what ships are made for
“A ship is safe in harbor, but that's not what ships are for.”-- William Shedd
I came across this quote in something I read last night, and I find myself relating to it very well. I have never been someone who fit in well with the “crowd”. When I was younger, while my sisters played house with the girls down the street, you could find me with the boys building jump ramps at the empty lot on the corner. In high school, while other girls were out shopping at the mall, I was out rollerblading or mountain biking with my friends Damien and Bryan, jumping off of curbs and cliffs and stairs. While my friends from church were hosting slumber parties, I was camping out in a backyard or in the woods or on the bank of a river. I never have been much for conventional things … I actually start to feel uncomfortable when things are too comfortable.
Spending too much time in the tidy, quiet suburbs makes me itch and want to break out into a sprint toward one of two extremes: desolate, country, dirt roads or dirty, crowded, concrete sidewalks. I feel out of my element if I feel too safe, and I feel gluttonous when I spend too much time focused on myself or indulging in “creature comforts”. I don’t feel like the easy, safe, comfortable, quiet, self-centered life is something for which I am cut out.
After a recent conversation with someone about church, I was reflecting on a time in my life that probably represented the opposite of anything easy, safe, comfortable, quiet, or self-centered. It was when I was still up in Rochester – I used to help a bunch at a soup kitchen in the city, and I was also pretty involved with an outreach to homeless people. Looking back on it now, I don't know how I did so much with so little time. I used to basically get out of my work (at the publishing company) and walk the two miles home, then drive over to the soup kitchen. I did that almost every night for quite a while – if the doors were open, I was there. I prepared meals, I went out and did street evangelism, I drove people home, and I led worship or sometimes sang for the “coffee house” that they held on Friday nights. I lived on that stuff … I thrived on the energy of other people.
Although that time was probably a time in my life that I left most alive, I also remember it being a time when I felt most alone. Though I knew quite a few people who came to the soup kitchen occasionally to help, they always seemed to arrive late and leave early, and their presence was inconsistent and unreliable. As I began to build relationships with the people coming to the center, I made a commitment to myself, and a silent commitment to them, to do all that I could to be sure that there was no possible way they could avoid hearing the Gospel, or experiencing God’s love. My heart grew incredibly during that time, but it also broke often. There were lots of times when I had a trunk full of grocery bags filled with food to take to some of the homeless people, but there was no one around or willing to go with me. I used to plead with God to send along at least one person (preferably a male) who shared my passion and desire to do all that I could to be His hands and feet … but week after week, I found myself alone.
It got to the point where I would get angry, and - even though it was probably pretty foolish to do this – I would go alone. I usually had to try to work around the warnings and looks of concern from the leaders of the soup kitchen (who always seemed to have other things to do once the doors were closed) – I probably lied sometimes and told them I was meeting someone else, or maybe I just snuck out before they had a chance to ask … but I could not ignore the stirring inside about going and being there when people expected me to be. Sometimes I would not take groceries at all, but would instead go buy a couple pizzas and drive to the old subway tunnels (where a bunch of guys I knew lived). I was always careful to just holler in for them to come to me, instead of going into the dark tunnels alone. For a few months, this is what I did every Friday night. The toothless, alcohol-scented men used to tease me that I was the luckiest girl in town, to have a date every week with five or six such handsome guys as them. As I continued to build friendships with the guys, I felt safe, and they actually said they would "take care of me" whenever any new guys came around and weren't all that respectful.
Right around that same time, I was helping at a church plant that met in a low-income apartment complex. I helped lead worship, make coffee (not brew coffee, but pour coffee and add the right amount of tea and sugar – I still remember that David liked two sugars and one cream, and Willie liked two creams and one sugar), and do whatever else needed to be done … and I still feel that THAT church was the best picture I have seen so far of what heaven will be like. People who were confined to wheelchairs smiled and clapped their hands and overflowed with the joy of Christ. Some weeks, I was convinced I could see huge, beaming smiles on faces that were paralyzed by disease and illness. People who smelled terrible and looked like they hadn't bathed in weeks suddenly became beautiful as the love of God radiated from their ruddy cheeks.
One man whose face is permanently written on my heart is Willie, whose body was confined to a wheelchair, but whose heart freely chased after, tackled, and captured mine, week after week. From the front of the community room, as I sang “The Battle Belongs to the Lord” or “Victory is Mine”, my eyes would well up again and again as I saw Willie clapping and laughing and singing with his eyes. He was unable to speak, and I never did quite determine what it was that led to him being bound in a wheelchair (though I think it had something to do with a major accident), but his life screamed out words of love and joy and victory. Every week, he would motion for me to come over to his chair, and he would open his Bible and show me very specific verses or pictures. There seemed to be a specific order to his story too, as he would show me one verse and then grunt “and then” (one of the few phrases I could understand) and then motion to another verse. Willie taught me how to listen without actually hearing, and how to recognize Christ in a person who was of a different skin color, age, and ability than any handsomely painted Jesus I had ever seen.
Thinking back, I realize that that part of my life was one of the times when I felt I was closest to seeing what worshipping, serving, and growing (what I think church is SUPPOSED to be about) look like.
Though I continued to be involved at the church, eventually I pulled away from the homeless outreach to lead a neighborhood outreach in which we designated two blocks in a pretty rough part of the city, and intentionally positioned ourselves in the houses and lives of those people every Saturday morning. We termed this outreach “Adopt a Block”, and it was actually modeled after a larger ministry that I had seen while on a missions trip in Los Angeles, California. The idea behind the outreach was incredibly simple, yet wildly profound: knock on someone’s door and talk to them about any needs they have, then do the best that you can to meet that need and love them while doing it. For the first six or seven months, our “group” consisted of three people. In time it grew, as various young men decided to pursue the only young woman of the group, but then quickly lost heart and stamina when they realized that she was not there for them, but for the people of the neighborhood. The same type of thing happened with a couple different women, who came only to request to be on so-and-so’s team, and seemed inconvenienced by the thought that they should be carrying bags of groceries and talking to residents, instead of carrying on conversations with the object of their crush. My prayers during this time were lengthy and full of lots of me asking “why, God?”
I found myself pushing through the week with my focus on Saturday morning, and how excited I was to sit down and talk to Nilka, Abraham, Joseph and all of the other friends I grew to know and love. I was able to experience the privilege and honor of praying with people who claimed that they didn’t believe in God. I sat in houses that I had heard were drug houses and opened my Bible and shared stories and tears with large Hispanic men with layers of gold chains and sleeves of tattoos, and I felt God there with us. It almost hurts to think back on those times now, because I feel so far removed from any of that. My life almost seems too safe again, and I wonder why that is.
One reason for all of this reflection is because tonight I am starting out on something new. I won’t be knocking on any front doors or shouting into any subway tunnels, but I will be sitting down at a piano in front of a group of elderly people. I will open up a hymnal and sing songs and hopefully meet some needs or touch on some desires. I will pray and touch frail hands and probably cry a little bit. The hope is that I will somehow carry God to that rest home tonight. I was asked out to dinner tonight, and that would be the safe thing, and maybe the enjoyable thing … but in my heart, I know it’s not what I’m made for. As long as there are people somewhere hurting, I know where I need to be. God has put too much inside of me for me to ignore that and turn that off as I sit on the couch, watch a movie, and stuff myself with popcorn. My heart is screaming way too loud for me to somehow tune it out as I sit down to eat an overpriced dinner in a stuffy restaurant and engage in a conversation involving things about which I really do not care. Life is big and scary and dangerous and tiring and loud, and love is messy and painful and inconvenient … but it’s what I have been made for, and it’s what I’m chasing after.
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