I am Filthy Stinkin’ Rich and Want to Share It!

No kidding.

This Summer I've stayed close to home. No cross continent vacations to places on my bucket list, just a trip 90 minutes up the road to Healing Care Ministries Summer Intensive in Westerville, Ohio.

This was my second experience at SI. The first was two years ago and it was transformational. Sharing my story for the first time, in our small group and receiving the insights and perspectives they reflected back to me opened up my seeing. Seeing the purposes of God and miraculous way He 'makes all things work together for good,' emerging through the rubble, brokenness, and chaos of my story was life giving.

Their words of life brought healing to my heart and soul that continues to nourish me. That’s what sharing your story with an empathic witness who will hold the sacredness of who you are, does for you.

This year I returned as an intern, paired up with Kim the Executive Director of the Formational Care Certificate Program. I have never met anyone quite like Kim. She is a fireball combination of big-hearted mom, mischievous 7-year-old and fierce female Shoshben.

Kim never stops. Moving. Thinking. Observing. Listening. Loving. Attending.

I imagine her mind is like one of those great rolling barrels in the old time fairgrounds and nightly game shows, from which the captivating host would reach in and draw the one in a gazillion winning numbers. Everything is tumbling around in there and after a moment of intense anticipation and excitement, she reaches in and pulls out the jackpot.

The entire team of caregivers is phenomenal. An anomaly really for such fierce warrior women who so seamlessly un-self and blend into one body. Subordinating their own needs to everyone else's around them, sans ego.

That’s true ministry.

It was the very first thing that struck me about Healing Care Ministries when I was led to it four years ago. No one was jockeying for position, or self-promotion. It was all about us. The wounded healer, coming for healing.

And I’ve been coming back ever since as I am healed. I am being healed. I am yet to be healed.

As we sat wrapping up our debrief after the Intensive, I was steeping in the exhaustion and richness of the week long journey. My heart was brimming over with gratitude for the healing myself and others received, and the people God has blessed me to walk with, and to walk with me. A thought bubbled up through my consciousness and tumbled out of my mouth, “I used to think being rich was Jaguar’s, Penthouses and Jet set travel … (I have a vision board to prove it) … But that’s not it. No way, no how!" I know people who have all that and are still running on empty bewilderment. Filling up the holes that life has made with stuff. It doesn't satisfy

Being rich is a living experience of being. Being seen, heard and held. Blanketed in safety of a community of people whose heart is towards God, and who will war in spirit and prayer for you. That is the function of an empathic caregiver.

I am rich beyond my wildest imagination and there is plenty to share, so why not come and get yours?

Thank you, Kim, Sandra, Chris, Marsha and my intern cohort, Kathy, JoLanda, and Becky for a remarkable week of holy embrace and a deepening of the richness of my one wonderful priceless life. And thank you God you are the author and perfecter of it all.