“Why I Go To Church.”

DISCLAIMER:  Hello! Welcome to my blog. I want all readers to be aware that my posts are about my journey, but are always written as thoughts come to mind. I do some editing, but for me it takes away from the emotion I am trying to convey. This the blog is ME … REAL and … well … RAW. I hope you enjoy my style. If not, there are plenty of us bloggers out there I am sure you will find one you enjoy. Thanks!

I have been working through many things lately as I sort through anxiety about being made to be uncomfortable. Since January I have been praying a prayer asking God to Stretch my faith like the man in Mark 3:5. Jesus said to him “Stretch out your hand.” The man did and he was restored. To me it isn’t the restoration … It isn’t the message the overall chapter sends to the pharisees … it is that the man KNEW what would happen by stretching out his hand … HE KNEW HE WOULD be restored. I have known for QUITE sometime I still had wounds to be healed, fears to overcome, but I never realized what I was doing wasn’t really getting me there. I realized it was one of those “Go Big or Go Home” type things. I know I am being called to certain things in my life, but I am also not ready, yet. I could sense God telling me now is the time … “Trust Me. Stretch out your hand.” So I did … in January and since I have been asking Him to stretch me….sometimes not wanting to.

In so many ways this year has been the hardest year of my life. I have hid it pretty well from the majority of people in my life or even glossed it over. I am unsure how many really knew how many nights or moments in my car I have cried from the amount of pain I was in … the spiritual and emotional pain of stretching has been almost unbearable. So, many times I cried out that I could not do this anymore and literally feel the air leave me with a “YES YOU CAN! Now keep coming … keep stretching we are almost there.” The number of nights I have been awake with full on anxiety attacks … visions of great things, but full anguish at what I was seeing that had to be done. One of those nights was last night …

I seen why … I seen where my heart is at … I seen why I have to keep moving forward … see I have looked into the eyes of nothing, I have seen what empty people look like, I have seen complete despair, I have felt shame, …. yet I also know a LOVE greater than it all.

I recall in my first 5 years of teaching some very powerful lesson happened for me that set me on my journey to peace within my self … to finding Him beside me … to NOW finding Him WITHIN ME!

I see the face on a student that did NOTHING in my classes. By nothing I mean NOTHING … no work, no talking, not a BAD kid AT ALL. I vividly remember giving him his papers one day and the kids (Some of his buddies) saying “Kaneeps (a nickname) why do you bother giving him papers  no one else does. He won’t do them anyway.” I replied without hesitating “Well, because I won’t give up on any of you and today might be the day.” That student stayed after class that day. I walked to his desk, turned a desk toward his, face to face we sat, and I said “One day you will make a decision to change things for yourself. On your journey I want you to see Jesus in me … that I can love you unconditionally because He does … You matter!” Tears streamed down his face and he said “Just you and one other person has ever told me I matter … Just you ever told me about Jesus and that you love me.” When I looked into his eyes I seen brokenness I had never seen before…emptiness that was filled with great sorrow.

I see the face of the student … students that have since taken  their lives. I see the faces of students who are now in jail. I remember faces of students that I suspected used drugs … that were so very very lost. Those faces haunted me then and haunt me still. I recall one morning feeling completely eaten up by it all … behavior, poor management, their lives, the struggles they faced, etc. I sat at my desk and asked God to show me WHY I WAS THERE!!!! Maybe I demanded it. I randomly opened my Bible to Esther chapter 4 and my eyes literally landed on “Possibly you were born for such a time as this.” Well, there you have it sister you have cried out, I have answered, and YOU ARE CALLED. I would never have survived those years without the co-worker of mine across the hallway. She showed me Jesus in such REAL ways. She led me to really face some raw stuff. Between the kids and her … I found a peace, love, and grace inside me.

Now after being home 10 years I still keep in touch with MANY of those students … it saddens me to see the struggles they still have, but I also see how some have turned things around and found JOY…found Jesus. Specifically I see the face of another student that was headed to major trouble if he didn’t die first … leave … turn his life around and become someone I admire. God’s Grace.

I seen that co-worker about 4 years ago over dinner. She told me to “Be Bold” … Not exactly my cup of tea. So much has happened over the past ten years of me raising kids … crying in the middle of my trashed living room with a 6, 3, and 2 year old racing around … crying out to God again “What am I doing wrong? Can I possibly be doing right by them? I feel so lost from everything.” When on my christian radio station played a song “Do Everything” by Steven Curtis Chapman … https://youtu.be/FEqdDdvFXZ0 … “You are picking up toys on the living room floor for the 15th time today” Can you imagine I was literally on the living room floor picking up toys. “Matching up socks sweeping up lost cheerios that got away” literally my kitchen was just as bad. “And while I may not know you I bet I know you wonder sometimes if it matters at all Well let me remind you it all matters just as long as you do everything you do to the glory of the one who made you cause he made you to do everything little thing that you do to bring a smile to His face and to tell the story of grace with every move that you make and every little thing that you do” …. I never heard the rest of the song instead I heard “I made you to be their Mom … I chose you … I came before you, I have been here already, I am ahead of you … I NEED you to be their Mom knowing all I know about your heart, the mistakes you have made and will make, I need you to walk with them on this leg of their journey.” That was 7 years ago. Still more growing has happened to get me to the past 9 months. That is when I found Him BESIDE me.

Almost a year ago now I became a leader of a ministry at our church and the current leader asked me to share some of my story with the group. I remember feeling great anxiety about it. I remember seeing a vision of myself peeling off a large scab … no band-aide … it was a crusted over wound that felt healed up, but it wasn’t … it was actually infected with fear, insecurity, doubt, shame, … out it all poured. So real healing could happen. This and the past 9 months … last night really was when I found Him WITHIN me.

So, why do I go to church … I go to church (with a lower case c) because His Church needs me…because of what His Church has done for me. That church I attend is His … not ours … it is His building that He opens doors so broken, hurting, sinful people can come to His altar to stretch out their hand to receive His restoration … His life saving Grace … His life saving offering. I go because there are so many faces pushing me to go … so many lost … so many that found hope because I allowed/allow Him to use me. See church is just a building that He uses to build His Church … to build His team … to build His army for eyes, ears, hearts, feet, and hands! When I attend Mass it is getting myself refueled to go out and allow myself to be used. These days church can be a dark place in itself … it has failed in many ways … ALL types of church has failed, but …. Attending is NOT ABOUT anyone, anything … other than Him and I. It does not matter what someone says or does … about who is there or who is not … about how the Mass goes … and really it is not about what church I attend … it is about SHOWING UP FOR HIM … for His Church … for the broken, for the empty eyes staring back at me, for the hurt, for the GRACE .. to restore my own brokenness so I can be His arms and reach out to those Stretching to me … those that have not quite figured out He is as there for them as He is for me.

Attached are 5 songs that I think will forever be a driving force in my soul … besides the one above.

• Our family fight song “Start a Fire” by Unspoken https://youtu.be/xrEzr-rWwe8
• When I struggle with the world around me it seems this song never fails to come on the radio “Do Something” by Matthew West https://youtu.be/b_RjndG0IX8
• When everything seems lost and I can’t get out of a depression sinking in “10,000 Reasons” by Matt Redman https://youtu.be/DXDGE_lRI0E
• Lately I have been facing fear manifested as procrastination “Made For This” by Carrollton  https://youtu.be/ZiPySgn84W8…. which parallels my life verse in Esther 4:14
• I go to end this kind of despair …. “God Only Knows” by King and Country https://youtu.be/Q5cPQg3oq-o