A Personal Relationship

A few years ago, when my girls were tiny, my mom invited me to a women's fellowship gathering at her church.  I left the girls with grandpa, put on a long dress (which was the expectation at the time), and kind of groaned inside. Women's ministry events were not my passion.  If I'm at all honest, it is because I was floundering in my walk with Jesus.  We weren't in church.  Not entirely because I didn't want to be, but the girls were a lot, I didn't want to leave them in a nursery at a place where I didn't know everyone. I was a little jealous of a lot of the girls I grew up with, surrounded by their families for support and having the same ladies in the nursery to watch their children that watched many of us when we were little.  My heart wasn't in the best place.

But I still remember that Saturday.  I remember the lady standing up there and talking with us.  I don't remember exactly what she said, but it was at that exact moment God placed a seed in my heart.  I needed sisters (not just my incredible biological one) to love and support my faith walk.  I needed to, in turn, encourage and love them in theirs.  

It took a fun week at a local VBS at my teacher bestie's church to nudge us to finding our own church.  Our church made it easy to get involved and I quickly was able to volunteer in the preschool ministry that my girls were a part of.  I joined a ladies small group and we had fun together.  Yes, we prayed and studied the Bible, but we did a Color Run, an escape room, picnic, it made learning together fun.  When we moved, we moved within an easy drive of our church, but during the week small group was a little bit too far.  I joined an online small group in the fall of 2019.  I went to one Zoom meeting.  I didn't like it.  It felt weird and impersonal.  Well, God had plans to teach me all about that too..ha!

Last summer, I had the opportunity to lead a teacher Bible study online (yay, Covid!), and that seed God planted in my heart to cultivate real friendships with other believers began to bloom.  I'll probably never stand on a stage and speak to a group like the lady did at that ministry event.  I'm an okay public speaker thanks to countless Gold Card award evenings (North Moore High School did a great job producing well-rounded graduates), but I get splotchy and nervous in my old age.  I wish I was great at sitting down and reading my Bible every day, but I'm not.  I wish my faith was always strong, but it isn't.  I have learned that having this sisterhood isn't a requirement for salvation, but it makes my journey way more sweet.  Iron sharpens iron.  I hope that as much as a I get from our weekly readings and meetings, the sweet women I meet with do too.

In the winter when I was choosing a book, I prayed that God would lead and guide our group.  I came across a book that we could read together, and that the author was in the process of publishing a kid version of the book.  I knew that many in our group had little girls and these books were written especially for women/girls. We read through our grown up book by March and I went ahead and bought the girl version.  This summer has allowed my girls and some of their closest buddies to read and learn together too.

Y'all when I was their age, I saw faith and loving Jesus as something very formal.  Dresses, lacy socks, church, organs, pews, hymnals.  While these were wonderful and meaningful parts of my testimony, I do not want my girls to have a formal relationship with their savior.  I want it to be a personal relationship.  I talk to God in my car, I read my Bible from an app, I listen to worship music on my morning runs. I get it wrong a lot, but because my relationship is personal and not formal, I can acknowledge my failures.  I know Jesus already paid my price.  His mercies are new every morning.

At the end of the day, my testimony isn't glamorous and I fall short so many times.  I hope that my children see that and know it's okay.  That God doesn't expect perfect, just good and faithful servants. If you don't have a church or a friend that supports you in your faith walk, my prayer is that you find those and know you have a friend in me.  If you need some recommendations on studies or books, I have a small little shelf I can share with you.  I'm grateful God plants seeds in us and I'm so thankful for that personal relationship with Christ.