On Belay: Surrender

A note from Wendi: I am incredibly excited to add a new Blogger to my rotation. I met Shelby Mathis while our husbands were stationed together in the Azores, and she has also come and worked on our farm!

I have done IF:Gathering, a women’s faith conference, in some fashion since its formation in 2014. I watched two years alone in my home in the Azores in the middle of the night because of the time difference. I was a new Christian totally overwhelmed by grace, so captivated by women leading on a big stage who clearly didn’t have it all together and were making it up as they went along (SAME!) I was also very sure I wasn’t supposed to watch it by myself. Something was missing.

The next year, I went to the live conference in Austin. I was so excited to see the live event and be surrounded by thousands of women from all over the world doing it with me. It was a huge production with lights and cameras, so fun and cute, but incredibly busy, impersonal, and fast-paced. I felt alone in a crowded room. I decided then I wouldn’t return to the live one the following year. I wouldn’t waste another year on keeping this experience for myself. I didn’t know where I’d land, but it wouldn’t be home alone or in Texas again.

However, God has a sense of humor and rarely goes along with my plans.

The next year, we were moving. Again. And I didn't have a home church or a local gathering to attend, so I flew back to Texas and took my sister to a local event in her town near Houston. 

For the fourth year in a row, God reminded me of what He put on my heart the very first year I watched alone, unable to name what was missing. The gathering near Houston was the intimate, overwhelming experience like at home. It was fun and cute like Austin. 

Except with women in their own place.

So the next year, in the fall of 2017, I told my pastor I wanted to host an IF:Gathering. Just a small one. No big deal, 20 women or so. At a friend’s home. That was my plan, and we’d name it after our church, and was that okay?

“Dream bigger”, said my pastor. “50 women. We’ll help.”

I am unqualified. I am inexperienced. I am unprepared. I am afraid.

I didn’t know how to do that. I didn’t know how to throw an event for 50 women. I didn’t know where I’d get the money or the venue or how I’d make it look like it did in my head. Which was 20 women in jammies in a living room. 

This wasn’t my plan!

I hadn’t lived in Denver long. I’d been at my church less than a year and was still trying to find my footing, where I fit in there. I was used to being “the new girl” and putting down roots as soon as I got someplace, but this felt way outside of my comfort zone and seemed to require much deeper roots than I’d established.

Unqualified, inexperienced, unprepared and afraid, I said "yes" in obedience to what I know without doubt God called me to in 2014, which was simple: bring IF:Gathering to your people.

I said "yes" when I meant "God, help me, I am in over my head already." I said "yes" when I knew I’d have to risk a lot, be uncomfortable and make it up as I went along. I said "yes" to not my plan!

And so, I leaped.

A couple months later, I watched from above myself — like a hovering, out of body experience — my fifth IF:Gathering. I saw myself still unqualified, still inexperienced, still unprepared, still afraid and shaking in my boots. I was busy running to the tech station and running through the production schedule and running back to my table and running on empty but so, so entirely full. Only with God is that possible.

For two days, I got to witness women being vulnerable, speaking publicly when they typically kept to themselves. Women sharing their hearts and struggles with near strangers. Women reclining around tables with women they have very little in common with but a common faith and savior. Women letting down the drawbridges to other women instead of reinforcing their walls.

And you know how I feel about walls.

____________


Sometimes I write to know what I think. Sometimes I write to remember. Right now I need to remember because I’m leading leaping again.

And I’m still learning. Honestly, just last week I was an actual mess.

I am unqualified. I am inexperienced. I am unprepared. I am afraid.

I wallowed for a bit. I called on a friend to affirm my calling to this ministry and admitted I didn’t know what to do. And she asked the hard questions. "What can I do?" "What do you need?" I didn’t know, but she refused to let me continue on. I called another friend who reminded me of the One Who Called Me. I confessed where I was struggling. She refused to let me continue on. She reminded me of what God did last year. When I was unqualified, inexperienced, unprepared, afraid then too.

I counted all the ways I could recall when God seriously, truly, kindly, faithfully provided. I named all the ways He took my desolate places of weary from moves and leaving "my people" and brought a multitude of new people and fed them with my few loaves and couple fishes. Not as a test or a comparison, but a reminder to myself and to the enemy who would love to see this thing fail because I believe I was more unqualified, more inexperienced, more unprepared, and more afraid than I am loved, chosen, and provided for.

Here's what I know to be true: we can lead and leap in faith with what we have and where we are, because God provides. We don’t have to fixate on numbers and budgets, dwell on tasks and to-do lists. We just need to be still and surrender.

What a God.

I weep at the mercy of a God who would have me not miss what He wants to do in and through the women in my community by moving me to say “yes” to this crazy dream and I crumble at the goodness of a God who would put friends in my path that would refuse to let me beat myself and commit to perfectionism when I need only to be reminded that I am who He says I am.

I am forgetful sometimes. When I forget who He is, I forget who I am.

He is the One Who Called You to This Messy, Incredible Ministry.
He is the One With Whom You Can Be Still and Surrender.
He is the One Who Knows and Has Taken Care of Your EVERY Need. 
He is the One Who Is Wowed By Production of Fruit and Not the Production Value of Your Event.
He is the One, The I AM, Who Says Who You Are When You Feel Unqualified, Inexperienced, Unprepared, and Afraid.

I am surrendering control.
I am surrendering tasks.
I am surrendering busyness.
I am surrendering expectations.
I am surrendering performance.
I am surrendering production.

I am also a Type 9 (Peacemaker) on the Enneagram. I have a friend who asks the hard, simple questions: "what was the best part? what was your favorite thing?" Jet-lagged and culture-shocked from a return trip from a land that turned my perspective and world upside down and they ask about my favorite part. Where do I even begin?

As much as those questions prick me, I’ve trained myself to have an answer instead of a verbal processing session where I say the food or the landscape -- which are usually highlights, don’t get me wrong -- but they're never the actual best part.

IF:Gathering 2018 was amazing, but IF:Embassy and the miracle it was has my heart and my attention. Those 50 women who said "yes" to something unfamiliar that I could hardly explain. And the teams of dedicated people that showed up -- not for me -- but to be hands and feet. Being the Church in Denver and also saying "yes" to this vision.

And honestly, that's all I did then and all I need to do now. Surrender my plans, my time, my expectations.

My plans didn’t include IF:Embassy with those women and that incredible team on those snowy days in that packed room with those tech issues and changed schedules and those vulnerable confessions and that sweet time of sharing how we persevere in the faith. But how I’d have missed it.

My plans didn’t include friendships with people who stretch and grow me to be a better disciple of Jesus. But how I’d have missed it.

I want to produce real fruit that points people to Jesus.
I want to run in faith toward the things He knew I’d miss.
I want to be a prayer warrior who prays like she means it and like God hears.
I want to catch glimpses of myself catching up when the Spirit runs ahead.
I want to live a life surrendered to His plans for my life and His Church.
I want to make God famous to the people in my world.
I want to say “yes” to things I’m utterly unqualified, inexperienced, unprepared, and afraid for where the fruit of the Spirit is unbelievable sweeter than anything I could possibly produce.

I don’t want to produce an unforgettable weekend for the approval of the 50 women in the room. I don’t even want to run a perfect event, though it would be nice. I want earth as it is in heaven.

Climb on,
Shelby

P.S. If you’re in the Denver area, would you consider being a part of this adventure with me this weekend (February 8 + 9)? Doing this with women has been my heart’s desire from the very beginning. It’s happening, and I want you to me one of them! Register here: ifembassy.iflocal.com.

If you’re not local to me but want to watch the IF:Gathering livestream this weekend, sign up at iflocal.com, grab some friends and let’s do this together!

On Belay: Crushing Walls

A note from Wendi: I am incredibly excited to add a new Blogger to my rotation. I met Shelby Mathis while our husbands were stationed together in the Azores, and she has also come and worked on our farm! She will be posting on Mondays! 

An additional note from Shelby: What I try to accomplish when working in this space is to present another way -- a way of hope. Hope means we don't have to think about conflicts and borders in such a binary way. The views presented are entirely my own. Though Wendi stays away from politics on her blog, she is pro-hope!

I am a writer, but fine art is my native tongue. My heart language.

I've always been an artist. I ran the art club in high school. I went to art school to get my BFA. I feel very at home in a classroom where students pick at paint under their nails while a professor asks for contemplation on the social importance of a Gordon Parks or a Cindy Sherman.

No one but the creative ideas in my head were begging me to learn photography, but I am taking a digital photography college course this semester. I enrolled and spent some scholarship money and, wow, was it weird to "go back to school."

And, wow, is it fun.

Production and commercial art have dominated my last 7 years for the sake of "making a living." I pulled out the paints and brushes every once in a while, and I took a short printmaking class at the San Antonio School of Art years ago, but I haven't dedicated this much time to truly creating art in years.

With learning photography, I feel like I'm getting a grasp on a new language, a dialect of my native tongue I appreciated and could comprehend, but couldn't write or speak myself. I haven't abandoned my old love for paints and prints, but I absolutely love that I can say what I mean with a camera in ways I can't with other mediums. 

The efficiency. The veracity. The control.

I've also discovered a magic to showing up to a shoot with the intent to practice storytelling. Because you know what people do?

They tell you their stories the way they want them told.

It's a bridge. It's an in to communities often ignored or even silenced.

During critique last week, a classmate commented that she loved that I don't just make "pretty" images, but that I use my work it as a tool to say something important.

Well, yeah, art as resistance is my favorite kind of art. I don't know a better way to do it.

It explains why Banksy and Shirin Neshat and Barbara Kruger and Shepard Fairey are my art heroes. It explains why I can't experience something and be able to articulate what I feel about it until I put it down in pixels or on paper. I don't know what I think until I write or make art about it. Or lately, make an image about it.

And when I've done that, that's when I'm most sure of the purpose of this creative gift: fight oppression, seek truth, find hope.

The camera, it can be a real weapon.

Visit ShelbyMathis.com to see images from my recent series called "Crushing Walls".

Climb on,

Shelby

On Belay: Meanwhile

I am incredibly excited to add a new Blogger to my rotation. I met Shelby Mathis while our husbands were stationed together in the Azores, and she has also come and worked on our farm! She will be posting on Mondays!

I finished my first running race last weekend. It was a slow 10k, but I crossed the finish line at a dead sprint that would take longer to recover from than the mere seconds I shaved off my time.

It's not like I had a PR or anything. I'm completely new to running.

I have always thought I was a terrible runner. I was a strong ballet dancer when I was a young person, but otherwise I've never considered myself "athletic." Volleyball was hard. Basketball was harder. Climbing is hard. Running is harder.

But I decided along the way that I'd run anyway. Run because I can. Run because it's simple and minimal, all I can handle some days. Run and remind myself of people who can't and wish they could. Run to prevent how sick stress made my body feel last winter and I never want to go back. Run to have the energy for the kind of life I want to live. Run because an hour pounding pavement with headphones in is the best place I have right now to escape from apathy and laziness. 

It wasn't always this way.

I've trained for a 5k before and not finished it. That's my baseline. That's where I come from.

On July 4th this summer, I set out to accomplish a new goal. By the end of October, I wanted to be able to run 10k without stopping. Six miles is a long way for a non-runner. Especially one with a track record of slacking in training and taking walk breaks during low-pressure 5k races. Especially at 5,280' elevation.

As I got deeper into my training, I began to learn I was never a terrible runner. Turns out, I was terrible at accepting the hard parts of running in exchange for the good. The rewarding stuff is on the other side of perseverance in all things worth doing or being.

I was running farther, faster, and longer than I ever had in my life. And I'd worked so hard for it this time.

Three nights a week and the occasional early morning, I could be found with headphones in making perimeter loops around the college campus and adjacent park and reservoir near my house.

Along the way, you could find me peeling off layers when I got too warm, calling my sister to pass the time (even if she does get annoyed I'm half-panting through the conversation), finding a trash bin to spit my gum and fresh gum's wrapper, fishing chapstick out of my awkward rear end zipper pocket, making to-do lists in my head. Anything to distract me, even if only for a minute.

Eventually I learned the physical aspect of running gets easier while the real challenge becomes occupying the mind.

You could say I was bored enough to get to the bottom of some things. Like my to-do list, for example.

One weekday evening, I was on the most boring stretch of sidewalk sandwiched between a construction site barrier of chain link fence panels and a section of road with traffic. The sidewalk here is uneven, so I have to watch my footing, but otherwise, there's not much to look at, and I'm utterly unaware of my legs turning over and over under me, as if my head sat atop a torso that sat atop a machine that resembled my legs wearing my shoes.

It's not that I'd conquered running. It truly emptied me. I could handle the miles. What I couldn't handle was the quiet.

I begin to mentally run through my to-do list for the rest of the evening:

• invoices
• dinner plans
• submit photo assignment
• go for a run

I laugh audibly to no one. Really, it's blessing to forget the pain of miles 5 and 6. Because there was a time where miles 2 and 3 were uncharted territory. Impossible.

I am on a run. And I am mentally so far removed from the work of it that I am found wondering when I'm going on my run today.

One of the reasons I took up running was to be a good steward of the gift of health I've been given. I can run, so I should.

I considered having run the worship, but I didn't know until then I'd watch my sheer boredom become the meditation.

While keeping one eye on the concrete trip hazards and one on my phone, I crafted a new playlist, on the run. Music has always been a portal for me. This one became a compilation of songs that reminded me of someone or some place I could fixate on over the miles.

From then on, before I left the house, I would pen turn-by-turn directions on my left hand, and a list on my right. Then I'd shuffle through a list of songs that meant someone or someplace to me. When songs didn't trigger a response, my inked hands would. It wasn't my to-do list. It was my to-be list.

Be a runner.

Be grateful.

Be prayerful.

I'd see it any time I finagled the cap off and back on the chapstick tube. Any time I wiped away the sweat that makes my glasses slip slowly down my nose. Any time I waved thanks to a yielding driver.

You think you're training for a running race, and God has better ideas for the meanwhile.

It was race day. I shivered at the start line as it was early and still very cold. I was way under-dressed to be idle, but I knew I'd warm up soon enough.

As my corral got closer to the start line, I pressed play and entered the zone, the meanwhile.

A friend and victim of Hurricane Michael.

A school shooting at the junior high were my church meets.

A friend's family struggling with their recent adoptions.

A friend fighting for joy in the midst of horrific illness.

A friend wrestling and recovering from infertility treatments.

Another serving her heart out and needing poured into.
Another losing a best friend to cancer.

I endured the 10k and I get the medal to prove it. I put my head down and got through the months of training, but they persevered the course with me.

I think this is the real race.

Meanwhile, I rise in the morning to achy knees. Ligaments groan and revolt as I warm up to walking. Physiologically, yeah, it's likely the running. 

But maybe it's the gold medal of meanwhile.

Climb on,

Shelby

On Belay: Church

I am incredibly excited to add a new Blogger to my rotation. I met Shelby Mathis while our husbands were stationed together in the Azores, and she has also come and worked on our farm! She will be posting on Mondays!

Last week I got home from a leadership conference in Dallas with IF:Gathering, a Christian organization that exists to disciple a generation by equipping women to lead in their local places.

I went to the airport exhausted, drained, and wondering what I missed because it didn't feel over, and it didn't feel that big. It didn't change my life. It didn't transform my theology or provide break through or lead me to new life-long friendships.

You know, the way IF used to do.

The early IF:Gatherings caught my attention and then my allegiance. I devoured the words and books and studies of the women who spoke from the stage the first couple of years. Jennie Allen was my mentor. Jen Hatmaker and Ann Voskamp discipled me. In a season of my life as a new believer at an overseas military base with an unstable church community, IF was my church.

IF is no longer "my church" but it is still my favorite conference of the year. And now that's only because of the way God uses it to minister to the women of my local church, The Embassy.

After I got home from the conference, I saw Instagram photos from the event. Women used words like "refreshed" and "filled up" and even "speechless" to describe their experience that week.

I get that. I was there. I saw women crumble during worship and break down during talks seemingly meant specifically for them. I truly saw the Spirit move all around me. I listened as the founder of IF interrupted a worship song to pray for women in the room unseen, unheard, going days unnoticed at a conference full of Christian women and in light of the crazy world swirling outside our walls and we all cried and begged Jesus to come.

All that, but I couldn't relate to "refreshed", "filled up" and "speechless."

The conference ended with us marking a token -- a reminder -- of our time together. It was a little packet of malleable, damp clay wrapped in kraft paper, tied with a twine bow. A pretty package, but the contents oddly squishy and cold. I thought it was strange the clay was still wet and days from drying, but I've also planned an event and know some details are better left ideas.

Or maybe the story just wasn't half baked yet.

As I stood on the platform of the underground train at DIA saying goodbye to other leaders who had also attended the conference, I was at a loss for an answer to "how was it for you?"

Different.
Underwhelming.
Not disappointing, but also not I can't believe it's over.

The next morning I rolled out of bed and beelined for the french press, as I do. My brain was still catching up to my activity when I realized it was Sunday.

It's my favorite day of the week.

This week was no different, and the worship left me refreshed.
Fulfilled.
Maybe even speechless.

And there wasn't even a full band. No music or traditional service at all, in fact.

This week was a celebration we call Sacred Space where we, not in lieu of worship but as an act of worship, serve our local community as a church body. This Sunday we could be found:

Walking around the neighborhood praying for our Hispanic neighbors by name and in general. In English and in Spanish. For refugees and immigrants. For them and with them. For the end of violence and the beginning of reconciliation.

Praying for the new direction of our small groups, a focus on mission and connection to one another that will surely make God famous to the world.

Praying over my co-leader and I, our reentry from the conference, and the vision for the upcoming year of events and focus on women.

Swapping stories with girlfriends about time spent in the Med and Middle East over Lebanese pies with zaatar and Arabic tea.

Pure joy and anticipation in starting new missional community tables, leading people into a space of understanding and peacemaking.

_____________

Back when a church community was elusive, and I understood little about the value of roots, IF was church. It was the good stuff.

Yet now I’m refreshed. Fulfilled. Speechless.

I know now, this is the good stuff.

A praying church.
A missional community.
A vibrant womens ministry.
A church with a heart for the nations.
A tangible connection to the Church.
A church of ambassadors who don’t simply consume but own the mission.

I didn’t comprehend that twinge of hope in DIA -- hope that it wasn't over -- on the platform while giving that reentry elevator speech I wasn't ready to give.

I get it now. That meaning I was still working out while the clay was slowly drying to solid. Where there was time and room for this all to take shape as something else, some new work of art.

This is the point of the IF leadership conference. And I see it clearly now: the work of being the church is at home, not at IF. And the work is the good stuff.

Thankfully, the Spirit of God isn't limited to moving at packed out conferences or through smoke machines on stage during full-band worship. God moves in the ordinary. He moves in the every day. The simple. The acapella and the backing tracks. The tiny acts of faith and obedience no one sees.

We be the Church, He moves, and that’s the good stuff.

I wear lenses and borrow lenses because I do life with people very unlike me. IF wasn't a waste. It was a lens cloth. My time at IF – I see now -- was spent scrubbing the accumulated fingerprints and flecks of debris. 

It reveals: in His Church -- at The Embassy – I am home.

Can you you believe we get to do this?!

Climb on,

Shelby

P.S. To find out how to bring IF to your church (it's the most fun thing!), check out IF:Local HERE. 

On Belay: Threads of Fall

I am incredibly excited to add a new Blogger to my rotation. I met Shelby Mathis while our husbands were stationed together in the Azores, and she has also come and worked on our farm! She will be posting on Mondays!

The first flit of a highlighter yellow leaf making its decent to the earth reminds me of another time. It recalls a trip with my Dad deep into the Colorado mountains, camping and seeing my favorite musician, Ben Howard, live at Red Rocks, our breath taken away by both white-capped Rockies and mile-high elevation.

That trip was the first time my eyes were opened to fall. Before then, I'd lived some pretty amazing places over the years, but I didn't know I'd missed brilliant colors and crisp mornings and slower pace of life.

I missed fall.

Leaves begin the shed, school bells resume ring, and the crisp air feels more like an invitation into something than an omen of the winter to come.

Of all the moves I've made in my life, most have come in the fall. So to me, fall is more than a season that ends or begins this time of year. It truly feels like the new year. Upon fall's arrival, just as the resolution day requires, there's simply no time to veg and hibernate. It's go time. Every year -- every fall -- the new home is waiting for me to build, so I shouldn't just let winter pass over my head buried in a memoir and a cup of tea as I am so prone.

Perhaps that's why I'm itching. The Front Range will see snow in a matter of weeks. I see winter down the way. And so, I acknowledge fall. 

I spent all last summer moving from crag to town to crag and it was fun but I got motion sick. I became home sick, though home was not a place then and only a feeling. Maybe it's just who I become in the fall. Like the trees and the bears and the geese, I become ready.

But this time, I don't have to move. Instead of circumstance calling me to reflection, I'm on my own in looking back. I'm on my own, readying myself for the launching of fall, the new year. 

Last year held a move to Aurora, a city I didn't dream of wanting to know. Before that, an entire holiday season at our first home, with family. That year held a farm that taught us rest and community. That year held a barn we called "home" for 4 months. It held the infancy of a film career and the propelling of a design career. It held a summer of adventure and pushed limits and sends and fails. It held weddings and funerals and memories big and small, near and far, somber and joyful. It held growing and learning. It held lots of tears and laughter and gratitude.

This year held no moves, only staying put, putting down roots. I started a garden, and even if it was not successful, at least I was around to see that. I'm building a community that I don't have to leave any time soon. Though we all change and grow, at least I am around to see that.

It has been a year of growth and courage and faithfulness. It has been hard and joyful and dizzying and exciting and parts of it way outside of my comfort zone. We started new semesters, new contracts, new projects, new missions.

The year incubated big dreams and goals while others were intubated and eventually taken off life support, labeled "not right now" or, simply, "no." Summer was an adventure, though we sweat in a house and not a tent for those blistering, sunny months. The year held a holiday season that warned loss, and the same holiday season would be the last of its kind, a heavy extinction. It held two weddings and a funeral in the same paragraph like a twisted Shakespearean comedy. 

This year I sharpened focus on a few things I hadn't carved space for in a while. I am taking my time to do well the things I want and feel called to do. I take more time to listen to what my body and heart needs. I spend less energy merging with the plans or assumptions of others, and more aligning my soul with the Greater Plan.

Now as I watch everything alive shed its beauty to hunker down for the brutal temps and darkness of winter, I am reminded of the seasons of my life. That each place I lived was good and lovely... for a season. And even if I wanted to stay, or even if I could go back, it wouldn't be the same because it too has moved on. Seasons are the natural rhythm so I'm choosing to not dread, but appreciate the shedding of leaves while looking forward to spring when it gently wakes the Rockies.

I look back. Then I look forward to fall.

I keep my arms and eyes open to the changing season the way aspens appear to gaze at the world around them. And I laugh at the time to come when I'll make the long, winded trek up the ramp to the most incredible amphitheater around as Ben Howard takes the stage and transports me back to seasons set to the soundtrack of his music. 

The world moves on, and so do I.

But I notice threads. I pay attention to the treads. I marvel at the intersection of seasons in this life.

And I sit in feeling known, in the way this moment feels familiar, in the way Someone knew I'd catch the thread this time.

Climb on,

Shelby

On Belay: Holy Ground

I am incredibly excited to add a new Blogger to my rotation. I met Shelby Mathis while our husbands were stationed together in the Azores, and she has also come and worked on our farm! She will be posting on Mondays!

We circle 'round in plastic lawn chairs in the middle of the narrow cobblestone street. My feet are dirty, caked with miles of stories and hard heart and farm work I've encountered over the last few days. I slip off my sandals and let my bare feet rest on the dry pavement. I sense this is holy ground. Not because millennia have seen these stones. And not even because Jesus may have walked here.

Sami waddles out from his shop with a tray of tea, sage leaves and thin lemon slices suspended in the glasses.

I don't trust the experience of a person who has visited Bethlehem and doesn't know Sami. He has a contagious smile and the most jovial personality, and the size of the town lends itself to bumping into Sami a couple times a day. If you accept the invitation to his pop-up cafe outside a storage room where he brews his drinks, you can feel like an old friend sharing tea in his living room. 

Here, in the streets of Bethlehem, here in Palestine, here in the Middle East, tea is an invitation. To connect. To rest. To hear one another. To be heard. Tea makes time and space to exchange ideas. To learn something new. To embrace a new perspective. To engage storytelling.

I count this holy ground.

Bethlehem is a beautiful city. The turquoise and mint green doors transposed on stone alley-width walls. Such beauty in what wouldn't be too pretty of a place for all the tan and beige. The old city of Bethlehem feels a bit like the city of my soul. Not my mind or body really - as it's too unfamiliar yet - but my soul knows Bethlehem somehow.

The people of Bethlehem, native and sojourning during my time there, know me too. I got to know these friends seated around me over the course of a couple weeks. We are all here for different reasons. Some are just passing through, travelers with a knack for unique passport stamps. Some with a desire to serve an oppressed population in the occupied West Bank. Some are of that population. And others still don't know why they are there yet.

I am one of those.

I am also one of those that prefers a plan, concrete details. I am one of those that can take leaps of faith, but I comfort in knowing Plan B is solid too.

With God, sometimes it feels like there's no Plan B, and Plan A is equally unclear.

With God, sometimes it feels like walking on water and He's rising up only one stepping stone at a time, and only when I get to the other side of a stone do I get to see the next one. He is mighty faithful to lift up that stone in His timing, but waiting on it is a hard pose to hold.

But it, too, is holy ground.

What a beautiful, sacred place to need God that much. To need Him directing my steps, lest I think I can walk on water on my own. To need Him drawing arrows, "meet Me here, pull up a lawn chair, and have tea with Me" when I have better ideas for my day.

Just over three years ago, I flew home from the Middle East with far more questions than souvenirs. I had seen things I couldn't unsee. I'd heard things I couldn't unhear. I'd met people I'd never want to unmeet. My price of visiting Palestine is not measured in shekels, but in a changed mind and heart.

I needed someplace to put this new energy, these new ideas. I had to make or do something. The last thing I wanted was for it all to be a waste, a vacation. I wanted to be productive and work toward real peace and reconciliation.

But how?

How does a young, white American from the Midwest effectively engage in the peace process in the Middle East? How do I approach this work without adopting a Western savior complex? How do I grow in understanding and compassion for a people and a conflict so far outside of my context?

I had no answers. I used writing, art, and design as a conduit to communicate what I'd experienced and learned, and used these forms of creation to process it all. I talked and talked about it. I wore out my friends, I think. I certainly wore myself out.

I discovered I had nothing to give. No truly good ideas. No brilliant organization to start, and no network to plug in to or deep resources to tap. So I spent a few years hanging out on a stepping stone in the water alone -- waiting, wondering, wishing -- the soles of my shoes gripping the slick rock threatening to betray my balance and toss me into the sea.

Finally, I slipped off my shoes, thirsting for holy ground, and I asked God to take it. Just take the need to "do something" out of my mind, my heart, and my hands.

I shouldn't be so amazed that's exactly what happened. But not before I prayed weak, small prayers:

Lord, if you want me to work in this space, would you send me a community who would take a tiny interest in the Palestinian narrative and reconciliation? Would you provide vision for a group I've been asked to lead? Would you show me what I can do with what I have, where I am?

"No, if you want to do this with Me, you don't get a community of people with slight interest. Not even close. You get a friend on her way to Israel next month committing to gaining a holistic understanding of the conflict from multiple perspectives. You get a film crew interested in making a documentary to tell the stories that don't make it over the wall. You get a best friend and a new friend with much experience in the region willing to pray and encourage you. And finally, you get someone you hardly know yet who has not only been to the places in the West Bank and Jerusalem that began to occupy your heart all those years ago, but has your Palestinian friends and homes in common and has had the same burden to engage as I have given you. And she already goes to your church. This is only the beginning."

"No, if you want to do this with Me, you don't get a vision for the small missional group you've been asked to lead. I get it. You get a co-leader with huge passion and heart for reconciliation in the Holy Land. You get to hear her ideas and dreams for where this group could go, and it's as if I plucked the words from your mind and set them to pour out of her mouth just as if they were your own thoughts. I will do the vision casting, dear."

"No, if you want to do this with Me, you don't ask Me to show you what you can do with what you have, where you are. You ask Me what I can do with what I have, where I am."

Because "now to Him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us, to Him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen."

In other words, these are the times I am sure karma and coincidence and serendipity are crap.

You find me on a stone, out in the water, waiting for the next to appear, in faith. And until the next stepping stone becomes clear, I will keep glancing back at the long path of stones stretching to the horizon as far as my eyes can see and tell those stories, those testimonies. The evidence of His faithfulness, of all the way He's brought me so far.

Until the next stepping stone appears, I'm brewing the tea to serve at this table He began setting 3, 5, 2,000 years ago. In a world this small, we're bound together by His invitation to take a seat as old friends in His living room. There, we engage, listen, learn, and activate. There, we can stand secure on this little piece of real estate, this promise, until the next move is clear and we're told to jump.

Barefoot.

Because this is holy ground.

Climb on,

Shelby