A Backstage Pass

Reflecting on All My Knotted Up Life, by Beth Moore

After learning Portuguese to church-plant in Brazil, one of the unexpected privileges that came my way was facilitating English-speaking women’s Bible studies. Our group was a diverse convergence of women from nations such as Germany, Israel, Mexico, and the US, but we were united by the English language and by our identity as foreigners, trying to adjust and humoring ourselves with stories of how far we had to go in that process. We were all at different places in our faith: some of us were committed to Jesus, and others, just curious about Him. 

Since English Bible study content was unavailable in our context, anyone from our circle who would be traveling to the US and back, volunteered to sacrifice a hefty portion of their baggage weight allowance to return with study materials. Alongside books by a favorite author, Beth Moore, came DVD’s of pre-recorded teaching sessions that transported us to a women’s conference in another hemisphere, and, even more importantly, transported us into the pages of the Bible. If you participated in her studies, you loved her like a sister, or a friend, or a mentor. 

I probably considered her to be all of those in my life.  You never knew if her insights would draw out laughter or tears, but what you could count on was conviction in your heart to love Jesus more, consume His Word more passionately, and respond to His Spirit more fully. Studying the Bible under her leadership anchored me to Christ during those years of feeling tossed in unfamiliar waters, far from home. 

Her memoir, All My Knotted Up Life, pulls back the curtain to her world off-stage. In the self-deprecating but profound style we’d expect from her, Beth addresses the chaotic childhood she endured, the call to ministry she followed against all odds, the marriage she was committed to, the devastating misuse of power behind the scenes, and the life she’s pursued more recently. Where praise is deserved, she honors individuals by name, and where critique is given, she writes in generalities. 

If your family life or your church life is turning out to be more like a tangled knot and less like a perfect bow tie, you’ll find camaraderie in Beth’s memoir.

On Rosa Parks

A letter to my black friends: 

On this day of remembering the advocacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., your faces come to mind. I admit to you that I haven’t lived your family history or experienced your personal aches about your family’s future, but I’m committed to learning how my individual choices can make a difference in my sphere of influence right now.

One individual who challenges me to courageous, yet simple actions is Rosa Parks. This past year, I discovered and read her book Reflections by Rosa Parks: the quiet strength and faith of a woman who changed a nation. The chapters are divided into topics that she spoke on, wrote about, and personally applied over the course of her life. 

She lived out of straightforward conviction regarding right and wrong, an uncomplicated approach to complex racial discrimination against her. Straightforward doesn’t mean socially acceptable, and uncomplicated doesn’t mean easy. What she endured grieves me - for your sake and our nation’s - and I’m sad to say, I doubt I’d have her faith or stamina. 

But I aim for it.

“I have learned that, 

in order to bring about change, 

one must take the first step, 

or else it will not be done.” 

-Rosa Parks

A resource for the committed

On Necessary Endings, by Dr. Henry Cloud

I love green lights. The difference between arriving 5 minutes early or 5 minutes late hinges on traffic signals, and, when not even a brake tap gets in my way, there’s a sense of satisfaction for my perfectly-timed excursion. I must have done something right; I got all the greens!

Yellow lights, though, send me into quick, calculated arguments. Does this really mean I’ll have to stop? Can I accelerate? Can I just cross the white line before the light turns red?  Whenever I cruise through the yellow, I glance with pity at the car in the rearview mirror that failed to make it and has no choice but to stop. 

To keep driving like this could be disastrous, and it’s most definitely disastrous if it’s the way I progress through life itself.

But we are much more accustomed to noticing and interpreting road signs on our daily commute than we are to looking out for warning signs along our life's journey. I think it’s because if we heed the yellows to stop at the red, we experience a sense of failure, instead of commitment. Stopping is certainly failure to continue as before, but stopping is also commitment to follow the signals and recognize them as good. When the light changes, the real failure is to ignore it.

Dr. Cloud sheds light on how to follow the signs toward the end of a job, relationship, or any previous commitment and how to see endings as an essential step toward true and healthy progress in life.

“Make the concept of endings a normal occurance and a normal part of business and life, so you expect and look for them instead of seeing them as a problem.” 

-Dr. Henry Cloud, Necessary Endings

Tenacity and commitment - traits praised for their ability to keep going, stay, and persevere - are also traits that enable a stop, a departure, or a pivot.  Sometimes, you’ll need these traits even more for the red light than you needed them for the green.  

A resource for the restless

On Starting Something New, by Beth Booram

Uncertain. Analytical. Restless.

That’s not exactly how I imagined I would feel when a dream signaled its presence. 

The box I put dreams into was labeled: big picture thinking, dramatic visions for life, and clouds with silver linings. Spurred on by the wind in their sails, dreams always gave quick answers for a ten-year plan and the resources (real or imagined) to match. Dreams lived at a pace that was unstoppable and had sticky note stacks to prove that their ideas wouldn’t be topped. 

If that’s what dreams were, there were none in my box. Although I had interests, desires, skills, gifts, hobbies, frustrations, responsibilities, convictions, and burdens, those didn’t seem like ingredients for any specific dream recipe.  

Dreams, in my mind, were imposters, brushed off with a smirk and without a second thought. 

What a joke. 

Dreams were subject to quick dismissal, like a puppy wandering into my backyard. 

You’re cute, but you belong to someone else. 

Dreams also risked failure, and that didn’t sound necessary - or dreamy. 

I think I’ll pass.

I had it all wrong, and I almost missed out.

“I have a growing sense that many people live with creative, Spirit-inspired ideas stirring inside them, but have little to no clue (and sometimes courage) how to pay attention to and nurture those dreams.”

-Beth A. Booram, Starting Something New

It’s always difficult to summarize a book in which I’ve highlighted paragraph after paragraph, so I’ll confine my takeaways to the words of the title:

Starting: Beginnings are usually small. Small things are fragile and easily ignored or crushed, but if they’re nourished little by little, they may grow into an oak tree.

Something: It’s hard to explain. A dream begins more like a longing than a defined goal. 

New: One step brings you to the next, which leads to the next, and that’s how God takes you where you’ve never been before. “Way leads to way”.

If you’re restlessly trying to discern God’s prompting in your heart, try Starting Something New.

Two books for your road trip, roadblock, or rough road ahead

On The Red Sea Rules & The Jordan River Rules, by Robert J. Morgan

I was living in a high rise apartment in a Brazilian city of 1.5 million people when I took the plunge into The Red Sea Rules; I was settled in suburbia surrounded by corn fields in the state of Indiana when I dove into The Jordan River Rules.  A decade of time and a continent of space separated the two occasions, and, from the outside, the surroundings couldn’t have been more distinct from one another. But, on the inside, I was asking the same questions:

Did we take a wrong turn? Will we make it through?

Brazil was definitively foreign, presenting monumental hurdles I’d never faced before, but Indiana felt unexpectedly foreign, challenging lessons I thought I’d already passed.  Although I knew God had called us, that was my only anchor in the uncertainty of following Him in each place. 

Robert J. Morgan’s books are short and simply written, perhaps intentionally approachable for the one who feels overwhelmed by life’s twists and turns. Morgan follows the storyline and draws out principles from Israel’s most historic moment crossing the Red Sea and then from their lesser-known journey through the Jordan River. 

Both books highlight ten “rules” about walking by faith, and #6 in each list was clarifying for me. One translates faith into small movements forward, and the other points to the expectation that each step forward carries with it:

Red Sea Rule #6: When unsure, just take the next logical step by faith.

Jordan River Rule # 6: Prepare today for tomorrow’s wonders.

Physical moves happen to play a major role in my particular walk of faith, but tests of faith are never really about the apparent obstacle; they’re about the faith beneath the surface. Whether your faith is being challenged by a catastrophic impasse (Red Sea), or you’re surprised by the challenge of a secondary barrier in a new phase of life (Jordan River), Morgan’s "rules" can bridge the gap by building your faith.