I ask you to do one thing: do not tire of giving, but do not give your leftovers. Give until it hurts, until you feel the pain.
Mother Teresa
I never meant to be the elementary room mom for all three of my kids. It just sort of happened by default. When Madison was in kindergarten I was like most first-time school mothers, eager to help and be involved in my child’s education. We hit the kindergarten jackpot by accident with Mrs. Davis. She had been teaching five-year-olds for twenty years, and her classroom theme was, “You get what you get and you don’t throw a fit.” She was easy to love, and I loved being her room mom as much as Madison loved her first year of school. Two years later, when Jon-Avery started school and we landed in Mrs. Davis’s class again, I had the opportunity to put into practice all she’d taught me two years before.
We started Mercy House when Madison was in fourth grade, Jon-Avery was in second, and Emerson was just three years old. That yes to God started a ripple effect of one life change after another for our family, and we decided to move to a nearby town where we could live on less and grow roots for our nonprofit. By the time Emerson started school I was a work-from-home mom, and I didn’t really have time to be a room mom. But I hadn’t quite learned to conquer mom guilt, and when no one else volunteered I reluctantly agreed to fill in. I made sure everyone knew that this was my last year. And it was, until I got a phone call from Emerson’s first-grade teacher in the middle of the day. After she assured me Emerson was fine, she asked if I would please be the first-grade room mom. I didn’t tell her I had just started writing my memoir, Rhinestone Jesus, and the December 1 deadline loomed. So I was just as surprised as you might be that I hung up the phone as room mom once again. I suspected I might have a problem saying no.
But I like to think it was providential because this was the year God taught me two truths that have shaped every day since. First, obedience is better than sacrifice, and second, we are where we are for a reason. I’ll never forget the day Emerson came home from school just before Thanksgiving break and casually said during dinner, “Mom, we have a new girl, Avery, in our class, and she wears paper beads like our girls make in Kenya.”
My head snapped up from my plate of tacos. I immediately began interrogating my six-year-old. “Where did she get paper beads?” Paper-bead jewelry was just starting to get popular but not with first graders, so I knew this was odd.
“Ethiopia. She lived there,” she said between bites.
“Are you sure she lived in Ethiopia? Did you tell her you’re going back to Kenya for Thanksgiving break, and you have paper beads too?” I fired away at her.
Emerson looked at me from across the table as if I had totally lost it. And considering the average family dinner conversation, she was probably right. But it just seemed more than a coincidence. Over the next few days I questioned her after school, probing for more information. I learned that the new family had adopted two boys from Ethiopia before they moved, and they were currently living with extended family down the street from us.
We went on that trip to Kenya to work at the maternity homes and took our kids out of school a few extra days to explore Paris on our layover on the way home. On that trip I wrote the epilogue to Rhinestone Jesus and submitted it a week later. “There, I’m done!” I said to Terrell as I hit send. I had just written an entire book on obedience and saying yes to God, but the funny thing is God wasn’t done asking yet.
It wasn’t until the first-grade class Christmas party a week later that I saw the new curly-haired, redheaded mom quietly crocheting the teacher’s gift in the corner of the room. I remember thinking as she whipped up a coffee mug cozy as though it was no big deal, Well, that’s cool. And different.
It hit me that this must be the new mom with the two adopted Ethiopian boys. I made a beeline for her and probably scared her half to death with all my questions. I had just returned from Kenya, and I was hungry for someone who understood the challenge of living in one place and serving in another. Jessica was tentative with her answers, but I learned that their plans to live in Ethiopia as missionaries and serve impoverished women had been interrupted. I could see the pain in her eyes from her untold story. I was eager to get to know this new friend.
As we cleaned up the Christmas party I casually mentioned, “Hey, after the holidays, I’m going into Houston to help my friends who are teaching a class to refugees. We need someone who knows how to crochet. Want to come?”
Tears filled her eyes and she nodded her head yes.
Yes. It was a word I thought I was done saying. Because surely after you write a book about saying yes to God, he stops asking. Right? But when our Russian friends, refugees themselves, invited me to visit a class they had started to help refugee women relocated to Houston, I couldn’t say no. They knew of the work we were doing in Kenya to teach skills to teen moms, and they said there was a need right here. I remember thinking, How much need can there be here in Texas? But when my friend told me in her accented English that refugee women were reusing disposable diapers because they couldn’t afford new ones, I knew I had to go with them. These friends had been so instrumental in our lives, and to this day I want to be a part of what they are doing for the kingdom of God.
The location of the class was an hour drive from my front door, and on the way my Russian friend explained that more than fifty thousand refugees from all around the world have been relocated from refugee camps by the United Nations. When I walked into the crowded apartment clubhouse, basically a three-bedroom apartment, every sense was overwhelmed. I stepped into another culture. Some of the women were dressed in clothes from their home countries of Nepal, Bhutan, and Burma. The air smelled of spices and food I didn’t recognize, but that didn’t stop my stomach from rumbling. Noisy conversations in different languages were happening all over the room. It felt as though I had just entered another country, and my eyes filled with tears. It made me homesick for the women I worked with in Kenya who had turned my life upside down.
I observed and learned so much that day. Most of the women had come directly from a camp, and the United Nations tries to resettle them by country so they will have language, culture, and community in common. Though they were given $950 to start their lives in America, they struggled to make ends meet in a foreign country with a language they didn’t know. I met a woman who lived in a two-bedroom apartment with twelve other relatives, and I wondered how she and her family would ever pay the UN back for the plane tickets to the United States. I didn’t know how I was going to help them, but I knew I had fallen in love that day and that God was asking again.
At the time I was already stretched too thin. We didn’t have any full-time Mercy House employees, and Terrell was working forty to fifty hours a week at his corporate America job so I could continue to volunteer my time running Mercy House. The last thing I had time for was a weekly class an hour from home with another group of women.
Terrell said as much to me in bed that night when I told him about visiting the refugee apartment complex. “Kristen, you’re going to burn out. How can you add anything else to your plate?”
I turned toward him and said, “Honey, I can’t explain it. I can only ask you to trust me. I don’t know what God wants me to do, but he is asking me to go back to that apartment complex. I just turned in a manuscript about saying yes to God. I can’t say no because for me this is about obedience.”
Some of the refugee women knew how to knit. It seemed a good place to start. I bought a few looms, and my kids and I taught ourselves to knit with the help of a YouTube video.
Jessica and I got to know each other on our drives down to the refugee apartment. I needed someone who knew what to do with yarn, and she needed something to do with her hands. Over time Jessica shared her story of how she and her family had given up everything to move to Ethiopia to teach women skills to help them with empowerment and employment. Just six months after they moved to Africa with their three young kids, the founder of the organization they worked with was unexpectedly arrested and imprisoned. Their family had three hours to pack what they could and flee Ethiopia. They didn’t know it would be the last time they would see their home.
Every Friday we dropped our kids off at school, hit the road with a trunk full of yarn, and cried our way to the heart of Houston. We didn’t always know what we were doing, but we knew God had us in this place for a reason. There were many tears, fears, and dreams shared in our minivans. It was holy work; we didn’t know God was beginning the birthing process again.
I approached a friend from church whom I knew to be generous about this little refugee class, and I asked him to invest $5,000 so that we could buy product from the women, sell it on their behalf, and then buy more. Our friend sowed good seed into our idea, and we started selling what the women made everywhere we could.
I was eager to introduce my family to my new refugee friends. On a hot February day in Texas, that’s exactly what I did. We had only a handful of volunteers, but hundreds of needy refugees had already formed a line so everyone had a job, even our children.
From across the parking lot I watched Madison give directions to the littlest of the volunteers, who were in charge of the mound of toiletry and hygiene items we were passing out to refugees in the city. Some divided the donated supplies into more than one hundred paper sacks, while others sorted donations, led refugee families around the free garage sale, and collected their vouchers for needed items. Our kids worked for hours and never complained.
Earlier in the weekend I had felt guilty for roping my family into all this extra work. What started out as a simple yes ended up being a time-consuming, several-day event that eventually became its own nonprofit, The Refugee Project. Volunteers helped us organize and sort a truckload of donations spread out on our driveway. Madison and Jon-Avery were in the eighth and sixth grades at the time, and when they got off the school bus their friends asked if we were hoarders.
I think that might be called junior-high persecution.
As I watched my kids, who had worked hard in preparation for that day, jump in and serve refugees and navigate the language barrier, I realized they didn’t need an apology for not making the weekend fun and filled with more stuff just for them and all about them! They reminded me that a bit of hard work is healthy and good for us and that it is rewarding to serve other people.
As parents, I think we’ve missed something important in our culture. In an effort to make family a priority and give our kids what we didn’t have, we’ve become a child-focused culture. In many ways we’ve lost our purpose. The sense of entitlement our kids exhibit is fueled by a parenting model that is obsessed with giving our children what they want and with making our kids the center of our lives.
I looked at my exhausted, dirty children as they gobbled down sandwiches in the car on the way home after our full day of serving—grinning, silly and content with the busy day—and I didn’t feel bad at all. I realized I had given them something money couldn’t buy, something more valuable than the latest technology or hottest-brand offering. I had given them perspective and an opportunity to see their world a little differently.
During this season of running Mercy House and attending the Friday refugee class, I woke up Terrell one night because I hadn’t been able to sleep. “Honey, are you awake?” I asked as I tapped his arm.
“I am now,” he said groggily.
“Terrell, I can’t sleep. I think God wants us to provide jobs for women.” I just had to say the words out loud that had been hammering around in my heart for months.
“Kristen, aren’t we doing enough? How much more can we take on?” he asked honestly. I didn’t know the answer to that question, but I knew God was asking a completely different one.
Terrell was worried about me, and he had every right to be. I was pushing myself and was exhausted, and he was trying to protect me. We were still six months away from getting to the place where he could quit his job and move into the role of CEO of Mercy House. It was another scary yes that we were anticipating in the future. Terrell was making my work possible by being faithful in his, so I tried not to add to his burden.
On one fateful Friday I talked to Jessica about it because I knew she felt the pressure to provide work as I did. She understood the burden of having people in another country depend on you.
“Hey, I have an idea. We have an abundance of fair-trade product from the maternity homes in Kenya, and now we also have refugee-knitted and crocheted items. I keep thinking we should start some kind of recurring membership where we send people fair-trade product every month. Every month would be a surprise, but it would be fun and would provide jobs for these women we are trying to help.”
Jessica wasn’t the first person I shared this idea with, but she was the first person who said, “Yes! Let’s do it. And let’s call it Fair Trade Friday since we help women on Fridays.” She and her husband, Keith, donated suitcases of beautiful fair-trade product they had escaped Ethiopia with to go into our first boxes. They created Excel spreadsheets and helped to procure and pack product. Our families joined forces to launch something new. That little nagging idea I couldn’t shake became Fair Trade Friday, a ministry of Mercy House. That first month we had eighty members; now we have more than three thousand. Fair Trade Friday is a monthly subscription club providing jobs for thousands of women in twenty-five countries and delivering cute fair-trade product to generous women in North America. It’s more than a club; it’s sweet redemption.
When I look back, there wasn’t one easy day during those long months. It was hard work, and it pulled and stretched our family in different directions. But it was just for a season, and we look back now and see that God was doing something good for his glory: he was bringing redemption. He redeemed broken dreams and answered prayers. He provided a way for us to provide much-needed jobs to desperate women around the world in Jesus’s name. He took us through hard places so that we could make his glory known.
During this challenging season my kids weren’t just watching us; they were active participants. Giving our lives away will cost us everything. When we raise world changers, we are asking them to pay that high price too. As a family we sacrificed our time, money, and resources, and in losing our lives we discovered them. We have followed Jesus into difficult places, and it is not always easy. On more than one occasion our kids have said, “But we’re doing this for Jesus. Why is it so hard?” as if that’s the ticket to an easier path. It’s a lie our culture of comfort tries to sell us. This path won’t always be easy, but it won’t be empty either. Jesus reminds us in Mark 8 that we aren’t alone when we follow him:
Calling the crowd to join his disciples, he said, “Anyone who intends to come with me has to let me lead. You’re not in the driver’s seat; I am. Don’t run from suffering; embrace it. Follow me and I’ll show you how. Self-help is no help at all. Self-sacrifice is the way, my way, to saving yourself, your true self. What good would it do to get everything you want and lose you, the real you? What could you ever trade your soul for?” (vv. 34–37)
More than once we read the story of Joseph to our kids, and our anthem became we are where we are for a reason. Sometimes God puts us in a place we don’t want to be in because it’s the right place for us to show his glory. He uses our discomfort to forge something deep within us. God uses our pain to forge a path—a bridge—for others to find him.
Genesis 45 reveals that Joseph, a man of passion and integrity who walked in justice, was a slave for a purpose: “It was to save lives that God sent me ahead of you” (v. 5 NIV). I think Joseph would have loved John Piper’s advice: “Occasionally weep deeply over the life you hoped would be. Grieve the losses. Then wash your face. Trust God. And embrace the life you have.”1
We are talking about God’s sovereignty here. He might imposition us to position us. He puts us in places that are hard, uncomfortable, and heartbreaking for a reason. God doesn’t always prevent suffering; he often allows it in his sovereign plan. We may not always see his plan, but we can trust that he is only and always good. And we can believe that he is able to redeem anything—even the worst suffering. He allowed his Son to be murdered because he saw the complete picture. He knew it would bring ultimate redemption. We can trust that God is with us in the difficult places. When we face roadblocks, dead ends, heartbreak, or suffering, we can trust this: it’s either for our sake or for someone else’s. We may never understand why God allows what he does, but we can know it’s for his glory.
As parents we might be in a place we wish we weren’t—a job we despise, a home we hate, a season that is hard. Or even worse—and more out of our control—our kids might be in a place we don’t like or understand. It’s okay even if it doesn’t feel okay because this is what’s generally called life, and God is still in charge even when we don’t like where we are. I was in one of these seasons in 2016 when I listened to the live streaming of David Platt speaking at the IF Gathering on making disciples. It was passionately delivered and deeply moving. It stopped me dead in my tracks because it reminded me of my purpose as a parent, as a Christ follower. Everything comes down to the one job God left us to accomplish on this earth—to make disciples: “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age” (Matt. 28:19–20 ESV).
This is our purpose: to love God, love others, and make disciples. This might just be the reason we are in a place we don’t like. This might be the reason we live on a particular street, our kids are in a certain school, our lives are intertwined with difficult people and daily challenges. It isn’t about us; it’s about trusting that God has us in this place, in this situation to make disciples. It’s the ultimate act of generosity: to look up and around us and see that the purpose behind our pain is his great plan. While listening to David’s sermon on John 17 that day in 2016, I wrote down the following notes:
When we do these three things, they make us want to share what we have. Doing so will change our family in incredible ways. Generosity is a tangible way for us to help our kids see someone other than themselves.