Welcome Home…..Again

As anyone who has read my memoir knows, there’s a “Welcome Home…..Again” chapter in it.  In this chapter in the book, I was referring to the season when I returned home after having my bone marrow transplant.  In this post, I’m referring to what I did on June 2, 2014.  I went “home” to share my story. 

A woman who had never before met me (but had read Hear I AM) invited me to speak to her Women on Mission group, and I was honored to do so.  As I drove from my home in Wake Forest to White Level Baptist Church, several of the rural winding roads I found myself on took me on a trip I didn’t anticipate, a trip back to my long-forgotten childhood.  The image of an old Ford pick-up flashed through my mind, as did the image of a 19 hand high Tennessee Walker named Maude (the best babysitter ever).  At this point in my life, it’s hard to believe I was ever as young as I remember being on the back on that horse! 

The scene waiting for me at the church could not have been more lovely.  There were pink carnations adorned with pink ribbons in clear bud vases on each table in the fellowship hall.  And there were several women busily and joyfully putting everything in its proper place.  As I watched the activity, I was a little more unsettled than usual (okay, maybe a lot) about speaking to the coming crowd.  Many of these people knew my family (when Denton was my only last name); they knew our history; they knew I was one of them.  What was it that Jesus said about prophets lacking honor in their hometown?  (I don’t think it was a good thing.)  Maybe that’s why I felt like my footing was a little less secure than usual.

Or maybe it was the cumulative effect of the grand gestures I had observed leading up to the event.  My aunt and several women from her church (a different church) had decided to turn the event into a “real” grown-up tea party.  There was hot tea, water full of fresh fruit, mini scones, cheese flowers and wafers, fresh fruit on toothpicks, and (last but certainly not least) Eula’s famous tea “cakes” (which are really cookies).  The tea cakes were lovingly shaped into crosses and butterflies since both are symbols of new life, which is exactly what I went there to talk about with the women.  The presence of Eula’s tea cakes was especially meaningful to me.  When I was sick from chemo, these tea cakes were my go-to food; and I know that I’m only one of many people in my hometown who can say this as Eula’s ministry is making her amazing cookies for people dealing with a critical illness.  I even recently learned that these same tea cakes were the very last thing several people I know from my hometown were able to eat before they entered into eternity; they were, in a real sense, someone’s last supper.  Talk about special!

After two most kind and generous introductions, one from the leader of the Women on Mission and one from my aunt, I went up and stood at the podium and looked out at all of the women in the sanctuary.  I felt very emotional and couldn’t quite figure out why at the time, as I had to focus on the message that I felt like God had sent me there to deliver.   Now, though, several days have passed and I’ve had time to reflect and realize that Monday night was a full circle moment for me.  When I was a very young girl growing up in Franklin County, I knew that God was calling me to write and to write specifically about him and his great love for all of us.  Only, I didn’t have the confidence, the courage, back then to answer that call.  I thank God (literally) that He is a multiple-chance kind of God.  He never gives up on any single one of us; and we can never, ever afford to give up on him–no matter what we see going on around us.

Most of the women who showed up to hear me speak were probably older than my forty-three years; and many have no doubt lived through even more challenging things than I have.  Yet, these women chose to honor me with their presence, their attention, and their affection.  They even came to me afterward to compliment me, to encourage me, to spur me on to more such Kingdom work.  And in doing all of these things, the sisters in my family of faith also helped me begin to believe that I am more a woman of God than I seem to feel like I am most days. 

I would later find out that the women who surrounded me on all sides were from nearly a dozen different Baptist churches (thanks in large part to the Tar River Baptist Association who spread the word about the event).  Yet, there was such a sense of unity among the women that an outsider probably never would have guessed that we were not all from the exact same church body (geographically-speaking that is).  I feel somehow like God’s giving us glimpses of Heaven when he allows us to see such unity in his Body.  I felt that unity when I was ill, as many churches came together around me; and I felt that exact same sense of unity as I stood up in front of several of the churches that supported me then to speak about my healing now.  Yes, something about Monday night gave me a renewed passion for the Church, a revived hope that Christ’s Church can really be so much more than it is down here now. 

Yep, it took an ugly battle with cancer, a father’s suicide, a couple of decades of heartache for me to develop the boldness to begin to stand up for God–to begin to publicly say that I am one of his before I am anything else in this world.  And I’m so very thankful that God pursued me relentlessly as I wandered from here to there; and, now that I’m “found” and finally starting to become fully awake and alive in this life, my goal is to spend my new life pursuing God the exact same way, relentlessly, and encouraging others to do the same.  I hope that’s what I did for the women who supported me Monday night at White Level Baptist Church.  Who says you can’t go home again!  It was a full circle moment indeed!