Life on God's Terms

"The Christian landscape is strewn with the wreckage of derelict half-built towers. The ruins of those who began to build and were unable to finish. For thousands of people still ignore Christ's warning and undertake to follow Him without first pausing to reflect on the cost of doing so. The result is the great scandal of Christendom today, so called nominal Christianity. In countries to which Christian civilization has spread, large numbers of people have covered themselves with a decent but thin veneer of Christianity. They have allowed themselves to become somewhat involved, enough to be respectable but not enough to be uncomfortable. Their religion is a great soft cushion. It protects them from the hard unpleasantness of life while changing its place and shape to suit their convenience. No wonder the cynics speak of hypocrites in the church and dismiss religion as escapism," -John Stott

Today I listened to the second week in the radical series and again was completely challenged by the message. David Pratt started off with a question asking "Have you ever really lived on Jesus's terms?" When I ask myself this question I think well yes I'm a christian I go to church, I pray, I serve the poor but then as we started to dive into the text and I began to be challenged by those same passages from last week (Luke 14: 25-35), I began to see I may never have let go enough to truly live on His terms. Unless you hate your mother and father... you cannot be my disciple. I have never really been able to fully wrap my brain around this scripture. To hate them....it just doesn't make sense to my head. I know God also says the greatest commandment is to love God and then to love my neighbor, so how can I do both? Love my neighbor and hate them. The idea was presented in this talk, that our love for God must be so supreme, so elevated above all other love, that our love for those around us looks like hate in comparison. I had to pause the and think on this for a minute, but after it settled in a way it does make sense to me. I must love God so incredibly much and then from that love stems everything else including my love for my neighbor but this is nothing absolutely nothing compared to my love for God. So as I thought about how much love this takes for God and how much love He deserves I feel like I completely fall short. Do I love him or do I love the idea of heaven and the security of having a God. I think this next week I am going to focus on God just simply Him and who He is and let myself work at deepening this love because in the end that is the greatest commandment and all that really matters, everything else will stem from that. I am going to love Him like crazy so that living life on His terms doesn't seem like a sacrifice it feels like a reward even when it does get uncomfortable.

Crazy Scary White Lady

So today on the ward I had a funny experience, not sure it should have been funny but after a while it started to make me laugh. I had a one year old patient who was so terribly afraid of the white people. Now you can see how it would be scary at one year old to suddenly be in a new environment where it is very cold and there are tons of people a different color from you running about talking in a language that sounds weird and coming at you with things sticking out of their ears and putting the other end on you and sticking pokey things under your armpit and clipping things to your toes all while your mom holds you down so they can.

So every time I walked over to this little guy he would start to whimper then when I would reach out to touch him he would cry and try and squirm away. Early into the afternoon I noticed that if I even got within 2 feet of the bed he would whimper then if I would back up a couple inches he would instantly stop. Lean in = whine. Lean out = quite. I thought it maybe just me so I had one of the other nurses try it.... same thing. It was like we had found a little on/off switch for the whimpering. It made everyone in the room have a little laugh including his mom.

One last funny fact about the whole thing... his last name is the local word here meaning "white person"

A little ward lovin

Its been less than a week and I am starting to get my feet and feel back in the swing of things again. I have finished my first couple shifts on the ward and I am quickly remembering why I love this place. I have never been a peds nurse but here I do a little bit of everything. The last 2 days I've been playing with the kiddos. The most precious set of twins obviously born premature and at a couple weeks old still each weighing under 4lbs. They both are part of our infant feeding program, designed to help babies grow by teaching the caregiver about proper nutrition and how to provide that effectively for their baby. One of them has the smallest most precious casts on both her legs I have ever seen, slowing helping to correct her malformed feet.

Then there is David an 8 years old and one of our orthopedic patients, who today learned my name. Every time I was anywhere close to his bed I would hear "Maggie...Maggie" as soon as I would turn and look at him he would just giggle and turn away like, what who called you wasn't me.

Its the ability to be totally silly for the sake of a laugh, the freedom to pray with your patients before their operation or at anytime for any reason at all. It's playing a game of memory on the floor while another nurse will gladly get some vital signs or pass some medication for you so you can keep interacting with your patients. It's praying at handover with nurses and the translators from all different parts of the world, sometime in multiple languages all because this is why we are here. We serve a great and loving God who has placed us all here, and gives us this privilege of being able to serve.

Radical Challenge

Before beginning my trip back to the ship. I wanted to establish a plan for better Sunday time. My last couple trips were quite inconsistent. Some Sundays I would attend a local church, which was so great in order to be able to worship along side the people here and to see the way they interact with God and the way they worship God. Some Sundays I would call in and listen to sermon's from home which was so nice for that piece of home, that connection knowing I was listening to the same message as my family and my church family at the same moment. Still other Sundays I would go to the evening service on board the ship which is good for worship alongside my fellow workers here. Although each of these was good in there own way and I plan to continue with them, I felt like I needed some consistency from week to week.

About a week before I came I was reading another blog and there was a link to a couple of series of sermon's that had really spoken to her. I looked into them and downloaded them prior to coming. I started the first one today and am excited for this journey I feel God is calling me to take. I will post the link here to David Platt's Radical series and encourage anyone who wishes, to come along with me. I am choosing to take it slow and do it weekly on Sundays. It's a total of 8 talks focusing on the gospels and the radical lives God calls us to lead in His teachings.

I have not listened to them all so cannot honestly speak to what all they will entail, but I just finished the first one and am completely challenged by it. I am going to step up to this challenge and push through some of these ideas that push the boundaries of what I truly believe and what I am willing to do in service of Christ.

Many things struck me but I will share the one question that was posed that rocked me the most at my core. Referring to the passage in Luke 18:18-30 where the rich man is asking Jesus what it takes to inherit eternal life and Jesus says "...Sell all that you have and distribute to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow Me." - The question was if Jesus were to say these words to me today, how do I think I would respond? The scary thing is I don't know how I would respond, I want my answer to be yes Lord I will, and then immediately and without hesitation do exactly that, sell it all be willing to give it all and just go. The truth is I have given up a lot and have left the security of home and I am serving but there are many things that I am still clinging to. There are plans for the future, there are certain material possessions, there are relationships that I am not sure I would be willing to sacrifice. But the truth of the matter is that's not ok, God doesn't ask us to give up all but those things that are most dear, He asks no He demands we give it all. "So likewise, whoever of you does not forsake ALL that he has cannot be my disciple." - Luke 14:33 Like the pastor says in this talk, I do not know what this means or implicates for my future but I am going to start seeking to find out. What I find may lead to even more radical changes in my life, but I am choosing to be ok with that.

Traveling Mercy to Togo!

I am safely in Togo! The traveling went smoothly with no major drama, which I am so thankful for because I seem to be the queen of traveling drama. I was so grateful to be able to meet up with a fellow Mercy Shipper and close friend Beccy in London and do the second half of the trip with her. I arrived last evening around 930pm local time. My new room is great! I know 2 of the 3 roommates from last year and that is a blessing to be able to settle in a little quicker.

I will start full steam Monday with getting acclimated to the VVF coordinator role which is going to be new for me this year. If you have spoken with me or read my blog entries from last outreach you know that my heart and my passion rest with the VVF ladies. God opened a door for me to coordinate the program this year and although I am totally intimidated by the prospect of a leadership role and responsibility of this level, I know this is what God has for me, and I will go with the confidence that He is laying the path before me and the knowledge that he hasn't failed me yet. He has also provided me with the blessing of sharing this role with a good friend of mine Lindsay, and I am really excited to be serving in this role along sider her.

Now although I am excited about VVF this role is not going to be in full swing for a little while yet as surgery doesn't start for VVF until mid-May. Until then I will be back in my old role working as a ward nurse. I am excited to get back into the swing of this. I think this will be a good transition back into ship life and the outreach ahead.

He doesn't need me

Tonight is my last night in the US before heading out to Africa and it has been a good one. I have been flying around like a crazy women trying to get all the last minute details done. Then tonight was communion at church and it was really good to stop, slow down and refocus and get myself looking where I should be at a transition time like this.

I had some support money checks to turn into the mission fund tonight while at church. As I added up the amount I had and then added in the amount that had already been placed in the fund in my name I was in awe. As I mentally processed that I had the exact amount of money that I needed and I had basically done no fund raising this time, I almost couldn't wrap my head around it. Then I thought to myself, why are you so shocked? Where is your faith? How can I continue to doubt when God has been continually faithful? The truth is God doesn't need me to do the leg work. He can do it all by himself. Don't get me wrong we can't just sit back and wait for God to drop what we need in our laps, but sometimes He says just serve and He will work out the rest. He is the God of the details and the God of perfect timing and He is AWESOME!

Good-bye nonsense

So the countdown is on, I leave in like 2.5 days. It is crazy crazy how fast time goes. Yesterday started the beginning of good-byes and can I just say I am over good-byes and over not being quite ready to go. It seems as if I am forever saying good-bye and preparing to miss one person or another and one situation or another. I know this is the life I signed up for and I love it but this good-bye part stinks.

So I have decided I am not having any more emotional good-byes I am finished with such nonsense. I love you all and you know it. So I am just saying see ya on the flip side.