Winter 2018The rented church space is abuzz with friends and family and LOADS of good food. The celebration seems to be a success as she stands and watches, wiping the same stretch of counter in circular rhythms. A brother walks up from behind, squeezes her shoulders into his side and says, "This is your happy place, Sis. We just need to get you a fellowship hall, and you'll be good forevermore."
Spring 2019
A vacant church house stands empty and still. Sold to a mining company but spared before demolition, the big white boxy building sits quietly among the overgrown shrubs. She calls her husband, "Please get me that church house! You can convert half the sanctuary into a shop. The kids can each have a Sunday school space for a bedroom. And I want that fellowship hall!"
He takes her seriously and calls around. He trespasses, inspects, and returns with terrible news. "It has been vandalized and ripped to shreds. It's going to take a lot of work. Also, I have no idea how we could even figure out who to buy it from. It seems pretty impossible."
She prays. She feels a seed of faith sprouting with hope up from her deepest longings. She musters courage to just ask God for what she wants. "Dear God, if it would please you, could I have a fellowship hall?" God knows her heart for feeding and tending her growing flock and all their friend-group gatherings. He has shaped the desire and delight within her.
Summer 2019
She keeps asking and seeking and knocking. She cries every time she lets herself believe it could come true. She starts a pinterest board for old church renos as an act of faith.
With little warning, the tables turn and one thing leads to another. Before she knows it she and her husband and her mother have signed a contract on a house that needs zero work. A house where people share bedrooms, where there is a shop, and a sense of sanctuary all around. A house with the most spacious kitchen and dining area she's ever known. Her very own fellowship hall.
The week they close on the house, she stands in a worship service weeping at how rich and kind God is. Her hands reach high to grasp the glory. She is fearfully undone. Just then, a tender-hearted daughter squeezes her momma's hips into her side and whispers, "You've been begging God for a quarter, but He wants to give you a twenty dollar bill."
Summer 2021
She settles in to begin a new decade of living. But what a brutal, challenging patch the last two years have proven to be. She feels weathered and worn, battle-weary and bruised. But also brave. And wiser and stronger and blessed. If God had given her a glimpse of 2020, she would have never agreed to the "twenty-dollar bill". But He is too kind to have done that. He knows blind faith is a mystery of mercy, so that's what He often requires.
The halls are filled with fellowship as little ones holler for Granna and adult children bless their Momma on her birthday. She sits in the abundance and weeps at the wonder of it all . . . and her husband hangs the hand-crafted sign.
The best gift: Sala de la compagnia.
She'll be good forevermore.
Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen Ephesians 3:20-21
