The Something Blue Well (Our Long-Overdue Wedding Update)

Hello friends,

All your lovely faces in 2015! 😍

If you remember, in 2015 so many of you made a stunning celebration possible for us. You came to witness, applaud, and encourage the beginning of our marriage, inaugurating it with your presence and a gift so humbling it continues to move us to tears. And now, we have exciting news!

First, can you please forgive us for all the waiting? We are so sorry it's taken quite some time. Thank you for holding on. Thank you for asking and wondering. We promise, this will be good.

Second, do you know the gravity of what you became part of that October day? We hope we can help you understand. We hope we can help it crash over you as it continues to do for us, and as it should for years to come; generosity is not meant to touch us only once.

As we planned for our ‘unique’ wedding, we wondered - sometimes (...ok, maybe a lot of times) freaking out over - whether family and friends would dare to embrace such an unconventional idea: the beginning of a marriage marked by the funding of a clean water well. You blew us away. We gave and hoped you might be moved to give a little, too, or if not to just show up and know you were part of it all. But you GAVE! Did you know that you gave so far over and above - before and beyond the wedding date - that we had to raise the goal itself?! Your generosity brought the total donated to $19,244. The total number was never the point, but this swept us away in an overflow of tears and joy which carried us through our honeymoon and far beyond. God was faithful to give us a dream and to carry it out, using all of you. To this day we are still moved to tears, and why shouldn’t we be?! THANK YOU!!!!!!!!

And so we planned for a well, and the excess helped to repair an entire drilling rig in a moment of unexpected need for this organization we love, Let Them LOL. So your generosity now touches so many more wells than one. But, onto the the feature: the Something Blue Well.

Kiddos using their new Something Blue well! (Also spotted: Star Wars shirt - yea!)

This well we once imagined as a “what if” now exists, because of you, because God is in the business of crazy dreams... and its story is beautiful. Not only does it serve a small community called Mosongo in the village of Njala along a dusty road I (Katie) have ridden many times before (so unknowingly - but God knew) as I waved and smiled at little ones and their mommas, but it primarily functions as the source for an entire elementary school. You can click here to see it on LTLOL’s map of drilled (and future) wells! (Fun fact: We have engraved the name Njala onto the inside of our wedding rings as a constant close reminder of all God can do through the love of our family!)

This particular school has known the longing for clean water in a painful way, for it experienced the unique hurt of broken promises before LTLOL arrived. We found they had a sort of “well” but it was left in such disrepair there is no way it was preventing illness any better than the dirty mud pits we see other villages forced to drink from, due its unfinished state (see images below).

This is the previous, unfinished "well". You can see the pump was never attached and it was improperly completed so bacteria, algae, and decay have taken over, thus this well never provided clean water.

Peering down into the gaping hole left in the top of the previous well

This school in Njala/Mosongo had been promised a well, but those who began construction never finished the job, not only compromising the health of these people but also leaving a gaping, dangerous hole uncovered in a place where small children wander and play. We are grateful for opportunities to step into these situations and set a new standard where communities have been taught to disbelieve hope exists as promises are broken for the most basic needs, like clean water. This is exactly the kind of thing we believe God was waiting to bring through you - our wedding guests, family, and friends - all along: restoration, hope, new beginnings, and new life. How can we explain our gratitude for this gift that will outlive us? We can only say thank you. Thank you!

The brand new Something Blue Well, just "capped," before the pump was attached an concrete poured.
See the school in the background?!

Clean water!!!

Hope!

Peter and I will head to Sierra Leone at the end of September with Let Them LOL (Peter’s first trip!) and we are hopeful for all that is sure to unfold there. Peter will have an opportunity to do some astronomy outreach with the high schoolers and teachers at our LOL school Hope Rising Academy, I will be photographing and taking on some work-related tasks (I was hired part-time by Let Them LOL last August as graphic designer and storyteller!). Plus, we will of course get a chance to see the Something Blue well and document it for all of you! We are excited to be able to bring back some visuals and first-hand reflections of this experience as another way we can hopefully express how grateful we are and what an impact you have made in this community. We will also get to see the opening of LOL’s new Mother/Children’s Clinic and Leadership Cafe. We know this trip will be full, we can’t wait to share about it all here. Check back soon and/or follow Let Them LOL on social media to keep up to date!

We can’t stop saying it - we are so grateful for each of you; we carry you with us as we need our incredible family to help sustain a firm foundation for a deeply rooted marriage. When we return in October we are excited to announce that we’ll be extending our family through the adventure of foster care as God continues to lead us into new things! We’ve been preparing our hearts for this for years, and working through the process since April.

If you have questions, please reach out and let us know! We’d love to hear from you. Let us say it one last time: we love and appreciate you, each of you. Thank you for being part of this story. 

Lastly, here is a photo album from the wedding (you can still view it if you're not on facebook, don't worry), shot by the incredible and talented Laura Wielo: https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10155792575091115.1073741828.765361114&type=1&l=7019e5fb81

We hope this post can be an encouragement for you to return to on the difficult days. Hope grows, sometimes in the unlikely and unconventional, sometimes in the hidden things, but always among people who simply choose to put love of other above love of self. This is our favorite story to tell and it is because of you that we have so much hope to keep believing it on the hard days. It is the story of the lowly King we serve. May we tell it with every day of our lives, in all the smallest ways, until it is overflowing.

(Ok, one more time...) Thank you. Truly.

With so much love,
Katie & Peter <3

The Spirit and the bride say, “Come!” And let the one who hears say, “Come!” Let the one who is thirsty come; and let the one who wishes take the free gift of the water of life. Revelation 22:17

He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose. Jim Elliot 

(a more recent picture of us ...because Mom told me to add this, haha - We love you!!!)

This Difficult Lens (My Brother's Keeper)

This difficult lens is the one I'm looking through. It won't necessarily make you more comfortable, more hopeful, more sure - this raw glimpse at the wrestlings in me - but I don't believe it is for nothing. I don't believe this wrestling is fruitless or hopeless even if at this moment it causes hurt or a struggle. Lean in with me, if you will take a moment to try, to put on this lens I am still trying to understand myself:

There are bombs falling in Syria. I read the truth of it late one night, illuminated with a million other everyday stories on social media and yet it screamed out to me, hit me hard. War is currently worse than it's ever been in this torn-up place and my heart aches because I have seen what a war torn place can be left to face. The tears well up hot.

The world keeps spinning and the warmth of my coffee is stark against the scene outside the window, passersby all bundled as March announces itself boldly, in like a lion. And the whole thing seems like a joke; how in the quiet of snowfall and the clamor of a coffee shop - and a disorienting constant silent screaming as my nation's loudest voices seem to be always now asking Am I my brother's keeper? - how there are bombs falling and parents dying and tiny bellies swallowing cardboard for dinner in Syria. My mind drifts.

A few nights ago my husband and I ventured (for the millionth time? must be!) up those now familiar narrow stars into a small home we should never really feel at home in, to share what shouldn't really belong to us with friends who shouldn't really call us family - but they do - and we are. We sat in a crowded room, ignoring the TV, eating foreign-to-us food off a beautiful setup on the floor with laughter and teasing and joy and three families feeling like they belong. This safe space that so often forces us into new territory holds hearts that carry mine around as if we've always crammed into this drafty apartment and shared broken english and coloring book pages - and nearly every week I look at these beautiful faces and wonder How did we get here?

I remember.

...

I remember that chilly December day, over a year ago now, discovering this staircase for the first time. Up, up, to an unfamiliar family room where we had no idea who we'd meet. We knew one name - the woman of the house (a title so befitting, deeper than we could have known then), who wanted to know English better. We knew they were from Afghanistan, displaced to eventually be resettled twenty minutes from our home, and she had relatives. I hoped for kids to play with.

I remember meeting S, bright and bold and kind; so helpful, and hopeful, welcoming us immediately as her mother and aunt brought in treat after treat before we could even speak. I remember quiet little Z, wrapped in a blanket peering out behind her mother, hardly brave enough to dare offering a smile, and her sister F literally only willing to peek once from around a corner before ducking back out of sight. I remember spelling each name carefully on a scrap of paper, an effort to remember this new family: a mom, dad, aunt, and three daughters, one a set of twins. I remember the thrill of writing the alphabet together before we left, and beaming as Pete and I chatted wildly in the car on the ride home, so excited. What would this become? We had no idea. If we had only known!

If we had only known then how shy smiles would so quickly give way to huge hugs and belly laughs, nail painting, raw stories, huge parties, late nights, and oh so much learning together. If we had only known weekly lessons would grow into shared meals, always tea, homework help, shopping trips, fashion shows, movie nights, cooking lessons, awkward moments, ice skating, walks to the park, and tag playing. If we could have imagined the bridges to be built as our families met and carved out memories with this new family (quickly becoming our third family) or how they'd insist on calling us "sister," "brother," "aunt," "uncle." If we only knew how our pantry, our habits, our bookshelves, our priorities, our prayers, our thoughts, our hearts, our entires lives were about to change... we probably would have stayed longer that morning!

...

Sitting around this Afghan meal, filled with lamb, rice, chicken, and veggies, talking sports and future, laughing and joking about the size of our appetites compared to our waistbands, feeling so at ease in a situation which may have once seemed like stepping into another world - we have found ourselves a home here, embracing the unfamiliar. We find ourselves having been given the most incredible gifts in knowing this broader definition of family and the world and loving our neighbor.

I looked into little eight year old faces squeezed in beside me, and this growing thirteen year old girl who is going to change the world. They choose random moments each visit to surprise us with reminders that we're cared for. I try to do the same, because I feel it with all of me. I wonder if they notice how often I stare at their faces and literally whisper a silent Thank You to God - for keeping them safe - for bringing them here alive and together and so whole that we might know them and love them. At dinner Z insisted that I save (or really, protect) the spot next to me. She chatted about how she has my back if I got full and advised me not to clear my plate too early or they would try to fill it up again so fast but don't worry she would grab it right away and run! Meanwhile F reassured me that I should eat up so that I grow muscles and get strong, her mom just doesn't want me to be too skinny. This family who looks out for us, who surprises us with hugs and unassuming affection when we most need it and least expect it - "Miss Katie, I just really like you a lot. Like you are my own Aunt" - they have captured my heart. They remind me the beautiful simplicities woven into childhood, and every once in a while the complexities of the country and past they love but had to flee.

And it is their precious faces I see - flashing through my mind with the thought each day for the past few weeks - as there are bombs falling in Syria. Because there are families in the path of war right now - children who laugh like sweet Z and F and have dreams like wise S. There are strong, smart, brave and incredible parents like this family dying, devastated, starving. How do I move forward moment by deceivingly calm moment? How do I not? What can I even do?

What do you do with yourself when every face of every person facing or fleeing war, pain, and poverty begins to look human to you - familiar to you? Each story is unique and individual, each background and culture will vary in its striking and stunning diversity - but each person represents the same thing: an image-bearer. Distinctly and intrinsically valued by God and therefore by me - by us - as fellow humans. I am my brother's, my sister's keeper. The pages of God's Word breathed to life leave no room for doubt: I exist to lay my life down, in the breathtaking example of Jesus life, this God-Man I call Savior who lived to be poured out and fully given away. And so my heart breaks the same as if these faces on twitter feeds and news articles are not just familiar, but family. Tears fall at the images scrolling because I see pieces of ourselves suffering where ever there is suffering. We are not separate, we belong to each other.

The weight of it hangs heavy and I cannot, will not, turn away. I have no real answers but my Father holds it all so I know where to turn with my weeping heart and this difficult lens He is giving me. I can do small things. And if I have to keep walking around leaking for a while (or even until all things are made new?), I will. Because I believe in not shying away when it hurts. Because God chose to step into my brokenness so I can step into broken places with my brave broken heart. Because there are girls who need to know they are worthy of self-sacrificing love in Sierra Leone, and there are refugees who I hope hear: you are wanted here when they arrive in Buffalo, and there are bombs falling in Syria. Today.

And it matters to me.

Remember that you were at that time separated from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth [citizenship] of Israel and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world. But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. Ephesians 2:12-13

Incredible/Reputable places to get involved in big and small ways, today:

Journey's End Refugee Services (Buffalo)

Jericho Road Community Health Center (Buffalo)

WEDI Westminster Economic Development Initiative (Buffalo)

West Side Bazaar (Buffalo)

Let Them LOL Volunteer Center (Buffalo/Sierra Leone)

Preemptive Love Coalition (Syria/Iraq/US)

The White Helmets (Syria)

The Weight of Two Worlds

A version of me wrote this in 2015 after returning from an incredible trip to Sierra Leone, my third, while navigating the sea of emotion and internal whirlwind that surely follows. In reading this back years later I am a little taken aback at how raw it all still feels, how it all still lies there right below surface in my heart, yet it is somehow healing to relive. I'm not sure if it will mean anything to you, friend, but here is a glimpse; for what it's worth:

I am back and I am trying. But if I am quiet, slow to respond, suddenly distant, forgive me - I am slowly unpacking two realities that seem so impossibly different. Each day there are moments my spirit aches and I wonder Where am I? Where is 'home' when everything is equally familiar and foreign? My friend calls it the place in between and I couldn’t say it better. Lately, I feel like a stranger, awkwardly trying to bear the weight of two worlds I barely understand.

I sit at my kitchen table and wonder at the silence of my parents' impossibly daunting house, still listening for the sea of tiny mende voices singing to their Jesus or erupting into laughter at every corner. I wander my neighborhood and try to reconcile what I see against the mud huts and red dirt floors still lingering behind close eyelids. I close my eyes in my soft bed as a song plays that once held back floodgates in a place where hope is something you fight for, sometimes moment by moment. I stare at the TV and wonder at our desperate pursuit and investment in personal happiness, when I have so recently held hands with a community united by self-sacrifice who has faced darkness with a resilience and a love for peace that outshines 'happy.' I swallow back the lump in my throat as I fill my cup from the tap, recalling the shy smile of the girl in red, standing in front of a murky dragonfly-infested ditch that is all the water for an entire village today. Friends ask kindly, some interested, some just being polite, "How was your trip?" and all I can muster is "It was... a lot."

Sometimes I want to run, and I have to wonder: Jesus, did You cry too at the awkward heavy tension, the pull and the burden between two worlds You adore? Did You long for Your home in heaven when You entered this world, did You miss the wonder and closeness of Your creation when You left it? Did Your bones grow weary with an ache to expose another world as we continually ran toward darkness, missed the point, hurt each other, ignored what mattered most? Do Your feet miss walking with us on red earth?

Today, pages of my favorite book still smell like another world. It sounds goofy but I'm completely serious! Chapters left open to the thinning air of distant heat lightning and heavy jungle rain, words brushed with red dusty fingerprints, love letters stained and rippling from my divided, leaky heart have trapped in their pages the distinct ozone of a beloved broken place. A place I love, 4,500 miles from here... and I am afraid to lose the smell. I know I can't but I am desperately trying to trap it there forever. I don't want to forget.

Greater than the fear of losing a scent, deep in me there is a growing fear of watching truths and memories fade away into this odd world I grew up in - into the busyness of the familiar, the easy, the convenient, the American dream I have so long accepted as 'normal'. I don't want to lose this passion to distance, I don't want to give up this urgency to the changing of seasons, I want to keep each uncomfortable detail vivid at the surface because I don't want to lose who I am becoming - who my Father is making me - in the hurt and the messy hope of it all.

I didn't know what God had in store for us this year in Sierra Leone. I didn't know He would expose greater darkness than I have known there in the past, that amidst slow progress and setbacks we would have to fight for hope again and again. I didn't know I would see the heart of my Father in the deep tear-stained rest of a little girl snuggling into my lap, I didn't know how impossible it would be to find a pair of shoes to protect her very small bandaged foot. I didn't know I would glimpse heaven in a long-awaited embrace with one teenage girl who somehow sings as she speaks, who is finally going to school, who calls us best friends, who can finally write her name. I didn't know my Savior would invite me to wash the tiny feet of a broken heart just like mine, being slowly restored, washed clean, and re-named in a sea of profound relentless grace. Do you remember that Man, Jesus? He has washed you clean! I whispered desperately to us both, reaching with all my heart into the painful silence of those heavy eyes. What hurt do those eyes hide, little one? I didn't know He would lead me back to the edge of murky mud puddles in villages I visited one year ago, still waiting for clean water. In the course of a year you tell yourself it must be better now but I didn't know it's not yet. I didn't know I would stare into a wide smile, a scratchy giggle and realize I have so much to learn about joy from the delicate frame of one of my favorite little girls in the universe. I didn't know we'd get to witness hope opening wide the heart of a little boy whose scars seem unfathomable. I didn't know how much I continue to underestimate what hope and family and grace can do to re-write a predictable ending into a symphony of freedom in four short years and eighteen children.  I didn't know my heart had more room to hold such polar opposite emotions moment by moment in a jungle where a battle rages - love and anger, desperate hope and searing pain, quiet adoration and tearful despair. I didn't know what new depths He'd hidden a world away and I still don't know what He has planned.

But I know more than I did. I am learning to know the Man of Sorrows the ancients spoke of, the One who endured the full consequence of sin for a greater promise to His children - each and every one of us. I am learning to see Him in every detail of this place. He is here, in the heavy suffering and resilient joy of each fragile frame, for He knows their suffering, in the deepest darkness He has not left their side. I am learning to know the One who walked this earth carrying the full weight of two worlds. That Man is with them in a way I have yet to grasp, and that Man is leading me. Into this dark place He will surely come. I don't want to forget. 

He meets me here. He brings spring rains, a long awaited promise, truths yet unspoken in a well watered place. He stoops down to wash dirty feet, and His steady love draws us in to know Him deeper for He is there in every fear, every scar. He will teach my heart to patiently know a world I can call home - an already/not-yet Kingdom whose burden is Light. He is coming again to bind up the broken and I am just trying to follow, leaning in for His whisper.

So forgive me for where I am, clinging desperately to the discomfort that haunts me. I am trying to hold on, to remember, to be near to the Man of Sorrows. I want to keep each uncomfortable detail vivid at the surface because I don't want to lose who I am becoming - who my Father is making me - in the hurt and the messy hope of it all. I am staring out the window, scanning for jungles of palm trees, I am closing my eyes trying still to breathe in red dirt. I am feeling for someone's gentle hand in mine, I am replaying that squeaky smiling voice calling Kadijah! I am trying not to cry at piles of food stocking restaurants and grocery stores, I am standing in the hot shower grieving muddy water holes being used to sustain life. I am searching for a Man who understands the tension better than I, because I need to know Him in this place. I am awkwardly carrying two worlds, as this Man of Sorrows pulls back each finger, fills my empty stained hands with His, and leads me forward. He is my home and even here - where I don't yet understand Him - into this place, too, He will surely come.

“Is this not the fast that I have chosen: to loose the bonds of wickedness, to undo the heavy burdens, to let the oppressed go free, and that you break every yoke? Is it not to share your bread with the hungry, and that you bring to your house the poor who are cast out; when you see the naked, that you cover him, and not hide yourself from your own flesh? If you extend your soul to the hungry and satisfy the afflicted soul, then your light shall dawn in the darkness, and your darkness shall be as the noonday.The Lord will guide you continually, and satisfy your soul in drought, and strengthen your bones; you shall be like a watered garden, and like a spring of water, whose waters do not fail." - Isa 58:6-7, 10-11

Gala 2015 - Someone Like Me from letthemLOL on Vimeo.

Every Dark Place

Four years ago, I could predict the general story of my life. I could probably have listed my dreams on paper for you with pride and comfort. My hands wrapped tightly around a future and an idea of God that seemed safe, and I thought I was happy there.

Until one crucial piece changed, and all of a sudden following my God meant letting go. The scary kind. Letting go of safe dreams and certain timelines, to step into uncertain, painful ones with no guarantees. It was terrifying. In dark places my heart cried out and I began to need – and to know - God differently. Slowly I began to open white knuckled fists just a little bit, and He met me there. He used the pain to create a space and as we waded together through oceans of tears and fear and sin and forgiveness, He began filling the empty in me with new things. 

One day six months later He leaned in and whispered, Come away, I want to show you more of Me.

My feet hit red dirt, and He opened my hands wider to fill them with new gifts I could never have predicted. Here in a war-torn country, here where tears soaked the pages of His words in my lap, I found what I never expected: hope. I found hope everywhere. Creeping in the places darkness said it should not be, bouncing out of smiles whose stories should have eroded it forever. I began to know this God as the One who speaks new life into valleys of dry bones, the King who kneels down in the dirt to be near to the suffering, the God who calls a farmer mighty warrior and makes it true, the Creator who calls forth hope out of darkness.

I began to trust the One who asks for my palms, my heart, my life held wide open. He plans past my limited imagination, my secure hopes. He pulls me into the uncomfortable, the painful, and puts power behind my every weak yes to draw me deeper still.

In March 2014 I found my feet again in this strangely familiar country halfway around the world, where my God so gently sings over red earth about the depths of His kind of hope. Plowing through a list of kids to be added to Let Them LOL’s School Sponsorship Program, surrounded by a crowd of them chanting, "We want to learn!" my heart was emptied and filled all over again. It was easy to hope here, I didn’t want to leave. But surrender means learning to listen. I offered my open palms and began to carry hope with me into darker corners of my city where God is still teaching me how to listen.

Shortly after returning home, one word changed my world all over again: Ebola. For months and months I sat on my bed crying as an otherwise manageable disease ravaged the poorest, most vulnerable communities in the world including that dusty red land that I love. This was too much. How could this impossibly hopeful place be suddenly drowning in so much hurt all over again? How could I know God as good here in this darkness, where my open heart seemed repeatedly met with deeper hurt? Daily He spoke His promises into the depths of me and I prayed them back to Him for my friends. Sometimes hope is something we fight for.

As I prayed for the faces I know, one by one, I learned about the One who responds to our weakness with mercy. I learned the status of our home base village: zero cases through the entire outbreak. Hope flowed salty down my cheeks. I learned our entire chiefdom was spared. I saw the numbers of daily cases drop from hundreds to single-digits. 

Then two weeks ago, tucked away in a grid full of pictures was a face I knew instantly - even after three years - a little girl named Hawa. The same Hawa I met on my first trip in January 2013, who shared with me a piece of her heart and stole some of mine in return. The same Hawa I wrote to when I could not visit with some of our team last year. The same Hawa I cried over on my list of “Abba, please let her be alive.” There she was in a photo posted just hours before – out of 100+ kids they could have pictured, at an orphanage I hardly knew how to track down - safe, smiling, and healthy with the impossible news that her orphanage had avoided the disease. With palms open, I lifted my head and closed my eyes. This was too much! God whispered Call to Me, I will answer you and tell you great and unsearchable things you do not know. Hope. Like a secret meant just for me.

I am no expert at this hope thing, but my dreams look different today than they were four years ago. I haven’t abandoned the longings planted deep in me but I have laid them down because God cannot fill my clenched fists. And I want His kind of fullness. My finite dreams and logical timelines might end with some basic version of fairy-tale happiness – but God is making me hungry for joy and a better story. Joy finds that hope endures because it has learned to walk through dark places, joy trusts that my weakness is strength in the hands of the One I follow. Joy pays no mind to ever-changing circumstances in the face of God's promises.

God is not afraid of the pain it will take to prove the depths of Him. He knows the greater value of what His invitation holds. He is bold enough to allow our fear to face His perfect love and shrink away. He continues to teach me, “every dark place has its redemption in Him. Every single one.” There is always more of Him to be found. When we stop, let our eyes adjust and open our hands we find it to be true: He has hidden hope every dark place.

God plants in me the kind of love that slowly pulls, finger-by-finger, leaving me with palms open but not empty, wounds exposed but accessible for healing, hope eternal and vast but intimate and mine, and expectations deeper than the ones I held to so tightly.

In April I will travel back to red dirt roads for the third time and I am ready to open my hands, ready to see hope in dark places revealed by the One who cares for the orphan and the widow. If you’d like to give toward my trip, it would be a blessing to the nonprofit empowering hope in a dark corner of the world, and to me. https://my.letthemlol.com/Katie2015Trip

“I remain confident of this: I will see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living.” Psalm 27:13

(L) Hawa in the orange bandana Jan 2013, (R) Hawa earlier this month!

This Conversation Is Missing Your Voice

Today, my friends are dying.

It hurts. Every day for months now, I wake up to this thought. It rolls hot down my cheeks when I'm alone for too long. It haunts silent prayers as I drift to sleep. And it is still the reality. Ebola is devastating Sierra Leone, Guinea, and Liberia - it is not getting better. These are my friends; they are mommys and daddys, baby brothers, and big sisters, grandpas, grandmas, and teenagers. Real live living, breathing, joking, dreaming, loving, hoping, incredible people.

You've probably already heard a million hard things today just turning on the news and it's exhausting. We change the subject, the channel, the conversation, to suppress the growing feeling of helplessness, because it's uncomfortable and we are busy and ...what good can one person actually do, anyway? I hear you, I get it... and here's what I've learned: 

You cannot change the world and you were never meant to. Me neither.

But being a bystander to suffering is not an option. What you can do is change the story for one person. You can pick a cause, a problem, a need, a friend, a story, and dive in. Starting right now, you can begin to do for one what you wish you could do for everyone.

The process isn't glamorous or romantic or simple. It isn't quick, it will not come easy. It won't fill your bank account, it will cost you more than money. It doesn't make you warm and fuzzy. It doesn't guarantee your happiness; you may find quite the opposite as you begin to share a burden too heavy for one set of shoulders. It will continue to look and feel increasingly crazy, you will not feel prepared. It's everything our culture will try to warn you against, but right there in the midst of chaos, what you find is beautiful and valuable and lasting: what you find is hope. The kind worth spending your life on.

If you know anything about my life in the past few years, you may have seen things shift inside me. You may have noticed the pieces of my heart being achingly, awkwardly, and unexpectedly rearranged. There is a story that is changing my story. I'm not the only one. Since this journey began I have come to know some of the most incredible people whose stories continue to shape mine as they have decided to help one like they wished to help everyone; together they are changing the world.

And I have an idea. Soon, I will be launching an online art shop (you guessed it, titled: Do For One). I want you to be part of it: if you have been impacted by Let Them LOL and/or a person in Sierra Leone, West Africa, I want to hear from you!

***

Here's what I'll need:

1) Your voice: Share a moment where the mission of Let Them LOL became personal for you and why. Explain (350-500 words emailed or facebook messaged to me) how you do for one what you wish you could do for everyone. This doesn't need to be profound/dramatic/religious, just honest and providing dignity to the people of Sierra Leone. If you're insecure with words, we can chat over coffee ;)

2) Your heart: Provide a quote (ideally a short one, 3-8 words) or an idea that resonates with you and might be visually transformed into an art piece/print item for the shop

3) Your hope: Spread the word so more people can enter into the awesomeness of Let Them LOL and the people of sweet SaLone (and hopefully collect some cool artwork, in the process)

4) Your help: Donate art (or send suggestions/requests)! I will reserve the final say on what goes up, but if you'd like to contribute to the shop do not hesitate to reach out!!!

Each month, I will feature a post called The Story That's Changing Mine. This will highlight your story as well as a corresponding item in the 'Do For One' online shop, named after & inspired by you! Any and all profit generated by your item will be donated to the Let Them LOL DiggingDeeper Ebola campaign.

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Um, honest moment: Guys, this feels scary, uncomfortable, vulnerable. This may totally flop. I'm trying to mentally prepare for that. Maybe you won't want to share your story, maybe no one will want to listen, maybe the artwork will turn out crappy and people will avoid the shop like the plague... it's all possible. But I don't care. I believe without wavering that we can be part of something bigger and this is one small way I can try to encourage that.

My friends matter enough to try.

So I'm hitting publish and hoping for some emails, here goes nothing...!

An Open Letter to the Community of Buffalo

I am young and naïve; my background is humble and my voice is small, but I will use it, because I have a story to tell.

We are the city of good neighbors. We believe in working hard, and playing hard. We are the kind of fans who make the news, who rename townships, and who people want to play for. We are the people who won't give up. We know what it is to face failure, to rebuild, to hope against all odds for what seems downright crazy.

For my brief 25 years of life I have known this place as my home and you, reader, as my neighbor. Time and again I have seen us come together for the hope and encouragement of even just one person struggling in our midst.

Right now, there is a virus taking the lives of thousands of people in West Africa. I am no doctor, I cannot fix it.

Right now there is a village of little ones whose mommies and daddies will not come home from a treatment center. I am no superhero, I cannot bring their families back.

Right now, there is a community who has suffered greatly overcoming the grips of hatred and fear. I am no billionaire, I cannot make it better.

But I can ask for help.

Maybe you've seen it on the news. Maybe you changed the channel. The world is full of problems; it’s easy to add this one to the pile… but what if we didn’t?

The truth is, the story of this faraway community is already weaved into ours. Because of the hearts of the people of Buffalo, I have been to Sierra Leone and I have seen hope growing. In one of the poorest communities in the world, I have shared hurt and unprecedented joy with an incredible people who, much like us, are trying desperately to rebuild. I have held more than one tiny hand in mine and gazed into a longing to be seen, known, and loved. And I have seen the efforts of our stateside community help begin to change the story.

So I am asking for your help, Buffalo. I am pleading with you to do something because right now there’s a lot of need.

In five years, people in our humble hometown have funded over sixty clean water wells, provided a home to orphans, and built a school. Right now we have the opportunity to impact 25 Ebola orphans, to feed and nourish struggling families, but we need you. Join the Digging Deeper campaign with Buffalo humanitarian group Let Them LOL. Give your change, plan a fundraiser, collect an offering. Together we can only make a small drop in a mighty ocean, but every drop matters. This is what community looks like – and Buffalo, I think it looks good on us.

Join the campaign visit: loldiggingdeeper.com or facebook.com/ltlol

For fundraising ideas visit: engage.ltlol.com

"Let us touch the dying, the poor, the lonely and the unwanted according to the graces we have received and let us not be ashamed or slow to do the humble work." - Mother Theresa

To Be Known

In sixth grade, my best friend and I strolled through a maze of buses when all of a sudden... a boy called her name. It was not just any boy, it was the boy. The topic of a million super-serious-but-probably-not-that-serious middle-school conversations, giggles, and butterflies had yelled her name through his tiny bus window (at least… we were pretty sure it was him). Obviously we freaked out. “He knows my name!” she squealed the entire ride home as she squeezed my arm and we marveled at the idea that maybe he knows she exists and maybe, just maybe he could like her back.

There’s a longing there. Did you catch it? It’s a goofy example but I believe it’s a sign of something stronger and heavier inside each of us: we long to be known.

It doesn’t matter who we are, to what culture we belong, or what our personality is. It doesn’t fade with time, success, or maturity. So much inside us hinges upon this need to be seen for who we are and loved. We desire to be recognized and sought-after; we long for validation that we exist, we are understood, and to at least one other person our life matters. 

This longing, at least for me, is a force to be reckoned with, and any fraction of its fulfillment it can change everything. I want to be known.

Jesus asked His closest friends once, Who do you say that I am? I want to be like Peter, who blurted out so impulsively that He is Jesus the Savior, the fullness of life itself (Matt 16:15-16). Peter knew Jesus, and was known by Him. Peter’s name was handed to him by grace and it re-defined his future. Sometimes I hear God whisper the same question to me. I stumble through, although I am with every breath reminded, and flip through the pages of His heart on paper to realize all over again that He is Savior, beyond worthy of all I can give. 

But in my weakest moments, wrapped up in that question I have found another that I am infinitely more afraid of: I look into the face of my perfect Savior and He asks, Who do I say that you are? This is a tough one, but He is teaching me.

Since last January I found a new name, in Sierra Leone: I am Kadija (pronounced Kah-dee-jah). I am pretty sure God called me that before I ever heard it out loud – it just feels too right. Hearing it squealed repeatedly from a million directions, or whispered softly as tiny hands gently brush a stray hair from my face, is a kind of fullness I cannot describe. This name reminds me that I belong, that who I am is on purpose and I have something to give, that I’m known. I feel like I’m home, and all the love I’m filled up with just comes pouring back out, in an overflow. It's incredible.

And I’m not the first one - over and over God will give us a new name (or a few) to teach us that we’re known and re-teach us what we are created for. This kind of stuff our world upside down; I have seen it first-hand.

I have squeezed and tickled more than one small frame who once believed the world when it called them Unwanted or Orphan, but today are learning how all along God called them: Mine. Where once they knew loss and emptiness, today they are finding family and joy because He sees them and calls them by name. I have flooded with tears holding close a tiny, quiet heart branded Pain and Shame since before she could speak. But this precious girl is slowly learning instead what God calls her: Beautiful. And the name fits her. I’ve laughed out loud wondering if a boy once known as Abandoned could have had any idea he was called Pastor by my God, even before the name caught on with a house-full of adopted family and now a village-full of friends. I have seen such unbridled eagerness build in the eyes of one sick boy, so recently given the name Hopeless as today he begins to get better, to learn, and to enjoy the hope in his brand new name Adored.

My God knows that a longing is in us because He put it there. Our Father loves reminding us that we’re His, that He sees you and me and loves us better than anyone else could because He built us. He knows that when we get it, we can really start doing crazy things together because we’re not busy asking around for it anymore. God’s name for us draws us up and out of the one we thought we fit into, the one we were supposed to prove true despite our efforts, the one we couldn’t escape. He pulls us from the place we were headed, sits us up where we’d never belong, and proudly calls us by our new name: Worthy. He wipes away the sin that branded us, with the blood of His only child, and re-defines our insides and our future with grace.

Just like my friends an ocean away I am still learning to answer to His new name(s) for me. I’m slowly and painfully learning that maybe, just maybe, He who knows me delights in me and that fact alone can define and fill me like it did Peter. 

I’m still learning who He says I am, and still trying so hard not to let all the other names creep back in, but I’ll tell you a secret: if you listen closely, He never stops saying it. If you let the stillness in for a while, open up His love notes, offer Him a little room in your heart, you will hear it - whispered (and sometimes sung) over and over again - with each breath, each sunrise, each tear, each heartbeat, He knows you and He calls you by name: Beloved.

"Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart; I appointed you as a prophet to the nations." - Jeremiah 1:5 

Love is and always was the longing placed inside my heart to know You and be known by You - All Sons & Daughters