Sara Shackelford

So Close....

Hi everyone!

My name is Sara Shackelford. I’m 22, and I’m almost through with my first year of teaching math a private Christian high school…I can’t believe the beginning of Mission Year is getting so close! I am so excited and scared at the same time…

I want to be a part of this because I want so much to see Christ in a real, living way. I want to understand what it means to pour out my life for something other than myself. I have grown up in such a safe comfortable environment and I know I’ll never really understand other people’s struggles until I’ve actually been a part of them. I want to make a difference – I try to tell the highschoolers I teach about the incredible obstacles that people and families face and yet I feel like I’m still not involved in really trying to change those things. More and more I see how the heart of God breaks over these issues. Mission Year attracted me because of the emphasis they place on forming real relationships, of really “doing life” with people, not just staying around the perimeter and never really coming alongside the people. I feel so inadequate to address the issues I’ve been learning about and I want, through Mission Year, to be better equipped to serve Christ effectively. I want to learn what “my life for yours” and following hard after Him really means.

The other aspect of the Mission Year that really resonates in my heart is the incredible call to justice. All my life, I’ve been very familiar with the idea of charity and taking care of the poor, but never with the idea of radical change, of what it means to see His kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven. Recently, I’ve been stuck on Amos 5:24 where he says “Let justice roll down like waters. And righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.” I am in love with the image of justice crashing down like water – I want God to work that justice through my life in some way.

Thanks so much for reading! I’ll try to be faithful in updating you all on the process leading up to my year and during – right now I’m just waiting to find out where I’ll be…

About Mission Year

Mission Year is a year long urban ministry program focused on Christian service and discipleship. We take teams of young people, place them in an area of need, and help them to serve people and create community. We are committed to the command of Jesus to “love God and love people,” by placing the needs of our neighbors first and developing committed disciples of Christ with a heart for the poor. Learn more about our first year program…

Sara Shackelford's Blog

...and we're back... / Jan 14, 05:51 PM

To the desperate eyes and reaching hands
To the suffering and the lean
To the ones the world has cast aside
Where you want me I will be

I will go, I will go
I will go, Lord send me
To the world, To the lost
To the poor and hungry
Take everything I am
I’m clay within your hands
I will go, I will go, send me

Let me not be blind with privilege
Give me eyes to see the pain
Let the blessing You’ve poured out on me
Not be spent on me in vain
Let this life be used for change

I’ve been listening to this song, I Will Go by Starfield, a ton recently (and, yes, if you haven’t noticed, I probably often feel the most connected to God through music). I’m realizing that when I sing the words of this song, it puts into words some of the things I feel my heart crying. I’m finding for the first time that I really mean those words. But at the same time, my idealism is fading. I think that’s good in many ways….I sing the words knowing that while the song is powerful and moving; daily life doesn’t always look or feel that way. Issues are far more complicated than they appear on the surface. Real change is clearly going to require all of my life and the reality is that there will be many disappointments.

Being home for Christmas has shown me how hard it’s going to be to transition back when this year is over. Don’t get me wrong, I loved being home and had some cool experiences – but despite the almost culture shock I’ve had, I’ve also seen just how easy it’d be to become the exact same person I was prior to leaving. It’s a crazy realization to make when you’re discovering simultaneously where your passion really lies. That’s something I’ve really been struggling with. How much of myself am I going to lose? So much of who I am and what I was is being burned away – and while I don’t begin to question that it needs to happen, must happen…am I still going to be me? Are the people close to me going to understand and embrace that change? Am I going to lose some of them or not be able to remain as close?

It’s hard…I am beyond far from perfect; I’ve never seen that more clearly or painfully, but my desire is for my God, is for His Jesus. The more I feel that pulling at my heart, the more I feel like I don’t know how to live in the world. On the one hand, here in our neighborhood, it forces me to be aware of the brokenness around me – and makes it impossible to not go and do something about it. But the problems are so big and deeply rooted here and everywhere else that we often want to throw up our hands in exasperation at our own ineffectiveness.

And to top it all off, after feeling all of these things for even a space of several months, I don’t know how to explain it to someone who wasn’t there with me. I’ve certainly tried, but even listening to myself, I can tell that my words aren’t quite getting at exactly what I’m experiencing. Sometimes it’s hard not to get frustrated if I feel like my passion isn’t shared – I forget how different I used to be and the constant struggle in myself to pray the verses from my last entry “Lord, I believe; help my unbelief!”

That’s really it…I’ve struggled to find a good way to somehow conclude this and have come up empty. I don’t know if and how it will resolve itself. I can only say that it’s amazing to me, that in the midst of this kind of upheaval of beliefs, I feel more at peace now than I ever have in my life, perhaps because I know why I am living it.

Comment [2]

....Same song, different verse... / Nov 3, 10:13 PM

Mark 9 – A man brings his son to Jesus. His son is possessed by a demon. And “Jesus asked his father, ‘How long has this been happening to him?’ And he (the father) said, ‘From childhood. And it has often cast him into fire and into water, to destroy him. But if you can do anything, have compassion on us and help us.’ And Jesus said to him, ‘If you can! All things are possible for one who believes.’ Immediately the father of the child cried out and said, ‘I believe; help my unbelief!’”

As a team, we do devotions every morning and take turns leading them. Earlier this week, Jordan chose this passage for us to think about. It’s been something I haven’t been able to escape. Is that not all of us – “Lord, I believe; help my unbelief!” ? I find myself in that place all the time. I DO believe, so why do I so often choose to listen to voices that would tell me I’m throwing my life away for something I don’t really care about, for things/people that are never going to change? It reminds me of a sermon I heard from Bryan Lorritz at home at Fellowship. He was preaching that our sins, our doubts, our hesitations, have been nailed to the cross with Jesus. However, he also made the point that crucifixion is by no means an immediate death…it’s certain death, but it takes a long time. The point was and is that everything broken in us has been put to death by what Jesus did on the cross, but in this life, it’s only in the process of dying, as he put it “the old man still wiggles sometimes.” I’m beginning to see my life as a process of asking God to teach me how to not listen to the voices, how to cling to what I know to be true, how to follow blindly when I can’t always find my belief, how to keep my eyes and heart open to what He’s trying to show me. It’s been liberating to think of it that way – to recognize that the ultimate battle for my heart is over and done with, to recognize that in this life I’m always going to struggle -that I’m a Christian because I struggle with my sin, not because I’m perfect.

I also like the simplicity of his prayer. I’ve always seen my faith as a complicated mess of theology – I liked that because I enjoy debating and arguing points. But I’m seeing that in many ways it has been my biggest stumbling block. I concern myself with making sure everybody believes correctly (i.e. how I believe) rather than making my first goal to love people the way Jesus has loved me. I suppose for most of my life I haven’t really believed that that would really change anyone, but being here, I can’t help but see that I’ve had things entirely backwards.

Micah 6:8

He has told you, O man, what is good;
And what does the LORD require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?

James 1:27

Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.

Peace

Comment [1]

Being Messed Up / Oct 13, 10:05 PM

Being here is messing me up. I don’t really know how to process everything I’m seeing on a daily basis…the poverty, the pointless bureaucracy, the education system. The problems are so overwhelming and the cyclical that I find it hard to know how to focus on what I CAN do or even how to think about it.

All the Mission Year teams did PROP on Saturday – that stands for Pauper’s Right of Passage; for us, it was a day long poverty simulation. We dressed in clothes we were given and spent the day downtown digging in dumpsters, asking for money/food, and talking with people who live in that situation every day. The day was eye-opening and really hard. To even sit on the street corner set us apart from the rest of society – we got a brief taste of what it’s like to have people look at you and quickly avert their eyes, to have them not look you in the face even when they do give you money, to have them refuse you food even when they’re holding a bag of leftovers in their hands. Many teams also saw the humbling reality that the most generous people on the street are the ones who live there. Several people only had food saturday because a “fellow” homeless person decided to share the little they had. My partner Jessica (who’s also from Memphis!) and I only had two people really speak to us all day – one was the smiling old man who gave Jessica a hotdog (wrapped in a tortilla, which was strangely good, but that may’ve been because that was all we ate) and the other was Bill, a homeless man who showed us more effective (and vocal!) ways to panhandle after making us admit we weren’t actually homeless. He also wrapped me in a long hug on the corner of a busy intersection while he prayed for us and thanked Jesus for loving all people.

So now I don’t know how to walk down a street, how I should, as a follower of Christ, love the people there. I discovered alot about the person I would probably be if I was homeless…at first, I felt bad about taking people’s money when I didn’t really need it, but as soon as I started really getting hungry, it didn’t bother me. I found myself becoming incredibly angry and bitter when I realized people had no problem telling us they didn’t have any food even as they held leftovers. I found myself realizing if I truly was starving, stealing or lying would be very viable options. I felt completely set apart from the world, like I didn’t even have a right to set foot in a store since I had no means to buy anything or in a way, to really even exist in that world. I know that probably doesn’t make alot of sense, especially since we really didn’t do the simulation for all that long. But the intense way we experienced those feelings in only that day made me only wonder what it must be like to live like that. So again, how do any of us walk down the street?

Comment [2]

One Love / Sep 28, 09:51 PM

I’m assuming most of you reading this blog have heard the worship song “Obsession,”
but in case not, it goes…

“Give me one pure and holy passion
Give me one magnificent obsession
One grand ambition for my life
To know and follow hard after You.”

This past week or so, I’ve been struck by how obsessed I’m becoming with Christ, with talking about what it means to live as a follower of His in this world. It’s the only addiction I’ve ever had in my life that is good, that is everything it should be. I’m learning that following him in every part of life and finding my every thought consumed is exactly what makes life have a purpose, what allows my life to make sense. I was reading in the book Unchristian (which you should pick up) and he says that he doesn’t really like the phrase “accept Christ,” that “following Christ” would be a better picture of what it means to be a Christian. As a team, I think we agree with this idea. At least for me, I couldn’t tell you when I “accepted” Christ, but I know I became a Christian when I made a decision to follow Him with my life…and that came many years after I prayed a sinner’s prayer. I’d like to include a passage from Shane Claiborne’s book The Irresistible Revolution (which you absolutely MUST READ, along with John Perkins’ Restoring At-Risk Communities). It’s long, but bear with me…it’s so true and something I didn’t understand for so long.

“…Conversion means to change, to alter, after which something looks different than it did before – like conversion vans or converted currency. We need converts in the best sense of the word, people who are marked by the renewing of their minds and imaginations, who no longer conform to the pattern that is destroying our world. Otherwise, we have only believers, and believers are a dime-a-dozen nowadays. What the world needs is people who believe so much in another world that they cannot help but begin enacting it now. For even if the whole world believed in resurrection, little would change until we began to practice it. We can believe in CPR, but people will remain dead until someone breathes new life into them. And we can tell the world that there is life after death, but the world really seems to be wondering if there is life before death. There is the kind of conversion that happens to people not because of how we talk but because of how we live.”

We have no contexts for our lives outside of Christ. I do, however, find that the closer I get to really embracing that truth with my life, the more I feel under attack from my enemy. It’s almost a voice in my head saying I’m unworthy, I can never really be different, my past is too unforgivable and I’ll just make the same mistakes over again. I’m praying that I can live in the realization that I am redeemed, that God says “as far as the east is from the west, so far I have removed your transgressions from you.” One of the Chicago area team captains made the point in an early city-wide devotion time that we have to be filled before we try to fill others. I want to be so overflowing with the love of Christ that He is the only explanation for the way I live my life.

More on what that looks like later -and how incredible our neighborhood is…for now, I need to catch a train home!

Peace

Comment [4]

I'm just a blind man asking to see... / Sep 15, 03:24 PM

The words to that song have been replaying in my head continually in the past week. For those of you who do not know, I’m living in Roseland in the south side of Chicago. My team of 7 (5 girls, 2 guys) will start working at Roseland Christian Ministries tomorrow morning.

I’ll be working at the thrift store with Steve who lives on Skid Row (our block) too. Honestly, when they first told us the different jobs they needed people to fill, the thrift store was my absolute last choice. My first thought was “ugh.” But ironically, when we met Steve while we were buying dressers for our house, we really hit it off and I began thinking that the store didn’t sound like such a bad idea after all. Then Dave and Laura (the couple that live down the street from us, they work for RCM and were the ones who contacted mission year for volunteers) also told us how the thrift store had become a hangout/counseling sortof center for some people in the neighborhood. I thought that sounded cool since it’s sometimes still hard for me to approach people on my own. They followed that by telling me the majority of my time will be spent there helping Steve. I’m thrilled, but I was more amazed by how God really changed my mind and showed me the opportunities. My attitude was completely transformed and for those of you who know me well, that’s not a small thing.

I know there’s no way I can begin to explain to any of you the many incredible moments and realizations I’ve had since coming here, but I’d like to briefly try. First, the people in our house. Like I said, there are 7 of us – Sarah from Buffalo, NY, Jordan from St. Louis, MO, Shaun from TX, Rachel from Vancouver, Canada, Kerry from Atlanta, GA, and Becca from Flint, MI. I never stopped to consider that Mission Year’s statement “love God love people nothing else matters” wasn’t just about the neighborhood we’re living in. We’re seeking to create authentic community in our house as well, to really live transparently before each other. I’ve never before talked so openly about God and faith and justice with people who all understand where I’m coming from, who share similar passions. I’ve never felt like I was truly relying on God for grace in every moment until now. It’s freedom – and I’m beginning to realize that my life will not ever be the same again. We’re all really excited.

The neighborhood has also been so welcoming. Early in training, they talked alot about remembering that we’re not bringing God to this place, God is here and will be here long after we’re gone. Even though I’ve been trying to live in that, I’m realizing that I’ve been finding Jesus in the absolute last places I expected to. For instance, several days ago Jordan and Shaun were trying to cut our small front yard with a mower. They weren’t having much success with all the weeds – and Shaun had made the comment that they really needed a weed whacker. As I was sitting on the porch watching this play out, one of the men on the block (with a reputation, I might add) suddenly went behind a house and came back with a weed whacker. I sat staring as he came over and worked on our yard and then had his teenage son come through with a leaf blower to clean up when he was done. He didn’t say a word and just nodded when we thanked him.

I’ve been trying to swallow that since it happened…my world is turned over when the drug dealer down the street understands community better than I do. I, who grew up surrounded by christianity, don’t really understand what it means to live in authentic community. I’m awed by seeing the unexpected good in this place. Everyone of every age is outside all afternoon/evening. I used to think it was intimidating when I drove through certain neighborhoods in Memphis; now I feel incredibly blessed to be part of it. The lines of color and class, good and bad are starting to blur and I can’t describe how unsettling and cool it all is.

I don’t know a good way to stop..there’s so much more to say. Please be praying for focus for our team, that we see each other through the eyes of Christ first. If you want to be on my mailing list too, send me an email (sarashackelford1@gmail.com) or just leave your address on here!

Excerpts from Nehemiah 4

“When Sanballat heard we were rebuilding the wall, he became angry and was greatly incensed…he said ‘What are those feeble Jews doing? Will they restore their wall? Will they offer sacrifices? Will they finish in a day? Can they bring those stones back to life from those heaps of rubble – burned as they are?’

…they plotted together to come and fight against Jerusalem and stir up trouble against it. But we prayed to our God and posted a guard day and night to meet this threat. Meanwhile the people in Judah said, ‘The strength of the laborers is giving out, and there is so much rubble that we cannot rebuilt the wall.’

…but After I looked things over, I stood up and said to the nobles, the officials, and the rest of the people, ‘Don’t be afraid of them. Remember the LORD, who is great and awesome, and fight for your brothers, your sons and your daughters, your wives and your homes.’”