The Price of Peace

In my first year working at TC, I really didn't know what I was getting myself into.  I remember one day in particular when a student was severely challenging me; my heart was racing and my breathing grew heavy as I tried to remain calm and move toward resolve.  I was so irritated that day and felt like maybe this wasn't the right place for me.  I thought, if these girls didn't even want help, why should I care?  Why try?  

I'll never forget where I was the moment I heard it - that voice.  Walking down the hallway of the house, the whisper told me, "You know, you don't really have to do this."  That was all it took to get my wheels turning.  I thought of home back in Florida, of friends and family I left there.  I thought of very cool job opportunities I knew I could have if I just went home.  I thought of a relationship I knew I could make happen if I just went home.  I thought of all the things I could do for me...if I just went home.  

If I've ever had a "Get behind me, Satan," sort of moment, this was it.  Thankfully, quickly, the sneaky voice revealed itself as nothing more than an effort to detour me from a redemptive journey God would invite me on as a peacemaker in the lives of hurting girls.  Forgive me, as I'm about to dive into an incredibly unworthy and not-even-close comparison, but in that moment I was reminded of Jesus in the wilderness.  I remembered Satan telling  Him, "Just bow to me.  Just worship me.  Just throw Yourself down from here.  Just take all these other kingdoms instead..."  

The sneaky voice whispered to Jesus, too: "You know, you don't really have to do this."

It is only since coming to TC that I've begun to encounter the bloody battleground that is peacemaking.  We tend to think of peacemaking as this lovely idea; this calm, tranquil meeting of minds, shaking of hands, agreement and love and the like.  But my experience with God and with people the last 8 years has proved quite otherwise.  Peacemaking has become a word that triggers images of noise, anger and maybe worst of all, disappointment... the very people you're trying to help, spitting back in your face.  

Tonight I lived one of those images again.  Tonight I had a moment of thinking, "You know, you don't really have to do this."  I was irritated and I just wanted peace, but the truth is, peace has to be bought.  Peace is pricey, and it must be bought at the risk of one's own well-being.  Think of it, and it is true: soldiers are sent off ultimately to make peace happen, yet they do so risking their own.  Something that initially was not their problem, becomes their problem because they have chosen to make peace.

Blessed are the Peacemakers...  

After three hours of swallowing my pride tonight, of waiting patiently, of speaking truth in love, of correction and efforts to help, I thought for a moment, "Why even try?"  But in a gloriously simple moment, she broke, and she let me help.  We will have loads of terrain to cover tomorrow, but tonight, we found her some peace.  And for now, she sleeps.  

I couldn't help but think of The Prince of Peace Himself tonight... the Prince of Peace, and the price of peace.  I realized that in the same way I so often feel like I am risking my own peace in order to bring peace to these girls, so Christ surrendered His own peace in order to bring peace to me.  After all, He didn't really "have to do this."  

I'm thinking that if I really want to be like Jesus, there is more of this peacemaking in my future, and I've come to, well... make peace with that.  Something in me wars against this: I don't want to give up my personal comfort in order to give it to someone else.  But I want to be like Jesus, and I want to love like Jesus.  Even so, as moved as I am on this night to love like He loves, to spend my life serving the restoration of peace for others, I'm quieted by the sound of the violent Prince of Peace:

Here is the Peacemaker, so aggressive in love, so devoted in purpose, that He bleeds away His own peace in order to give it instead to me.  

What a Prince.  

What a price.

THANK YOU, JESUS.  THANK YOU...  Thank You that "we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ."  Thank You that You are our peace, and You have broken down every wall, every barrier that stands between God and man.  Thank You that when I spit in Your face, You offer me another cheek.  Thank You that You humbled Yourself to the point of death for me; You tell me the truth in love; You correct me; You teach me; You love me; You're still with me... always still with me.  Thank You for not being a quitter.  Thank You for enduring.  Thank You for enduring for me.  Thank You that You "looked death in the face and didn't flinch.  You embraced the company of the lowest.  You took on Your shoulders the sin of the many; You took up the cause of all the black sheep."  Thank You that when You heard, "You know, You don't really have to do this," You said, "I know," and did it anyway.  Thank You for that pricey peace that bought redemption... for me.  

There Are Some Things That Only God Can Do

There are some things that only God can do.  That used to irritate me.  It made me feel powerless, frustrated and defeated.  If I didn't see the results I wanted to see, I thought it was because I had failed or done something wrong.  

I thought maybe I wasn't pushing hard enough.  

I thought maybe I just don't have what it takes.

Then I realized... I'm saying "I" a lot... an awful lot...

There is an amazing young girl I've had the privilege of walking through life with for quite some time now.  She has suffered from severe depression, self-harm, addiction and more.  I remember starting off with her telling me how she doesn't believe in God, she hates Christians, and she doesn't want to waste her time talking about anything pertaining to either of these.  I agreed.

Yup, I agreed with the atheist.  

If she didn't want to talk about God or faith or Christianity, then I agreed that we shouldn't talk about God or faith or Christianity.  I suggested that we talk about the things she does want to talk about.  The things that hurt her or bother her; the things that consume her thoughts and emotions throughout the day.  So we did just that.  We didn't talk about God or faith or Christianity.  We talked about pain, suffering, and loss.  We talked about disappointment, betrayal, and self-hatred.  We talked about hope, or the lack thereof.  We talked about the cuts on her legs and what they represented.  We talked about the guy that broke her heart and the parents that let her down.  We talked about her mistakes and all the ways she felt she would never measure up.  

It's funny though.  After quite some time of not talking about God or faith or Christianity, my favorite atheist started to sneak them into the conversation.  Somehow when we talked about pain, suffering and loss, a piece of her nodded back in God's direction - maybe with an edge, or a bitter remark, but there it was: desire.  Slowly, in letting her be 'where she was' at the moment, we gravitated closer and closer to matters of...dare we say it... God.  

When she finally opened the door for us to discuss Him, to get tangled in all our questions and misunderstandings, to go ahead and just accuse Him of all that she wanted to... I found myself a little irritated actually.  Not with her, but with me.  I didn't have answers for her.  We'd been dealing with this stuff for a really long time now.  Why was she still so depressed?  Why did she keep struggling with the same old things over and over and over again?  Why did she hate herself so much, no matter what I did to help her?  Why am I not able to fix this girl?

Why am I not able to fix this girl?

Because I am not able to fix this girl.

Because there are some things that only God can do.

For the next 6 months or so, this young girl spent week after week diving into questions with me, searching through her issues with God.  She'd open up to Him, then slam the door shut all over again.  I ultimately found myself saying that phrase to her multiple times: "________, there are just some things that only God can do."  I hesitated to say it, because it felt cliche; it felt like, "words, words, words," - meaningless words.  But it was true, and I knew it, and at the end of our painful searching my soul settled in the knowledge that there are just some things that only God can do.  

We can go so far together and make lots of headway and improvements, but it's true: there are some things that only God can do...and I am not Him.  It was as if in telling her, I was really telling myself, "Tara, you can't 'fix' this girl.  You are never going to single-handedly make her life better.  You are not her solution.  These things you think you can recover for her - they're really not about you.  There are just some things that only God can do."

I knew it was true.  I said it because I believed it.  I usually said it with a crack in my voice, holding back tears.  I usually said it while praying painfully in my own heart, "Do it, Jesus.  Please, do it.  Do what only You can do - bring her back to life."  

I don't know when it happened.  Neither she nor I could tell you an exact date or moment when He did it, but somewhere along the way, she chose to believe.  She chose to open her heart and let Him heal all those things that we could not.  Her self-hatred has been banished by the 'intolerable compliment' of the relentless love of Christ, and she is coming alive in Him.  

So as I watched yet another gloriously ordinary instance of surrender in this young girl recently, God spoke to my heart, "Tara, didn't I tell you?  There are some things that only I can do."  I realized not only did she need Him to do these things in her, but I desperately needed to be reminded that He is still capable of doing what I think is impossible.


He is still fully capable of redeeming the "least likely to succeed" among us - the ones we've written off, the ones we've decided are just never going to change... and that is really, really good news for me, too.

He's still fully capable.

There are still some things that only He can do.

Somehow tonight, I don't find that so irritating anymore.  I find that relieving, and I am asking Him more and more to do what only He can do in my life and in the world around me.  I'm finding with David that it's true: "God made my life complete when I opened the book of my heart to His eyes" (Ps. 18:20).

There are just some things that only God can do.  

(And that is good).

Going Mirror-Less: "The Experiment" (Pt 2)

I've been doing a class with the girls for a few months now about body image and self-worth.  It has been interesting to say the least.  One week in particular the girls picked photos out of magazines for three purposes: (1) Pick a photo that makes you feel good about yourself.  (2) Pick a photo that makes you feel bad about yourself.  (3) Pick a photo that is using sexual imagery to sell something non-sexual.  When it came time to share their photos, it went something like this:  

When choosing a photo that made the girls feel good about themselves, they picked a photo of someone and made fun of that person.  I was silently shocked - I honestly did not see this coming.  I thought they would pick photos of girls that revealed natural beauty, or girls they related to, etc.  Instead, they chose photos of incredibly beautiful girls, or sultry women, or fashionistas, then SHREDDED them.  Shamelessly, the girls bragged on, "This photo makes me feel good about myself, because, look at her nose!  It is so big!  And seriously, her ears stick out so far - and that hair is just nappy!"  My girls, who are usually quite thoughtful and insightful in classes like these, thought they were soooo funny and laughed it up as one after another bashed the girls in their photos.

Wow...

I just sat silently and let the girls take their turns slamming model after model, all in an effort to "feel good about themselves."  Only two girls out of 19 actually chose photos that made them feel good for reasons like, "She looks like she is being herself, and I appreciate that."  When the girls finished sharing, I posed a question:  "Did anyone notice that when you talked about photos that made you feel good about yourself, all you really did was find as many faults as possible with the girls in that photo (and then exaggerate them)?  Why does it seem that in order for us to feel good about ourselves, we have to find faults in everyone else?  Why do we think that someone else's beauty has to be a challenge to our own?"  The room went silent and heads dropped.  They realized this isn't just something they do to magazine photos - it is something they do to each other at a great cost.

Over the next few weeks, conversation rolled over into past experiences and perspective.  I love teaching the girls about perspective.  The first time I came back from Africa, I was so irritated when the girls complained about food that I took a photo of a precious little girl eating her meal at a Children's Cup care-point in Swaziland and posted it on the bulletin board in the dining room with a note underneath that read: "Not happy with your meal?  Complain to her."  (It was awesome:)

The girls know that if I start talking Africa, they're about to be in for it.  Some of my best challenges for the girls come from lessons learned with kids in Swaziland.  As we discussed perspective and body image, I remembered how profoundly impacted I was on my first trip to Africa when there were little to no mirrors to be found anywhere.  So I decided to cover every mirror in the TC house - bedrooms, hallways, bathrooms, everywhere - and have the girls write Scripture or words of encouragement over them.  

We called it "The Mirror Experiment."  The challenge would be for one week, to live a mirror-less life.  It was interesting to see their reactions: "What about when I go on pass?!"  "What about youth group?"  "Can I use my compact to put on my make-up?"  I did not give the girls many instructions other than to cover the mirrors and pay attention throughout the week to how often they unconsciously turned to check their appearance, even when unnecessary.  It was fun to see the words of truth and love the girls penned on those coverings; every time they went to look in a mirror, instead they found Scripture or reminders that, "I am more than my reflection."

When the time came to pull the covers off, I asked the girls what they thought of this experiment.  One girl who is obsessed with having the perfect part in her hair admitted to using picture frames on the wall to try to check and make sure it was straight.  Others confessed that they checked their make-up in the toaster at breakfast.  Someone even said she would look at her reflection in her friend's sunglasses, but admitted she felt like she was sort of "cheating" every time.  There were loads of silly reactions like these, and I could relate - been there, done that, girls - you'll find no judgment here :)  After all the fun of it, some valuable statements came out.  One of the most profound was common to all: "I hated having to ask other people if I looked ok all the time."  Hmmm... 

We asked ourselves:

If I hated having to ask other people if I looked ok through this experiment, then why do I do that all the time in real life?

Why are we constantly allowing other people to define us?  

Why do I let magazines, society, culture, friends, frenemies and the like be the mirror in which I measure myself?  

We realized that it's true - we are constantly looking outside of ourselves to decide who we are.  We look to others to tell us if we are good enough, smart enough, pretty enough; we rely on compliments or trash-talk to decide what is good or bad about ourselves.  But it doesn't have to be this way.

We wondered... what would my life look like if I stopped allowing everyone else to be the mirror by which I view myself?  What if I found a different mirror?  What if I chose to be a reflection of something else?  Something more... authentic.  Something more... "me."  We talked about Peter in the Bible - how it was only after he discovered the truth about who God is that he discovered the truth about himself, and that maybe this is true also with us.  We talked about the idea that we were created, formed, fashioned on purpose, by a God who loves beauty - a God who creates and says things like, "Mmm, that's good.  That's really good."

We decided to try something.  We decided to let Christ become the mirror by which we view ourselves.  We decided that when we look in those uncovered mirrors again, we would appreciate the GIFT of being able to decide for ourselves what is "good enough."  We agreed to remember when we look in those mirrors again, "Today, I am not at the mercy of someone else to tell me if I am beautiful.  Today, I get to decide how I look.  And today I agree with my Maker:  'It is good.'"

Going Mirror-Less: Pt 1

The first time I went to Africa, I was amazed at the noticeable lack of mirrors.  We stayed in a house with an Englishman married to a Swazi woman.  We were in what you could call the "suburbs" of Mbabane, yet even in this somewhat westernized home-life, there was not a single mirror to be found -  not in the bedrooms, not in the bathrooms, not even in the hallway by the main door so you could check yourself on your way out!  What were the Swazis thinking?!  

My first trip to Africa taught me to get crafty about personal hygiene.  Now honestly, we had it pretty easy in Swaziland.  (Mozambique was a WHOLE other story, but honestly...way cooler experience, too :)  Back in Swaziland, though, I had electricity at the house in Mbabane, so of course I put it to good use.  I blow-dryed and straightened my hair as usual, only with the exception that I was mirror-less.  I figured out that if I woke up at just the right time in the morning, the sun would be hitting my wall making a perfect square of light through the window; therefore, if I stood at just the right angle, I could use my own shadow on the wall as a form of a mirror.........

Um.... obsessive-much?

Here I am - in AFRICA of all places - and I'm still obsessing about getting my hair straight and shiny enough.  Really, Tara...I don't think anyone cares.  After three weeks in the land of no mirrors, I began to realize how often I would unconsciously turn to check my appearance, only to remember there were no mirrors.


It was only when I was completely unable to constantly look at myself that I realized how much I actually do.  

It's not on purpose; and maybe it's not an "all-girls" thing, but it's certainly an "a lot-of-girls (and-maybe-some-guys-too)" thing... maybe it's even an "American" thing.  It's like a knee-jerk reaction: if there's a mirror around, we look in it.  We're told constantly to be perfect, look perfect, sound perfect, walk perfect, dress perfect - perfect, perfect, perfect.  As a recovering perfectionist, this is exceptionally challenging for me.  Nothing I ever do is good enough in my own eyes, so for me to ever breathe a sigh of relief and choose to say "It is good enough" is quite an accomplishment.  (Even better when I finally take off the "enough" and just rest at, "It is good"...but that's another blog for another day).

It's quite relieving actually.

After that first week of mirror-envy, thankfully God grabbed a hold of my heart and reminded me that I am more than my reflection.  These people didn't care what I looked like.  They didn't care if my make-up was on or off, and they certainly didn't care if my hair was pretty or messy.  They cared that I came to them; they cared that I loved them... they cared that I brought stickers :)

I enjoyed the next few weeks of our trip, mirror-less.  There was this sort of relief in not being able to set my eyes on me all the time.  I realized that on a whole other level, God was stirring me to live a mirror-less life - a life that was not about cultivating perfect reflections of myself, but rather, redemptive reflections of Christ - with or without my make-up on.  

Every time I go to Africa, I realize I am being shaped into a better me.  I am being shaped into a more accurate reflection of who Jesus is, because I am reminded that He is the Savior, not me.  I'm not a doctor, a nurse or some brilliant genius who will discover the key to resolving poverty, hunger or the AIDs pandemic.  All I really have to give is a smile, a voice, some arms to hug kids with (and, it should be stated, I can play a mean game of hot potato with a trash bag), but I never feel more beautiful than when I find the dirt of Africa caked beneath my feet.  

In the mirror-less land, I was reminded that beauty is more about the love we give away than the image we give off.  Beauty is found in a heart that shines Christ, in eyes that see as He sees and hands that reach out in compassion to "the least of these."  I found in those "least" of these, the living beauty of Jesus, right here among us.  

Among many other things, I learned in Africa the gift of living a mirror-less life.  My students hate it when I go to Africa... Pt 2 will tell you why - "The Mirror Experiment" :)