For the past
several weeks we have been in a sermon series called, “One Day.” Members of our
church have reflected on stories in the Bible where profound things seemed to
occur after the phrase “one day”. It’s been such a gift to hear, in each story
shared, how it’s also in our present-day lives that God can do profound things
with just a single day.
Unfortunately,
I am going to break the rules today. I tried, I really did. I tried to come up
with just one day, but I couldn’t.
I don’t have
one specific day when God spoke to me. I don’t have one day when I accepted
Jesus as my Lord and Savior. I don’t have one day when things had been one way,
and the next day they were different…end of story.
My life has
been a series of “One Days", and your's probably has been, too.
A journey of
being carried by God before I would have ever given God credit, of being given
gifts from God that I surely didn’t deserve, and of seeking God with all of my
heart.
So, I won’t
exactly follow the rules, but at least I will start out the right way…
One Day, I boarded an airplane at O’Hare
International Airport that would take me to Brussels, and then to Uganda,
Africa to live for one year with my husband and 6 children. I have never had a
heart for travel, and still don’t, but one
day, about five years prior to boarding that plane, I was reading
about missionaries, and my heart began doing strange things. As I read about
people who gave up so much to move to places that were unfamiliar and do great
things, the voice in my head kept saying that I could be one of those people,
too. No matter how much I argued with myself, my heart kept assuring me that
everyone one of those people were just regular-ole people who were willing to
live out their faith for real. There was an inkling in my heart that God was up
to something, but I had yet to learn how to listen.
You see, one day, about eight years prior to reading
about missionaries, when I was finishing up my elementary education degree at
ISU, I was required to observe for 4 weeks in a classroom. I requested an early
education classroom just as I had dreamt of teaching my whole life, and I
expected to get just that. There was no thought in my mind of God having a plan
for my life, let alone a plan different from mine. I had my own goals and my
own plans, and I honestly thought that if I could just work hard enough and
make the right choices, that all would go my way. (Thank God I am COMPLETELY
over that. ;-) ) You can imagine then, my frustration as I walked into the
first day of that observation, not assigned to the kindergarten or 1st
grade classroom that I wanted, but to a SIXTH GRADE CLASSROOM…have you met any
sixth graders lately?!?...and they were all going to be taller than me!?! I
couldn’t believe it.
And as if
that weren’t bad enough, the teacher of that classroom was this absolutely
ridiculous guy. It was awful. There wasn’t a chance that I was going to learn
anything about teaching from these 4 weeks. Or so I thought. I had no idea that
God was giving me one of the greatest gifts of my life before I ever would have
even thought to give Him credit for it.
Dave:
Little did I know, the one day that I
was assigned an ISU student to observe in my 6th grade classroom for
4 weeks, was the day that I met the woman who would become my wife. Not only
did she end up loving the 6th graders, despite the fact that they
were taller than her, but she eventually ended up liking me, too. When Cara and
I began dating, she told me that she was going to change the world, and that if
I wasn’t up for the adventure, then we probably shouldn’t bother even dating. I
had no idea what she really meant by that, but it sounded fun, and I thought
she was cute, so I agreed. In our first year of marriage, we bought a house,
moved, and brought our first child home from the hospital. We also racked up
thousands of dollars’ worth of debt. There was no thought of listening for
God’s plan or asking for God’s input. We were doing this crazy-life-thing just
fine on our own.
We were
going to church, and we considered ourselves Christians, but what did that even
mean? We just had to be good, right? We were nice people, and we did good
deeds, so we were in.
There was no
talk at this time of God being present in our daily lives. We knew God loved us
and we thought that was great, but I had a plan, and it was full speed ahead.
We brought
our first child home from the hospital two days before our first anniversary, had
our second 20 months later, and our third just a short time after that.
We bought
into the lie that everyone lived in debt, so even though there were more bills
than money, we saw no reason to stop buying things. After all, we weren’t
buying bad things. We were buying things that we deserved, right, for all the hard work and good things we were
doing.
Dave was
teaching full-time, I was running a home daycare, we were raising 3 little
ones, leading vacation Bible School, teaching Sunday school, volunteering on
committees…we were involved and we were busy. Because being busy with good
things seemed honorable, we never hesitated, or thought to consult God on any
of our choices.
A friend of ours became a foster mom, and we
thought, “Hey, that sounds like fun!” So we also began the process to become
foster parents. That friend of ours was
a young, single woman, and as it became clear that the children she was caring
for would need a forever family, Dave and I told her we were interested, and we
began preparing our lives for the addition of 3 more kids. Full speed ahead.
Our “one
days” in that season were all a big blur. They were great in a million ways,
but my heart jumped back and forth between excitement over all of the big
decisions and absolute terror about how we could possibly keep all of this on
track. Even when things were going smoothly, I was white-knuckling it, knowing
at any moment it could all fall apart.
Then came
the season when I thought it was.
The children
who we had been transitioning into life at our house, could no longer be
adopted by us. It didn’t matter that their bedrooms were all set up at our
house. It didn’t matter that they were registered for school or had gone on
trips already with our extended family. These children, who in my heart were
already mine, wouldn’t never truly be.
I was beside
myself. Not my finest moments. I was broken and mad. I had absolutely no way of
knowing how God was actually carrying me through this season. I had no idea how
God would redeem our family. I was just broken.
But, life
had to go on, right, so I did what I knew how to do best, I busied myself with
other things. As long as I was moving at full-speed, there was no time to
process those feelings.
Except that
I was in a small group at the time, and these people didn’t let me get away
with anything less that authenticity. Each week, as we met, they spoke truth to
me…truth that I often didn’t want to hear. They told me I was doing too much.
They told me that I didn’t seem as happy and I wanted everyone to think that I
was.
One Day, my dear small group friend asked me
some questions, and answering them honestly made my whole life stop moving.
“How would
God feel about you if you didn’t do anything other than sit at His feet and
love Him?
If you couldn’t do a single thing for God,
would you be worth loving?”
I knew the
right answer. I knew God would love me no matter what, but doing nothing was so
foreign. My purpose and my identity were all wrapped up in what I did. I knew
it would take time to live into the truth of the answers, so I began
practicing.
Instead of
squeezing as many of my own ideas into my prayers, I simply sat. In the brief
moments when all of my daycare kids were napping, I took that time to listen to
that feeling in my heart, that voice in my head. Once I took the time to
listen, I came to understand that sometimes that feeling was me, and my own
ideas, but other times, it was God. God would place a persistent feeling on my
heart, and I couldn’t make it go away. God would encourage me and bring truths
to my mind exactly when I needed them, and, in my human-ness, I would roll my
eyes and disagree. I felt this battle occurring within myself, but as much as I
wanted to, I didn’t fully understand it.
One of those
crazy truths that came to mind and wouldn’t go away, was that we needed to make
some major life changes. We needed to clear our schedule, focus on our
immediate family, and get in a healthy place before we could do any good in the
world for God or for anyone else. If I wanted to change the world, even just my
own little corner of it, as I told Dave when we were dating, I needed to find
my identity in something bigger than just being busy.
It sounded
torturous. This truth wouldn’t go away though, so I mentioned the idea to Dave.
“What if we stepped down from every commitment besides our family and our jobs?
What if we just quit everything and focused on our family?”
I don’t know
how, but Dave didn’t think I was crazy…that’s the other bizarre thing about
God’s ideas, God makes other people think they’re good, too!
After some
discussion, we decided to give God one year. God had one year, and not a day
more, for us to sit at His feet, to love Him, to study His word, and to listen
to Him. We would call it “The Year of No Crazy.”
Yes, it had a name.
The rules
were:
No big life
decisions
No large
purchases
No kids’
activities
No evening
commitments
More time
growing our faith
More time
focusing on making our own family the best we could possibly be together.
It was
probably about a day or two into this year-long commitment that I ran to one of
my small group friends with a list of things that I was absolutely certain that
God wanted me to do…to busy myself with. She simply shook her head at me and
said, “If you have given God this year, then God will honor that. Trust that
God will honor this time.”
She
challenged me to write down all of the things that I was certain God was
calling me to do during our year, and if it truly was from God, then I could do
them when the year was over.
This led me
to a season of learning to discern my own thoughts and ideas from God’s voice.
It took work to try to tell them apart, and I had to know God better in order
to be able to tell if something was truly coming from Him. So, I kept plugging
along in my year. I read my Bible all the way through for the first time in my
life, listened to Christian radio, and read Christian books to gain a better
understanding of who the Bible says God is, and how the life experiences of
others have shaped their view of who God is.
Some of
those books were about mission work that was being done in Africa. The word missionary
always sounded so professional to me, but these stories were really just about
regular people who couldn’t shake the feeling that God had something for them
to do in another country, so they listened. They didn’t dedicate their lives to
mission as a personal choice, but because they couldn’t live out their faith
authentically without obeying this call.
Then, One Day, 2 months before our Year of No
Crazy was over, I received a call from the foster care agency. A family we
didn’t know was going on vacation, and they needed someone to watch their 3
foster children for one week. Could we possibly take them just for that week?
It was just
a week. It wasn’t a major life decision. They were 3, 4, and 5 years-old, just
about the same ages as our biological kids, so it wouldn’t be a hassle. Dave
and I had grown so much in the 10 months of no crazy. We talked about whether
it would be good for us to watch these children, and we prayed. We asked God
for His input on the decision. We took it slow.
Everything
in us felt that it was right to do, so we agreed.
We had a
cookout with the family so the kids would know us prior to spending a week with
us, and although I had always taken the lead in our foster care journey to this
point, Dave knew instantly upon meeting the 4 year-old girl, Halie, that she
was meant to be his daughter. He couldn’t shake the feeling. I was so glad that
we had made room in our lives to listen for God.
The week was
wonderful with the children, and with that persistent feeling in Dave’s heart,
we inquired about the children’s situation. Wouldn’t you know it, the kids were
about to be eligible for adoption, and they were most likely going to be split
up because there wasn’t a home open for all 3 of them.
More
discussion. More conversations with our small group friends. More prayer.
One month
shy of the end of The Year of No Crazy, Brice, Halie and Jasmine moved into
their forever home. A year later, they would officially become McMorrises.
Should we
have waited until that year was over? Would God have honored that time if we
waited to move forward. Yes. I believe whole-heartedly that He would have.
But I also had
come to know how deep God’s understanding of my heart was. I had been in
conversation enough with God to discern His voice from distractions. I knew in
my heart that God was saying, “Go for it. These are your children.”
We ended our
year of no crazy with 3 additional children, a deeper understanding of our God,
and the gift of a blank slate on which to build a life not filled with good
things, but a life filled only with the great things that God has planned for
us.
If you had
all day, I could go on and on about the adventure that our life since the Year
of No Crazy has been. I would assure you that God’s plans for our lives are so
much cooler than even my best plans.
I would also
warn you that you can’t go back. Once you have trained yourself to listen for
God’s voice, you can’t ignore Him when he says things like…
That money
that you are spending is mine. Being in Debt is not where I call you to be. You
can do better with what I have given you. When we heard that, we learned to
live more simply, and in less than 2 years, paid off over $50,000 worth of
debt.
Then, in a
crazy set of circumstances that we would have ignored for sure had we not been
tuned in to the voice of God, we shared some sack lunches with strangers around
town and were led to a community of people who lived in tents. That day of
sharing sandwiches led to a 2 year focus on deep, authentic relationships with
a rag-tag group of people who were homeless. It led to the greatest
Thanksgiving dinners that were ever shared around our table, and the fullest
house as we opened presents with our kids on Christmas mornings.
In the midst
of that, God placed Uganda, Africa on my heart. I have never had a heart for
travel, and still don’t, but God said that He had some things for do there, and
we knew well enough to obey.
So, One Day, I boarded an airplane at
O’Hare International Airport that would take me to Brussels, and then to
Uganda, Africa to live for one year with my husband and 6 children.
But those
are stories for another…One Day.