Y’all….God is so good! This week He has taken so many of my dreams and prayers for over 20 years and simply made them come true. This morning Lori and I had breakfast together at the Hotel Indigo and then we had the best first meeting with Lysa K! of Proverbs 31 women! Oh.My.Gosh! If Lysa’s lesson and testimony doesn’t make a girl cry, her publisher does….they are fully willing to help get the information out to share on A Joyful Place Called Church, so we can share links and information to Step and Blended Family ministries.
Don’t tell Les, but my second favorite man in the whole earth (well, tied with David Cooper!) spent time with me today. Dr. Kevin Leman of Sex Begins in the Kitchen fame. He took time with me to listen to our plan for a ministry for leadership to help churches understand the needs of today’s families and to help facilitate perceptions and programming that will offer opportunities for step and blended families to be inclusively allowed to participate. Oh yes, in the middle of his presentation he noticed my name “Sweetie” and immediately deducted that I was the only girl, the youngest, and “Princess of the Place” present on the front row. Truth is he was right, I am the only daughter, granddaughter, and at my house I’m Queen Mum….After making complete fun of my name and being on the front row…oh.my.gosh y’all, the short bus girl had the hardest time not squealing when Dr. Leman had time to talk to me and introduce me to his publicist and publishers. They so helped with our new step and blended family resource blog as well! I was simply here to soak in learning, but God had another plan. God has so opened doors: Dr. John Trent, Dr. Kevin Leman, Therapist Karen Rabbitt, Sandra Royla, Thelma Wells….are ALL now people who know our ministry’s name and mine, but more importantly they know Creating A Joyful Place Resources is a reality and are willing to helping make it the into the reality that God has had me dreaming for so many many years. Presentations and a free web resource for Church leadership to gain new perspectives on how to inclusively plan for step and blended families so that our ultimate Healer can touch their broken families and restore each heart!
Just for the record, I believe I am taking the whole PR team from CBE 09 home to Alabama with me,(though the luggage charges may take us under) Mark, Mike, Cindy, all of you….you make me so proud of the work you are bringing alive. You did an excellent job of facilitating this event and I am so appreciative of your hard work! Friends, save Palm Sunday weekend next year 2010, for you want, need, and must come to Christian Book Expo 10! It’s an amazing offering of up close and personal time with your favorite authors, ministers, and materials! The worship and classes were amazing and so worthwhile, you cannot believe the $59 price for THREE DAYS of 12 horu offerings! Bring your churches, your friends and your family, THIS IS NOT TO BE MISSED! When Cindy says hi, the whole world simply is sunny again, she is precious!
Then God did another work…..and one that He so had to arrange. I had read a book review of Don’t Give Up, God wants you to Win…by Thelma Wells, a featured Women of Faith and Exceptional Womanhood speaker. I so wanted to find her but could not read the print in the program due to eye strains….but couldn’t find the room or find help, then God had someone ask me to step in to a room downstairs and help with a mike and traffic for a specific room and author in a specific place….and guess who it was!!! Breathtaking, to hear Mama T herself speak and to minister to us all on God’s plans for our lives….and sharing her own! It went further than that!!!! I was able to connect with so precious and capable not to mention beautiful Vikki, her daughter and Christina Lee, her strategic planner whom I adored and was so blessed to spend 30 minutes with discussing a book partnering for her future…the ghostwriter in me simply loved sharing and hearing her cast her vision for leadership. God is so moving in each of our lives! It couldn’t get any better than the fellowship I was able to share with them for an hour and half and to hear their dreams and the reality of a first women’s conference that God has GIFTED them with for 5600 women in Dallas May 21-22. God has so blessed me with the gift of working with Mama T on Monday morning 1:1 to work with her ministry and to help be a part of her team for her very first large conference of her own! God is so good, those 12 years of Mary Kay finishing school in management, sales, and promotions is not going to waste, nor is my degree as an Educator…for God is using them in new ways….and writing as we go for many new clients but more than that God has humbled me by allowing me to serve ministries I truly love and taken the blessing even further by the ministries embracing our dreams and assisting us to make it happen! How thrilling to be taken by the Father into places I have only dreamed of going in ministry, so many years broken, alone, discarded, a failure by many standards and yet God has taken every single one of those experiences to be the stones that build on His foundation to resurrect a new structure for broken families ….and so very very humbling!
Ms Thelma doesn’t know it yet, but she just adopted her newest daughter, (I’m adoptable you see, and we share the same Dad…GOD!) and girl, I don’t mean a part time, distant family…I mean I am working for the next 8 weeks in joy to help see her dream of her first large conference realized!…..God directly intervened in my life and their ministries to meet each of our needs today. They are graciously allowing Sweetwrites! to assist them with the event, and I could not be more excited to help this production by God happen! I am still amazed at how God has tqken my one.itty.bitty.thread and woven such a rich tapestry of love around me this week. God has taken so many scars from my life and created a new picture from the old, scraggly lines…..and the new rendering is emerging in ministry. I went back stage before her teaching in the big worship tonight…and got to meet Sheila Walsh, her son Christian, Nicole C. Mullen, Don Piper,and the rest of the worship team slated…I’m talking walk over cords, go past the security clearance like I belonged there, and get to BE with them before the worship for a few minutes! Oh.My.Gosh. God was in the house! Only 12 folks were in the green room and I was one of them thanks to Thelma, Vikki, and Christina Lee. Ladies, you don’t know how I loved getting to know you face to face and so look forward to our future on the projects we discussed!
Folks, it was another night of duets for me during the worship service, of course, I was in my seat and they were on the stage!….Nicole will never know how much her singing touched my soul after an already blessed day from God….I don’t know why those other folks came, she was singing MY song to me…on the 4th row! She invited us to sing with her and I simply enjoyed praising God out loud after lip syncing through the concert and worship!
God has so moved Les and my seven year dream of ministry to step and blended families. I never dreamed we grow to introduce this at a national level for church leadership to present a new perspective of who today’s family is to the leaders of the church and to facilitate their ability to easily reach and have a consistently updated resource for materials for programming.A Joyful Place Called Church will be up in as a ministry in partnership with 7 national ministries and gathering as we go of all ministries that have materials for step and blended family topics.We will be creating, improving, and preparing for the avalanche of what has happened in Dallas this week, working really hard to get the containers ready for what God has given us to share! It will be functioning at full throttle by July 1st as all ministry partners requested said YES! just as we dreamed it, free to all churches and staff seeking help! I went as an unknown, God’s Short Bus Girl, and yet when I leave on Monday I will be known and partnering with seven national ministry teams to make this happen! They all said “How can we help you Sweetie?, we want to partner in this!” God, only God can do this in a 3 day period!!!!
After years of being God’s short bus girl, I think I finally have the lesson down….He has taken our ashes and made something beautiful of the broken life and marriage Les and I have had seperately and now created such a new and beautiful thing in our marriage and granted our long desired, long prayed for hope for this ministry for step and blended families….there’s work to be done, but God has said “It . is. time to rebuild the family” and I say “Yes”, as Lysa would say, and we’ll see just where God is going and walk this out with him!
God is good, so good that I cannot begin to catch you up on the miracles of all that has happened in 3 weeks, but know that our heavenly Father can so weave a tapestry of your life so that every threadbare piece of your past is woven into a new and beautiful part of the picture of where he is designing you to be.
In love with Him!
God is good!
Sweetie
