game-changer.

It's like Christmas Eve.

Though Monday is actually my first year anniversary at James River to the date, tomorrow is my first anniversary in Sunday service.

Kinda exciting, right?

Come on, be excited with me. Smile. Drop a friggin' or a stinkin'. Tell the person next to you that the heat outside is probably due to a shift in the earth's axis on August 16, 2009, then smile, and drop a fake curse.

I'm seeking myself, trying to get a read. Am I happy? Confused? Sad? Regretful? Do I miss the life I might have had, had I not gotten all wrapped up in Jesus and James River?

I'm thinking back to that first night in town. Knowing no one, I sat in my room, alone in a strange town, thinking that if I dropped dead, no one in this town would care. That wasn't self-pity, it was matter-of-fact. My housemates had told me about this crazy megachurch that was a must-have experience for a student of churches. I can still remember seeing the website for the first time. Writing down the instructions. How huge it seemed from the highway. That raspberry smell in the halls. Asking the tour guide when "ya'll" take communion. The craziness, and loudness, and... I smile.

And cry. I'm so lucky. (Ashley translation; lucky = blessed).

I didn't know. I couldn't have known.

I didn't leave a service for the first 5 or 6 weeks without someone having given me a phone number, or email address--asking me to go see a movie, or offering to help with anything I could think of.

A whole year. I came here thinking that Jesus was a man with an inordinate love. But I was so angry. I was so full of venom and arrogance. So sure that I knew better for the church. Because I hadn't really seen or felt Christ's love given out so freely from His body. These people spent so much less time frowning at my theology, than they did loving me anyway. That kind of love--it's a game-changer. It trusts God to be God.

Because they allowed God to work in them, they led me to allow Him to work in me. To whom will I pass that on?