birthday party

                                                                                       
                                                                                  

God is up to some serious business in me these days.  I am seeing Him everywhere.  Today, I am full of delight.  I am enjoying.  I am celebrating.  I am hungry.  I am choosing to see, taste, and recount.  I am seeing HIS presence and I feel exhaustingly ALIVE. 

I don't often feel this way.  Most days I feel quite the opposite.  Today, I am drinking deeply.

I recently had some retreat time with a special sister and lots of the Holy Spirit.  Oh, how I need all parts of the Trinity.  I look forward to processing all that God started that weekend.  I wholly believe it will take my lifetime to process, and I still won't uncover it all.  It was rich.  It was heavy.  It was other.

I have been gleaning a lot lately.  Gleaning is a term I learned when I was on staff at Cedar Springs.  I was responsible for leading a time of gleaning blackberries in a field belonging to someone I didn't know and then taking the berries to share with the "less fortunate."  As I glean in others fields, I am that...."less fortunate," and I feel incredibly rich that other women would extravagantly share their harvests with me.  Which brings me to my point of today's entry.                                      

I have so enjoyed my reading time.  I have what I like to call "small brain syndrome."   I am aware that I can be a little slow.  It's how I've been made.  It's why I can relate well with children.  My brain thinks like one.  Yesterday, as I was drinking deeply, I was radically touched by the writings of a particular woman.  Radically moved.  My heart was marked.  Today, God used her example to bestow honor and blessing upon my husband. 

This morning I had a walk in the steamy air that fills my neighborhood.  As I was walking the Holy Spirit initiated an invitation.  He invited me to be a part of renaming my husband.  Remember, the two of us are often at war these days.  I love him, but this is a trying season for us both. 

Most of you are aware that we have a million "love names for our children."  Shorty, Lu, Bud, Panda...these are the main ones.  I love that they have a love name.  They are gifts that express our delight in our children.  A few hours ago, the Spirit game me a new name for Adam.  It started as one word.  Pastor.  As I continued the conversation the name grew.  A few weeks ago, as we shared life words with Adam on Father's Day.  Emmiline spoke what I would call a prophetic word over Adam.  She called him "Good Pastor."  I was and am still deeply moved by the eyes of our daughter and her courage to speak such words.


                                                                                    

                                                                                    


What am I saying in all this?  I am saying that from now on my love name for my husband will be Good Pastor.  Our children have been invited, without pressure, to join in this new name for Adam.  I am sure it might be confusing for Him, for us, for you, but from now on I will seek to call him Good Pastor.  I do not call him this becuase he is good, but because the Spirit issued and invitation and I have accepted.   For it is the Spirit that lives in Adam and makes him what he is.....Good Pastor.

                                                                                    

                                                                    Happy Birthday!
            Revelation 2:17  Here's to hidden manna and a white stone with a new name written on it.