Beachheads, Indian words, and drunk Philosophy teachers.

It is really weird to think that many of our grandfathers came here to France. You may have heard that there is a really important beach in Normandy with the name “Omaha.” It was the place where boats full of young American doughboys landed. They marched up a heavily fortified hill of sand with wet boots to open a door for others to fall in behind them.

You do not need to have a CDIB card to know that “Omaha” is not a French word.

We recently learned that near that famous beach head where so many laid down their lives to take back Europe from a tyrannical ruler, there is a grave yard. It is a place that is technically American soil and is maintained to this day by the American people. It serves as a reminder.

It tells us the ever-repeating story that the only way hard places are won is with sacrifice.

A good story that is well timed for us. If you want to know what our first weeks here have been like I would say that it really feels like a beachhead. Life has hit us all at once and our boots are wet. Everything seems uphill and sandy. We are in this strange place with new sounds, and new smells, and new sights, and new people. We have had to learn how to use public transit (train and bus) to do EVERYTHING. We have had to learn where to buy food (semi-important when you are feeding a baby T-Rex like our 2-year-old Deacon). We have had to setup bank accounts, phones, and a million other things with a lot of broken French, smiles, and affirmative nods. Needless to say, we have done a lot of praying. G-d has been so gracious and has not abandoned us.

We think we might have found ourselves in a good story.

Something I have noticed about us, as Christians, is that we tend to not tell good stories. It is not that we do not have them. I would argue we have the best stories to tell. It is not inadequacy in our delivery necessarily either, for we have many gifted communicators.

Sometimes we tell the wrong stories.

Or just tell them at the worst times. Stories are like hieroglyphs for how we interpret the world. The stories we tell say something about the way we see the situation. This is why an old friend once told me that in meeting someone for the first time it takes about 5 minutes to determine what that person worships. That was always startling to me. We tip our cards so quickly that it is staggering. If I asked you to tell me a story about any particular topic, the one that comes to the surface first says something very profound about your worldview. Even more, it will say to us why you live the way you live in that regard.

Let me explain a bit. We got to France ready to charge the beachhead and a well-meaning woman welcomed us to this corner of the harvest. Within a few moments among the first things she told us were a couple stories. She told a story about how it's inappropriate for the French to talk of G-d or church at work or in social settings (This makes evangelism difficult you might guess). She went on to say that one French woman lost her job for commenting simply that she was a Christian. This act apparently made her coworkers nervous and she was let go. If her story was a freshman English paper the title would be: The people do not want to hear and the the believers do not want to share. Another story of a man followed that told how he was volunteering at a city service project for years but when someone learned that he did it because he was a Christian they told him not to come back. After years of service this door was closed in his face.

They fear, she said, and have been trained not to share their faith with others.

She even co-signed on this reality and said we must respect that the French do not talk about faith. The French must be accommodated in this regard. She said it would take us long periods of time to build French friendships that we could maybe, and just maybe share with. She framed in the work for us in such a way that I am not sure how we could expect any response but discouragement. At some point we cut off the flow of stories with an attempted polite change of subject.

Welcome to the beachhead. The people closest to the new boats coming in only can tell you about the bodies on the ground that were the people who came before you. Well meaning and maybe a good warning, but it's the wrong story. Accurate in some respects, but bad timing with a capital “B.”

Here is my deeper trouble with my new friend: I am not sure that G-d plays by those rules. He loves the French more than he cares to play by their rules. He is bigger than the expectations of His people. He is a better answer than His people pray.

In this moment I have to doubt my friends fears to the point of appearing naive. I have to doubt her story. Not the veracity of the account, but whether it has the final say on the matter. Or if there is not a better story to tell or be told. I have to take statistics and her expertise and respectfully ignore them. Otherwise, I would lose before I start. Otherwise my faith would be crippled by rules that would make the Pharisees glad and the enemy relax.

So I woke up the next day and prayed for an opportunity to share Jesus with someone. I believe that when you pray for this and are faithful to look for opportunities that the Lord answers this prayer every time. There are strong Biblical reasons to do so, but that is for another time.

We have been using the last couple weeks to acclimate to our new culture and learn language on the streets like Jay-Z did.

So we planned this trip to a nearby neighborhood called Versailles. As in the Palace of Versailles, Versailles… Its just a few miles away and there is a garden for the kids to play in. Why not? While waiting on a train (because we got on the wrong one) there appeared a 60ish year old woman who began to call our kids “minion.” In the states this means something entirely different (insert despicable Me reference), but here it means “cute” and is used for kids. Though my kids are kinda minions on all accounts. Since Malachi is Will Rogers reincarnated and has never met a stranger he didn’t like…we soon were in conversation. She was a retired Philosophy teacher and looked like she may have very recently been partaking of the fruit of the vine. Her lipstick was smeared and she looked like a college student after a rough night on Spring Break. By the grace of G-d, she spoke English better than we do French (Which is not hard to do). Side note: speaking in a language you don't know is about being secure enough for people to laugh and correct you all the time. ALL THE TIME (Farewell, pride). She was very kind and had spent time in the states so we had a lot to talk about. We talked the whole train ride and she even decided to walk us to the very doorstep of Versailles about a half a mile away. I think it is worth mentioning that I am rereading the French Philosopher Blasé Pascal by coincidence/sovereignty of the Lord. Also, we are walking to the house of the King of France who killed hundreds of thousands of believers. So let me run this back for you in case you are missing it: 1. We prayed for an opportunity to share with a French person. 2. A French philosophy teacher invites herself into our life while I am reading French philosophy. 3. We are talking politics while walking to a former political headquarters that killed my ancestors the Huguenots. 4. She speaks English, which happens to be really important for communication with us at this point. 5. And she is a slow walker. #golden

Here is the deal: if we believe the other story about the French people. The one about how you cannot talk to them about Jesus and faith, then we maybe never get to share with this woman. We may never even meet her.

It is not that she wouldn’t have existed, but that the rules would have blinded us to the fact that G-d wanted to speak to her through us that day and it doesn’t even matter that she is French. It matters that she is a sinner in need of grace. Is not this a better story to tell? Don’t you want to believe in that story unfolding around you?

There are two churches nearby where we are temporarily living and this reality could not be more transparent. One sees all the reasons they cannot do things and the other is baptizing a bunch of people who responded to an invitation. Which is the better story to tell? Which one do you want to give your life to? Let me be clear. France is hard. France is really hard for us right now. It is a lot of sacrifice that we feel all the time when we think of people back home in the states especially.

The reality is that there are no good stories without sacrifice. We need not look any further than the beaches in France with Indian words attached to them to remind us of that. All the easy places in the world are gone. The cross of Jesus, even more so than a graveyard in Normandy, should make that abundantly clear.

If you want easy, then you want something not worth doing. There is just this story that G-d has invited you to be in. There is just the here and there is just the now.

How are you telling that story?