The nature and source of my ministry

"Your most effective ministry will come out of your deepest hurts."
 -- Rick Warren, from The Purpose Driven Life

 "You often meet your destiny on the road you've taken to avoid it."
 -- Unknown

Yesterday I stood at one of my life's most painful thresholds and looked across.  It was both painful AND liberating, an odd paradox.  As I'm sure many of you who've known me for a long time have noticed, I have been talking about God a lot more over the last few years than ever before in my life.  It is coming out of my reflecting on all the time I was lost in my own suffering, where I tried to "manage" my life's fears, pain, and shame on my own, rather than turn them over and allowing myself to be used for God's purpose.  In my past life, as a weak response to difficult surroundings I didn't understand, I would make up which conversations I was "allowed" to have and which ones would get me categorized as "unacceptable" in some way.  I was so afraid of life, and life was not about being true to God, myself, or my beliefs, it was about "maintaining acceptability" in front of whichever audience I found myself, for survival's sake.  I was like a deer in the headlights.

Well, a real "biggie" came up for me yesterday - a reminder of the nature and source of my ministry.  As you've been reading lately, I have been working with some wonderful people in The Woodlands, and yesterday I had lunch with two very special gentlemen who are devoutly Christian in their beliefs.  They have empowered me as both a business coach and as a life coach in their lives, their company, their families, and their community, and in the midst of my "calling forth their best" in their interactions with each other, their co-workers, their loved ones, and their neighbors, they challenged me to discuss my own personal relationship with God and with Jesus.  In that very moment when the focus of our conversation shifted to me, my behavior, and my beliefs, every fear and doubt about myself was dredged up in the face of their question, and my face felt white-hot.  I was right back in the place where my worst fears live.  Was this just another way in which I was going to be found "unacceptable" in the world?  Am I too "New Age," or worse yet, "Touchy-Feely," for these people?  Am I going to Hell for being an imposter?  What do I really stand for?  Will I only be loved and accepted if I "behave" a certain way or "espouse" certain beliefs?  Can I actually "be" my beliefs while stating them in an open dialogue with others, which would require me honoring and loving the people to whom I was speaking, even in the midst of their tough questioning and my own worst fears? 

Well, I can honestly say that I am excited about how this conversation went.  Not that I "performed well" or even answered their question definitively, because I did not.  I know this conversation is not over by a long shot, and my journey of discovery continues, but the important thing for me was to be able to stand in the face of the question honoring the power of the question itself, as well as the intent of the questioners, as well as myself and my own deeply personal relationship with God, cultivated through years of healing, opening up, and re-engaging.  For the first time, I found myself trusting completely that what was being said was a definitive "I love you" by all of the above.  What a refreshing new perspective.  I felt embraced and loved by the question, rather than attacked or threatened by it.  I am coming to understand that my life is about the ability to live inside this GREAT BIG QUESTION, and the way I live my life, more important than the words I use to describe it, is the most important answer to it.  have a long way to go on this journey.  I am a child groping in the dark in so many ways on the subject.  I want to thank these wonderful men who called me forth to be my best - who challenged me, inspired me, and loved me throughout the conversation, knowing there's much more to follow.  It is clear to me that my life's ministry comes from the deep hurt of having abandoned my beliefs in the face of "business expediency," driven by the childlike need to feel accepted.  God is clearly using this weakness of mine and my willingness to talk about it to teach others the way back. 

Driving back to their offices from our "business meeting," which is how the lunch started out, we pulled into an empty church parking lot, held hands, and prayed.  We prayed for, with, and in total appreciation of each other.  It was a fitting end to the most powerful business meeting I've ever experienced, and I felt completely at home.

Now before this experience took place yesterday, I had found the following piece that was going to be my full message for today.  I think it's relevant to include it here as an addendum, because it is a clear reflection that "Mother Waddles" really got the message that, "Your most effective ministry will come out of your life's deepest hurts."  I so relate to her great tag line below:

"I'm in the business of loving the hell out of people."

                                      - "Mother" Waddles

For over four decades, the Reverend Charleszetta Waddles, affectionately known as "Mother" Waddles,  devoted her life to providing food, hope, and human dignity to the downtrodden and disadvantaged people of Detroit. Founder, director, and spiritual leader of the Mother Waddles Perpetual Mission, Inc., a nonprofit, nondenominational organization run by volunteers and dependent on private donations, Waddles believed that the church must move beyond religious dogma to focus on the real needs of real people.

"We're trying to show what the church could mean to the world if it lived by what it preached," Mother Waddles told Newsweek. "I read the Bible. It didn't say just go to church. It said, 'Do something!'" In addition to operating a 35-cent dining room on Detroit's "skid row" that serves appetizing meals in cheerful, dignified surroundings, the mission offers health care, counseling, and job training to thousands of needy citizens. Still others benefit from an Emergency Services Program that provides food, clothing, shelter, and medicine. "We give a person the things he needs, when he needs them," she told Lee Edson of Reader's Digest. "We take care of him whether he's an alcoholic or a junkie, black or white, employed or unemployed. We don't turn anyone away."

Charleszetta Waddles was 36 years old and the mother of 10 children when she began what James K. Davis of Life Magazine described as her "one-woman war on poverty."  Up until she was 82 she worked 12-hour days and remained on call throughout the night.  

Footnote:  Mother Waddles died on my birthday, July 12, in 2001.  She was 89 years young.