Hope Doesn't Float: It Flies Helicopters
We spend a lot of evenings around the dinner table laughing at Lifa’s inability to stay awake between bites after 6:30pm. Being 8 years old and a soccer ninja is just exhausting.
#ninjalife
A few nights ago, he actually got too tired to chew. So he just started swallowing his food in big, loud gulps. In effort to keep him awake, I started telling stories about some of our very first dinners together.
I talked about what it was like to teach little Lifa how to chew and swallow his food before we even spoke the same language, and how his body was slow and super-ultra-gross in learning how to digest nutrients. Before our dinners, he had mostly lived on flavourless porridge that slid down his throat without requiring chewing and without delivering any nutrition to his swollen little body.
Although his bones were melting from end-of-the-day exhaustion, our healthy and happy Lifa held his fork and knife just like Chris taught him, and thankfully ate his healthy dinner. (And then spent the remainder of his energy trying to convince us that surely not all food had to be chewed… Chewing cheese seems ridiculous!)
We live in a nation full of swollen starvation. People are starving to death, and they’re not hungry. They have no idea their bodies, minds or hearts can feel different because they only know what they’ve tasted and seen.
Yesterday, we loaded our car with big-hearted mamas who spend their days cooking and serving healthy food to the beautiful little mouths of their own communities. Hundreds of children flock to them after school each day, eager for the plate of food and the safe place these ladies offer.
As we traveled to the seminar we were hosting for them, Chris turned on Justin Bieber and I started asking questions to stir up conversations and dreams. (We make the perfect team.)
I asked the car: “If you could learn ONE THING to make your life better, what would it be?"
While my family answered things like learning how to fix stuff (Lifa), fly a helicopter (Chris) and get really big muscles (me), these ladies laid out their hearts and dreams… because there was finally a place for them. The first mother said the one thing she wanted to learn about was how to talk to people better. “So the children can feel safe and I could help when there was problems with other mothers. I don’t know how to help. I don’t know what to do.” The next one said, " I’d learn how to be a better parent so my kids will feel loved and not manipulated."
We were dreaming dessert kind of dreams - flying helicopters and building biceps. They were begging for basic nutrition. Something they could chew on.
The women leading CarePoints - the ones who, in my eyes, exemplify the healing, filling, meaty hope of Christ - sat in the backseat and dreamt that there could actually be more than what they know.
I bowed before them that day and taught them about loving humbly, something they already live so well. They ferociously scratched notes on this word, “humility” that they had never even heard. Then, my handsome husband stood before them and taught them the basic Biblical principles and practical steps of managing conflict. Their eyes unlocked and smiles broke through - just like the day Lifa finally understood what it meant to chew and swallow before taking the next bite so he wouldn’t gag himself anymore.
The most handsome man giving Mama Edith a certificate of completion for yesterday's Equip Day seminar. Photo by Angi Bittle.
They’ve been hungry for so long. Not starving for physical nutrients, but for spiritual and practical ones.
A thought flashed before my mind for just a moment in that car ride. I wondered if I should feel ridiculous for dancing to Justin Beiber and dreaming aloud about squats and lunges and an awesome butt while these women were dreaming of the most basic life-sustaining nutrients. They just wanted to know how to save their kids.
But you know what… Hope is fancy, not flavourless. Hope craves, dreams, desires. Hope comes with dessert and an awesome butt. Hope talks about muscles and helicopters and fixing stuff. Hope even comes with a catchy soundtrack and a music video. Because where hope comes from, nothing is spared.
Just surviving… letting porridge slide down your throat so you don’t feel like you’re starving anymore… makes you lose your appetite for life.
You have to see the menu to know there’s something else available.
No I'm not sorry. Yes, I own that music video.
You have to see someone who is healthy to believe in health.
You have to smell a juicy steak to know what to crave.
You have to hear a Justin Bieber song to know how to dance.
My job is not to end world hunger. It’s to dream about dessert, and to get really big muscles.
I constantly ask God to increase my imagination because His Word says He can do more than we can even imagine. (Eph 3:20)
I’ve given my life to Christ. Why would I just slide through this world without craving, moving, growing, learning, yearning, and doing?
Jesus came and worked, healed, taught, cried and died. He flipped over tables, and He said, “Lifa, you have to learn how to chew that cheese because the meals only get better and better.”
Jesus did stuff.
Hope doesn’t float. It learns how to fly helicopters. It goes to the gym. It fixes stuff.
Hope does stuff. It moves. It breathes. It pushes the roof off so you can see heaven.
What if our job wasn’t to solve the world’s problems by shouting about what people don’t have?
What if the world started to change because we change ourselves? What if we increase our imagination, our abilities, our capacities to whet the appetites of others who just didn’t know. What if two ladies in the backseat of our car saw healthy parenting boundaries and that was enough for them to start wondering if there was something more than manipulation, threats and fearfulness for their families? What if that was enough to chew on for them to take a new idea to their own communities and show the families there? What if a healthy family wildfire started in that backseat?
Want a taste of this stuff that changes the world? Want a bite of hope? Go do stuff. Change yourself so the world can change. Somebody needs to see it so they know they can do it too.