Walking in someone else's shoes

I sit here thinking about past conversations and postings people put on Facebook when it comes to helping others. My mind is flooded with thoughts, it feels like I live in two different worlds. Many of you will stop reading this before you get through the first world.  Its the second world that you need to read-it will change your life forever.

The first world
It's the one we all live in, average america where people are complaining about many different things and offering opinion as facts.
1. My personal favorite (not) is when people talk about those in need.  They need to just get a job, they are lazy, they are living off the tax payers money, they are cheating the system, they are buying junk food, they are doing drugs, etc. Really? What if all that is true? Couldn't we say the same about the people around us that are not on welfare? Also if you were in their shoes how would you respond? I am not sure I wouldn't do anything different. Living in survival mode, trying to make it day by day, is very different then surviving your day because of the busy schedule our over involved family members are in.
2. The person holding a sign in need is very black and white when it comes to reactions.

Either people give them money or they give you the opinion on why you are wrong to do so! I believe in giving them money, if God owns it all anyway-does it matter what they use it on? I am giving it with no strings attached. I am giving it as a means of hope. I am giving it to give back some of their dignity and let them know they are not invisible. As soon as it leaves my hand and I say goodbye, what they do with it is between God and them. I don't know about you but I still struggle and haven't figured out a way to live my life financially pleasing God with all my choices.  Since I have work to do with spending my money in a Godly way, not sure I should judge someone else in how they are spending their money. Also I have never been homeless, I have always had shelter and food.  I am not sure what its like to sit or stand in the brutal cold holding a sign hoping someone will give me something so I can eat that day or feed my family.  Not sure what it's like people driving by or walking by looking the other way as if I don't even exists. I don't know how it feels to starve and to not provide for my family who is starving. Would I turn to drugs and alcohol to numb the pain? To get a moment of escape from the life I am living? I think I would, I am only human.

So before you give opinions, thoughts or comments-go walk in their shoes first! I know I need to be reminded of this daily as well.


The second world
I get to experience this world on Monday and Tuesday's from 6-8 and Wed mornings from 10-12. I get to experience this with 200-250 other people every week as we share this experience with over 325 families. This world is different and even the people are different during the above time frames.  The experience that happens is one of molding clay-a work in progress so to speak.
These 250 different volunteers live crazy busy lives also.  They have work and school to get through, and after school activities. They have dinners to prepare for and stuff to do like all of us. But somehow they open their schedules just enough to allow the potter to mold his clay.


This world is different, judgement is replaced by Care. Looking the other way is replaced by an open hand. Busy unconnected lives are replaced by interlocking hands praying together and praying for one another.

In this world…..
To see the smile as the door is open,
To see the greeting as they walk in the room,
To see the comfort that is given to the first timer,
To see the explanation of the choices this week,
To see the hugs of embrace as they walk in the pantry,
To see the tears as they choose items their family needs,
To see the care of the items being placed from cart to bags,
To see the humble placement of their bags into their vehicles,
To see the Holy Spirit embrace the prayers,
To see the person in need walk through this and become a friend!
To see the volunteer be changed forever!

This world is different indeed.  Yes we feed those in need, but what is happening is way more than that. They walk in for food and leave with the sustainer of life. Along the way they become our friends and we are forever changed.

Tired of the first world? Come join us weekly!
If you are in need of help, we are here to become your friend.
If you are in need to help, God is here to change your life forever!

Find out more at gracechurchin.org/carecenter

Heartbreak to Love

February is a special month for many of us.  It is the month that I was born in, but to most of us it represents LOVE. I can think back over my lifetime and this month wasn't always special. For two of my loves, it also hasn't always been a special month.

Here is a special glimpse into their hearts...

The boys were abandonded by their biological mother in February 2011. It was a sad and scary time for both of them not knowing what was happening to them and what their future would be.  God knew exactly how the next few months would unfold, but today they shared something special with me.  A song came on the radio that really means something to them.  It was the first Christian song that comforted them and they quickly learned the lyrics.  Christian music has played a significant role in our lives and God has used music to speak to us.  Our family song is Voice of Truth by Casting Crowns, that song was used to bring the three of us together. But more on that later, there is another song more important that I want to focus on.

So the song on the radio today comforted the boys while they were in dark times. As I drove down the road it was hard to hold back the tears as the three of us sang the lyrics to this song.  The boys explained to me that the song gave them hope and drew them closer together during those rough times.  Their love for one another held them together and helped them weather the storm.  "My brother's keeper" has a very different meaning to them!

Here are the lyrics……

                   "Hold Us Together" Matt Maher

It don't have a job, don't pay your bills
Won't buy you a home in Beverly Hills
Won't fix your life in five easy steps
Ain't the law of the land or the government?
But it's all you need

And love will hold us together
Make us a shelter to weather the storm
And I'll be my brother's keeper
So the whole world would know that we're not alone

It's waiting for you knocking at your door
In the moment of truth when your heart hits the floor
And you're on your knees

And love will hold us together
Make us a shelter to weather the storm
And I'll be my brother's keeper
So the whole world would know that we're not alone

This is the first day of the rest of your life
This is the first day of the rest of your life
'Cause even in the dark you can still see the light
It's gonna be alright, it's gonna be alright

Love will always hold us together and now as a larger family we have more love that will shelter us through the storms of life! So always know you will never be alone again!

Amazing Man of God

I have reflected over the past 24 hours about this amazing man of God I know.

Saturday morning of our first weekend of service food drive is when I first met him. He joined us on our transportation team to get the food collected from the zones back to where we are sorting. He was so impacted that day from the amount of food collected he decided to join us Sunday to repeat the transpiration of the food. He let us borrow his cargo van and enclosed trailer as well and someone else drove it around to collect food.  When sunday was over he handed me the keys to the cargo van and trailer and said it now belongs to Grace. That's the first time that has happened to me, and it was the first time I met this amazing man.

He signed up the next year and showed up with a dump truck to collect the food we gathered. I will never forget the look of proudness on his face as he pulled up.  It was completely filled with collected food. He always impacted those he interacted with.

There was something about helping others and food that stirred inside this man. One day I got invited to come visit his office and try out this new idea he had. Tim and I went out to the office and had some of the best BBQ ever.  He had traveled to this expert BBQ man in St Louis and spent the day with him learning as much as he could.  Now he was back and had some of the homework with him for us to try. He talked about creating a ministry at Grace that would feed people. It was a huge plan and I wasn't sure where it would land, but boy that was great BBQ!! Little did I know that this man was dedicated. When he set his mind to help people, that's exactly what he did. Add to it that he could share the love of Jesus with them, watch out he was on a mission.

Helping others through food was what Doug lived for.  When he sent me emails about the design of the trailer that was being built, all I could think was wow.  This was an amazing cooking vessel, but the pictures didn't do it justice. When he showed up that day to show us his new ministry tool, I think every man was drooling.

He has served many ministries, our leaders and volunteers. He has served the homeless many times. He also served the staff lunch during our service day. Not only did he serve us lunch, after lunch he joined us by pushing a wheelbarrow.  He was always there to help, to do whatever needed to be done.  He didn't want the credit, he always gave it to the Lord.

I shouldn't have been surprised when he came to me and said he wanted to feed our Care Center friends. Not just give them food, but amazing food-the same amazing meal he was making for the men's ministry.  I was blown away! His goal was to feed 500 of our friends this week, he wanted to give them a taste of amazing food. He wanted them to feel normal, to feel special, to feel Jesus this week.

We just got done talking about the way the food would be transported over to us. I just got done reminding him how amazing our friends were going to feel and that I couldn't wait for this to start.

Then 10 min later, he was gone.

We will never know why, our questions will not be answered.

What I can hold on to is the life he lived,
the amazing person he is,
the wonderful father he is,
the caring husband he is,
the servant leader he is,
the humble man he is,
the Godly example he is!

Doug would want us to be better people, to be better father/mothers, to be better spouses, to be better volunteers, to love people more, to care for them no matter what it cost us, to be the hands and feet of Jesus to EVERYONE we interact with.

He loved the staff, he loved Grace, he loved our volunteers, he loved everyone and more importantly he loved Jesus!

Parenting lessons, what not to do!

I have my sons permission to blog about some of our conversations that we have shared together in private. This isn't being done to bring light to their past in a way to show sorrow or ask for it.  I have a larger desire for them to know this isn't anything close to normal. For them to know I care, that I hear them and that I understand (as much as I can) about their past and how it impacts them today. A question that I get often from friends is "are they really that nice/good all the time?" My answer is always.  These boys are a direct example of how God is larger than any one thing, or person, on this earth.  What someone can do for harm, He can turn it for good.
I know more now than I ever did, that owners manuals don't come with kids. I will add this to the list of questions, along with why men cant figure out women! All we have to rely, on when it comes to parenting, is the tools in our tool box. Those tools are things we learned from our parents as they raised us, both the good and the bad.  I know many of us have said, "I'll never do or say that", only to find ourselves eating those words later in life. We also have those things we learned from our friends' parents.  Many times we all wished our parents did this or that, or didn't do something-comparing them to our friends' parents. Little did we know that they were doing the same thing with ours!!  We can learn new ways to learn to use our tools, but all in all we still have the same tools in which to parent.
 When it comes to parenting, I have been overwhelmed with another thing. My parents! Many times over the past 4 months I have thought of my mom and dad parenting me.  How did they do that? I have a huge appreciation for the stressful times they made it through and for the man they made me into!

So now to me as a parent. I have found myself realizing more these past few weeks that I need to be reminded of what these two precious young men went through.  It is their foundation, it forms their decisions, it guides their path.....but most of all... it helps me to change all of that as their father. People treat their pets better than what they experienced.
Here is some of their experience.....
-Allowed to eat two things for dinner Ramon Noodles or rice.
-Allowed 5 mins to eat their food-no matter how hot it was.
-Many times not given food, it was used as a form of punishment. This went so far that the boys were starving and sneaking food in their pants pockets. Their mom found out and cut out all the pockets in their pants!
-Doing "The Wall" (standing with your nose on the wall and lifting your heals off the floor) was not only a form of punishment, but used as a containment tool like an animal.  On the wall most of the time or in their bed room.
-Rigging their bedroom door with a bell, to notify them that they opened the door.  All hell broke loose if this happened, so even if you needed to use the bathroom at night-nope!
-Being told over and over that you are stupid, cant accomplish anything and that you are worthless.
-Not getting Christmas presents or birthday presents. Now I know many families who cant do this. But the presents were exchanged back and forth between the parents in front of the boys.
-Not ever allowed in the house when the parents were not there, so they had to leave for school when they left for work. The same after school.  This caused the boys to find somewhere to go for hours before school started and after it was over.  Rain, Snow, Heat-didn't matter...they were outside.
-Summer time when school was not in session, they were gone from early morning till late evening on their own. No place to go, no money or food to eat.
-If one of the parents had to wake up at 3:00 am to get ready for work-she was mad that the boys were sleeping still....so she woke them up and made them "do the wall".
-There was screaming, name calling, degrading words spoken to them daily.
-There also was the abuse.

All of this above is a reminder to me that these boys have been traumatized daily for years and years. Through all that they trust me, they love me, they allow me to love them, to care for them, to guide them, to spend time with them, to share life with them and to be their father! They have been a true blessing in my life so far and we have our whole lives ahead of us. They are a answer to my prayers!

This house, this neighborhood, this church community will never be the same because of these two amazing boys.

People can still ask if they are really this good?
My new answer is "you don't even get to experience the level of good these boys really are!"

The thought of what I would say or do if I ran into their mother has always been a question in my head. I have thought of many different reactions and responses as you can imagine.
The one that is giving me a sense of peace in my heart is the one you can pray for it to happen if I do see her. I will look her in the eye and tell her that I do not understand what (or how) things that happened the first 15 years of these young boys life. But that these are the most amazing young men I have ever met, and that they are my sons, my amazing sons who were given to me by the Lord. I also want to thank her because she did have a part in this whole craziness. I know that might sound odd, but its true.

You can pray that God heals the wounds of the past for all of us. And that He continues to give us comfort and guidance in the days to come.

Three months

It has been a little over three months since my life changed forever.

For years and years I have dreamed of being married and being a father. I actually had a goal to accomplish both by the time I was 30. As year 30 came around I remember thinking to myself that this goal wouldn't really play out like I wanted it to. After a while I was content with my life as it was, but I was always wanting a family. The girls I dated didn't pan out into wife material for me, so I started to pray about being a father. Maybe it wasn't in God's plan for me to be married, but there are plenty of children in this world who need a father. We are called to help with widows and be a father to the fatherless. This thought started to grow in me more and more. I volunteered with Safe Families which is a temporary foster program that helps families and children. Their main goal was to reunite the children back with the families-which I was fine with, I was content doing my part. Little did I know that by being faithful in serving this organization and these children, my life would soon change.

I remember the call like it was yesterday. It was like a normal call from Safe families...I have a child in need, can you help? This time it was different. It was children, not child and I was being asked to consider a long term placement, maybe even adoption. It was a lot to take in, I mean it was something that I longed for-but it still was a large task. I said I would need time to pray, and they were in agreement. Back and forth the pulling and fighting began between my heart and my head. I needed it to make sense, everything needed to line up just right but I couldn't get it to. After a few weeks, I called Safe Families on the night before I was going to meet the boys. I explained how I wasn't able to meet the boys and how I didn't think this was the right time for me. She asked what was going on, and I explained that I didn't know how I was going to financially do it. I didn't know what it was going to cost to raise two 15 year old boys, and that I would loose a roommate if I did this. So I would have less income than I did currently with two more mouths to feed and care for. Some of it was my reasoning and logic but there was a reality piece to this that was so unknown. She asked me to pray and that maybe I was to be involved in some other way. I prayed and felt comfortable meeting the boys.

Just to be a mentor, I kept telling myself over and over again as I walked up to the door to pick them up. As the front door opened, God opened the door of my heart forever. As I met these two young men I could sense that something bigger was about to happen. Looking back I never knew what it was going to be, and surely didn't think we would be where we are today-but from the moment we met, I knew God was at work.

The next phase happened so quickly that you would have thought it was months later. But after a few weeks of hanging out, they moved it. Soon we were moving down the road of adoption. I still had no idea how this was all going to work out, let alone how the finances would happen. But I did know that all I needed to do was to trust God and allow him to work in me. And work he did!

The work that the Lord did by mending our hearts as one family, in such a short period of time, has been hard to describe.
It has been as if we have been together for years.
On October 3rd, our final adoption hearing, the court will catch up with what we all three of us already know....We are family!

I love those boys as if they came from a part of me.

We might not share the same blood, but we do share the same heart!

Will you help?

This issue has been weighing on my heart for months now, so here we go.

How far are you willing to go to help others? I think my initial instinct would be "I would do anything to help others." Then as I think about it more, I would have to say that I start to weigh my willingness to help everyone with the level of comfort I would need to give up. Does that make sense? I mean we are not all selling our homes and using every penny to help those in need, so there is a line drawn somewhere. If you agree with me, then the issue isn't about helping others-but more about our willingness to give up comfort!

So if someone needed you to hold the door open for them, not much comfort is being given up-5 seconds maybe, you would help them. I would guess that a high percentage of people would be willing to help someone in that way. What if someone needs you to help them start their car? Now the comfort level is getting a little higher. Time is a factor, is the person safe, can you really help them out, will I be late doing whatever is next, etc. All those comfort thoughts come into play when you make your decision to help. I am guessing that we are getting closer to a 50-50 chance of helping someone out. Most of us rationalize that we are already "good" people or "doing our part" with something else in our life-which allows us off the hook when we say "sorry I cant help you right now"! Is that rationale really something, or is it our way of justifying things?

So what is it about our comfort zone that determines what we are willing to do or not do. Were called to help the least of these, how does that work into our comfort determination? Everyone in need is someones mother or father, daughter or son, etc. Is this how we would want someone to respond to our mother who asked for help? Or even more the mother who has given up on asking others to help and doesn't know where to turn any longer?

What will it take to no longer allow our comfort meter to determine when, who, and how we help those in need around us. Do Christ followers look different than non believers when it comes to who lends a hand? I know what I would like that answer to be-just not sure that makes it true.

It makes me wonder if the Barna institute is correct that 85% of Americans would consider themselves Christians, if just a portion of them reached out and helped someone-wouldn't this country or our communities look different?

Next time you are asked for help......How will you respond?

Through Foreign Eyes

Can you imagine what it would be like to wake up tomorrow and in a different country? For some of us if we had input on which country-we would do it in a heart beat. A different language, different cultural things, different food (still remember eating cow stomach in Africa), different customs, etc. Things would not be the same as it is here in the good 'ol USA. What if you didn't have a say in where you would wake up? What if it wasn't a place you would ever want to go, or even knew where it existed on a map? No time to prep and learn the new language, the sites to go see, etc. Just BAM one day you are in a different world.

I think that some people who live here right next to us experience that exact same thing. They don't have to hop on a plane and travel to the other side of the world-they simply wake up and wonder "how in the world did I end up here", or "where am I?"

I was taking groceries to my truck and the wind was so bitter cold, below zero wind chill, and I thought of the homeless person and prayed wondering if any of them were left out in the cold. I wanted to run and jump in the truck and then finish the prayer, but I thought I would walk slowly to the truck feeling the sting on my face just for a few minutes trying to feel even a little what someone spending the night would be feeling like. I am surely not the only one who is thinking about them, but those of us that are..we are thinking that someone else will do something about it. Tomorrow it will be just as cold, and so will the next day. If they are able to wake up in the morning, they will have to face it all over again. But someone else will step up-right?

I wonder as I prayed at dinner, thanking God for always providing food on the table and asking Him to be with those without food tonight. I wondered like standing in the cold air, should I not eat for a day, two days or three? Just so I can feel, truly feel what it is like to go without food. When I was at Culinary school I learned that the average restaurant wastes 12-18% of it's food that it takes in. The average home, over 30% is wasted. From scraps as we prepare food to uneaten leftovers still in the fridge. How many starving people could we save from just our waste? Who knows but someone else will step up-right?

Who will step up? Who will be the next one to help someone in need? I know I am not doing my part, this is so much I can do. But dream with me for just a moment. How would this world, this country, this state or this town look differently if we did step up? If we just did more than we did yesterday? If just the Christians alone did what Jesus asked us to do? Who would be hungry? thirsty? need to be clothed? who would need to be visited or invited in? Is Matthew 25 just something we do once a year in the Fall, to make us feel like we have "done our part". Our feel good weekend? Great things happen that weekend, don't get me wrong, but how would needs be met if that happened twice a year? 6 times a year? monthly? daily? if this happened we would need to have to focus on the spiritual needs of those around us, because their physical needs would have been met. And many of them would be knocking down the church door wondering who this Jesus guy really is, because this time..people didn't just walk by looking the other way.


I watch this young man light up in just a few hours. For years darkness has hovered over him. He is looking at things from a very different perspective. The smallest smile or the most simple question allows him to know that he is alive and you notice. That's all it took. I am sure it wont be that easy in the days to come, but for now I rest knowing that sometimes it is the smallest things that make the biggest difference when your heart is in the right place.

We wont do it, living the same life we lived yesterday. We will not impact those around us if we continue to focus inwardly on our own lives or competing with the Jone's to get what they have.

You want to do something, die to yourself today and ask what God what would he have you do. Be careful for what you ask for, because what He might ask might change your world forever.....and change THE world forever.