Good Shepherd

In this photo, you can see several things…a precious Navajo grandma with her “sheep boy”.  You can see the modest corral the sheep that little guy loves, come to every night. What you can’t see is this little guy’s other Navajo grandma, Maàsani. You can’t see the way these two women gently love and guide my children, how they have openly accepted my family as their own. How they have both wrapped us up in their arms the way I imagine Jesus will wrap His arms around us one day.

What I see in this photo, is my Little Man, loving where he lives…I can vividly hear my girls calling the sheep by name and I can hear “Mister”, the ram, saying goodnight.  I can feel the cool wind of the desert blowing through my hair and across my face and in that memory from a few evenings ago, I feel peace.

This month was a doozy. We had no internet service for 16 days… I had some dental stuff that turned into oral surgery, the kids and J had the stomach bug and we had a conversation with our girls about why there is death because they lost their precious friend. It was not the month I’d envisioned. Nothing, really, about this move has been what I envisioned. Not the good and not the bad.

After a long week, with a trying weekend ahead, we ventured out to serve one of the churches we are blessed to be a part of winterize their buildings. It was then I snapped this shot of Little Man with Grandma E.  The beauty and nostalgia of this photo are not lost on me. The simplicity of the way Little Man loves those sheep and the peacefulness of being with my Navajo sisters is a little slice of heaven. My girls walking around in their boots and talking to those sheep and reminding me that we have to “shepherd the sheep because they aren’t smart enough to find their way, Mommy.”…so true, girls, so true. The life lessons and truths my littles are learning and EXPERIENCING and the conversations I get to have with them because of this step of faith are more than I could have pictured.

And yet, I find the enemy creeping into my thoughts more often than I want to admit. I hear him saying we aren’t cut out for this. I feel the weight of our service here heavily on my shoulders. I feel the stress and anxiety and expectation that things must look and be perfect so that we can build a solid ministry. But God. Y’all, he didn’t call me or my family because we’re perfect-I know, that’s very hard to believe. Ha. ::sarcasm completely intended:: He called us because we are broken people who love broken people and want to love and seek our Father above all else…because we want to show others their brokenness is NEVER to broken for God to put them back together.

The most precious moments of this month have been simple ones like this photo. The peace of this month has been found in the conversations with my Navajo sisters, meaningful deep conversations about where our hearts rest and where the enemy seeks to destroy us. The beauty has been in phone calls home to my crew to say this is hard and I’m not sure and what if I can’t…only to be reminded by those who believe in me AND for me at times, I can’t but HE can.

His perfect peace feels me when I see this photo of Little Man. Those sheep…they just aren’t smart enough…but neither are we. Good thing we have a Good Shepherd to lead us home.