He leads me in right paths

Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death

The first Saturday of every month, the women of my small church gather for a time of encouragement, a craft or activity, and a snack. As I don’t live near the church (yet) all I ever have to do is find a speaker, plan the order of things, and pick up a few ladies who live on the way to the church. I knew that June would be a very hectic month, and I wanted to make things easier for myself, so I decided we would use a video resource I have in lieu of a speaker. Our space doesn’t have internet, so we can’t stream videos, but I thought I had a link to download. A week before the meeting, I listened to the conference. My favorite lesson was done by my dear friend, but the sound quality wasn’t great. Thankfully, she was able to send me the original video, and I began to edit it a bit to help the sound issues. I thought with the church sound system, we could get it good enough. Then, a day before the meeting, I realized the session was a whole hour, while we only have about 20 minutes for the lesson.

I felt so stupid. So angry with myself. So ashamed that I had been “too lazy” to find a speaker for this event. I really had no idea how to fix this mess I felt I had gotten myself into, and I broke down. I cried for hours. It was a culmination of stress from so many things going on in our life: moving, residency, finances and the price of tickets to the states for an emergency visit, my father-in-law’s diagnosis, my kids’ loss as their friends go back to the States.

I started crying at school while we waited for our kids to finish signing yearbooks and saying goodbye for the summer, and my friend prayed for me. She asked God to give me the strength and skills necessary to find a solution. I sniffed a laugh. Skilled is never a word I use to describe myself, especially if the task is technology-related. I could not shake the feeling that I had failed again. My resource for finding speakers is the group of women at our church plant’s parent church. I am still getting to know these women by name and face and it felt like a lot to try to ask one of them to speak in June. But what kind of missionary puts off talking to people? Well, just a very busy one with a digital resource.

Chris gently suggested that I give the lesson myself. This had already been suggested by three friends, the one who prayed for me, my team leader’s wife, and my dear coworker Lucia who helps me set up the events. I resisted this for so many reasons, but at the top of the list is I don’t want these meetings to be about me. I want to bless the ladies from behind the scenes. I want to cultivate opportunities for them to be built up and encouraged by women who speak their language, who can respond to their specific needs without a language barrier. I want to be the hostess, welcoming them, setting the table for them. I already shared my testimony with them in the first meeting I planned, and now it’s my job to find other women to share with them. But I failed to do that this time, and I wanted to punish myself. So I cried and wallowed and refused to prepare the lesson myself.

Then I ate a little food, and that did help. Eating always helps a bit, doesn’t it? I was able to express to my husband that what I really wanted was to have the video edited and cut down to about 20 minutes (and would he help me?). He obliged, and we embarked on an editing spree in a new app I have never used before.

There was no way to save the project in process, it could only be exported. The hours this project cost me, not to mention my family…and then the next morning I discovered that I had muted an entire section without knowing.

Back to square one, but, thankfully, fewer tears. I asked what God could be trying to teach me? Where would I find the answer? How could I start over and complete it in time? Chris suggested again that I do the lesson. I resisted.

I breathed, I prayed, I read the text in English.

Finally I decided that I would rather study the Bible to prepare a lesson than edit a video. I consoled myself that even if it was terrible, my friends would give me grace. Using my friend’s notes and a lot of her teaching from the video, I studied Psalm 23. The method my friend shares for reading any text is to first understand what the text says, second determine what it has to with Jesus and how He fulfills the text, and third to apply the text to our own lives. Usually when we study Psalm 23, we read, “the Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want.” And we ask (and answer) ourselves: who is the Lord? Jesus! Because in John 14 Jesus says twice, ‘I am the good shepherd.’

But in my friend’s teaching, she emphasizes how Jesus trusted His own father in every situation because He knows that His Father is the Good Shepherd. Jesus never worried a day in His life about what He would eat, where He would stay, what would happen to Him if He came into dangerous circumstances. In fact, Jesus walked the valley of the shadow of death joyfully trusting His father to lead him only in correct paths because of who the Father is: the Good Shepherd.

Jesus the Son perfectly fulfills every line of Psalm 23.

I wrapped up my study and went to take a shower. Meditating on God as my own personal Good Shepherd, I realized that perhaps I did not deserve punishment for all that had happened leading up to the event. I had not been in rebellious sin, refusing to obey. I just made a mistake. It is a credit to my friend's teaching that I didn't realize her session was an hour long! I thought, if God is a good shepherd, then even if I am in trouble, it is His responsibility to rescue me, to lead me along righteous paths, and He always does it. He must be doing it right now. God never, ever fails. So if He never fails and always leads me in correct paths, then doing the lesson myself might have always been His plan. And as any good shepherd has to, God used His rod and staff to push me along a path I didn’t want to go because He knew it would lead me to the green pastures and still waters of His will. I had not been like the sheep in Psalm 23 or John 14. The sheep who belong to the Good Shepherd know He loves them and cares for them, and they, like Jesus with His Father, never worry or fear.

That night I shared with the ladies how I had resisted doing the lesson myself because my friend is such a good Bible teacher with much better Spanish and so many good nuggets I was sure to leave out, but God must have wanted me to learn the lesson personally, because here I was, sharing with them myself. It went well, long as always, as I rambled and got lost in my second language. I asked God that I might leave the meeting giving Him glory, that at least I do my part for His name’s sake. The women confirmed that while Psalm 23 was familiar as a reminder that God always provides for them, they had not ever considered how Jesus Himself perfectly fulfilled the words of the psalm.

During our activity, I made a pair of earrings with green and gold beads to remind myself of green pastures and God’s presence, and I can’t stop wearing them, imperfect as they are.

When I arrived home later that evening, I learned that my father in law was in the hospital, unlikely to survive the day.

One does not have to be smarter than a sheep to know that God had ordained my close reading of Psalm 23 for that very moment.