Inspired.

It hasn’t been the best week I’ve ever experienced. Max has a cold. He’s not coping so well. We’re talking repeated meltdowns all week.

So by Friday night I certainly wasn’t in the mood to go out… but I’d made a commitment and I felt obligated.

It was the YWAM Youth Teams annual dessert night. It was important that I was there and deep down I didn’t want to miss it, but as El throw up on me just as I was about to leave, I wasn’t feeling very glamorous. A baby wipe bath and squirt of perfume later, I found myself walking into our YWAM centre alone and amazed.

I walk into this building most days but today it had been transformed into a skate park with video display of the crew… I kept walking and saw an art gallery with thoughtful items produced by teenagers… and then I was entertained by members of the sports team telling me all about their fishing escapades.

our good mate fiona leads the hip hop crew as they show off some of the skills they've been working on.

But that was just the beginning. As the night went on, I was genuinely inspired by heaps of 12-17 year olds. I know what we do with Youth Street. Heck, they’re in my backyard every Saturday. I write grant applications for them. I even helped give a few tips on the event they threw last night.

But sometimes, I forget. I forget what it means to those kids. I forget that it totally changes their lives. I forget that its a lifeline, a defining relationship, sometimes one that shapes them for the future in a way that they look back and say, “I am who I am because of _<insert the name of one of our amazing staff>__.”

And last night I remembered. I remembered and I was proud and privileged and grateful. Proud of the team who makes it happen every week. Privileged that I get to play a part. And grateful that I got to hear about these amazing young lives that have been radically impacted.

As I listened to a mother stand next to her teenage son and share about the change she’s seen him, my eyes welled up with tears as I remembered that my sleeping toddler may have some challenging days, but even weeks like this are only preparing him for his future… for the impact he’s going to make in life.

Motherhood…ministry…it can be tough… but today, amidst the challenges, I feel re-inspired.

That Other Guy In Our Family

We’ve written a lot about Max and a little about me…

But can I just say Jared has been a champion all the while too! We’ve moved some things around on our centre and he was busy building a new chapel and relocating our recording studio. The results are fantastic, stunning, and we’re really excited about the change in culture it brings to our centre and the impact that has on all of our staff and students. Its funny how rearranging the furniture just a bit can make just the right change to our home and I think that’s what these projects have been about.

Our ship is still doing phenomenal things and I thought I’d share a short video clip that had me in tears (and I don’t think its just the hormones) from one of our DTS outreach teams who were working alongside the ship in PNG.

For those of you who get behind what we do, know you’re not just championing our family but an entire nation. And the results have been astounding – not just statistically – but in the way they are changing individual lives, families, and communities.

Good work, team!!

Happy, Happy, Happy!

That’s what this little man kept saying today as we walked the trails to one of our area’s more secluded beaches.

“Happy! Happy! Happy!”

I smiled and all I could think was, “Me too, kid; me too.”

We’ve had lots of happy news lately. It was the first weekend that I was able to do a full clean on the house (a top to bottom clean and on my own) since getting so sick. I turned a significant corner at the 16 week mark and though I was still puffing a bit on our short hike to a secluded beach today, my fitness is coming back faster than I thought it would after laying flat for so long.

More importantly, we got happy news from Max’s surgeon. We left the hospital with tears on our cheeks after being told we would almost certainly be returning for surgery three weeks ago, but as we prayed we began to think that God is up to something else… something miraculous, maybe?

And so it was last Tuesday that while our favourite nurses teased that maybe we were optimistic parents thinking that perhaps those lumps were getting smaller, the surgeon himself wondered if it was a possibility they were starting to break down. The past week and a half Max has been symptom-free on the meds, so he suggested we keep going for a couple of months and see what happens. He also asked us to meet with the infectious disease doctor who is overseeing Max’s case to confirm, but we are feeling confident that something has changed… that a miracle is happening.

And while we don’t love going to the hospital every week for checkups, we are excited that on Tuesday we will not only be visiting the infectious disease unit; we’ll also get to see our new little baby too! A few more days and I’ll be half way through this pregnancy, and we can barely wait to see if this is the little girl we’ve been suspecting or another precious little boy.

Oh, and in case you wondered, in the midst of our craziness, we’re still doing our work with YWAM. And we’re still loving it. And we’re still seeing lives changed. Stories to come! Good ones.

Happy, Happy, Happy Ones!