Fourteen Years Ago

If you've heard me say, before, why having a November baby would mean so much to me - well, here it is again. But if you haven't, it's because I'm a sucker for milestones in my story. And for that, November is a goldmine. Apart from my own birthday in May and our wedding date in July, November is the month of major character introductions. Introductions to my story that alter it entirely... for the beautiful great grand good that my life has become.

I hadn't yet marked the passage of seven years with ol' Clifford on the blog yet, as that date is officially reserved for Saturday, but we did meet seven years ago - the first of this month, to be exact...

But today marks fourteen years. Fourteen years since my mom and I sat in an all-but-us-and-our-pastor's-wife empty Sunday School classroom and gave our lives to Christ. It was that night that I finally saw with such clarity and understanding, the truths about a man - and a God - I'd only really known of very, very casually the thirteen-and-a-half years of my life I'd lived before then. 

You see, I didn't grow up in the church the way a lot of people I know around here did. It was occasional relationship with the church I had, and by that, I mean for special occasions only. A Sunday mass with my dad's side for Christmas or Easter, weddings and funerals and christenings, and that's a lot of what I can remember. Nothing was every personal, it was just what you were supposed to do. Otherwise, life was just life and you sometimes gave thanks for what you had, but even that was nominal.

There is so much I could tell you about life up until the day I met... truly met and welcomed Jesus into my life. I didn't have an average thirteen and a half years on which to hinge my hope and trust - they were challenging. For the first time, I could see that night that God had been there all along, because as challenging of years as they were - an unseen hand had protected me when no one else really could. And not only had that hand protected me, but loved and cherished me in the way only a Creator truly can. The way I'd been longing to be known and treasured as a little girl who never got that, entirely. 

That promise, for me, was everything and I felt it to the very depths of my core. I was known and everything had a purpose and now I had full-unhindered access to the God behind it all. We drove away from church that night, and I swear to you, the sky was blacker and the stars brighter than they had ever been in my whole life. And still have been. What a shelter and refuge He became as thirteen-and-a-half years bled into some of the hardest years of my life - which would have been even more difficult had it not been for His leading.

And still He leads, now fourteen years later. Fourteen years that have been marked by unique seasons of seeing aspects of His character and finding Him refining pieces of my own. I have known no greater joy than knowing Him, nor have the joys He has introduced into my life been sweeter.