For me, it started with a piece of paper.
A piece of paper + God.
We never know how God is going to weave our stories of connection, of friendship, of life. A happenstance meeting at a restaurant turns into a marriage, a potluck roommate assignment turns into a lifelong friendship. It is absolutely miraculous how we connect to each other in this great big world.
As I was driving home from an amazing weekend at the You Are Women's Conference, I reflected on how I even have the honor to be connected to this incredible group of women.
A piece of paper + God.
In 2004, I was part of a group of women who had been hungering for a different type of Bible study in the Bryan/College Station community. We began praying about starting an interdenominational Bible study. We met and prayed together for months before we started gathering to do a study together. We found a host church. We haphazardly assigned leadership roles to our little motley crue of women; I was tasked the role of the leader/teacher. I remember opening Microsoft Word on my Dell desktop computer, creating a flier announcing when and where we would meet for our first Bible Study. We made copies of said flier. We all grabbed a pile of said fliers and went around town, leaving stacks of papers here and there. (The year was 2004; it was a pre-social media world, when fliers, church bulletins, and community newspaper columns were some of the only options for free publicity.)
This mystery still remains to me one of the greatest ways I have experienced the beautiful ways God works in the smallest of details, but somehow a few women saw the paper. Picked one up. And actually SHOWED UP to our first little Bible study.
A piece of paper + God.
To this day, Bryan College Station CBS is a vibrant, God-honoring ministry in the community. My years of leading CBS connected me to women from different denominations and churches from all across the community.
A piece of paper + God.
Our family moved from the BCS community to Huntsville in 2013. I vividly remember seeing the announcement of the first You Are Women's Conference in 2014. Our exit from the community had been packaged in painful heartache; we were emotionally hemorrhaging from the loss of the community we loved so dearly. I remember having such confidence in all the women I knew who had launched the conference; I had met some of them through CBS as well as other local ministry connecting points. I knew without a doubt they were wholeheartedly sold out to Jesus and it would be an incredible gathering. Yet my heart was too raw to attend. I couldn't bear the thought of being in a crowd of women, seeing faces I recognized, feeling paralyzed at the thought of making small talk when my pain was still so raw, pouring salt in the wound of having to leave the town our family had loved dearly.
Because our God is a God of healing, I was finally ready to attend a conference with a dear friend a few years down the road, my heart more solid. Some of the ashes were beginning to turn to beauty, the mourning transforming to joy.
Then I had the absolute honor to be invited to speak at both the 2021 and 2022 conferences. Standing before a group of women in B/CS, teaching the word of God after such heartache, was surreal. It was not lost on me what a full circle gift of restoration this was from the kind heart of a loving Father, through the prayerful invitation of the You Are team. As I stood to teach, I experienced His sweet little head nod and gentle grin, directly to me, reminding me He was in the business of restoring the years the locust had eaten. (Joel 2: 24)
This year, 2024, (twenty years after those papers were passed out), I had a blast emceeing the 10th anniversary conference with my sweet friend Ashley. The weekend was absolutely glorious in every way possible. God continued to speak to some of my heartache, reminding me again and again how we have a God who finds us and sees us. Like Hagar said, “I have seen the God who sees me.” (Gen 16:13)
He sees you, too. You NEVER know how God will use one small random connection that links to another connecting point, years down the road. He uses it all.
A piece of paper + God.
Any part of your heartache + God.
Any unfinished work + God.
Whatever we have, God will work through it. Trust the God of the bigger, longer story.
His math always works for His glory and our joy.
