My Church Is My Family...

This morning, I felt Christ's love and care for me in a beautiful way.  Every week, the little kids do a craft in their 'little kids church.'  After service, Lucy, one of the girls, came up to me and handed me a beautiful little card!  Then Mercy handed me one, then Tori, and Adalynn, and Will, and Charlee - until I had a whole handful of beautiful cards.  Obviously, I totally started crying.  If you can read the notes, you will see why....

I've known this for awhile, but today just reminded me even more of how thankful I am for my church community.  We might not have the most members or the biggest, flashiest band ever, but we preach the Truth and live it out loud.

It's not some thing that we just all check off our 'to-do' list on Sunday mornings.  Conversations are real, and we long to get to know and live life together.  That means it can get ugly as we start getting real and vulnerable with each other.

But that's where God's grace and love shines so beautifully.

I've learned to be more open with my community and allow people into some of the harder areas of my life.  It's not always been pretty, but my community and my church HAS been constant.  I can't say that about many things, if any, in my life.




This community God has given me is a beautiful display of God's faithfulness.  He never leaves, He never gives up, He never stops pursing me, and He never leaves me as I am - He grows and strengthens me to be more like Him.  That's what love is really all about.



As the time gets closer to leave, I am strengthened by the fact that God has given me a beautiful family in my church.

It gives me the courage to take this leap of faith, knowing that I am surrounded by family in thought and prayers on this journey.

It also gives me great hope that the Lord can and will surround me with a new family in England.        

Our family through Christ is so, so big - not even a little pond can get in the way of that :)

“I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. The glory that you have given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me."

John 17:20-23