Two Cups of Coffee
I love Thursday mornings. I buy beautiful flowers, roll out a tablecloth, and spread out scrumptious snacks, tea and coffee. I sprinkle board books, blocks, and baby blankets throughout the living room. At 10am, our house fills with moms and babes for Cape Town’s first ever Help Club for Moms.
We started six weeks ago as a room full of baby strangers and mama strangers. We oooohed and ahhed over the little ones, swapped stories, and enjoyed a very polite amount of coffee and snacks. I cast a vision for the Help Club for Moms to be more than coffee, snacks and a couple of hours away from monotony. I wanted to create an army of moms helping each other mom. (The verb “mom”.) I wanted to equip these moms with something eternal, and to give them something to take home that would change them and their families. Something to impact their marriages and children for good.
You know what they say... If mama ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy!
What if Mama was joy-filled and believed she could change the world by the way she loved God and her family?
I didn’t hold back who I was, what I believed, or why I was establishing the Help Club for Moms. The group was going to have structure - and homework! We were going to do The Joy Challenge together, watching 4 short videos and devos independently each week. (Click here for more info. You don’t have to be a mom, and it’s really, really great!) Some people didn’t come back because of it. Which made me realize - it’s working!
The Ladd Family already looks and sounds very different than the culture around us. We’re used to sticking out. (Lifa’s hodgepodge accent is hilarious!) We spent a couple of years trying to figure out how to fit in. We thought it might help us gather people for the church if we seemed slightly normal. But fitting in has never really worked for us, and it was never Jesus’ motive either. Why would we think Love Jesus Church would be born that way? I had a vision, a hope, and a deep passion for strong families - and the perfect way to put that in motion with a baby on my hip is through the Help Club! So I just went for it. I told the moms how much I believed in them and their potential to impact an entire generation with their joy... and then I passed out their homework.
It. Has. Been. Amazing.
Thought patterns are being re-written. Marriages are being strengthened. Friendships are developing. Discipleship is happening. We are learning and growing together.
As the weeks have gone by, moms have started staying longer. Going back for a second plate of food. You know it’s real when you’re not afraid of seconds or thirds. Or when someone forgoes the standards of South African hospitality and goes into the kitchen to pour their own second cup of coffee - and doesn’t care if it’s two hours old. (There are none easier to please than a bunch of sleep-deprived, breastfeeding moms!)
It started with a cup of coffee, and then it was two. That turned into frisbee picnics, birthday parties, Saturday morning walks, dad breakfasts, matching swimsuits, and baby showers.
It’s working. Not folding in, but living full-on. Even with a baby on my hip.
It’ll work for you too. Whatever might be on your hip, in your hands, or weighing on your shoulders. Don’t fold in. Go full on. Be a little ridiculous in the way you set your table or in the way you give to others. Go a little overboard with your passion, and go against the grain. If it’s from God, it’ll work.
In the places that matter this week, stay a little longer. Have a second cup of coffee. Maybe it’ll make a bigger difference than you know.
