an emotionally long post…

I don’t know if you noticed but amongst a few other odd things yesterday… I slipped onto Twitter.…which apparently means you must appear on Instagram.  A few of you caught on and followed me on my strange little trip.  See right there to the right of this post (if you are reading this on my website and not in email)….”Seeds Sown in Twitter”, yep that’s me.  I am only just learning…so forgive me my fumbling learning ways.  Do you Twitter?  Instagram?  As every name on the planet is taken…I took the obvious (and easy to remember)  “aseedinspired”  I would love for you to follow me…it could be fun…it could.

The How and Why.

For all of those of you who didn’t follow along on my tripy little day yesterday… a recap.  One of my very closest  and dearest friends was speaking with Stacey Campbell at a big conference in the city.  Would I like to come and hang out during the downtime?  See a few bits of the conference?  Do lunch?  Hmmm.  So I set my house in order for a mother of 7 to leave on a Friday.   I called my aunt who a decade ago tried to convince her children to play a hammer dulcimer….  Would she sell it to me?   Could she bring it into the city? After going to the Songs of Water concert we have a new interest in owning one.  Happy to meet up she lugged it  out of her attic and reluctantly abandoned the idea that her grown and moved out children would revive and renew an interest in this enormous stringed trapezoid.  So I went into the city….with spiritual purpose and with natural curiosity….or is it all spiritual?  Yes, probably.

I most likely should have switched off many of my switches for something like this.  I was just too alert.  I was so spiritually watchful.  Can I say that here?  A lot happened.  How could it not… all these spiritual powerhouses.  We ate together… we took them out and about the town showing them different places….I wish my aunt would have been along as she knows the city backwards and forwards…. I showed them where I walked with the man of my dreams after we got married…

A Sweet  Sidestory…

We got married in that church.  The reception venue was two blocks away….again all thanks to my aunt who found all these places for us over a decade ago…. After we left the church for the reception we walked out to a beautiful 75* day….in November! So me and the man of my forever, we walked.  We walked just him and I and our beautiful sunny warm day.  In a beautiful city with the autumn leaves swirling about us.  We walked the two blocks hand in hand (and my other hand carried my too-new shoes).  Him in his tux and me in my dress…. better then a limo, better then a carriage….just him and I …we entered this life together walking hand in hand…and as we rounded the corner of the quiet street and walked along the noisier busier street…it started…They cheered….”You are so beautiful”…”Congratulations”….” Blessings to you”. People we never knew, just driving by  called out to us.  Celebrated us.  There we walked for two blocks hand in hand all newly married ,and a bit shy about it, and they cheered us as we walked into our new selves as husband and wife.  By the time we got to the reception, and I slipped my shoes back on, we felt like we had been married forever.  It is, to this day, one of the very best memories of that day.

…. so I relived that moment, sending pictures back to my husband. Then it was back to the conference… to hear Julie Meyers sing.    Talk about emotion…I look back and a little old lady behind me looks like my great grandmother…and it was like standing in heaven with her …and I just kept blinking back hard.  When she smiled at me her eyes creased  and lifted her cheeks just like my great grandmother’s had.  Oh did I mention I have never ever been to a conference…that kind of stuff normally makes me feel like a cat being given a bath.  But I had pretty much disassociated about it being a conference…I was going to support a friend….show people the city…no conference (insert image of cat holding it’s legs out side of a tub of water).

Needing to Process…

… a few things happened, and this has already become a long post…so I am sorry …. but there is so much to tell….  So before I pick up the hammer dulcimer I sat and heard Stacey up on stage with my friend… and she told a story about how women get so weird about strong women.  How they will find the fault and not promote the strength….how they want everyone to be the same spiritual height and how they don’t realize how different seasons will be different growth in women’s lives… and how that is okay.  Then she went on to tell a story about when she had a youngish family…other women had come to her at a Bible study…told her “something is wrong with you…we don’t know what” and then how one of them quipped up about “her needing to be broken to let Him into those places”  and then they all sat around and “in His love” (bah!) told her the things that were wrong with her, her ministry, her relationship with her husband and how she carried out her giftings….till she was a sobbing mess.  Like a prize fighter with her hands tied behind her back she sat there and let them tell her in that ohh-soo-christianese way which is silky and dripping with a fermented sugar kind of words.  She sat and she sobbed and nodded working hard just to breathe. The sobs in, being caught on the breaths out….hoping to grow from it all.  I nodded and nodded and thought I was going to throw my notes and have to leave.  I was so mad for her… I wanted to go back in time and defend her, I wanted to make them stop.  I know that feeling where you want to help them and you hope He is talking… but in the end you have been beat to a bloody pulp and you could have easily defended yourself but all you kept saying was “I am sorry…I am so sorry…I am sorry” taking it all on you…on me……you could have… I could have. I could’ve.

The Snippits

Luckily before I threw my notes at the stage and stomping off I got the text to go get the hammer dulcimer.    So off I slipped into the humor of my aunt.  A great diversion. I heard of her dreams and I felt joy encouraging someone who had helped to form parts of me when I was a broken kid.  She put that paint brush in my hand and swirled colors when my world swirled black.

I am sorry this went so long….. there is actually much more to tell.  Did you stick with me?  Because I need to tell you what happened before I left.  Where it was just Stacey and I in a cold hallway near the elevators… where there is redemption to this story and you don’t need to throw your notes… but maybe find a better pen…copying each revelatory word down…imprinting them so they dig deep even onto the next page.  Where I learn about the safe places… the safe people…. because …well I will wait…let you read this..

PFW tonight… and I KNOW HE will be there.. and I am full….and I am cut up… and I am strong and weak and I need to be there.  So join me…I might even put some pictures on twitter 

To Be Continued…