serving

How to Chase a Different Kind of Great

June 1, 2017 By Michelle 7 Comments

“Everyone is chasing status, but serving the vulnerable is wide open in every field.” — Andy Crouch

I’m intimately familiar with chasing status. As an author, I’ve spent countless hours strategizing how to sell more books, attract more readers, build my platform, gain more social media shares, and rub shoulders with influential people.

I could tell you that this emphasis on networking and platform is an integral part of my job as a writer, and that would be partially true. But that’s not the whole story. The truth is, I like the status that comes with being a published author. I like the recognition. I like being known. I chase status because I want status.

I’ve been chasing status for a long time, and here’s what I’ve learned after years of hot pursuit: the chase never ends.

No matter how much we achieve, status is ephemeral. We will always want more – whether it’s better book sales, a more prestigious job title, a higher salary, a bigger house, a more expensive car, or a fancier purse. Chasing status is a race we will never win.

This is a lesson that’s taken me a long time to learn, and truthfully, on most days, I’m still learning it.

In his interview, Andy Crouch noted that when we focus our tunnel-vision solely on being the biggest, the best, and the most successful, we lose the opportunity to use our gifts to benefit others rather than ourselves. So many of us it seems, myself included, are wildly spinning our wheels in a fruitless attempt to Become Someone Important. Yet in doing so, we leave in our wakes a vast expanse of potential to make a real difference.

Setting our sights so narrowly on reaching whatever it is we’ve deemed The One Big Thing means we often miss the wide-open field of less glamorous but no less important work available to us.

This kind of opportunity likely won’t result in being known or recognized or famous, but as Martin Luther King, Jr., observed, there is the opportunity for a different kind of greatness here.

Last week, as part of my work for The Salvation Army, I had the opportunity to interview Daniel, a recovering crack cocaine addict who is eight months sober, on the road back to physical and mental health, and, having recently completed training, about to begin volunteering as a peer support counselor. As we chatted, the mix of perseverance, strength, and humility I heard in Daniel’s voice touched me deeply.

Writing part-time for The Salvation Army isn’t glamorous work. The story I wrote about Daniel, for example, will be included in a newsletter that will be mailed to fewer than 800 people, and I suspect far fewer than that will actually read the article. That work won’t impact book sales, help me build my platform, or earn me any name recognition. There’s no status in this kind of writing. And yet, talking with Daniel and writing his story was some of the most gratifying work I’ve ever done.

A couple of Sundays ago in church I listened to a soloist sing “Go Light Your World.” It was Senior Sunday, the day we bless the graduating high school seniors and send them off, and I teared up as I thought about the potential of each of these young men and women to impact the world.

The truth is, though, the ability to make a difference has no age limit. Each one of us, no matter how young or old, has the potential to carry our candle, to “run to the darkness, seek out the helpless, confused and torn,” as the song goes. Each one of us has been blessed with gifts we can use not just to increase our own status, but to serve those in need around us.

Reaching out to the Daniels in your world and the organizations that serve them with your God-given gifts won’t make you famous. It won’t earn you a lot of money or accolades or notoriety. It won’t make you “successful” by modern-day standards. But this I know for sure: it will offer you the opportunity for a different but no less beautiful kind of greatness, the kind of greatness that will bless you unexpectedly beyond measure.

The Man with the Brown Blanket

February 26, 2014 By Michelle 19 Comments

Photo credit: Matt Talbot

“Peaches, sir?” I ask, holding a slotted metal spoon over the vat of canned fruit.

He doesn’t talk, just nods a quick yes. The plastic tray shakes in his hand. I spoon the fruit into a square partition, careful not to drip the juice onto the chicken breast and green beans. We make eye contact only once, his grey-blue eyes piercing mine before they dart away. A ragged brown blanket is stuffed under one arm.

The boys and I are serving dinner at Matt Talbot, the local kitchen and outreach center in town. Rowan is responsible for dispensing small packets of sour cream for the baked potatoes placed in the corners of their trays. He offers one packet, but is allowed to hand out two if the people ask for more.

Noah stands at the end of the stainless-steel counter, plastic gloves wrinkled and baggy on his small hands. He places one cookie on each tray, encouraging the little kids to point to which sweet looks best. The pre-schoolers hoist themselves up by their elbows on the counter, leaning in for a better look. They always choose the cookies with the purple and green frosting.

Noah looks to me when the teenager in the neon pink sweatshirt requests two. I shake my head no, murmuring an apology. The line is long, wending past the gas fireplace to the back of the large room. These last few nights the temperature has plummeted below freezing, and the same is expected tonight. The teenager pauses for a second, holding my gaze with narrowed eyes. She’s angry, I can tell, and I feel guilty.

When everyone’s been served many come through the line again. They are handed a different plate, smaller, to distinguish that they’re on seconds. The man with the brown blanket and the skittering blue eyes sits alone at the end of a long table nearest the food. He comes through the line three times until finally he is the only one left in the dining room, still hunched over his plastic plate, the blanket draped over his shoulders. I watch him as I dip my sponge into the bucket of disinfectant and glide it over the gleaming countertop. I bring a pan to the dish washer in the back room, and when I return to the serving area, the man is gone.

The parking lot is dark and the street deserted as the boys and I pile into the mini-van. I crank the heat and make the right turn onto 27^th Street, accelerating toward home. And that’s when I see him once more. The brown blanket is pulled tight around his body as he walks into the darkness.

We are Called to Serve, Not Solve

September 27, 2013 By Michelle 14 Comments

I heard the crying as soon as the engine died. It was hard to ignore, our respective vehicles only feet apart, our windows rolled down to let in the hot wind. Her SUV was pulled to the curb across the street outside the school, my mini-van on the opposite side. As soon as she turned the key, the quiet of the neighborhood settled around us. Glancing up from the book in my lap, I lowered my glasses. She was crying all right, sobs muffled as she held her head in her hands.

I read the same paragraph four times straight, all the while praying the woman would get control of herself.

I didn’t want to approach her. I didn’t want to ask if she was okay. I didn’t want to deal with the awkwardness, the discomfort. I didn’t want to walk straight into a stranger’s pain. I wanted to sit in my car with my book in my lap and ignore the sounds of distress. I wanted to push the button on the side of my door and roll up the automatic window so I didn’t have to hear or see or acknowledge.

She didn’t stop crying.

I put my book face-down on the passenger seat, clicked open the lock, swung open the door. I walked five steps across the street, my eyes on the pavement as I approached her window. “I don’t want to intrude on your privacy,” I said to the woman in the car, lifting my eyes to meet hers. “But you seem upset, and, well, can I do anything to help?”

Mascara was smudged like charcoal on both of her cheeks. Her eyes were red-rimmed, bloodshot and raw. “No, no, I’m okay, I’m okay,” she gulped, staring down at her lap. “I’m okay,” she said again, glancing up at me standing outside her window.

“Okay,” I said. I lifted my hand to touch her arm, but I stopped just short, resting it on the door frame of her car instead. “Okay,” I repeated. “I just wanted to make sure. Let me know if I can do anything though.” I stood there for a half-second, my hand on her car, grappling for something, anything else to say. But there was nothing.

I walked back to my car and slid into the front seat. I picked up my book again, but I didn’t read another word.

I didn’t do anything to help the woman in the car. I didn’t ease or pain or assuage her suffering. I didn’t solve her problems. The only thing I’d done was heed the nudge I’d felt deep inside me, the nudge I’d wanted to ignore.

I think sometimes we forget that poverty – whether poverty of spirit or poverty of circumstances — isn’t our problem to solve. Jesus didn’t command us to go out and solve the world’s problems. He didn’t instruct us to go out and singlehandedly obliterate suffering. He simply commanded we go out.

Go out and show compassion.

Go out and offer help to one person in need.

Go out and love our neighbor.

It’s easy to succumb to apathy in the face of the world’s problems. Pain is everywhere. Poverty is rampant. Everyone is suffering, everyone is carrying a burden. It’s easy to conclude, Why bother? What’s the point? What can I do, one person amid millions of suffering and burdened, millions of hopeless and sick.

But the point isn’t really what one person can or can’t do. It’s whether one person will or won’t serve. Jesus asks us, commands us, to serve. Not to solve, but simply to serve. We won’t always make a noticeable difference. The story won’t always have a happy ending. But he asks us to hear the call and to heed it nonetheless.

“Poverty is not necessarily an issue to solve; it is an opportunity to serve. As we go through each day, our heart’s cry should be, Lord, where would you have me give, serve, and invest myself to bring hope to the poor?” — Orphan Justice author, Johnny Carr

If you’re hesitating to answer the call to sponsor a child in need because you’re discouraged by the enormity of global poverty, remember this: sponsoring a child isn’t an opportunity to solve a problem necessarily, it’s an opportunity to serve. If you are hearing the call to do something today, even just one little tiny something, listen and heed.

My Dad Went to Haiti and Came Home Sick

May 8, 2013 By Michelle 21 Comments

“I still don’t know why I went,” he said, genuinely puzzled. “I know why you went,” I answered my dad. “You don’t just go to Haiti for fun. You go because the Holy Spirit tells you to go.”

My dad and my brother-in-law Matt recently traveled to Haiti with the Haitian Health Foundation, an organization that provides healthcare, education, food and shelter to more than 200,000 Haitians living in the city of Jeremie and in rural mountain villages. Matt and my dad went with a team of dentists from Connecticut. They helped pull rotten teeth and dispensed medicine and food for five days straight.

I admit, I was shocked when he announced earlier in the year that he had signed up to travel with the Foundation. Like me, my dad is a somewhat troubled believer. Traveling to Haiti at age 70 on a mission trip was unexpected, to say the least.

My dad came home sick. Not physically ill, but heart-sick. And a little bit spiritually sick, too. He talked for a long time, sitting on my red couch, tucked into our cozy living room with the lights burning bright and clean water from the faucet and cabinets stocked full of food. He described what he had seen in Haiti, what he kept seeing when he closed his eyes at night, comfortable in his king-sized bed.

Children scavenging for food amid garbage, playing in the stream of raw sewage that flowed by their shacks.

Orphans, their bellies grossly distended from malnutrition.

Families lined up at sunrise for the chance to see a dentist.

Mouths full of sores, swollen gums and rotting teeth.

Fathers selling bits of junk and charcoal on the street.

A mother who held out her sick infant, begging “Take, take.”

“No, no,” my dad had said, shaking his head at the woman who thrust her child at him. “No doctor, no, I’m not a doctor.” He stood outside of the orphanage in the blazing sun. “I just couldn’t do it,” he said. ‘I just couldn’t look at those kids for another second.”

I don’t know what the answers are. I don’t know about the solutions, or even whether there’s really hope for Haiti. But I do know this. The Holy Spirit sent my dad to Haiti. He doesn’t know why and neither do I. But there was a reason. That I know for sure.

How YOU Can Help:
More than 92 percent of funds collected by the Haitian Health Foundation go directly to services for the poor in Jeremie and the surrounding mountain villages. Relief programs include healthcare, Feed-A-Child, Save-A-Family, housing construction projects, latrine building projects, education sponsorships and more.

Please visit the Haitian Health Foundation for more information or to make a donation.

*Photos taken by my brother-in-law Matt (pictured in the black glasses and the baseball cap). I’m just so proud of my dad, who went on his very first mission trip at the age of 70 – what a leap!

Hear It on Sunday, Use It on Monday: He Dreamed Dreams

December 10, 2012 By Michelle 21 Comments

This past summer I wrote a story for the Lincoln Journal Star about my dad’s volunteer work at Gray House, a neighborhood assistance center in a downtrodden part of Springfield, Massachusetts. He organizes the used clothing in the basement thrift store and works upstairs in the food pantry from time to time, too.

When my dad first started to volunteer for Gray House, he simply dropped off clothing donations outside the basement door. But one day, the pile of trash bags outside the basement door was so high, my dad decided to go one step further – he opened the door, and he carried the bags downstairs.

Here’s the part that didn’t make it into the Journal Star story. Here’s what my dad told me about that moment. “That was the Holy Spirit at work, right there,” he said. “The fact that I opened that basement door and brought the bags downstairs was the Holy Spirit at work.”

What happened amid the dank mustiness was that my dad saw dozens of trash bags piled high from the back of the basement to where he stood at the bottom of the stairs. Gray House had been collecting donations for months, but they didn’t have the staff to organize and display the clothes. The thrift shop was in utter disarray.

That was the week my dad started working in the basement of Gray House. He bought portable clothes racks, hangers and a shop-vac and organized the space like only a man who’d spent 37 years in the military could.

“…I will pour out my Spirit upon all people,” God says in the book of Joel. “Your sons and daughters will prophesy. Your old men will dream dreams, and your young men will see visions.” (Joel 3:28)

Now. My dad is not going to love the fact that I am referring to him as an “old man,” yet I can’t help but marvel over that particular phrase, “your old men will dream dreams.” The fact is, when my 70-year-old dad walked down those stairs and glimpsed the mess in that basement, he saw the potential, he dreamed the dream of an efficiently organized thrift shop where men, women and children could find exactly what they needed, from winter coats to shoes to infant onesies .

As my dad stood at the foot of those basement stairs, the Holy Spirit planted a dream in him that day, and he continues to see it through, one pair of donated shoes at a time.

Can you think of a time in your life in which the Holy Spirit prompted you to dream a dream or a vision? How did you react to that prompt?

{portions of this story are excerpted from the Journal Star article}

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