The Jimisons Archives

March 8, 2024 by Lindsey Moreno 3 Comments

“Do You Trust Me?”

“Am I allowed to feel this happy?” I asked myself as I walked to the office this morning. The air was fresh and crisp, and the morning sun threw everything into vibrant color. Life didn’t feel real.

Happiness and I have a complicated relationship. There have been many seasons in life where joy felt far away. Whether it was loneliness, fear, melancholy, or frustration that became my fixation in those seasons, it kept the joy at bay. There have been times when my only prayer was, “Father, I just want to be happy again.”

Back in July Micah and I found out we were pregnant. Let me tell you, that news brought a flood of emotions. It was not a surprise, we had been talking about having kids for the past several months, but I couldn’t quite wrap my mind around the gravity of what was happening inside of me.

You might think that with a reality like new life, happiness was overwhelming, and there was a strong sense of excitement, but what I didn’t expect was that fears and anxieties were also sitting at my door.

Fears multiplied more than I let the joy abound. I was afraid of the pregnancy, afraid of having a miscarriage, afraid of birth, afraid of motherhood, afraid of changing, afraid of becoming someone and something new, afraid I wouldn’t like what the future held.

I was afraid.

And there was a season that I felt far from joy. Fear and anxiety were close friends to me. They were easier to invite in than to keep out. I didn’t care enough to keep them out. There was something strangely comforting to me about their dark presence. They sat at my table, they ate and drank until my storehouse was depleted, and they left no room for joy.

It is easier to play the victim than to face the fears that cripple you. So I let them overcome me.

I didn’t even realize what was happening. The enemy likes to work slowly and secretly. I didn’t realize how much I had blocked out the truth of the Lord until I realized how much I had changed. I was suspicious of everyone. Jealousy crept in. Kind gestures had sinister motives. Friends became enemies. The things that should have brought joy made me anxious. My capacity to love others disappeared. I boxed myself up. I hid my heart.

I didn’t like that version of me, but fear and anxiety had such a strong hold on me, I no longer knew what it looked like to live without the gloom. The path they were dragging me towards was not a path I wanted to go down, but I felt powerless to stop it.

“Father, I just want to be happy again.”

God spoke to me in that season through a children’s book, The Very Hungry Caterpillar. The Very Hungry Caterpillar, in his season of growth, decides that instead of eating nourishing fruit and leaves he would rather eat junk food. And before he realizes it, he is sick.

I felt like that hungry caterpillar. In a season of growth I had consumed my junk emotions and let them overcome me. I was sick. I was hungry for something good, but I had let the wrong things fill me. In the story, the caterpillar goes back to eating leaves before he becomes a chrysalis and then transforms into a beautiful butterfly.

God gave me the image of the butterfly, the transformation from one degree of glory to the next.

“This is what you are becoming. I am taking you from one degree of glory to the next. I know you are scared. I know you fear the transformation. I know you have doubts, but do you trust me?”

In that moment, I realized that it was I who was holding onto the fear and anxiety. I had given them power over me. I let them go. I didn’t need them to tell me who I was anymore. The father held his hand out to me and I took it. It was time for me to trust Him.

Life is less than perfect. Do I still have days that I get anxious? Absolutely. There are still worries that hang around finances, family, and the future. There are still questions that have no answers. I could easily choose to hold onto fear and anxiety. I could let those fears and worries overcome me. But as a believer, that does not have to be my portion.

“The Lord is at hand; do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 4:5-7).

Hold onto God. He is near. Trust him. Give your fears and anxieties to him and it will bring you joy and peace. When you do, your heart is protected against worry and anxiety. There is no room for them when Joy sits at your table.

“Am I allowed to feel this happy?” The answer is yes. Joy is your portion. As a believer, God desires for us to be filled with joy. When we trust in him, we lack nothing. He will lead us to green pastures and still waters. He will restore our souls until we are overflowing. True Joy comes when we have complete trust in Him.

September 29, 2023 by Lindsey Moreno 5 Comments

Homesick for Two Homes

And a few days ago I said goodbye to home again. You would think that after three years of the same trip, the same goodbyes, the same routine that things would be easier. But it seems that each time we say goodbye it becomes harder to leave– harder to leave my family in the states and harder to leave the family I’ve found in Honduras. Funny how that works.

I think one of the hardest parts of being a missionary is feeling like you have two homes, like your heart is in two different places. If you’ve ever moved far from home, you’ve probably felt the same way.

Home has always been an important concept to me. Home is a place where despite your shortcomings, you are safe, you are welcomed, you belong.

I remember three years ago, when I moved to Honduras how hard it was. I missed Texas. I missed my family. I missed my home. Transitioning to a new home in Honduras was probably one of the hardest things I have ever done.

I came across an old passage in my journal a few weeks back. I was wrestling with God. I felt so isolated and alone. I missed home. I missed knowing I belonged.

“Father, I feel stripped and bare in so many ways. You never promised easy, but You did promise that You are good and Your ways are good. Father, my heart in so many ways is breaking. When left to myself I feel the breaking. I feel the pieces falling and crashing.

Loss. I feel the loss of the things I didn’t even know I loved. These things that I didn’t believe I loved, taken away. And I realize how much I loved them. Oh Father how much I loved them instead of You.

I didn’t know. Or maybe I did and chose to ignore the signs.

My hypocrisy was so deep inside of me I couldn’t see it. I couldn’t see it. I couldn’t see that my identity was not in you. I believed it was. My heart told me it was.

But liar. I now call the liar, as everything is ripped away– my friends, family, reputation, job, status, home, country, belonging, power, language, culture– everything. In this I realize that I had leaned into these things. I looked for life where there was none. I thought chasing these things was good. I didn’t even realize what I had let myself do.

Then it was gone.

Strong. I used to think myself strong; we can believe that when there is nothing causing us to break. But when we have the floor ripped out from under us, then what? I have been gripping white knuckled to the remnants of the foundation of dust which I had built my identity on.”

God worked on me in that season. He had to strip me bare of my old identity to bring me into a fuller understanding of who He is and what it really means to be home.

“‘Let go, my child,’ He was saying to me, ‘Let go. You cannot hold onto My hands when you won’t let go of what has already passed and gone.’

And He sits in sackcloth beside me, the King of Kings sits in the ashes of my old identity. And He holds my hands in His. The scars of my salvation staring back at me. Can I look into His eyes knowing what I have done?

‘Guilt is not your portion, and neither is the shame. I was broken for you, and I broke you for my kingdom.’

He motions to the dust around me, the ashes of my broken kingdom.

‘These ashes will grow gardens if you let them. Life will spring forth in a place where there was only a wasteland. Mourn no more. This is my promise to you.’

He wipes the tears from my face and I look into His eyes.

‘Are you brave? I will be with you every step of the way.’”

When I wrote these words, I wasn’t sure I had the strength to be brave. But God. He does more than we could ever ask or imagine. It’s been several years since I wrote these words, and I have seen gardens spring forth from the ashes. His promises ring true. The loss I felt was filled with blessings. Once I let go of my own kingdom, It made space for God to show me a piece of his kingdom, a part of his home. I’ve found a place where I am safe, I am welcomed, I belong.

Now, home is here in Honduras and it’s back in Texas, and I am so thankful for the deep relationships I have in both places. It is hard at times to feel my heart in both places, and it’s a funny problem to have. Only because of God’s blessings and goodness can I call both places home.

I know that my homesickness for two homes will be a struggle for as long as we live in Honduras and even when we say goodbye. But I also know that one day the Kingdom of Heaven will be a home where my heart doesn’t have to be homesick, where there will be no division between Honduras and Texas, where my Heavenly Father will look me in the eyes and say, “I am so proud of you for being brave, welcome home my child, welcome home.”

May 26, 2023 by Micah Jimison 2 Comments

Dirt

As a farmer I deal with a lot of dead things. It is not my favorite part of the job when I get to the farm in the morning and see the tell-tale ball of feathers signaling the death of a chicken or the committee of vultures that might mean a goat has been killed. I am not a butcher, and I take no joy in the death of animals or in killing them even when it’s necessary. I will not hesitate to kill when the job needs doing, but I much prefer husbandry of living animals. Keeping them alive is the art I try to master, but nothing stays alive forever and death plays a deep part in the art of living. Dead animals, dead leaves, dead roots, and all the other dead and decomposing things in the soil are what provide the food for the microbes, bacteria, and fungi who create the living soil that produces good crops. We need the dead because without it we cannot keep on living. In this way, dead things are also my favorite part of farming because I enjoy the process of redemption wherein we take dead things and we make life as co-creators with Christ.

You see, Christ is the artist of all artists when it comes to taking something dead and bringing it to life. Ezekiel 37 comes to mind when God shows Ezekiel a vision in the desert of dry dead bones being brought back to life as the living flesh and bodies of an innumerable army. Just before this God tells Ezekiel, “I will give you a new heart and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh” (Ezekiel 36:26). When Adam sinned all of creation fell, and our hearts of flesh died and turned to stone. Our God of redemption was not done, though. He knew we “were dead in [our] trespasses and sins” but He “made us alive together with Christ” (Ephesians 2:1 & 5). In fact, our redemption and new life in Christ was only made possible through His death on the cross. But we all know this, right? I doubt I am telling you anything new or showing you any verses you have not already read. Our God is a God of redemption, which should never cease to amaze us, but it also should not surprise us.

The other day something about this did surprise me. I know God is a God of redemption, but I thought He only needed to redeem because we were dead, because the world is dead, because when Adam fell everything fell with Him and now needs redemption. That is true, and a hearty “Amen” to it. I am certainly no stranger to my need or the world’s need for redemption. Yet, it was not the Fall of man that spurred God’s redemptive work. God was already in the business of redeeming before sin ever entered the equation. Look at Genesis 2:7, “Then the Lord God formed man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature.” Before sin, before man even existed to sin, God took dust and redeemed it to make a living human being. Think about it. God could have created man from anything or He could have just created Him out of nothing. Both options were equally within His omnipotent ability, but He chose to create man from dust. Why? Because God is a God of redemption from the core of who He is, always has been, and always will be, an eternally redemptive God. He did not have to change at all to deal with the Fall. He already delighted in taking something dead and devoid of life and making it living, well before sin entered the heart of man.

I think maybe the devil missed this. The devil thought, “Shoot, if I can get man to fall and become dirty and sinful then good-ole pretty clean God up there won’t know what to do with him.” But God is a dirty God! He loves dirt. He loves working in the dust and the dirt to create life where no one else could see even the possibility of life. Redeeming dirt is what God is about. When Man fell and the devil thought he had beaten God I bet Jesus must have just started to chuckle. Just more mud to play in for the redemptive hand of God. God was ready to do the dirty work of redemption. He made dirt to be redeemed. Redemption was always part of the plan. From the very beginning when God created us He did not just create us from the dirt. He created us from dust, the very least of dirt. As dead as dead gets is where God decided to start, so when we died in our transgressions and sins God knew exactly what to do with us. Redeem. Restore. Repeat. Just remember, you cannot get too dirty for God. His very eternal nature desires to turn your dirt to life. You, and a lot of things in your life will have to die, but God wants to make you alive.

November 26, 2022 by Lindsey Moreno Leave a Comment

It Matters

Do you ever find yourself asking the question, “does it really matter?”

“Do my daily choices matter? Do the habits I make matter? Does my work matter? Does my life matter?”

I ask myself those questions a lot. I ask God those questions a lot too. In the monotony of day to day life, I often wonder quite frankly if any of “this”– life, work, struggles, responsibilities– matters. Deep down, I want to know “What does man gain by all the toil at which he toils under the sun?” (Ecclesiastes 1:3). Is everything really just vanity? Does everything just crumble to dust?

I know in my head, of course I matter, I was thought up in the mind of God, and of course what I do matters, I am where he called me to be. But doubt is my best friend, and to borrow the Spanish terms what I saber (know by facts) in my head is not always what I conocer (know by experience) in my heart.

I used to have this idea that if anyone in life had work that really mattered, it would be a missionary. I mean, you can’t get more purposeful as a Christian than leaving everything to serve God in a different country, right? If anyone had meaningful work it would be the ones who are actively leading people to God, right? There was almost this golden haze of meaning surrounding the life of a missionary.

But the truth is, missionary, or working in the states, the doubts are still there and the question of meaning and purpose is always lurking in the background. Surprise! The question of “does this really matter?” doesn’t change and it doesn’t go away.

I think people are always looking for meaning and reassurance in the work they do in life. Is the thing that we pour our every drop of life and every ounce of passion making a difference? We all want what we do to “matter,” but meaning, value, and success is defined a little differently by each person, country, and culture.

Does it really matter? For me, I like to be able to answer that question with results: facts, numbers, and figures. I like success to be easy to measure and easy to see. I want something to show for my work. I like tangible results to assure me of the fact that I really matter.

Recently, I have taken a pivot in the ministry work I have been doing in Honduras. I decided to step away from the school and explore other facets of ministry. That has led me to helping Micah on the farm, going out to villages, doing office work, visiting the pregnancy center, and even getting involved with a local deaf ministry. Every day is a little different and I get to experience a different part of the goodness of God. And while it may sound romantic on paper in the day to day aspect the romanticism is easily wiped away.

Feeding chickens, stumbling through half cohesive Spanish conversations, answering emails, serving arroz con leche to pregnant women, and cleaning up after kids hardly seems like kingdom work or work that really “matters.”

A few weeks ago I got a message from a high school friend. I have seen her maybe once since high school, aside from the occasional photos and comments on instagram. She told me her and her husband had been talking about how they had met and realized it was because I had invited her to come to church. She shared, “Thanks to a small gesture and church invite my life is on a completely new and Godly path.”

To tell you the truth, I don’t remember exactly when we met or that I invited her to church. Those memories have faded into the mundane day-to-day moments of my life. But she remembers. To me I never imagined that something as small as an invitation could truly matter to someone.

But I think that is God’s secret. He works more in the day-to-day motions than the mountain top highs. Sometimes the things that seem small to us or the work that seems in vain is actually where God works to change lives. And we don’t always get to see the results.

So to answer the question does it really matter? The facts and figures I want to use to measure the value of my work and my success are meaningless– they are vanity. Your work doesn’t need to matter for you to matter. God knows what matters, even if you don’t always understand, and that is enough. God works in the daily motions and movements in ways that we can’t even begin to imagine. All he asks is that we remain faithful to him.

“By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out to a place that he was to receive as an inheritance. And he went out, not knowing where he was going…These all died in faith, not having received the things promised, but having seen them and greeted them from afar, and having acknowledged that they were strangers and exiles on the earth… But as it is, they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared for them a city” (Hebrews 11:8-16).

May 13, 2022 by Lindsey Moreno 3 Comments

Crying In The Classroom

It had been a particularly difficult day at school. I had spent the day fighting to keep the attention of 60 plus, thirteen to eighteen year old masked students who chattered endlessly and looked for every excuse to be distracted. And this day, keeping their attention seemed to be the impossible task. I stood at the front of the class waiting for the bell to ring, and it hit me all at once, the feelings of exasperation, overwhelm, and failure broke from beneath the surface. As I sent the last class out at the end of the day, the tears threatened to fall. Only three lingered a moment, a hesitation, and then the question:

“Are you okay, miss?” one of my students asked. A simple question that often makes us confront unpleasant truths. There was no use in pretending. “No, not really,” I said as the tears began to escape and fall. He gave me a hug, “Miss, you’re doing a really good job.”

One of the other students who was standing there said, “It’s okay, miss, don’t worry. We are like this with all the teachers, and I know sometimes we can be a lot, but we are very glad that you are our teacher.”

I never thought I would find myself crying in front of students in my classroom. I thought I would be strong enough to forgo such instances. But, God does not call the equipped; he equips the called.

Growing up I used to think I was strong. I used to believe that I could hold every burden and shoulder every difficulty. I thought that I could manage every task, responsibility, stressor, and expectation if I decided I was strong enough. But as the responsibilities grew, I realized my breaking point was closer than I thought. I realized that I was in fact weak. I was painfully weak, and perhaps the strength I thought I had was a fleeting illusion.

2 Corinthians 12:9 “But he said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.’”

Recently in my 12th grade class we read a few of the Screwtape Letters. You may be familiar with C.S. Lewis’s satirical story of a head demon uncle sending letters full of clever advice on tempting humans to his inexperienced nephew.

In one of his letters, he explains the purpose of virtue and how it can be twisted to take a person away from God. Virtue, simply put, is created to transform our animalistic self love into godly selfless love. It is the practice of focusing less on ourselves and focusing first and foremost on God and His creation. Virtue brings us closer to the holiness God desires of us. But virtue can be twisted to make an individual think more about himself and less about God. And I think weakness works in a very similar way.

For a long time I was upset with myself for my weakness. It was a point of shame for me. I thought: If I am a Christian and pursuing the kingdom, why do I feel so weak? As a Christian shouldn’t I be able to “do all things through Christ who strengthens me.” Where is this truth for me? I would be upset with myself for not being able to handle life. And I thought to myself, if God has called me to these places, why do I not feel equipped to handle these burdens? Why did my weakness seem so great? What was wrong with me?

God gives us these moments of weakness to turn us from ourselves and turn us to Him. And instead of using my weakness as a blessing to grow in my understanding of God’s goodness and His mercy, it became the thorn in my side. All I could think about was me. During these moments, the Enemy would come in and feed me lies about who I was and I would believe them. All I would think about was my inability, my inadequacy, and my failure. I would let the enemy distract me from the true power of weakness.

Weakness is in fact a blessing. God wants us to know we are weak. Your weakness does not make you a failure. The inability to continue on your own is not a sign of a deficiency or a defect in who you are. It shows that you are a living breathing human being and that God is calling you to rely on Him because we can’t do this life on our own. Oftentimes, instead of letting these moments of weakness draw us to God, we let these moments of weakness tear us down, isolate us from others, and draw our focus even deeper into ourselves. As Christians, it is His mercy to us that we can come face to face with our weakness and see it as a strength.

After my moment of weakness in the classroom, after the tears in front of my students, I thought that this was a mark of failure. I felt the lies racing through my mind, but this time I didn’t let them define me. I am weak, and I can proclaim that proudly. I can throw down the facade of strength and accept my weakness boldly. I don’t have to pretend to be “strong” because I serve a God whose strength is so much bigger than my weakness. I serve a God who, in my weakness, fills in the gaps and carries me when I no longer have the strength to stand.

“Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong.” 2 Corinthians 12: 9-10

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