After breakfast today we met together as a family to talk about the weekend. Before we started though, Papa Ken handed out a copy of Oswald Chambers’ “My Utmost for His Highest” to every one of us, with a hand-written personal note in each! Mine says: “My friend, my comanion in the kingdom – May God’s cologne and fragrance be on your life always! You are as a breath of fresh air – so refreshing! I love your story! Tell it everywhere you go. And be very blessed by our freidn Oswald Chambers; his messages are timely an straight to the heart. We pray this book makes you grow close. Very close! Love you so much. Ken and Linda Helser.” WOW! It was so good to talk about the weekend together too. Melissa was saying that this is what we need to crave – to know and be known (in family), not the being up on stage for everyone to see. We spoke about what were our highlights from the gathering, about the things we loved. Jonathan spoke about how important it is to hand back to God all the bouquets and congratulations that are handed to us. If we hold on to them, they wither in our hands, and poison from their thorns seeps into our veins. But if we hand them over to God, they never wither or die. We laughed together, we thanked God together. We were getting centred again, handing it all back to God. They also shared how important it is to disengage after a time like that – we did what we could, now we no longer need to carry any crushing weight from it. We don’t need to beat ourselves up for anything that went wrong, or anything we could’ve done better. We also all got free “Cageless Birds” t-shirts, aaah yeah! :o)
After lunch we broke up into our small groups to do some more processing together – this time through the Adam Cox teachings. It was really great to hear from everyone – we had quite different perspectives on it, and it was good to talk out some of that stuff! Our small group went to David and MK’s house for this, so we ended up watching some of their wedding video too, which was lovely! They have such a welcoming home, and are such an amazing couple! We also prayed for JD who was going to be sharing his story that evening, after supper. I LOVE these story times – it’s something I want to bring back home and set up as a value in our community. It’s amazing how quickly you can get to know someone better when you listen to their story; when they’re vulnerable and let you in to what their journey has been. You catch many glimpses on what made them them, and of what God has been doing in them throughout the years they have lived. I’d say one of the strongest messages from JD’s story was just: be yourself. When you understand how much God loves you, you have perfect freedom to be yourself, whether you feel like you “fit in” with those around you or not.
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