The Reverse Missionary

*I read this a while ago and have wanted to share it!  Thank you Alise for sharing this message with me.  And now I share it with you, my friends. 

When I start thinking about missionaries, I think about people are sharing Jesus with people. A missionary is someone who knows the gospel message and whose life goal it is to tell that life-giving message to anyone who will listen. I’ve been in the Church long enough to know that you don’t have to go to Africa to be a missionary (though it totally helps your missionary cred), but missionaries have a group they’re out to make sure to tell the story to. The unsaved. 

I’m a Christian and my husband is an atheist.

So we all know who MY mission field is, right?

Yeah, not so much.

I’ve met a lot of atheists in the past two years and one thing I’ve found about almost all of them is that they know the story. They know who Jesus is, they know what Christianity teaches, they know what we believe. They’ve visited our churches, listened to our songs, read our holy book. The message is not the problem.

We are.

We, the Church. We who talk about grace, but are quick to cheer when the bad guy gets his. We who talk about talk about forgiveness, but would rather hold a grudge. We who talk about desiring persecution for His name’s sake, but make sure that we do our fair share of persecuting of “the other”. We who talk about God’s acceptance, but are loathe to share our filth with one another.

And I can look at this and point to all of the reasons why we suck, but I think it boils down to one thing. We don’t believe that God really and truly loves us the way he says he does. And when we don’t believe it, we can’t live it, not really. We serve a God can do “immeasurably more than we ask or imagine” and yet we place limits on how much he can love. We place them on ourselves and as a result, on others.

So my mission? To show love. God’s wide, long, high, deep, immeasurable love. Love that is wild and free. Love that reaches further than we can think, further than we dare to hope. Because when we get that, deep in our bones, we don’t have to worry about making sure people know the gospel.

For more from Alise, visit her blog “Alise… Write!”,

Lingo of the K—Quartet

Cheesy Weesy—Cheese-its

Octopus Pasta—small/skinny pasta

Purr-eee-to—Burrito

Par-ah-tay—Karate

Old Cars—Cars the Movie 1

New Cars—Cars the Movie 2

Shrek with the baby—Shrek Ever After

Shrek and the Dragon—Shrek 1

Woody and Buzz—Toy Story 1

Zurg—Toy Story 2

Woody and Buzz with the Bear—Toy Story 3

Life Saver—Light Saber

Con-fuk-shun worker—Construction workers

Ribble-ing—Dribbling

Star Wars: The Legacy Continues

I grew up on it.  I loved me some Luke Skywalker!  I know the deep desire to be able to ride on the Millennium Falcon.  I know the thrill of seeing Darth Vader for the first time!  However, here I stand, at close to 40 years old, and seeing my son fall in love with it for the first time is WONDERFUL.  He saw one of the “new” (AKA the sucky [personal opinion] ones that are the prequel) ones at my parents house and became OBSESSED with Darth Vader.  I searched for the “real” ones, and found out that since I don’t have a blu-ray player, I couldn’t just walk into a store and buy them.  Well, thank goodness for Amazon!  I bought all three for $40 and so K’s journey into Jedi-hood began!

Since I popped in Star Wars, A New Hope, he has been a Star Wars junkie. He carries his “life savers” (as he likes to call it) around the house (thank you B and R for buying him one—each) fighting the “bark” side.  Yes, my son has 2 of them!  He has a “vintage” Star Wars shirt that he loves to wear, even when it’s dirty.  He tries to talk in the Darth voice as much as possible (which can become annoying) and LOVES to “sing” the Darth Vader theme music even when Darth is not even on the screen.

All of these things are blasts from my past, and I love every minute of it.  I love that K REALLY likes some of the things that I liked when I was a kid.  I like that he is enchanted by space, spaceships, the Force, R2D2 (and by the way, I still have a stuffed R2D2 doll that my grandpa gave me when I was like 7), Ewoks, and yes, even Darth Vader!  Thank you Star Wars for what you are, what you have been and what you will continue to be in the house of Team Williams!

Unique Names

For those of you who know my son’s full name, you know that it’s unique.  I love it.  Well, I hope so, I gave it to him!  However, it seems as if, lately, I have had a slew of students with…distinctive names.  Honestly, they have been unique enough to make me want to blog about it.

—First we have Ciarrah.  It’s pronounced Sierra, but he mom wanted something different.

—Next we have Kristalle—I wanted to pronounce it like the Champagne, but nope, it’s just a regular Crystal. 

—I currently have a Mile-lissa (yes, there is a dash)—pronounced Melissa. When I asked her about it, all she said was that her dad’s name was Miles. Um, ok!

—I have a Demtrius, but he likes to go by Mark.  Oh, ok!

—I recently had a student names Susan, but she liked to go by Precious!

—I also had a student name Ia.  That’s it.  Nothing else.  No, it’s not short for anything.

—Then there was Jerlene.  Not too weird or unique, but kinda is.

—I had a student named Carmela but she liked to go by Kiki or Sunshine. Really???

—I had a student named Tonhetta

There are a few more, but sadly, I didn’t write them down to remember them once the class ended.  I don’t know if it’s just me being overly obsessed with names, what they mean and how people come up with such a name, but there you have it.

Conversation about “dunder” clouds

Scenario:  In the car on the way home from a rainy day!

K: Mommy, are those dunder clouds?

Me:  Yes baby!  And what do THunder clouds do?

K:  They make loud sounds and crash us!

M:  Crash us?

K: Yes!  Dunder and lightning are loud and bright and can crash us!

M:  Konjo, thunder clouds can be loud, but they won’t crash us!

K:  They could though maybe.  They can be scary but we aren’t scared of anysing.  We are brave.

M:  That’s right.  And thunder clouds bring us rain and we love the rain!

K:  Oh yes Mommy!  I love rain! I can jump puddles and wear my boots and… look at that tractor!

*And done with the dunder cloud talk!

Thank you Non-Christians! No Really, thank you!

*Disclaimer—not lumping ALL Christians into this group!  So don’t send me hate mail or a theological _________________ about how you walk in LOVE all the time!

It’s no secret that I call myself a Christian.  Well, I hope it’s not a secret.  I am and I say it proudly. When I say that though, I want to say that I think I am one of the coolest people you might ever have the chance to meet.  But, that isn’t what I want to write about today, now is it? (But really, I am a really cool person!)

It recently came to my attention that some of my fellow Christians, don’t like the fact that I adopted a “Black” kid (their words—not mine).  Now, as with any story, I admit, I am leaving out some of the details (details like—obviously, “[I am]…a lesbian because I adopted a black kid as a single woman” or “I got a tattoo on national TV of my black kid—so I am not only not waiting for God’s order of how a family is built, but I am scarring my temple!…”) surrounding this scenario.  Granted, some of these people have known me for years and it’s pretty sad that judgment, racism, and ignorance still rule their lives.  And for some of this—I blame me!  I have clearly not been a good enough influence or example in their lives to steer them away from such things (add this to the list of things I gotta step up my game for this year!).

But I just want to take a moment to thank all my non-Christian friends (and even strangers) who have had NOTHING but amazing things to say about my adoption.  I just want to thank you for loving my son—no matter what.  I just want to thank you for offering to watch him and be kind to him.  I want to thank you, random lady at Target, who bought me diapers!  I just want to thank you for not judging me for wanting to adopt as a single woman and not say things like, “You should have waited for your husband, so that you could adopt in God’s ‘right’ order.  You are out of God’s will by having a child out of wedlock!” 

Thank you my friends who are worshipers of Buddha and Mohammed, non-believers, Jews, Hindus, GLBT’s (I know this isn’t a religion, but they are part of my life and they love me and K), Atheists and Agnostics (if I left you out, it wasn’t on purpose) for caring about the cause and the plight of orphans like I do.  Thank you for knowing that my tattoo, that I was blessed to get on national television, wasn’t just about the tattoo.  Thank you for knowing that tattoos don’t totally define who I am.  Thank you for knowing that my son is funny and smart and creative and witty and snarky and goofy—just like his Mama! 

Thank you for understanding that there are so many things out there in the world that matter besides petty stuff.  Thank you for being aware of what is going on in the world with things like, oh I don’t know, the plight of ¾ of the world trying to get access to clean drinking water.  Or maybe, just maybe, you might like to know that right here—in our 1^st world life: 13,500 children are diagnosed with cancer every year in the United States, 1 in 5 children diagnosed with cancer will die and everyday, 46 school children will be diagnosed with cancer.  Or maybe worry about/focus on this: More than one in six people worldwide—894 million people—don’t have access to this amount of safe freshwater.  How about the fact that there are 340 million people in the world living with HIV.  Let’s think about there are possible 17 million orphans in the world due to AIDS.  Oh, but why stop there!  Every day 5,760 more children become orphans! 

Ooopsie, Mr./Miss/Mrs. Über Christian—am I making you uncomfortable? Am I revealing trade secrets?  Am I ratting you out?  Well GOOD FOR ME!!! Get over it!  I am not telling non-Christians anything they don’t already know about you—you suck sometimes.  You judge them for piercings and hair color and dating choices and music choices.  You judge them for not being just like you! 

Don’t get me wrong.  I know plenty of people who serve God, love God and love others.  I adore them.  They are in my inner circle of friends, but so are the other people I am thanking in this diatribe.  I have said all of this to say, I still love you—you judgy Christian!  NO MATTER WHAT!  That won’t ever change. I will still hug you when I see you!  I will continue to pray for you because the Bible tells me to “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.”  I love you because God loved me when I was unlovable.  I love you because I don’t always deserve love and I still get it, so you will get my love too!  I love you because…just because! 

But—I will end this the way that I started it—thank you, from the depths of my heart, the people in my life who love me and K—just because!