blogger mom

As I mentioned in my previous post, I had dinner last night with 23 other women from our church. I have been looking forward to this evening for a couple of weeks now. One obvious reason is because it was a rare break from the kids. But, the other reason is much more important. I have really, really missed spending time with women from other generations that follow Jesus. I am extremely lucky because I have an amazing mother and grandmother that I see regularly. They teach me so much about what it means to be a Christian woman every time I am with them. Just yesterday I was on the phone with my grandmother and near the end of our conversation she said, "Kerri, my God is my Best Friend." However, I have missed having women in my church community who are filled with wisdom from many years of following Jesus. It's been six years since we left our church in Bowling Green. I had several friends my age in BG who love Jesus and our conversations about spiritual things were rich and meaningful (I love you, Sara!). I was also so blessed to have older women, my mother and grandmother's age, that filled my life with good wisdom, guidance, and advice. For the last six years I haven't had older women to fill the void that was left when we moved. St. John's has provided me with that again and I am so grateful. I have so much more to say, but to be quite honest, I don't want to offend my readers. I'll just end it with this...ladies, we NEED to be around women who have been serving their families and Jesus for many years longer than we have. We NEED to learn from their experiences. We NEED to be able to come to them for advice, prayer, and guidance. I'm so glad we'll be meeting as a group monthly now. I know that to fully develop as a mother, wife, and follower of Jesus that I need my mom, my grandmother, and women in my church community to support and encourage me.

So, I have yet to make it through a Wednesday night church service without tears coming to my eyes, and we've been going for about a year now. The entire experience is simply beautiful. It can be frustrating, but it's all so worth it. Tonight I listened to a congregation of homeless men and women and the extremely poor who live life in the Bottoms sing "Jesus Loves Me." One of the women raised her hands later to ask if we could sing "If I Were a Butterfly" which made my boys very happy. Simple child-like faith is so refreshing. Tonight we also sang "Sanctuary," which has always been one of my favorite songs. It seemed to bring a lot of peace to my heart tonight. I've really been wrestling with my role in the lives of the children in our neighborhood and that song tonight seems to bring maybe a few answers for now. There's no keyboard, no tracks, no music director. Just our priest doing her best as we all sing a little off key together. Tonight Eric joined us. Not my Eric, another Eric who lives in our neighborhood. Eric has been in prison, I believe on several occasions. He has lived a rough life, but he's found a beautiful freedom now in Christ. When he's not working he walks around the Bottoms. He walks where God tells him to walk, praying the entire way. He often stops at our house. He's never here long, usually just long enough pray for our family's safety and for our marriage and then he's quickly on his way. My description here isn't doing him justice, he's quite a character. Tonight he stopped by St. John's with his guitar. God had given him a song to sing. He sang to us about God's grace in his life. I told my husband recently that we may never know the way his prayers have changed our lives.

I promised my dad, my very kind boss, that I would get my work done tonight. I better get to it.

Sarah, I saw your comment and I will post the beet cake recipe soon!

And finally, my boys are off school AGAIN tomorrow. We better hope for a very mild winter because we are already out of calamity days!