Susie Grade

Do you ever think about why you do what you do? Most of us work to pay the bills, eat in order to survive, and spend time with people because we love them. Yet if we’re honest, and if we take the time to look deeper, other motivations are often at work. Not only do I work to pay the bills, but I also work to gain a sense of identity, to prove I am enough. Not only do I eat to survive but also to comfort myself and distract myself from life’s trouble and pain. Not only do I spend time with people because I love them but also because I need their affection and approval, and I sometimes need to try to control them.

I want to believe and live as though being precedes doing. The problem is that most of the time I think that all my doing constitutes my being. I think I am a somebody because of all I produce. Smart people call a “false self” all the layers of frenetic activity that we think make us who we are. The problem (or maybe the blessing) is that life throws curve balls. And when we hit those junctures where we are forced to have all the activity cease – when we hit those times of trouble or transition or turmoil that pull the rug out from under us – we can be left feeling completely lost. Without all the compulsive activity, when all we can do is just be, we are compelled to see our true selves. This is when we need God desperately because His love quiets us. (*See excerpt from author Henri Nouwen below.)

As an ENTJ on the Myers Briggs assessment, “being” is especially hard for me. But I want to increasingly value the inner-life work of being, of trusting God’s love for me apart from my activity and production, and of letting God change me from the inside out. I want to tend the garden of my soul – where my truest self resides and where God can produce the kind of fruit that no one besides Jesus sees or measures.

“Claiming the Sacredness of Our Being”
Are we friends with ourselves? Do we love who we are? These are important questions because we cannot develop good friendships with others unless we have befriended ourselves. How then do we befriend ourselves? We have to start by acknowledging the truth of ourselves. We are beautiful but also limited, rich but also poor, generous but also worried about our security. Yet beyond all that we are people with souls, sparks of the divine. To acknowledge the truth of ourselves is to claim the sacredness of our being, without fully understanding it. Our deepest being escapes our own mental or emotional grasp. But when we trust that our souls are embraced by a loving God, we can befriend ourselves and reach out to others in loving relationships. -Henri J. M. Nouwen

Many of you have supported our partnership with Ekta Church in Nepal through your giving, and participation in the most recent Serve Lunch event. Here is a report from Vaun Swanson about the trip…

“The women’s conferences we hosted in Tikapur were a huge success. We heard story after story of women that were so blessed by their time at the conferences…and away from their daily chores! The women came from many different churches and were from all castes and different tribes. We focused on how much God loves each one of them, views all of his children as equals and how often we see God use unlikely people (like uneducated women) to accomplish his purposes. We talked a lot about how important stories are. I shared several stories from scripture and many of the women shared their stories. Many, many more would have liked to but we had to encourage them to share with one another and with their neighbors. The exercise I had planned for them around stories kind of bombed though. I had taken four hundred cards and markers and we tried to teach them how to put their story-line on paper in order to share it. Turns out…many of these women didn’t even know how to hold a pen! Wow! I quickly told the group that this was only one way to help them think of the important times in their lives….but the important thing was that their stories were important and they needed to share them with others.

The women loved mixing and talking and eating together. Many of them slept at the church Thursday night too. This was the first time many of them had ever done something like this. One woman told her pastor (who told me) that she was kind of afraid to come because she feared that the monkeys would destroy her fields while she was gone. After the conference she told him that she didn’t care what the monkeys did…she was just so glad she had come. They are already talking about next year and anticipating 7-800 women! Yikes!!

Thank you so much for your prayers and support for this Christian women’s conference. I interviewed 20 women and wrote down their stories. Only one of them was born into a Christian family…and she was pretty young. They have all had hard lives and been persecuted by their families and friends. But their love for the Lord is so strong. I was truly blessed by them. I know you would have been, too.”

I am so grateful for this partnership and the great work God is doing in Nepal!