that gravelly voice.

I'll remember the little nose sticking out of his coat.

I'll remember him walking beside a blind woman with her arm wrapped through his.

And I'll remember what he told me when he came back:

“You guys saved my life.”

Maybe.

But that's only half the story.

He gave something back long before he had anything to give.

Chapter 9: The Preacher With a Cane

Chapter 9: The Preacher with a Cane

There are some people who enter your life like folklore.

Rough.

Raw.

Unforgettable.

He was one of them.

He grew up in the same town I did, but his version of it looked very different from mine.

He remembered segregated schools.

He remembered land that had once belonged to his family being sold off piece by piece until

nothing remained.

And he remembered Vietnam.

Not just the uniform.

The war.

The bullets.

The things he survived.

By the time I met him, the streets had worn deep lines into his face.

He had become something of a local legend among the homeless population downtown.

Everybody knew him.

Especially law enforcement.

He slept on a pallet near the square, usually with one eye open. He had learned to protect

himself because he'd had to. People had jumped him before. Beaten him. Mocked him.

And if you got too close without warning, there was a decent chance his cane might find your

shin before your words found his ears.

But he loved me.

And honestly?

I loved him right back.

I'd pull up beside him in my car, and his whole face would light up.

He rarely asked where we were going.

He'd just get in.

Sometimes we'd go get a burger.

Sometimes we'd check his mail.

Sometimes we'd just ride.

Windows cracked.

Blues playing on the radio.

No particular hurry to get anywhere.

Wherever we went, it was usually an adventure.

And I was always glad he let me come along.

He could be rough.

He could be defensive.

He could make people nervous.

But I knew another side of him.

I knew the man who sang old hymns.

I knew the man who laughed.

I knew the man who could sit in my passenger seat with the blues playing and, for a little while,

just enjoy the ride.

Then one winter morning, I got the call.

They had found him outside.

His face was frozen to the concrete.

His body temperature was barely eighty degrees.

His pulse was almost undetectable.

And somehow, he was still alive.

I raced to the hospital.

Day after day, I went back.

Some of the nurses seemed unsure of him. Some were frustrated. Some seemed a little afraid.

I understood why.

If you only met his defenses, you could misunderstand him pretty quickly.

“He's not dangerous,” I told them. “He's just been hurt more than most of us can understand.”

I wanted them to see what I saw.

Not just the cane.

Not just the roughness.

Not just the homeless man brought in after nearly freezing to death.

I wanted them to see him.

A veteran.

A survivor.

A man who had lived through things I hadn't.

A man who had been hurt by people and still somehow got up and sang old gospel songs like

heaven was close enough to hear him.

Eventually, he recovered enough to be released to an assisted living facility.

I was hopeful.

Maybe this was it.

Maybe he could finally rest.

Sleep somewhere warm.

Be cared for.

Have a little peace.

Then we arrived.

The staff member handling his intake looked at me and said flatly,

“What do they expect me to do with these homeless people?”

I bit my tongue so hard it hurt.

I wanted to say a lot of things.

Instead, I looked at her and said:

“He's not a case. He's a man. A veteran. A survivor. A brother in Christ. He sings the old gospel

songs better than anyone I've ever heard. Give him a chance—you'll see.”

She didn't say much after that.

But I saw something in her face soften.

Maybe she heard me.

I hope she did.

Because he was never just “one of these homeless people.”

He was himself.

Rough.

Unpolished.

Blunt.

Funny.

Defensive.

Faithful in ways you might not notice if you didn't stay around long enough.

There was something about him that reminded me of gospel music coming through an old radio

speaker.

A little gravel.

A little static.

But beautiful if you were willing to listen.

Takeaway

The world usually met his defenses before it met him.

I didn't.

Or maybe I did, but I stayed around long enough to see what was underneath them.

That's the difference.

It's easy to meet someone after decades of hardship and judge the person standing in front of

us without knowing anything about what it took for them to get there.

By the time I knew him, he had lived through things I had not.

He had known segregation.

War.

Homelessness.

Violence.

Cold.

He had learned to sleep lightly.

He had learned to protect himself.

He had learned not to assume everybody coming toward him had good intentions.

Then we looked at the result of all that surviving and called him difficult.

That doesn't mean every behavior was acceptable.

Sometimes it wasn't.

That cane was real.

So were the boundaries people needed around him.

But I've learned that understanding why someone became hard is different from excusing

everything they do.

Compassion and boundaries can live in the same room.

So can dignity and accountability.

I didn't have to pretend he was easy to love in order to love him.

And I didn't need him to become polished before I could recognize what was beautiful about

him.

I think about all those rides.

I don't remember most of where we went.

That's funny to me now.

At the time, I'm sure whatever errand we were running seemed important.

But that's not what stayed with me.

I remember his face lighting up when I pulled over.

I remember him getting in.

I remember the windows cracked.

I remember the music.

I remember companionship.

Maybe that's what he needed sometimes.

Not another person trying to fix him.

Just somebody willing to ride beside him for a while.

Then I think about the assisted living facility.

“What do they expect me to do with these homeless people?”

These homeless people.

There it was again.

A category where a name should have been.

I had heard versions of it before.

I would hear versions of it again.

But by then, I knew him.

So I couldn't hear “homeless person” and stop there.

I knew too much.

I knew there was a veteran underneath that label.

A storyteller.

A survivor.

A man who loved music.

A man who sang hymns.

A man who had scared a few people with a cane.

A man whose face lit up when his friend pulled over to pick him up.

A whole person.

That's what proximity does.

It makes stereotypes harder to maintain.

It's easy to have an opinion about “the homeless.”

It's harder when the homeless man has a name.

When you've heard him laugh.

When he's sat in your passenger seat.

When you know which songs he likes.

When you've stood beside his hospital bed wondering if he's going to live.

When you love him.

Jesus was constantly getting close to people others had already categorized.

And the closer I get to people, the more I understand why.

Distance lets us simplify people.

Love doesn't.

Love makes us learn their stories.

It makes us hold contradictions.

It makes room for the fact that someone can be difficult and deeply loved at the same time.

That someone can carry a cane for protection and still sing hymns.

That someone can need boundaries and companionship.

That someone can be rough around the edges and still reflect the image of God.

He taught me that.

The preacher with the cane.

I don't remember every place we drove.

But I remember the sound of the blues coming through the speakers.

I remember that weathered face beside me.

And I remember being grateful that, for whatever reason, he trusted me enough to get in the car.

Sometimes ministry looks like helping someone find housing.

Sometimes it looks like sitting beside a hospital bed.

And sometimes it looks like rolling down the windows, turning up the music, and going for a ride

with your friend.

Chapter 8: The One They Called a Bum

Chapter 8:The One They Called a Bum

There are things I've witnessed in this work that I will carry for the rest of my life.

Beautiful things.

Redemptive things.

And then there are things I didn't see with my own eyes, but somehow carry just the same.

The call came from the hospital—or maybe he called me himself. I honestly can't remember

anymore.

I just remember hearing the words “possible heart attack” and feeling dread settle into my chest.

By the time I got there, they were already running tests.

It wasn't a heart attack.

It was a pulmonary embolism.

He had nearly died.

When I sat beside his bed in the ICU, his voice was weak and cracked from everything his body

had been through.

Then he told me what had happened.

“I was on the side of the road,” he said.

“I was slumped over in my chair, and I knew something was wrong. I couldn't breathe. I couldn't

move. I was trying to wave somebody down.”

I pictured him there.

Bent forward in his wheelchair, leaning against the concrete barrier near the road.

Alone.

Unable to breathe.

Trying to get somebody—anybody—to notice him.

“And then a truck pulled up,” he said.

For a second, I felt relief.

Someone had stopped.

Then he continued.

“They rolled down the window and screamed at me, ‘Get a job, you bum!’”

He paused.

“And then they threw a hot cup of coffee in my face.”

I didn't know what to say.

Then he looked at me and said something I have never forgotten.

“I thought I was gonna die. And that's the last thing I heard. That I was a bum.”

I sat there stunned.

He had been trying to get someone to help him.

He couldn't breathe.

He couldn't move.

He thought he was dying.

And someone looked at him and saw only a stereotype.

A bum.

Not a man.

Not someone in distress.

Not someone trying to stay alive.

A bum.

I went home that night and cried.

I kept picturing him on the side of that road, barely able to lift his hands, trying to get somebody

to stop.

And then somebody did.

Just not for the reason he needed them to.

He spent close to three weeks in the ICU.

Somehow, he recovered.

But years later, I still carry what he told me from that hospital bed.

Because there are wounds people carry that don't show up on scans.

And sometimes the cruelest thing we can do to another human being is decide who they are

before we've ever bothered to know them.

Takeaway

What happened to him made me think about labels.

Homeless.

Addict.

Lazy.

Crazy.

Bum.

Words can make it easier for us to stop seeing the person standing in front of us.

Once we've assigned someone a category, we don't have to be curious anymore.

We think we already know the story.

That's what haunts me about what happened on the side of that road.

A man was in a wheelchair, struggling to breathe and trying to get someone's attention.

And someone saw him without actually seeing him.

I've wondered many times what might have changed if the first thought had simply been:

What's happening to him?

Instead of:

What's wrong with him?

That difference matters.

Curiosity makes room for compassion.

It gives us a second before judgment takes over.

It allows us to consider that maybe the person behaving strangely is sick.

Maybe the person who looks angry is afraid.

Maybe the person sleeping outside has a story we don't know.

Maybe the person we have already labeled is fighting something we can't see.

I've spent years around people who are easy to misunderstand.

Sometimes their behavior is difficult.

Sometimes boundaries are necessary.

Sometimes they've made choices with real consequences.

Seeing someone's humanity doesn't require pretending otherwise.

It simply means refusing to believe that the worst thing we know about someone is the most

important thing about them.

That man in the ICU was not a bum.

He was a human being who almost died.

And before anyone knew whether he had a job, a home, money, an addiction, a criminal record,

or anything else about him, that fact alone should have been enough to make his life worth

protecting.

That's what Jesus continually modeled.

He didn't require suffering people to prove their worth before He moved toward them.

He saw them.

Touched them.

Sat with them.

Listened to them.

And the longer I do this work, the more convinced I become that seeing people is where

compassion begins.

Sometimes ministry looks like food, shelter, medicine, case management, or financial help.

And sometimes it looks like sitting beside an ICU bed and letting someone tell you what

happened to them.

I couldn't undo what those people in the truck had done.

I couldn't take those words out of his memory.

But I could sit there.

I could listen.

I could call him by his name instead of by a label.

I could remind him by my presence that the people who threw coffee at him didn't get the final

word about who he was.

I think that's one reason Jesus was so drawn to people others had dismissed.

The world has always been good at labels.

Jesus was good at names.

That's the difference I want to remember.

Because every time we're tempted to look at another human being and think we already know

their story, we have a choice.

We can label them.

Or we can get close enough to see them.

And sometimes seeing someone begins with one simple question:

“What happened to you?”

Chapter 7: The Day He Walked Again

Chapter Seven: The Day He Walked Again

I'll never forget the day I walked into his hospital room and saw him weeping.

He had just lost his second leg.

He had already learned how to live with one prosthetic. He could navigate his camp, get to

appointments, and even make his way to our center on his own.

But this was different.

When I walked into his room, they were dressing the wound from his second amputation.

He looked at me.

And the tears started to fall.

We had tried so hard to keep this from happening.

Wound care.

Rides to appointments.

Prayers.

He had tried.

We had tried.

And still, here we were.

There wasn't anything I could say that was going to make losing another leg okay.

So I didn't try.

In the days that followed, he was moved to rehab, and I kept visiting him.

Sometimes we talked.

Sometimes he barely said anything.

He'd nod.

I'd sit.

That was enough.

I was beginning to learn that you don't always have to fill suffering with words.

Sometimes you just stay.

Weeks passed.

Then one day I was at the ministry center when someone came flying down the hallway.

“Sarah, you have to come see! You have to come now!”

I rushed to the window.

And there he was.

Outside.

Standing upright.

Both prosthetic legs on.

One hand gripping the side of the building for support.

Walking.

Well, hobbling.

But moving.

Determined.

I burst into tears.

He looked up, saw me through the glass, and grinned.

“I hoped I could surprise you!”

I ran outside with my hands over my mouth, still crying.

Then he looked at me and said something I will never forget.

“Step back. I want to walk to you.”

I froze.

He let go of the building.

And I stepped back.

Then he walked.

Slowly.

Shakily.

One foot.

Then the other.

No crutches.

No hands holding him up.

Just him.

By then, people had started noticing what was happening.

Clients came outside.

Staff.

Volunteers.

People who had simply come for food that day.

The courtyard began to fill.

Nobody needed an explanation.

We just watched.

He kept coming toward me.

One step.

Then another.

He was sweating.

I was crying.

I think he was crying too.

And when he finally reached me, I opened my arms.

We both sobbed.

Then the courtyard erupted.

People clapped.

People cheered.

Some cried.

Others just stood there watching.

And for a moment, on a concrete sidewalk outside a food pantry, everything else stopped.

All I could see was him.

The man I had watched cry in a hospital bed because he didn't know what life was going to look

like without either of his legs was standing in front of me.

He had walked to me.

I'll never forget it.

Takeaway

There are moments in this work that don't need much explanation.

This is one of them.

I had seen him at what felt like the bottom.

I had sat beside him when there was nothing encouraging to say.

We had prayed for a different outcome, and the outcome we prayed for didn't come.

He lost the leg.

That's important to say.

Because sometimes we tell stories about God in a way that makes it sound as though faith

means everything eventually turns out the way we wanted.

It doesn't.

We wanted healing before the amputation.

Instead, we got an amputation.

And then we had to figure out what hope looked like afterward.

Maybe that's part of why seeing him outside the ministry center affected me so deeply.

The miracle wasn't that his legs had somehow been restored.

They hadn't been.

He was wearing prosthetics.

His body had changed permanently.

The loss was real.

But so was what came next.

“Step back. I want to walk to you.”

I've thought about those words many times.

There was something important about the fact that he wanted to do it himself.

I couldn't walk those steps for him.

Nobody in that courtyard could.

We could cheer.

We could cry.

We could stand close enough to catch him if he fell.

But the steps belonged to him.

And he took them.

That's something I've come to understand about helping people.

We can walk beside someone.

We can remove obstacles where we're able.

We can provide resources.

We can encourage.

We can pray.

We can stay.

But there are steps another person has to take for themselves.

And when they do, we should celebrate the living daylights out of them.

That courtyard certainly did.

I love that people gathered.

People who had their own problems stopped what they were doing to cheer for someone else's

victory.

For a few minutes, nobody was a client, a volunteer, a staff member, or a person waiting for

food.

We were just people standing together, watching another human being do something incredibly

hard.

That felt holy to me.

I've learned that miracles don't always look like suffering disappearing.

Sometimes the prayer is answered differently than we hoped.

Sometimes the body isn't restored to what it was before.

Sometimes the loss remains.

And yet God still meets us there.

In hospital rooms.

In rehab facilities.

On concrete sidewalks.

In prosthetics.

In trembling knees.

In people who refuse to believe their worst day gets to be their last chapter.

I don't want to turn this man's accomplishment into a metaphor and miss the actual man.

He did something extraordinary that day.

He worked.

He learned.

He hurt.

He practiced.

He put on two prosthetic legs.

He held onto that building.

And then he let go.

I was simply blessed enough to be standing there when he did it.

Maybe that's one of the greatest privileges of this work.

You see people on days when they're convinced they'll never get back up.

And every once in a while, God lets you be there on the day they do.

I'll never forget what he said.

“Step back.”

So I did.

“I want to walk to you.”

And he did.

These thirty days.

 Well, here I am again, Lord. For years you have given me a dream to write a book. I have started half a million books, yet always somehow find a way to talk myself out of my disgraceful writing. I guess you could say that this looks like obedience. If left up to my own decision, I would have given this writing session a second guess and talked myself out of it simply because of the enemy of comparison. I'm pretty sure that the Bible gives us a glimpse into the dangers of that  very thing, or else there might not be a commandment somewhere that mentions the big-C word (covet) but here I am, thinking of all of the amazing writers I know and trying not to talk myself out of closing this laptop. Yet, obedience moves my fingers. 

Truth be told, I know that you have given me a spiritual gift and while it may not be as good as others I know, it's mine. You are a good giver of gifts and I would never want to neglect the things that you have given me. So I humbly press on and rest in the fact that this is obedience, whether my brain is convinced of this gift or not. 

Thirty days. 

Six years ago, you stirred something in my heart and it changed the trajectory of my life. I was on summer break from the classroom and you challenged me. I wanted to serve my community. I didn't want to waste away my summer break. I felt a nudge to sacrifice my time off and go where you sent me. Community pantries, clothing closets, church... I just knew that I wanted my time off to count for something. I had no idea what you were up to, but you have never proven to not be faithful. After all, you are a Good Father. You led me to places where my perspective changed on so many levels. You put me in front of people from all walks of life, and you gave me so much fulfillment to walk alongside them. To offer prayers and encouragement when you prompted me to, to love as you would. 

That summer, my life changed. You reminded me of the calling that you had put in my life as a young child and my heart was so full to be able to serve people once again. I believe a revival was stirred in my heart that year, and I am so thankful for that. Six years later, I am still thankful for the calling that you have put on my life and for the people I serve. Whether they are sheltered or homeless, addicts or preachers, sinners or saints, lost or found, loved or forgotten, we all have something in common: we need you. 

As I approached the new year, I pondered the state of my heart. I have to admit, 2022 had a lot of highs and lows. Our family has become closer and I am thankful to you for that. I see you working! Yet, my heart still aches for the loss of mom, an unexpected event that still takes my breath away when I stare too long at her picture or watch a video of her laughter. Still, I press on to the things that you have for me to do. For the next thirty days as I pray and fast, I commit myself to new revelations that you have for me. Each day, I will obey my calling to write out the ways you spoke to me that day and ask that you speak loud, for your servant is listening. 

Day 1

Before the work day had even begun, I received a text from a coworker who had discovered a woman sleeping behind the building. The temperature was barely 32 degrees and it was a miracle she had slept outdoors in it and was able to tell about it. Wrapped barely in a blanket that would cover her body stretched out, she was happy to talk to the staff as we tried to help her on this frigid morning. 

As I thought about what it must've been like for her to find our building in the middle of the night and sleep outside in the dark, I cringed at the thought. The bravery she must've had, and the determination she showed by making it to us to wait until the morning to be discovered, I was humbled. She had made it to us and survived. I remembered times in my own life when I had nothing. No hope, no direction, no understanding of how to be ok. Just as this woman walked to the hope she had heard about from others who told her about the "center that helps homeless people," I thought about my own life and how there had been moments in my own life where Jesus met me when I had no hope. How thankful I was to have made it to Him, and what it meant to have a firm foundation again. When we talk about our unsheltered neighbors and how hard it is for them to go without running water, heat, and walls when there is snow on the ground, the foundation is missing.  Today perhaps, I realized that we can still have a roof over our heads and be missing a foundation, and he is more firm than any walls could be.  

Today, I am thankful for the true foundation I have in you, Jesus.