“Two hundred dollars—SOLD! Here’s your bottle of water”. That’s right. A bottle of water. $200. How can that be you ask? Was it a bottle of water autographed by someone famous? No. Is the lid made of sterling silver? Nope. Is it water from the purest mountain glacier? No. Dasani off the shelf. Then why would someone pay $200 for a plain bottle of water? To help a jail ministry and build a house for women coming out of jail and addiction. This is the season of Thankfulness and I would be so ungrateful if I didn’t take a moment on this blog to thank God for what happened last weekend at the writing retreat. Every year I sneak off into the woods of Clayton, Georgia, along with 50 other folks and we gather together and write songs. The first year was 2007 and I remember walking into the lodge (it was held in Indiana back then) and seeing all these folks standing around and wondering how I was lucky enough to be with them. Although I didn’t personally know most of them…I knew their writing, at least some of them. I was meeting many of them for the very first time and as they sang some of the songs they’d already written and gotten cut, I just listened in amazement. I’d only been writing a few years and some of these folks had been writing for fifteen and twenty years. These were really talented people---Dove Award Winning talented people. What I was to discover that year and in the years to follow, is that not only are these incredibly talented people, they are incredibly loving and open hearted. As we sat in writing rooms and talked about our lives, our stories, our joys and our pains, we sat with people who “got it”. Who understood that each of us have our own path next to the Savior and the song comes from what we find along that path is valuable and unique and may be worth writing. Over the years as I have gotten to know and love these folks, I have found a generous community of caring, kind, generous people. This year I was to discover just how generous they were. It started with a picture of a blanket and $5 donation. But you need to know the back story first. In May of 2016, at the Spring Retreat (we have them twice a year now), they were giving away some door prizes which usually consist of CDs, pens, bags, water bottles, etc. When a nice warm blanket was held up I fell in love with it and shouted out “I’ll give you $20!” Our sweet Director, Joel Lindsey, was so shocked by someone bidding on a door prize that when I ran up waving my $20, he just handed it to me. Fast forward 6 months and I have now decided to bedazzle the blanket and take it back and auction if off for more than the original $20, just for fun! But then I had another idea (you know how the Holy Spirit works…), and before I knew it was I holding up the bedazzled blanket to the room of songwriters and saying “You can have your picture taken with this amazing bedazzled blanket for $5 to go towards the jail ministry.” Several people responded and I was thinking “how cool God, you and I might raise $100 before I go home this weekend!” Oh boy, God must have smiled at that one. He had much bigger plans. It was during another door prize giveaway time on Friday morning and some items were being given away from the Write About Jesus Conference. The founder of that conference, Sue Smith, was also at our retreat. If you’re not a writer you may not recognize her name, but in the songwriting world, she’s kind of a big deal. She’s a really BIG DEAL. Just trust me on that, ok? They had just given away a Write About Jesus tote bag and then someone noticed there was a pen in the bottom of the bag. Someone else yelled out “Did Sue Smith touch the pen?” And before you know it the bidding started at $5, $10, $12, $17, $20 and all the way to $30! It was so much fun! And everyone was having a good time and I thought that would be the end of it. But then in the bottom of that bag was also a cardboard liner. And someone asked if Sue touched it….and the whole thing started again and the piece of CARDBOARD went for $38!!! How amazing is that? People continued to take pictures with the blanket and some folks just handed me cash. I’d collected over $100 in one day. I was thinking how good God was as i went to my room Friday night to collapse in happy exhaustion from having written some cool songs that day, never knowing that he had more in store. Saturday the water bottle auction started. My writing friend, Gerald, had come up and said he’d purchased some water bottles and maybe we could auction those off. I was doubtful (oh ye of little faith) and I guess when Gerald saw he wasn’t getting anywhere, he went straight to the Director cause next thing I know, Joel is holding up a water bottle and saying “hey folks, who wants a bottle of water?” and my friend, Gene, gives the winning bid of $200!!! What? Really? I’m sitting there in disbelief at what God is doing and I can’t stop the tears. I happen to be sitting next to Candace, aka Chewbacca Mom (you ARE one of the 162 million viewers of her Face Book Live video?? If not, stop now and watch it. Then thank me later), and she leaned over and said “I’m crying with you girl”. Then other crazy good things happen. Joel offers a free registration for the next writing retreat….BOOM……$550 from Bev my Colorado writing buddy! Chewbacca Mom offers a selfie on her face book page that has over 800,000 followers and my artist/songwriter friend, Sean Smith, wins that bid at $700. PEOPLE!! What’s happening here? WE SERVE A BIG GOD. Heard that before? Seen that before? I guess it had been a while for me. Oh me of little faith. Oh me with my $100 faith. God thought I needed to increase that a bit. I sat there with more tears. I sit here now with tears again. Jesus uses ordinary, loving, kind-hearted, broken, struggling, hardship-ridden, people to BE His Kingdom on earth. That’s what I witnessed. Something not of this world. Then to further blow my mind, the Director walked to the front of the room. His publishing company is Sunset Gallery and several of his writers were in the room. He asked them to stand and I looked around at the faces of folks I loved. I thought maybe we were gonna have a big group hug or something. “On behalf of Sunset Gallery and all of the writers, Sunset Gallery is going to match every dollar raised this weekend.” OH. MY. WORD. I thought my heart would bust out of my chest. And you know what I was seeing through my tears? A house. A house filled with women who are broken. Women who feel unworthy. Women who haven’t heard the words “I love you” enough to ever believe them. Women who need to experience something not of this world. Kingdom love. The kind that Jesus came to establish. The kind that songwriters displayed in a place called Clayton.
3 Comments
It was a baptistery in a beautiful sanctuary and it was a metal trough in a jail cell, but both were filled with the water that signified new life. One saint was clothed in a baptismal robe, one saint was wearing her jail jumpsuit, but when both were lifted out of the water they had the glow of the Holy Spirit on their face. At 9 A.M. I stood with the preacher lady and three candidates for baptism. They had declared Jesus their Savior last Sunday and were ready to proclaim their love for Him by following in His footsteps to Believer’s Baptism. Their witnesses would be a couple of church ladies, a couple of inmates and an officer. They remove their state issued flip flops so as not to slip coming out of the trough. They gingerly hold a hand and step into the water that’s been prepared sometime during the week. It’s usually quite chilly and some ladies endure it better than others. But without fail, they stay in the water while they are prayed for and dunked under. They wipe the water from their eyes, wring out their soaked hair and hurriedly step out, usually. But this Sunday, one of the ladies tarried. She was lifting her eyes and hands to heaven and letting the freedom of the Holy Spirit consume her. She began crying and praising God. At 11: A.M. I stood with three candidates for baptism. One was a mom and her son and one was my dear friend. I was there to take pictures for her. They had all declared Jesus their Lord last Sunday and were ready to proclaim their love for Him by following in His footsteps to Believer’s Baptism. Their witnesses would be Pastors, family, friends, and a congregation of believers. They would be clothed in baptismal robes and step into water that had been prepared and was just the right temperature. They would be welcomed in the pool by a Pastor and would have a chance to declare to hundreds that this day forth, they were completely sold out for Christ. Beautiful music would be playing as they were immersed into the water and lifted up again. Pictures and video would be taken to remember the beautiful event. The inmate who stood in chilly water and my precious friend in the baptismal pool…..two such different baptisms, but here’s where they are so much the same…..both went down longing to wash away the past and both rose up into a BRAND NEW DAY. Jesus, lover of our souls, graced both events with His sweet presence. He saw hearts that had been broken and made them whole. He saw wrong choices and redeemed it all with His love. He saw women thirsting for the Water of Life and quenched their thirst. He saw women who wanted to choose obedience and He gave them wisdom to walk in it. And in both instances I know there was a voice from heaven saying “This is my daughter in whom I am well pleased.” |
AuthorHi! I am Donna and I'm traveling. It's a journey to discover who I am in Christ every day....no looking back, face to the Son! Come join me! Archives
October 2017
Categories |