Today is the Day

For months now, actually years, my friends have been encouraging me to write down my stories of what God is doing through me. The last five years have been quite a journey on God's chariot, and today I finally felt the Holy Spirit direct me that it was TIME to speak.

It all began in my closet. Well, really, it started long, long before that...but, let's start in the closet.

Two and a half years ago, I was alone at home putting away laundry. A couple months earlier, I had quit my executive job...for the second time. For 20 years I had worked in senior positions, making good incomes, earning bonuses, meeting with important clients, making myself into "somebody". But, along the way on that journey, God broke my heart for the orphan. Permanently. And as a result, I will never be the same. I am not the same woman Jerry married, I am not the same mother that Mackenzie and Olivia once had, I am not the same friend many of you once knew. I have a permanently broken heart. And, with that new heart, I couldn't seem to do my job, any job, that did not involve rescuing the orphan. So, there I was, at home, trying to figure out what to do with the rest of my life.

This brings us back to the closet.

After a couple of months of me at home doing NO housework, my dear husband casually mentioned one day "Honey, now that you are a housewife, do you think you might do some housework? I could really use some clean clothes." God bless him, he is a saint. But, that is a whole other blog.

I set out in earnest the next morning to be a housewife. About four loads into six loads of laundry, I was standing in the closet putting up my husband's shirts, but I was thinking to myself: "How can I get Ray Barnett, founder of the African Children's Choir (whom I knew), together with Tom Davis, CEO of Children's HopeChest (whom I had just met), because somebody needs to figure out how to rescue ALL the orphans". And that is when it happened...God said, loudly and clearly, "IT'S YOU".

It embarrasses me even to write that down, but God says I should tell my story, so I am telling it just like I know it. "IT'S YOU", He said. I fell down on the bedroom floor. I could not breath. I don't know what it means to be "slain in the Spirit", but if it means that you are so overcome by the call of God that you can't move and you just lie there with tears pouring into your ears for a time that seems like forever, then I was slain. "No way God, don't put that on me. That can't be right. You are mistaken. I don't know what I am doing. I have no expertise, I am not trained. I have no experience. There are EXPERTS...I am NOT one. It can't be me...it's too big, it's too overwhelming, I don't want it...NOT ME!!!!." But there I was, stuck on the bedroom floor, and I knew it was meant for me.

For the next few days I had a fight with God in my mind. I didn't tell anyone, not even Jerry. Anyone would think I am insane. "God, I don't know how to do it" I pleaded with Him over and over. And every time, the same answer: "You already know everything you need to know". What the heck!!! I had no idea what He was talking about. Every time I asked, the same "You already know everything you need to know". This went on for days. Then, I was on the elliptical at the gym one morning, and I was thinking about a massive food shipment for orphans that was being sent by a prominent, expert organization working in Ethiopia, and I knew from a past, unrelated job of mine that it wasn't being sent the best possible way. I thought about my friend Sharron from that season, a logistics expert, and how she would know the correct way to solve that problem. And God said "See, I told you, you already know everything and everybody that you need to know". BAM. There it was. I got off the machine and stumbled into the locker room. I sat there just taking it all in...

All my life, every season, every relationship, every career move, held some gem, some lesson that had prepared me to rescue orphans. I could suddenly see, with crystal clarity, how the seemingly serendipitous path of my life and career had actually been God's carefully crafted curriculum to prepare me to one day rescue orphans around the world in lands I have never seen.

I already knew everything I needed to know. I just had to have the courage and the will to start. God would show me the rest when I needed it.

And that is when my journey really began.