Back in the Beginning

This morning in church, I was sitting with Owen. We had rearranged our schedule a bit for today and everyone else was in Sunday School. We were singing a song, I don't even remember now what it was and I had this overwhelming thankfulness. I had an overwhelming thankfulness to a man named James Walker. I don't know why at that moment, his face flashed into my mind. He was the pastor at our first real, we are serious about having a grown up, christian life church. The church was huge. We visited there one Sunday and the following Tuesday the Pastor and his wife were knocking on our door. Our house was a DISASTER! They came to the front door (which we never used - only to find out that it was painted shut.) I could go into a whole other post about the condition of that house but I won't. I will just say that now it is a parking lot and leave that at that. Anyway, they came to the door. His sweet wife saw that I was about to die from embarrasement and suggested we sit out on the deck (either that or she was afraid of catching something from my house!) She offered to chase Emily around (she was 16 months at the time) while we sat and talked to James. We were sitting on that back deck and he asked each of us our testimonies. He interrupted Ryan in the middle of his "spill". I say that because Ryan had a rote memory account and said in all sincerity "I don't mean to question you, but are you sure?" No one had ever questioned him before. Needless to say, that was the beginning of a beautiful friendship. I know that eventually we would have gotten to the place God wanted us to be but I am so thankful that He chose to put them in our paths. We learned so much there and met so many wonderful people that had such a huge impact on our lives. This morning, 16 years later, I still feel the effects of the thankfulness that those people were willing to invest in our lives. That they cared enough about us to say "are you sure?" That they could see a bigger, better picture of us 16 years down the road that we couldn't even begin to imagine. It made me challenge myself and my family to ask "who are we investing in?" and "am I doing enough?"