Sarah and Joy--my two partners in adventure--we make up the "Girl's club" and make memories together all over the world.
Dallas is such a unique conference for us as a family. We started out here. We have friends who have been coming for 14 years. In many ways it is like being back home with family. We take time for perspective. But I really love to glean what my young, idealistic children see with their own honest eyes. I learn from their freshness. Joel already back in Boston, Clay on the road in the car traveling his 13 hours to home,
Sitting with my two precious, girls and best friends this morning over a leisurely breakfast here at the Dallas hotel, gave us time to ponder all that had happened in the last few days. These are our breakfast musings....
"How did you girls like the Dallas conference? What are your thoughts?"
"They (the women here in Dallas) are so loving and giving and generous and encouraging. There are those who give of their words and time and money and gifts so generously to us at this conference that it makes us think that all of the years of work is worthwhile--though we wanted to give--we were given so much. These kind, thoughtful women make us want to invest our lives for the kingdom, and to keep going."
"Watching our friends work just at hard as us---with no money or reward--gives us accountability to want to be faithful because they are." (the principle of accountability and positive peer pressure.)
Thoughts on outward appearance or inside hearts.....
"We should always look at people's hearts--there are people who dress a lot differently than us and people who have a very different background or theological underpinning--but in the end, some of them have hearts that are exactly like ours."
This from a conversation about how we have traveled all over the world and worked with Baptist Romanians, atheist Chinese, Moslem families from the middle east, Catholic Polish nationals, Charismatic Hungarians, Lutheran Germans, Reformed Dutch in Europe and New Zealand, Patriarchal Texans and Australians, and all sorts of backgrounds here in America......
God is not American or limited to culture or religious preference....
Seeing my girls realize that God is not American and not just like anyone else they know--He is wild, bigger than us or our little world--but that His word and truth transcend all centuries, all cultures and all of us can be so personal as to feel He understands each of us where we are right now. His Spirit works where the heart is turned to him, focussed on faith, living by the truth of His word, seeking to be obedient....
How living and traveling internationally and nationally had influenced our own choice of clothing, values, food tastes and such--but that our hearts most identified with those whose hearts were passionate or hungry for the eternal, the real spiritual meaning in life, about the kingdom and our Lord Jesus, and loved reading and discussing the word and depending on prayer and giving the grace and redemption of God. Whether poor and uneducated or wealthy and sophisticated--the ones they felt closest to were those who were alive to Christ.
They loved all of the stories about children and family.
"Some of these great moms are amazing--giving, loving, serving, obviously over their heads with work and pressure--yet still full of the life of Christ. Some just need rest and love and life-giving words--and a break--maybe just a night of sleep.
or then to the eternal issues.....from a too short visit with my mom in Canton yesterday...
How fun my mom still is, even though quite fragile--and how much closer she is to going to heaven.
How when my dad asked her to marry him, when she was a system's engineer with IBM, and he said if they got married, he would ask her to stay home to raise her children and to attend to their needs. And how maybe her decision influenced me many years later to make the decision to start a ministry to moms because of her own giving up of her life.
How important it is to take time to make one more memory.
(Sarah snuck this picture of me and mom because she thought I would like it as a memory.)
And how important it is to feel that soft, precious cheek against mine one more time, to pray God's blessings over her one more time, just in case...
And how, she is a sermon to us of the brevity of life--how to be faithful in the years we have left.
This is what we were talking about this morning at the breakfast table--I learn so much from my girls.
Grace and peace and perspective to you today.