I know that the experiences of our lives, when we let God use them, become the mysterious and perfect preparation for the work he will give us to do.
Corrie ten Boom
I stood in church behind her. I watched her worship, and I knew.
I had known Ally for a long time, but I didn’t really know her. I knew she was in her late twenties and was the first American born to a refugee family. I knew she was amazing with kids, and my own children fell in love with her during summer camp. I knew she could cook delicious Thai and Laos food and that she always had a smile on her face. But standing behind her, listening to her sing and worship God, I knew she was supposed to work at Mercy House.
At the time I didn’t know what her skills were, but it didn’t matter because we needed employees who loved Jesus more than we needed anything else. It didn’t take long for me to fall in love with Ally. She was not just good at her job, she was great at it because she understood that it wasn’t merely work—it was ministry. She started out as our intern and in January of 2017 took a full-time position as the manager of our retail stores.
One day I commented on the fair-trade necklace she wore almost every day. It was a gold bar stamped with the words “For such a time as this.” We talked about Esther and God’s timing and plan. She told me she wanted to learn as much as she could because she was supposed to return to Thailand to work with impoverished and oppressed women. If I could have loved Ally more, I would have that day. I asked her to order more of the necklaces for us to sell in our store, and I wear mine almost as frequently as Ally does.
Ally started at Mercy House two weeks after that pivotal trip to New York City with Madison I mentioned earlier. One of the highlights of that trip was finally meeting Melody Murray, founder of JOYN. Mel and I had been friends for quite a while thanks to email, phone, and the power of the internet, but this was our first opportunity to encourage each other face-to-face.
When we started our monthly subscription club, Fair Trade Friday, in 2014, JOYN products quickly became a club favorite. Every gorgeous bag has quite the story, and each bag provides a total of eleven jobs—from the weaver who creates the fabric to the man who carves the stamp to the block printer who stamps the fabric to seamstress and leather maker and others—eleven jobs! Their website says, “JOYN is a socially-conscious fashion brand producing women’s handbags that are 100 percent handmade. JOYN bags aren’t mass-produced. People make them. Real people with names and faces and stories and passions. Each bag is unique. No factories, no automation, because the more hands that it takes to make the products, the more jobs we are able to create.” Not only is JOYN’s mission stunning, so are their bags.
In late 2015 when the Murray family had to suddenly and traumatically leave their home in the Himalayas due to the political climate, they were devastated. They had given more than five years of their lives to the cause of empowerment, but due to reasons out of their control they lost access to their home and businesses and to their friends and community, who had become family.
It’s easy to lose sight of what God is doing behind the scenes when we can’t see it or understand it. It’s even harder when our children are impacted. Mel and I talked about this from every angle—as entrepreneurs, nonprofit leaders, and mothers. Mel and her husband, Dave, have two amazing little boys, and it was easy to identify with their heartbreak. Our family is living a life we didn’t plan either, and I found great comfort and encouragement in her words when I asked about their deportation. Over the phone she shared her mother’s heart with me: “My children’s view of home, safety, and community changed that day. I want what most parents want for their kids. I want my boys to grow up happy and to feel cared for, safe, and peaceful. I want them to have a healthy childhood and nurturing memories. These are our instincts. But in this loss of home and our normal, I realized that I can’t protect them from everything. I can try to shield them, but the world will throw tough stuff at my kids. To be honest, they handled this situation better than my husband and I did. They see evil more clearly than we do. They trust God easier.
“We do everything in our power to protect our kids from the pain of this world. It’s part of our job, right? But no matter how hard we try, there is pain in life. It’s tempting to avoid risks, adventure, uncertainty, and even obedience because we want to live in safety and comfort. But we end up causing more problems for our kids when we rush to resolve their conflicts and protect them from life. When we do this we raise kids who run to us for the answers instead of God.”
I think of John Piper’s description of the providence of God in A Sweet and Bitter Providence:
Life is not a straight line leading from one blessing to the next and then finally to heaven. Life is a winding and troubled road. Switchback after switchback. And the point of biblical stories like Joseph and Job and Esther and Ruth is to help us feel in our bones (not just know in our heads) that God is for us in all these strange turns. God is not just showing up after the trouble and cleaning it up. He is plotting the course and managing the troubles with far-reaching purposes for our good and for the glory of Jesus Christ.1
Months later as we drank coffee at our first face-to-face meeting in the New York City Starbucks, Mel told me what she thought might be next for her family. “We are moving overseas to Southeast Asia to expand God’s work of empowerment to the Golden Triangle where Thailand, Burma, and Laos join. We are making plans now and are looking for a translator.”
I immediately thought of Ally. I told Mel all about her, and she agreed that they should meet. As I was talking I touched my necklace with its prophetic message, and I knew in my heart that Ally would be going with her. I already felt the loss, smiled at Ally’s gain, and remembered how God is always working even when we can’t see it or understand his plan. I felt as though I were sending off one of my kids, and I would be sad to see her leave. But I know God’s plan is good, and he prepares us for such a time as this. It’s the same dream I have for my own kids—to follow God wherever he leads. By the time you hold this book in your hands, it’s entirely possible Ally and Mel’s family will be living and working together in Southeast Asia.
I came home from that trip and began reading the book of Esther again. I have always loved the story of Queen Esther. Esther was forced to participate in a “beauty pageant” at the whim of a king named Xerxes in the city of Susa. The Old Testament book of Nehemiah takes place during a time of exile and captivity for the Jewish people also in the city of Susa. Perhaps their lives overlapped. Some scholars even believe it was Queen Esther who influenced the king to allow Nehemiah to rebuild the city wall.2
I’m inspired by these words from Raechel Myers on her blog She Reads Truth: “We serve a God who designs our deliverance before man can begin to devise our destruction.”3 In Esther 4 the queen learns of a plot to destroy the Jews. She is asked to approach the king and we read: “If you remain silent at this time, relief and deliverance for the Jews will arise from another place, but you and your father’s family will perish. And who knows but that you have come to your royal position for such a time as this?” (v. 14 NIV). I find comfort when I remember that before an evil plot was set into motion to destroy Esther, God had already devised a way to rescue her.
We are where we are for a reason. We are called to give up our lives for the gospel. If we don’t lose our lives for Christ, we will lose our souls to this world. It’s not about how much we give away; it’s about what we are giving our lives for. “Then [Jesus] called the crowd to him along with his disciples and said: ‘Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me’” (Mark 8:34 NIV).
Sometimes God puts us in a place we don’t want to be because it’s the right place for him to reveal his glory. He uses our discomfort to forge something deep within us. I love how Ann Voskamp calls us the Esther Generation. In a 2013 blog post she writes:
You’ve got to use the life you’ve been given to give others life. If your life isn’t about giving relief—you don’t get real life. What does it profit a man to gain the whole world but lose his own soul?
You have got to use your position inside the gate for those outside the gate—or you’re in the position of losing everything. There are a thousand ways to be the living dead.
If you have any food in your fridge, any clothes in your closet, any small roof, rented or owned, over your head, you are richer than 75% of the rest of the world. We are the Esthers living inside the palace.
If you can read these words right now, you have a gift 3 billion people right now don’t; if your stomach isn’t twisted in hunger pangs, you have a gift that 1 billion people right now don’t; if you know Christ, you have a gift that untold millions right now don’t. We are the ones living inside the gate. . . .
You are where you are for such a time as this—not to gain anything but to risk everything. You are where you are for such a time as this—not to make an impression but to make a difference.4
Do we really care about the lost and poor of the world? I have been with women who release their waste in a plastic bag without any dignity because they don’t have access to a bathroom or the five cents to pay to use a filthy public one. And then they look into my eyes and ask, “Do they know how we live?” Do people in North America know how the rest of the world lives? It’s the kind of gut-wrenching question that changes your life. I vow I will tell them, but I don’t know if they will care.
Are we so concerned with our own self-centered lives that we don’t care people are dying? Are we so obsessed with building a comfortable life that all we can offer the poor is our leftovers? Perhaps one of the biggest deceptions we believe is that what we have isn’t enough to meet the overwhelming needs in the world, so maybe we should do nothing.
I think that’s why I love Esther’s story so much. She gave what she had and God did the rest—the impossible. God says give me what you’ve got. Think about the boy with his small lunch of fish and loaves in John 6. God wants what we are holding in our hands. It’s small and, yes, it’s not enough, but it’s all God asks. He will take it and do something miraculous with it. The story is bigger than we are because the story isn’t about us; it’s about Jesus. It’s not about what we can do; it’s about what he can do. There’s nothing more satisfying than giving God what we have so he can draw others to himself.
When I think about Ally and Mel, Queen Esther, and even my family, I think of ruined lives. I have this favorite pair of jeans. I’ve been wearing these faded denims for an embarrassingly long time. They fit just right. They are comfortable. They are trustworthy. I know them.
I used to feel that way about my life. It was predictable, comfortable, easy. It was shallow in many ways, but I knew what I was getting. It was chocolate cake—sweet though empty. My life was a safe bet.
When I woke up from the American dream in a slum in Kenya in 2010, I found soul-fulfilling purpose—that also ruined my life. It’s not sad, but it is true: when we open our eyes to those around us and step outside our comfort zone—either by choice or by life’s unexpected circumstances—we will never fit back into our old lives the same way again. God didn’t call only my husband and me to see the world differently and walk in obedience; he also called our family. Our choices and decisions impact our home. It’s as brutal as it is beautiful. It’s a glorious gutting. Some days I’m homesick for what I didn’t know. I have grieved the loss of the ignorance from my former life and longed for its comfort in some weak moments. For many years now our work has been filled with trials and trauma from across the ocean to our own back door.
But I still thank God for slaying me because even in my life’s toughest moments there is always someone facing something harder. Perspective saves us every time. This awakening is filled with pain and purpose, but I want to live with eyes wide open. I am weary and worn, but I am anything but empty. The second we look up from our lives to see how other people live we drink from their cup of suffering, and nothing will ever taste the same again.
Thank God, because emptiness is a bitter cup.
I pulled at the frayed hem of those familiar jeans and realized they don’t quite fit anymore. That’s what happens when you grow. I don’t know if your life has been ruined by divorce or disease, by criticism or a calling, by death or disaster, by broken bones or broken dreams. But I do know that every moment of pain in this path to obedience is producing a peculiar and eternal glory. Though God ruins us for this life and we long for the next one, we will praise him.
God has a good plan for each of us—for such a time as this.
Generosity is really about teaching our kids to see people other than themselves. And as parents it begins with us. We have to open our eyes to the needs around us for our children to do the same. As Ann Voskamp says, “We only get one life here. It’s a crazy, beautiful, liberating thing to realize: We’re not here to help ourselves to more—we’re here to help others to real life. We’re here to live beyond our base fears because our lives are based in Christ.”5