Front Row Thoughts

Our family is leaving the ministry. At least for a season.  The reasons that have led us to this place are both deeply personal and painful.  I definitely feel it is what’s best for us for now but that doesn’t change the fact that I’m still having to wrestle with this at a soul level.  

I’m struggling as I grapple for a new identity outside one where we are formally laboring for Christ as a way of life - and a paying job.  As I searched for metaphors and reached for things of comparison to help me process and understand, this analogy came to mind.  It’s as if there’s this huge venue where God is on stage and the feature presentation is His Kingdom and its advancement.  As those who labor for him in full-time vocational ministry, it feels like we get a front row seat to what God is doing.  Like the first 3 rows at a concert that are reserved for certain individuals, we are front and center to Kingdom work.  

Stepping out of ministry feels like being asked to move from Row 2 Seat 8 to Row 84 Seat 14.  No longer down in front, there’s a feeling of being relegated to ordinary regularity in the Kingdom.  Once you’ve been down front, you like being there - like it’s vantage point, like having your finger on the pulse of ministering to people, and like the proximity of the platform and microphone for declaring the gospel to a world who desperately needs it.  

Having been a military family for quite some time now, allow me to use an Army analogy inside this venue analogy to further explain.  In the Army, a special tab (or patch) is reserved for those individuals who have persevered through and answered the calling of Ranger School.  It can proudly be worn on the individuals uniform for the remainder of his/her career.  This patch is a distinguished one and simply says “Ranger”.  There is another patch, although not worn on uniforms, that I’ve seen floating around which is similar in shape and size but its wording is a humorous way of describing everyone else who couldn’t (or wouldn’t even try to) cut it in Ranger School.  It says “Regular Guy”.

Going from Ranger to Regular Guy, so to speak, is proving to be a tough transition for me.  But when I think deeply about what it means to be a gospel-centered person, I realize that my position in Christ is unaffected by which row or seat I’m in.  My place as his daughter in the family of God is still secure.  I am no more nor no less loved by moving a few rows back.  My ability to obey, glorify, and please him through the work of my hands won’t change either - because, whether sacred or secular, I’ll be doing all that my hands find to do as if I’m working for the Lord.  My seat may have changed but my position in Christ hasn’t.

If I can be permitted to carry out my large venue analogy a little further, here’s one additional observation.  When it comes to serving in the upside down Kingdom of Christ, maybe I’ve had it all wrong to begin with.  Who God has really called us to be as servants of his Kingdom probably looks less like a VIP and a lot more like those ushers who met us at the door and guided us to our seat.  They labor in various ways, at various spots throughout the arena, doing various tasks - none greater than the other.  But all serve with one task in mind - to usher in as many people into their seats as they can before the lights go down.  

When trust is a must

We’re getting ready to sign a lease on an apartment.  I realize that to some that might seem like an amazingly exciting thing.  And at previous points in my life I would have agreed with elated anticipation.  But deciding on this apartment has felt like deciding between something I don’t want and something else I don’t want.  

Backstory: I’m preparing for the 14th move in my life.  I am almost 40, but still - that’s a lot of moving around!  This move has a deeper sting to it and I feel myself growing even more resistant to its coming.  It is a product of the circumstances that result from poor choices plus the challenge of a major life transition, all rolled up and tied with the bow of unemployment.  Sounds less than desirable, eh?  

But even in the midst of this chaos and disappointment, I am being reminded and shown how the steadfast love of the Lord endures.  His mercies remain new each morning.  I am still being fed manna and quail daily by my heavenly Father.  And I feel much like the Israelites must have when they wandered in what probably seemed like an aimless pattern for what must have seemed like an endless period of time.  

I can’t see the future more than a half-step in front of me, but I know who is planning the longer path ahead. And I know ultimately where the path will take me at my journey’s end.  He then is all my hope and stay - and I can trust him now.  

At the moment, He is giving us shelter, warmth and cool, running water, and privacy in the form of a 3 bedroom apartment.  I can’t establish the garden my green thumb is longing for, but He is tending to the tender soil of my heart.  There is a quiet wooded space behind our unit - perfect for hanging a hammock - along with a view of a wooded mountain close by.  And our children are giddy over the beautiful pool a stone’s throw away.  

God knows me and made me inside and out.  My frame (how I am made up from the inside) has not been hidden from him. He knows how my heart longs for a beautiful home I can nest and design and make my very own as we love and raise our family within its walls.  He has been there for each of the long days and lonely nights we’ve lived the nomadic life of a military family and he’s familiar with my longings for a forever home - a space that I don’t have to leave behind in a couple of years when duty calls.  He sees my displeasure at the thought of another transition - yet another place to try to see if I can make one of the curtains from my extensive collection do the trick yet again.  

But he also knows what’s coming.  He can see around that next bend (and the next one and so on), and so He knows what I need today and tomorrow.  Each day it seems I find myself working through a new or different emotion - not knowing whether I should push, pull, run, sit, jump, or scream.  I know this to be normal as I work on accepting what is (my reality) and at the same time acknowledging what’s happened (my past). 

A constant for me through the daily onslaught of emotions is this: I MUST TRUST GOD.  I must.  In quietness and trust is my strength.¹  That’s not to say I don’t have a lot TO say.  Boy, do I.  Probably too much, if you ask those closest to me.  But My strength isn’t found in those many words.  

In quietness and trust is my strength.

My strength is found in the soul-stilling quietness that the Shepherd of Psalm 23 affords me. It’s the confidence that being the daughter of a proven Victor brings.  It’s in the unfailing love of the Lord, parceled out to me each day in small and sizable ways.  

In the community of believers we chose to worship amongst today we were challenged by the worship leader to “Ponder anew what the Almighty can do.”  And my soul responded with both “Amen” and “Hallelujah”.  

For us, there are no other hedges around our bets, no other back-up plans, no contingency strategies to fall on.  We are solely and completely dependent upon the gracious right hand of the Lord.  

I can honestly say: The Lord is the Refuge and Stronghold of my life—of whom shall I be afraid?²  

Thank goodness: Whoever dwells in the shelter of the Most High will rest in the shadow of the Almighty.  I will say of the Lord, “He is my refuge and my fortress, my God, in whom I trust.”³

¹Isaiah 30:15

²Psalm 27:1

³Psalm 91:1-2