Failure, A Mustard seed & Landfill
I left the house early this morning because we were out of coffee and we don’t do a morning without coffee around here. After driving through at Caribou, I found my way to the land we hope to buy for Storyteller Cafe. As I was coming up on the corner I have pictured our cafe on thousands of times I thought ,
“what if my girls remember me as a failure because I spent my whole life fighting for something that never materialized?”
If you feel this is a dramatic thought, it is.
I haven’t spent my whole life working towards this cafe, 9 years yes, but my life isn’t over as far as I know and where as everyday I feel myself getting older, in reality I am still pretty young. Another thing, this isn’t the first time I have considered the possibility we might not be able to proceed with building Storyteller Cafe. I am more aware than anyone the difficulty for a nonprofit to get funding for a building project without an enormous amount of money in the bank, especially in a post Covid-19 economy, and because 1/3rd of our space will be used for a restaurant. When I tell people when God brings the right person or right bank it will be a miracle, I am not kidding. This morning I wasn’t thinking of the possibility of failure, I was thinking of what my girls would think of me, their mom, and us, our life, if the cafe we have been talking about and believing for doesn’t become a reality. If they would look back at me as some quack who spoke, sang and lived for dreams too big to ever be realized.
This is raw writing tonight. It is for anyone who has ever believed in something so much bigger than themselves. It is for anyone stepping out into the unknown holding in open palms a mustard seed named faith. It is for anyone who God has scooped out from their lives all the comfort and ease in order to lead them on a path where it is clear He is all there is to desire, follow and long for. It is for you, if you have stood or sat or cried or quietly screamed for God to walk with you and use you no matter what that may mean, because you are so desperate to be with Him, wherever He would have you go.
After I had my coffee and took Ernie to the lake, my head cleared. There are two things about the unwanted thought from the enemy of my soul entering my sleepy mind before 8am. First, my identity isn’t in what anyone thinks of me, not even my beautiful children. It is secure in the Lover of My Soul and therefore, my identity is also secure in his definitions of success and failure. To Him the one work is to believe (and boy do I) and out of that belief I am to remain in Him, surrendered and connected to Him as my source. This I am learning to choose more than I don’t ( I often feel like the poster child for ‘work in progress’).
It is here in this remaining where rest for my weary soul waits. It is here he quiets the questions of success and failure my human nature and the voices of this world arise. It is here he tells me I am a success simply because I am His.
The second thing about this thought is about my girls. As I have learned to trust my Creator for the security of my identity I also must trust him for the work he is doing and will continue to do in them to teach them these sweet truths. If my girls look back at my life and say even for a minute I showed them what it was to sit with Jesus, what other success is there?
Are you like me? Battling with a definition of success other than the one given by the most successful, perfect, King and Lord? Do you need the reminder? He is asking us to know Him. To sit with Him in surrender and find rest with Him. He is gentle and humble, His burden is easy and here we find rest for our souls.
After we left Caribou, Ernie and I took our hot coffee and found ourselves at a nearby lake. Ever tired of what I have already done, I decided to walk away from the water at first and head across the road on a path I had never paid attention to. It was a nicely paved wide sidewalk with a fairly well traveled road on one side and fields of wild grass turning brown and gold as fall in Minnesota hangs on for a few more days like a summer sunset that won’t quite let go. In these fields there was a sign and it said;
“Restricted Area, Do not Trespass, Closed Landfill”
This sign was repeated on both sides of the road for the entire way Ernie and I walked before we turned back toward the lake again and I was struck by the beauty growing over garbage. Just below the quiet fields and hills was toxic waste, harmful even. Like I have a million time this fall I thought to myself, beauty can grow out of death. Beauty can exist in the midst of garbage and even garbage can be transformed.
Our world currently boasts of much hopelessness, dying and death. There are people who are hurting in a myriad of different ways, ways I have no need to outline here because as soon as you read these words I typed you thought of hurting friends, of your own hurts and the hardness in this life. The culture is divided in every area, every community. No one is immune to judgement and misunderstanding.
But, God.
But God is the Redeemer and Restorer.
But God can do the miracle of taking the hopeless and bringing hope.
But God can breathe life into the dying.
But God can create unity where the only possibility seems to be division.
But God can make a way for a little cafe to be a place for community, restoration, and flourishing; for all who walk through its doors.
But, God.
I don’t know where you come to this space from tonight. If your thoughts can be as cruel to you as mine can be to me. If worry and anxiety tap at your heart so steadily their beat has become the rhythm your rushing life attunes to or if you are determined to close your eyes and hang on knowing this crazy life will one day end and eternity full of peace waits for you.
No matter who you are, what you battle, I want you to know, or know again, you are valuable. You don’t have to strive for some unattainable, unsatisfactory version of worldly success. If there is ugly in your life, it doesn’t have to have the last word. Your ugly can be transformed - even better and more completely than a closed landfill. God can do all of this for you, us, all of this and more. When we turn to him.
I don’t know what my girls will say about my life when it is all over. I was with my mom recently at a mall, first time I shopped in a mall since the pandemic started, and in remembrance of my GG (her mom) we went into JC Penney’s. This was GG’s favorite store. Throughout the night we talked a lot of GG, about who she was, and even the funny parts as I listened to my mom her voice brimmed with love and longing for her mama. I hope this is how my girls talk about me when it is my turn to go. That even my quirks are loved because they were me and they love me.
This is how God loves you and more. He knew every mistake, every presumed failure, every time you turned away from him- the is the Giver of all good things- to lesser things. He pursues you anyway. He showed his love by defeating death, for you.
Tonight my prayer for us is this;
I pray we find true rest as we choose to remain in Jesus.
I pray he scoops us out so he can fill us up with all he is, life and love and peace and joy.
I pray whatever the enemy would use against us melts away, in Jesus’ name.
I pray we still walk forward with open hands and mustard seeds.
I pray we will see his faithfulness in the land of the living.
We wait on you Lord, we wait patiently on you.
Amen.
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