The Great Life

3 months in, 9 days til Christmas, and a little less than 2 weeks til I get to come home for a bit and be with my family over New Years.  Anyone who has kept up with me much the past few weeks knows its been an intense and overwhelming time—both here within the program and community, and personally within my own life.  Last time I blogged I was already sitting in the tension that I was living in a world outside my comfort & support and felt I needed a strength & reliance beyond my own to get by.  And then this last month hit and everything got a lot harder.  Snow fell, temperatures dropped below zero, residents and mentors left in the midst of distrust, dissension, angry outbursts, and, dare I say, spiritual oppression.  And in the midst of it all, I found added burdens and heaviness to my own heart as my own support system seemed to get smaller….

So what can I proclaim?  God’s faithfulness. His love.  A peace.  His never-ending strength, when my own fails.  He will guide me through.  I know this to be true; I don’t necessarily feel it, but I know it.  So I’ll proclaim it.  In the words of Psalm 40: “As you know O Lord, I will not seal my lips. I do not hide your righteousness in my heart.  I speak of your faithfulness and your salvation.  I will not conceal your love and your truth from the masses.”

“But as for me, I will always have hope; and I will praise you more and more”—Psalm 71:14

So its with all that in mind that I recently read this devotion based off John 14:27: “Peace I leave with you, My peace I give unto you….let not your heart be troubled.”   Its called The Great Life:

Whenever a thing becomes difficult in personal experience, we are in danger of blaming God, but it is we who are in the wrong, not God, there is something somewhere that we will not let go. Immediately we do, everything becomes as clear as daylight.  As long as we try to serve two ends, ourselves and God, there is perplexity.  The attitude must be one of complete reliance on God.  When once we get there, there is nothing easier than living the saintly life; difficulty comes in when we want to usurp the authority of the Holy Spirit for our own ends.

Whenever you obey God, His seal is always that of peace, the witness of an unfathomable peace, which is not natural, but the peace of Jesus.  Whenever peace does not come, tarry till it does or find out the reason why it does not.  If you are acting on an impulse, or from a sense of the heroic, the peace of Jesus will not witness; there is no simplicity or confidence in God, because the spirit of simplicity is born of the Holy Ghost, not of your decisions.  Every decision brings a reaction of simplicity.

My questions come whenever I cease to obey.  When I have obeyed God, the problems never come between me and God, they come as probes to keep the mind going on with amazement at the revelation of God.  Any problem that comes between God and myself springs out of disobedience; any problem, and there are many, that comes alongside me while I obey God, increases my ecstatic delight, because I know that my Father knows, and I am going to watch and see how He unravels this thing.  

Actively Waiting

Wow, has it really been 2 months today since I arrived here at His Mansion?  In many ways the time has flown and yet many days have felt like an eternity.  His Mansion is quite the intense community to jump into but the last couple of weeks I feel like I have been able to really settle in and find some of my place out here.  I can honestly say that I really enjoy the flow of life here and the richness and closeness this community brings.  I love the steady rhythm of worship, work, fellowship, and processing/class time and am discovering when and how to make time for myself.  I’ve had a blast at the many times of laughter and competiveness we’ve had at various Brother’s or Family Nights (times where we gather on the hill to participate in sports, games, or some other fun activity, occasionally refereed to as “forced family fun”, but honestly often a lot more fun than not.)  This is a community that is deeply vulnerable with one anther and confronts pain and burden head-on, but also really knows how to celebrate and laugh with one another.  I experienced a lot more of that light-hearted side at our Harvest Party the night before Halloween.  Everyone on the hill came together for costumes, a pie-baking competition (which my team won!) and square dancing.  His Mansion knows how to party and as difficult as it is going to be for me to be away from my own family and friends during Thanksgiving and Christmas I am looking forward to celebrating alongside the His Mansion family.  I’ve heard that we are known for going all out during the holidays!

            I’ve had the opportunity to lead several devotional times with the men and share a little bit during our times of worship and Im looking forward to more times to be intentionally involved in those ways.  On the building and maintenance crew they recently gave me the primary responsibility of stoking the hill.  All of the buildings on the hill are heated by wood stoves during the winter and its my job during the workday to go on stoking shifts and make sure every boiler has enough wood and is cleaned/maintained every 2 hours.  I often get to take along another person with me when I do one of these runs to the 8 boilers around the hill and its normally provides for some good one-on-one time.  I also enjoy getting to walk around the hill with a clipboard and pen behind my ear—it gives me a feeling of responsibility.  Although I’ve heard the story a few times of how the original mansion was burned down when one of the first stokers let a boiler get to hot!

 Life here, whether at work, in class times, around the dining table, or just in general down time provides ample time to get to know others and build relationships in community.   We do a lot altogether, though, and sometimes it can be difficult to get to know people individually.  I have found I am really grateful when I find opportunities though, and am amazed at people’s honesty, and openness here.  Doubt, struggle, faith, pain, hope, and hopelessness are all regular conversation topics here and within the 30 or so of us in the men’s dorm there is quite the plethora of different life experiences and perspectives (guys range from 18 to about 37, come from many different states, and possess some pretty intense life stories they have lived.)  I really enjoy finding time to connect with the other mentors.  Most of them are recent graduates from the program and have some pretty powerful testimonies and passion for the gospel!

I have found the Lord really moving in my own heart over the last couple of weeks as well.  God is relentlessly faithful and I am realizing more and more that anxiety, stress, or even our heaviest burdens and sins need not separate us from trusting Him and seeking to worship and live life fully.  He has been teaching me a lot about laying down our right to ourselves and expecting Him to move and work His will in our lives.  It’s a pretty mundane lesson.  Looks a lot like long days of work stoking the boilers, sitting through another exhausting 3-hour group process time, singing the same song for 19^th time this month, or having the same old vegetables and grains in casserole after casserole.   It looks like coming alongside struggling individuals who are intently examining their lives and often proclaiming:  “Its hopeless. Im not changing; I cant change,” and watching many of them persevere and find the strength to rise the next day while watching others decide they’ve had enough and its time for them to go.  It looks like heartbreak.  It looks like vulnerability. It looks like waiting.  But in that, as our hearts earnestly seek the Lord, we come to the end of ourselves and face the reality of being consumed by our worries, emotions, or shortcomings or pressing on, striving forward for the prize, and believing that the Lord is in control and delicately guiding us the whole way through.  I have found that I am clutching all the more tightly to Jesus’s promise in Matthew 6:33:  “But seek first His Kingdom and His righteousness and all these things will be added unto you.” In the end, I think it looks like the gospel. 

I read this recently in a book Im reading on Discipleship:  “Most gospel ministry involves ordinary people doing ordinary things with gospel intentionality.”  Often it takes a lot of humility to admit were just an ordinary vessel in the hand of our Lord.  The temptation for me is to wonder why Im here.  How am I relevant?  I haven’t made it through the program.  I didn’t come in with an addiction.  Why did I choose to serve at a simple farming, redemptive community?  Surely my talents and passions could be better used elsewhere?  What use is holding a degree in Engineering only to do work anyone could reasonably do if needed? I thought God was calling me to big things?  Many times, even though I enjoy the community, I have found I don’t want to be here.  There are so many other things that I have experienced that have captured my heart; so many things that I can identify with the goodness and joy of the Lord, that I know could bring Him glory.  Shouldn’t He want me to pursue those things which I have glimpsed His passion and calling in before?  What about a vocation in the Engineering profession?  What about international ministry in developing countries?  What about growing and deepening relationships with my family and friends who I deeply care about and have already seen the abundance of the fruit of the Lord through?  What about recently pursuing a relationship with a great friend of mine? Why wait?  On the other hand, in blogging and sharing my story with others, it’s easy for me to get lost in the false humility of having made the “sacrificial” decisions and focusing on the hard things Im doing for the Lord.  Both responses feed my pride and although may adhere to the wisdom of the world, stand in direct opposition to being an ordinary vessel with whom God may bring about His gospel intentionality.

Maybe none of that is the point.  Maybe those questions don’t need answers.  Maybe the “foolishness” of God really does put the wisdom of the world to shame as 1 Corinthians 2 talks about.  

Recently, I found this snippet on what it means to wait on the Lord from Quiet Talks on Prayer by S.D. Gordon.  It met me where i was at and I thought was an incredible description of waiting:

"Steadfastness, that is holding on;
Patience, that is holding back;

Expectancy, that is holding the face up;

Obedience, that is holding one's self in readiness to go or do;  
Listening, that is holding quiet and still so as to hear."

When I think on those things, with the perspective of my faith/life journey and under the lens of living in this community I see God’s faithfulness come alive through those phrases.  It is what those struggling through redemption and community here at His Mansion must wrestle through each day: waiting, expecting, obeying, listening, proving steadfastness and patience.  Its how I can look back and see in my own life how He was guiding and directing the whole way through.  Its simple.  Its dry and mundane in the moment.  But that does not mean it is not incredibly powerful and carry with it the very weight of God’s glory and a joy and radiance beyond all compare.  “For where your heart is there your treasure will be also.”  So I will continue to meditate on those phrases and wait on the Lord.  

And I Had the Audacity to Doubt?

          So I just posted last night, but I was spending some time praying earlier today and God laid something powerful on my heart that I started journaling about and thought was just too good not to share.  J  This last week I have had a step away from the typical routine of life out here as I have been attending a conference put on by His Mansion called Healing in the Context of Community (HHC).  There were roughly about 30 of us in classes, small groups, worship & other activities, amidst testimonial life sharing.  The premise of the week was to learn all about the program and history of His Mansion and the process of healing that residents go through out here in this intense community.  I was taking the class along with 5 other mentors who had recently started out here. The rest of the attendees were made up of pastors, other ministry/non-profit leaders, college grads, or just other people who wanted to learn about or experience healing in the context of community.  HCC had just ended and people were headed home after a full and very long week.  I had felt anxious and burdened for awhile and decided to spend awhile that afternoon just in prayer and scripture when God suddenly revealed Himself in a different way to me and I began to journal intently:

           Well, I’ve been sitting here on my bed praying and seeking the Lord when a random thought jumped in my head and I knew I had to start journaling about.  I was laughing to myself about the legit certificate they had made for me for completing HCC.  I was thinking on the simplicity, though, of how it did feel good to be recognized and to participate in a ceremony, even if menial, and then started thinking on how I took my own college graduation and Engineering ceremony for granted in the midst of everything else I was jumping into:  Summer Serve coming up, internship in Swaziland, committing to a year at His Mansion, and pursuing a relationship with one of my best friends. I realized that a huge part of me took it for granted because I never once doubted that I would walk across that stage and receive my college dipolma.  And then the thought suddenly struck, literally struck me, that not a one of the residents here takes it for granted, even in the slightest, that they might make it through a year and walk across the stage to receive a similar (on the surface) certificate that I am holding right now. 

I imagine the joy and incredible feelings of perseverance, accomplishment, and authenticity that such a year of struggling, doubting, and fighting through a web of vulnerability, shame, and accountability in the midst of traumatic and life-entangling addictions must bring.  What does it mean to know grace?  What does it mean to know victory?  To encounter a 2^nd chance at life?  Or come face to face with redemption? To understand the passion and power of the Gospel and hope in the Heavenly Kingdom?  Getting to share my own Genogram (testimony/life story) during HHC revealed me to me that I know in part, but nothing, nothing, like the residents here.  As I engage more and more with the men around me, as I hear details of chaos and horrendous trauma in their lives, as I begin to glimpse some of the transformation in their hearts and in their souls I can say, assuredly, that they are coming to intimately and powerfully know these things.  

I saw and I heard it in the passion and eagerness of the 10 graduates who walked across the stage last month right after I arrived.  What an amazing, vivid, image of what I can only describe as witnessing “those with unveiled faces beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Father, and professing the transformation into His likeness from one glory into another (paraphrase 2 Corinthians 3:18).  Its an eagerness and indignation they possess that I can only further describe with later verses in 2 Corinthians:  “Yet now I am happy not because you were made sorry, but because your sorrow led you to repentance.  For you became sorrowful as God intended and so were not harmed in any way by us.  Godly sorrow brings repentance that leads to salvation and leaves no regret, but worldly sorrow brings death.  See what this godly sorrow has produced in you, what earnestness, what eagerness to clear yourselves, what indignation, what alarm, what longing, what concern, what readiness to see justice done.” (7:9-12 NIV)

What an incredible memory for this community and I to hold onto as we welcome burdened new residents officially into the program after completing their month of induction.   There was so much joy in our prayer and share ceremony today and I feel like the Lord has suddenly lifted a veil from my eyes.  This whole week I felt like I was missing something; like I was blind and unable to see what all my fellow HCCers seemed to be witnessing in their amazement at this community and throughout classes.  Had I grown so complacent and burnt-out already to view life so mundanely?  It took a group of misfit pastors, visionaries, former addicts, and ordinary dysfunctional family members stepping into this community through HHC, along with a moment of God’s sudden grace for my calloused and stony heart to be suddenly broken and allow me to see the radicalness and beauty of this place.  The Lord is claiming and redeeming lost lives!  He is rescuing His lost sheep.  Let us respond like that shepherd, or young woman who had lost her coin, and in eagerness and excitement gather our friends and family and profess boldly: “Rejoice with me!  For what was once lost has now been found!”

If you would like to read the testimonies from one of those recent graduates of the program you can hear:   http://hismansion.com/newsletter-october-2013/ 

Life in a Christian Habilitating Community

5 weeks in and I am doing well and enjoying life over here.  :)  New Hampshire is beautiful and it is awesome to take in some of the scene of this side of the country.  The barn and a couple of the homes and buildings here on His Mansion property were built in the 1760's and its crazy to think they were around before our country ever officially was!  On one of my weekends off I got to go camping with a few of the other mentors and had a blast.  We hiked along some of the mountains and up a creek to the highest waterfall in NH. It was peak season of the year for all the trees changing color (NH is 80% forested) and a beautiful warm sunny weekend. 

I like it here (most of the time!), but its definitely a radically different community and I come to more of the awareness each and every day that people and life can be incredibly broken and painful.  Some of the residents and staff here have some of the most traumatic and overwhelming stories you can imagine.  On the surface many of the guys here look incredibly street tough.  But underneath their surface you will find some of the most genuine, compassionate, soft-hearted followers of Jesus who have been radically redeemed by the Gospel.  His Mansion is a non-profit ministry originally founded upon the George Mueller principle of trusting the Lord and praying for Him to meet every need.  Everyone serving and living on the Hill still raise their own support and as such the program is provided virtually free of charge to the residents (In contrast to many other programs and rehabs which can cost thousands of dollars a month!). 

His Mansion is a tough place and lives are undoubtedly being redeemed here, but don’t refer to this place as a rehab….(Re)habilitation assumes that life was once well and desirable, but as one of the directors here points out, many of the people joining this community life have never experienced a life they want to return to; they come here for a chance at new life.  HM is a place of starting over; a place of transformational living.  A place where the Gospel comes alive and the lost and broken encounter the presence of Jesus and their vast need for Him.  Indeed we are all lost and broken outside of Christ and on this side of Heaven.   Those in positions and roles of leadership here simply act as guides pointing people along to our Wonderful Counselor, Mighty Redeemer, Lord, and Savior, Jesus Christ.  We are the broken guiding the broken; disciples making disciples.  Sinners and saints, one in the same, joining hands to pursue the Kingdom of God here on earth and stumble along on this journey of redemption…welcome to life on the hill.      

The structure and rhythm of life at His Mansion has been intentionally set up to strip away all facades and make people real with each other.  Residents come here in humility, knowing they need a challenging community and a lot of support to turn their lives around and find change, but most of them have no idea what they are getting into at first.  Transparency is a must and the counselors quickly help people notice and become aware that the addictions that they brought in to fix are simply surface issues hiding a vast amount of pain and personality/character disorders that abuse, trauma, neglect, and their own choices have built over time.  The Gospel, worship, and service permeates this place as it is believed that true redemption & healing are found in Jesus (holistically, alongside professional counseling, group therapy/processing, a rigid cycle of physical work and classes, and a tight community which will not hesitate to confront and call out, but always offers grace and love). 

At times this place feels very invasive; you quickly learn-if you’re choosing into life out here-that you cant hide behind anything or any part of yourself.  But it’s also a place where I, and everyone else I’ve encountered, have experienced a tremendous amount of comfort and peace and quickly began to feel at home.  To many of the residents, it’s the first time in their life they've truly experienced belonging and a place they feel they are wanted.  It's no wonder to me that everyone constantly refers to the His Mansion 'family' up on the hill and calls the male residents and mentors 'brothers' and the females 'sisters'.   

I live in the dorm with the men 24/7.  It’s pretty much just 2 wings with no separate bedrooms, just halls of bunks and closets.  The mentors have our own rooms at the end of the hall, but even they don’t have any doors (you just walk around the corner) so pretty much anything or any conversation can be heard by anyone else in the hall at any time.  Meals are an intense version of family style where a male and female staff head each end of the table and serve everyone else food and you must ask them for permission to leave for any reason (getting a napkin, seconds, bathroom, etc.).  They also open and close the meal with prayer and we scrape up and save all food scraps to feed to the pigs.  Speaking of food, we eat a lot of our own meat here and pretty much all our own veggies.  Their corn and peppers here are amazing!  And their homemade maple syrup!  haha, im starting to rely a bit too much on coffee.  The meat is honestly a lot better tasting, but I am very grateful I don’t have to be involved in the process at all! 

I work in the building and maintenance department alongside some of the other mentors and residents.   We do all sorts of odds and ends projects from constructing decks, to cleaning carpets, to simply moving equipment and appliances all over the hill.  The value of simple work and a disciplined lifestyle is emphasized here and work often serves as a great venue to build relationships and get to know the other residents and mentors well.   We do highs/lows, devos, and a time of confession with smaller groups of guys at the end of the day as well as breaking up our work schedule by spending an hour together in worship, prayer, and open sharing before lunch.

There are currently 11 mentors in the men’s program and we all live alongisde the residents together as companions in their day-to-day lifestyle. We lead activities, devos, and act kind of like RAs in enforcing/reporting anything.  There is plenty of time and space to interact with and get to know guys one-on-one though, and I have had many opportunities already.  The men and women are kept really separate in the program (which is probably a good thing with some of the trauma and severe addictions people are facing).  Its also just the beginning month with a new group of residents though, so everything is a lot stricter, and I’ve heard the genders are brought together more as the program goes on.  I get a little bit of downtime in the evenings after the residents go to bed at 9:30 and have a couple weeknights free, as well as every other weekend so I’m finding time for myself, to study, and to connect with people back home a bit.

At times it is incredibly difficult to be so far away from everyone I know and care about.  Im adjusting to life here and have a sense of belonging but sometimes I still feel really out of place.  Occasionally I feel pretty alone because no one in this community really knew me at all before I came here.  Its strange coming from the strong communities I had in Oregon, specifically at Fox and Twin Rocks where my identity was so established and I had such a strong support system around me.  But this is a year for service, ministry, and outreach for me so I am learning to lean on the Lord in everything (literally, He's been teaching me a lot about my own strength, and lack thereof, and that I need to trust in Him).   

If you think of me pray that I stay humble and rooted in the Lord and that He provides the grace and support I need to serve here and find my own strength and healing in Him also.   Were all broken people helping and guiding other broken people!  Something I was definitely aware of before I came here but has been made all the more apparent to me the longer I’ve been here.