God is El Roi – The God who sees. Sometimes the simplest act of kindness can be a holy demonstration of Jesus’ love. In this episode Gina has a conversation with Sheri Briggs about her story as a single mom encountering Jesus’ love through the generosity of strangers and the call to do the same for others who find themselves in places of vulnerability.
Gina and Sheri cover lots of ground from loving and learning from those that are the most vulnerable, to Sheri’s own story of losing her son and how her faith was challenged and changed.
Sheri Briggs is the founder of Bridge of Hope San Diego, a non-profit organization dedicated to strengthening families through transition. Transition can mean many things including families leaving homeless and domestic violence shelters or recovery homes, families facing crisis, and refugees relocating from around the world.
Click below to listen starting at 29:15 to follow along.
The God who Sees
Sheri:
I believe, even now, God’s creating even more vision for myself personally. Fast forward, my son passed away, my beautiful Nathan, who was my child who God used to really bring me to Him. He passed away in a diving accident six years ago, and as a result of that, I’ve changed in many ways.
I’m now working with families that I’ve been surrounded by all along, but I’m working more intimately, one on one, with families and individuals who have lost children, lost spouses. That is something that I’m now wanting to create and give to them. God took my tragedy, met me in certain ways, been working my heart and giving me spaces to heal. Now I’m doing that for others.
Gina:
If you’re willing, would you share your journey? That’s every parent’s worst nightmare. God had demonstrated His love and care for you in so many ways. When you’re faced with something like that, I’m sure your faith and everything is challenged. You’re having to wrestle with all that. Whatever you would be willing to share in that story.
There’s a lot of people who are going through a lot of pain in life, a lot of brokenness, a lot of loss. Sometimes I don’t think there’s permission to wrestle and to struggle, and to know that God is a safe place, even with your doubt and your hurt and your anger and your pain.
Sheri:
I would love to share. I’ll never forget the day my son died. It was June 3rd, 2015. And one of my families from Iraq had just returned from visiting their family back in Iraq and brought me gifts. And then after that I had a beautiful time with her. Then I was invited to a new Barrudean family’s house or apartment in town and they were serving me a fish for lunch.
Well, at the same time, my son was dying, catching a fish in Aqua Verde, Mexico, about 20 hours down Baja. And I say that, because when you look back on those days, you think what was going on that day? It was kind of an interesting day and actually a beautiful day.
But that night, 10 o’clock at night, my husband’s son, our son Eric, called me and said, “I need to talk to dad.” I’m like, “Dear dad’s asleep honey.” And he goes, “I need to talk to him.” And so I gave the phone to Brew, and Eric was outside and he wanted my husband to go outside. I’m thinking, “What happened to Eric? Did he break up with his girlfriend?”
I’m just in the house getting ready to go to bed. And my husband goes outside, comes back in and he says, “Sheri, I have something to tell you.” I go “What? Is Eric okay?” He says, “Eric’s fine. It’s Nathan.” Not in a million, not in a million years, would I have ever thought that I would hear the news I was going to hear. Not for a second.
Because I’m God’s daughter. He had adopted me. He knew me so well. He created me to be this mother. He gave me my son that changed my life. Why? No. Sure enough, my husband said, “Nathan, didn’t make it. He drowned.” And at that moment, what comes of a mother’s mouth is the sounds of rage and pain.
I just flailed my body around that house. It’s unnatural. It is not the way God created us. We are made to protect our children and do everything we can, we give our life for them. This is not anything that even fits with our DNA.
Long story short, we were able to get his body back from Mexico. Thank God. And we brought him home. He’d been passed for three days. They brought him home and we had him with us for about 12 hours. I got to sit with him and rub his hair and be with him. Actually that was the best thing I could have ever done.
Then, they took him away and I began the process of living in shock and completely undone and actually feeling like not only had I lost my son, I lost my Jesus. I felt, I lost my safe place. I trusted Him. Trusted Him. And now he’s gone, my son’s gone. It was a year and a half where I was so lost and hurt, but where was I going to go?
I felt the Lord so sweetly let me know He was always there, but giving me space. I would go in my backyard and I’d feel like He would be across the yard. He was saying, “I’m here. Take your time.” Then over here, just wherever I was, I would hear, “I’m here, I’m here. Take your time.” I just lived in that for about a year and a half.
I’d go to Lori’s house. She gave me a space to go and stay in a tree house or I’d go here, I’d go there. Just holding on wrestling, crying out. I needed to be in nature. I needed to be away. Just crying out, crying out. But still my heart was so not okay, trusting or yielded, until one day I went down to Mexico.
Just over the border somebody had given me a home to go to and I was there for four days and I was just writing and writing. I felt like I was just kind of purging all this stuff. And I wasn’t though, still hearing anything that was giving me peace. Until the last hour before I was going to to leave, I suddenly heard, and when you hear the Lord speak, it changes everything. I heard Him say, “I have compassion on you. I see you.” Those words were His words, because they changed everything.
It’s not like somebody could say, “Oh God has compassion on you. Oh, God’s with you.” No, no. He said to me, “I see you. I have compassion on you.” When He said that, all of a sudden, I just sat up. I was like, “Wait, what?” And He’s like, “I see.”
Then He brought quickly to my mind, the story of Jesus seeing the widow in the distance and her son had passed and he saw her and He had compassion on her. The word for compassion is the same word for intestine. Here I had been plagued with problems in my gut, since my son died. Here my Lord has compassion on this widow in His gut. That He would go and raise her son from the dead because of His compassion.
When He said, “I have compassion on you.” I went on a walk up the street of the hill, it’s a mile up and a mile back. There was a hawk flying above me, just swirling above me as I’m walking and he’d go over to the left of the pasture and come back over on top of me and kind of swirling. I’m like, “Okay, if this is You, that means if You’re with me in my pain, like You’re with me. If this is You, let this hawk stay with me this whole time. I need this sign.”
Literally the hawk stayed with me for the whole way up and the whole way back until I went in the house. He was showing me, the hawk is surveying, he’s watching, he’s paying attention, he’s seeing everything. The Lord said, “That’s me, Sheri. I’m seeing everything I’m watching out for you. I’ve got you. I’m with you.” From that moment I now was not alone in my grief, or abandoned in it.
I was with Him in it, and everything changed. We partnered. When I partnered with God, I thought “If You’re with me, I’m going to be okay. If You have compassion, I’m going to be okay. You’re with me in all.” And it just began a completely deeper intimacy. He brought my son into my life, changed my life, brought me into that intimacy of Him meeting my needs. Birthed the ministry out of that. Now He takes my son.
Now I’m invited into another deeper part of intimacy, because of death. Now there’s something being birthed, because of his death, for others. It’s this remarkable thing. It’s been six years. It’s still grueling. I miss him every day. I long for the day that we can be together. But in the meantime, I’m experiencing a level of love and richness and depth with God I never had before.
It’s connected me to my son. H I live my life now is I’m with God and God’s with Nate. We are really all three together. That’s how we are. If I’m far from God, I’m far from Nate, that’s kind of how I feel. We are all really together, because we have the same Dad. That’s how I think of it. The thin space between heaven and earth is very thin. I’m more aware of heaven.
I live more heavenly minded than I live earth minded. Whereas before I lived earthly minded in ministry. Now I’m heavenly minded. It’s a supernatural life here. This isn’t our home. We are to live in the supernatural. We are to live closer to Him. He, whose hope is in heaven, purifies himself.
He’s Always about The One
Gina:
It’s the bi-habitational thing. We’re in the world, not of the world. It’s both. It’s the, Your kingdom come, Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven now, but not fully realized. Its the now and not yet. It’s that constant tension. How does that manifest or how has that changed how you sit in the ministry that God’s giving you and the things that you’re doing here and now?
Sheri:
I think that now my hands are just open. I’m making myself more available for the one. Bridge of Hope is a busy working thing. But I feel like now, I want to just be present for the one in front of me. My heart is thinking of heaven.
If this isn’t our home, I just want to be loving the one in front of me with the hope of heaven. I don’t know if that makes sense. I am totally detached from this here on earth, but more of a ministry of hope of heaven.
Gina:
I like that you say “ministry to the one”, because that is how Jesus lived His life. It was always about the one, whether He’s telling a parable about leaving the 99 to go after the one or whether He’s practically sitting with a woman at a well and having a conversation. He’s never about the masses. He’s always about the one.
The woman who touched His garment, who had an issue of blood, there were throngs of people around Him. I think we, in our human nature and probably also in just the Western evangelical world, tend to lose the one for the sake of the masses. That’s so contradictory to how Jesus modeled life and love in ministry.
I interviewed a friend of mine, Paul Gates, who’s the executive director of River of Life in Oahu, Hawaii. They’re the largest faith-based charity. They feed over a thousand people a day, it’s incredible. One of the things that was so powerful when I was there, is that this little rag tag bunch of people on their staff know every person that they feed by name.
I think we can reduce ministry to the report, to the donors at the end of the year or the,”we fed 10,000 people and we did this and we did that”. But my question is, do you know their name? Do you know the name of the man, the woman, the child standing in front of you.
There’s something in the intimacy that you experienced and the care that you experienced being seen, being known. God’s presence, even if it was like, “I’m just going to be over here. You take your time. It’s okay that you’re angry. It’s okay that you’re scared I’m here.” Being cared for with that level of intimacy then requires me to see and care for people in the same way.
Sheri:
I’m on alert and aware of those who are suffering. As Jesus saw the widow, she didn’t come to him. He saw her and went to her. I’m aware and I want to go to the one or be there for the one who was suffering, the way He was with me. Which is pretty much what you just said. That’s my heart. That’s how God has met me. That’s where we are today.
Now I have a meeting with a group of widows, things are happening with the way things are now. There’s a lot of grief and a lot of things going on in our world right now. I kind of think, “Wow Lord, was this your plan?” I don’t know. I’m here and this is who I am today and this is how He’s using me. It gives me a lot of life. Even though things could seem like, “That’s so heavy. You seem to be around a lot of people who have lost loved ones. Now that’s so heavy Sheri. Are you okay?” Actually that’s very life giving for me, because that’s where God has met my heart.
Gina:
It’s beautiful. Thank you. Thank you for your vulnerability and your willingness to share and thank you for standing where you’re standing, the way you’re standing there. Thank you for caring, listening and posturing yourself in a place of surrender and humility and learning and demonstrating what that looks like. God bless you in your ministry and your family and bridge of hope, and all that God’s doing in and through you.
Sheri Briggs is the founder of Bridge of Hope San Diego
Check the rest of this conversation Redemption and Stewarding Vision, Love That Learns and Serves
Check out the Dwell Meditations
