In the Tuesday night Heaven-to-Earth bible study we are asked to describe our personal experience, a time or place where Heaven touched our Earth.
Co-conspirators in this adventure speak of sunsets, clear waters and healing. As i pause to ponder the question my heart experiences confetti: bright round colors falling slowly in the first years of life... moments like photographs that i look back on and know God is there:
• first communion
• fifth grade
• the summer of my 15th year
• the birth of a daughter
• the birth of a son
• the night i met the man God designed for me
• the day i marry him
• the day Father Gubbels calls and introduces himself: looks like you need an annulment ... the healing that flows from that invitation
the confetti falls faster
a quickened pace, images of 7 years walked within Fellowship:
• my first six Sunday mornings in worship, the sobbing and messy tears, the unmistakable sensation i'd come home again, an invitation from Destiny and Diane to sit with them
• my first Seder Supper when Andrea welcomed me into her kitchen and Phoebe taught me to make Charoset; sitting on cushions around a low table constructed of pallets on the living room floor
• the Sunday at Fellowship when i discovered the Our Father, a prayer from my childhood, in the pages of Matthew 6
• a Saturday afternoon at home as i find inspiration for the Hail Mary in the words the Angel Gabriel speaks to the young virgin in Luke 1
• praying in the healing garden with Perry and Amy, as my husband and her father endured open heart surgery, the unexplainable unspoken assurance that life not death is the intended outcome
• the beginning of Whispered Hopes, the moment i realized this was more than just a fact-finding mission, that i would be leading, that i'd been Called with a capital C, a concept and a word not in my vocabulary at the time
• the first time i stood at the front of the theater at worship and spoke into a microphone, overcoming the fear
• the Christmas we celebrated Joseph, the role of the adoptive father, and my husband sharing with all of us how he loved me
• the day traveling north on Highway 53, a beautiful, sunny and lusciously rich day when i looked back and thought about my first marriage, how difficult i'd been to be married to, and uttered aloud the words poor Wayne as God with miraculous precision carved away the remnants of divorce, the deeply embedded pain in my heart
• the summer wedding of Bryan and Kathryn, the beauty of family gathered, the blessing of Perry officiating
• moments in The Gap, pauses in conversation where time seems to stop as i play out multiple responses and the impact of my words on those i most love
• the second time i stood at the front of the theater at worship and spoke into a microphone, overcoming the fear
• the week spent with Amy at ICAP in Green Lake, the bonding of mother-daughter, the celebration of true friends and co-conspirators for Christ
• the third time i stood at the front of the theater at worship and spoke evening and morning into a microphone, overcoming the fear
• the day Jeremiah found for me the Matthew 8:8 verse that resonates within my heart, the pre-communion Catholic Mass affirmation "just say the word and i shall be healed"
• a couple weeks ago when i stood at the front of the theater and took the microphone, the blessing to speak of thankfulness and whispered hopes, praying for my friend Peggy and Teamwork Africa, overcoming the fear
Rw
Confetti Photo used with permission; purchased at 123rf.com
