frisbee

  On a sunny February afternoon in Vegas, I developed a theory- if you make eye contact with a stranger, shout "FRISBEE", then launch a frisbee at him, he has no choice but to catch it. Or at least fetch it wherever it lands and toss it back.  

   My friends and I were at University of Nevada Las Vegas every day for a week leading up to an event we were hosting on campus. The goal was to spread the word about the event, which we did while giving out free snow cones, chatting with food truck workers, hanging out at sorority recruitment booths, and whatever we sort of stumbled into doing that day in order to meet people. After a couple days I found myself tossing around a frisbee with two of my friends, feeling we had basically exhausted our resources in how to meet new people and make friends on campus without being too forced or weird. We must have been feeling a bit silly that day, because we decided to throw our frisbee at unsuspecting and often unwilling passersby just to see what would happen. Some loved it, yelling "Go long!" and backing up for me to pelt it to them. Some looked embarrassed and dodged it, blushing as they picked it up and tossed it back. Some caught it on their way to class, and again as they walked back an hour later. A surprising amount not only threw it back, but they joined us in our game for awhile and excitedly inquired about when they could meet again for our "Frisbee Club", making us realize we had possibly unintentionally created a school club at a college we didn't attend. But I don't recall a single person ignoring the frisbee and not throwing it back. 

   Something sort of magical happens when people feel seen and included. People soften. They let their guard down for a moment, wondering if the person in front of them would actually have the audacity to break their personal protective bubble in order to bring them in and show them love.

   I learned this not only through my frisbee social experiment, but through another bubble-bursting action my friends and I often did this winter. We would walk through university campuses, stop any random stranger, and ask the person, "Hi, could I compliment you?" People typically had no clue how to respond, probably wondering what our hidden agenda would be. But in the moments when these people would give us permission to love them, it was amazing watching their walls melt as we spoke words of kindness and truth. Anything from "Your jacket matches your shoes really nice" to "I can tell you are such a good friend", whatever God led us to call out in them. Yes, Jesus often came up. When they asked in wonder how we knew things about them or why we would be speaking to them in this way, we unashamedly told them that Jesus' love drives us and moves through us. But what was our agenda? Get them to follow Jesus? Get them to come to our event? Get them to follow us on Instagram and think we're cool hip missionaries? No, our motive was simply to get people to soften enough to experience and receive unbiased, unmanipulative, no strings attached truth and love. 

   We live in a culture where people pull out their phones at a bus stop, pretending to scroll through something interesting so they don't need to make eye contact with the human being next to them. We move quickly from important class to important meeting to important interview to important phone call, not even considering the importance of the people we briskly brush past on our way. I think we feign importance and busyness to block out potential rejection or judgment or pain that could come from allowing ourselves to be seen by anyone more than a few specific people. 

   Why then did faces light up when I forced them to join my frisbee game, though they were clearly on their way somewhere else? Why did so many tear up from simply hearing a stranger tell them that they have a beautiful smile? 

   Few people truly have walls. Most have things more like those flimsy manila folders your science teacher would get you to prop up between you and your neighbor during a test. But life isn't a test, and we don't have to protect ourselves from being seen by others. Perfect love and perfect acceptance has already walked the Earth, has already called you His, has already laid out your worth. What if we who know that love and acceptance chose not only to lay down our barriers and live it out, but to bring others into it with no motive but love? What if we kept our phones in our pockets and asked the person at the bus stop about their day? What if we walked slower and looked around a bit and smiled? What if we stopped pretending how important we are and took a moment to make a stranger feel important?

   I want to practice throwing frisbees without worrying whether or not people will throw them back.

long live UNLV Frisbee Club

un-prayed prayers

      I don't even remember when I met the Jamiesons... I must have been about 14. But whenever it was, there wasn't a time throughout my high school career that I didn't have them consistently a part of my life. Marshall and Emily Jamieson were the Mercer Island Younglife area directors, leading weekly gatherings for middle school and high school students, personally discipling countless young people, and opening up their home on a nearly daily basis to all who desired to dig deeper into the word, needed a listening ear, or just wanted a freshly baked cookie during lunchtime. Their house was 3 doors down from the high school, and during my senior year I was probably over there more frequently than anywhere else. Marshall oversaw me as I stepped into leadership for the first time. Emily saw me through boy problems, girl problems, more boy problems, stupid teenage rebellion, and some of the most significant moments of my life. I watched their family grow from one to two to three little rambunctious boys. And then four years later God called us both into unexpected new territory, sending me across the ocean to spend 3 years working with YWAM and sending them 15 minutes down the freeway to spend 3 years as the Younglife area directors of Issaquah and Sammamish.

      Every spring since I joined YWAM, I would fly back to Washington for a month or two and I always found time to catch up with the Jamiesons. Our lives have changed so much in just 3 years. I have seen and experienced adventures and movements of God that I never could have imagined. They have added another son to their family, tallying it all up to 4 little men now. I had led teams of young people across the world to live out the love of Jesus. They have overseen ministry and discipleship for middle schools and high schools across multiple school districts. Our areas of influence have expanded, our dreams have broadened, and our relationship with one another has deepened and matured as I have moved from the role of their student to that of their friend.

     I remember sitting in a beautiful chapel in a boring baccalaureate service for my brother's college graduation in Chicago. It was May of last year, and I sat staring up into the tall, ornate ceiling asking God what I was doing with my life. I was about to go back to Kona, Hawaii the following week for my second year of staffing with YWAM, I was nearly 21 years old, I had zero college education (and zero desire to acquire one) and no "calling". I wondered if going to YWAM had been wise. I mean here I was at my brother's college graduation with nothing to show for from my past couple years but a few stamps in my passport and some cool stories! No no no, I quickly tossed that thought, knowing that my time in YWAM was deeply significant and God had clear purpose in it. But I did wonder, and admittedly worry, about what I was to do next.
     Suddenly my mind was totally overrun with one idea: I needed to live with the Jamiesons. I needed to serve their family. Excitement brimmed in my spirit for a moment, but was quickly stifled by logic- what good would that do for my future, to live and work for free for a family with no end-goal in mind? What would my friends and family and supporters think of me? I didn't know, and I didn't want to ask and find out. So I kept the idea to myself, thinking it as just that instead of something that only could have popped into my mind like that with the direction of the Holy Spirit. 

     As the months passed this year, I chose not to worry about what would happen this spring after my two year commitment to YWAM ended. I felt peace and permission not to over think and over plan. But if someone were to ask what I felt I would do, I would say with very little confidence that I hoped to live-in nanny... maybe. I brought nothing up about this to the Jamiesons, assuming that me living with them wasn't even a possibility. The thought that God had planted the idea in my head seemed more and more unlikely as time went on.

     This February I was in the middle of a university tour across southwest America, running worship and outreach events as we drove from state to state. It had been 8 months since that moment at my brother's graduation, and there was only a month until my ticket was booked to fly me back to Seattle with no plan of what to do there and no intention of returning to Kona. I sat reading in our AirBnB just north of Denver when my phone rang. It was Emily Jamieson. We had been half-heartedly playing phone tag for a month or so, and she finally found time to call me while her boys ran around at a McDonald's playplace. Our conversation wasn't any more than 10 minutes, and I honestly don't even remember what we talked about. All I can recall is Emily asking where I would live and what I would do when I came home. With uneasiness in my heart I told her I had no idea, to which she immediately said, "Oh, you will come live with us!" She quickly told me we could talk more about it later, and then hung up to go corral her boys.
     What? 8 months of questioning and doubt and uncertainty all smoothed over by an 8 minute conversation? I couldn't fathom it, and I didn't believe it. Does God really answer prayers that haven't been prayed?
     After 3 years of full time mission work, I have seen the Lord show up in extraordinary ways. Not only have I seen this in ministering to others, but I have seen it so personally in my own life. Not once have I been in need financially since I joined YWAM. In a single day the Lord provided nearly double the funds I needed for my Discipleship Training School. He has brought together such specific people into my life right at the perfect timing. He has spoken so clearly through his word and teachings and worship and my mentors. He has taken me to the most beautiful places. He has let me experience life to the fullest. But honestly, I fully believed in my heart that this provision and peace and purpose that Jesus had poured into me throughout my time with YWAM would be over the second I stepped out. No more full time missions? No more help from him. I needed to learn to fend for myself in the real world.
     But that is not who Jesus is!

     I write this while sitting in my bed in my cute little attic at the Jamiesons' house. This has now been my new home for about a week, and I am still pondering the movements and timing of God in my heart. I am struck by his gentleness with me. I am humbled by his trust in me. I am honored by this new season of becoming a part of a family that I adore and admire. And I have continually watched as my God has answered prayers that I haven't prayed.
     The Lord blesses and honors an obedient and surrendered life. He sees our simple desires and he loves them because he is the one who gave them to us. He isn't confined to move only through casting us off into the ends of the world (although there are many times he would if we would only give him permission to). He is just as active and present in a world-wide missions movement as he is in a family of 6 in Northwest America. Though I don't see very far down the road, I have peace knowing that I can trust who I'm walking with.

The Lord directs the steps of the godly.

He delights in every detail of their lives.

Though they stumble, they will never fall,

for the Lord holds them by the hand.

Psalm 37:23&24

   

though the seasons change

    Three years ago I made what, at the time, felt like a radical decision. I moved to the the little Big Island of Hawaii to be trained up as a missionary and then tossed into an unknown foreign nation to put to practice whatever I learned. It was expensive, it was unusual, it was frightening in many ways, but it was exactly what my heart yearned for. My original planned six month "gap year" journey turned to a thirty-one month experience, weaved together through late nights in the red light district of the Philippines, muddy hikes up the mountains of Sri Lanka, sweaty days in tent classrooms surrounded by sheep pastures in Kona Hawaii, and 13 hour drives through the Arizona desert in a 1995 Chevy Astrovan. I found my people. They were faithful, fun, genuine, unafraid, convinced and convicted by truth. They were tiny old women in mountain rice terraces. They were government officials in a violently Buddhist nation. They were orphans. They were freshmen at the biggest party school in America. They were unapologetic and fearless pastors. They were 75 year old prayer warriors in Las Vegas. They were my friends and peers who walked by my side for three years. These people have daily changed me in ways that cannot be reversed. I have seen enough to know that Jesus is worth it all and he is all we have to offer. He heals deaf ears, he breaks away addictions, he destroys lies and confusion with real truth, he releases wisdom and vision and hope. Walking with the Lord and my friends, seeing miracles, knowing the presence of God, receiving a nearly constant flow of teachings and revelations, this has been my normal.

    So what now? 

    A dear friend of mine recently was praying for me. He told me that he felt God was leading me into time of "discovering wildflowers". He said some flowers grow in a garden where human hands tend to them. Wildflowers grow under the care of no one but God. In this prayer, my friend felt the Lord would be leading me to these places of where he is moving without any effort of my own.

    After three years of intentional and intense mission work, I am now back where I began in the Seattle area. I don't yet have an answer for what is next. I am now here indefinitely. This, to me, is more radical and nerve racking than any unknown nation. I know the season has arrived for me to recognize Jesus in the familiar, building the integrity to choose him by choosing obedience and servant-hearted love. I have chased the power and truth of God across the world, but now I slow down to pause and notice where he is moving around me. 

    I plan to use this blog to process what I discover on this new journey, reflect on what I have experienced in my past journeys, and proclaim truth. May this be a place of wildflowers for whoever happens upon it.