It is my absolute pleasure to welcome to Rubble and Rescue my hero, my mentor, my best friend, my mom - Michele. You will never meet a woman with more resilience, wisdom, and grace than this lady. Soak in her words today and let them feed your soul as they did mine.
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“If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up people to collect wood and don’t assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.
”
The best fries (skin on, served with sour cream), the best burger (piled high with fixings) the best chocolate shake (chocolatey, creamy, need a spoon) and the best guy (blonde mullet, very blue eyes, square jaw, yummy mouth).
Jeff Sorvik had asked me out! Walked right into my dorm - of course he didn’t know it was girls only - with his blue 80’s suit on, fresh from his management job at a computer software company.
I was a freshman; he was a junior. I asked myself what in the world he saw in me? The answer: he saw not something…but someone. Someone he wanted to know better.
After he asked me out for the aforementioned dinner, we started to build.
We built a friendship that turned into wobbly love. Jeff told me he loved me first and I couldn’t say it back... at least not yet. He graciously said, “that’s ok,” and drove out of my sight, where he proceeded to bang his head on the steering wheel of his grey Nissan Sentra.
You see I was struggling with the whole concept of love as it actually is and not some trumped up, Hollywood-ized version of it. Jeff said he loved me first and he meant it. He patiently waited until I understood love for myself to see if it applied to him. And when I finally landed on love and applied it’s real definition to Jeff, I meant it with all my heart.
For over thirty years we built a life together. We could see the immensity of God’s love for us, like a giant fathomless ocean, so much better then we could see it alone. We bent toward one another, lifting each other up when life struck us down - and believe me, it did - while learning to trust Jesus again and again and then suddenly...
It all ended.
Jeff, dearest husband and very best friend, taken in a fire in February of this year.
Now what? It’s just me. Me, alone after building a life and ministering with him for so many, many years.
When I first met Jeff, almost from day one, I knew the man had vision. He could see far out there and paint a picture of it. That first date I mentioned earlier? After we had finished eating, we took a walk where we began talking about our desires for the future. Jeff said with hope in his voice that he wanted to have a family and live in the country. “Wow,” I said, thinking that got serious fast... “It’s time for me to get back to my dorm.” But lo and behold, many years later that dear, sweet, gentle, tough man who loved Jesus and me, built our family a house on 20 acres that we were graced to live on for many years.
Vision. Jeff had it and God enabled him to build on it.
And he didn’t just have vision for his own life, but for other people. He saw the good that could be and began building toward it. It’s how he preached as a minister and how he treated others. He painted a better picture of life based on God’s love in the Bible and because he lived it himself, he made you long for it too.
That was Jeff. Always going forward. Always sprinting toward the next bend in the road. And now he’s Home and I’m here, wondering how to build a life without him. It’s an incredibly painful prospect.
So, this past Sunday I’m getting ready alone (my new unwanted ‘normal’) and I see that the shirt I’m wearing is a bit large on me. I worry it may make me appear larger than I am – lets be honest, we all have these thoughts, am I right?
As I’m thinking and wondering if I should find a belt, I sense God’s voice telling me He has just the right belt for me. “Hmmm,” I think to myself. “After the fire, I now own two new belts and that’s it. Not sure either of them will work with what I’m wearing.” Yet His quiet voice insists and I turn into my closet. “Up there,” I sense Him say to me. And ‘up there’ is Jeff’s leather tool belt that he used when he built that beautiful home in the country for our family 15 years ago.
I take it down off the shelf. It has large leather pouches hanging off of it to be filled with nails and screws and all manner of homebuilding necessities. I slide off the pouches and place the worn Craftsmen belt around my waist…and it fits. Perfectly.
Instantly, I know what God is saying to me. “I will build your life, Michele. It’s Me, Myself. You will not build your life alone. Remember? ‘In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.’ I did that out of nothing. I will do so again. I am the Craftsman.”
And I have tears in my eyes, just like that.
God’s voice of Vision, speaking to me of the future I cannot see and have no way to get to on my own. He reminded me in those moments that He builds for a larger future than I can comprehend or lay my hands upon. A future my dearest husband is now living in.
Not only has God built Heaven as our real Home for us but He is also the Craftsman of the here and now, building a life of purpose for me that I can’t see yet but long for.
Jeff’s gift of vision was always an echo of God’s particular visions for our marriage, our family, our church while he was still here. Now that he is gone from the earth, I’m learning in new, albeit currently hard, ways to trust the larger vision that God has for me though I cannot see with my earthly eyes. God has a vision for me and for you. It does not end when life changes or ceases here. Today is not a day of endless, pointless tasks. Today is not merely a day to survive, even if it feels like it. More is going on than we realize. A larger vision built small grace by small grace into a very relevant picture of God’s love for us happens in each of our daily lives.
And so for me, my hurting heart chooses to remember Jesus, who gave Jeff to me as a gift and that He, as my true Carpenter, will establish His good work in my life today and for whatever ‘building projects’ lie ahead.
I’ll be wearing that belt a lot in the days to come.
“I am confident that the Creator, who has begun such a great work among you, will not stop in mid-design but will keep perfecting you until the day Jesus the Anointed, our Liberating King, returns to redeem the world.”