she calls me minny & she's my skeeter

 i know for me, when something seems monumental

i'm a little intimidated to tackle it or break it down.

i sure don't want to overwhelm ya'll with what the lord's been doing in my heart

& what He did over the last several months

& then brought to fruition the past weekend,

but i'm still struggling with just how to verbalize everything.

well, that & i don't want to saturate you with multiple posts.

i have 33 posts in my drafts & yesterday i sat down to write about my friends

& the pearl event

& walked away thinking that i should just slap one of those up instead.

so...my disclaimer in advance,

there'll be more than one post.

ok, now that i've got that out the way let me start at the beginning...

sibi sees the good in people.

she loves on 'em, makes a fuss over them & verbally affirms them.

she dreams big. with chandeliers and gigantic roses.

despite a past that i only know a fraction of

with stories of abuse and abandonment,

she longs to share the story of her savior

& how he filled her years & years of brokeness with wholeness.

she shares about the pearl:

  formed inside the shell of certain mollusks as a defense mechanism against a potentially threatening irritant, or an attack from outside.

& longs to tell women that we are His pearl

a metaphor to describe how priceless & valuable we are.

i love this friend of mine. we've been url friends

that became real life friends.

when she asked me months ago to come & speak at her event

i had no idea that, once i said yes, the lord would do such a work in my own heart

while i prepared to share with 200+ women!

i was running one day & thinking about how on earth i was going to turn down sibi's request

(with all my sweetest southern manners possible.of course)

when he put a reminder in my heart,

to always be prepared to give an answer to everyone 

who asks me to give the reason for the hope that i have.

(1 peter 3.15)

 i knew i had to share my story ( not just "the sad" chapter)

but the story of how i learned my God would come through always.

that when i lift my eyes up, my help comes from the lord.

not from a self help book or positive thinking,

not from anything i did myself or from sucking it up & just doing it.

the part of my story where despite living such an easy and blessed life early on

that i truly learned more about the lord's love and provision

 during the saddest darkest time of my life.

thank you sibi for seeing something in me

that i didn't know was there.

thank you for being a woman that not only has a gentle & quiet spirit

that listens for him and to him,

but then acts on those words.

thank you for covering this event in prayer and fasting.

for showing me what living a life sold out to him 

looks like in real time.

thank you for sacrificing so much to make the pearl event a reality.

i considered it one of the highest honors 

to stand beside you last weekend.

i love you pearl...

i spent a long time looking for a video that i thought would be a great intro for my talk.

my theme was trust your story, trust your author 

& find your voice.

being a lover of so many stories, i spent some time looking at you tube videos

for my one of my favorites.

originally thinking i would share the trailor, i 'bout did a standing back handspring

when i saw the following.

perfect!

(maybe you'll see why she calls me minny...
& i call her skeeter, "the person helping bring about change")

alrighty, for all you fans of "The Help", enjoy....