Weird with Hope

I was speaking at a conference recently. Sitting at a round dinner table, waiting for my turn to hop up, my chair was turned around backwards facing the other guests while we listened to the current speaker. I noticed the older couple sitting in front of me wasn’t drinking the tea or water that I had been offered. The husband’s shirt gave him away as classic tribal global worker and his cup was halfway filled with Mountain Dew. I laughed, wondering where they’d secured the neon-colored caffeine needed for the night, as his wife lifted a two-liter bottle with a cover cinched over it from her bag to top him up. 

Guys, when I tell you I love global workers, I mean I love how weird we are. If our slightly out-of-step clothing doesn’t give us away, our “We need to be prepared for anything” mindset will. 

Got an unexpected wait? Let me pull out this travel-sized board game I have in my purse.

No good coffee shops open? Let me grab this travel pour over set I keep with me.

Have to stay awake through an evening of speakers? I have a cleverly disguised two-liter bottle of Mountain Dew right here.

The next day when I spoke again, this couple showed up in my workshop. And I found out that among the 7,000 people who would wander the conference that weekend, this sweet couple were responsible for translating the New Testament into a tribal language for an island people group. They had a daughter buried there. When Covid hit, they had made the difficult decision to be separated because their older bodies were at risk, but the work was almost finished. So he stayed and she left. He wept three times while he told us his story. And he corrected the mistake on our slides (once a language genius, always a language genius). 

For the rest of the conference, I would see them wandering around in the sea of people and think, nobody knows who they are walking next to. Nobody knows the hope they carried to the ends of the earth.

We, who have chosen to be a part of this “weird” group, are a part of the heritage of hope. We know that there is something more coming, so we wait in a different way. We wait with expectation. We wait while carrying this hope to jungles and bustling cities. We wait with priorities focused out instead of in. We carry hope and we wait with hope.

At Velvet Ashes, we cheer you on. We are so proud of you. We are sitting behind you and smiling. 

Once a year, we wait with hope that the Lord will use others to keep us in this space another year. Is that you? Would you be a part of giving this year to help us fulfill all that the Lord has given us to bring to this space in 2025?

I love that I don’t feel bad asking you because you get it. This also is part of the “weird” that we sit in—doing great things that we can’t do on our own. He wired this work so that we all need others.

So, to all of you working in obscurity today, wandering among your thousands, carrying hope that others have no idea about (probably with a bag full of secret goodies), we see you. And as long as the Lord provides, we will be here smiling at the table behind you.