A Life Worth Living

On November 21, 2015November 21, 2015 By happyreignIn JoelLeave a comment

It has been almost six months since we decided to move to the Middle East. Many have asked of how we ended up living and being involved in one of the most “difficult” and “hardest” regions on the planet. The simple answer is that it was all His idea. Both my wife and I have felt that our lives haven’t been our own for a long time. When you have this deep conviction it is easier saying yes. Our no has been Crucified with Him. We get people praising us for living what seems like selfless lives. The honest reality is that we are doing what makes us come alive. He has orchestrated our steps and has led us down the road of Love.

We have had the privilege of working with His persecuted Body. Our days and nights consist of hearing people’s journey of Faith. They have had loved ones killed and everything they have worked for destroyed all because of their unbreakable conviction of not bending their knees to fear. I honestly can say that I complain a lot less since I have been here. In the face of so much loss and pain what can I complain about??? Our brothers and sisters have lost everything but the ability to love. The way they have welcomed us to their homes and families is truly humbling.

If your asking yourself what can you do to help or how can I make a difference I say to you is that you CAN love. You can love fearlessly and fully. Start with those around you. Do not let yourself be filled or swayed with fear by the Media and ask your God what He thinks about the Refugees. Ask Him how He sees them and go from there. -Joel

Remembering Our First Year

On April 8, 2015May 23, 2015 By happyreignIn Heather

All God’s Done for Us in a Year

My first anniversary ever is coming up next week and I wanted to take the time to remember what God’s done for me in a year. Our Anniversary is April 15th. Just a little over one year ago I was living on the island of Malta and Joel was headed my direction after us not seeing each other for a month and half, after we had known each other for just one month prior to that. I was getting married in a week from now. Joel had brought wedding clothes and a ring and I had bought my dress online in one day for a hundred dollars, his ring that same day, and two $5 veils online from the U.S. depending on the color matching and length. I think it was this week that I picked up a pair of shoes for my dress for nine Euros in the Tuesday market outside our front door.

On a moment’s notice, wonderful people on the island helped make Joel and I’s wedding a reality. That day we went to high cliffs overlooking the Mediterranean in front of a chapel older than the U.S. and said our extemporaneous vows, shared communion, and were wed. The wind can be harsh on the cliff and although it was prior to the ceremony, afterwards it was light and playful and a Tasmanian man I had asked to play a song he had written at our wedding, took our camera and also happened to be a wonderful photographer, capturing our once in a lifetime moments.

Within the first month of our marriage, I participated in an art gathering in Morocco and Joel participated in a ministry event in England. After that first month, my mother and sister joined Joel and I on the island and met my husband for the first time in person, ever. They stayed a month and got to behold the breathtaking beauty of Malta and the surrounding waters. Soon after they left, a couple on the island gifted Joel and I their waterfront apartment while they were away traveling for our remaining forty days on the island before a visa ending initiated our departure.

During the time in that apartment was when a door opened to our next adventure: the Middle East. Flying through Turkey we arrived in Amman, Jordan, which would be our home in a desert land for the next three months. We were extended an invitation by a wonderful German young woman that had come to the Middle East from Mexico, where she had been serving a church the year prior. We stayed in the guest home of a church and got introduced to the Arab world, sharing our living space with young adults, and refugees, ministers, and all sorts of local people.

After getting to share life and visiting refugee communities and other churches, we made our departure at the end of November through the neighboring country of Israel. Staying in a hostel in the old city, I got to revisit some favorites in the area with Joel beholding the sites for the first time, which after living on an island with thousand year old fortresses and then living in the Arab world, no longer seemed that spectacular to him. But what was spectacular was meeting a new friend, who had already encouraged us along our way in taking risks.

Thanksgiving morning, we connected with a man named Andrew White from England who has been working in the Middle East for close to twenty years. He invited us to come join him as he was moving some of his base out of Iraq and into Jordan. We said yes. And then we were off to England and Wales again for the transition back into the western world. Fortunately our first host was Egyptian, understanding some of the cultural dynamics we were coming out of. Then off to Wales for wonderful times with friends and then back to South Carolina.

We were just in South Carolina for about a week, where we connected with family, and new and old friends, before heading to Florida for a few days to connect with more family and friends. Puerto Rico was wonderful in beauty and weather and surroundings. I walked down Joel’s memory lanes and connected with his friends that now have become mine. I experienced the holidays on this beautiful island place that truly has its own culture and with the wonderful people there.

After three weeks into the New Year we came back to South Carolina where Joel and I would depart across country, from coast to coast in a vehicle gifted to us by Joel’s amazing parents. We drove into the wintry tundra of Ohio and remained with friends there for a time before departing again across the southern half of the United States in a snowy weather pattern that did not lift until we arrived at the sunny coast of southern California.

After staying with friends, attending fun ministry gatherings, and traveling up the coast we arrived to our final destination for our first year: Redding, California, where I have since finished the first-draft of my rewrite of my novel.

In the midst of all of this movement were spontaneous paintings, costly lessons, character growth, seeing the miraculous, lots of affection, new horizons coming into view, new lifelong friends being made and old friends being appreciated. I forgot who I was and then remembered again. I’ve experienced and enjoyed the process of sharing my life with someone who made it all too easy to do. I’ve had to tolerate being celebrated and affirmed every day by my husband (note the sarcasm), who is tangible ministry of the holy spirit to my heart and mind.

Joel and I’s first year spanned seven countries, staying in thirty different homes, multiple hotels, visiting something like twenty different churches and connecting with so many amazing people. The most fun for me, in addition, to experiencing life with my husband Joel is being around those courageous people who are redefining reality and breaking down boxes they’ve found their identity too confining to remain in; whether it’s church structures, business ideas, educational positions, or just people remaining faithful to be their authentic selves despite demands the world sometimes tries to put on them that would damper their passion or creativity or dreams.

I’ve felt so privileged to watch people turn great corners in their lives that require faith and risk great failure; where if God doesn’t show up, this is not going to be good. But I’ve found when, it’s him that has placed that desire in people’s hearts, he always shows up. He’s waiting to reveal himself through the areas in people’s lives where they’ve risked trusting him.

Another thing I’ve loved is kitchen table church. Some of our most profound and encouraging conversations that feel like they are altering reality just because you’re having them—whether it’s that person’s life or country or culture—have happened over meals shared at a dining table. Whether in a restaurant, bar, pub, café, airport, kiddie table, or card table, you name it, I have felt the joy of life being exchanged there and have loved it.

God promised me years ago, that he would always take care of me and he always has, no matter where he’s invited me to go. This is also a thank you. Thank you to those wonderful people who shared their food, their homes, their guest beds or couches, but most of all shared their hearts with us. You are celebrated in the completion of our first year too.

Belief in Something Bigger than Understanding

On September 10, 2014December 10, 2016 By happyreignIn Heather, Reflections & MusingsLeave a comment

I read and hear things being written or being preached but there seems to be vast areas of my life that have become normal to me that I just don’t hear articulated very much. Keep in mind I’m not sharing a comprehensive Christian outlook or in any way am I teaching something that is absolute, but I find myself speaking about fringe things that are sometimes common in riding the life of faith. I just share them to encourage anyone out there to keep being different, keep being abnormal, and keep being courageous enough to be how God created you to be.

This idea came up a couple days in a row and I have/had zero energy to defend or explain it. Let me introduce you to the idea through my paintings first then life later. So I paint. I paint at events, I paint at home, I like to do creative things and appreciate creativity. Often, understandably, people come up and ask me what a painting means. I have seen videos where people do art interpretation three different ways through three different observers and they pull worlds relating to their life experience and personal history from paintings. Even scripture; a sentence may say one thing, but it speaks differently to different people in different seasons. It’s alive; living through inspiration.

Life is more controllable and more comfortable when we interpret things, our reality, to mean one specific thing. It’s logical, it makes sense, and we have right answers. For some reason, years ago, God decided to slide me off the dance floor of right answers and ever since I have been swimming in a vague reality of the truth of love, three dimensionally swirling around every sort of reality and frankly, sometimes I don’t even remember which way is up. In this water I am still dancing but my dance partner doesn’t move just back and forth but now my dance partner–which is inspiration–moves in ways I didn’t know I could follow.

And so in regards to my art for instance. I paint what I see. That’s what I do. I don’t “do” art apart from inspiration. I’m not religious about that or anything, I just lack desire to create things I understand. So I buy a canvas as the home for something I’ve already seen in my head. And in order for productivity to be had, some would say I now have to interpret it and clarify it in order for it to speak. But inspiration speaks regardless of explanations. And so I will go through a whole creative process, of seeing, creating, and passing along, without ever understanding what I’m doing the whole time. It is to my benefit and the benefit of other humans beings around me if I trust inspiration and follow. He knows every heart and every circumstance and is logically far more effective.

Am I against understanding? Of course not, it is the spirit of God. Do I think there is power when we move outside of the borders of our understanding in response to Holy Spirit? Definitely. In my life this applies to more than just art. What about relationships, what about our jobs, what about responding to how God’s created you or something he’s called you to?

There are seasons of my life I don’t understand. I heard a call, responded, I was myself, and left not knowing what God was doing through that and still don’t. At times He’s even reiterated it through other people. “I’m doing more here than you know at the moment.” Okay… I guess I won’t reason away my “productivity” and move on to something else. I’ll just continue being me…here.

Success in this life is so vastly different from anything the world paints as success or even the Christian church sometimes. Success is a relationship. A relationship where you care for the other person’s opinions and feelings, you listen and get to know them, you walk the same direction together, you believe them, trust them, and grow through your relationship with that person, who is the messiah of your life.

I see people sometimes debating decisions between following what they feel like God is saying or what seems to make sense from their perspective. Whenever I hear someone say they chose what they felt like God was saying to them I want to leap and cheer and give hugs and high fives. It comes down to: do you trust him?

I was challenged by God once to worship him, probably more than once, but specifically this one time. I really carried that word. Yes it means sing songs with your spirit, yes that means spend time in adoration, that is worship, but for me it meant something more at the time. How did Christ worship? Did he lead masses of people in songs and singing to the father? Did he try to gather everyone together to petition the father concerning the Roman government and social injustices?

His worship in my eyes was his laid down life; his obedience, his surrender, his yes to the father, regardless of its appearance of success or failure. He lived life in liberty and spoke the truth in order for others to participate with the freedom of life like he was. Christ, through obedience, in his vast freedom, dared to respond and fail according to the eyes of the world. God understands what he’s doing when he calls you into something.

He doesn’t misunderstand social security. He doesn’t misunderstand your expensive education. He doesn’t forget your history in that area of your life. He doesn’t not see your inadequacies or your frustrations…or your lack of understanding. But he didn’t wait for any of those things before going ahead and communicating with your heart anyway. He knows all those things and understands them completely and still believes in you, and his ways that often offend others senses of normalcy and propriety.

There’s a whole unseen spiritual reality that you are already fully blessed in. There’s a liberty in everyone’s life that’s been paid for. There’s belief in something bigger than understanding. And there’s risk to be had, and fear to laugh in the face of, regardless of having anything to show for our sowing, our response, our journey of love, or our choices.

And…I’m not waiting for understanding to come. I get to continue to enjoy the ride, I get to continue to go, to listen, to speak, to create, to express, to pray, to rest, to enjoy and he is perfectly able to lead me, shepherd me, teach me, and guide me. He’s always with me whether or not I understand. Like a kid in the backseat not aware of a lot of the dynamics that go on the world of adults, I will enjoy the wind in my hair, the sun on my face, and leave the driving to someone who created the car, knows the way, and has invited me to come along for the ride.

His Rest Was Never At Risk

On June 7, 2014June 7, 2014 By happyreignIn Joel1 Comment

His rest celebrates perfection. His work is complete; the fall of humanity did not flaw its perfection. (Heb. 4:3 the Mirror Translation)

Each day I am more convinced in the totality and perfection of not only what Christ did but in WHO he is. He has always been the Lamb slain before the foundations of the world. The solution was there before the problem, our forgiveness came way before our repentance. There is this Capon quote that I absolutely love. It reads: Creation is just as miraculous now as it was at the beginning, because redemption is present at every moment and every place throughout every part of creation. The creation and redemption are one act, not two. In the moment Adam and Eve eat of the fruit of the tree, they are redeemed. Not by that act but by him who made them. And therefore everything that happens after that is a proclamation of the gospel. Francois du Toit says: God saw more than his perfect image in Adam, he also saw the Lamb and his perfect work of redemption! I mean wow!!!

Growing up in the Church I always heard what God was about to do or was going to do but few rarely boasted in what He had done already. Religion always seems to put the good things of God in a far distant future. It thrives on distance and delay. Somehow Religion has made boasting through a language of lack as being “spiritual.” I am really excited about seeing how many have been waking up to the blissful reality of what Christ accomplished! Many when hearing the Good News feel life jumping inside of them. The truth is that the Good News is not a Message of something that they haven’t heard but it’s something that Religion tried to cover up. True Faith recognizes what has ALREADY taken place! In the beauty of this growing revelation we are not only finding who Christ is but we are also finding who we have always been… accepted and chosen in the Beloved before time!