That time, the message clicked. God called Renata to be willing to go to Russia, but He made it happen. He called her to be willing to travel to southern Russia to evangelize, but He brought the people to her. And He called her to be willing to talk to a cold, homeless, deaf man, but He made the beggar understand. It wasn’t about her abilities; it was about her willingness to obey.
Despite the discomfort of a foreign country and language, Renata Rodrigues Oliveira let God work through her to accomplish His purposes; her obedience, rather than her talents, continues to change the lives of many Christians in Russia today.
Be wise in the way you act toward outsiders; make the most of every opportunity. Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone.
(Colossians
4:5-6
)
mary carol mazza
Moving Forward in Faith
A
stranger might look at Mary Carol Mazza’s résumé and wonder if she knows what it is she’s after. But anyone who meets this vibrant, brilliant twenty-four-year-old quickly learns that the answer is simple, really: she wants to follow her God wherever He is leading.
So far, He has led her to a joint degree in economics and psychology from Virginia’s prestigious Washington and Lee University, a season of study in Austria, a stint as a summer camp counselor in Oregon, a policy job at the Texas Department of Health & Human Services, a summer at a women and children’s shelter in New York City, and missions work in Bolivia, Brazil, and Eastern Asia.
And she’s just getting started.
An only child who grew up attending a private Christian school in Houston, Texas, Mary Carol came to know Jesus Christ at a young age. Her mother shares her faith, but her father does not.
“I’ve prayed since I was in fifth grade that my dad would know Christ,” she says. “My family has always been divided in that way, and it’s caused a kind of split in my heart that I’ve carried since junior high. A lot of the choices I’ve made don’t seem reasonable to my dad. He wants me to do what to him would be the sensible thing: go to law school, settle down, and have a successful career using the gifts I’ve been given. And maybe it
is
easier to just please other people and do what’s expected of you. But there’s nothing better than following God in faith—seeing the way He leads and the things He does—and being able to say, ‘God did that!’ That’s the only way for me.”
If there was ever any question, a turning point for Mary Carol was probably the summer between her sophomore and junior years in college; she spent eight weeks living as an intern at a women’s shelter in Queens, New York. “All my friends were interning on Wall Street,” she remembers. “And when we’d meet up in the city they’d be talking about all the great stuff they were involved in, and say, ‘Now
what
is it you’re doing?’”
What she was doing was whatever it took to befriend and assist the residents of the shelter. “Some days it might be getting milk for their kids. Or just sitting on the side of a bed and listening to someone’s story. “I started organizing little outings for the residents. I was ‘that crazy girl from Texas’ who said, ‘Hey, let’s all go to the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens this week. It’s free on Wednesdays!’ The amazing thing was, some of them actually did!”
Many of the women she lived with that summer were abused, addicted, and angry. Being in the middle of so much pain was a far cry from attending the sheltered, white-columned university just a few hours away. “I felt overwhelmed at times by their situations and their needs. It was lonely and scary, and I truly felt that God was all I had,” Mary Carol says. “I was there to build relationships, but they were pretty skeptical at first. When they saw that I wasn’t going anywhere, things began to change. What I was doing seemed small compared to [what] some of my friends [were doing], but it was incredibly fulfilling to me.”
The experience in New York solidified her desire to help others and taught her that building relationships was much more important than just offering detached service. That passion for involvement carried over to activities on campus, where she discipled other female undergrads through her dorm and sorority. “My senior year at W & L was all about relationships. It wasn’t about getting into a graduate program or getting a fellowship or landing a great job.”
As she began to invest in the lives of others, she saw a proliferation of women with whom she did share something in common: eating disorders that were hidden but powerful and disruptive. “It’s rampant on campus,” says Mary Carol. “And I thought,
I’m a psychology major—I’m going to do something about this.
” She and a few other women took on a research project on anorexia and bulimia, interviewing students and sharing their findings. “We began to speak out about the problem to other girls, trying to bring it out into the open,” she says. “We figured we need to talk about this stuff and not keep it a secret. We need to figure out how to heal.”
There was also a special relationship for Mary Carol at W & L—an undergraduate named Andy, two years her junior, who became a close friend, and then a boyfriend. They clicked almost immediately but had been dating only a short time when Mary Carol felt a nudge from God to pull back. They cared for one another deeply but agreed that the timing wasn’t right. “I haven’t really spoken with him in over a year,” she says, “but I’m trusting God to bring us together again if that’s what He desires. It’s hard to let go, but God has our very best in mind, and I’m trusting in His timing. I know this is His will right now, and I’m settled in it.”
Mary Carol moved to Austin after graduation and found herself challenged and stretched by her job at the Texas Department of Health & Human Services, taking part in an investigation of the state’s Child Protective Services agency. She found a church in Austin and became involved there, but after a little more than a year, she felt the tug of God’s leading again, this time to a kind of spiritual hiatus that may be her biggest challenge yet. She’s heading to Nashville, Tennessee, for an extended stay at Mercy Ministries, where she’ll open her heart and seek God’s healing for the “thorn” that’s been lodged there for years: her eating disorder.
“I believe God is calling me to do something big for Him, and I need to get ready. This is an area of my life that I know I need to work on. I don’t want to be weighed down by it anymore—or carry it into my marriage or pass it on to my children. God wants me whole, and He’s calling me away for a while to settle some things with Him.”
To some it may seem like a detour, but Mary Carol knows otherwise. “I’ve had enough experience to know when God is leading,” she says, “and to know that I want to follow. Maybe ‘big’ for me will be to get married and have a family. Or maybe it will be to move overseas and do missions work. Maybe I’ll go back to my job in Austin and He’ll have another assignment for me there, but I’m in preparation for the life He’s planned for me. There’s nothing more important now than deepening my relationship with the Lord—because that’s what we’ll be doing for eternity. God is teaching me that obedience does not require understanding. His question is simply, ‘Will you follow Me?’ and I mean for my answer to be ‘Yes!’”
To all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God.
(John
1:12
)
lori jo
Love Child
F
rom birth Lori Jo has been two distinct people: the spunky and caring daughter of a preacher and a rebel and independent bent on threshing her own trail. Lori Jo was practically born in a pew, and in the eyes of her parents she was their star child. Teachers raved about her “wisdom beyond years,” friends were never hard to come by, and Lori was a coach’s pet due to her love of sports and natural talent to perform on the field and court. Still, she’s always tried to hide behind her abilities, preferring not to be noticed; she has feared what people would see in her if they looked too close: a hypocrite.
The summer before Lori Jo entered sixth grade, her parents told her the family was moving to the Great Northwest. Oregon? Lori Jo couldn’t move there. She was going to attend the University of Arizona with her friends; she was going to marry Kelton Busby, the Mormon boy she adored; and she had just moved up to be a senior league shortstop.
After their first year up in “God’s country,” as Lori Jo’s dad so gleefully called it, she began to warm up—or more like thaw out. She met new friends, was given a horse, and lived amid beautiful mountain trails that she climbed on her new bike. Lori Jo had also found the perfect spot to smoke menthol cigarettes where she could keep a vigilant eye on who came and went from her house.
Lori Jo kept church friends fenced off from school friends. She couldn’t very well be the same LJ with the young Bible beaters that she was at school. Again, she artfully created two lives, the rebel and the preacher’s daughter. You could say Lori Jo had a healthy aversion to the “churchy,” uptight, saintly types. They only reminded her of what she could not (and did not) want to be. Lori Jo was skeptical of and distant from many who claimed to follow the same Christ she did. They made it look too easy.
Her introduction to marijuana took place when she was fifteen. From her first puff, Lori Jo was hooked on getting high from weed grown in “God’s country.” She was popular in more than one circle and was soon connected with the best marijuana the area had to offer.
One of Lori Jo’s first experiences with alcohol is unforgettable. En route to a family reunion, she and her parents spent a couple of days in Southern California, where Lori Jo hung out with her older cousin. The cousin thought it would be cool to sneak Lori Jo out of the North American Christian Convention and into a bar where her boyfriend was gambling away his paycheck. Although Lori Jo could smoke joints with the best of them, she was far from a seasoned drinker like the three towering ASU basketball players with whom her cousin left her.
Time warped, and when Lori Jo came to and opened her eyes, it was to find herself under the weight of a really big guy. Her neck was being rammed up against a hard, sharp surface behind her. She had no idea where she was or why the guy who had been sitting across from her was now on top of her. Lori Jo couldn’t recall leaving the bar, entering the camper, or giving the go-ahead to take her virginity. From that night forward, her guilt knew no end. It wasn’t until years later, when she finally let the story out, that she was assured she’d been raped.
Lori Jo shut down and remained closed to those church folk around her who still believed she was a
love child
—a child of God. Instead, she retreated to a place where drugs and promiscuous relationships made life more surreal and bearable. After that night, Lori Jo shut out her family from her private life for many, many years.
By the time she was seventeen, she was very comfortable using cigarettes, pot, alcohol, acid, mushrooms, cocaine, methamphetamines, and heroin. Buying and selling were old hat by Lori Jo’s sophomore year, and she even began growing “the special herb” in her bedroom near the end of high school. Drugs became her focus, her priority, for four years. Still, she somehow managed to pull good grades, play sports, remain popular among various cliques, participate in church events, and remain extremely active in outdoor activities.
As long as Lori Jo was high, she didn’t have to face who she had become—how low she had stooped. She didn’t have to think about how she was going to quit that lifestyle and start fresh, drug free, sex free . . . clean. Her guilt and shame were made worse by the voice inside her that continually whispered, “You are My love child, I made you, I love you!” Lori Jo knew if she believed that voice, it meant she would have to give up control of her life and return to the place she knew she belonged.
But in the end God’s love was too great for her to ignore. The semester before Lori Jo graduated from high school, she became the first person in the local day-treatment program to sign herself up. It was a sober summer and she felt great, ready to start fresh with the help of her new grip on faith. Lori Jo told her parents about everything except her lost virginity and list of unnamed boyfriends. She would not be ready to open that box for many years to come.
Everything looked great right up until college started. The day before she left for L.A., she freaked out and packed some speed in her bag to help ease the transition from “hippy chick” to “straight sister.” The drugs kept Lori Jo up the entire first week of school. She let fear overcome what she knew was true—that living within her she had a Power greater than any drug. The Holy Spirit was there to help her walk through the awkwardness of joining her new “straight and narrow” community. After seven sleepless nights, Lori Jo finally realized she no longer wanted nor needed the tricks in her bag, and she threw them out for good. Lori Jo truly wanted to let God lead her and show her a better way.
Lori Jo would like to say that Christian college was exactly what she needed, that she changed all her old habits and became a shining example of obedience. Although her years there definitely helped in her formation, Lori Jo was hardly transformed into the cover girl for
Christian Woman Today
. She learned that simply creating space for God was half the battle. She also discovered that she wasn’t the only one struggling with her spiritual journey. Still, Lori Jo constantly felt condemned as a hypocrite because she could not swear off cigarettes and an occasional mellow high while sitting on her balcony or lying on the beach.
Lori Jo doesn’t downplay the wayward choices that demonstrated time and again her incapacity to live out her faith consistently. The fact is she began to learn more about the character of God, and as she did, she began seeing herself as He does. Lori Jo could see how a light was beginning to shine in her eyes where years of drug and relational abuse had dulled and shaded her sight. She started to believe she was blessed, one who had something to give others: a gift of forgiveness and acceptance. Escaping with drugs began to lose its influence and in quiet moments of meditation, Lori Jo began to faintly hear again her Father’s words, “You are My love child.”