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.

***

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

Where I Am

If you were wondering, this is where I am:

I have to be honest, over the past few days of returning back to the US, I have felt an increasing emptiness. It's a scary feeling to leave behind a place you adore and have thrown your whole heart into, but despite all I am missing, I do not return empty-handed.

I am back. With deep crimson dust on my suitcase, shadows of long hot days on my clothes, and a cluster of delicate dirty fingerprints staining my notebook and my heart, I am back. With songs in my head, laughter echoing through my soul, and selfless friendships warming my hands, I am back. With (awkwardly, and no doubt poorly-spoken) foreign words waiting on my tongue, music dancing on my mind, and boundless love spilling over, I am back. I am back with the beauty of Sierra Leone in my heartbeat, and the weight of a million precious faces - a million stories woven into me, welling up and deserving to be told.

And although I feel I have left a whole family across the ocean, though my soul still searches for mountains of trees, dusty roads, and eager eyes, though my ears strain to hear foreign but familiar greetings, rolling giggles, and deep belly-laughs, although my arms ache for just one more squeeze, one more tiny hand finding mine, one more gentle head resting on my heart, one more chance to pour abundant Love deep into so many just longing to get caught up in it, though I am weak with the anguish of goodbyes, the stain of tears, and the fear of time stealing from vibrant memories... I am back. But this is just the beginning.

Last night, I came back to my house that feels suddenly too gigantic, too quiet, and too empty of my favorite people. This morning, I woke instantly with tearful memories of a people and way of life I have barely begun to understand and yet feel so blissful whole within. Today, it is easy to start to think there is a deep empty well within my heart, but even now I am learning it's not true. I'm actually overflowing.

I am filled up with and clinging to the most beautiful thing that soothes the longing between two homes: I am clinging to hope. I have been drowning in it over the past 10 days from the excess overflow of the people who welcomed us freely, and it is sweet and refreshing like clean water straight from the pump. 

I am filled up with my Abba, with the whisper that He sees me - He knows me - and where I am is safe and secure and worth it, every moment He is with me. He is better company to the sweet hearts and hopes and dreams of those I miss than any ordinary 25yr old girl could desire to be. It will always be true and though it feels helpless, I am filled up with gratefulness. With each thread of my soul I am so thankful, for those here who have been my constant support, and for the exceedingly beautiful plans of my Savior for each of those I miss deeply and so many others I do not know. 

I am filled up with love for all the places and people my heart can call "home"; the new ones who have crept in and swept me up so unassumingly this past week as well as the ones who have shaped me to get here, who have been my shoulder to lean on, my encouragement, and my solid foundation for so long before this week.

I am back, and under all this overflow is exactly where I find myself: right here in the middle of it all. Feeling far away but far from alone, far from the end of the story, a little bit closer to finding my purpose, and so overwhelmingly thankful for a chance to love and receive love from such incredible people. As hope rises, the ocean that seems at first to divide us takes new form as a living water that connect us. With hope, the landscapes of Buffalo and SaLone are being changed, and in both places grace can be the air with which our lungs are filled. There is much we can do, here in this place where we are so often spoiled with options and opportunity but so poor in self-sacrificing, boundless love. I am back and it is just beginning. We have much to learn, much to give, much room to grow. Let's start today, amidst the overflow: live fully, love greatly, give completely.

Defend the weak and the fatherless: uphold the cause of the poor and the oppressed. Rescue the weak and the need; deliver them from the hand of the wicked. - Psalm 82:3-4