I’ve had something pressing on me for awhile now, and today I’m finally releasing it a bit.  Poof!  Relief.  It feels good.  I feel the weight of the orphans in Adecar, but as of…wait for it…right…NOW…I no longer feel this bizarre pressure to perform the role of miracle worker.  I can’t.  Advocating for orphans is hard.  It’s slow.  Sometimes I feel like a freak for caring.  An ineffective freak.  But my job is to put one foot in front of the other, tackle this monumental task one orphan at a time, and leave the freakin’ results up to God.  Just like I can’t make people believe in Christ, but can only share my story and His love and truth and leave the results to Him, I also cannot make people sponsor orphans.  I can share my heart for orphans, provide information about their plight, describe their living conditions, implore people to get involved, but I can’t write checks for other people.  And you know what?  I’m okay with that.  There is such freedom in knowing that God changes hearts and spurs His people to action.  If not for God, I wouldn’t be sitting here writing this blog.  If not for God, I wouldn’t have a filing cabinet full of orphan profiles.  If not for God, I wouldn’t give a crap about orphans.  And the second, the SECOND I start thinking that I have any kind of power to move hearts or that any of my actions are because of my own goodness, I fall prey to the lie of performance.  If my life is about performance, then I’m either performing so that one group of people will see how incredible I am at helping orphans or I’m performing so that an entirely different group of people will see how normal I am and how well I fit in to mainstream American culture.  If my life is about performance, I can’t win.  God is the true winner, the true doer, and my life is just an offering poured out for His glory. 

So, pour me out, God!  Let me be a part of Your redemptive plan for these kids and for my community.  I just want to work, and I’ll leave EVERYTHING up to You.  For You, by You, because of You.  Wheee!  That’s freedom.

Tonight I’m just contemplating humility.  Humility is the most attractive quality in a person.  Humility in leaders makes me want to follow them.  Christ’s humility breaks down every claim that I think I have.  The closer I get to God, the more I discover His heart, the more I am broken by my own lack of humility.  He scrapes away layer upon layer of my pride to reveal new depths of selfishness, self-centeredness, and self-promotion.  The more humble I become, the more I ache with the knowledge that I’m not humble enough.  I’m not talking about self-flagellation and mea culpas.  I’m talking about an innate sacrifice entwined with the very core of my being.  “Jesus did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made Himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant” (Phil. 2).  That’s my model.  That’s a leader that I get excited about following.  What makes me think for a second that I can exalt in an accomplishment or consider myself above anyone?  My Lord took on the nature of a servant.  Am I living so that people will see the things that I do or the things that I wear, or am I living so that people will see the God that I serve, the God that humbled Himself enough to serve me?  I have no idea how to “accomplish” humility.  It’s not something you check off a list.  Hopefully, the closer I get to Jesus, the more I imitate Him, the more I will absorb His humility and start to exude it myself.  And I have a feeling that there will be many more of these nights, when I stare despairingly at my computer screen and come face to face with my self-absorption.