in the seeing.

I was standing in worship at the women's conference at my old church in Missouri last Friday. A thousand memories came to meet me. And I started to feel that familiar mix of relief and comfort to be home, and faith in the all-out faithfulness of that place, but also timidness. Because when I went there, I was timid. I was growing, and getting stronger every day, but timid all the same. Unsure.

And a strange thing happened. I heard the Lord speak to my heart. He said, Don't you pick that up. You leave that down there in your old seat, on the ground, wherever you left it. You might not yet be a spiritual mama, but you are at least a spiritual big sister, and maybe even an aunt, and don't you pick that noise up again.

I realized He was right. That though in my daily life in Pittsburgh, I don't see the distance I've traveled, standing there in Springfield, I saw it. And in the seeing, I suddenly felt powerful in the Lord. Our lives in our church here have been so topsy-turvy, so confusing and upsetting, that I had somehow missed the fact that through it all, I have grown. I'm so used to doubting myself, and the church, and sometimes the Lord. And even as I write this, I feel doubt creeping up about who I am in the Lord, whether He is real, and whether all of it means anything.

But now, the decades of my existence are proof of Him.

The way that he called me as a young girl. I had a Precious Moments child's bible. I put it on my book shelf next to my books about greek and roman mythology because I thought they were the same. So I didn't understand the Bible. And yet...I knew Him. I felt His presence, felt Him telling me that He would make the wrong things right.

On the rare occasions that we went to my grandmother's church, the other kids made fun of me for not knowing the Lord's prayer. And yet...it was Him I cried out to when I was hurting.

And in those awkward tween years before I ever heard the Gospel, there was this empty stretch of beach on the shores of Lake Michigan next to an abandoned museum, where I never saw another soul, and it was there that I would fall to my knees in the sand and talk to Him.

As a young teen, when I discovered the church and first gave my heart to the Lord, I was honestly more conflicted than peaceful. So many questions. But there was this forgotten place up a flight of steps that lead to a door whose destination to this day I am unaware of--and there, I called upon the Lord in earnest, and often.

And when I went to college, and I drank my behind off, there was this little spot on a street that no one ever seemed to use, where I would sit on these steps hidden in a hedge, and beg Him to show me the truth.

And when I went home after college for a couple of years to figure out what to do, I spent hours in my favorite coffee shops, reading the gospels again and again--sometimes all four in the same sitting,back-to-back-to-back-to-back--writing and writing in notebook after notebook, trying to figure it all out, asking Him to help me figure it all out.

And then I showed up in Missouri. And honestly, outside of some advanced statistics skills, the only things I remember about that are the things about Him! If you dropped me in South Springfield, I could barely get you to campus, but I could get you to James River from any end of town with my eyes closed.

And even since leaving James River, trying and fumbling my way through the first years of marriage, and through this really just frankly bizarre experience with our current church, His voice is still there. His insistence on being in my life--it doesn't ever stop. For His gifts, and His call, are irrevocable.

The weight of my writing about Him, which doesn't touch the enormity of the contents of my thoughts, is too immense to point to an empty universe.

And in that moment in worship last Friday, I thought about all of this, and I came one step closer to the faith He has planned for me. It's not timid.