My husband and I sat in a crowded auditorium this week for our oldest son's high school valediction. The headmaster's final address to the students encouraged them to shape their lives around generosity and connection. He spoke of Nipun Mehta's "Karma Kitchen", a generosity experiment that has become a global chain of restaurants.

My sons are 17, 6 and 3 years old. One is preparing for the last exams of his high school career; one is practicing subtraction; and one is learning to sing the ABC's. Almost every evening, all three brothers gather around our low coffee table to play dominoes. The oldest makes sure both of his brothers get a win, but all three are completely unified in purpose and passion. The proverbial "playing field" is leveled by their brotherhood.

This week contained enough material for many calls to worship but did not leave me with margin to write even one. Today, I'm sharing from page 17 in my "Called to Worship" book, originally shared on 6 August 2021.

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Hurricane Ike devastated the Gulf Coast of Texas in September 2008. Three years prior, I lost my childhood home to Hurricane Rita in the same area.

My eyes are my greatest insecurity.

I underwent surgery for infantile esotropia (crossed eyes) when I was six months old. Early surgical intervention gives young eyes a chance to develop binocular vision (eyes that work together, but the effects "wear off" in time.

Over the last decade, I've lost binocular vision, and, consequently, developed severe eye strain, visual impairment, and loss of eye control. I stay mortified in every moment of eye contact (even with my husband), appearing on videos, or standing in front of crowds.

This week I read an obscure story with a familiar plot.

Ezra 4-6 recounts one episode of God's people returning from a 70-years exile. They faced immediate opposition in rebuilding the temple. Politics, persecution, and twisted truths made it seem there would never again be a place to meet with God. But an extraordinary plot twist came by decree. Enemy accusers received royal, irrevocable notice to stop opposing the temple rebuild. They would face their own demise if they did not also foot the bill and provide for temple sacrifices.

We used to sit next to Uncle Lindsey on the front row at church. He and my husband often huddled, head-to-head, in prayer. Every Sunday at church and Friday after the Call to Worship, Uncle Lindsey would tell me what he was going to do when he got out of his wheelchair. He couldn't wait to glorify the Lord with his healing. The man had a plan to dance, and no one doubted he would.

Uncle Lindsey shared his life story with me a few years ago...

If you were born in southern America in the 1980's, and if your parents took advantage of every summer Vacation Bible School in your hometown, you can probably finish the following lines without thinking twice:

"God is good..." (All the time!) "All the time..." (God is good!)

Our six-year olds's auto-immune condition has been flaring up. My nerves crackled and popped all night last Friday from the intensity of caring for him, and I couldn't sleep at all. On Saturday, we watched a medic team carry my oldest son off the rugby field on a stretcher. My three-year old and I rushed to the hospital to open his file while my husband rode in the ambulance with him.

You'll never believe what happened next... I LOCKED MY THREE-YEAR OLD IN MY VAN IN THE HOSPITAL PARKING LOT. My sleep-deprived, nerve-frazzled, broken heart was just about ready to stop beating at this point.

The boy loves worship music. He regulates with it. He worships with it. He makes up his own.

He asked me to write the words down for him as he sang them this week. I just had to give this a permanent place.

Here it is. A new fresh hit. Dictated by Jam. Written by Mom.

I've been playing an old hymn on repeat. My younger children don't understand the 18th century lyrics, but we've worshiped wholeheartedly to "Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing". Something in that song is reaching something in us, so I did a little digging on the story behind it.

Robert Robinson lost his father as a young boy in the 1700's. He had to grow up fast, start working young, and ran the streets of London as a gangster…

Pent-up energy is ricocheting off our walls during an extra long, extra loud, extra rainy school holiday. I'm giving my all, but my autistic son needs more than that. The rest of my family gets less of me, and my son still doesn't have enough. I start each new day already storm-battered.

I tiptoed to my Bible one morning while the house slept to see if Jesus was still in the storm-stilling business.

Imagine... Political chaos is on the rise. Justice is at an all-time low. You're hungry and crippled by a reckless kind of hurt - for your family, your future, and humanity itself. You don't see a way for things to be different.

You hear there's a man who performs miracles. The neighbors say He's heading to a desolate place. There's nothing there for anyone, but there's nothing to stay for either. Almost 20,000 people are already there when you arrive. You strain to see the man called Jesus from tiptoes in the back.

Join me in a conversation with Deb Weakly from Help Club for Moms. Deb is a long-time friend, and she invited me to share about my journey in special needs parenting to offer encouragement to moms all over the world. I’m very much still in the trenches, learning the hard way, and even shared that I had completely lost my cool on Benjamin an hour before we started recording! But we so often find God together, and in those valley lessons of learning to worship anyway.

Maybe this is a chat you can relate to, or maybe it’s one to share with a friend who can.

I remember what it felt like, years ago, when I first felt life inside of me. Every kick and hiccup of the child within re-proclaimed God's design for us as co-creators. I quickly realized both big and small decisions are weighed on different scales when you understand you are doing it with Christ.

Now, we are stepping into a new season of co-laboring with Christ. We are launching a new church in Cape Town! In some ways, I've felt the familiar weight of a new parent. We dream of a place for people to feel at home with Jesus and their neighbors, no matter where they've come from. We believe His House should be the safest place for a person to become their whole, dearly-loved self.

My husband and I went on an evening walk a while ago. We rehashed a painful season we'd traversed in the previous months and marked how God had used it for our good. The conversation went deeper as we turned a familiar corner in our neighborhood. Yes, we have successfully navigated external hardships... but what about the ones woven into our family DNA? My husband worried aloud,"Your personality has changed. You were so bubbly... laughing all the time.. and now I can see how heavy life is on you." I conceded that the relentless spiritual warfare, crippling corruption, decade of distance from family, and special needs parenting has dug deep, rugged trenches in my formerly light disposition.

We've been asking God for a particular miracle for a long time. Last week, another "not yet" hit hard, so I searched "miracle" on my old website. I borrowed hope from my own stories as I re-visited scenes where God met me. Today's call to worship is a miracle lesson I wrote to myself from the mission field in 2011.-----------

We started feeding orphaned and vulnerable children in a nearby community- a handful became hundreds in eighteen months. Last week, an unspeakable amount of hungry children came for hot food and hope...

Relevant Magazine recently reported "Christian music is finally having a real mainstream moment." For the first time in over a decade, two Christian songs made Billboard's "Hot 100" list simultaneously. "American Idol" aired a three-hour "Songs of Faith" special on Easter Sunday. Christian singer and songwriter, Brandon Lake performed "Hard-Fought Hallelujah" on Jimmy Kimmel Live and made a surprise appearance at Stagecoach Festival, co-leading 75,000 people from every walk of life in an incredibly relevant psalm.

I recently spent an afternoon with moms ahead of me in their special needs parenting journeys. A familiar knot twisted in my gut as they shared about unenrolling their children from school. My personal nightmare, one I push down deep, was tea time conversation. You see, statistics agree with every story I've heard. Children with my son's diagnosis are often unable to stay in school and endure so much just trying to grow up.

Have you ever read stories of the disciples and wondered, "How could you do that? Jesus is LITERALLY right there with you!" Luke 22 recounts Jesus telling Peter he would deny Him three times before the rooster's first morning crow. Despite the "warning", Peter fulfilled the prophesy that very same night.

Me too, Peter.

I didn’t know what I was standing in the middle of when I started playing worship music, trying to make it louder than the pounding pulse of life. I didn’t expect those long nights to minister to me - and then others. God’s voice broke through the noise of life while I listened to those songs. I wanted to tell my friends what I heard, so I started sharing through WhatsApp messages. Over time, I started sending it to a few more people - and then more. I committed to sending it out every Friday at 6am and called it “The Friday Call to Worship”. Nobody needed me to write it down except me. I was making a commitment to God to show up every week and to need to hear Him.