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It's Throwback Thursday, so you're going to get a story...
Years ago, during my grade school years and even through high school, my parents worked with the single adults at the South Baton Rouge Church of Christ. Dad was the deacon and there were many Saturday morning waffle gatherings, homemade ice cream cranking after a barbecue or other such activities that brought the single adults together in fellowship and in the context of a family. The four of us girls looked up to those individuals and we also had a built-in audience for our antics.
Being the oldest, I remember more of the people that came through the ministry and married, moved away, or made a lasting impression on my life.
I remember one such individual, Maryellen, who started coming to church with her sister. After a time, she started dating this guy, Brian, whom she later married. I didn't know them well, but I do remember them coming to meet with my parents for premarital counseling. Their memory of me was of an obnoxious high schooler.
Fast forward several years to 2007 as I am moving back to the US after living four years in Venezuela and twelve years away from Baton Rouge. I have returned to Baton Rouge as Women's Campus Minister and am prayerful that God will provide some relationships outside of the college students through which I will be blessed and can bless others.
A month or so after my move, a ladies' Bible study group begins at Ms. Wanda's on Tuesday or Thursday nights and I decide to join. We later became known as the Twisted Sisters, but that's another story for another day.
One of the first nights after the study, Maryellen and I start talking about something, which turns into a several-hour-long conversation in the middle of the street. Ms. Wanda later told us that after she watched the news and turned out the lights, she wouldn't have been surprised to find us out there still talking come morning.
Now that more than six years of friendship have passed, I believe we could've stood in the street talking until morning. We were no longer the obnoxious high schooler and "just another of the single adults in the group." We were Twisted Sisters and BFFs, provided by God to bless each other's lives with a friendship that will continue to last a lifetime. She is one of my original Iron Rose Sisters.
Thanks, Maryellen, and I'm glad I get to spend time with you while in Baton Rouge!
P.S. You know it's an awesome friend when she shops according to your crazy food allergies, picks you up at the airport, insists on hosting you, and fixes you an amazing dinner of foods you can eat!
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Do you ever wake up and wonder how your life got to the place it did? I'm not talking about a mid-life crisis, although that may be a similar wake-up realization. I'm referring to the moment when you look back and realize how far you've come, how much you've grown, or how God has worked through you and in you.
Yesterday was the anniversary of a very difficult day in my life and, at the time, I wasn't sure what the next few seconds looked like, much less the next days, weeks, month or year. As I look back now and see all that has happened in the past year - all that God has done - I'm humbled and grateful. He demonstrated His transforming and healing power in my life and it is a continual process that we can only take on day or one moment at a time.
On this wake-up Wednesday, may you wake up and recognize how far God has brought you in transformation, whether from a difficult time or what seemed to be an impossible situation.