It’s a beautiful Sunday morning. Sun is up. Birds are singing. Most of my kids are still asleep. It’s cool outside. I’m reminded of a Sunday morning from my childhood. I can’t remember why, but my brother and I were staying at my Grandparnt’s house on the 4VEH missionary compound in Vaudreuil, Haiti. I was twelve years old. I always woke up with the sunrise in Haiti. You could hear birds singing, roosters crowing. Maybe some donkeys braying. I could hear movement in the house as my Grandmother bustled around, getting breakfast on the table.

My Grandmother was a very scheduled person. Before we went to bed, the night before, she would have told us the exact time that breakfast would be served, and no one would even think of being late. The table was in the dining room that also opened into the living room on one side, and a doorway into the kitchen on another side. The table was always set very precisely. Cloth napkins with napkin rings. My Grandma really liked napkin rings and she had an individualized napkin ring for each member of the family, including grandkids. She used a label machine to print tiny neat labels for her and Grandpa’s napkin ring. No confusing who’s ring belonged to whom.

She always had two glasses at her and Grandpa’s table setting. A small glass for juice, and a larger glass for water. I remember eating pancakes and watching with great interest as my Grandpa would take a mango, cut it neatly into cubes and then put the cubes on his pancakes, along with a big dollop of homemade plain yogurt. It did not look appetizing to me. Maybe mango by itself, but on pancakes?? My brother, across the table, would spend a great deal of time spreading rich Haitian peanut butter on his pancakes, before he covered them with syrup. I shook my head and opted for the traditional syrup and butter.

We would eat and then wait until my Grandmother took out her Bible and read a Psalm for the day. The rhythmic clicking of the ceiling fans, the constant tick tock of the wall clock, birds singing, and scripture being read aloud, this was a Sunday morning.

After breakfast had been cleaned up there was a bustle to get ready for church. Make sure your hair is brushed neatly. Do you have your Bible? My Grandmother would walk out of her room and hand cardboard fans to my brother and I so we could fan ourselves during the service. She had a whole collection of cardboard fans and fancy women’s fans. The cardboard fans might have a pretty picture of flowers and scripture written on it. (If you haven’t seen these before, imagine a rectangle of thin cardboard, glued to a popsicle stick, voila, personal air conditioning at its best.)

Then my Grandmother would hand my brother and I a Haitian hymnbook. In Haiti, at that time, there was one standard hymnbook. Everyone was responsible to buy their own hymnbook and bring it to church every Sunday. I am presuming that all the churches used the same hymnbook, no matter what denomination, as I know our family visited many different types of churches, but it was always the same hymn book. (If I’ve got that wrong, forgive me, I was a kid, not paying attention to a lot of details.)

Armed with a Bible, hymnbook and fan, we were now ready for church. The church my Grandparents attended was only a couple minutes walk away, but by that time, my Grandparents were moving slower so we would pile into their light blue peugot and drive the short distance to the church. Then the endurance game began.

I was not fluent in Creole, and even my mom, who spoke Creole very well, had a hard time following along in a Haitian church service. Everyone spoke so fast. Our job as missionary kids was to sit quietly and pretend like we were paying attention.

The hymn singing was at least interesting. The words were printed out so I could gather the meaning better and I always loved singing. But then finally it was sermon time.

Let me set the scene first though. The church was made of concrete block. It had high ceilings and a large cavernous sanctuary. The walls were covered in windows (the kind that is made by simply leaving artistic spaces unblocked) and the doorways were all open, trying to let as much airflow as possible happen. The space was crammed full of long wooden benches. The benches in the front of the church had backs, but the farther back you went, the more basic the benches became, just a long wooden plank. There were bright banners and ribbons hung everywhere. The church was packed, and everyone was in their Sunday best.

My Grandparents were considered honored members so they got to sit up front, which meant my brother and I had to sit up front, which meant we had to be on even better behavior. Everyone was crammed in as close together as possible to make room for everyone else.

Once the sermon started in earnest, I would pull out my English Bible. I figured out, early on, that you can get away with inattention, if you are reading your Bible. I eyed my Grandmother who was patiently fanning herself with her fancy blue lace fan, eyes forward, seeming to be completely caught up in the sermon. I pulled out my cardboard fan and gave a couple waves and then gave up. Flipped my Bible open to the Old Testament, (should I read Genesis, Joshua, Ruth, Kings?) and slowly lost myself in all the old stories. I think I can credit my great familiarity with the Old Testament with Haitian church. Trapped on a bench in blistering heat, nothing else to do except read my Bible.

Finally, several hours later, the service ended. The last speech, the last special music, the last prayer. Everyone stood up and started milling around. I stood patiently by my Grandmother while she greeted all the people around her, until she had a minute, and then whispered in her ear, can we walk back to your house and meet you there? She nodded her agreement, I nodded at my brother who was also waiting for permission, and we carefully edged ourselves out of the crowd and took off for my Grandparents house.

The rest of the day would be a big Sunday dinner, followed by my Grandparents taking a long nap. We were on our own for entertainment for the rest of the day. Read a book. Walk around outside. Nothing loud or too boisterous. A day of rest. Something I didn’t appreciate at that age, but now, it sounds wonderful.

P.S. One of my Grandma’s fans I inherited.

Our church is doing a reading plan together on a Bible App. We are reading through the Old Testament. Every day it gives you your chapters to read and at the end there is a place you can make comments and see what everyone has to say about the daily reading.

On Sunday morning I followed my normal routine of laying in bed, checking my email, the news, and then going to see what the daily Bible reading was for the day. We were starting the book of Job and I groaned and shut off my phone. I did not feel like reading Job. My husband was out of town and I was feeling physically sick. There was a bug running through the house and I had not escaped it. Job felt a little too close to home at the moment.

By lunchtime on Sunday I couldn’t pretend I was Ok any more. I climbed into bed and proceeded to have a fever and nausea and horrible sore throat for the next 24 hrs. My oldest took care of the household and everyone was fine, but I was miserable. Then the next day, my oldest got sick and I had to pass on responsibility to the next kids in line as I was still too sick to get out of bed.

Plans that we had made weeks in advance had to be canceled. Disappointment had to be dealt with. Groceries had to be ordered for delivery, as there was no one well enough to drive. And on the edge of all that was Job waiting to be read.

I’ve read Job many times before and each time I come away with something different. This time, I lay in bed, set my App to read aloud the passages for me and lay there kind of listening as my body ached, my throat was in agony, and I tried to fight off nausea.

For me, I think my simplest explanation of the book of Job is of a man who suffers horrible things, wants to know why he is suffering, has a bunch of friends give him a bunch of reasons for why he’s suffering, and then he finally talks to God, and walks away knowing that the “why” is not what he’s supposed to focus on. The focus is God and who He is. God’s ways are not our ways and we are not Big enough to comprehend it all. We are simply asked to trust him.

Reading Job while sick has been helpful. A good reminder to not sink into gloom and despair as all my carefully laid plans got unraveled with a rather horrible virus. My daughter was very upset about her special events having to be canceled and she wanted to know WHY DID I HAVE TO GET SICK NOW??? And of course there is no answer for that question. Rather, we can rest in knowing that our God is good and we can trust our lives in his hands.

One week ago I was at the end of myself. My self-loathing was high and I felt hopeless. I lay in bed Saturday night and talked to God about it. Essentially the conversation was, Lord, you gave me this wonderful body and I have not taken care of it. I have broken it. And no matter how many times I swear I’m going to do better, in my own strength I cannot change. I’ve tried and failed so many times I’ve lost count. I can not fix this in my own strength. And as I lay there, exposing my sin to God, I just wanted him to do something. Yell at me. Tell me how disappointed you are in me, agree that I’ve really messed things up. Punish me. Anything. Just do anything to get me out of this horrible place of stuckness and failure. As I lay there I was exhausted and feeling so low. I started to drift off to sleep and there was a whisper in my mind, “You are Loved” and a peace came over me and I fell asleep. In the morning, those words came right back to me and I repeated them over and over again in my head as I got ready to head to church. Maybe there would be some answers for me in the service.

We had a guest speaker, Clem Ferris, and his sermon had me sitting on the edge of my seat, as it felt like God was speaking directly to me through his words. He was talking about grace. And there were two things he said that have stuck with me all week. First, he told a story about how his dad let him “drive the car” when he was seven. He sat on his dad’s lap, held the steering wheel and “drove” the car into the garage from the driveway. He was so excited about his big accomplishment. But the truth was, his Dad had his hand firmly on the bottom of the steering wheel and it had been his father who actually drove the car. He pointed out that our sanctification is like that. We think that we are doing everything in our own strength, but God is the one that is making the changes in us, it’s his strength that accomplishes things in our lives, not our own. Second, he told about how his perspective changed on the story in the Bible where a woman caught in adultery is brought before Jesus. The crowd is ready to stone her and Jesus says, whoever has never stoned, throw the first stone. The crowd slowly leaves without throwing any stones. Jesus asks the woman where her accusers are, didn’t even one of them condemn you? She says no and he says, Neither do I, go and sin no more. Clem said that his interpretation before used to be, Jesus not condemning her was grace. And then of course, she needed to go and work hard at not sinning any more. But now, his view was, Jesus didn’t condemn her because of the work he was about to do on the cross which would cover all of her sins. The grace in the story was telling her to go and sin no more. That is something that is accomplished with the help of the Holy Spirit. God doing the work in us. After the sermon, our church always has a prayer team at the front of the church so you can get special prayer for whatever you need. As the service was over and people were starting to stand up to leave, one of the pastors reminded everyone about the prayer team and said they felt like there was a special call for those who were needing freedom. I went up. And was met by two dear ladies that I know and I trust. I talked to them about my inability and seeming undesire to care for my body in the way that I know I should and my inability to fix the problem. They prayed over me. And while I can’t remember all that they said, the theme was love. You are loved. There is no condemnation. God is the one steering the boat, not you. I went home and ended up having most of the day to myself as my family scattered all over the place. I took a really long walk, thinking about the sermon. I went to bed several hours earlier than normal and slept a lot. In the morning, I was still thinking. I ate my normal, not so great for me, bowl of cereal. Not sure what to do now. And then somewhere around lunch time I felt a surge of hope and suddenly had a plan.

Two years ago, when I had been working really hard to get healthy again, I had used a personal trainer app where a personal trainer gives you a workout to do every day and you record everything you eat on the app and the trainer is available to give dietary advice. I still had the contact info for my old trainer and I texted her, telling her I’d like to get started again. Within half an hour I was all signed up and already had a workout assigned to me. I went ahead and did it. Then I decided I might as well record what I was eating, so I put my info in, then I decided that I should probably start checking my blood sugar with my glucometer (something my doctor told me to do but I’ve been avoiding for over half a year) and I might as well record my numbers on the fitness app so my trainer could help keep me accountable. So I did that. Which was an unpleasant reality check, but it was also motivating. Ok. What can I change so I can get those numbers lower? In the past week I have been exercising a lot, made major changes in my diet, and I’m already seeing improvement in my blood sugar numbers. I have been filled with hope and peace and I haven’t felt once like cheating or stopping. And that is a miracle. A week ago I truly felt dead in my sins, completely unable to help myself. And today I feel alive in Christ, set free from bondage.

I think the takeaway point I want to make is that this has come about from a fresh revelation of God’s love for me. His love for me now, as a broken person who doesn’t have the strength to help herself. Not as a perfect person who is doing everything right. There are two things I’ve been repeating to myself all week. You are loved. And Jesus is the one driving the car, not you.