Beautiful

For the past few weeks, I’ve felt that deep pull to write after church and then as is the case with life — I get so totally distracted.  This week though, I couldn’t NOT SHARE this with you. When we moved to Florida this summer, it was on the downhill slope of what had been six months of uphill mountain climbing for me and Jason, and for our marriage. God had answered a prayer that I had prayed daily for

nearly half of my life, but the answered prayer came out of so much pain and sorrow and brokenness there were days when only Jesus could hold me together. So, when we arrived here, my heart leaped a bit when Jason pulled up a post on Instagram and recommended we try out a Sunday with Champion City Church.

If you’ll permit me, I want to jump way back and tell you a bit about my first experience with Church.

My First Church

As a 5-year-old my family moved from San Diego to Ohio, and as you can imagine it was quite a different experience. I remember a few things about that period in our lives, but I can’t recall how my parents landed at First Presbyterian Church of Minerva. All I know is that we attended every Sunday and our family of six would dress up and sit together taking a whole pew towards the front of the Sanctuary. As we grew and grew, we became this almost wall of tall teenagers (my brothers are both right around 6’5” and none of us are shorter than 5’9”).

Every Sunday the adults in the church took turns after service teaching a pretty good-sized group of kids the Bible stories over and over in creative ways— from the time we were preschoolers until we graduated from high school. Each one of those people became known and loved family members to me. To this day when I walk into that building, it feels like walking into cherished love, or maybe, the very tight hug of a grandma.

A Personal Relationship with Jesus

In 2011, I had made the choice to leave the Navy and Jason and I moved with our two kids to Austin, Texas. I was very pregnant with Austin, our third, at the time. When we arrived, I began the search for a new Church home. This was a search I had come to be familiar with after many military moves and new congregations over the years. This time it was a flyer in the mail that had me visiting The Exchange Church in Round Rock. A newly “planted” non-denominational Christian church led by husband and wife Trey and Carrie Rose and their five kids. I kept returning each Sunday morning to a new and different service. Not like anything I’d experienced before.

Each week Pastor Trey preached, and I listened as my understanding of Jesus grew. I’d say primarily I learned to have a personal relationship with Jesus. But that’s another story for another day…  

What I most hope to convey is that it was a Holy and transformational time in my life and would give me the faith and understanding of love that I would need during a later period down the road.

We left Texas four months later and moved our family back to our home state of Ohio. Right away I felt certain that the family move to Texas had been God-directed and Holy Spirit inspired solely for The Exchange Church and the Rose family to influence my understanding of God. It would be many years later when I would realize how critical that spiritual growth was for me and for my family.  I’m not sure I ever shared those thoughts with Jason.

A New Chapter

Today, during our service at Champion City Church, Jason shared with me that he felt like this call for our family to move to Tampa was God’s way of bringing him to this Church at this time in his life.

Alright, people, I have goosebumps again just typing that…

Champion City Church is another newly planted church by a passionate husband and wife team that also ironically relocated from Ohio to Florida. The service is so much different then that of the traditional Presbyterian service I grew up in, but the message of Jesus’ love and God’s grace is the same. When our family moved back to Ohio, I picked back up where I knew there were love and wisdom and brought my children to The First Presbyterian Church of Minerva. They grew to understand the same cherished love and felt at home and valued and comfortable in this Church family.

For the past few weeks, the kids have funneled into the Champion City Church children’s program, while Jason and I go into the adult worship and message. At one point, Austin joined us in the adult service and came away telling his brother and sisters about the “rock concert” at the beginning of the service.

The children asked if they could skip the kids’ program and join us. Pastor Bruce’s current series “Raising Arrows” centers on Psalms 127: 3-5. “Children are a heritage from the Lord, offspring a reward from him. Like arrows in the hands of a warrior are children born in one’s youth.” (NIV)

Innocent Faith

So, this week we invited them to attend the main service with us. I will admit to all of you I was crying a few tears of joy during the worship portion of the service when I looked over and down at 4-yr-old Esther and she was singing (no words – just a lot of singing) with both hands in the air. The rest of our family was swaying and tapping our legs and for the most part singing, but here is the littlest one passionately worshiping God.

I bent over to Esther and she smiled up at me and said, “It is so beautiful Mommy.”

She continued pointing to the reflection the blue stage lights made on the ceiling and said, “It like a river flowing through here. I know we are reaching our hands up because God is up there, and we are reaching to him.”

“But Jesus called the children to him and said, ‘Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these. Truly I tell you, anyone who will not receive the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it.’” Mark 10: 14-16 (NIV)

There are many times in the Bible when God calls people or families or individuals to travel to far off lands. Maybe we don’t know in the instance why he has called us to such places at such times. There is a beauty in worshiping our Lord with passion and obedience and the innocent faith of a child.