Yesterday was weird. Good weird, but weird.
I woke up at 4:00 a.m. and started praying. See, we love our church, but we’ve been frustrated by a lack of any real teaching. Our Sunday school class goes through a chapter in the Bible and the teacher asks what certain words mean to us. “Vain”, “steadfast”...we end up going in circles listening to three or four outspoken folks define and redefine a few words that aren’t really open to interpretation, particularly in context.
I considered taking a dictionary to class instead of my Bible, but I thought that might not be the right attitude or solution.
We’ve also had a hard time really connecting with anyone at church. Sundays are crazy for us, and we don’t really see anyone from church outside the church. I’ve got several people I talk to each week, and the more I work at it, the less awkward I am with them, but I’ve felt kind of...purposely kept at a distance, I guess, by most women my own age.
So, prayer, yeah? I kind of just vented to God about everything. We Want to be at church, to serve, for fellowship, to learn...why did it seem like none of that was happening? What else could we do besides show up and meet people and offer to help?
The following events are all small things that seem like direct, though unexpected, answers to my prayers-
Our Sunday school teacher announced that he is stepping down and hoping that my husband might want to take over to teach the next planned lessons on church history.
The pastor gave my husband and I lesson books for a class on the basics of Christianity, which is something I told my husband privately last week that I felt our church could really benefit from. We’re not sure if the pastor just wants our thoughts on the lessons, or if he’s hoping my husband may want to teach it. I guess we’ll find out next week.
The pastor’s youngest daughter (a couple years younger than me) is married to a man who was just hired where my husband works- the two of them are getting to be good friends, and I had been hoping for a chance to meet Her at some point. Yesterday that happened and I think she may be more shy and awkward than I am.
As we were driving away from the church, I noticed that the pastor’s other daughter and her husband were behind us- they followed us for over a mile to a stop sign and pulled up next to us and invited us out to lunch with them. They seriously chased us through two neighborhoods and over a huge hill to ask if we were hungry.
God opened a lot of doors yesterday that I hadn’t been sure how to unlock myself...and all of that is awesome and what I’d been asking for, but the craziest part of the whole day:
Right after church, my husband was finishing up some work in the sound booth, and I needed to pick up some things at the grocery store, so the kids and I went to do that and then came back for my husband. I didn’t ask for dry ice for the milk or few other cold items because I thought I’d have it home and in the fridge within a half hour. Thanks to the random lunch invitation, the groceries ended up sitting in the hot car for three hours...yet when we got them home, they were ice cold.
God is definitely into details and has everything under control if He cares enough to spare our dairy products from the heat