weekend report

It's been a while since I've written.

I messed up and lost my domain temporarily - but was able to get it back fortunately!  So here I am.

It's been so busy at Crossroads that I barely get to think about what's next, but thankfully I get to do life with staff I love - while pursuing our ultimate goal to provide as many opportunities for people to know our Savior and grow closer to Him in their daily lives as we possibly can.  Always with a focus on eternity, not the problems of today!

As we carry on the daily work I try take time to praise Him and thank Him for all he's given us at Crossroads.

This past week our praise team did an awesome job leading us in a great time of worship with our praise choir as Pastor Jesse completed the Desperation series.

 Our Setlist:

Announcements
Wonder
Glorious Day
Amazing Grace My Sins Are Gone
Revelation Song
Series Bumper video
Message: The Gift of Desperation  - Jesse Rider
Exit Song - Wonder


It's amazing to watch ministry during the week when the services are over and not everyone is there.

I watched a beloved friend who serves weekly move about the office cleaning the bathrooms and washing our towels.  She just quietly moves through our work zone, doing what she does to make our areas so wonderfully clean and neat!

Today was also a good example of the church at work as we hosted a funeral meal for one of our precious senior attendees.  My husband and I had been in his families' home for card parties, Christmas get togethers and meals together.  He always had some teasing for me and I'll miss him. This weekend there will be one more empty seat in our auditorium, instead of being there he's sitting with my dad, looking at the face of the King of Kings!  How amazing is that?

We have a team of volunteers that do a beautiful job of serving our funeral meals at Crossroads and I got to witness them 'doing what they do' so well to comfort and serve a family experiencing loss.

the Crossroads kitchen full of generous serving

This is ministry.

And I'll never tire of being part of it!

a great outpouring

I have never experienced anything in my life like the passing of my father, on many levels.

One is the great outpouring of love and support in the form of cards and letters that are still coming from my friends and relatives.  Another was the amazing food that friends brought to us!

As I sat with my mom this afternoon - I read through all the cards she has received.   I couldn't believe the pile of cards and notes she had!  The thing we marveled at was that nearly every card had extensive writing in it.  The amazing detail people included about their relationship with dad made us smile.  And the only ones that didn't contain extra writing, were from people that we've spent time with and talked to over the past several weeks, or from people who didn't know my dad, but sent beautiful cards to encourage us - a generous outpouring!

As I returned home today, my husband handed me the mail which also still contained cards coming from dear friends!

Thank you so much!

It's so hard to believe it's been a week ago that we held dad's funeral service.  Out of all the services I've helped to create, it was my greatest honor.  I loved him so so much...

We invited dad's pastor whom he loved to open the service and then family members lead the rest.

Eric and Jocelyn lead the music

My brother John read scripture

Aaron had the difficult task of reading the families' memories of dad and my brother-in-law Rob Barlow delivered a perfect message, and then my precious hubby gave the graveside message!  I was thankful for the talents of each family member, so thankful!

The veterans were so kind to honor dad too!

My mom only wanted to have 2 hours of visiting hours right before the funeral service, which was at 3:00 p.m.- so I was worried that she might be disappointed in attendance on a workday.  But everyone  just kept coming and coming to pay their respects to my amazing dad.

They came to pay respect to the man that taught me who God is, what kind of a man I deserved to marry and how to raise kid's to love the Lord.  The man that adored my mom for nearly 60 years.

I miss him desperately and just cannot thank you all enough for all of your care, your support and your example of what it means to have amazing brothers and sisters in Christ.

Now we turn our attention to mom and the tremendous changes that she will be experiencing.  To lose a partner after so many years...so difficult.  One of the saddest pictures from the whole experience was the one of mom walking out of Hospice with all of dad's possessions for the final time.  It makes my heart ache.

But she's leaning into her Heavenly Father and continues to encourage everyone else - an amazing women for sure!

Thanks for continued prayer!

Guatemala changed me

My first blog following our trip to Guatemala had to be about the hopeless faces of the children.  The most innocent, most abused and most helpless to do anything about their situations.

I loved these older gentlemen
talking as they walked by us.
Possibly friends for years and year
or maybe even brothers.

But tonight as I sat down to finish going through pictures I felt that tug at my soul once again.

The conditions I saw in Santa Maria have left a hurt deep inside me.

This is an example of a normal home in Santa Maria

Houses built of rusty metal, a font wall of
block and shards of glass along the top for security.

Wood for cooking is stored on open roof.

You can see a boy if you look closely using the same sink
his mother washed clothes in and scooped cooking water from.

I guess the sadness I feel comes first of all because I think of Jesus' words when He spoke about 'the least of these' and the times He told us to care for the poor, and that He said they would ALWAYS be with us.  What is so difficult to accept is that what we saw would not be impossible to solve - to change - to rescue!  But this can only be accomplished through great patience, care and a lot of respect for their society and the way they do things.

The spiritual darkness there is deep, abuse within families - very common, and the temporary escape from hopelessness that alcohol offers destroys what remains of many families forcing the church to take a strong stand against it, even at the risk of appearing judgemental.

Complicated.

The bottom line is - we can help.  Our teams working side by side with the coffee farmers and the villagers building stoves or water filtration systems accomplish multiple things at once.  We get to help teach them how to meet their most basic needs for clean water and cook stoves that are vented - while showing them what it means to find true, eternal hope in Christ.  They know we're different and they cannot figure out why we would take the time not only to come once, but to come year after year and build on-going relationships with them as we teach them how to solve problems, and point them toward a Savior.

It was such a privilege to go and I hope to return, over and over!  Meanwhile, I can cover them in prayer as they tirelessly continue the work that we got to be a small part of for a week.

Ladies or girls carry heavy bowls of corn, many times
on their heads, daily for grinding to make their tortillas.

I've never seen such strong people - the
amount they carry is mind boggling.

watching mules and horses pass by makes you feel
like you've taken a step back in time.

I loved the creativity of the children - playing with old tires or anything they could find.

This is a look inside a home that we were honored
to be invited into.  How these people raised the
beautiful children below in a mostly dirt floored room
is beyond me!

These are other sites we saw around the village as we took a prayer walk through the village.

This was the entrance to the graveyard. 

I even got to see how a funeral takes place one day while standing on a balcony. 

 Last weekend celebrating the Sanctity of Life drew my attention again to the voiceless unborn, the babies that never will be.

While being in Guatemala introduced me to a voiceless people although fully born - mostly forgotten and ignored.

Oh Lord, how you must long for us all to come running to you...

life keeps on moving

As I find myself sitting here in the video booth at Crossroads, waiting to cue up a video honoring a young woman's life that was taken by the horrible disease diabetes.

I too lost a 40 year old brother to this disease.  I absolutely hate what it does to the body it overtakes.

The thing that always catches my attention at any of these kinds of losses is the fact that life all around us just keeps on moving.  Totally unaffected by the hearts that mourn this morning.

While people inside Crossroads struggle to make sense of a life cut so short -- people beside us buy their weekly groceries at Kroger or shop for thematic crafting items in preparation for fall celebrations or early Christmas preparations at Hobby Lobby.

When something so totally consumes you personally like the loss of a loved one,  it's shocking to watch the total disregard of everyone around you.  Not that they knew this girl or her family, but, because of being so totally inside this loss, saturated by it - it's hard to watch as traffic drives by and people laugh walking down sidewalks...

I am speaking to both myself and you as I encourage you this day to really 'see' what's around you.  Consider what others may be dealing with and have the mind of Christ always considering others before yourselves -

just passing through

This was the name of a group of local guys who played years ago in the Central Ohio area. We loved their music and knew all the guys from several area churches.

Today we have been at church all day as hundreds and hundreds of people stood in line for 3 hours to bid farewell to Craig - one of the best singers in the area, bar none! Craig passed away late last week. Everyone is shocked.

I just returned to my office after walking across the Town Square area of our church and I saw the album that a few excited young guys worked to produce all those years ago...Just Passing Through in large print on the front of the album...how well that describes all of our very short lives.

funeral

Yesterday I attended a funeral.

Approximately 50 other people also attended.

As I sat there I couldn't help but wonder, if I died would people come? Of course my friends and immediate family would, but, beyond that?

Have I affected people's lives enough that they would take time off of work to come? Have I impacted anyone outside my immediate circle so much that they would alter their schedule for a day to come? Who knows...

I could see cars going down surrounding streets as I sat there, busy with their lives. Oblivious to the deep loss of the family inside.

It made me wonder how many people I have passed by without a thought to what they may be going through. How many opportunities to share the life changing message of Christ - did I walk on by...

I sat with 50 people yesterday who came to pay respects and who came to say goodbye - funerals bring perspective, a renewed eternal perspective.

a great loss

Our ministry suffered a great loss this week, his name was Skip.

This man Skip, was not someone I was close to, but I always admired him from afar. Anyone who chooses the Hospital Visitation team to serve on is special. And he was.

At his funeral yesterday, one of the speakers talked about being with Skip a couple of days before he went to be with the Lord. He spoke about Skip's eyes lighting up with the anticipation of seeing Christ. He knew with certainty he was only a day or so away from meeting Him and it's all he could talk about. He longed to be with Him!

The thing that concerned him terribly were the people in his life that he knew still didn't know the Lord personally. He asked his wife to call each one of them so he could speak to them with great concern and urgency. And for those he couldn't speak to one last time, he prayed for in his hospital bed.

While Skip was hospitalized fighting great pain he shared his faith, he lead several people to the Lord right in the hospital room. Amazing!

This is something I cannot get off my mind, if I knew for sure that I only had a day or two to live, would I be overcome with the joy of passing to be present with the Lord? Would I?

I cannot say with certainty.

This makes me sad and has brought great conviction to my soul. I long to be Eternity focused instead of settling for this. In my final days I wonder if I would busy myself trying to make provisions for family, organize as much as I could and fuss about earthly details instead of resting against Christ counting the moments until I saw Him. Life is very, very, very short - eternity forever -

So even in his passing Skip challenges me with a life that always looked ahead and always lived to take many with him, and so he did...awesome!

what I learned today

I attended my Uncle's funeral today. As I sat and listened to 3 men talk about Christ and the fact that my Uncle only recently had accepted the Lord I was very thankful...thankful for all the other people in his life (his sisters and brother) that talked to him about the Lord for years. All the other people planted seeds, prayed, hoped he some day would give his life to Christ.

We sang the old hymn "It Is Well With My Soul" and one line mesmerized me, I had forgotten this line, "And Lord, haste the day when my faith shall be sight"...when my faith shall be sight...no longer will we have to simply believe because we will see Him.

I asked myself, " do I really want the Lord to hurry up and come? Do I ask Him to Haste the day?" This bothered me, indicating a lack of spiritual maturity..

I learned today that if I am really a child of God, then I want to walk so closely with Him that I cannot wait to see Him! My life doesn't reflect this kind of anticipation at times.

How did I get here

So I'm sitting in the parking lot of a funeral home in Canton. I discovered they have wireless...

Anyway I have no idea how we got here, I mean in regard to this place in our lives.

As we pulled up I heard the parking attendant call my husband, "Pastor Ron"...oh man, how did we get here? One of the most impacting, memorable times in a person's life - the death of a loved one. How can we possibly be in charge of such an important event? Pastor Ron...so what does that make me? A Pastor's wife?? Wow... Don't missunderstand, Ron is not officially a pastor at least not in a techincal-degree sense. But his whole life he has been a pastor. He sees deep inside people, he knows what they feel, he cares for them instantly. He loves the Lord.

Ron took a round about way of arriving as our Membership guy, but he was always supposed to be there, he just had a small building project he had to oversee first. God's timing, impeccable, there is no arguing no resisting when you are called.

So that's how we got here. By following God's giftedness, His call. I have to go now, time to go support my husband, a man of God.

very full day

This day was full from beginning to end. I led our first large programming meeting this morning where we invited several of our volunteer praise team members. They came prepared and we moved through the five weeks of services we had to program as quickly as we could for an hour and half . We accomplished more than I ever thought possible in so little time. I was very happy with the results of this meeting!

Then it was off to my home town of Ashland to a funeral for one of my uncles. He was a Christ follower and it was definitely a celebration of his life. He lived 95 years.

I met my parents there and rode with them to the graveside. Of course with my dad nothing can ever be ordinary. Instead of getting in line with the rest of the relatives, my dad had his car waiting at the back of the parking lot so we could make our escape! We went right to our car and away we went while the rest of the family obediently lined up behind the hearse.

We pulled into the graveyard and parked our car pointing toward the exit so as not to get parked in. We then walked around the graveyard with 20+ minutes to read all the gravestones before the others arrived. Finally the rest of our family arrived and we proceeded with the burial. The pastor did a great job and ended in prayer. By the time I opened my eyes my dad was already climbing in his car and was waving for us to get in.

He wanted to get a head start so he could make a stop on the way back to the meal that awaited us at the church. That stop was at an Amish home. We all climbed back out of the car and went into the basement which of course was dark because of no electricity. I walked around trying to see what was for sale in the basement wondering why this stop couldn't have waited until some other day. Only my family would stop on a funeral day to shop at an Amish home. We bought several chunks of cheese, some eggs and candy and climbed back in the car. We then hurried back to the church to eat with the rest of the family.

After this I headed back to church to finish the work day. We still had a Midweek service to get ready!

The service was amazing, worship was awesome and I was very thankful once again to be part of Crossroads!! You can watch tonight's message at www.crossroadswired.com.

Now I am at home with my husband sitting on the couch and eating Frosted Flakes! Life is good!