A Weekend to Remember!

I am still processing the past weekend!  I am feeling extremely blessed and grateful for all God has done in my life!  It’s an awesome thing to be married for 18 years!  It still doesn’t compute that it has been that long.  I think we lost a few years in childbearing exhaustion!!  Dan and I have been blessed with a peaceful, fun, fruitful and very hectic life!  I am so thankful I get to do this life with Dan.  He is so very hard working, and self-sacrificing for our family!!  He spends every waking moment, doing something for our family, working at his job, coaching a team, doing the lawn, fixing something in the house and exercising our crazy dog. We try hard to squeeze in some dinner dates with just us two every so often to maintain sanity! He has loved me well, has made me feel loved and believes in my gifts and talents like no other!  I don’t take him for granted!  I know I chose wisely! :)

I got to do several fun things this weekend!  Friday night I got to see my oldest girl, Bonnie serve the Lord through YouthQuake Live!  I love to see God using my children in other people’s lives.  It’s truly what I live for!!  On Saturday, we dropped off Bonnie and Bubba to the 30-hour Famine that they signed up for themselves!  I don’t know if I would have volunteered to fast for 30 hours for missions when I was their age!  I was very proud!  Bubba also impressed me when I mentioned him playing the X-box.  He casually told me that he gave up playing the X-box for Lent.  I was like, WHAT??  Our church has never emphasized the Lent season like other churches do so I was pretty amazed!  Apparently they talked about it at Youth Group and Bubba was moved to participate!  I was stunned and maybe somewhat convicted that I should give up something as well!

It was also special to celebrate my Aunt Doris’s birthday with her whole family in town!  It’s really wild how fast time goes by and how time with your family is such a rare thing!  Dan and I also went to Taco Lu for a nice Anniversary lunch and then out with our friends the Wyatt’s for dinner!  Having the Wyatt’s as friends has been a wonderful blessing to us! They understand us and love us like few others!  We had a blast with them minus Duke’s win over Miami that we witnessed at the restaurant! (Only low part of the weekend!)  I am still ticked that the Wyatt’s bought our dinner though….

Today marked quite a historic day at Beaches Chapel Church.  I have attended that church since I was a baby.  I have only had one Pastor that I have had a relationship with and today we prayed Pastor Howard in as our new Senior Pastor.  It was a day filled with great joy and expectation!  My brother in law said it was  “just the beginning” and I truly believe that!  Pastor Howard and I started off in ministry together and were ordained together in 1993, 20 years ago in October.  We went on mission trips together and have seen the ups and downs of ministry life.  I am so happy that I am still at Beaches Chapel Church. There have been times that I wondered if it was time to go but I never felt released.  I truly believe that our best days are ahead!  I believe it is time for all of us to reach out to the lost and hopeless and to see a great harvest of souls!  I fully believe Howard is the man for the job!  He has a humble attitude, relies on God and prays for God’s direction!  He charged us as a church to Pray, Love and Serve and I think it has motivated us in the right direction!  

Today we had a church lunch and I got to see people from my childhood who have come back to the church and also see the future generation of leaders in our youth!  It was a mind-blowing, inspiring day to say the least.  I felt like I was on the verge of tears all day, tears of joy, of hope and of gratefulness that I am able to be a part of all God is doing!!  Beaches Chapel has the distinction of being a multigenerational church.  I saw so many grandparents with their grandbabies today!  What a gift and a rare thing in this fast pace, disjointed world that we live in!

I had a very moving thing happen to me! A friend I’ve known for 20 years slipped me a piece of paper during church.  I read it and was brought to tears.  She listed three people who were born on February 24 who meant a great deal to her, my Dad, Teresa Rogers and her son Isaiah.  She bought blocks for our new Impact Center in their honor!  What an incredible idea and a gift to me that someone is still thinking about my Dad.  This is what she said about him, “He was an Elder at Beaches Chapel, provided wisdom and encouragement to countless people. He was an inspiration to many and lived as a Godly man. His legacy is still so evident here, his beautiful wife Barbara, his children, their children and now even their children.  He was loved by so many and still missed in a very real and tangible way to all who knew him.”  It still makes me cry!

We ended our anniversary weekend with a fabulous dinner by Dan!  I was upstairs and all 5 kids came running up and said, “Dad wants you to come downstairs now!”  I went down and he was frying some crab cakes!  I was so excited!  I ran upstairs while he finished cooking to wash Eddie up real fast.”  Bonnie and Bubba stopped me on the stairs and said, “Go back down!  We got this!”  They bathed Eddie and put him to bed for me!  That was a gift!!  I also enjoyed a perfectly cooked steak, potatoes and Alaskan King Crab legs!  I went to bed very full in my stomach and full in my heart, very grateful for all God has done for me and expectant about the next 18 years!!