My name is Lisa and I make tea. This is my primary calling in life. I’m not kidding.

OK, the actual tea making is NOT the primary calling. The tea making is a symptom, an out-working of my calling.

Let’s start that again.

My name is Lisa and I am a nurturer… And I know that my job description includes gallons of hot, black tea. (Milk and sugar are optional.)

But just hold on a minute, right here. I’m 45 years old. I have a degree in literature and more than 20 years of experience in cross-cultural leadership training. I am an excellent communicator and a darn good teacher. I am full partner in a 25-year (and counting), highly successful and ridiculously happy marriage. I have some sweet, crazy children who are turning the world upside down in beautifully rebellious ways. I am on the leadership team of a global prayer movement, 24-7 Prayer. I seldom write for publication (because I have too much laundry to do) but when I do, shoot, it gets published! I speak a difficult tribal language called Maa and I am the proud graduate of 10 years in the wilderness among the Maasai people. I carry a driver’s license from 4 different countries. That’s not particularly relevant, but doesn’t it sound cool?

Geez! I hope you’re impressed with me!

(By the way, I’m feeling really stupid for listing out this selection of “credentials” but they do have a point so hang with me.)

Who cares about all that? None of those things really matter. In all of this, what I am called to above anything else is to offer love and nurture to those around me. I hug. I touch. I put the kettle on. I listen. I probe. I pray in the night.

20 years ago I experienced miraculous healing of a malady that was really ticking me off. I had a brand new baby boy and I had chronic breast infections as I struggled to give him the only food I felt good about giving him. I was, as I have said before, a militant breast-feeding Mama. As part of a class at Fuller, my husband and I were “observing” a healing service and the woman speaker was receiving words of knowledge from God about ailments that people needed healing of. I just wanted to know if it was really God. I wasn’t really a doubter. Call me inquisitive.

I said to the Great Healer, “If this is you, please just tell the lady.”

So Speaker Lady walked back over to her microphone and said in a cool, clear voice, “There is a young woman here with a sore, left breast.” I was healed as she prayed for me.

Ten or twelve years later, I had a vivid dream that I was feeding a baby from my left breast. The sum total of the dream was me, nursing a baby. All the following day I pondered why the dream wouldn’t leave my mind. So I turned to the Great Dreamer and I asked, “Were you trying to tell me something?”

Clearly, I heard him say, “You will minister from the places where I have touched you.”

I have done and seen and experienced a lot. I've logged many miles and held cool positions. But honestly, real ministry comes out of a simple place called "Where He Has Touched Me."

Some how, in my global wanderings, this seems to manifest itself best over a cup of freshly brewed tea.

I seldom have a podium or pulpit, a stage, an audience, a publisher or an impressive paycheck. (Come to think of it, I've NEVER had one of those!) I do have a kettle, a teapot, a collection of cups, a tray and a porch to sit on. This foolish little collection, like Lucy's diamond vile of elixer, are the gift-tools I've been given from which to pour forth His grace.