A lesson in gardening
Pua
Hawaiian Dictionary
Flower, blossom, tassel and stem of sugar cane; to bloom, blossom. To issue, appear, come forth, emerge, said especially of smoke, wind, speech, and colors, hence to smoke, blow, speak, shine. Progeny, child, descendant, offspring.
Whenever you see a “For the Love of ____” blog, you can be certain I have emerged from a period of examining myself to see if I am in the faith. Am I on the right path Lord? 2 Cor 13:5 We have learned through the years that God periodically tests our faith. James 1:2-4 Everything we do that is anything is for His glory alone. While those who plant and water are not anything. God gives the increase when we are faithful to fulfill our part.
What then is Apollos? What is Paul? Servants through whom you believed, as the Lord assigned to each. I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth. So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth. He who plants and he who waters are one, and each will receive his wages according to his labor. For we are God’s fellow workers. You are God’s field, God’s building.
1 Cor 3:5-9
Some know that Cathy and I ran a coed faith based transition home for furloughed inmates on Kauai called Live Again The Walk. Translation: we had 5-10 inmates and sometimes their children living in our home for 12 years.
Anyone who has engaged in prison ministry knows that the odds of success are stacked against you from the start. Those who fail to understand and embrace the realities of 1 Corinthians 3 usually abandon all hope and move on before the miraculous increase happens. So many inmates that came to our home failed over the years, that I used to joke that we ran a fruitless ministry. Yet the Lord had called us to it and we didn’t have His permission to quit. That’s not to say that we wanted to or that everyone failed. Our first resident loved the lord. He became a successful carpenter and independent contractor with a family before he died. Our second got her master’s degree and now teaches at a High school on Kauai. We had nearly ten years of experience under our belt when Pua arrived.
Pua (a.k.a. Kimberlynn) didn’t want to come to our house at first. As she says, “I was planning to get high.” But the KCCC Warden Neal Wagatsuma had other plans. Pua had to see the judge before she could be released. Neal told her Cathy would be there to pick her up. Pua says she didn’t believe it. Why should she? She’d been homeless for three years before she was arrested. She’d been homeless a lot growing up as a child of addicted parents in Waianae, Hawaii. Waianae is probably the roughest community in the entire state. She suffered the most unspeakable things you can imagine. But Pua is tough. In fact, she was the self-appointed “mayor” of the homeless camp before she went to jail. Apart from one or two prison Bible studies, Pua didn’t know Cathy at all. Imagine her surprise when Cathy turned out to be the first person in the courtroom when Pua arrived. Those who know Cathy will understand when I say,
Pua came home with Cathy.
Traumatized women require a lot of love, patience, listening, and gentle guidance from those who are willing to take the time to earn their trust. Yet it didn’t take all that long for Pua to allow herself to be planted. She never lied to us, never stole, never drank or did drugs, never became violent, and was never promiscuous. She got saved and filled with Holy Spirit and has been a walking, talking joy bomb ever since. No one loves Mondays like Pua. I promise you will have no greater understanding of joy than if you meet her. That said, follow her on Instagram and tell her we sent you to get joy bombed.
Like a lot of women fresh out of addiction and criminal lifestyles, Pua’s only real temptation was in the area of relationships. To love and be loved are genuine, valid human needs. And like most women from traumatic backgrounds, Pua had a broken picker when it came to men. So Pua got creative. She used stuffed animals as a coping tool. Bub was her favorite.
She’d been with us about two years when she came home and confessed that she was attracted to some guy in the community. Romantic relationships were normally forbidden for our residents, but Pua had been with us for a while and we knew it could not last forever. So I investigated. Sure enough, the guy was a stoner and toxic for Pua. I reminded her in my characteristically blunt way, that her “picker was broken.” I held the stoner’s picture in one hand and Bub in the other. “Seriously?” “He looks exactly like Bub!” I said, “Oh my God!” Pua said.
She dropped the stoner like a rock and kept Bub.
Incidentally, Pua named me Dutch.
That should make perfect sense to anyone who knows me and has seen the movie.
In return, I named Pua “Boove”, after the main character in the Pixar movie Home.
That should also make perfect sense to anyone who knows Pua and has seen the movie.
Today Pua has a boyfriend named Kali. Naturally, I investigated. It turns out he is a solid, spirit-filled, hard-working guy, and perfect for Pua. Cathy and I approve.
Now, you might be wondering what specific kinds of teaching, discipleship, counseling, interventions, etc., we employed to make Pua the person she is. What curriculum did we use? If so then you still don’t get it. Christians everywhere are grasping for false identity called self-esteem while struggling with the reality that he who plants and waters is nothing and that
God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, so that no human being might boast in the presence of God
1 Cor 1:27- 29
It continues to amaze me that so much false pride and boasting exists within Christian ministries. It seems that believers everywhere are either vying for a platform or idolizing one.
You can not manualize transformation. As I’ve said, Cathy and I know what it is to be utterly broken. As I wrote in the previous post, our brokenness is our resume. God comforted us in our affliction. Now we can comfort those in their affliction. 2 Cor 1:4 That’s it. That being said, the closest we have to a manualized formula is contained in Proverbs 3:5-8. We said yes to the Lord, fell in love with Pua, and had a whole lot of fun doing it. Granted she has a slightly different perspective.
Hanae, pronounced (Hana-ay), is the Hawaiian word for adoption. Not just formal legal adoption. Kids can also adopt parents. Like a lot of people with millennial kids, Cathy and I have adult children from whom we are currently estranged. Pua said we had faith? The truth is she had enough faith to trust us even though she didn’t know us “Haoles” (foreigners). Yet she came to live in our home and accepted us as her own despite our previous failures as parents. God knew we needed her to inspire us, to help us persevere and grow amidst rejection by some of those we love most.
Today the Pua to whom we provided a place to be planted and bloom has become the Lord’s increase. She took over our transitional home when Cathy and I left for the foreign mission field. Now, she works for the county of Kauai as the number two person in charge of a program that assists all the homeless on the island. She oversees transitional homes and feeding programs all over Kauai.
So then neither is he that planteth any thing, neither he that watereth; but God that giveth the increase.
1 Corinthians 3:7
As we always say, God calls us to help certain people because He knows it is the best place for us to receive the help that we need. That revelation, if we get it, will squash false pride and enable us to follow Jesus’s command to “Deny Self” and become His disciple.
In addition to the transition home where I lived, I also worked as an adolescent substance abuse treatment counselor in a school-based treatment program. It seems like just yesterday that I had a 13-year-old boy named Elijah. God used him to teach me a powerful lesson about mercy, grace, hearing His voice, and that, quite often, He works despite rather than because of what we think and do. It remains one of the most formative experiences in my faith walk with the Lord.
To say that Elijah was a handful is an understatement. I remember looking at him as he was causing trouble in my classroom and thinking, “There is no point! I can’t help this kid. He is destined for jail.” We were scheduled to go on a bi-yearly camping trip, and I did not want to take him. But he begged and pleaded and promised to be good until finally I gave in.”Fine!” I said. “But I’ve got to check your bags.” “Uh…uh…oh-ok…,” Elijah said. It took all of thirty seconds for me to find a bag of weed, a lighter, and a pipe.
“Elijah I trusted you!” I lied.
I didn’t trust that kid as far as I could throw him.
Everything in the code of conduct, every rule I had sworn to uphold told me to turn him into the principal so he could be suspended from school. But I felt an undeniable check in my spirit. It made no sense. But it seemed like the Lord wanted me to take him on the trip.
Seriously Lord?!
So I gave him the “justice, mercy, grace” speech. Justice – getting what you deserve, Mercy- not getting what you deserve, Grace – getting what you don’t deserve. “Which one do you think you are getting?” I asked.
“Uh…Grace?” Elijah replied.
I flushed his weed down the toilet smashed his lighter and threw his pipe in the dumpster before loading everyone up and heading off to camp.
My nickname on Kauai at that time was “The Hammer” and or “Warden 2”. Anyone who knew me then could tell you that it went against everything I stood for to let Elijah go on that trip. Boundaries are to be preserved not willfully and flippantly violated. Not only that, but I was putting my most prized commodity on the line: my integrity. Yet, God was clarifying His voice in my spirit along with my faith and obedience to it. That same paradoxical and seemingly contradictory obedience would save our lives more than once when I finally got to the mission field.
As soon as we got to camp Elijah was back to his old defiant and delinquent self. Naturally, I questioned myself,
“Did I really hear God?”
I’ll let you decide.
That was seventeen years ago.
Elijah is thirty today. He approached us after I preached a sermon about our spiritual resumes. Going to jail is a huge part of mine. “It’s the legendary Mr. Gray!” he began. “Oh were you in jail too?” Cathy asked. “No!” Elijah said. “Hina Mauka Teen CARE at Kapaa Middle School!”
“Elijah?!!!” I said.
“I think about you all the time.”
“You know”, Elijah began. “You showed me mercy once in a way that really impacted me.” “It was grace.” I thought to myself. “Was it the weed?” I smiled. “Yeah maybe.” He said. “All I remember is that you trusted me and I let you down.” “It was my lowest point,” he said.
“I’ve never forgotten it.”
“Neither have I,” I replied. “You have been part of my testimony for years.”
Elijah didn’t remember the weed or my speech. He had no knowledge of the ethical dilemma in which he had placed me, let alone what God was doing in me. But rather, the imaginary trust that he believed I had in him made him realize the inherent value of being trustworthy. For all intents and purposes,
I was a mere prop in God’s plan.
I’d seen Elijah once in passing since middle school. He was graduating from high school. “Clean and sober!” he’d exclaimed. “I’m going on a mission trip!” I never got to talk to him beyond that. Church leaders at Pukas Ministries on Kauai tell me that Elijah is humble and a genuine servant today.
One thing is certain when it comes to those whose lives I have purposed to touch. I plant, often without knowing it. Other people water. God gives the miraculous increase. In the end, Pua and Elijah bloomed like flowers in the field while I wasn’t even looking. Today, they water the seeds of my ever-growing trust and obedience in and to the Lord. Today, they are the Lord’s confirmation that I am indeed walking the path and doing the things that God prepared beforehand, and I should walk in them. Not because He needs me to. But because I get to. Our works are never for our significance but for His glory alone. Given what Cathy and I are about to undertake, all I can say is that “I really and truly needed this!”. It might be the main reason for our trip to Kauai. Pua and Elijah’s growth was never about me. But it was, at the very least, partly for me. I am so very grateful and blessed that God used them to increase my faith, awe, and appreciation of His goodness, omniscience, and power.
As a father shows compassion to his children, so the Lord shows compassion to those who fear him. For he knows our frame; he remembers that we are dust. The days of man are like grass. He grows like a flower of the field. When the wind blows over it, it is gone. Its place will remember it no more. But the loving-kindness of the Lord is forever and forever on those who fear Him. And what is right with God is given forever to their children’s children,
Psalm 103:13-17
