Amen

This evening has felt different for me. Tonight I'm not scrambling around trying to get all the toys back in their places, the toilets scrubbed, floors mopped and vacuumed, the clothes put away, snacks planned, our babysitters accounted for, emails sent and chapters read. Nope. Tonight I'm doing our normal routine, (well not too normal. I'm blogging...) and it's great, but so sad. I've decided not to do mommy group anymore. Jamie and my parents can't understand why I am sad. And rightfully so. If you haven't sat in my mommy group, you wouldn't, couldn't understand how necessary it is, and how sad I am to not be a part of it (formally) anymore. It has been my ministry for four years. It's how I've done church...only at home. It's coming together with my sisters talking of our walks with God, our trials, our praises, our struggles, our joys, our sadness, our children, our husbands, our kitchens, our clothes, our bodily functions after multiple babies, our sex lives after multiple babies, our hair, how we pray, how we need to pray more, our friendships....EVERYTHING! I could describe in length how I came to this decision, but it comes down to obedience. I felt my heart being pulled in a direction that I am not comfortable with, but that I welcome because it's been brewing for months now. I have felt a pull to keep my children at home, to embrace other women who also shared this desire, and to follow what I felt like God was asking me to do. Really follow it, even though I didn't want to. So for me that has meant stepping out of one ministry to enter another. And when I started feeling really sad this evening about not seeing my sisters tomorrow to do church in my living room, I was remembering reading "A New Beginning" from the Jesus Story Book Bible to my three children, discussing Noah's trust in the Lord and how that applied to us, and then singing at the top of our lungs "The Lord told Noah to build Him an arky, arky, Lord told Noah to build Him an arky, arky build it out of gopher's barky, barky children of the Lord", I knew I was still doing church in my living room, my audience was just way cuter and a lot noisier. Amen.