Gentle Hands: learning, loving, serving

I (Media Mary speaking) just spent 5 days with the nanny team at Gentle Hands. What a blessing and challenge that time was!

For their mamas: this nanny team is alive and well - and busy! Gentle Hands describes itself as an agency "meant to be on the front lines of rescue and rehabilitation of the needs of at-risk children and youth, working towards improving human community life through the love of Jesus and family-centered care." Currently, GH is home to over 50 children and 30+ staff members. I want to describe it as full of "life," which is especially significant because many children arrive at Gentle Hands on the brink of death.

I've been told that writing blogs about nanny work is a challenge because the work is not especially thrilling. It's true that changing poopy diapers and helping with math homework is not breaking news, but this week at Gentle Hands has taught me some important lessons about true service and love.

[sometimes service looks like this - donated clothes, sorted by size]

[Rachel, Maegan and Hannah taking the toddlers for a walk]

• Service doesn't always make for great stories. Sometimes the Lord calls us not to preach or plant churches, but to bathe an elderly woman who is unable to get out of bed. Sometimes it's not a matter of blazing a new trail but of obediently submitting to an authority. These nannies probably don't have a passion for cleaning oatmeal out of a squirming toddler's hair, but that is the service that the Lord has set in front of them for the summer. And as such, it is a vital part of the Kingdom story.
• "Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men, knowing that from the Lord you will receive the inheritance as your reward." (Col. 3:22) The test of a true heart for service is how you respond when no one notices. Sometimes I think I want to serve when really I want the assurance that my service is appreciated.
• God loves the unlovely and calls us to do the same. In most of my pictures the babies are sweet and smiling. But those babies also cry. They scream, in fact. They dump water on you at 5 AM; they poop in the bathtub; they refuse your outstretched arms. If you love them less in those moments, you don't really love them at all. If you do not love the troubled teenager or stubborn six-year-old as you do the cooing toddler, you don't love as God does. As my friend Lizzie reminded me, as ambassadors for Christ we cannot be selfish with our love. It's not ours to keep and give as we please. We, too, are often unlovely.
• God loves the unlovely, but He doesn't leave them there. His love is the kind that transforms. It redeems. It disciplines.

Pray for the Gentle Hands nannies, that the Lord would continue to give them hearts of true service. Pray that they would "put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony." Pray that through this team, the children would know they are loved uniquely and individually by their Father.
Pray that all glory would be His.
- Media Mary