We Have More In Common

 And just like that. I drove down my street and saw my friends standing on the curb with all their belongings, distraught.

Evicted without notice. Things on the curb. The people came in at 4:30 am. No time to pack. Things in trash bags... 

So I helped. And we ended up all in my living room at the end of it hugging, talking about how the Lord takes care of us after eating chicken salad and chicken wings. 

I got a call a few days later from my friend telling me that they got a new place. It was bigger and nicer.

I drove by. I loved it. 

I reached out to my church asking for furniture donations for my friends' new place.

Within two weeks, a sofa and love-seat, dining room upholstered chair set, recliner, desk, dishes, and other decor was given. Not to mention a bed, a book case, a vacuum cleaner, a blender. The items kept coming and coming. And I kept finding myself day after day back on their porch, handing them items, saying, "My church ladies keep wanting to give y'all things."

It was an overwhelming experience to watch my friends get kicked to the curb, these good people with real struggles. That work so hard and have such good attitudes despite this hardship. Left there with no empathy from the men in pickup trucks, chunking their belongings into a pile, ignoring me as I bent down to help gather the things, and not making eye contact. I don't care what the situational details were, this is not how people should treat each other.

So now my friends have a new house, filled with things from a body of people who care. And these people pray. And they are present. It's so beautiful, and the love of God shines through. This connection between my friends and my church is so powerful. There are many disconnects in our society because of different factors that separate us. But when the gates are knocked down and the dividing lines erased, that's what the Kingdom of God looks like. That's how it felt when I stood in Haiti worshiping with people who live on an island and in that moment we were all the same. Or when I danced with the children in Africa and we felt euphoric and together. Or in Cambodia when the joy of the people around me transcended past any language barrier. We are all humans. We all have emotions. And I believe we have more in common than we realize. Getting to be a part of bringing that together as much as I can is what I love. I want my children to do it with me, and I want them to live that way. Then I want them to grow up to be adults who live that way. 

I'm thankful for a chance to have new friends who trust me enough to help, who don't realize how much they actually help me by letting me be in their lives and experience the joy that that brings.

Anxiety

 Anxiety is a hard thing to admit to having.  I used to pretend like I was immune to it out of shame and pride. It clouds your thoughts entirely; it's like trying to drive while looking out of a windshield in a rainstorm with broken windshield wipers. But God is Truth, and I have found that when I intake Truth all day (mainly through listening to the Psalms through music), the voice of anxiety quiets.  It gets softer and softer until I forget it was ever there. 

I remember one night when I was cooking at the homeless shelter, and they had just let people off the street in. We had already served 100 meals, and it looked like 100 more were needed. I was racing back and forth to each serving window, counting lunch trays, checking steam pans, telling people to give smaller scoops. Then I found myself racing to the walk-in fridge frantically grabbing donated foods, heating them in the microwave, creating more plates that way...moving to throw away plates because the dish room couldn't clean the lunch trays fast enough. At that time I had a friend who used to come into the kitchen to help me regularly.  He had a rough past, and I knew he had been in and out of jail multiple times. He was about 6'5" and was treated by the other men at the homeless shelter as the alpha. I wasn't afraid of him even though others were. He would come into the kitchen and snatch the mop from me after dinner shifts, asking why I didn't have anyone doing the mopping for me and telling me to go home.  

He and I knew how to work together, and I found that to be a common thing in the kitchen that I either had with people or didn't.  A kitchen flow.  Some people had it and others didn't.  This friend did, and it seemed he was always looking out for me when I needed help. I will always be thankful for him.

The night I was scrounging to feed the excess of guests from the street, my friend looked down at me and said "We got this." 

It was as if he knew how we were going to create dozens of meals out of thin air. I knew we didn't have enough food. I knew people were hungry and expecting to be fed a hot meal and I could never bare to turn anyone away. But I remember that night just looking at him and believing him. Trusting him. Letting go. It felt kind of like giving up. And somehow we ended up producing enough food for everyone. Everyone was fed.

I often think of this night when I am anxious and remember that God's got this.  It's hard for me to believe that but I know that's how we are supposed to live. Trusting him is hard. But it's easier if I sit down with a pen and paper and look back on all the ways that he has taken care of me. It's in small and big ways, consistently through my entire life. And I'd be an arrogant fool to give myself credit for my fate, because half of the time I had no idea what was going on and His plan always turned out better than the one I imagined.

So I have to remind myself of this all the time. He's got this. He's like my 6 foot 5 friend towering over me kindly, letting me know as I'm sweating, exhausted, and unsure of how to finish- that he's going to take care of it. 

The Shepherds

The older I get, the more excited I become when I read about Jesus being born. I try to imagine the details when I read them as if I am there.  Transform into that place of Bethlehem, smell the donkeys and think about how Mary felt.

I  put myself inside the shepherds shoes this year...imagining how I would have felt to be in their situation.  Their lifestyle was to hang out outside at night and look after their flocks.  Then an angel came out of nowhere and totally freaked them out.  But it told them that they shouldn't be afraid, Jesus was going to be born and that was amazing news.  

I love that the angel appeared to shepherds because shepherds probably smelled bad, were more of in the lower class grouping at that time, and hung out with animals constantly. But that is who the angel chose to appear to and reveal this crazy news. 

The best part is when the shepherds go and find Jesus. I bet they were amazed, maybe amazed that God had chosen to use them in such a big way to spread the news of Jesus being born. They were a giant part of the story. And just in case they thought they were loosing their minds when they saw an angel, they got to go see Jesus for themselves and it says that they were "glorifying and praising God for all the things they had heard and seen, which were just as they had been told." (Luke 2:20)

I think that often we underestimate God, because we don't believe that he notices us. We feel like we are in too bad of a place, too disobedient or lazy for him to want to enter into our lives. But the story of the shepherds is just like God's character. Choosing the lowly things of the world to shame what is up high.  It's who he is and it's why Jesus makes sense.  It makes me excited to think about the shepherds being the message deliverers to so many, the ones who got to be eyewitnesses for not only Jesus but an angel delivering a personal message from God to them.

This Christmas seemed a little sad because I was not with my normal family crowd thanks to Covid. But it was a great reminder that Christmas is not about creating perfect family moments. Even those fall short. It's about closing your eyes and pretending you're a shepherd, remembering that Jesus being born really happened and what if you would have seen that angel. It's about the story being real and knowing it, then getting excited about it. Christmas is a reverent time that is not to be spoiled by consumerism, distraction, exhaustion...no matter what we tend to make it, we can't change what it is and what happened, and that is good news!

Grandmother Warriors

 So many epiphanies happen during times when I am folding laundry. Yesterday I was folding and pondering the current pandemic, and how I was sick of its restrictions, especially around Christmas. Focusing selfishly on the very few ways that it has affected me.

My front door was wide open yesterday because of beautiful weather and my love of fresh air, which gives some of my older family members panic attacks when they have knowledge of me allowing this type of trust in my neighborhood.  I looked over and a lady was standing almost in my living room, asking me if I was Hailey. Yes, I am Hailey.  She then proceeded to hand me a giant box of chocolate covered strawberries from my grandmother.

And that's when it hit me.

First off that chocolate covered strawberries were one of my favorite things in life. And a box of them was like a kiss from God.

But secondly that I had received two packages from each of my grandmothers that week.  Gifts sent through the mail full of love. My dad's mother had sent me homemade cookies, made from scratch with her hands and her rolling pin, the same cookies she had been sending me in a box each Christmas since I was a child.  

The people who have been sacrificing so much have been our older generation, our grandparents, our high risk ones.  They have been sacrificing since the beginning. Since last Spring.

I've had to do little to change my life. My kids wear cute cotton masks from Old Navy to school.  That may be it.

So before I go on to feel sorry for myself that I may not see certain family members at certain times this Christmas, let me remember the people who have been sacrificing socially, mentally, and really in all ways. The ones who have been staying home, but who are still sending love as we live our busy lives.  They are the ones who have been doing hard work to get through this, but I believe its creating strength, and its not surprising to me that it may also be creating in them a beauty and resilience that they didn't have before.  These people are warriors.  They are fighters.  They are survivors.  They are my inspiration. And they should know that they are remembered.  Even if they aren't out in public, or in the middle of the big gathering.  My heart is for you, my heart thinks of you, and my heart is thankful for you.