As I sit here and just relive the past few days of service in a local prison, I keep shaking my head and searching my heart!!! I am not sure I can share adequately the lessons that these men are bringing to my life and my quest to do what God has laid on my heart. I go there and we strive to be of service but what happens EACH and every time is I leave lifted, I leave more convinced than ever that my time on earth is important and it is important for one thing and that is to be of SERVICE!!!
As I listened today to men laying their hearts WIDE open, totally vulnerable to each other I realize that I am so out of my league!!! I am way off base, I don’t have the skills but what I do have is willingness!!! I have a willingness of heart for God to use me. To use me to share his love. To use me to share that there is hope. To use me to be open minded. To use me to seek solutions for change. To use me to love those that people may not want to love because it is NOT easy. To use me to stretch, to hover outside my comfort zone, to climb a mountain that I can only climb with his help To use me, to show me, prepare me, guide me one step at a time.
I don’t know where I am going!!! I truly do not ,but I do know who I am following and that is making all the difference.
People ask me all the time how I am doing since the death of my precious husband? How am I doing trying to raise 2 little ones and run an up and down business? How am I doing with 2 boys struggling with addiction, brother struggling with addiction? How am I doing not knowing what tomorrow will bring? My answer is I am doing great, one day at a time, trusting God, loving others, finding joy in the ordinary.
The truth that I know and that I live each day is I know that I can not wait to be happy!!! I can not wait till all is well, and all my loved ones are living the way I desire for then to live. I can not wait till my house is perfect, my weight is just right, my car is clean, my office is at peak shape. If I wait for any one thing on earth to make me happy then I have missed it and it will be fleeting, here one day and gone the next.
The secret, the deepest secret to this joy that is in me and is not up for grabs is getting outside of myself and loving, just loving and striving to find someone who may just need something that I have even if it is nothing more than my willingness. This quest or this life adventure is more real to me because of these prisoners who are locked up but are free in their hearts. They are learning that if they would live a life of meaning it would be one of service. They for the first time in their lives are learning though a Re-Entry program to be the men that they can be and they are doing it daily. To watch and to witness is a miracle unfolding that you can only believe if you see it!!!!
I wonder what Gretchen Rubin would think if she knew the life changing EFFECT, that Her Happiness Project is having on the inmates and the greater impact it has had on Erica and I as we share it. I love how God works, the more you give away the more that comes pouring back into your heart. I love that kind of equation. Love out equals multiplied love in!!!!
I pray that God continues to allow me to honor the call, I promise I am not all that and because I am not all that I have to depend 100 percent on a God that has my life in his hands. It takes nothing to be of service other than a willing heart. I am so under qualified but oh so willing and oh so grateful. I remember a song we sang in church as a youth and it went something like this, “Share his love by giving of yourselves.” I keep hearing that song in my head and it is a sweet melody.