But it's not that story I want to share here today. The story I want to share began on that night in late October of 2012 when I squeaked out words on a page and stood barefoot and bare souled before a bunch of women I hardly knew beyond avatars on a screen.
This story has been written and scrawled desperately for a year until a day in late October at the same conference a year later God brought it all full circle.
There is so much to tell...
I could tell you about the hugs from friends gathered near from thousands of miles away. I could tell you about the prayers and tears and real life conversations with women who cheer me on across the miles. I could tell you about my computer dying in front of 100+ women and the "throw it on the ground" moment I had. I could gush about my few days of up to earlies and up way too lates with a couple of my best real life girlfriends who I get to see far too in often.
I really could fill a book with the story that is the Allume community, but I won't.
Instead I will tell you that sometimes you go somewhere thinking that God can do a little bit and then He shows up big. I don't mean sorta big, I mean grand slam kind of big.
A year ago I was a girl who was in fist to fist combat with fear. I had taken it on for the year and I was determined that in 31 Days in the month of October I would explain it away. I would write fear into oblivion and it would never bother me again. Then that didn't happen and the fear battle rages on so I pinned it for another year to the top of the bulletin board of life.
But the year came and almost went and October with the fire and beauty that is the season was suddenly here and so was Allume. I was still wrestling with fear. You see it was only a year ago that I got brave enough to call myself a writer. If you are a writer then you get why that can be a daunting task and title.
God has done so much in my writing this year. I've seen this space grow enormously and for some reason you folks keep coming back and reading and cheering and believing in a big God with me.
It has truly been an incredible year, but the fear was still there under it all leaving words pent up. In fact so pent up that my friend Alia scrawled a prayer in my prayer journal (Thanks The Seed Company!) to that affect somehow knowing through the Spirit that there were words behind a dam within me.
Her prayer combined with about a million other things at Allume were the catalyst for God to release that dam. It feels like a sonic shockwave has gone off in my heart and mind and the words are just there gushing out. All the ways that I was fearful have just leaked right out and you know what is left?
A spirit of bravery that gets what fear is, an ugly, insidious cancer that keeps us from full Spirit brave living, and gets that anyone that ever did anything big for God had a deep and abiding knowledge of who He is and what He has done.
Here I stand on that and I've got words to say. Get ready.
You know that little book that I've been working on for about a million years? The one that I keep promising and falling through on? The one that was going to be an e-Book? Yeah, it's meant to be so much more than that and I know it in my bones and have it on some authority that it could be a reality.
Me, the girl who couldn't call herself a writer a year ago, might just actually hold her writing in her hands someday.
The reason that I can come back from a blogging conference and tell this story of freedom from sin and fear is because of a giant God who sees and a conference that is way more than a blogging conference.
Allume is a place for Christian women who blog to meet with each other and ultimately come face to face with Jesus.
What other blogging conference would dare challenge us to stop striving for readership? To stop reaching and reaching for more and more influence and just let your influence be your reach? To reach across the street and around the world to make the Gospel hope given open handed to all the prize and not worldly accolades in a comment box?
It is astounding and shocking beauty. It is life in the light. Life lived basking in the Light that is Jesus. I'm walking in the light today, reeling and tired and overwhelmed by grace, but walking.
Thanks Allume organizers, sponsors and every woman who makes up this community.
Oh and to that anonymous person who bought my conference pass. Maybe you knew, maybe you had a God-sized nudge and knew exactly what you were doing when you chose to bless, but just in case you didn't let me tell you that God took your gift and made it much. Who knows, God might just use my words, my little words and your gift, as the catalyst to feed Jesus hope to thousands more.
Can we dream that big?
You are a part of this story. My story. The story Jesus has been writing for us all and the story that He is writing on my own life in all my fear struggling and hope grasping. Thanks be to God.
{There is so much more to share. I promise that it will come out in bits and pieces scattered throughout the next few months. Right now I am going to be putting words to page in a real way. Pray for that process? Thanks dear ones.}
No comments:
Post a Comment