I feel speechless and have for some time but I pushed through it tonight….I have wondered if it is the lack of sleep…. the lack of “overflow” that I have felt in these past 3 months after adding our sweet fourth child into our family. The Front Porch certainly has been anything but quiet and the opportunites have been plentiful – there was no “maternity leave” from the Front Porch so to speak…. only stronger boundaries for a time. There have been some amazing times and lots of kids to love on and relationships to maintain – a lot can happen in a week around here. One thing I wrestle with is how to articulate what goes on in my heart when I sit with some of these women and children. I am always blown away and humbled when these moms come over…. and keep coming…. and come when they have BIG issues or want prayer. My heart is heavy for them… they have REAL BIG stuff going on and often no where to turn where they feel is safe. I know I can’t save them… but I feel affirmed in what God has called our family to be with Front Porch Ministry and am amazed at the relationships He has helped us form with these women and the trust that we have gained over the past four years. It hasn’t been easy. I feel like we have gone from people just wanting something to “get by” to people being desparate for “life change.” It’s both wonderful and difficult to be apart of sometimes.

Tonight we had a mom and her children over for dinner to help her fill out a job application and instead she spent most of the evening sharing with me about her abusive relationship and the fact that she dances for money to pay her bills when she is behind. She is hurting and has so much shame and yet I feel the grace of God flow through me to share boldly with her that God will make a way… and it might not be easy… but it will be one step at a time. Through donations with Front Porch, we can help her keep her lights on and not feel pressured to strip in order to pay bills until she gets a job. We can pray with her and encourage her that God has a better plan for her life… that she is tired because she can’t do it alone and needs help…. she needs a Savior… we all do, we are all a mess without Him. Luckily there is one…. and He died on the Cross for HER and for me.

Just in the past 2 1/2 weeks, I talked and prayed with moms about their runaway children, domestic violence abuse, one mom working in strip clubs to pay her light bills…I have been to the domestic violence division of metro police to help a mom turn herself in for violating her probation, been to night court, day court and accepted phone calls from jail. Thom has changed locks to protect a family from a dangerous man and brought groceries and rides to school for kids whose mom is in jail. Life is harsh for some of these children and moms and they haven’t even touched the surface about what this is doing in their hearts….it is enough just to live through the cirmcumstances. No wonder many of them have shared with me about their anxiety or depression. One mom came over for prayer after hours earlier sitting on the couch with a butcher knife, ready to take her own life.

I feel like an unskilled social worker and I try not to “Take it home with me.” BUT I LIVE HERE!!! How can I not take it home with me. It’s real and these lives are real and they are hurting so desparately. I know I can’t save them… only Jesus can….and I am so grateful that He is a work.

In the meantime…I feel called. Called to be available… to answer the door…. called to speak boldly. And is not because I have it all together…. it’s only because I know where I find “bread.” Ginny Owens has a song that’s lyrics are something like… “fellow traveler let me take to the place where I find rest….fellow seeker let me show you where I find true happiness…. fellow traveler…. I know where there is bread…good bread…. come with me and sit at the table and you will never go hungry again.”

I love that song (even though I probably just butchered the lyrics). Nevertheless, It reminds me of whose I am…. not who I am. I am just grateful others want to know “where I find bread.” Who knows….maybe they will join me “at the table” and…”never go hungry again.”

My world often feels like a snowglobe. Everytime I see one, I think of my dad saying that I am like a snowglobe…. “when you walk into a room…. it’s like “shake shake shake” and the snow starts to twirl and spin and go everywhere.” I am not sure if he was originally relating to the state of my room as a teenage girl at the time, but there is still truth to this day in his analogy. I have always thrived on chaos.

I can feel it deeply this morning…. as I realized it took me 2 1/2 hours of being awake to settle my soul (let the snow fall) and just sit in the quiet instrumental music of a cloudy morning. I awoke early, only because of my 5 year old who somehow has made it to my bed to snuggle in the early hours managed to push me to the edge of my own king-sized bed. She is good at pushing me to the edge (in more ways than one) and even in her sleep-state was “feisty” enough for me not to want to fight it.

It makes me question why I do not seek more “snow fallen” moments – it feels like food for my soul….. quietness, stillness, peacefulness. I think maybe I am “both/and.” For some reason, God placed our family in the midst of inner-city, door-knocking chaos. We are currently 6 weeks away from giving brith to our fourth (surprise) child in the midst of Thom being nearly 5 weeks now into healing from major backsurgery….. all while being 3 months into officially launching a very busy Front Porch Ministry. There is more…. but I can feel the “snow” twirling and shaking and I don’t want to get my snowglobe “stirred” up again…knowing how long it takes for the settling to happen.

There are so many times, I feel equipped to live out life in the midst of chaos and I can survive…sometimes even thrive. I understand it and can even function in it…. just come to one of our inner-city outreaches. Your head will spin. I have seen it happen with friends who aren’t used to it and it reminds me that God calls us uniquely and individually.

I think the challenge for me is remembering that I can’t stay there. There is so much value in the quiet. There is value in what you can only see and notice in the calmness…. when all the “snow” lies still and there is a quiet, beautiful scene left standing there…..That scene is enough and merits attention aside from the function of the swirling snow. It has beauty all it’s own and can even be valued aside from being shaken or spun. In fact, the scene inspired the snowglobe, not the other way around.

I want to remember that….even in the midst of being surrounded by passionate kids(both my own and our neighbors) who twirl and swirl and shake shake shake when they walk into a room. There is beauty in the calm (not just sound asleep calm). I need the Lord to teach me to let the snow fall (exactly where it may) and rest in the beauty of the scene. I want to take notice of the stillness and the quiet and maybe even softly make snow angels in the mound of snowfall…gazing back at the One that holds my snowglobe world in the palm of His hand.

It’s Saturday, October 4 at 2am in the morning…I am awake all of the sudden and my heart is BOLD to trust God for his provision and step out in faith for the ministry God has called our family to…

God began this Front Porch Ministry…. and for some reason, He called our family to live it out daily… the mission “trip” He arranges everyday with what seems to have an “open ended” plane ticket back to the life we were living before we “arrived” in the land far away from our home as we knew it….the land called “The Front Porch” where we arrived almost 4 years ago when we bought this house in East Nashville. Life as we knew it changed permanently for our family that day… December 2, 2004 and God became the “mission leader”… the tour guide of this un-ended “mission trip” to a different way of living and a different kind of “schedule.” The master schedule would be “written” since the beginning of time, but our mission leader would choose to hand out the itinerary daily, sometimes hourly and the calling would be simply… “Availability.” The sacrifice would be very little “free time” so when you do get it, learn to use it wisely. The money needed for this trip….it will “cost” something, sometimes more than you think you have to give. “Out-of-pocket” expenses will be covered… but you must trust the “mission leader” for reimbursement…. and trust that your basic needs, plus some perks and money needed to help others will be provided (this is starting to remind me of The Amazing Race). There is no typical day in this culture…. Life happens in real time in this land and you have to respond to it with discernment or face being another ineffective “outsider” to this land. We have seen other “outsiders” that come to this land… and yet don’t adapt to this land’s culture or get to know the people. We made a conscious decision to fight against that route and instead adapt our way of living to effectively serve the community in which we live. Day planners can only get you so far here… its availability and relationship that seems to matter. Planning is important …. But don’t rely on your plans to get you where you need to go.

The reality…. it’s not completely our time anyways…not for any of us. We all just like to think it is and live like is (I know I do)…until we are finally struck in the head with something that gets our attention and we admit we aren’t in control. For us, right now, it’s our front door knocking.

At 8:30pm yesterday, Front Porch Ministry clocked nearly a 12 hour day in the “mission field.”

The “plan” for the day (and plan for most days at the Front Porch “mission field”)….live life with our family of 5 (soon to be 6) responsibilities and be available to God’s calling on our lives. Live in the home and neighborhood that God called us to…. invest in the relationships that He has brought and continues to grow and seek opportunities to show his love and care.

The “schedule” for the day (we are talking what’s written on the day planner) for the “front Porch”…stay home for the morning and get administrative stuff done

1. First get up, morning routine, take our older two girls to school, squeeze in laundry, dishes, pay bills yada yada

2. Play “choo choo” and read books with my 19month old son– highlight of my day

3. Set aside the morning during the baby’s nap to respond to Front Porch emails, phone calls and requests for Front Porch that have been in my “inbox” and I need to get to

4. Attend a Round Table Discussion Meeting from 12-1 at the Salvation Army

5. Interview with Belmont Student for school project – she choose Front Porch Ministry as her topic to write about 1-2pm

6. Pick up the girls from school at 3pm and let them know they get to go to an ice cream social at the “station army” as they call it.

7. Ice Cream Social at the Salvation Army with the kids from our neighborhood 3:30-5:30

8. Family Night with our kid’s

moderately full day, so it seems….

The reality… like many days…not much of that happened and the timeline of the 12 hours that it went down doesn’t really matter …. The results were amazing and what we couldn’t have orchestrated or hoped for from our own planning of the day… but came about by the grace of God because of flexibility and availability to a Ministry that only God can grow ….:The results of the day were:

-Spending quality time with two single moms who popped by and needed a ride, some coffee and a friend… one who has been very hard to “reach” but who through the course of our time together today felt close enough to ask for help with Math tutoring for GED (big step for her to ask for help from someone). We made some calls and are working on finding her a tutor…. Hopefully even a positive relationship too. She needs positive… she doesn’t have it.

- A Belmont Student who came to interview us for a school project got to meet these two women who stopped by during our interview. She may know someone to help tutor and will work on that. We also talked about her sorority getting involved in community outreach and suggested that she consider taking on a Prom Dress Drive next spring for girls we know that attend Maplewood High School. We even have a location for them, we just need everything else…volunteers, dresses, a seamstress, nail polish etc…There is also a possibility for mentoring & tutoring teens through the Salvation Army.

- The Ice Cream Social today at the Salvation Army drew not only neighborhood kids, but a mom from our church and her teenage daughters to come and hang out and help. They helped serve ice cream and played with the kids and afterwards came to hang out on the Front Porch for a little while. About 10 of the neighborhood kids from the center followed and rode in her van and mine and through the course of our visit, she handed me $310 that she and her husband want to contribute to scholarships for kids to get into the after school program at the Salvation Army. Thom and I had been asking for 10 scholarships to be raised for kids at $25 each. With this money…. We can scholarship 14 kids, including the two scholarships raised earlier in the week. How awesome!

When I drove the kids home after dark from our front porch…. I got the privilege of telling a mom to get her paperwork in because her two kids just got scholarships for the after-school program. God provided. She was thrilled and blown away.

This weekend I get to tell 12 other kid’s moms that God provided for their kids scholarships and also bless the Salvation Army with relationships with these awesome kids and the money they needed to be in the program.

One of the best parts…my kids got to be a part of it… right along side. Being loved on by not only their daddy and I, but by a neighborhood of kids and moms whom they don’t even realize they are giving their lives away for…

Full day…. Yes! Blessed day…. Yes! Planned day… not so much (at least not by me).

I love this “mission field assignment” in the land of the Front Porch… that is never predictable and rarely limited to just on the Front Porch. That just happens to be where the journey for us starts…

The “video” by Scott Moore that told a story that we could never have fit into words…. If you haven’t seen it:

Living On The Front Porch

youtube.com/watch?v=rRGac7eHKgc

The reality of needs if you are willing…(if you made it this far into reading…. then I would beg to say that you are willing)

We are so grateful for the outpouring of people that have been touched or moved by the video story that was shot and produced by Scott Moore on our front porch this summer. He told the story better than we could have tried. We were so grateful to share the privilege and “reality” of our story… our “mission” trip calling with many people (a lot whom we don’t even know) via this video. It has allowed us to share a story that is hard to explain in words or restrict to defining in a pamphlet. Hearts have responded and people want to be a part of Front Porch Ministry. They want to come to the land of the “Front Porch” and see and taste for themselves how awesome these children and moms are that reside here in this land. It is awesome and we want to share this life that is not our doing, but the One who called us here in the first place. We want to take in donations to benefit the children of this neighborhood, arrange families to be adopted at Christmas, orchestrate volunteers for outreach opportunities to plug in and minister to these kids and moms. We are delighted for basketball goals that are being donated for our house and other kids. We have enjoyed the crafts that were donated and anonymously and left for us at the church for our front porch. We were moved to tears with the “painting” that a local artist did for us and blessed us with as a reminder of our calling. The volunteers who have stepped up to help serve on Sunday mornings at the Salvation Army Chapel with me are amazing and couldn’t be done without help. All of is in Awesome!!! Amazing!!! Much Needed and Much Appreciated!!!

We LOVE being a part of all of that and LOVE expanding the Godly influence into our neighborhood. We are relationship people and personally my heart gets filled by the privilege of all of these amazing connections and relationships.

Here’s the dilemma …You all get to go home

So here’s the boldness (and the part that stretches me WAY out of my comfort zone)…

We ARE home… and this has become a full-time life for us!

Thank goodness we didn’t know this was what God had planned for us, or we likely would have “planned” our way right out of it.

But here’s the “unpolished” truth…

We are in great need for some of you to become Front Porch Partners that can invest in us on a daily basis. We need prayer. We need an income for our soon-to-be family of 6 that can support our needs, and help with buying snacks and ice cream that feed a neighborhood and the gas for all the extra driving around we do. We need to build an ongoing ministry fund so that we can plan to send kids to camp and scholarship them into programs that keep them safe and teach them about life. We need ongoing financial support to build a Ministry that requires time and energy and administrative costs to operate. We need your help to do that. And the worst of it for me is we can’t even find time to “postpone” our ministry long enough to raise the support we need, in the “scripted fashion” that we have been advised we need to do it in. Some of you have even contacted us via email or signed up on a sheet and probably want to give, but are just waiting for me to call you back. I want to talk to you and could call you now… at 5:44am. But again…unlike traditional “missionaries” who plan, raise support and then go…instead we went, became missionaries (much to our surprise…a “real” missionary friend had to point out to us that we were missionaries) and now we need to raise support.

If were up to me I would prefer the first way (or not at all, really), but that is not the way this whole thing has come about for us (must to our surprise again).

So….

Here’s how you can help:

Pray and follow God’s prompting…

Giving online at http://www.frontporchministry.org/get-involved/give/

Pray:

Pray for us that God provides protection for our family and the families we serve – we live in a dangerous part of town that is crawling with drugs, prostitution and gang-related activity. Not to mention we have become a target for satan’s attacks.

Pray for our availability, effectiveness and endurance.

Pray for the children – come to Christ as their Savior.

Pray for the children – God will become their “Abba” Father, especially to those who are fatherless.

Pray that the children will break the cycle of addiction, jail, teenage pregnancy and abandonment that has run rampant in many of their families for generations.

Pray that many adults will come to know the personal relationship with Jesus Christ and that they commit their lives to putting on the “new” and letting go of the “old” – walk in freedom from addiction and lies.

Pray that God will provide us a strong Board of Directors – need 5 to start – that are willing to be a Front Porch Partner, and willing to help with some fund raising support for Front Porch Ministry – That their giftings will make up for areas we are lacking.

How God will use your hands to impact lives for eternity…whether on our front porch or your own…or maybe even both!

Driving along…singing worship songs.

It’s Saturday morning and I am truly excited to prepare to go to a brunch with friends this morning. This brunch won’t taste like the amazing chicken salad from The Puffy Muffin or fruit tea with mint sprigs and cute little petit fours for dessert. Actually I don’t know what we are serving for sure. It’s been donated. The conversations won’t be about how we spent our week or the trip we are planning for next month. There won’t be references about going to the zoo or how we haven’t visited the Science Center enough this semester. Or even how our children are doing in school.

No, the conversations will be drastically different than that… more raw… more about the hardships that seem to live on the surface for these friends of mine. Life is hard day by day. There are no thoughts about enjoying a day as a family at the zoo or planning a picnic at the park – there is too much harder stuff going on RIGHT NOW that requires all the energy it takes just to make it through another day….. Several of them we will get to celebrate that they are about to finally move back into a place where all of their kids can be back together with them. We can celebrate a God that is faithful to provide for their basic needs….. Miraculously. Three weeks ago it wasn’t looking so good…. but of course… God came through again. Of course He did…I will share with my friends. I will remind these friends that God desires to do abundantly beyond what they could Hope or Desire. He Desires to Bless them… just believe it….. Live it…. claim it. That is a hard sell to these friends who can barely keep their heads above water. To believe that God wants to bless them abundantly…. “where is the abundant in their lives”…. they ask. I don’t have an answer.

I know that life is harder for them – I see it… I believe it. The facts are I am not trying to raise 6 kids on my own, with no GED, barely a job that pays minimum wage. I didn’t have 5 of those kids with a man who resides in prison and has NEVER been a father or a husband to his “family.” I don’t have the answer. What I DO KNOW is that God is not interested in the facts. He is a God of our Hearts. I do know that we are responsible for the consequences of our sin, yet we can ALL surrender our sin to a God, through the sacrifice of His Son, who can leave us all as White as Snow. Forgiven and as true Daughters of the King….

I am left to believe that maybe the abundance is on the inside… in the heart… in the soul… in the hope that we have…. the hope that God is real and hasn’t forgotten his daughters….. Not one of them. He isn’t interested if they are lavished abundantly in jewels from this earth or cute handbags. He is interested in lavishing His LOVE, His HOPE, His HEALING, His LIFE on them….. On me.

I may not have the answer for them that they may want to hear or can get their arms around right away….. My answer doesn’t make their circumstances of life any easier…. or prettier….but I hope…. no I pray….. that through a friendship built on Jesus Christ…. we will sit at the table of our Father and believe that we are ALL Daughters of a King with an inheritance that is more valuable than rubies and gold…. more filling than earthly possessions and more promising than anything this life can offer.

I feel honored to participate in this unordinary, yet extraordinary brunch…. and perfectly at “home” with my friends. We have more in common than meets they eye. We are all “daughters” which means we are all “sisters” which means that we all have the same father. Abba Father….. “daddy” and we all have the same access to him, not some as step daughters…. but ALL as Adopted Daughters of the King…. who wants to Lavish us with His Love.

So, I guess…. no, I know…. I am really off to a brunch with my “sisters” to enjoy a “feast” fit for the King’s Daughters, whom He loves and wants to Bless. How blessed am I!!!!!

http://www.rccbirmingham.org/sermons.htm

Listen to the one entitled Seek the Welfare of the City.

I was blessed by listening to this message. It was so affirming of what the Holy Spirit has been working on through us, without ever hearing a sermon exactly like this. Amazing how God works in our hearts for His Glory. I couldn’t sleep this morning after my young son woke up and wanted a bottle. I have been wrestling with all of this formalization of “Front Porch Ministry” and what direction God is leading us, how to unashamedly ask for financial support, not so much struggling with asking for our neighbors sake, but struggling with asking to launch a full-time ministry out of our home, how to move forward, answer people’s email requests, questions and desires to get involved. It is all a bit overwhelming for me. I feel like I am being moved out of my comfort of just “living out this calling” without having to formally commit to it and even help others to get involved. It feels as challenging to me as the first time God called us to move here – I am wrestling…. and as much of good thing that always turns out to be (for God’s sake), I am uncomfortable with it and feel called to more than I can do on my own – which is where my reliance on the Lord needs to step up to the next level. It’s exciting and scary all at the same time.

I am grateful for the women who sent it to me. There have been so many times I have questioned “what are we doing here… are we really making a difference…will our impact count… Lord, are you sure you called us to this?… are our children going to suffer?, what will this cost us?, how can we really do this, when we have our own issues? Are we equipped?” This sermon helped me (personally) to make sense of some of those questions and be able to “label” them in God’s “economy” terms. Salt to the earth (preservative) and mustard seeds (it matters for eternity). Not to mention… according to Jeremiah, it is the way God called us to live and according to Jesus, it is what he modeled.

Please pray for us as we wrestle with how to move forward with Front Porch Ministry and what God is calling us toward. It feels bigger than I can handle and I am terrified and excited at the same time…. and sometimes I just want to go hide under a rock until it all blows over .

Sustained by God, Michele

It is 6 in the morning and I have been awake for 2 hours. How does the happen to a pregnant, non-morning person. My only explanation is God. He is the only one brave enough to wake me up and KEEP ME UP this early in the morning. I think He knows I wrestle harder in the morning (maybe He knows that I want to get down to business quickly so I can get back to sleep before the little ones start to wake up or maybe He knows I am not yet affected by the highs or lows of the day, and therefore I am more raw in my emotions and thoughts). Whatever the reason…. I am awake and wrestling. I have prayed, listened to a sermon (link below) and in my effort not to feel so alone in my wrestling, I have even learned how to post a “note” on facebook. I guess hoping for an answer (from someone in cyberspace) or “cure” for my wrestling. I don’t like feeling alone in my wrestle and yet my online friends is “O”, my kids are asleep, my husband is asleep and I am pretty sure the neighborhood is finally asleep after an active Saturday night in the inner-city. So I am left to wrestle with the One who woke me in the first place.

In the Beth Moore Study I am doing right now ‘A Women’s Heart – God’s Dwelling Pace’, God talks about the daily manna He provided for His people each day (Exodus 16: starting in verse 4). They were to gather it up in the morning, He would provide exactly what each family needed and no more, and if they tried to store up more than just that day’s amount, it would rot and be full of maggots. Beth Moore comments (as she is so anointed to share) “He was telling me that a sufficient amount of mercy and grace would be set aside for me everyday of my life, enough every morning… and in direct proportion to every moment’s demands; but we must go (get out of our tents, like the Israelites lived in the dessert) and gather it – that part is our responsibility. God wants a daily relationship with Him, which starts with a daily approach and dependency on Him.

There are so many times I want a Sunday God that will last throughout the week or at least “cover” me on the days that I sleep through going and getting my daily manna. I am often too inconsistent for a daily manna – I certainly don’t want to go to Kroger everyday to get that day’s portion of our family’s food. I want to treat God the same way – a weekly shopping list so I don’t have to think about it again until the next week. Sure, if in need, I may run out and get some milk or bread half way through the week, but certainly not the big “shopping.” Same with my approach to God sometimes…. if in need… I will run to you.

Well I am in need… bit off more than I can chew and need my daily manna…. and I will need my manna for what is looking like a long time running. I need my daily God back and thankful for me… He hasn’t ever changed.

Feeling ill-equipped and in need of the One who is Equipped,

Michele

I spent the morning with a mom who is struggling to get back on her feet. Two of her 6 sons recently spent time in Juvenile for a crime that ultimately got her evicted from her housing. She is currently had to split her kids up and stay with family who spends more time judging her than they do helping to encourage her. She starts a new job at Wendy’s tomorrow and is working to get back on her feet. She does not have her GED, nor does she have a car or a penny to her name. She started having kids (like the generation before her) as a young teen and is basically “growing” up with her kids. She has bills (like NES) that she is behind on and cannot obtain help with Housing from MDHA until she pays it off. Until then, she struggles. Life is a struggle and yet somewhere inside of her, she knows that there is hope somewhere. She clings to God and begs for help, knowing that she is responsible for her decisions and her problems. Aren’t we all? We know lots of women and children in this situation. They leave a trail that traps them from ever getting ahead. It saddens me deeply and I can’t offer to save her, but I can be a friend and give her a ride and even help her get a bus pass to endure that she can get to work and put one foot in front of the other. Only the Lord can save and in His mercy and grace He can offer us a fresh start…. He can make us White as Snow