"Take my will and make it thine, It shall be no longer mine, Take my heart, it is thine own, it shall be thy royal throne, It shall be thy royal throne."
Exhausted and drained were the perfect words defining how I felt as I stumbled in out of the pelting rain, several years ago.
After two hours of driving Kentucky’s back highways and a weekend of speaking a total of ten hours to a sweet group of moms in a Tennessee lake house, I was spent. It wasn't just the weekend, or meeting with more surgeons, or finding an oral surgeon for Joy or working on a movie project with Nathan or finding Sarah with a 103 temp and needing advice about a ruptured ear drum or hearing that a sweet friend had borrowed her car and had an accident and totaled the car and trying to figure out how to proceed (!!!)— it was the cumulative weariness that just comes with some seasons of life. I think there are parts of me that are bone tired and soul weary from many years of being in the battle.
My heart, though, was swimming in hope and excitement and child-like anticipation, because my borrowed car was headed to the wonderful home of my forever sister-friend, Gwen, where I knew that God lived.
After gratefully crawling into a warm bed there and sleeping for nine hours, (unheard of for me), the next morning I woke and found Gwen, candle lit, Bible in hand, cup of coffee steaming, in her quiet time chair. "Curl up in my bed, and I will pour you a cup of tea and we will be friends," she whispered, as she gently wrapped her blankets around my shoulders and puffed up the pillows in the bed where I had gratefully obeyed.
And so a beautiful little candlelit tray came to rest in the room, and life and beauty took place. I have many friends and thousands of sweet women in my life, but few who, when I am with them, will always have the palpable life of Jesus glowing, living, stirring in their midst. I always know I will find it here in Earlington, Kentucky, with sweet Gwennie.
After, journeying over bits of life, events, people, illnesses, deaths and heart sharing, we came to the most important subject.
"Why are we so blessed? What shaped our lives so that we have been able to live purposeful lives, we have seen dramatic answers to prayer, we have watched the life of God's spirit swirling amongst the events of our lives our whole lives. Why, in spite of the battles, do we see God's favor?"
And she showed me a poem she had written in her Bible many years ago,
"I heard Him call, "Come follow."
That was all.
My gold grew dim, my soul went after Him.
Who would not follow IF they heard Him call."
That was it. The secret. At an early age, we were both challenged to follow Him, to listen for His voice, to be His bondservant, to let Him show us the path, to live by faith, to believe in the power of prayer, to invest in His kingdom, to put aside the voices, the peer pressure of the world to conform, simply to follow Him.
Both of us have had to reject the voices of "Job's friends" in our lives, and the world's voices, and all of those voices who seemed to have "God's will in mind for us," and we could see, looking back, that holding fast to His voice, His way, His direction, as our pearl of great price, was the secret. Always, He is at the center. Always, His paths are the right paths.
And so, both of us, bow our hearts before Him, together, thanking Him for the miracle of the lives He has allowed us to live.
She has seen the death of all of her siblings, grandparents, many cousins, and all other support systems dwindling, with her precious mama still loving and smiling for many more years before going on to heaven.
As Clay and I followed His voice, He led us to leave overseas missions, to move back to America, to raise four wholehearted children, and to write about parenting, mothering, and discipling the next generation; to make radical decisions that most of our Christian friends and family did not understand.
After 25 years of serving the Lord in Austria and Eastern Europe, He directed Gwen to live a quiet life in a tiny town caring for her elderly mom, day after day, for many years. But both of us live in the comfort of knowing He has guided, He has been faithful, and His ways have indeed been the pathway of blessing. And in reviewing His history of faithfulness, our hearts are refreshed in the company of each other.
And so we ponder … I wonder how God might direct us to serve Him, to follow Him, to hear His voice in the next 30 years? May we both be attentive, may we both hear, and expect His presence, and may we both obey and simply follow Him.
"Riches I heed not, nor man's empty praise, Thou my inheritance, now and always; Thou and thou only first in my heart, High king of heaven, my treasure thou art."