When your world is shaking, it is not what you can hold onto but Who holds on to you that makes all the difference.

It has been a shaky kind of week filled with dusty roads, tears, loss, grace, laughter and the people who make my world truly rich.  Family.  To lead go low, dig deep and lift the ones you serve up to fly.  And when I thought I could not go any lower, I am finding there is always lower still.

This was not a normal visit home.  There has been a shaking that stripped us right down to our foundations.  Seven years ago I entered what is now South Sudan with a lot of promises and not much else.  We trusted God for everything. And now we stand in need of that everything kind of ridiculous trust and faith again. This time it is my children who remind me of the testimonies of His greatness.

In recent years, we have settled in and somehow the West has crept in around the edges.  I am not talking about the good things kindhearted people have offered to bless our family with or the precious people who come visit (you are welcome you know) but rather a mindset, a way of thinking.  Many of our children have never prayed for food to multiply simply because they have never had to see it multiply.

In this shaking, God has given our family a gift.  A gift to be able to begin again.  I am so grateful.

We have been given a gift that calls our family to exercise their faith and see miracle replies.  A precious opportunity for our leaders to lead with their ears pressed close to hear wisdom from heaven and see something truly indigenous rise up to transform the land filled with God’s Kingdom love and power.  It is from times like these revivals are born and nations changed.

We trust when the shaking subsides it will only be His unshakeable Kingdom that remains in us, through us, around us.  Please continue to keep our family in your prayers.  We sure do love you and thank Him for your love and support.

Some days it seems like your world is fraying at the edges and all that is seen screams impossible.  It is on days like these that we lean hard on Him, pressing into heaven, standing on His goodness.  And our fraying edges where dreams and plans have seemed to unravel before our eyes, these edges He stitches with grace.

The last six months have been ones of extreme battle over our Yei base.  I was delayed from returning because of dealing with my own extreme health battles and the enemy has fought long and hard to take me out and our dear Sudanese family whom I love so very much with me.  Unexpected legal expenses drained almost all our reserves and we are back to where we were when I came to Africa 7 years ago.  Desperately dependent on the only One Who can meet our needs, standing in raw faith and as all has been shaken to the core, His unshakeable Kingdom remains.

We are retooling some things, regrouping, redirecting, reassigning and watching Him restore.  Seven times that which was stolen, in every area.  While I now live in Jacksonville, FL, I still lead the Yei base in South Sudan for Iris Global and serve the other bases and partner works there however I can.  I will be visiting South Sudan every few months for as much time as my health will allow or God will grace.  While in Florida, I am pioneering Iris First Coast with a precious group hungry lovers of Jesus and traveling to share the stories of God’s amazing grace and lead others to encounter His extravagant goodness.

Because I was unable to travel to speak or be involved directly with the work in South Sudan for almost six months due to some crazy medical issues, we are in a place of stepping out in total faith to a degree we haven’t had to in quite a while.  But God provides.  Period.  And stretching is good for us.  If we never face the impossible, we will never see the miraculous.  {And by the way, I am back on the road as God opens doors to minister.  You can contact me directly to see about having me stop by if that at all is of interest.}

It goes without saying that I am beyond elated to be visiting my precious family in Yei tomorrow, even if the visit is a bit on the short side.  I have missed them so very much.

We need some miracles friends.  But that is pretty familiar territory with roads paved in heaven!

Please be praying for our Yei base specifically in this season where much has been shaken {and for all our bases and partner works}:

• For peace.  The shalom nothing broken nothing missing restoring peace of Jesus to guard the gates of our minds and our homes.
• For protection.  From all elements that seek to devour and corrupt, kill, steal and destroy.
• For provision seven times greater than that which was lost.  Every need met in each and every work we serve and connect with.

All my love,

Michele

Sweet friends,

Here I am popping in ever so quickly to say I would deeply cherish your prayers in the next few weeks.  I leave in a few hours for two weeks visiting my family in South Sudan and Uganda.  It has been 6 months in coming.  We are on a new journey together in this season and my heart is more knit with the peoples of my adopted second home than before.  Leaning harder on grace, trusting more for miracles, pressing deeper for wisdom and needing more love than ever.

I look forward to sharing the good stories of God’s amazing faithfulness with you when I return.  The road right now is more unpaved than it has been at anytime since I arrived in 2006 but we stake our lives on His covering mercy and His overcoming joy.  I am so grateful for you, our family all over the world who stand with us and support us through thick and thin.  Please pray for all our children and staff these next 15 days and this mama of theirs who is going to sit and listen long to their hearts.

We need lots of this in our home.

Not the kind that comes from having circumstances all buttoned up and ironed out.  But the peace that comes only from walking in step with One Who gives peace above. beyond, in spite of.

“Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid.” -John 14:27

We need buckets of this too:

The kind that lets us hang in and on to Jesus no matter what knowing really it is Him holding on to us.

And a bit of this:

Loads of laughter.  God sits in heaven and laughs at the enemy. He works and weaves all things together for our good.  ALL things.  Every single one.  And childlike faith still inherits the Kingdom.

Over the last 6-12 months the enemy has tried his darndest to shut me up with pain, take me out with infection and stop me from stepping in to more of God’s promise.  It has been a battle.  A battle when some days all I could do was stand and that alone by grace.  And standing here now.  In Jesus, I am stronger than ever and more dependent on His very Presence to be the air I breathe.  Still in need of breakthrough in some areas physically but this journey that starts soon is one orchestrated by heaven.

In just a few days I look forward to being surrounded by my adopted sons and daughters and our precious staff family who lay down their lives in love to care for them.

Please pray for us.  We need miracles of provision, protection and His peace that passes all understanding to be released from the inside out.

All my love,

Michele

PS If you are in the North FL area May 24, might I invite you to our first Iris First Coast gathering of Worship and the Arts held at St Mary’s Episcopal Church and Outreach at 7 pm in downtown Jacksonville?  Together we want to lean into His heart, fix our gaze on His face and be transformed by His love.

May all your dark Fridays lead to resurrection Sundays. May you find the hope that shines in the night and the promise of new life in the dead of winter. May you live from a reality deeper than what your physical eyes can see.  Mar you live in His resurrection power that still moves gravestones and leaves death an empty tomb.  Be blessed friends!

You are loved-  Michele

Tonight.  What a night!

In making this poster to be printed for a statewide women’s event I will be at tomorrow: my computer crashed twice, I lost the file three-times and had to reinstall Photoshop on my hard drive. In the morning, I will rise earlier than I’d like to think about now to finish getting ready and make the trek west.

Please join me in praying for many open hearts who want to make a difference in a child’s life in South Sudan.  It really doesn’t take very much.  For the price of 5 conservative trips to Starbucks or a mid-range dinner out {about $35}, each month it is possible to literally change the world.

It is easy to assume someone else will be the one to stop.  When everyone assumes the next person will stop and get involved, no one does.  Be the one to stop for one. Become a part of our sponsorship family and join us in the adventure and joy of taking care of some God’s most precious treasures.

Just hop on over here and take a peek.  {You can even sign up to sponsor a child or request our sponsorship team to be in touch.}

Maybe you’d like to help us get the word out?  Yes, we need that too!

Here is a downloadable brochure {in a .pdf file} that makes it easy to share with your world about this amazing opportunity.  You can tweet or share this post on Facebook just below with the sharing buttons.

Grateful for you friends!

You know those pictures of intrepid surfers riding the crest of a gargantuan wave that a few inches either direction would send them tumbling under its power? {In case you don’t, a google image search graciously provided the one above.}

Enter, my life. Ok, that is not me in the photo. But still. Welcome to my world with an extra 500 or so pages of reading assignments each week for my master’s degree.  I am grateful to be a speed reader and that my organizational tactics have organizational tactics to avoid the crash zone of this maverick season I am learning to navigate.

But there are days despite your best efforts, life happens and you find yourself spun in its crash zone.  Ahem.  It has been one of those, mercifully bookended by coffee with friends.  When our lives are rightly fit in relationship, grounded in family, even the crush of life and deadlines and dreams and joys and gut-wrenching sorrows and pain and delight and loss and success and failure and did I mention, dreams?  It all becomes framed with perspective that makes the crashing waves, stormy skies and riptide currents a little less hazardous.

We were never designed to be a lone surfer.  There are moments it is you and the wave but it is never ever ONLY you and the wave.  Our most maverick waves, the ones that threaten to drown us and shred our worlds are… only… ripples… when watched from heaven.  And we, you and I, we are held in Hand by the One Who set the boundaries of the seas and made a pathway through the deep.  You and I are invited into a whole family of wave-walkers and light-carriers.

There are seasons strength means standing. There are others strength only comes through leaning.  Leaning hard on grace and His goodness and His ability to handle the ripples that look like tidal waves when we stare them down from the shore.

Praying for you friends, that you know His grace and lean in hard to His faithfulness and let the waves threatening turmoil only take you higher and deeper into your destiny.

–

Speaking of grace.  Some of my friends and fellow Iris family who lead Iris Central Coast in CA are starring in an original Lifetime series called “Preacher’s Daughters.”  I am so happy that we share the same last name {even if we are only related in the Kingdom}.  They are a shining example of God’s grace and might just among be the bravest folks I know to allow a hoard of cameras, lights, crew and not to mention the entire country into their living room and some really tender family moments. That takes serious guts.  I’d prefer dealing with ak-47 toting soldiers in South Sudan.  Truly.  Some of the other segments featuring other families had content that was ahem well not for the faint of heart: so if you do check it out, please be aware of that. It made me blush and I have heard and seen just about everything from the women and girls I have worked with to see set free from trafficking and exploitation.

The Perry family radiates His love; raw, real authenticity and seeing them on my screen here in Florida’s First Coast made me want to board a plane for CA’s Central Coast.  I love you guys and Iris First Coast is cheering you on!

I go in search of canvas to create on.  Not the neatly stretched, pre-primed, prepared artist canvases gleaming white and pristine in the art store, but rather raw canvas meant to be trampled on, designed to catch spills and splatters, christened as a drop-cloth for the off-scouring of creativity.  It empties in an unceremonious heap on my studio floor daring me to transform it, reminding me of the tarp cities in the refuse heaps of Africa turned into makeshift shanties and tent communities all crying for redemption’s untangling.

Can God take the places of our suffering, the worst moments and hardest journeys and transform them to become the very canvas backdrops for the greatest displays of His beauty in our lives?  I don’t think true redemption can be experienced any other way.

For days I let it sit.  Right in the middle of it all.  Reminding me of the before.

So here, the imperfectly woven material designed for walking on, to absorb the spills of beauty.  Found in a hardware store. Covered in dust.  A cloth meant perhaps to protect but not to become anything in and of itself.  How like so many of our stories.  The world, our lives, our experience has us labeled and boxed as this one thing, something of function but not anything with great expectation attached.

Then Papa intervenes, rescues us from dusty dark bins and takes that which was walked on, stepped over, invisible and He sees.  He infuses worth.  He irons out our wrinkles and shapes us into that which can display His goodness and glory.  Even the hardest seasons redeemed into part of the everything that works together for our good. Not one moment, not one tear, not one thread lost or wasted in this story of the art of His redemption alive, brilliantly bursting forth in the cracks and crevices of our lives where we least expect it.

I have been wanting to explore redemption and transformation interwoven with other related themes and subjects.  As these canvas pieces become substrates for this journey, I’ll share the trek I take with them.  And we both will be surprised with what He does with the unexpected and unlikely.  In many more ways than one.

Be blessed friends with the knowing not one thread of your life has unraveled beyond the place of His ability to weave it back into the masterpiece He is creating in you.

Today was a most interesting day.

My very first session ever with my new personal trainer.  SO. MUCH. FUN.  But you and I both know I love a good challenge.  My body has always had its quirks to overcome but this last season with the facial nerve issues about knocked me down for the count.  I can’t do anything about fixing my facial nerve except trust Jesus in it all, but it did dawn on me I could help strengthen the rest of me.  Maybe getting myself healthier in general might even rub off.

Today I found out something.  I am a whole lot stronger than I thought I was.  I started out on 10lb weights.  Yep the big ones up there.  And with the right guidance there really wasn’t anything I couldn’t do, even if I had to do it a little differently.  I thought I’d be in the weak recovering missionary from a tropical war zone with inadequate nutrition who has never really worked out a day in her life category.  Still getting part of my body with the program, true.  But I’m actually going to be circuit training like an athlete {with a few injuries} would.  That’s pretty darn encouraging if I do say so myself.  Take that trigeminal neuralgia.

We never really know what’s inside of us until we try.  We never really know how strong God is inside of us until we step out and trust Him.  I’ve expected a 2 and He’s been a 10+ every single time.  He is limitless except in the places I limit Him by holding back my trust.  So here’s to a life lived in His strength, heart flung wide open, abandoned to His love that knows no limits.

Be encouraged. You are stronger than you think when you have His strength on the inside of you.

I love roses.  My personal favorite are Hawaiian Sunset. But roses don’t usually love me back. I can admire them from across a room but any closer, well… let’s just say we don’t play well in close proximity.

So I splurged on the tote bag variety of roses.  I’m a sucker for turquoise and black/white anyway.  And I needed a tote bag to muscle my notebooks and computer to area coffee shops when I want new scenery to study around.  You see I am heading back to school.

As if this journey wasn’t already strange enough.

I feel like I keep apologizing for not being here. I so appreciate you sticking with my silent seasons.  I am more of contemplative at heart than I ever knew and there are seasons that can only be lived out well in hidden places, secreted away in gardens that look barren and dead.  But they they aren’t barren or dead.

A while ago now a reader asked me to explain this journey I am on, to share what precipitated the decision to go back to school and start a business. I have readers. Really?  You. Here. Sharing these words, this moment.  I am humbled by that. And I’m frankly always amazed when you stop by my inbox and let me know you are out there.  Friends, I so appreciate you.

To all of you who have been wondering and not asking, oh how I wish I could explain my journey, distill it to its purest form, serve it up in storied sentences for you to enjoy.  Yes, please.  I love being able to explain my seasons, when they are nice and neat, appealing and understandable.  When they are as clear and defined as those graphic roses exploding in Vera’s print above.

Alrighty.  Cleared that right up, didn’t we?  {Ahem. Right.}

I want to live my one life well.  To make Him smile.

It is easy to feel like you are living your one and only life well when you hold broken children a world away and stare straight into the faces of God’s promises fulfilled over and over every single day.  It is easy to know each moment counts when you have a story to tell of all the amazing things He is doing in the bold expressions of grace all around you.  It is a good deal more challenging when the amazing things He is doing are hidden largely even from your own sight and defy vocabulary.  When your rose bush looks more like brittle twigs, barren of blooms raised stark and empty against the sky.

So what happened that this missionary from Africa turned around, returned back to her hometown, started her own business {two actually} and signed up for a master’s program?  It is not as incongruous as it all might seem.

At 17 I had an audacious plan to take over the world and start my own leadership consulting firm, which of course would single-handedly rewrite the way leaders are trained and shape history. By next Tuesday.  Thank you.

Two weeks after arriving to Baylor University as a wide-eyed teenager {Sic’ em Bears.}, God very bluntly me told me He didn’t want me training leaders just yet.  I needed to learn more about His Kingdom first. I asked for the course syllabus and He instead took me on a 17-year long journey that has traversed across the planet and back many times, each step leading lower and deeper into His heart.  Seventeen years virtually to the day, He handed that dream of owning my own consulting firm back to me.  In my laying it down and letting it go, Jesus was able to shape it into what He desired it to be, only to hand it back to me. How many dreams are stunted because we refuse to lay them down?

This is not an either/or journey.  It is both and more.  Edge Creative Consulting is the fulfillment of a God dream planted deep in the soil of my destiny.  It puts a name to what I already have been doing just because God has woven it IN to the fabric of my being.  It will eventually be a channel of resources to flow right back into South Sudan and to other nations too.

I am based in the USA now. I still continue to travel to preach and minister here and abroad.  I am still serving with Iris Ministries, raising awareness for our work in South Sudan and serving the field teams there as much as I can.  I will, as soon as I possibly can, go back to South Sudan to hold my little ones I miss so much.  And now I have my own business that allows me to engage the mission field right here 2 feet beyond my front door in ways I never could without it.

Why do I love business so much? I mean jump up and down, turn back flips, love this consulting business. I straight up enjoy what I do.  I LOVE to see others fly.  But business is simply a different looking mission field.  I am not talking about putting a fish on my business card and calling it good.  I am talking about being so Love-saturated and filled with the reality of Who Jesus is and the creativity of heaven, that every person and organization He allows me to serve gets splashed on out of the overflow of His Presence in my life, while being served with excellence.

And school? This particular degree program is the program I really was hoping my earlier MBA program would be.  I gained vital experience and understanding in the MBA portion I did complete, but the remaining courses were not topics relevant to what I needed then or now.  This degree curriculum is every class I wished they had for me to take, combined in one program that didn’t even exist until very recently.  Talk about a God thing!  And all online, able to be integrated into my whirlwind of a life.  I can scarcely wait to get started!   This too is a tool to be more effective in loving the people Papa puts in my path, right here as well as a world away.

Even though this is a quiet, at times confounding season, I know the growth happening in the hidden places will at just the right time burst into bloom changing the atmosphere around me.  This one life of mine lived well, infused with fragrance of the Rose Who wore thorns for a crown so He could crown me with His beauty.

When I lay down at night and He whispers, “Sweetie you did great today. Well done. I am so pleased with you.”  That is the only measure of success I ever want to seek.

*****

Psssst, before you go… here’s a super duper exciting new art adventure for 2013 over at TalkingWallsArt.com {my art studio}.  Love to see you there too!