One of my favorite things about church this am was getting to talk to people afterward. Sometimes I think that peoples perception of church is "you go, you listen, you leave". End of story. But, in my opinion, that is very incomplete. The community that is found in a local body of Christ, (another way of saying "church"), is tremendous - something that I have come to greatly rely upon. That's not to say that it's some sort of club that you belong to so you can get to know other people, or that my family and I never leave church right after the worship service. It's not a club, and sometimes we leave without talking to more than a handful of people, but there are other times when I stay after the service and just talk to people I don't know, or people I haven't seen in a long time. It brings so much joy.
Today I had the honor of conversing with many people whose heads barely came up to the handles on my wheelchair. A little (like, maybe 4-year-old?) girl in this adorable pink mini-Chinese dress was flittering around the lobby like a butterfly when she almost bumped into me. She turned to me and said in a super-soft voice, "What happened?" How I explain it to most little kids is that "I hurt my leg, and I have to wear this black thing like a giant band-aid so that it feels better." Little little kids totally get it. They are also the ones that gape the most. It's hysterical. Like, mouths open and everything. Another little guy that had seen me before (4?) came up to check in, and he said, "I see your toes! Do they feel better?"
My heart just melted. I was cracking up because kid after kid came up to talk to me. Maybe it's because I'm getting fat, and I look like Santa Claus. I think it's because I'm permanently on their level and, as such, they feel more comfortable talking to me. After they get over the fact that I'm in a giant stroller that doesn't have any cool cup-holders.
Yesterday, I took down all of the cards that people have sent me over the last three months. I had them all hanging up on the dining room wall, (with blue painter's tape, of course) and they have been such an encouragement to me. Dozens and dozens of people letting me know that they were thinking of me, and more importantly, praying for me. I had to take a picture so that I could remember why it's important to send people cards. One of my absolute favorites came to me in the hospital:
It's from a three-year old.
(My other favorite is also from a three-year-old.
Green one, top right, with the puffy balls.)
Noah came from HJ. HJ came with her mom and dad to visit me in the hospital when I had first fallen. Apparently, she had made it in Sunday school. It made the perfect get-well card, didn't it? The top of it says, "Noah's family and the animals were safe in the boat." I can vividly remember getting it from her, and thinking about how fitting that line was. "Noah's family and the animals were safe in the boat."
Noah stepped out in obedience to God, even though everyone around him thought he was a loon. I really admire that about Noah. Because I'm a chicken. The first neighbor that would come over to question what I was doing with a crap-ton of wood, and I'd be like, "Okay God, I'm done now. I can't build this thing." Don't even lie. You'd give up soon after. Like, when you found out that you'd have to quit your job, and devote your week to building a really big boat that all the animals in the world would come to. It's almost laughable. The story of Noah is one that (I think?) is pretty well-known, and pretty well-made-fun-of. I mean, I'm not laughing at God. I respect him, and I think that his plans for our lives are the ones where we find the most joy, and the most clarity. But sometimes when God asks me to do something crazy, I am tempted to say, "Yeah right. Oh wait. Really? You weren't kidding? Oh. Okay."
I'm a CHICKEN, I tell you!
But. When we are obedient, God truly does great things. I think that if God can redeem an entire planet through one family & a gigantic boat, he can redeem a broken leg sitch. Sitch is short for situation, in case you didn't know. And, in this sitch, it has been easy to be ashamed or discouraged by many things. Phillipians 1:20 has something to say about this:
Cuh-razy cool that I found this passage tonight. "But I will have sufficient courage so that now, as always, Christ will be exalted in my body..." I pray earnestly that Christ is exalted through me - I have seen his faithfulness in so many ways. Ways that I have talked and talked and talked about, and I can't seem to stop. I'm so thankful that he uses even the craziest of things to exalt himself, and that he uses cotton-balled covered pictures to point me to himself.
