Hungry

I’ve been learning the past weeks a valuable lesson about how to surrender and this song by Kathryn Scott truly unglued me at the seams on Monday night…it beautifully captures the rhythm of my life in these moments.

Hungry I come to you
For I know you satisfy
I am empty but I know
Your love does not run dry

Lord, I am so empty without your love and your presence in my life! I’ve turned my eyes from my beloved Jesus and focused on the storms that ravage the lives in this broken world, I feel myself sinking just as Peter did. The hurt, the exhaustion, the pain, the sorrow it’s all consuming without Your strength, Your power, Your grace, Your compassion and Your mercy. Lord, I need to keep my eyes on You for You have promised me in Isaiah 43 that when I pass through the waters You will be with me and the river can not overtake me. Lord, I know this in my heart, some days I must remind my head! Help me to remember Lord how hungry I am for your Spirit! It is Your Spirit that leads my heart to the place of motherhood loving the Best Family children. Show me how to love them through their pain: Innocence dying; a childhood stolen because of war. Innocence dying, an inherited disease that is killing their physical body. Oh Lord, I am empty and so hungry. Help me to know how to show them Your love does not run dry…

So I wait for you
So I wait for you

I wait for You Lord, some days I ache so deeply is it so hard to wait! So many times I fall short, struggling to “know” when and how to move and You’ve answered me so sweetly these past weeks with your beautiful promises in Psalm 27. Oh all the ways You answer the cries of our hearts, if only we wait in silence for Your voice. So I wait for You, needing YOUR guidance on how to touch and comfort my children from the east to the west. Those who are right here at my finger tips struggling endlessly with illness in it's physical and mental forms. Those I can not hold when they so dearly need a mother’s hug as they embrace the reality of death knocking on their door. Those who live in captivity of memories they can not erase of horror no eyes should ever witness none-the-less eyes of a child, these are the children you’ve woven into my life and my heart Lord ~ so I wait on You to fill me to overflowing with YOUR love for them, take my words and make them Yours!


I'm falling on my knees
Offering all of me
Jesus your all this heart is living for

Prayer; oh Lord thank you for the gift of prayer ~ I cry out to You my Father for the children, falling on my knees. All the children that ache in my heart for so many reasons. I focus my eyes unto You Lord and meet you in prayer, falling on my knees, knowing I can not do this without You. Jesus truly, You’re all this heart is living for. I know this without doubt because when my eyes turn from Your loving gaze, I feel empty, sinking and without life, hence I have no life to give! Truly, You are ALL this heart is living for!

Broken I run to you
For your arms are open wide
I am weary but I know
Your love does not run dry

BROKEN; Jesus I am broken, You know this. A heart of compassion seeps brokenness like a raging river and Lord I give it all to You. I can not carry the heaviness of all the pain You’ve shown me. I realized that is what I’ve been trying to do these days so You gently remind me in Your loving way through the mouth of a familiar face to fall back into Your arms wide open awaiting to catch me, BROKEN I fall onto You knowing it's safe to be broken BY You. Broken because my Best Family child Jean Claude has re-lived the horror of Rwanda’s genocide to give us written testimony of what terror his 9 year old eyes have seen. Testimony of how his innocence was stolen from him. A story of a boy who hid silenced in terrifying fear just feet away watching his naked father bludgeoned and dismembered, limb by limb while crying out in agony; watching in fear as his defenseless sister was defiled, tortured and raped before his very eyes, lying helplessly dying next to her father. A 9 year old boy who mustered the courage to cradle his bleeding, dying father in his small, tiny, child arms and listen whole heartedly to the plea’s of his dying father; begging Jean Claude to forgive those who had hurt them, begging his son to grow to know Jesus and be a man of God, caring for others before himself…a boy who’s final memory of his father is both wretched and yet somehow bittersweet in a way can no words can describe because it is a story of Your presence admist the terror God, only a story that You can see the beauty from the ashes as it unfolds. Lord, how proud his father must be looking down. Jean Claude has risen to the challenge and answered the cries of his father’s dying wish beyond measure! Jesus I am BROKEN; You know this…how can I envision my dear “old child” Jean Claude as a 9 year old living this unspeakable nightmare! BROKEN.

Jesus I am BROKEN because Jean Claude just shared with me yesterday that one of our dearest Best Family daughter’s is in her final days, losing the fight for her life to AIDS. I am BROKEN because my poor child has no one to hold her while she waits for her heavenly Father to come and take her home. BROKEN because my heart longs to be the arms that embrace her assuring this tiny child of Your love. Lord, I am broken because of all these children that live in my heart and my incapacity to meet their needs; my physical children and my spiritual children alike, I can not take their pain away. I know this is because YOU are meant to meet their needs Lord. The beauty in this lesson Lord is that I'm finally learning what you've been trying to teach: how to truly surrender. Help me fix my eyes upon you Lord and surrender my children to You, I am weary in strength there is no doubt, You alone know the depths of my exhaustion but I know Your love does not run dry. Lord, I wait in faith…for You…

So I wait for you
So I wait for you

Because I suck...

At updating this blog as much as I LONG TO!

Go check out this amazing sister of my soul (whom I've never met, but hope some day I might)...Katie (she's linked on my right sidebar as well)! I wanted to do a huge rev-ya-up kind of post to introduce her many different times over the course of several months, but since I've failed to find the right words to box in this girl who is living outside the capacity of any box responding to the call to be the hands & feet of Jesus Christ in Uganda...I'm just going to cut to the chase and say YOU MUST GO CHECK HER OUT.


Her ministry Amazima Ministries International:





Her UNDESCRIBABLY INSPIRING blog (that I have been stalking for MANY MANY MONTHS):

http://kissesfromkatie.blogspot.com/

Hot & Cold

Sorry, I have been missing in action these days...some of this absence can be blamed upon illness (shame on the influenza type A that's all I've got to say about it!), but in all honesty what's happening in my mind these days is something reminiscent of a solitary light bulb, in the corner of the dark basement, swinging back and forth, flickering from a disrupted power source. I have actually began 4 blog posts over the course of the past 3+ weeks I've been absent...just as I'm about to fully engulf myself to drown in God's grace...life comes barrelling through the door interrupting my intimate time basking in the presence of Jesus and letting His infinite love flow from my soul to these keys to your eyes. So I click "save" or I close my "notebook" and I tell myself "I'll be back" as if I'll actually believe it more if I just promise it to myself. Well, I do come back...completely inspired by some other life-teaching God moment that has occured and I begin the process all over again. What a crazy cycle I'm trapped on these days...hot or cold seem to be my only two modes. Cold when I'm engaged fully in "this world" and FIRE HOT when I'm hopelessly lost in "His world". There is much rumbling around inside me yet I'm having a hard time channeling the energy, I'm in a phase where I'm seriously just taking the time to learn, with God as my ultimate teacher I could spend every day in the classroom and never hear the bell ring!

My latest source of inspiration comes from a lady that literally perspires soul from her being as a human. She has had this ability to draw me in long before I knew the Lord, but now that I hear through different ears I find myself lured even more towards her presence and the truth in her words.

I find myself meditating on these wise words from Tracy Chapman in her song "paper and ink" (I suggest you listen to the song!!!)

Touched the mirror

Broke the surface of the water

Saw my true self

All illusions shattered

Money's only paper only ink

We'll destroy ourselves if we can't agree

How the world turns

Who made the sun

Who owns the sea

The world we know will fall piece by piece

Sat down up close to the colored black hole

Like they'd always told me not to

Saw the one dimension polka dot pacifier

And all illusions shattered

Money's only paper only ink

We'll destroy ourselves if we can't agree

How the world turns

Who made the sun

Who owns the sea

The world we know will fall piece by piece

Bared myself wholly heart and body unadorned

Stripped down solely

To the evil and the good

Felt no shame

Naked to the world

And all illusions shattered

Money's only paper only ink

We'll destroy ourselves if we can't agree

How the world turns

Who made the sun

Who owns the sea

The world we know will fall piece by piece

Faced towards the sea

Looked to heaven up above

Felt the world revolve around me

No one could tell me otherwise

But the turbulent waters won't reflect this life

Only the sun the moon and sky

And all illusions shattered

Money's only paper only ink

We'll destroy ourselves if we can't agree

How the world turns

Who made the sun

Who owns the sea

The world we know will fall piece by piece

Money's only paper only ink

Once I can channel what's going on inside me and keep my children healthy for longer than 24 hours...I hope the good Lord will grace me with the words to share and continue to ramble! Until then all I can do is continually apologize for being a slack blogger! I promise I hold many gems in the treasure chest...both from Africa and America! Their luster never dulls even if I'm holding them secretly captive from you all longer than I promised I would!

The end and the beginning...

I'm not going to get all deep about the ending of 2008 and the beginning of 2009 mostly because, I don't have to this book of mine does it so much better and in less words than anything I would write! These were words that greeted me today and they sent my mind to that deep place whereas my heart tagged along too. So I want to share them here, just in case it touches one of you the way it touches me...

Take a Good Look

If you've never studied astronomy, you could look at the stars all night long and never know anything about them. However, if you were to get a star chart and a telescope, those little points of light would take on more meaning and significance. It's the same with the places where God is working in your life. If you don't make an effort to know God, you'll miss out on the amazing things God is doing right now and wants to do in your future.

May grace and peace be yours from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ. ~ Galatians 1:3

Wow, how these words sum up my current state of mind just perfectly and I love this scripture to end one magnificent year growing, learning, serving and loving Christ!

Christmas through new eyes

This year I made a promise to my heart; to take my eyes of "santa" and focus them solely on Jesus and the true purpose of Christmas. I wanted a living Jesus to be my greatest gift this year. And He was!! ~ no doubt in that! He came packaged in many different faces, many different voices, many different souls yet His eyes always remained the same so I could not mistake each gift that I received. The most precious sights for me was how I seen Jesus in my husband, I seen Him in my two sons and this brought tears to my eyes that only God could send, tears of joy and tears of love...a love so grand there's no way to measure it...a love so deep it could only be classified as holiness touching my heart.

What I didn't plan on, what I didn't expect was the gift of receiving Jesus through the eyes of my beloved Best Family. My children I can not hold, my children whose eyes I can not see, my children who have no parents to love on them and no santa to bring them gifts, but alas...they have much more, they have the living Jesus inside their hearts to celebrate, a gift far greater than anything wrapped in paper! It was my honor to learn yet another lesson by having the privilege of the Best Family Children sharing with me the true gift of Christmas through new eyes, their eyes. Here's the email we received on Christmas Eve from Jean Claude:

Hello Maria, Donny and Boston+Zachary!
I wish you Merry CHRISTMAS! This is a special day in our Life and in our Hearts.
Because MARIA(think about your meaning in Name) is going to beget a Highest Child, in whom we shall be saved. And we will never go in Heaven without pass through this SON who is annointed.

As Best Family children we are very excited to this Child who was born in bad Place, in poor Family, without Support, without any thing. But after He became a special one, and all people alike Rich and Poor, Tall and Short, White and Black, Big and Thin, Intelligents and Less Intelligents, and so on must be saved in his name, to go in heaven they must pass before him!

That is our Trust as Best Family, we are no Value now, but we each will become the Special one, because our Father called GOD and our Mother called MARIA(halleluya jesus christ for our own mary, mother).

To day afternoon we start together to think about GOD's LOVE. love to us which grand to give us his beloved Son. and we pass all night long in Prayers and Thanking him till tomorrow morning, where all your children celebrate new family.

Maria Mery Christmas too. And we must joint with you in mind or on hearts..

~BEST FAMILY CHILDREN

I've said it before and I'll say it again...God truly knows how to love His beloved, because I have never felt more loved and more grateful for the true gift of Christmas than I did this year! The Lord showed me in ways beyond my comprehension the gift of His love and it was my greatest Christmas present EVER!

My latest Best Family letter

Here is a letter from Jean Claude sent in response to an envelope I sent from our Sunday school children. Inside the 9x12" envelope were some colored pictures from children ages 5-9yrs old and a written letter by the 5th & 6th graders explaining what autumn is like in Minnesota, also they were gracious enough to include all the ways they pray for the children of the Best Family to be blessed. 2 months later, the package finally arrived (makes me wonder how long it will be till the Christmas packages arrive since we only mailed them out last week!!). Anyway, I just had to share how tremendously humbling it is to receive all this gratitude simply from some colored sheets of construction paper and a one page letter ~ what greater gifts are these words to my heart...

Hello mum!

How are you mum? How is Dad? How are my brothers? They are very fine as I always wish and want. I'm writing this e-mail with full happiness because of my Family in USA. those Children of 9 to 10 years have made us very happy yesterday for their wonderful and exciting Drawings. Best family USA sent good pictures to their other Best Family Rwanda, and they know to draw so much in beauty. You will also show them what their brothers and sisters designed or painted soon. And we thank them for a wonderful Letter they wrote to us, which consist of the best words concerning their prayers to us and wishes for the gift of Life to us. We make sure that we will live in better life in the name of Jesus our lord and we trust all things in GOD. And we have known blessings from God that we have the wonderful relatives(brothers and sister) who loves us so much and always think about us and pray for us in all their times. God bless them so much and their families. And God bless you Maria and Donny for your best intermediary between your two families(Rwanda family and USA family). My children are very very happy about the children from your church, and they shall write back soon. And they are very very proud about their mum and dad in USA(maria and donny). They are telling me in these days that they are no longer Orphans now, because they have the Parents who always look after them. This is the confidence of life you have given to my children. I'm very happy about that. God has blessed me by this.

Our parents, Be blessed so much.

Our Relatives at church, be blessed so much.

Stay with GOD in all times.

~ Best Family Rwanda.

Someone stole...

The thoughts from my soul and the beats from my heart with this video...



I promise to get back to the mission trip stories as soon as I find a moment TO BREATHE! Till then "gasp"....