I know it's been a while and even worse I never finished the set of blogs that I last was doing. I do want to finish those and my reasoning for dropping them of will sort of be answered in the blogs to come, but for now I have a more serious blog to share with you. I'm going to jump around a little in this blog, but if you stick with me it should all make sense by the end.
Five years ago I was living in a suburb of St. Louis and was working at a high school (Jennings) that was boarder line inner city. It was a very different world than I had grown up in. I had been there for a year and a half. And in that year and a half I had thought many times about checking out the Vineyard Church closest to my house, but always made up an excuse not to do so. At one point I had printed off the directions to the church and left it on my printer for probably close to a year. Then I threw it away (only to dig it out of the trash and finally go on Palm Sunday 5 years ago).
I was in a very rough spiritual area of my life back then. So why am I telling you this? Well tonight I had these irrational feelings of uneasiness and anger though it wasn't directed at anything in particular. Five years ago these emotions would have eaten me up alive. I would have gotten depressed or taken my anger out on my pillow by hitting it or throwing it across the room. I probably would have cried uncontrollably as well.
Tonight however, I was able to step back from these emotions and lift them up to God. The only one who could make any sense of them. So I put on my 'Light' radio station and gave into God's truth. THE TRUTH! While I don't have a whole picture of what those emotions were about, I got a brief glimpse of what some of my time in St. Louis was about.
This past weekend I was in a dinner theater put on by our local theater group (Broadway R.F.D) and a newly opened restaurant (The Swedish Crown). On one of the nights there was a large group of teenagers. While it wasn't the most normal group I expected to see there, I wasn't surprised by it either. Come to find out this group of teenagers was brought by their sponsor to help them experience some new things that most of them had never experienced before. Some of them had never been to a restaurant that had pre-made salads. Some had never had the types of roasted vegetables that were served and I'm sure that some if not most had never been to an interactive dinner theater before.
It didn't really hit me what all this might mean to them, or even me until tonight. I had worked in a school where I am positive that the majority of the students had never been to a formal dinner theater, and quite a few had probably never been to a formal dinner where the salad was preset and the vegetables were roasted. And while I never had the chance to introduce my students those experiences, I was able to offer other experiences. Even if it was through them laughing at what a country bumpkin I am.
So tonight I got a glimpse of perspective. I can help offer new experiences here as well as I did in St. Louis. In St. Louis it was bringing touch of the county, Kansas life to them. Here in small town Kansas, it is to bring a touch of the city. And because of my time at Vineyard Community Church, I am able to do what is necessary to achieve this perspective. It's hard to have perspective is you don't look down Memory Lane from time to time.
*I thank those at Jennings High School who stuck with this country girl.
*Thanks to Broadway R.F.D. and The Swedish Crown for letting me be part of something that might have made more of a difference than we will ever know.
*And especially thank you to those of you at the Vineyard for helping me to come back to God's walking path when I had strayed so far off course.
