It's 7:30 at home and just 8:30 here (outside Colorado Springs, CO) and I'm beat. Sleepy, dry-weather congested, but mostly just awed and humbled by the graciousness of God and the majesty of individuals' stories.
It is easy for me to forget that everyone's story has tragedy, comedy, dark, light, and searing boredom. But tonight we laid our altar for the week. Each person brought an object that symbolized his or her current relationship with God. They didn't all actually symbolize that but that was okay. We each rose, gave our name and city, and told why we had brought what we'd brought.
The tenderness and determination flowed:
the woman with stage-4 cancer whose body will die soon but who describes herself as fully recovered;
the man whose wife's death forced him to choose a soul-strengthening viewpoint;
the woman whose daughter fought a terrible blood disease (which bankrupt them), only to be killed in an auto accident;
the man who has decided to stop being hard, dark and broody and become a teddy bear.
And:
the young woman trying to get published;
the young lawyer learning truth isn't found in books;
the man learning delight from his kid;
the woman whose garden this summer swarmed with Monarch butterflies.
After the hour talking with the young man on the plane about life, relationships, and God, it was quite a lot. But awe-some. I couldn't help but pray after almost every one, thanking God for hope in the kingdom and for the glory of lives worth saving.
To bed at 7:42 pm. It might be a awe-full day tomorrow too. DW, after all.
I brought a bungee cord, because after all these years I'm finally really accepting that no matter how stretched my relationship with God gets, if I let it it bounces right back where it should be.
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