The Rain

I have to say one of my favorite things is walking in the rain. In fact, rain was a struggle my husband and I had to get through early in our relationship.

When he sees rain he either goes inside or gets an umbrella. When I see rain I want to run outside and stomp in puddles. He would exclaim that rain is dirty and gross, and I would say it was refreshing and clean. Needless to say, my husband will now walk in the rain with me and even enjoy it, though he does still think it is dirty.

Rain to me used to signify cold ugly weather where you couldn't do fun things. Rain has a completely different meaning to me now and I find it beautiful, cleansing, refreshing, renewing, happy, and even loving. When did this transition happen? On a hot sticky humid grey day in Sarasota Florida about 8 years ago.

On this particular day I was sitting in church, that was at that time renting a classroom at the local red cross. I felt like I should go outside and pray. I had been feeling lackluster in my faith for some time and felt like I was going through the motions, and though I was continuously learning and reading my bible I wasn't feeling a real connection with the Lord. So as I walked the parking lot praying aloud to the Lord. I prayed specifically for renewal. I prayed the Lord would wash me of the burdens that I carried and that I would be refreshed with a passionate relationship with Christ.

When all of a sudden I became aware of an intense feeling of love and then boom it happened. It poured rain down over me. And I started to laugh out loud to myself. I had been asking the Lord specifically to wash me and renew me and pour his love on me and boom rain pouring all over me. I continued to laugh and pray and walk around for a few minutes more enjoying the cold rain falling down my face, drenching me. Coincidence? That would be naive to believe it was a coincidence. And trust me, my burdens were lifted that day, my passion was renewed, and I felt the Lord's love in a very real way. This was one of those times in my life that pushed me into a deeper love and relationship with Christ.

Since that day I think back to those moments often. Yes, I was always a puddle splasher but I never ever appreciated rain like I do now. Now when I see rain, I notice things. I see the sun-cracked dry light brown earth filling with moisture and life-source. I see the withered green leaves puff up with energy. I see the dirt pour off my driveway down into the gutters. I see my car shining a little more (well when its waxed real good). I feel the appreciative exhale of a Floridian about to explode from heat and humidity when the rain starts coming and we get a few brief moments of coldness, well when the rain isn't near boiling temperature and scalding our scalps. I see the birds huddled up together on power lines waiting for it to pass.

I really do love the refreshing rejuvenating effect that rain has on us. And I think living in Florida in the summer has an exaggerated vision of what rain does. Not even considering the droughts and water restrictions that we've had in recent years... When I leave for work in the morning I go out and drench the soil in my plants. When I come home the soil is so dry that there are cracks in the soil and it looks like someone literally took a food dehydrator to it. And the leaves on my plants are curled in and browning. So when it rains just then and the soil expands and turns a darker brown and the leaves puff back up, I can just see how the rain gives new life to things.

The Lord has a similar effect on us. The Lord can bring us life when our bodies and souls are light brown and cracked dry. When the scorching heat of life has made us feel like we can't breath or move, the Lord can fill our spirits with himself and rejuvenate us. Without rain a plant can only live a very limited life. Without the Lord we are only breathing and following the motions. So if you see a silly young woman drenched and laughing splashing through puddles in central Florida - shoot me a wave :)

I pray for you today that you ask the Lord to rain his spirit on you. Maybe it won't be in a literal way, maybe it will. I pray you ask him to take up greater residence in your heart and that you would love him in even a small portion of the manner that He loves you. I pray that you know today that you have a father in heaven who is watching and waiting for the tiniest of times with you, and is deserving of so much more.

Psalm 42
1 As the deer pants for streams of water,
so my soul pants for you, O God.
2 My soul thirsts for God, for the living God.
When can I go and meet with God?

The Boy

Memorial Box Monday Edition

So while I spent my late teen years with my high school boyfriend, my early twenties found me broken-hearted and alone. My high school boyfriend and I had parted ways. My friends had all gone off to their own lives. My parents had completed a divorce and were involved in their new lives with their new significant others. I had a newfound faith in Christ, and while I finally felt like I was home (because of my faith), I was also experiencing my first alone time as a single "adult".

Initially it was very lonely and I was pretty sad. But then the Lord started to call me. He drew me to His word. I started reading it for the first time in my life and really seeing it as something real and applicable and the living word of God. I made some mistakes as an early Christian, as we all do. Saying the wrong thing out of zeal. Doing the wrong thing out of ignorance and rebellion. But from early on I had a desire to not just read the scriptures but to understand them.

But to be honest I often wondered about my husband. I wondered when I would meet him. I wondered what he would be like. Even in my most spectacular moments with Christ I had in the back of my mind earthly love. I prayed and asked God why everyone around me was marrying off and He had left me alone. I asked what was unworthy about me that I couldn't have a man to start a family with. I knew I wasnt ready, but I wanted it anyhow, and I guess I thought if I was persistent enough the Lord would eventually answer the prayer.

At some point my older sister told me to get my prayer journal and start making a list of the things I wanted the Lord to grow in my husband, things that were important to me. She reminded me how special it was to pray for a man I did not yet know. I did this, and continued this, though I often lamented and felt like it was something that would never happen. I often felt I would end up an old maid... silly I know but going through my twenties and being the only one in the room without even a boyfriend was difficult. I asked that the Lord not bring me a man until my husband, and He certainly fulfilled that, much to my chagrin.

So what were the things I was asking the Lord to prepare my husband with? What were the things most important to me? Here are a few I recall:

a deep love for Christ

a deep love for me

sillyness

humbleness

tenderness

the ability to make me laugh

passionate about youth ministry

someone to make me feel safe

laid back/easy going

So, I spent some time praying for this, but also for God to form my husband to be the perfect fit for me, and what I didn't even know that I would need in life. I often felt these were promises that would never be fulfilled. I knew that the Lord wants us all to feel the love of a spouse, especially when that is a reflection of His love for us. But I know there are still people in this world who don't get that, and I often felt that that would one day be me.

During this time I focused on my walk. I learned to appreciate my friendships. I grew in my faith. I learned more about who Christ is and what He wanted for my life. I have had the most amazing friends who have gotten me through that time in my life. I have had the most amazing and awesome moments with the Lord. I have experienced things some never get to. And in the end.....

So it was spring when we first met online. It was a website like myspace but for Christians. I initially signed up while I was researching for my online ministry and had surfed around it looking for ideas for new features. We started talking on the site, then it switched to text. Then we started playing Lord of the Rings Online together with some of my friends, until one day when his computer crashed and he called me. Then we started spending time on the phone. Until one day in late November when we set up our first date. I wasn't about to meet someone new on my own, so I made sure my friend Anna and her husband could come and that we would go somewhere public.

Well, after our date Bry and I went to Starbucks alone. We sat outside and talked. Before we knew it it was dark, the place had closed up around us and everyone was gone. I recall freezing but didn't want to go get a jacket for fear the magic I felt would end. He was even smart enough to leave the night with just a friendly hug. Our first kiss would come later. We both felt that connection, that magic, like nothing before. 

We both started to realize very quickly that this was it. At some point we had a talk about how we had been praying for a spouse. It was not long before we noticed that the very specific things that we had been asking God for were very specifically part of each other's character. Bry is the man I had been praying for (to the tee), and even more that I didn't even know I needed yet. Where I am weak he is strong, where he falls short I succeed. We are the perfect fit, and who would have known?

Since we have met we have encouraged each other in our faiths. Early on (when we lived 2 hours away from each other) we would spend hours upon hours on the phone. We would take turns reading through the new testament together. He would drive down for youth group on the weekends, where I was a volunteer. He became a friend not just to me but to my friends as well. I soon saw that all the things I had admired in husbands I had seen in my life were all compiled in Bryans very being. The night he knelt on the beach and proposed to me I told him I felt like I won the husband lottery. And I still feel that way even more than I could imagine. We are not perfect, but we are certainly perfect for each other. I pray for many many many years with Bryan. He is a daily reminder of not only God's fulfillment of a hope, but of the intense love that God has for us. He is my matching puzzle piece.

I am putting a candle from our wedding into our memorial box today. :Because our love is God's greatest gift to date.

  

The Mountain

Memorial Box Monday Edition

I have always struggled with irrational fears. One of my fears has been of heights. When I heard my first mission trip working with our youth ministry would be in the mountains fear started to take root in me. I pushed it down and ignored it and continued planning. Driving up in one of the two vans, with Arlene behind the wheel, I knitted furiously, chugged chamomile, and tried to ignore my surroundings by watching movies on my laptop. At one point Arlene and the other leaders prayed for me at a gas station, asking for the peace that transcends all understanding.

After arriving we got busy and my fear started to subside a little as I got used to my surroundings. The next day after we finished our day's activities we were told we would be taken up to the top of the mountain to go swim in the waterfalls for bathing. I instantly pictured scary narrow roads almost completely vertical. We stopped at a local museum on the way and while we walked around my fear started to build. I remember walking up to a youth (my friend's son, who knew about my fears) and saying "pray for me im so scared" and he said "you dont have to be afraid, we'll protect you" and gave me a hug. This was enough to get me back in the car and head up the mountain.

While it wasn't quite the scary road I had pictured, the roads were indeed narrow, drastically curvy, and when you looked out the outside window it was straight down into rapids. We were also told stories of multiple cars going over the side, as the local missions director (G) raced around the corners. Then when we got there we had to climb down this cliff to get to the waterfalls where we would bathe. I am sure it took me like 10 times as long as anyone else to climb down and I was probably a mess by the time we left that day.

I struggled through the week but spent much time in prayer that kept me going. A couple days later we were driving back with the missions director from somewhere. He said to me "Kim - I don't know why but everytime I see you I picture a short bus." I chuckled thinking it was a joke and then immediately lost my breath and tears instantly came to my eyes. It was as if I had been sucker punched. I covered it well and no one seemed to notice the flood of emotion that came to me.

When G said that to me I got a picture in my head of the short bus I used to ride. Now before you start making jokes at my expense, I went to a private school, and they purchased old buses no longer used by public schools. They had purchased a short bus to pick up those of us kids who lived on the islands and called it the island bus. That was the bus of my nightmares. I asked G what he meant by that, and his response was somewhere around "do you think God is trying to tell you something about it? If so pray and ask Him to show you" I didn't need to ask though, I knew what it was about.

When we got back I went off to a quiet place on the property and prayed. I knew God was trying to tell me something about that time in my life. I was not a Christian on that bus, and I was very unhappy. I had struggles of my own in those years and the kids on that bus seemed to pick up on that and would tease me. This one boy in particular, Jamie, would pick and pick and pick until I started to cry and then they would ignore me. No one protected me. No one stuck up for me. I tried everything. I tried ignoring him. I tried giving it back to him. I tried joking it off. I eventually gave up and would just sit there until I cried. Every day for an hour there and an hour home and many many tears. I don't even remember all that he would make fun of me about. Whether it was my name, my height, or made up things. I remember at one time he started saying I was homosexual, and teased me for that. It was a very very sad time in my life. I started to hate my life, and school, and those around me who didn't stand up for me. 

My poor little sister probably got most of my aggression because I think I blamed her in some ways for not sticking up for me, or because I was jealous of her having friends. I seem to recall going home after that bus ride and picking on her, teasing her for her weight problem or anything I could think of. Like I said - I wasn't a very nice person back then. It makes me cry now to even think that I could do that. It was certainly not her fault that someone picked on me. She was younger, and as her older sister who wasnt very nice to her I can't imagine her putting herself at risk with Jamie to stick up for me. Anyhow... back to the story.

When I prayed on the side of this mountain in Tennessee asking God to show me what it is about this short bus experience that He was trying to share with me. I heard God speaking into my heart very clearly that he was there with me even then and that it broke his heart for me to hurt like I did then. That was perhaps the most alone I had ever felt in my life. The idea that I was possibly not alone hit me like a train. The fact that I didn't acknowledge him as God at that time, but he was there loving me and waiting for me and caring about me when I felt no one cared for me, yep it hit me like a train. That kind of love that I didn't feel like I was getting - in the hardest time in my life, was there and being offered by the king of the universe, even then. This intense feeling of how much the Lord loved me even before I loved him overwhelmed me on a mountaintop in eastern Tennessee.

The love was so overpowering that the fear that had crippled me the first couple of days of this 10 day missions trip to Appalachia was immeasurable. I remember practically flying the rest of the week, and even for months afterwards. I remember running down that cliff to the waterfall the very next day, the same cliff that had paralyzed me before. I remember actually driving one of the vans down those curvy roads laughing and singing along with the radio. I remember jumping off the rocks by the waterfalls and sliding down the natural slides with my friend, Arlene. The love that the Lord showed me that He had for me was so intense it took over every bit of fear.

this is actually a picture of me jumping into the water that week - graceful I am not

I had long heard the scriptures about the love that conquers all fear, and the peace that transcends all understanding, but never experienced it in such an intense way. I had grabbed a couple of the rocks on that mountain in TN and stuck them in my pocket. I have kept them to remember that Christ is my rock, and His love conquers my fear. That Christ will stand up for me, love me, and protect me, even when no one else will. So today I am putting one of these rocks into my memorial box!

For God did not give us a spirit of timidity, but a spirit of power, of love and of self-discipline.

2 Timothy 1:7