My Foolish Calling by Lisa Borden

Published: January 22nd, 2008

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. 

Lisa Borden (along with her husband Byron) has spent the last twenty two years nurturing new Christians first among the Maasai in Kenya's wilderness, then among urban tribes of young people in Europe.  They are now living in Tanzania to continue living out the prayer, justice and mission calling on their lives.  While balancing the roles of wife, mother,  and pastor / teacher / missionary, Lisa has found that singing in the shower and dancing in the kitchen keeps her sane.  To dialogue with Lisa and learn more from her, visit her blog.  Lisa and Byron have also set up a website to chronicle the stories of hope from Africa they are involved in.

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