Poem: Struggling Before Prayer

I wrote this poem in 1999 and dug it up recently. It's about those moments when we're pretending with God, but He sees right through that to the exact thing we need. We see, in those moments, how very weak and human and vulnerable we are. We see the futility of life without God's help. God wants to hear our anger and be with us in our despair. His compassionate strength rescues us when we are at rock bottom.

Struggling Before Prayer
By Summer Black

There is only one response required
When God’s endlessness
meets
the selfishness
of me.
With a rocket’s ambition and
a snail’s pace
my will and my knees
are bent before God.

The asking, at first, seems meaningless.
God knows what I want
and how far away from Him I am willing to go
to get it.
He knows what I need
and that, above all, I don’t want that.

Like a worm who craves dirt
but needs water,
I keep digging—
thinking that before long
I’ll hit something that sounds
like earnestness and feels
like communication
only I’m really just moving lips,
not moving nearer
to God at all.

The distance between
my full height and the floor,
where I should fall prostrate,
grows longer and taller
as I rebel.

While I fight with Him
He uses me
and I become a tool
in my own re-making.
Even then I prove His life,
His purpose,
And the pit I would be without Him.

“Lord, help me find the spots that should be clean
and I will wipe them up again.”
Even as I speak these worthless words,
I kneel in pools of sin
too deep for me to swim in,
much too dense for me
to hold it all together.

I wave to Him while drowning,
not to ask for help,
but to give a sign that I’m alright.

I scream so that I know I still have my voice,
my opinion,
and my vote in what happens to ME,
without acknowledging that God hears—
pays very close attention to every plea,
never
leaves me alone, and yet
sees me very differently.

Fortunately, the heart in me—
with all its desire to be right
and well
and free
on its own—
is very close to having
His will instead.

Soon I will see that
I need no voice when it is His
who wakes the morning up.
I want no strength that gets me
places where he is not.
Pain my grip me hard
and a fallen world may pierce me,
but my pretending is what harms Him most.

Even so, He always defends me against
myself and other enemies
because eventually,
I honestly ask the Lord
To take everything that is me,
forgive it, and make it whatever He wants.

Desire then ceases to be longing and
becomes action, the cousin of fervor,
who, in turn, is closely related to peace.

Thankfully, grace is won without a fight.
God saves even those who want to look
beautiful while drowning.
He shortens the distance between
our pride and His majesty by
providing a way for us to reach Him
any time.

When we crave Him,
His wisdom and His voice,
We need nothing else.
God spent His entire human lifetime
That we might know the truth of that.

Mission Trip to the Ukraine: 2001

I went to the Ukraine on a missions trip with Grace Community Church in July, 2001. Many people received this support letter in their mailboxes on Sept 11, 2001. What a time period that was---not only in my own personal history, but especially the history of the country......it's been 8 years ago already!


Sept. 7, 2001

Hello! Just about 2 months ago I left for a missions trip you supported with your prayers and your pocketbooks. I boarded “the plane for the Ukraine,” knowing somehow, my life would be different when I returned. Well, I am back…and boy, was I right! I am changed. Before, the Ukraine was just another country. Now, it has faces and names and incredible evidence of God’s faithfulness. You know me…you know how much I wish I could sit with each of you individually and tell you the stories face to face!
Here are some highlights. What a gift your prayers were to us!
· I loved teaching English to the young students there! I had a group who could not speak English at all, so I worked with a translator. (The beginning of many lessons on dependence for me!) His name is Leonid and he’s the pastor of a growing evangelical church in Eastern Ukraine. I loved learning new ways to engage the students, challenge them, and build relationships despite a major language barrier! While other groups were learning idioms and conjugations, my class learned their colors and numbers. J They were so eager…in Bible lessons we spoke at length, going back and forth so much the translator needed breaks for the water fountain.
· We used every waking hour just to be with the students—and I learned that’s a key to ministry. Don’t wait for the “perfect moment” to ask others about their lives; use meal time, waiting-in-line time, any time. We weren’t there to “shove the Gospel” at them, but to love them so well they would want to know about it. Some of the most meaningful conversations about Christ occurred during Frisbee games!
· We had evening worship services with preaching, singing, and connecting happening all at once—hearing what became a constant simultaneous mix of Russian and English. I loved hearing the sounds sung together: SLAVA BORGO—PRAISE GOD! We talked to the students about our different cultures and what they promise. To them, all Americans are wealthy and it’s hard to understand why we wouldn’t be content. To Americans, life in the former USSR might seem hopeless; with their history, how can anything be made right again? Our messages centered on Christ and his role as the Restorer of all people in all kinds of pain in all parts of the world.
· The young Ukrainian Christians were such an example to us as we worked beside them to encourage, build, and bless. Oleg, one of the students, received a New Testament from someone on our team. Since our return, he has e-mailed, saying, “I’ve read the New Testament. Can you send me the whole Bible?” We spoke to the young men especially, teaching them the term “step up.” It’s time for them to be young leaders in their churches, leave the heavy yoke of Communism behind, and worship God freely.
· In many ways, our conversations with students were about God’s purposes for the world. Even in the midst of the oppression it has experienced, the Ukraine is coming alive again. Its people are realizing God wants to restore them in His power, in spite of what humans have tried to do in the abuse of their power. Some students left camp with a new realization: God is good and He is able to be trusted.
· We visited 2 orphanages. I simply cannot get the pictures of that day out of my mind. There is no money set aside for humanitarian efforts in Ukraine; the orphanages are dependent on foreign aid. As we played and held the children, one of the Ukrainians who was at our camp saw me crying. He said, “I know, Summer. It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” To him, the children are cared for. They have a roof over their heads and a meal they can count on—which is basically what life IS for people in that country now. It was too much for me and my heart was thinking of Psalm 10:14: “The victim commits himself to you; you are the helper of the fatherless.” The children called us Mama…running around in their underwear with sores on their bodies and smiles on their faces…They clung to us. They wanted us to take them home.

SINCE I’VE BEEN HOME

Since I’ve been home, many things have been on my heart and mind. The trip has been difficult to process. How do I take what I learned overseas and make it part of my life here? My hope is that as I tell you about some of my lessons, your heart would be moved, as mine was, to reach out in better ways to the hurting world. I kept saying to myself on this trip, “Enter into the pain you see around you—that’s love!”
· The Ukraine has very little structure anymore. Its people are on their own and only make about $30 a month, if they’re lucky enough to be employed. The roads are a series of craters. The lights go out whenever they feel like it and may never come back on. What a person wears one day, he may wear for several days afterward because he has nothing else. If you’re traveling 12 hours in a bus with no shocks, there’s nowhere but the nearest tree to use the restroom (I know this from experience)! I learned about waiting—how to practice it, get better at it, and expect to do it. I’ve come home and cried over my laundry because I have so much of it. I go into the supermarket and shake my head at all the choices. I listed to Larry King complain about government regulations and I want to ask him, “What if our government regulated virtually nothing? Do you know what that would look like?” It would look like Ukraine. I’m learning to be grateful in ways I never knew existed.
· I’ve learned that the way to minister anywhere, to help anyone, or to change anything is the old one-person-at-a-time method. One of our pastors at Grace says, “Help the person in front of you.” I can get so overwhelmed by the problems in the world (the hungry, the homeless, the oppressed, etc.) that I’m paralyzed—then no one gets help. Help has to be local, then it can become global.
· I’ve learned that to be desperate for God is a wonderful thing. In some ways, I haven’t stopped crying since I landed in America. I am crying, “Lord, USE your people. We’re frail and we forget your power so often, but please Lord, USE us for your glory. YOU alone are what matters. The reason all people were born was to worship and serve You. Show your people all over the world the work You want us to do.” Our team depended on God in completely new ways. Many things we planned did not happen and things we hoped for did not take place. But God does not exist to make our plans possible. We exist to give hands and feet to his plans—to see His glory on this suffering planet. Nothing we do could ever match what He does for us. God was calling people to Himself in the Ukraine through our camp—and you were a part of that. THANK YOU!

A CHALLENGE FOR YOU AND I

You are one of those orphans I wrote about, no matter where you live. You live in a terrible place, full of worry and suffering. No one denies that. But what ELSE is true? Earth is not the home God intended for us. God has said in His word that He wants to take us home to heaven. He’s saying to you, “Come here, _________(insert your name). I love you more than you’ll ever know and I want to teach you how to live. Will you come and follow me?” Christ picks us up, holds us close, and has the power to give us more than we ever dreamed of. But some of us, we don’t accept the offer. We stay at the orphanage, wallowing in what we do not have when God Himself has offered us His life and His Name.
I challenge you today as I was challenged: to live as someone who has been adopted by Christ. If you have given your life to Him, all His blessing becomes yours—just like a child who comes home to live with a loving family after spending years on the street. God has said to you, “Here! You can have a great home and a family and food to eat and a job and friends who love you. But those things are NOT your life. Don’t depend on them because they won’t be around all the time. Let the pain from your past go. Don’t live in it anymore. You will still have pain until you go home with me, but let me, not your circumstances, define what life is for you.” God’s given us a choice whether to stay in poverty or live in His wealth.
I learned on this trip that the kingdom of God is not just about heaven. The kingdom of God can be experienced now because God’s plans ARE taking place all over the world. It was not His plan for the world to suffer—that is a choice the world has made through greed, malice, hatred, etc. But God never gives up on us: “Because of God’s great love we are not consumed, for His compassions never fail” (Lamentations 3:22). Each of you is part of God’s work in your own corner of the world and I have been blessed to live and work alongside you. Reach out to people—they need your touch, your words, your love before, during, and every day after they live in light of the message of the Gospel. They need to hear God became a man because of His love for us! People need to know why they were born. Be the one to tell them. We were all born to love God back—for He’s been loving us since the beginning of time.

Christmas Letter: 2004

Christmas, 2004

Dear Friends and Family:
We’ve been going through and eye-opening series at my church lately. I wish all of you could hear it! We’re learning about how we can know what God is like. What motivates the Creator of the world to continue creating, year after year? What is in God’s heart? What does He care about? If we can’t see Him, how can we know Him? It’s my 4th year at Grace Community Church and I’m growing there, especially over the past year. Here are some of the highlights of 2004:

WHAT MOTIVATES GOD?
MY JOURNEY TO THE HIGH PLACES

You know how much I love to read, so recommending just one book to you is a difficult task. But, if you read just one book in 2005, make it Hinds’ Feet on High Places by Hannah Hurnard. I read it in college and picked it up again this year…it paints a vivid picture that God desires His people to go with Him to the highest, the best, the purest heights of faith. God is motivated to continue creating because He wants a relationship with us based on faith in Who He Is.
It’s an allegory about a crippled young girl named Much Afraid who learns to trust the Shepherd (Christ). When she trusts, she brings Him glory. She meets many others along the way who both help and hinder her progress to the High Places: Sorrow, Suffering, Pride, Craven Fear, Self-Pity, Bitterness, etc. Even though she can’t always understand where He is leading her, Much Afraid develops her faith in the Shepherd and begins to see things differently. He name changes to Acceptance with Joy and her body is healed. She understands that life is not all about her. It’s about the Shepherd and His power to transform.
God made it possible for me to be above the clouds again this year, in a plane traveling to Europe once more with my mom’s French students in June. It was a trip that imprinted God’s high places in my mind: standing on the Swiss Alps throwing snowballs at each other, climbing the stairs of ancient castles, waving from the Eiffel Tower to visitors below, sitting on the crags and cliffs of the Brittany coast. All of it sang of Psalm 36:5-7:

“Your love, O Lord, reaches to the heavens, your faithfulness to the skies. Your righteousness is like the mighty mountains, your justice like the great deep. O Lord, you preserve both man and beast. How priceless is your unfailing love! Both high and low among men find refuge in the shadow of your wings.”

We were in Normandy for the 60th Anniversary of the D-Day Invasion. We met British and American veterans there, in their 80’s or 90’s now, leaning on their loved ones as they walked between the rows of graves marked by the famous white crosses…I could tell by their faces that this was a place of strange and bitter solace for them. We stood inside huge craters made by air bombs and crawled into trenches, once full of gunfire, but now full of silence. It was such a contrast, these low places of war and underground holes of soldiers. What a refuge the Lord is when we all are afraid!

WHAT DOES GOD CARE ABOUT?
LET EVERY HEART PREPARE HIM ROOM

For all those veterans, the ability to start over when they returned home must have seemed like a miracle. They may have asked, “How can this be? Is it true that I get a new life—a new start now that the war is over?”
I have learned this year that the Lord cares about the restoration of His people. Many of you have seen this in 2004: His comfort while you are grieving the loss of someone dear to you, His provision after divorce, His hope when long-standing prayers have been answered in ways that bring the most glory to Himself. As in the Christmas song Joy to the World, He wants all of us to prepare room for Him in our hearts. I am amazed in my own life how many chances I get to begin again when something has ended: a relationship, a task, a chapter of life. With God, there is always something new, something good for us to grasp about Who He Is.
I moved into a great new apartment in Carmel in July. You’ll have to stop by when you’re in the area! My roommate got married, so I needed to find a new place again. It has been a process, learning to live alone. But it has provided me a chance to prepare more room for God—and I’m beginning to see that I live with Him—that He has chosen to move in with me. We have more quiet times together than we used to and there is a richness to my faith that I haven’t experienced before. I’ve decorated the place in my own “style” and had many beloved friends over at all hours…fillings the rooms with the kinds of fellowship I love. Our Bible study group has been meeting for over 4 years—it’s a continual source of blessing. I am learning that God cares about how I use this apartment: Is it open to others? Am I reaching out and inviting in? Am I preparing room for Him to live and breathe and be there, too?

WHAT IS IN GOD’S HEART?
CHRIST’S PASSION AND HIS ACTION

Like many of you, I saw The Passion of the Christ during the Easter holiday. Our pastor, Dave Rodriguez, paraphrased Scripture when he said, “If we want to know God, we should look at Christ.” What a picture of love He is! After I saw the film, I was overwhelmed at its honesty, reality, brutality, and impact. I saw myself in so many of the characters. Sometimes, I am the one who denies Him and at other times the one who holds Him close. One day I am the one who brings Him a drink and the next I am the one who turns my back. I saw the steadfast faithfulness of God, confronted with how passive I can be about Him. The Christmas story is part of the Easter story; at the center of God’s heart is His desire to be with us. He wants a relationship with those He came to save.

HOW CAN WE KNOW GOD?
THE PROCESS OF FAITH

This year has definitely been a Year of Faith for me. With your help, I’ve been stepping up, going out, moving in, and staying open to the work God has for me to do. It’s my 6th year at Traders Point Christian Academy, my 3rd as the school counselor. As I talk to the students, I realize a lot about what God wants me to know, too.
I tell the kids that life is a process—with many beginnings, middles, and ends. When one thing is wrapping up, another will start. It’s important to get more comfortable with mystery—more accustomed to hope. God isn’t going to give us all the answers to questions like WHY? and WHEN? and HOW? Instead, He gives us Himself. It is possible to know God because we know who Christ is. It is possible to love Him with our lives. Thank you for the many ways you have shown me that this year! May 2005 bring you the beginnings, middles, and ends of all He wants for you.

Love,
Summer

Christmas Letter: 2000

Christmas, 2000

Dear Friends:
This year, I made New Year’s resolutions…in June. Okay, okay…you and I both know I can take FOREVER making important decisions. But right around the First Day of Summer (ironic, isn’t it?), I made some promises to myself and God. My life is richer now because I have kept them and God is ecstatic because He’s getting more of me than before.

I promised to make my living turning light bulbs on.

I stopped teaching math and got back to teaching English. That plain and simple choice has made such a difference because what I teach is one of the things I love. I’m still at Traders Point Christian Academy on Indy’s northwest side, only this time I’m working part time—with learning disabled kids one on one. I’m seeing light bulbs go on over their heads all day as they realize that what they struggled to read is a word with a meaning that they now understand. It’s like that scene in the Helen Keller film when she realized W-A-T-E-R means water—I’m like Anne Sullivan, running to catch up with kids who want to know how to spell everything, how to communicate, now that they can read and write better. Celebrating the smallest of victories makes this job the sweetest of joys.

I promised to completely pursue counseling as a life work—and I’ve received my “passionfruits.”

When I started trusting God more, my passions and my fruits of labor started to be more and more connected—I affectionately call them my “passionfruits.” I love counseling kids, so I made more time for that kind of labor—and the fruit just keeps on coming…
I cut my work schedule down to 3 days a week so I could spend the other 2 focused on my Master’s in School Counseling at Butler University. I volunteered at Indy’s Northview Middle School this semester and will move to Carmel’s Clay Jr. High in January. I’m following the counselors everywhere, trying to learn all I can about counseling kids all day. I’m also becoming a volunteer counselor for the local Crisis Pregnancy Center, a Christian organization that provides counseling about abortion alternatives and praying that a position would open up for me to be a Director of a CPC Counseling Center by May, 2002—right when I get my degree! Would you join me in that prayer? It’s a long way off—but God can make it happen. I know that this type of counseling will be emotionally very difficult for me, particularly when young teens choose abortion despite Scriptural evidence about God’s ability to make all things new. But I know that God is leading me to this ministry because I am drawn to the women involved in a way that is difficult to explain apart from God’s mercy.

I promised to permanently move into a church and make my home there.

God has provided Grace Community Church for me (and about 4000 other people) in Noblesville. I cannot tell you in words how much this church has helped me, just since I started attending in August. I went through some very hard times last year when I felt the weight of loneliness and the loneliness of waiting. Grace Church is part of God’s answer to me, as I prayed through tears, as all of us do when we cannot see what is ahead. But, as always, God gives us more than we ask for and we are continually surprised by how good His goodness really is. Grace has multiplied my desire to serve God and added many people to my wishlist for fellowship in Indy.

This Christmas, remember the words of Martin Luther in the great hymn, “A Mighty Fortress is our God.”

Did we in our own strength confide, our striving would be losing.
Were not the right man on our side, the Man of God’s own choosing.
Dost ask who that may be? CHRIST JESUS it is he!
Lord Sabboath his name, from age to age the same,
And He must win the battle.

Whether it’s battles you are facing or strength that you are needing—it is God who is calling, “I am the promise!” Claim that promise today and make some of your own to God. Christ lives to save us. Sometimes I have to keep reminding myself over and over…then, there are days I, like Helen Keller, run around, hungry to learn more—because I get it; I understand! Because of God’s mercy on us, heaven is a real place where worship happens without breaks, except to take a breath and praise some more.

I love you all,
Summer