Jenny Rain is passionate about missions in Africa, deep relationships with God and others, and a myriad of other fun things. She and her new husband live in Northern Virginia. You can find her on her blog, Jenny Rain: Rainmakers and Stormchasers, or follow her on twitter @JennyRain. When I first read the post you are about to read, I was immediately struck with the similarities: Wow. She hides just like me. Perhaps you will see yourself here as well.

I am a professional hider. Whether it is skating through a crowd to find an elevator I do not have to share, or eating lunch in my office to avoid the lunch crowd, I know how to hide. I hide because of fear.

Fear has been a constant companion in my life, but not a welcome one. It has been an uninvited straggler in my attempts to prove myself in the world. The weight of fear has lumbered awkwardly like an extra appendage and tethered my should-be-soaring-leaps to the flattened landscape. Like a genetic anomaly, fear has woven its code into the DNA helix of my life. I hide because of shame.

When I was younger shame tangled around my ankles and wound itself like a creeping vine around my abilities. By the time I was six, the roots had embedded themselves in my life and I could barely move. Most of my younger years were spent encased in my toy-room creating make-believe worlds with my Barbies. They had fancy toy cars, lots of friends, and lived in a world inaccessible to my tiny imagination.

I lived my life behind a mask. My masks took many forms . . . self-reliance, people-pleasing, religiosity, intellectualization, corporate success, infatuation with beauty, and relationships. But the masks were all formed as a reaction to the same two villains named: Fear and Shame.

Hiding was so natural for me. It was no longer what I did, but who I was. Like Adam and Eve, the fig leaf was no longer an unusual decoration in the land of freedom, it had become my permanent wardrobe. Yet even in my hiding, God saw me and loved me into being.

He knew my heart rhythm. When I placed my hands over my ears to drown out the fluttering palpitations of my
heartbeat, God heard a melody. When I plugged my ears to the screams of my silenced heart, God tuned into my aria. He was never afraid. He was never ashamed of me.

And it was in His knowing that I reached up my tiny fingertips and clung to His Vine of hope. I dug my toes into the sides
of the muddy hole I was stuck in for leverage, leaned my entire weight on the Vine, and allowed the Vine to heave me
out of the pit into freedom. There are days that I still hide, but now I realize it is a choice, its not who I am.

I am thankful for this reminder this morning – that the hiding is sometimes a way I cope, but it is not who I am. To learn more about Jenny, visit her blog and say hello.

Manda is a chocolate connoisseur who treads ground as a runner on Canadian soil to keep the calories down. She is passionate about women walking in their God-given beauty and freedom in Christ. Well aware that sanctification is a life long process, she walks daily by the grace of God. This 30 year old, fun-loving Jesus chick, married her husband at just 19 years old. She is the mother to two daughters, Anna (9) and Paige (6), and blogs daily about her own imperfections, personal struggles, faith, and victories at There is a Time.

We walked the streets of Jasper in May. Our little family get-away. Snow-topped mountain peeks hedge this National Park. The air a bit crisp. The sun bright. Our little beauties skipped ahead, full of vigor, as my husband and I made conversation along the way. As we strolled in step, he made mention of the street cleaner. “Look,” he motioned, “That’s wonderful. He’s doing such a good job.”

“Yes he is . . . and you noticed.”

I continually encourage this man of mine. I tell him he makes a difference everyday in the lives of his family, his co-workers, his friends. He provides well. He loves extravagant. He serves wholeheartedly. I truly think he is an incredible man.

In the mundane of everyday, I know he questions if he is doing enough. I get it. I wonder if I am enough or if I am doing enough. All. The. Time. Am I making the most of my life? Am I making a difference? Is there something else I could be doing? Should be doing?

As we looked at this man who was a stranger, my husband broke with emotion. Gratitude and contentment simultaneously showed up on his face. I could tell my words touched something deep.

If a man is called to be a street sweeper, he should sweep streets even as Michelangelo painted, or Beethoven composed music or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say, here lived a great street sweeper who did his job well.

~Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Several weeks ago, I printed this quote and had it framed. I took it with me to my husband’s office: a little hope sealed behind glass and an ivory matte. I placed it on his desk, for him to read, to view, to be uplifted. Daily or anytime he needed that reminder, it would be there. For his eyes to read and his heart to believe.

No matter what the job. Small or Large. No matter how big or insignificant a job may seem, we can do it with excellence. We can make a difference.

We never spoke a word to the man who was picking up garbage. As he leaned down to grab scraps of paper and trash that people tossed away, he was creating a clean, blissful atmosphere within this little town. He probably goes about his days without much recognition or thanks. Not much notice.

He gave us more then a tidy sidewalk to stroll on, that day. He gave us a picture of true greatness. Distinction. A street sweeper who did his job well.

Linda has been married to her high school sweetheart for 43 years and is in the midst of the lovely season of life that includes Grandchildren. She enjoys time spent with her family, quilting, knitting, writing, playing the piano and Bible Study. To learn more about Linda, visit her at Linda’s Patchwork Quilt. Her voice is calming and sweet. I know you’ll enjoy her.

Before we can even get the car doors open they are there, spilling out of the house with cries of “Papa!  Grandma!”  I bend over to grab a little one in my arms, reach up for a hug from a grandson who seems to have grown six inches in the past few weeks, and caress the cheeks of a beautiful granddaughter. Everyone is talking at once as we make our way into the house. There is so much they all want to share. I feel like the most loved, important person in the world.

Try as I will, I cannot make time slow down during these visits. How I long to make a few days stretch into weeks. We play and laugh and talk. I lean in close to hear their hearts – the things that are deeper than words. I carry a camera in my hand wherever we go, trying to capture the moments. I know from experience how quickly they slip through our fingers.

We walk slowly to the car when the visit is over  - one last quick catch, promises to come again soon, hugs and one more hug. The car doors close, and it is time to go. They stand in the driveway, waving until we are out of sight. I miss them before we reach the end of their sub-division. They are so precious to me.

I think about a Father who feels the same way about me. He loves me unconditionally and longs to spend time with me. He wants to hear my heart and share my joys and sorrows. He is never too busy. He has all the time in the world.

But what of me? Do I make Him feel loved and cherished? Do I look forward to hearing what He has to say or has prayer become more like a duty?  Do I rest in His presence without counting the minutes – my mind already on the next thing I must do?

Surely He is deserving of so much more. I want Him to feel the way I feel when my grandchildren run to greet me. I want to give Him one of those hugs my grandson gives – the kind that make me wonder if my ribs might actually crack! I want to love Him with my whole heart, and I want Him to know it.

Katie and her German husband, Martin, split their time between life in Berlin, Germany and the Rocky Mountains in the US. In April, she launched an online shop of handmade journals and minibooks. In her own words: “I know we all have stories about ourselves, our travels, our homes; I want to help people celebrate those journeys in a fun (and affordable) way!”

I think the post office must hate me. I am constantly filling out fowarding information. Since June of 2007, my husband and I have lived on two continents, four states, and six communities. I have a whole section of my address book dedicated to all of the companies I need to contact each time we move.

The hardest question anyone could ever ask me is, “So Katie, where do you live?” Or at least that used to be the hardest question.

We just moved to the Rocky Mountains in the US for the summer after 9 months in Berlin, Germany. For a long time, I was working very hard to reach out and meet the expat community in Berlin.  I’d met some really amazing people. It was beyond inspiring to sit at an outdoor cafe, chatting over coffee with people who loved where they live. They were not Germans, and they absolutely loved living in Germany. You don’t have to be fluent in the local language to call a place home.  You don’t have to completely understand the culture around you to love it.  You just have to be open.

At the same time, I have been meeting expats who just ache to get back to where they came from. They hold on so tightly to the world where they came from – to the place where everything was comfortable.  I come home feeling drained.  Somehow, I’d love to give them passion for this fabulous place where we get to live.  It’s all about your attitude and the way you look at everyday life and the choices you get to make.  No one can alter that for you – no matter where you live or have lived.

The definition of home and feeling happy and alive there has to begin deep in your heart before it can grow anywhere else. So what is home?

If you’re not there right now, what do you suppose could change that?

Is it physically moving to a new place?  Or is it moving your heart?

I like to document the places we call home in a little minibook called {Love Where We Live}. It’s one of several journals from my online shop, Gadanke. Imagine what it would be like to look back on where you were after 10 years. What did the little corners of your house look like?  How did you spend your days in town?  What did you love about your home?  I imagine sharing this book with our kids one day.

***

I’m glad for this reminder of the true meaning of home. Katie sent me one of these little home journals as well. Here are some pages from mine:

If you would like to learn more about Katie, visit her at her blog, Making This Home. Or if you would like to learn more about her homemade journals, visit her shop, Gadanke.

Laura is currently hacking out a life overseas in Thailand, where her husband directs a Christian orphanage for girls. She is homeschooling their three small children, loving 44 Asian orphans, and navigating markets that sell fried grasshoppers. After ten years in church ministry, she is learning that practical obedience in a foreign country is much less romantic than the missionary novels she read as a kid. She writes of lessons learned and blunders made at her blog, Laura Parker {Life Overseas}. You can also follow her on twitter.

We each hold a kid’s hand as we navigate the Asian marketplace.  It’s a sweltering mangle of vendors with knock-off sunglasses and the smell of freshly-dead fish and the bodies of nearly-everyone within a scooter-ride’s distance from this parking-lot turned Thai-Walmart-on-steroids. And I start to feel sorry for myself. I’m frustrated at the effort it takes to just get dinner in a foreign land, and I’m annoyed by the heat and the crowds. I grumble about the smells that turn my stomach and the weight of my three-year-old strapped to my back.

And then my shoulder bumps him. Shuffling on cautious feet. Fingers doggedly striking an oddly-tuned keyboard slung around a brown neck. Tin can taped to the side of the scratched instrument.  Eyes glazed-blue, deformed, and seeing only darkness.

And compassion stirs. I scramble for coins to clink into the can, and I touch his hand so he’ll know. And I walk away wondering about what it must be like to navigate a busy marketplace, by yourself, without sight, begging for the money to buy dinner.

And, suddenly, I feel pretty small to be complaining at all.

Ever since our family of five moved to Thailand several months ago, poverty and injustice have been daily visitors. We read the histories of the girls at the orphanage my husband directs, and we are struck with the reality of childhood prostitution. We see the dirty-faced boy selling flowers on our busy street corner, and poverty stands right outside our car window. I hear first-hand accounts of abuse in neighboring countries, and I watch my husband travel into remote villages where rice is the only food in the bowl. I bump into a blind musician at a busy market, begging for pennies.

Insulated. My life six months ago was vastly different; it whispered insulation at every turn. Living a middle-class lifestyle in a quaint mountain community in Colorado, I was enjoying the American Dream. My hands were overflowing with freedoms and conveniences and privileges. I had become so naturally insulated from the less fortunate around me that subtle attitudes of entitlement and discontent quietly became the normal. I never fully realized what I had been given, and so the desire for more and better reared its head all too often.

And then I moved halfway around the world.

Gratitude. And one of the lessons I am learning in this life on Latitude 18 is that the level of my insulation directly corresponds with the depth of my gratitude. If I surround myself with the comfortable and convenient, suddenly “they” start becoming much less important than “me.” If I choose to turn away, eventually my agenda dwarfs most everything else, and suddenly, I don’t have what I need to be comfortable or satisfied. When all I’m looking at is myself in wealthy America, I start feeling like I don’t have all that much to be grateful for.

Oh, but I do.

I have the freedom to stay home with my kids, when the women around me have never dreamed of the option. I have the money to eat. Every day. My kids sleep on beds, in a house, in safety. I have an education higher than most everyone on the planet, and I belong to one of the wealthiest nations in the world. I got to choose who I married {for love, even}, and I’ve always had clean water. But mostly, I know about Jesus, and I  savor the Rescue.

But, when I insulate myself from those precious souls around me–both globally and locally–who have tasted poverty and suffering and abuse, I begin to forget how much my hands are really holding.

And I start to neglect giving thanks.

And I foster entitlement and discontent.

And I begin brush past the blind musician on my way to dinner, and

not feel anything, at all.

What are you most thankful for today? What ways can you “get closer” to those less fortunate around you?

I’m so thankful for Laura’s perspective today, because she doesn’t speak as someone who doesn’t know. She knows. And she sees. And so she testifies. Since she submitted this guest post, her words have been rolling around in my heart. I hope they roll around in yours, too.