Welcoming Santa to Refugee Beads

We have a new lady in Refugee Beads! She is Purna's best friend from her school house in the refugee camp in Nepal. Her name in Santa Darjee. She has a little 3 month old baby girl named Apakhcha. She has been in the states only 16 months now. Her husband is looking for work right now. We are so happy to welcome her into our community and praying we can help her family financially!

Race Report: Frogtown Trail Challenge

Since going to Mount Everest in April, I've had some nagging knee problems which kept me from training for the StumpJump 50k, which I ran and loved last year.

But the weather in Georgia has been beautiful, and I didn't want the fall to go by without doing some kind of outdoors adventure. The Frogtown Trail Challenge presented the perfect solution. At ten miles, it was a perfect distance to be challenging without doing too much damage. Plus, the obstacles would add some excitement to the event.

I talked Brian Weldon, Jeremy Anderson, and Ruthie into running the race with me, and we all registered. Brian and I work at a nonprofit called She Is Safe, and they provided "Run to Rescue" t-shirts for us. R2R is an initiative we're developing where sponsored runners can free and empower women and girls against trafficking.

While Ruthie ran the four-mile course, Brian, Jeremy, and I decided to run the ten as a team. Besides being more fun that way, this allowed us to take pictures of each other throughout the race.

The first obstacle was a short drop via a rope onto a lower trail. Since the field of runners was still pretty much together, it was fairly crowded, but it got us excited for challenges to come.

While the overall elevation change wasn't that severe, whoever organized the race did a good job of designing some wicked climbs into the course. We regularly had to walk to the top of a climb, then resume running when the trail leveled out. Several times, we power-walked past runners who decided to gut it out.

While all of the race was enjoyable, we had the most fun during a mile-long portion of the race that took place in a creek. The water was cold, our shoes filled with sand, and there were fallen logs all over the place. I felt like a kid again, splashing full-speed through knee-deep water.

The final miles of the race were marked by hilly loops. Around mile 8, my legs started to feel heavy, and it was a challenge to keep up with my team. At this point, Jeremy took the lead of our little group, and Brian and I pushed the pace to keep up with him.

The final obstacle was a rope net with a drill-sargent-like volunteer yelling at you. Jeremy climbed to the top, took a snapshot of Brian and me struggling our way up, then scrambled down the other side.

We finished the race together, in a pack of three, all sprinting together for the line. I had to fight to keep from throwing up because of the final push, but I felt elated at the same time. We had run a good race together, pushed ourselves, and finished well.

Ruthie had finished her four-mile course long before us, and was waiting at the line to cheer us in.

I usually finish races one of two ways: barely able to stagger across the line and hoping to die, or wishing I had given more and done better.

With a two-hour finish time after starting in the last wave, I felt perfect at the end of this race. I had pushed hard, managed my energy well, and enjoyed a day in the woods with two of my favorite people.

Garden days

This year, in addition to running the helping with homework, Ruthie has worked with volunteers, student leaders, and the kids to develop a community garden, where kids can help grow veggies to cook and eat in the afterschool program.

Here's one picture of some of the kids with Theresa, a faithful and caring friend of ours and the neighborhood. Miguel is taking a break from planting to stick his face in front of the camera:

The kids took home starter plants to nurture, then brought them to the garden to plant:

The Creek Kids had a great chance to play in the dirt and spend time together on the garden. We have one garden day each week:

Team USA

-People are starting to talk about our team, so we need a name, I say as Marco takes another shot.

The ball goes sailing over the goal and toward the creek. Ivan puts on his socks on the sideline.

-Los Immigrants, Adrian suggests.

-How 'bout HB-87s? Alan jokes.

-No. I got it. USA. It's simple, Omar says, looking around for any dissent. Heads nod around the circle of players as it forms. Like that, we become USA.

This takes place on a Tuesday. We are fresh off a win against a team that beat us twice before I took over coaching. While we gather around, kicking soccer balls, joking in Spanglish, getting ready to do our sprints, the feeling is that we can make this little neighborhood team into something good.

I'm still reeling from the fact that I'm even here. Guys on this team have made fun of us, written obscenities on our door, picked on kids in our afterschool program, and generally avoided us for peer pressure reasons.

Then, one night while they watched a police officer grill some of the neighbors on something, I asked Ivan and Bon Bon what was going on. They shrugged, then asked, Hey, you wanna coach our soccer team?

I showed up at the first practice, not sure how things were gonna go. Then Omar, the other coach, who supposedly couldn't coach anymore because of a job at QT, showed up too.

It's been a bit messy ever since. Our players go back to Mexico, get distracted when their parents go to prison, show up to practice under the influence, and sometimes burst into tears. There are alliances and insecurities and everyone has to watch his back most of the time.

But we've started playing like a team. We're learning to build each other up. We're taking some pride in who we are, and where we come from.

For the first three years in this neighborhood, I prayed that God would give me a way to connect with the middle and high school guys. They are at risk right now for gang involvement, drug use, incarceration, gun violence and deportation. It's a good time to show them love.

Now, living out God's answer as their coach is a confusing, turbulent, hilarious adventure. It demands about ten hours a week in addition to my writing and ministry work. But the time, sweat, and pain are well worth it, to be involved in the turnaround we're seeing, to get to play during scrimmages, and to see the development of pride they've taken in who we are together, as team USA.

Thanksgiving in July

This morning, on my drive to work, I did some thinking about this blog, where I have done a great deal of wrestling, where I have spilled some of my doubts and the mess of my life, and where I have proclaimed victories as they run through my hands.

And to those who read and to those who follow, I must give thanks. Without you, this is a clanging gong. It's a waste apart from you. So here are a few thanks I offer:

To Uncle Tim, who made this whole project possible. By loving us, inviting us, placing us here, and showing us how to make neighborhood ministries work.

To Dad, who tells me that he sees God's hand leading my life, which makes me tear up, but I keep cool for the sake of the conversation. To Mom, who loves patiently and hears the truth in the mess of the things I write here. To Lisa, Eric, and Gina. I'm proud to be a part of this wild clan.

To Adam Fites, who walks before me into the corners of man's mind, past those corners to the glory beyond.

To David Park, who fought for me, beside me, who gives to the Father's work in our life and in our neighborhood. To Josh, who has mastered at least three art forms (music, design, and bike mechanics), and still pretends like he's no big deal. To Jonathan and Kelly, who live more boldly than I ever could. And to Tim Isaacson, who inspires and leads us through the mess of life here in Chamblee.

To Eric Beach, for giving my writing a home back in the Brew days, and for the things you've said about it ever since.

To Kacie, an old friend with the courage to listen, read, think, and speak, all at the right times. To Ernesto, whose writing and reading led to the birth of this whole messy project, and whose work leaves me trembling, breathless. To Keith Evers, who supported us, housed us, and showed us what faithful friendship looks like.

To Jeremy, the brother of my heart. I know you read this stuff. You are, and have been, the best friend I could have hoped for.

Okay, I had about ten more, but this is starting to feel pretty sappy, so maybe I'll do another one of these later. To those listed here, and to the rest of you who follow, I feel that you are reading. I read your comments carefully, and they move me. Thank you.

Rwanda, Caanan, and Chamblee

We are sending some of our best friends, Jonathan and Kelly Nolte, off to Rwanda in the next few weeks, so tonight we gathered to watch a movie about the genocide that happened there called Beyond the Gates. As you can imagine, it wasn't a very cheery movie. In fact, during the first hour, I was thinking, why doesn't God just blow this world up and start over?

One of the main characters in the film is a Catholic priest. As a horde of Hutus are about to rape and butcher their Tutsi neighbors, a young man asks the priest where God is.

"He's right here, suffering with these people" the priest replies, declining a ride that would take him from the massacre to safety.

That line rattled around in my head for a while. Not in the "it reminded me of a nice idea that I forgot" kind of way, but because it didn't sit well with me. At some point, I have to wonder how much it really hurts him, because he could stop it if he wanted to.

Rwanda isn't the only place that makes me feel this way. I see irreperable scars in my neighborhood. Kids get abused, raped, and abandoned. They build defenses against love. I do some writing for a nonprofit that works with women who are victims of sex trafficking, short-term marriages, slavery, starvation, neglect, and destitution. At some point, if it really bothers God all that much, why doesn't he just stop the awful stuff from happening?

I thought about Rwanda, then I thought about how the Canaanites probably felt when the Israelites came in with divine orders to wipe out every man, woman, child,and cow . Then I thought about friends who died young, and all the scars that their leaving formed in my heart, and I thought that there had to be something about God to be learned, if I was to believe in him at all.

Since it is all we have, human life seems to us the thing of highest value. But, based on biblical tales and the chaos I see around me, it's not the most important thing to God. He seems very little concerned with our comfort or individual survival.

I believe in a God who mourns with those who suffer. Who hates violence. Who grieves when we grieve. But all this has me thinking that the suffering is worthwhile to God because he has a higher value somewhere.

I'm going to propose my little view, which is that God does indeed hurt, but that he values a relational connection, he values the redemptive narrative, and he values the human struggle more than he values the mere fact of human life, and especially more than he values our neat little ethical systems.

So to survive where I live, where suffering abounds and lives are cut short all the time, I have to believe that the God who presides is telling us a story far bigger than our own lives, and he asks me to worship as he unfolds it before me.

This is going to sound weird coming from a guy who believes that Jesus wants us to care about physical needs and poverty (which I do believe, quite fervently), but I don't think God is out to cure every ailment and alleviate every pain.

If we learn anything from suffering, it's that God's priorities and ours are different. We have a choice. We can accept his values and move further into worship, or we can seek safety and avoid the pain that comes with knowing a God who can bear the weight of our suffering for the sake of something higher, which we can't quite grasp in our current state.

A Flood of Blessings

You can tell how busy I am by the frequency of my posts on this blog.

I recently started a new job as a marketing and communications specialist for She is Safe, a nonprofit serving women in the toughest places on Earth. During my first week at that job, my sister called with the news that her small group wanted to install new flooring in our apartment. Ruthie and I had been praying for new flooring for a while, so we jumped at the opportunity.

In addition to that, a short story I recently wrote for Red Rock Review, a literary journal in Nevada, was noticed by someone who I would hope would notice it, prompting me to launch into editing and expansion of a novel I had been picking away at for a while.

As all these good things crashed into my life, a typo by GEICO resulted in the suspension of my driver's license, leaving me dependent upon the grace of Ruthie to get around.

On Thursday, as I hauled scraps of carpet from our disheveled apartment to a rented UHAUL, I saw some of the high school guys who had written and peed on our door, and I asked them if they knew why a police cruiser was parked nearby. They shrugged, we started talking, and the conversation moved to their soccer team, which they asked me to coach.

So now, I have a new job, a new floor, a new opportunity with the guys in the neighborhood, a chance at getting my weird little novel in front of some helpful readers, and no wheels.

The complicated, unprecedented levels of blessing and difficulty often overwhelm me, but I know that these opportunities come to me from a gracious hand, and I trust that hand to move the story forward in a good direction.

If you are a praying person, please keep us in your prayers. We are caught in a flood of blessings, trying to breathe, love and pray while God's story swirls around and over us.