What God Has Done For Me
by Rev. Anna Capron
The reason I wanted to speak today was to sort of introduce myself to you, tell
you about my life and what God has done for me.
My life began with a tragedy that had an enormous impact on my childhood, and
really on my whole life. My mother died when I was 18 months old and my sister
was 5. My dad raised us from that time. But, as you can imagine, he was in a
great deal of emotional pain at that time and for many years to come. In truth,
my sister and I took care of him as much as he took care of us.
We were not Christians, we did not even celebrate Christmas in our house. I remember
my childhood as being full of uncertainty. I was always worried about my dad
and I was always worried about money. I grew up with the impression that if there
was a God, he must be very cruel to take away our mom when we were so young.
My sister became very emotionally reserved and distant (as she still is today)
and I became the emotional caretaker of my dad. I struggled a lot with depression
throughout my teen years…there were times when I truly wished I would just
die, so the pain would be over.
When I went to college, I was excited to get away and have a fresh
start. I lived in a coed dorm my first year and was surrounded
by Christians. My roommate, suitemates, and the guys across the
hall were all Christians. The friends I made that first year of
college are still some of the best I have…to the point that
now they are Gabriel’s Godparents. I was invited by one of
these friends to go to a campus ministry activity and I showed
up because I had nothing to do. The people I met there took an
interest in me, wanted to know who I was, and later invited me
to the fall retreat where I was saved. Looking back, it is amazing
how God put those people in my life to bring me to Him, how I was
surrounded by Godly people during a time in my life when I could
have very easily gone the other way.
After I became a Christian, things were not all better. I still
had the same family, the same bouts of depression, and the same
emotional baggage. I had changed, but the life I came back to was
the same. But, the difference was that I had hope. When I first
became a Christian, I was really on fire for God. About a year
after I became a Christian, I decided to spend the summer working
at an inner city Gospel mission in Kansas City Missouri. My family
did not approve at all. But, I packed up everything I owned, and
really felt like it was what God wanted me to do. The first two
weeks I was there, I wanted to go home…here I was, this small-town
girl, living in an apartment in an inner-city shelter with people
I didn’t know. The shelter had to be guarded 24 hours a day
and it wasn’t safe to go out alone.
But, I would find that summer to be very life-changing. I learned
so much about myself, about people and about God, just by being
open to that experience. I spent a great deal of time with the
homeless people who stayed in the shelter. We ate our meals together
and talked. I began to think of them as neighbors. The thing I
realized during that summer is that despite different circumstances,
people are people. The people there were in need of the same things
that all people need…not just the obvious physical things…but
someone to listen, to care, to help them feel a sense of dignity
again, to show them compassion…Despite all the things that
might have divided us, I could see myself in the people that I
met…the same loneliness, insecurity, and fear that I had,
I could see in their eyes… There was one particular experience
that summer that has really stayed with me. I was hanging out at
the mission during my time off. A woman who looked to be in her
sixties, with a very worn face and sad eyes came into the mission.
Her clothing was stained and old and she was not wearing any shoes
and had only a black garbage bag that was about a quarter of the
way full. I saw her struggling with her key and offered to help
her. She invited me into her room and I was hesitant to go in,
because I was supposed to be off that night. But, I went into her
room and sat with her. For the next hour or so, she told me about
her life...about the abusive husband she had finally found the
strength to leave…about the children that she loved dearly
who had abandoned her in her time of need…and about how she
had bounced around from shelter to shelter fearing that her husband
would find her and kill her. I didn’t do a whole lot, but
I listened to her tell her story, I sat with her and felt her pain.
After she was finished talking, I started to get up and she asked
me to wait. She went over to the trash bag and began to pull things
out and give them to me. This bag contained all she had in the
world and she was giving it to me. She handed me an old watchtower
magazine and a half-melted piece of chocolate, and I gladly accepted
them. You see, I learned that day the power of listening to people,
of hearing and appreciating their stories and of how powerful that
can be for someone who has never experienced it. It was after this
experience that I knew I would devote my life to helping people.
I spent the next three years at Asbury Seminary. To be honest,
this was one of the most challenging experiences in my Christian
life. I expected seminary to be a friendly atmosphere, free from
the competition and inflated egos that are present in many areas
of academia. My experience was very much the opposite. I could
not even go to lunch without hearing people shouting over this
or that theological issue. We could never just watch a movie, without
people arguing about the hidden Christian symbolism within the
storyline. When I left, I had lost much of my faith in the church.
In truth, I might have given up on it entirely had I not married
Dale.
After seminary, we moved to Alabama for Dale’s first appointment.
It was not long before I began to feel the pressure of being a
pastor’s wife. I told Dale before we married that if he wanted
someone who would lead the UMW, be a stay-at-home wife, and be
always available for church activities, I was not the girl for
him. Those are good things, but they are not who I am, not who
God made me. It would have made things a lot easier if I could
have been that person that other people wanted me to be.
In truth, these last four years have been very lonely for me. It
is hard to find friends in the church that really want to know
who I am as a person and do not assume a lot about me based on
my role as a pastor’s wife. In addition, after the birth
of my son, I struggled for months with postpartum depression. It
was difficult to make myself go to church when I didn’t even
feel like getting out of bed. It took all the energy I had to take
care of my sweet son. But, I felt like no one cared what was going
on with me, but only that I was not in attendance like I was supposed
to be. Dale and I were both very hurt by many things that happened
last year. Our world was rocked when we found out that we would
be moved after only one year in Dale’s appointment. In many
ways, I felt I was to blame for that move, because I was not who
people wanted me to be. I felt very guilty, but I was also very
angry…
I came into this church feeling like I needed to protect myself,
feeling very hurt by many of the things that happened in our previous
appointment. Most of all, I felt tired…tired of being on
the defensive…tired of feeling like who I was wasn’t
good enough…tired of the way that Christians sometimes treat
each other... and tired of feeling alone…
As soon as I found out about the Honduras Missions, I knew I wanted
to go. Tom Camp was one of the first people I met here at Christ
Church, and the first person I have met at any of the churches
we have been in, who seemed excited to meet me…not because
I was the pastor’s wife…but because he felt that I
had my own gifts to bring. I went back and forth about going on
the Mission trip in September. I made all kinds of excuses…I
didn’t want to leave Dale and Gabriel…it was in the
middle of school…it was pretty soon after our move…and
so on. When I applied for my passport with only a few weeks to
go before the trip, a part of me secretly hoped it would not come
in time. When it came in record time, I knew that I was supposed
to go.
I actually knew very little about what would be happening on the
trip, so I had no expectations, other that it would be a break
from my life and a chance to help someone. Our trip was through
the United Methodist Volunteers in Mission and was what they call
an ‘exploratory team.’ Part of the purpose of this
type of team is to see how existing projects are going and to see
what other needs might exist. I spent most of the trip talking
to people and hearing people’s stories.
The first day we were there, I spent a couple of hours talking
to an exceptional group of girls at the Girl’s dorm in La
Ceiba. For those of you that don’t know about the girl’s
dorm…I will tell you a little bit about it. The girls there
range in age from early teens to early twenties. They had to be
taken away from their homes because they were being stalked by
older men in the villages they lived in…what we could call
pedophiles in the United States. These men were basically grooming
these girls to be either sold into sex slavery or become their
own personal sex slaves. Had they not found refuge, these girls
would have been kidnapped from their homes. The girls had to be
taken out of their villages and now live in a compound in La Ceiba.
Many of them had not had the opportunity to see their families
in years.
You’re thinking that’s horrible…right? But, that
is not the end of the story. These girls do not let their circumstances
define them. These girls have big dreams and are willing to do
what it takes to get there. They are all going to school…some
for nursing, some to learn computers, some to learn English, one
wants to be an artist, another wants to be a doctor, and several
want to be teachers. They all work together to make sure that everyone
has what they need. They look to their education not only to help
themselves, but to help their families back home. They are my heroes…because
they do not give up, because they consider the needs of others…because
they are using the gifts God has given them…because they
do not take their lives for granted…because their faith is
bigger than mine…
These girls reminded me of who I used to be, before I let myself
be convinced that who God made me wasn’t good enough. Before
I let myself become so scared of what people would think of me
that I stopped letting God use me for his purposes.
That was the first day…
The second day, we met up with some Cuban doctors working with
the Cuban Medical Brigade in Honduras. These doctors spend a year
working abroad through a government program that supplies doctors
to impoverished areas. When I first met them that day, the barriers
between us seemed insurmountable. We didn’t speak the same
language, we were from two very different countries and different
cultural and political climates. But, it did not take long before
we began to discover our similarities. With the help of interpreters
and something akin to charades, I began to learn more about these
amazing people. Several of them were Christians and they came to
our daily devotionals. I learned that they come to Honduras of
their own choice, because they want to help those in need. They
choose to leave their families, including their children, because
they are needed and it is the right thing to do…if that is
not a missionary heart, I don’t know what is…
I think God brought these wonderful people into my life because
he knew that we needed each other. This was the first time in a
very long time that I felt like I was part of a family. I was loved
and accepted for who I was as a person…I felt like myself
again for the first time in a long time. It was an incredible healing
experience for me to be in that environment.
On Thursday of that week, it was my turn to do the morning devotional.
I talked about how much my Cuban friends had meant to me and asked
that we pray for them as a group. Our Cuban friends and I were
in the middle of the group, surrounded by the rest of the team.
To me, that was a way to return the love they had given me and
show them how much I cared. But, it ended up being a much more
powerful experience, because God was there with us. I am not a
big public prayer…I usually feel kind of awkward and embarrassed…but
I led the prayer that day…and God used my stumbling words.
After it was over, they came up to me and Reynaldo, the one who
speaks the best English of the group told me on behalf of all of
them what the experience meant to them. He said that the only other
time they had felt God so strongly and had felt so loved was when
they had been blessed by a priest. I tell this not to brag on myself,
but to tell you that God used me in spite of my stumbling words
and insecurities and in a way that felt natural to me. This was
the first time in a long time that I had felt like I was useful
to God…like I had a purpose.
Another important lesson that I learned from my relationship with
the Cuban doctors is that God can bring unity, even when the barriers
seem insurmountable. The significant language and cultural barrier
didn’t seem to matter, because God’s love speaks when
words are insufficient. We tend to see the differences between
ourselves and others and categorize people. But, when we open our
hearts to others, we find that there is more in common than we
ever imagined. The spirit of God does not tear people apart, but
brings them together. God’s world is so much bigger than
Jasper, than Alabama, than the United States.
There are many more stories I could share about my experience in
Honduras.
I met so many wonderful Christian people, from Honduras and Cuba,
and from the United States. Being able to see the global nature
of the body of Christ really helped me to realize that my anger
and hurt was not toward the church, but toward certain individuals
who to me had represented the church as a whole. But, they are
not the church…they are only a very small part…giving
up on the church based on the actions of a few people would be
wrong.
For most of us, there are times in our Christian life when our
faith seems very small, when people let us down, when we feel like
God can’t use us. Let me assure you, if He can use me, He
can use anyone. No matter how old or how young, we can all be missionaries
in our homes, communities and our world. But, we must see the bigger
picture. Our Christian lives must reach outside of this building.
I believe that the churches that die do not explode, but implode.
What I mean by implode is that they die because they lose their
mission of reaching out and only look inward at how the church
can serve those that are already in the Church. But, God calls
us to go out into the world…every single one of us. In the
words of John Wesley, “Whosoever loves God with all his heart
cannot but serve him with all his strength.”
Not all of us are called to foreign missions, but all of us can
show God’s love to those we meet along life’s path.
I challenge you to ask God to show you opportunities to reach out
to people. If you are here and you do not have any non-Christian
friends, please consider making some. I challenge you to reach
out to someone who is different from you, to listen with your heart
and not just with your ears. You will be amazed at what God will
show you. Take the time to really be present with the people you
meet…open your heart to them. Most of all, I challenge you
to do what Christ has done for each of us – to meet people
where they are and show them the compassion, love, and forgiveness
that has been shown to you.
If you would respond to this challenge, please come forward as
you are able to the altar rail this morning and commit yourself
to serving God with your whole heart, and seeking out those in
need of his love. This will be a time of silent prayer for the
whole church, and I will close us. Let us pray!
. . .
God, we come before you today with humble hearts and confess that
we have strayed from your mission in the world. We thank you for
reaching out to us and showing us compassion. We pray that you
would give us open hearts and open eyes to see the needs around
us. Amen.
Let us join together in our closing hymn - |
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