I have three brothers and I love them all dearly. We grew up in a close knit family in a small midwest town, which has kept us committed to staying close despite deeply different perspectives. Yesterday my youngest brother Doug sent this email:

“I hope you all can take a few minutes and seek out ‘Probably Tomfoolery Youtube.’  These are presented by a young English poet who has something we all could embrace.  I recommend  two of his videos: ‘The great realization’ and ‘Tale of two mindsets.'”

I found these short videos to be SO creative, refreshing and insightful; I was finally inspired to do a blog entry, but I hope you will first take the time to watch them.

These videos reminded me of when I went off to college. Of course, like most 18 year olds I had no way of understanding that my humble childhood (four kids raised in a 2 bedroom house with no air conditioning and an unfinished basement) was a treasure trove of blessing. The house was small, but the yard stretched back through a large vegetable garden to a creek and corn fields beyond: it was our own world. Of course, we were required to work in the garden in which we raised massive amounts of tomatoes, corn, green beans and strawberries for eating and canning!

We didn’t belong to the local pool where the kids in the 60’s “hung out,” but we went to Kennel Lake for swimming, fishing, and campouts with scouts and friends. Our Methodist Church was a big part of our life, and there I learned to know and love Jesus. My mother taught the children’s choir and afterward would teach the 40 children about missions. It was there that I decided I wanted to be a missionary to India: I loved those beautiful people with their brown eyes and skin. However, in my simple humble world, there was no evidence of the horrors of war and violence through which my parents and their generation had just lived. I remember my parents trying to tell me that all people were not good and that there was evil “out there.” This, however, did not fit into my paradigm of life and I summarily rejected it.

Since our town had been small enough that we knew most everyone, I carried that open friendly way of life with me to the University of Illinois (45,000 students). I was stopped on campus almost every day: “Why are you always so happy?”  I hardly knew how to answer, but I remember thinking: “Why are you not happy?”  Gradually, the questions became judgments and predictions: “You are happy because you don’t really know about all the evil in the world.  When you do, you will no longer be so optimistic (and your naive, irritating joyful smile will fade).”

Also, upon my arrival at college I found that of the 60+ girls on my dorm floor, six of them were people with that beautiful darker skin and deep brown eyes. At some level I felt that I had “come home.” Gradually, I noticed that no one else of lighter skin color would go into their rooms, and I was confused and confounded. However, with my typical optimism, I adjusted to the reality that I could have them “all to myself.” Throughout my four years at college I was to have a vast range of experiences both beautiful and horrible, but that will have to be told in “the book.”

Being at a university, which specialized in focusing on the problems of our country and our world, I channeled my mother’s “can do” approach to life and I decided to be a social worker and attempt to help make the bad better.  However, as mentioned in a previous blog post, I found myself at 22 working in a faraway state, isolated and overwhelmed by all the suffering, and the church I was attending seemed more like a country club social gathering. Since I was not –and never have been– political or prone to blame a group of people (prejudice) for any wrong, the only one I could find to blame for what I saw was God. Since I did not know His Word at that time, there was so much that I did not understand. Therefore, I allowed the “cares of the world” (the “tares” in the parable of the the “sower of the seed”) to choke out the “good seed,” and I allowed the hypocrites to get between me and my God (thereby positioning them closer to God than myself). Eventually, therefore, instead of proving all the prognosticators wrong, I gradually – over years – lost much of my joy, and my smile did fade.  The hopeful, enthusiastic, bright, helpful young woman approached 30 only to find her dreams shattered, her values and faith compromised, and her hope diminished.

There were many steps and missteps in my journey back to God, but each step led to deeper understanding of how I had, by my independent decisions, made a mess of my life: leaving me with just remnants of the lovely vessel He had planned for me to be.  I found that, although I could not trust my own thoughts or inclinations, I could yield to Him “whose thoughts and ways are higher than mine” and He would “direct my path.” So, I handed that “pile of mess” over to God in exchange for forgiveness, healing, and a new heart.  

 Now, at 70, I again have those who would say that my hope is naive and I must look at all the evil and wrong, and “do something.”  I respond with what I found in “Streams in the Desert”  this morning:

“Week after week, with an unwavering and steadfast spirit, Elijah (I Kings 17) watched the brook dwindle and finally dry up.  Often tempted to stumble in unbelief, he refused to allow his circumstances to come between himself and God….

“Unbelief looks at God through the circumstances, just as we often see the sun dimmed by clouds or smoke.  But Faith puts God between itself and its circumstances, and looks at them through Him. God will often extract us from a  mess we have made because ‘His love endures forever.’ (I Chronicles 16:34). Yet if we had only been patient and waited to see the unfolding of His plan, we would never have found ourselves in such an impossible maze, seeing no way out.  We would also never have had to turn back and retrace our way with wasted steps and so many tears of shame.”

“Waiting for the Lord” is not sitting around twiddling our thumbs or wringing our hands. After my “surrender” to God, He literally brought me, on May 7, 1982, to Dr. Floyd McCallum who would become my dearest friend and mentor. His life of intercession, counseling and deliverance ministry which I was privileged to share, was often unseen and unknown. However, Floyd had responded to our sovereign King in His plan and call to involve us in His work through prayer. I remember the one time that I got angry with Floyd: he had said to me, “You have so much Martha in you that I can’t make a Mary out of you.” Of course, I know why I got angry: he had just spoken too much truth.

Now, for so many reasons, I am finally at another point of surrender: the desire to be a true intercessor, a real prayer warrior. There is a mighty, clarion call for prayer going out in our country and world, and Ric and I join many who are responding and attempting to understand how to be more fervent and effectual in our prayers. May the Lord not have to say as He said in Ezekiel 22:30: “I sought a man among them who should build up the wall and stand in the gap before Me for the land, that I should not destroy it, but I found none.”