Rooted in Decay

Once or twice a day I slip through the screen door on the side of our house, my hands full of bits of food.  These are the scraps.  The peels.  The rinds.  The things we couldn't...or wouldn't...eat.

All day long I collect them in a little bowl, watching merrily as it slowly fills.  I chop and slice and smile as I tenderly scoop up butts of squash and celery leaves.  When the onion skins begin to tumble over I take my bowl and rush outside.

It takes me 28 seconds to cross the grass to the compost pile.  A heaping, stinking place of decay.  I throw the cantaloupe rinds and apple cores on top where they will bake and soak and be eaten by less discerning creatures.

Now and then we will turn it and churn it.  Stirring up all that crumbling waste until something miraculous happens.

Dirt.  Thick, dark, soft, warm dirt unlike anything you could buy at Home Depot.  Our precious garden plots are full of it.  Lettuce, tomatoes, zucchini and eggplant all rooted and nourished by dead bits of lettuce, tomatoes, zucchini and eggplant.

This is life.  I love feeding it.  For God wastes nothing.

A Rose by Any Other Name

And the makeover continues!  Things are getting even fancier in this little corner of the world wide web.  Look at the address bar at the top of the screen.  Yep.

www.ranchedonjesus.com

You'll still be able to get here by typing in the old www.ranchedonjesus.blogspot.com.  But with the new address there's less typing.

Why the change?

I decided to get a few business cards printed.  We are going to be at quite a few conventions/events this summer.  I plan on giving out cards advertising the blog.  My husband says if I really want to be a writer I need to do more of these promotional things.  I stink at promotional.  But I am trying.  Sort of.  Hence the cards.

www.ranchedonjesus.com is a lot shorter than www.ranchedonjesus.blogspot.com.  It fit better on the cards.

When I purchased the domain name Google made a few other suggestions for website names that they believed might be similar.

housedonjesus.com
residencedonjesus.com
farmedonjesus.com

But I think my favorite was:

spreadedonjesus.com

That address is still available if anyone is interested.  For now I'll continue to be Ranched on Jesus.  And if you don't know what that name means, do some clicking around to find out!

Cake with Icing

The last few days have been jam packed with unusual goodness.

Exactly seven days ago I was at the complete end of myself.  We had to send out an email alerting our supporters that we did not have the necessary funds to send our Ugandan children back to school.  We needed a whopping $7,500 and we needed it FAST.

It is so so SO hard to send out that kind of email.  SO hard.

I had to humble myself and hold out my empty hands before my partners, my children, my supporters and my God.  To be very VERY honest, I didn't feel I deserved a "rescue."  For the sake of the children I knew we had to open up and share our need.  I just personally felt all used up and wilted.  Like a flower beyond saving.  Not worth watering.

I wanted the Lord to intervene for the children.  I did.  But I couldn't bring myself to really pray or talk to Him about it in any way.  In fact, I didn't even say much of anything about this need on the blog.  I just couldn't.  I didn't want to be involved.  I needed Him to do it for them...but not for me or through me.

Most of you have seen by now that God met our need.  He met it in full.  In fact, he almost doubled what we needed.

I was so pleased as I watched the donations roll in.  It was very touching.  What started out as a dry month was suddenly quite lush.  The months ahead looked more promising too.

My joy and enthusiasm are normally off the charts at times such as this.  But they weren't.  As much as I was thankful for the gifts that came in I was mostly pleased for the staff and children at Ranch.  Pleased and relieved.  But I was not enthusiastic.  Not the way I normally am.    This only made me feel more guilty.

Not only did I not want to talk to God about my inadequacies, I couldn't even properly praise Him for His provision.  I didn't want to enjoy the cake He gave us.

I felt empty.

Then...there was yesterday.

Yesterday God showed up with icing for His cake.

When times get hard in the ministry, they get hard for our family.  I won't go into details, but this involves a lot of mental, emotional, spiritual and... financial strain.  Truthfully we live VERY comfortably. I feel blessed and happy with what we have and how we live.  I love what we do.

It's just that lately practical things keep falling to bits.  The dryer.  The windows.  The paint.  The roof.  The AC.  The sewer line.  For the first time in well over 3 years I was feeling poor.  I was sad.  And wondering if  God even noticed.

Then yesterday Scott was rifling through the mail and sliced open an envelope from our insurance company.

All he said was, "What's this?"

I came to look over his shoulder and went speechless.  It was a check from our insurance company.  On Thursday they had come out to survey our damage from the tornadoes.  We hadn't thought much of it because our damage didn't seem too bad. Apparently, the insurance company felt otherwise.

Inside that envelope was not just an unexpected check.  It was an unexpected gift from the Lord.  A check that shows me God cares.  He doesn't just care about His children in Uganda.  He cares about His children in Birmingham too.

He loves me.

And even though I am still very convinced that I don't deserve this kindness at all, I will gladly sit down and enjoy this iced cake with Him.  Because it doesn't matter if I deserve it or not.  He is who He is not because of who I am.  What a comfort.

Today I am humbly and gratefully accepting His grace with tears and delight.  My cup overflows.

Makeover!

Tada!

Notice anything different?

I've been wanting to give the blog a makeover for a while now.  This weekend I finally sat down and did it!

The old blog header invoked dear memories of a simpler time.  But whenever I looked at it it took me too far into the past.  Much has changed since the day in 2007 when Scott shot this precious photo from across a field in the middle of a church crusade.

The woman pictured above is not the same woman writing these posts.  It was time to move on.

I feel the new look better encapsulates my writing and my personality.  The new blog header is actually an old photo too.  But somehow I feel more at home in it.

What you're looking at now isn't the finished product.  I've got a good bit of tweaking to do...especially with the header.  But for now I'm pleased.  I'm especially pleased because I did the whole thing by my little ol' self!  I hope you enjoy it.  I'd love to know what you think!

Martha's Dress!

This photo makes me blissfully happy.

Remember when we were in Uganda and we took Martha (Sarah and Theophilus' daughter) out for a special day?  This picture is the result.  I promised then to show you photos of her dress, but we ran out of time.  Thankfully Scott remembered to snag a shot of this growing African beauty while he was there last month.

Every time I look at Martha I see a small, feminine Theophilus.  She looks so much like him.

Mountains Inside of Shoe Boxes

I have shared the secret here before.  My mother always knows when there is something troubling me because I don't call her.  I call her frequently.  A lot of times I call her to talk about my troubles.

But there are certain troubles that are not like pebbles or stones.  There are troubles like boulders.  They sit in your stomach.  Or sometimes on your feet.  To move them from your insides to your mouth is impossible.  They are simply too heavy.

So there the troubles rest while you silently hope something will come along to punch you in the gut and shatter them into pieces.

I've been full of boulders lately.  That's why there haven't been any "real" posts in a while.

By now a lot of you have seen the email outlining the very large and urgent need we have for the kid's school fees.  I suppose that might be one boulder.  Or maybe not.  The need is scary and it hurts, but to be honest there are uglier things weighing on me.  Things that are not so obvious.  Things buried under other buried things.

Often a big crisis, like needing $7,500 faster than you can say quickly, shakes you a bit and all sorts of slugs and bugs come crawling out from your underbelly.

They make big problems look like smaller problems.  You discover the greatest hurdles might not be those around you, but rather those occurring in yourself.

I'm not sure what I mean by all of this.  Discussing these things is like trying to squeeze a mountain range into a shoe box.

I can't even articulate it to myself.

I want to talk about these things.  I write about things to untangle them.  But somehow I'm not ready yet.

This is not the place I want to be in right now.  Sort of how you never want to be in the doctor's office, but you know you must in order to eventually feel better or even to just survive.  I'm in the waiting room now.  Waiting for that something to punch me in the gut and break the mountain range to pieces.  Pieces I can understand, then cough up.

Mother's Day Tribute

I considered doing a special Mother's Day post, then got so busy mothering my very busy three year old I lost all motivation.  Yesterday was just one of those days.  Vivian decided to hold nothing back during church with behavior ranging from the extremely sassy and squirmy to the utterly bizarre.  Within a five minute period she 1) attempted to take off her panties and 2) wiped her snot all over my leg.

Guess no one sent her the "Mother's Day Memo" about angelic behavior, gratitude...etc... etc...etc...

And in all honestly I don't think I could write anything "momish" up to par with last year's Mother's Day post.  To read "On Becoming My Mother," my 2010 tribute to my dear mama, Carolyn Rosser, click HERE.

 

"When It's Got to Be Honeysuckle"

I've been organizing files.  It was really boring until I started organizing photos.  Our wonderful 2009 intern, Hannah Copeland, took thousands of amazing shots while she was in Uganda.  She edited hundreds of them and gave us that disk to use for publications, etc.  BUT she also gave us a flash drive full of EVERY SINGLE SHOT she took during her Uganda trip.   I've been going through that driver and stumbling upon such fantastic photos.  A lot of these aren't specifically ministry related which is why they've been collecting digital dust.

But I had SUCH fun looking through these old pictures that I couldn't help but share some with y'all!  Enjoy!

Look at this sixteen month old cutie!  She STILL wasn't walking.

"Hey, Daddy, put Mathew down!"

"This isn't fair!!!!!!!"

"Can I get some sympathy, please??"

Kamara

Scott driving Martha and Mark off for an "adventure."  I think they went up the road to the gas station. Ha!

I LOVE this photo of a Ugandan billboard!  "When It's Got To Be Honeysuckle!"  Ugandan advertisements are the BEST.

I'm giving Joyce a look.

Now she's giving me a look.  Joyce has never been an easy child, but she's always been especially dear to me.

Scott posing while Mark takes his photo.

Hello?  Namugenyi and Vivian with her play phone.

Naked bliss after a delicious lunch of matooke and gnuts.

Anyone else notice Martha's face?!?

I'm going to EAT the gorilla!

Or maybe I'll just kiss him.

See what that sign says?  "Ranch on the Lake."  This is the inspiration behind the name Ranch on Jesus.  This sign is gone now.  They rebuild Ranch on the Lake and renamed it Serena Hotel.  I get choked up looking at this picture.  

Sarah Kamara...a goofball.

Ahhhh Stoney. The delicious ginger soda.  If only they sold these in the States!  (Vivian spit hers out after she took this sip!  Guess she isn't a believer.)

Theophilus outside the dining hall watching the kids sing.  I love this man!

I really really really really miss Uganda.

Back to Normal

I am sitting in my house and the lights are on!  It's a good feeling.

My husband is sound asleep in the other room!  It's a good feeling.

Life is back to normal...sort of.

There are still limbs covering our entire back yard.  A smashed up fence.  An enormous hole.  But compared to last week, things are pretty ho-hum.

I was pretty depressed this weekend as I threw out 40% of the food in my fridge and freezer.  But today when I opened the refrigerator door and saw the clean, organized, spacious shelves I felt energized!  I can actually see everything in there!  I don't have to dig through my freezer to find a bag of peas!

It is nice to have a fresh start.

Scott landed safe and sound in Atlanta Monday night.  He's been doing much better with jet lag than usual.  We actually ate dinner together as a family the last two nights.  (In the past he's passed out on the couch while Vivian and I eat.)  It's been nice.

We're still getting back into the swing of things around here, but I I hope to get a few more posts up over the next several days.