A year ago I was having my house painted by this really neat guy named Jim Henderson. He used to be a pastor at a mega church. Now he runs Off the Map (very incarnational evangelism/missional living stuff). His day job is painting houses. (Email me if you live in Seattle and have a painting project to hire out — I’ll hook you up!) Anyway, last Summer I had just started out on the adventure that is ThPM, and frankly, I was splashing around a lot. My coworker, Bill, had already advised me to attach myself to Jim’s hip at the earliest possible moment. So one day, I stood on my front lawn and looked up and Jim on his ladder and asked him if he wanted to go to lunch.

“Are you asking me to lunch?” he said.

Uh oh. Had I crossed some sort of gender boundary or something? Yikes!

“Yeah. I’m asking you to lunch.” I replied.

“‘Cuz ten years ago no pastor would invite me, a housepainter, out to lunch to talk about church planting stuff.”

(laughing) “Well, Jim, I’m pretty sure ten years ago no pastor would have invited me, a woman, out to lunch to talk about church planting stuff either.”

So. We two misfits, we went to lunch. And that was the beginning of a beautiful relationship.

Jim spent the whole summer painting the house. We stretched it out as long as possible because I liked having him around for counsel and conversation, and it worked out well for him because he had to “push pause” (as Cate would say) on painting in order to travel for OTM conferences. Cate was only 2 at the time and couldn’t say Jim’s name right so he became Missser Geeem — a much beloved jack-in-the-box appear in windows in paint spotted overalls. We instantly fell in love with his wife Barb as well and now we feel weird if we don’t have some sort of contact with one or the other of them every week or so.

This morning, the girls and I were doing encircling prayer. We make a circle with our hands and imagine that some part of our world is inside the circle. Today we were imagining our neighborhood inside the circle. Then we pray, “Encircle us Lord with your love, keep….within, keep….without. For you are love and within your love we stand.” The girl take turns pretending to pick things up and put them inside or outside of the circle. (Keep making friends inside, keep fights outside. Keep playdates inside, keep robbers outside.) After we’d done that for awhile, Eden asked to email this to Mr. Jim:

Dear Mr Jim,

We were doing encircling prayer this morning and we were encircling our neighborhood with Jesus’s love. We think you should paint our house red and turn it into a big heart. There should be a big picture of Jesus on the the door and the front porch should be all red. It’s been a long time since you painted — 12 months!

-Eden

And now, from Cate ( sung to the tune of “Mr Sun, Mr Golden Sun”):

Mr. Jim, Jim, Mr. Golden Jim
Please come out to-day
Oh Mr. Jim, Jim, bright and shiny Jim
Please come out to play.

Love,

us

I dig the life my kids are building. Thank goodness for Mr. Jim and the Densmore House’s red door.